Maintenon Mystery # 8, excerpt six.

Louis Shalako

With the local officers trying to get some decent plaster casts, which would keep them busy for a while, Maintenon took Tailler and went looking for Monsieur Delorme, and hopefully, Madame Roux.

There were a couple of males cycling past when they got to the cars, and their stares were eloquent enough. Two cop cars and black sedan all lined up in a row. Nobody around except a couple of perfect strangers…dressed in suits and ties.

Heat haze and thick humidity hung over the open clearing that was the park. There were very few people about, although the pool seemed as popular as ever.

With Delorme’s help and a bit of door-knocking, they finally found her cleaning one of the chalets.

She insisted on finishing up one or two things before she would talk to them, which made sense as the place was occupied and the people would return soon enough.

With her sitting uncomfortably in the back seat, they brought the lady back to the office building, where an equally-uncomfortable Delorme let them use his office. With an unreadable look, he closed the door behind him as Maintenon took a moment to turn down the radio. They watched him go into the kitchen, come out and go along the aisles in the small grocery section on the other side of the main room, taking stock with a pencil and notebook at the ready.

Gilles moved a cat, fat and lazy and not too worried about this one at all. Maintenon finally took a seat to observe the interview. As for the cat, it had another spot on the window ledge which was just as good. He’d even gotten this particular (and rather foolish) human to carry him over…life was good.

Madame Roux might have been beautiful once.

Tailler cleared his throat and began.

“So. Madame. Did Monsieur Dubzek have a lot of company?”

“Er, sometimes.”

“But not always?”

“Not every day or every weekend, no.”

“How do you like working here?”

“It’s all right.”

“They let you wear your clothes, eh?” She was in a more-or-less traditional maid’s costume, suitably dowdy, dull grey in colour and with a fairly low hem.

The shoes were very sensible.

A bit of colour slowly rose in her cheeks.

“Ah, yes, sir.”

“And why is that?”

Cold grey eyes regarded Tailler from across the table as Maintenon patiently listened.

“I suppose it’s because, otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to get anybody.” No smile.

This was her answer and she was perfectly serious. The proper questions elicited the proper responses. The lady had been born not a kilometre away, and the farm was still in the family.

Her older brother had it.

“Hmn. What do you think about nudism? What do you think about all these naked people, eh?”

She flushed slightly.

“I try not to think too much about it.”

“So you’re not a big fan then. Why work here at all?”

“I suppose it’s because I needed the job.” She took a breath and opened up a little. “I have two daughters and I like to keep a roof over our heads and feed them, you know, things like that.”

“Yes, I’m sure it’s very hard sometimes. We really appreciate your help in this matter. So, where’s Monsieur Roux?”

“Killed in the war.” The tone was flat, unemotional.

“I’m terribly sorry to hear that. How old are your daughters?’

“Nineteen and twenty-two.”

“All right, we won’t keep you too long, then. So, in your own words, can you tell us about finding Monsieur Dubzek?”

“I suppose. I was cleaning the chalets. Mostly a quick dusting. I don’t wash the dishes, not unless specifically asked, and I don’t do their laundry, you understand.” There was a shack with coin-operated machines, even electric dryers.

There were so many chalets, and only so much time in a day.

If she did the dishes, a reasonable tip would be expected. Delorme had been in the business for over thirty years…

Delorme didn’t miss a trick, when it came to generating income—but then, the season was short, as one could imagine. Staff were not that well-paid either, and so one needed hours—and the odd little tip helped as well.

“So, in other words…”

She sighed.

“I opened up the front door with the master key. I have a box of soaps and cleaners, a sponge, scrub-brushes. Each cabin has certain essentials. The mop and the broom are kept in the small cupboard in the back hallway.” Guests sometimes had their own occasion to use them, and it didn’t make much sense to lug all that around by foot.

Basically, she’d taken her cleaning supplies into the kitchen.

With the light still off and the kitchen curtains partly closed, she’d almost tripped on the body.

She hadn’t screamed, and she was keeping her composure now.

