Maintenon Mystery # 8, Part Seven.

Louis Shalako

Madame Boutin lived with her senile father, an alcoholic husband and a couple of rather useless-looking young men in their late teens or early twenties. One look at the cops, and the older one went out abruptly, and the younger one retreated to a back bedroom.

They’d interrupted a shouting match, clearly audible through the door. It had stopped abruptly on their knock.

The fact that they could stop, said something.

It meant they still had some dignity.

It meant someone ruled the roost around here and it was probably her.

While there was bit of heat in her cheekbones and a glitter of something in the eyes, there was little hint of embarrassment. It was just the way some people lived—it didn’t mean anything a lot of the time.

There might have been a lot of love in the household.

Just having a bad day, maybe. It was no one’s business but their own.

If nothing else, the place looked comfortable and smelled like food. She sat in a rocking chair with a small, carefully-clipped poodle in her lap.

“So, Madame Boutin. Thank you for speaking to us.”

“Not at all. I hope you catch them—” The lady was out of work now, and would have to find something suitable somewhere else.

Her employer had been fairly easy to please, and she was a hard worker. She knew what people wanted in a domestic servant. And now, she’d be scrambling.

Monsieur Dubzek had paid well and had been flexible when she needed a day or an afternoon off. This information had been dragged out of her.

“We’re interested in Monsieur Dubzek’s friends, family, you know. The sort of people that came and went.”

“Well, he has a mother, of course. His only sister moved to Algeria with her husband many years ago. He was an unsentimental man, although he might have saved his sister’s letters. I told him he should.”

“Oh, really? What sort of relationship did you have with your employer?”

“I should think a very good one. As I said, he was an easy-going man.”

“Okay. Would you have any idea who visited him Thursday night? Can you help us with that?”

“It was an old friend. Marko didn’t mention a name. But I made sure to lay out snacks, cheese, crackers, pate de foie gras, things like that, and of course he liked his wine chilled.”

“Did you call him Marko?”

“No. Only here at home.”

“What did he call you?”

“Madame.”

“I see. Hmn. Anything else? Not champagne this time?”

“He had ordered some lobster from the fishmongers. It arrived in a big packing crate, frozen solid. I had to make sure there were a few un-frozen ones…that is to say, I had to unfreeze one corner and break a few out, carefully, so that they might be ready for Thursday night.” 

She pursed her lips, not liking to thaw things out and then having to refreeze them.

In the end, she’d boiled the kettle a few times and took them out that way.

“He wanted a nice crisp white, not too sweet, for that night.”

Marko had the pantry stocked, floor to ceiling, with an impressive set of wine racks. It was generally about half-full. This left room for new acquisitions, as Marko had told the lady one time.

“Sounds like a special guest, then. Was, er, Marko, a good cook?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never had the food, you understand, but it seemed like he must be.”

“Did he ever mention any kind of a legacy?” This was rocky ground.

She was in fact mentioned in the will, a small remembrance of a thousand francs. Arguably, not worth killing for.

“No. He was too young to be thinking of such things.”

Theoretically, she had never rifled the drawers and read his personal stuff. The desk did have a lock on it, one almost anyone could pick with a bobby-pin…he tried to ignore his thoughts, but it wasn’t very easy sometimes.

Tailler nodded thoughtfully. Dubzek had been fifty-three. In some ways, she was right. A man could go at any time, and yet, no one ever expected it to happen to them. Servants stayed out of trouble, and employed, by not pissing their employers off. She might not have had a single curious bone in her body…next question.

He had them written down.

“It’s a terrible situation, what with you out of work now, and your family depending on you.”

She nodded.

“Yes, but Eduard’s mother passed away a couple of years ago and she left us a little something.”

“Ah.”

Her face was suddenly pinched with worry. The money would not last forever and the costs were ongoing. Eduard’s father was a burden to care for, although he had a tiny pension. The boys ate their own weight in food on a weekly basis, as she said, with the first real hint of genuine warmth and Maintenon tried her with a gentle smile. Whatever they’d been arguing about was by now forgotten.

She’d be back to work within a few days, (God willing), and it would soon fade into memory.

“Well, thank you, Madame. You may have been of very great help to us. If we have further questions, may we have permission to talk to you again?”

“But of course. Marko was a good man, and whoever killed him deserves the guillotine.”

For the first time, Maintenon spoke.

“Were you aware of any of his previous business enterprises?”

It was an open-ended question, but she shut him right down.

“No. Not really. That was before my time and he had no reason to discuss that sort of thing with me.” According to her, she’d been working hard for Marko Dubzek for the past three and a half years and she’d never had a problem with him or she would have walked.

Maintenon grinned and she gave him a quick nod of thanks or something.

Eyebrows raised, Tailler glanced at Gilles.

Still grinning, it was Maintenon’s turn for an enigmatic nod.

“Ah, yes, sir.”

So. That would appear to be about it…

***

The pair sat in the car, just down the street from the Boutin residence.

“Gilles.”

“Yes, Emile?”

Tailler ginned at the tone.

“I have two questions.”

“Fire away, mon ami.”

“One. What if this Bazin, the priest, is a member of some order? He might not be associated with any particular parish at all. He might have been given a Sabbatical, or, ah, maybe he’s studying, ah theology, at the Sorbonne…you know, something like that.” In which case, he might not be attached anywhere…under no one’s immediate supervision and accountable only to himself.

“Good point. We can check with the various institutions, of course. We can start on that tomorrow. Next question.” It would take a little time and manpower.

It could be arranged.

“Why don’t we talk to that little girl, Judith?” Tailler hesitated. “We could talk to any number of them. What with eighty-seven folks on hand at time of the call, and a few who departed Sunday night, we’ve barely scratched the surface with any of them.”

Now that, was a very good question…

The answer was hard to put into words, but Tailler had asked a pretty good question and he deserved an answer.

“Ah…”

Tailler reached for the ignition switch.

It was getting near to quitting time and he was tired, hungry, and oddly enough, thinking about his mother.

The fact was, that it was spaghetti night, she was damned good at it and he’d missed it last week due to the demands of the work.

The case, for all of their motions and running around, wasn’t getting any better.

Maintenon’s mouth closed.

Let Emile think about that one on his own for a while—

He’s not exactly stupid, either.

“Gilles.”

“Yes, Emile?”

“Thank God, but so far, we don’t have any wigs—or twins.”

Maintenon tipped his head back and laughed.

God, how he laughed.

(End of excerpt.)

Readers may be interested in The Maintenon Mysteries.

Thanks for reading.

 

 

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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