“Not at all,” she said hastily, but her heartbeat quickened yet again, and she blinked rapidly—a sure sign of a lie.
Hm.
“Any personal problems at all you know about?” the inspector asked.
She took a breath and held it for an instant before she let it go, as if she were contemplating a decision. “He was always complaining about money,” she said at last. It sounded like a confession, although she still held her shoulders tense and her scent remained the same. “His wife never complained, but her aunt did. She thought Pierre wasn’t providing well enough for her niece. She pushed him to make more money, to get a promotion, or the like. But he found it difficult to get ahead at his bank.”
“Is that the auntie with the little dog?” I asked.
“Caramel! Yes!” she exclaimed. “Mon Dieu! That she brings everywhere and allows to lick her on the mouth!”
“Incroyable!”—unbelievable!—I complained. We shared a shudder.
“And do you know, all the rest of her family is in Lourdes, but the auntie moved to Paris solely to keep an eye on Pansy when she married? She even moved into the same building as Pansy,” she said, her eyes glittering with pleasure in the gossip.
“Oh, how… thoughtful of her,” I said.
“To return for a moment to the murder,” the inspector said mildly, “do you have any reason to believe the… auntie… in question might have thought it necessary to resort to capital punishment for Pierre’s failings?”
We all held the moment in silence, contemplating, and then Mireille said, “Perhaps. I simply don’t know. I’m afraid I have nothing else to offer, Monsieur Inspector.”
I didn’t believe her, because she still seemed distressed, but I didn’t want to press her in the inspector’s presence. Perhaps she was simply uncomfortable being questioned by an inspector—I couldn’t have blamed her for that.
“You may go, then,” he said with a polite smile. He stood while she got up and went out, and then he returned to his seat. To me, he said, “What do you think of the possibility that the auntie is involved?”
“As I said before, Inspector, I don’t know of anyone connected to Pierre that I could think responsible for murder. Oh—but I do have one question. If you’ll humor mere curiosity?”
The corners of his mouth turned up. “For you, Madame,” he said, and my heart fluttered in my chest. I struggled a moment to recall my question. Oh, yes, Monsieur Carré.
“Do you have any idea as to why Monsieur Carré would have turned green while examining the murder scene? I’ve never seen him look so disquieted.”
His eyes shifted as he thought. “No, I don’t believe I have an answer to that. But I can ask him.” He stood and put on his hat. “Speaking of which, it’s back to work for me.”
“Mais non!” I said with a mock frown—but no! “You will deprive me of your company so soon, Inspector?”
“I’m afraid I must. Bonsoir.” He allowed his eyes to rest on mine for an extra instant, and then he nodded and went out.
I felt adrift on a daydream for at least ten minutes after.
6
As I pulled myself together, I thought on what else I needed to accomplish this night. I still needed to speak with Mireille about the gambling… problem… that I believed was likely occurring downstairs, but now hardly seemed to be the time to upset her with more troubles. I would save it for a while. Probably nothing too dire could happen in a space of only a few days.
I went downstairs to check on business, just in time to see a young man enter with a different sort of expression than I normally see—not the open smile of anticipated pleasure, but the serious look of the bearer of bad news. He had a square face with short blonde hair, and I liked him immediately, although I wondered what his business was.
I went straight to him. "Bonsoir, Monsieur. How may I be of assistance?"
"You are the madame here?" he asked. When I nodded, he went on, "I'm sorry, I find this very awkward, but I am in possession of some information which I feel I shouldn't keep to myself, and I believe that you might be the person to tell it to."
"Do come into my office. Champagne?"
"Oh, yes, please."
As I signaled one of the waitstaff to attend to us, I saw Mireille just as she came down the broad stairway into the drawing room. She caught sight of the gentleman before me, and blanched. He too caught sight of her, and a smile began to break across his face before he caught himself by burying his face in his freshly acquired champagne glass.
"Oh, you seem to know Mireille," I commented. I do have a hard time not pulling the tiger’s tail.
“Uh, I’m sorry, who?” he asked lamely. He deflected: “You mentioned your office?”
“Certainly,” I said. I was definitely going to have a word with Mireille. Why was it that so many of my ladies and staff felt the need to keep things from me?
The gentleman and I soon found ourselves sitting opposite one another across from my desk.
"You said you had news to deliver,” I said, “and judging by your expression, I’m guessing I’ll be sorry to hear it."