“Was the inner back door closed?”

“No. It was wide open.”

“I see. I wonder if you can help us to identify any of these people.” Tailler had a stack of prints and getting up out of his seat, he went around to sit on her side of the desk. “First one. Do you know them?”

Her eyes flicked over the photo.

“No. Never seen her before.”

“So this one wasn’t a regular guest, then?”

“Not that I know of.”

“What about this one?”

“That’s the Lussier woman. Ah…Adelaide. They were in Number Eight, ah…earlier in the summer. They stayed a week.”

Tailler made a note of it: one positive identification so far.

“How many days a week do you work here?”

“Five or six days a week in summer. We go crazy in early spring, when we’re opening up. I don’t get hardly anything at all in winter.” She explained that most of the time, or a lot of the time, there was no one in the cabin when she went in.

If a cabin was unoccupied, she still went in and had a quick look, a quick dusting sometimes.

She opened up a bit more.

“That’s in the busy season. In winter, I work for anyone that needs it—”

Apparently she was a seamstress. She took in laundry, babysat for the neighbours and did whatever she could to get by. They had a vegetable garden out back, and she worked at it. It was a source of pleasure, one could tell by the way she spoke of it. It was something all her own, where she set the standards and had control over the operation.

One of her daughters was a secretary at a law office in a neighbouring village, (one much larger than St. Etienne with fourteen hundred souls), and the other one worked a counter at a local shop. They were lucky to have three bedrooms, and a bit of a garden out back. That was the beauty of village life, all that space out back.

They were getting by, but at some point the girls would marry, or move off somewhere…

Somebody might get sick. At some point, she was sure to be left on her own…it was very difficult to put anything away for a rainy day.

“I understand, Madame. All right, next picture.”

She shook her head.

Maintenon bit back a deep sigh.

This wasn’t going too far, but one never knew—they might get lucky.

One simply never knew.

She had at least a few names, mostly confirming ones they already had. Ordinary, bourgeois, naked, middle-class people.

It was right about then that the phone began ringing, and Tailler gave Maintenon a look. With Delorme out and about, the thing just kept ringing and ringing.

Gilles gave Tailler a nod and the younger detective picked it up as the lady patiently waited.

“Hello? Can I help you?”

Kornelia und Hartmut Häfele 

His eyes swung over to Maintenon.

There was this look on his face.

“It’s for you, Inspector.”

***

The call was from Levain, stuck in Paris holding the fort as the expression went.

“So, Gilles. In amongst the documents recovered from Dubzek’s apartment was a will.”

“Ah. Excellent—” There had been a desk, a filing cabinet, and a few boxes of old papers tucked onto the top shelf in a closet in Dubzek’s small study.

Rather than go through them at the scene, they’d been inventoried, photographed in their original positions, (with some identifying background shots, clearly of the flat in question), boxed up and brought back to the unit for careful scrutiny. It was all signed, sealed and delivered by agents of the state, duly authorized to do so…

Hubert, Firmin and others, rather than put it off, had cleaned off a couple of desks, laid it all out and gone through it methodically.

“Also. We have a title deed for the building—you remember the little sicko club he ran downtown for a while there.”

“Ah.”

Detective Andre Levain.

There was a short silence as Levain leafed through his notes.

“We’ve got his bankbook and it’s really something—poor old Marko was filthy, stinking rich.” There was this tone in Levain’s voice. “We’re talking a few million here.”

“Interesting.”

“Now we have the name of his doctor, his lawyer, and it turns out there’s a phone number for his mother in a notebook. Her name and address are there. She lives in Orleans, or a little village just outside of it. We made a quick call. That was a toughie, as she doesn’t read the Paris papers and, ah, yeah. I had to break the news. It’s never going to be easy, eh, Gilles? She was pretty broken up by it. She’s about eighty-seven. He owns that building too, a small retirement pension. When the old lady lost it, I ended up talking to a niece who was there at the time. He’s got a cousin managing it, but it’s very small and looking after it sounds pretty simple. It’s another angle. For one thing, she inherits the bulk of his estate. We have no idea who’s in her will. Right? There are one or two other names in there as well. There are some small legacies for people we think are cousins, nephews, nieces and things like that.”

“How do we know that?”

“They all mostly live down near Orleans.” Wills were very specific, they had to be, and their last known addresses would be in it.

How current those addresses might be was another question, but the will was only four years old.

“Ah. Okay. Excellent.” They could look into them later.

“No address for the priest.”

“Does he get any money?”

“Ah, no. Not at first glance, but the name didn’t pop up in the will, at least according to my reading of it.” That wasn’t to say Marko hadn’t promised him something, or even handed out cash to anyone in particular.

“There’s nothing in the phone book.” This was the proverbial little black book.

Marko’s had a dozen names in it, mostly grocers and bakers and butchers and the local dairy.

The only other names were a mother and the sister.

According to Andre, Dubzek had made some pretty substantial bequests to a half dozen charities, the Church, an orphanage, the St. Vincent de Paul, even a hospital in his neighbourhood. A children’s hospital! Nothing that would really threaten his fortune, or that of his heirs, but substantial enough.

“Hmn.” A guilty conscience, perhaps, trying to buy their way into heaven—or maybe just someone who knew the value of a dollar.

The bankbook didn’t show any unusual withdrawals, at least not recently. The book was half-full, going back seven months, and it looked like Marko went in once or twice a week to make withdrawals. The withdrawals were surprisingly modest for a man of such means.

Five hundred francs, last Thursday afternoon. That was the most recent. Sure, a lot of money, but the man was a millionaire going away for the weekend. He’d had over four hundred on him at the time of his demise.

“Okay.”

“So. We’re trying to get a handle on the priest. He’s not actually attached to any of the nearby parish churches, and one wonders how he comes into it.” They were talking to the Bishop, but with Church authorities fearing trouble, they were getting a bit of a runaround.

They were neither confirming nor denying, and asking plenty of questions of their own…

The line crackled, and Maintenon silently cursed. All of this would be written up for his perusal, but he needed to know.

Sooner rather than later.

 “…the tactics of delay, in other words, while they try and figure out what’s up with us…” Telling them about a priest’s possible involvement with the murder of Dubzek would only complicate matters that were already complex enough.

It was a process of negotiation, with the Church, with bishops and the like. If they got too pissed-off, there wasn’t a power in Heaven or Hell that could move them.

“Indeed. Keep working on that, and if you locate him, I want to be there when we talk to him.”

“Right. Anyways, how are things going down there?”

“About as well as can be expected.”

“When are you coming back? Chiappe wants a meeting on the Beaudoin file, and the trial date is coming up fast.”

“Yes, yes. Ah—we’ll try to get back this afternoon.” At this distance, it didn’t make much sense to stay overnight.

Officers could just as easily sleep in their own beds and save the department some money. A little bit of drive-time, even at time and a half, was a bargain by comparison.

“Right. Off we go then, Gilles. Have a good one.”

“You too, Andre. Say hello to the boys for us and I guess that’s about it for now.”

(End of excerpt.) 


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Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery # 8, an excerpt.

Inspector Gilles Maintenon.

Louis Shalako

Number Eighteen was occupied until the end of the week.

Francis Herriot was a minor official in the Customs service. His wife Marie, was a consumptive-looking woman who smoked and coughed incessantly. Their son Benoit was about seven years old, wide-eyed and curious about the strangers in the living room.

“You understand, gentlemen, that if word should get out, my position at work might become very uncomfortable.”

“Ah, yes, of course, but I wouldn’t worry too much about it. We’re not going to go blasting it all over the front page.” Tailler consulted his little list of questions. “So. When was the last time you saw Monsieur Dubzek?”

Francis looked at his wife, who apparently did much of the talking.

“Saturday. He was at the lunch counter.”

“When was the last time that he had company, that you can recall?”

“There were some people…possibly two or three weeks ago.”

“Did he use the grille out back?”

“Yes, he did—they were out there drinking. They had steaks. It’s a popular meal around here, and the smell is unmistakeable.”

“Men or women? Or both?”

“Ah. Two males and three females.”

Tailler showed them a few photos.

No hits.

Interesting.

The descriptions were pretty generic, but Tailler dutifully took them down. The two males had brown hair and were pretty average in all regards. There were two brunettes and one redhead.

One of them was a bit heavy, the others a little more average. The lady had no idea of the relationships involved. The people were in their thirties and forties maybe. That was all she could say.

“Ah. Do you guys know a little girl named Judith?”

“Oh, yes, she’s friends with Benoit. We know her parents very well.”

“Are you friends in town?” The Herriots were from Paris, and Tailler had the impression Judith and her family were from Orleans.

“No, just here.” Both parties had been coming to the park for a number of years.

“Did you ever see Judith go into Monsieur Dubzek’s cabin?”

“Oh, yes.”

“How often?”

She looked at her husband.

He shrugged, but taking up the thread, he answered this time.

“Yeah, pretty often.” No big deal, in other words. “The kids have been in there once or twice.”

They seemed terribly accepting of such things, as if it were natural for nine year-old girls to hang around with middle-aged men—naked ones, at that. And their own children.

He chewed on his lip, feeling like he was wallowing badly, which he was. Why in the blazes didn’t Maintenon step in with his superior knowledge and experience?

But for whatever reason, Gilles was letting him have the lead.

There was a loud knock at the door.

Gilles sighed.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get it.”

Having taken off his jacket, there were visible sweat patches at Tailler’s armpits, although the Herriots seemed comfortable enough in their minimal attire—a thin house dress for Madame and sky blue Bermuda shorts for the old man. They’d been about to go into the village for ice cream with the boy. Monsieur Herriot was about forty-one and looked very athletic, and the fellow was about as hairy as a bear.

Maintenon was tiring of all that skin, all that hair—

It was Detective Larue, with an eager look on his face. A carload of gendarmes idled behind him.

Detective Larue, St. Etienne detachment.

Closing the door firmly behind, Gilles stepped out into the broad light of day.

“Yes? What’s up?”

“News. A vehicle was seen parked on a lane just north of the park. On the evening in question. It’s less than a kilometre from here. First, there’s a brush-line, not exactly a hedgerow in the classic sense. More of a windbreak, and then there are open fields, and then about a half a kilometre of woods and brush.”

“I see.”

“Then there’s the other thing. Shouldn’t we have seized all the bows and arrows? I mean, and check for fingerprints?”

Maintenon tipped his head on one side.

“Yes, but it’s hard to see what good that might have done if he was killed by someone in the park…” He nodded sharply.

Larue might be on to something—

“What I was thinking, sir, is what if it was an outsider.”

The archery equipment hadn’t been used since the week before, as it had rained heavily on the Sunday. It was just a whole bunch of stuff, jammed into a locker.

“Yes. Well, we can do that I suppose. However, it’s much more important to check out that vehicle.”

“We have a description. It was a big, black Voisin. Our witness doesn’t know anyone around here with that sort of vehicle, although we are asking around…”

Maintenon nodded.

“Can he pinpoint the place?”

“Yes, sir. He told us exactly where it was.” There was a farmer’s laneway, and the car had been parked on the opposite side of the road, facing west, and unoccupied.

There was no one around, no one walking down the road with a jerry-can, as if the vehicle might have run out of gas. The person had gone down the road, going the other way, just a few hours before and the car wasn’t there then.

Gilles had made up his mind.

Stepping to the chalet door, he opened it.

“Tailler.”

“Sir?”

“Say goodbye, we’re going.”

***

Dappled shadows danced under their feet as gravel crunched.

“Here.” There must have been a rain the night before, there were faint tire marks on the verge.

“I want plaster casts.”

“Sir.” Granger waved a hand and spoke.

One local officer would remain here.

Maintenon eyed the laneway, leading to the golden glow of the grain field at the other end of a long tunnel.

“Has anyone been through here?”

“Not that we know, sir. We could ask Joinville, who owns the land, but he’s away. The whole family’s gone. Visiting his mother. The odds are no one, sir.”

“Very well. Let us use our eyes.”

A known party place.

 The very first thing they noticed was the empty bottles, mostly beer but one or two small whiskey bottles, brandy, even liqueurs like crème de menthe. The second thing was the used condoms, littering the ground and not speaking well for the purity of their scene…

Noting the raised eyebrows, Larue spoke up.

“It’s a known party-place. But that’s mostly on weekends, and virtually always after dark.” As they all knew, when they the had time, patrol officers would take a ride past, (and they still used bicycles in a lot of rural detachments) and check for underage persons out past their bedtime as Larue said.

“I see.” Maintenon nodded. “That might account for how our unknown subject knew about the place.”

Constable Granger raised the camera and took a few pictures, in both directions, using natural light and then the flash as well. Even with the thin leather gloves, he winced when removing the bulbs, which were white-hot, although they cooled pretty rapidly. Rather than chuck them all over the place, Maintenon saw that he put them in a leather pouch, and then into a special pocket of the camera bag slung over one shoulder.

“Let us proceed.” At the end of their lane, ten metres into the trees, there was a field of golden wheat.

At one time this must have been a farm-stead, accounting for the mature trees and relict bulbs and flowers including periwinkle and day-lilies in all of their tall, orange glory.

They stopped before venturing out into the sunlight.

“I’m a bit of a hunter, you know, and it looks like something crossed the field.” Larue pointed, head leaning in towards Maintenon and Tailler.

He knelt down and had a look.

“It’s not a deer, anyways.”

Granger changed lenses, trying to document the trail, which clearly led south, more or less in a straight line, towards the forest on the other side.

“All right. Use your eyes. Let’s stay off the actual trail and look for footprints.” Maintenon led off, head down, moving slowly, eyes roving across the distinct patches of flattened grain.

Larue got down on his hands and knees, feeling the ground, shuffling along sideways like a dog.

“Ah.”

“What? Have you got something?” Tailler and Granger stepped in close as Maintenon gazed off into the far distance, a blue haze over the low hills and the more distant forest.

It was very much a Cezanne landscape. Perhaps that was just fancy, or perhaps it was the wrong artist—he wasn’t much of an expert on the subject. Just what one might learn out of magazines and newspaper coverage, and little more than that.

“It’s definitely not a deer…” Feeling around, Granger stood.

He nodded at another officer, who was carrying a bundle of stakes with cheap red flags on the end.

"I'm pretty sure that's not a deer."

“Mark this one.” He looked up at Maintenon. “We’ll make a plaster cast. It appears to be a human footprint. At least the heel-marks are distinct. The ground must have been pretty soft, and it did rain…I think the night before the murder, or two nights before the body was discovered.”

“What about the grain?” Tailler raised an eyebrow and Larue hastened to explain.

“We’ll use some snips and try to expose the proper print. If we find enough, we’ll try it a couple of different ways.” Obviously, they were hoping for clear and distinct prints in soft soil.

Maintenon nodded. So they weren’t total fools, then.

“Very well.”

They meandered their way across the field. Larue and even Tailler found more marks, which were flagged for casts and photos. Another thing would be to measure the length of the stride and look for other indicators such as uneven weight distribution—like a cripple, or whatever. 

They could do all that later, with no rain expected in the next twenty-four hours at least.

The edge of the forest was another problem, and Larue led, looking for crushed plants, snapped branches and marks in the leaf litter. There was the occasional mud-hole, which would fill in a heavy rain but drain almost as quickly in the local deep, black humus. The puddles had now dried but at least there was a lot less underbrush due to standing water much of the time. Larue explained how he’d once camped in such a spot, for just that reason, and after a big rain, he and a friend had woken up with four inches of water in the tent.

More flags were planted.

“The trail is still heading due south.”

Maintenon nodded.

“Interesting.”

Like Red Indians, the men filed along, trying to step where Larue had stepped, and swatting at the bugs which seemed very thick in the air. There was no breeze in the dark forest, and the temperature seemed to have climbed accordingly.

“Ah. Here we are.”

The men crowded around.

One footprint, revealed after Laure had deftly swept away the leaves, grass, and twigs that littered the forest floor everywhere.

“Right. Mark it and keep going.” Tailler was cheerful enough, in spite of the trickles of sweat going down inside the shirt. “That one might work pretty well.”

“That looks like a man’s shoe.” It was the left foot—their first print had been a right, (he was pretty sure), indistinct though it might be.

Larue nodded at Tailler.

“Yes, and it’s a fairly big one. I’d say size ten or eleven at the least.”

Maintenon, not particularly happy about the hot sun and the various stick-seeds and burdocks stuck all over his pant-legs, kept silent, the inner band of his hat feeling unfortunately moist.

At times, there was no trail at all, at times, there were marks and signs that seemed almost ludicrously easy. Whoever they were tracking wasn’t particularly good at bush-craft, according to their guide. He seemed very pleased with his conclusion, showing off a little for the big-city boys maybe.

Finally, they came to a place where they could see the camp. They were still in the woods, having come out behind a chalet. It wasn’t Number Eighteen, but that was only thirty metres off.

This would have to be Number Fifteen or thereabouts.

“What would you have done, Larue?”

“I don’t know. The lockup for sporting equipment is on the other side of the park. I think I would have circled around, no matter how long it took.” Especially in daylight hours.

“Which way would you have gone?”

“I’m tempted to say, to go the long way around, meaning the back way. I’m wondering how much local knowledge they actually had…yet the front way is probably shorter. They could wait until there was no traffic and then just dart across the road.” They would have to check in both directions and really use their ears. “There’s another thing, Inspector.”

“What’s that?”

“What if he brought the bow and arrow with him? Or her. What if they had been to the camp at some point in the past, and simply stole some archery equipment then? Or at least knew what brand to look for in their local sporting goods store…” The actual bow had not been properly identified or recovered.

It probably never would be…

It might have been any brand of bow.

Photo by Arthur Kastler., (Wiki.)

These were all good points, and Maintenon nodded thoughtfully.

“Well. Let’s carry on. Ah, you and Tailler go that way, and Larue and I will go this way. Follow us, young man.” This last to the gendarme, patiently carrying the flags and marking where he was told.

Granger took a handful of stakes from his comrade.

What with the plaster casts, and more photographs, they had some work to do, but they were at least generating some kind of a lead.

It was food for thought, at the very least.

The two parties were soon lost to each other.

“What if—” The gendarme paused as if embarrassed by his own temerity in the face of the big-city cops.

“Yes? Spit it out, young man, we need all the ideas we can get.”

“What if it’s just some peeping Tom?”

Larue laughed.

“Then the odds were, that he would be very disappointed. At least in most cases. Also, there are a few dogs around here. They should be barking like crazy. Not that people haven’t done it, I suppose—”

With a nudist camp in the vicinity, surely more than one person with a prurient interest had shown up here in the bushes over the years.

“How come the dogs didn’t bark, Inspector?”

Why didn't the dogs bark?

It was a good question. There was a dog barking now, not more than a hundred metres east, where a small farmstead stood just on the other side of the park boundary. The only thing visible had been the back of a sagging barn and a break, a clump of tall, gently-rounded deciduous trees a contrasting green in amongst the predominant conifers.

“Maybe they did and people just ignored it.”

The others nodded. It happened often enough.

“All right. Off we go.”

Gilles stood there a moment, squinting into the far distance at a long line of geese flying low over the treeline. He hadn’t realized his eyes were that good, since he’d taken to reading glasses a few years ago. In the city, the air was bad and there were buildings on every horizon.

Out here, the air was very clean.

Hmn.

Interesting.

You learn something new every day.

(End of excerpt.)

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