"I apologize for that, Madame. I hope not to cause you any difficulties, nor to become embroiled in any difficulties myself. It's just that the word is that Pierre lost his life here, at Le Chat Rose, and I have some information related to that. You see, I worked alongside Pierre at the Banque du France. We were colleagues."
I leaned forward, curious to know what this gentleman would reveal. Was Pierre having an affair? Did he have enemies within his department?
"There was one day last week that Pierre and I were headed off after work to have a few drinks, and he kept looking around in every direction as soon as our feet touched the cobblestones. Finally I asked him what in the world was the matter. He confided in me that he thought he was being followed."
"Being followed?" I echoed, entranced now by the story.
"Yes, indeed. He didn't recognize the person following him, but he thought he'd seen him three times before. Once in the street outside his home, twice on the street either approaching or leaving the bank."
The gentleman stopped and rubbed his hands over his face as if wishing he could wipe away the tragic story of Pierre's death. "Pierre didn't know why he was being followed, or at least that was what he told me. And he didn't describe the fellow. So in the end, I have little of actual use to tell you, I'm afraid. But knowing this fact about Pierre, and then knowing that he met his end violently... well, I felt it would have criminal of me not to tell this to anyone."
"But why me, Monsieur? Surely it would have made more sense to report this to the police?"
"I don't want to get involved in it, Madame. I'm a family man. I have a wife and two young children, and I'm trying to keep my life as simple as possible. I'd rather not deal with the police."
"You wish this to serve as an anonymous tip, then."
"If you don't mind, Madame."
"I can honor that," I said. But then suspicion leapt into my mind—could it be possible that he was trying to cover his own tracks or throw off suspicion if he were somehow involved?
Well, I had the man in private... the one thing you never want with someone of my particular nature.
I came around my desk to sit at the chair neighboring the gentleman’s. His eyebrows went up in surprise, but he didn’t pull away. Leaning closer, I applied my enchantement as I spoke. "Do tell me, my friend—do you have any idea who killed Pierre?"
He blanched, then blushed, and his eyes traveled to my lipsticked mouth. He drew a quick breath. "Ah... no, Madame. Perhaps this man following him... That’s the only suspect I could imagine."
“You don't know anyone who would have wanted Pierre to come to harm?" I kept my gaze on his eyes until I felt the charge of electricity between us.
He leaned closer to me and cleared his throat. We were so near now that I could feel his body heat. Softly, he said, "I’m sorry, Madame. I really don't know of anyone at all..."
&nbs
p; “You have nothing to confess?” I asked, my eyes boring into his. “Nothing at all?”
He swallowed audibly and made a tiny sound like a half-whimper. He half-sighed. Reluctantly, he said, “My secretary… But I don’t want my wife to know…”
“Ah.” I rolled my eyes, disappointed at the useless revelation. “That’s what I get for asking too broad a question.” I stood up and let my charme dissolve. "The butler will see you out."
I returned to the public drawing room.
I'd had it with Mireille. It was time for her to answer a few questions.
7
I surveyed the drawing room, but didn’t see Mireille. I thought of checking in her room upstairs, but—ah, yes, the new gambling room.
I went down the broad hallway to the back, where I found her and her fellow ne'er-do-wells sitting around the table, the room wreathed in smoke. I saw no banknotes on the table, but the game was raucous and tense—half the gentlemen had already folded and the remainder had stacks of one- and two-franc coins in front of them.
"Come on, old man, fold 'em, you've got nothing, we can tell from the look on your face!" shouted Monsieur Talbot.
The old man in question turned red. "Not a chance! You don't know what I've got!"
Mireille still held a hand of cards, and she watched the others with her small eyes flashing about and glittering.
"Fold 'em! Fold 'em!" cried the baby-faced man. He began to pound the table in time with his words, and Monsieur Talbot joined in.
Monsieur Guillot, the one who’d complained of Mireille’s behavior in the gambling room, was more sedate this time. He’d already folded, but even so, he kept his gaze fixed on the table.
I caught Mireille's eye and gestured to her to come to me. Upon sight of me, her expression flashed through two or three variations of guilt and conniving. The others followed her gaze and, upon spotting me, quieted down as if I'd doused them all with cold water. Guilty looks all round, once again.
"Mireille, do join me for a brief conversation," I said.
I put just enough charme into it that she had no choice, and she put down her cards and followed me into the hallway. But once there, she pleaded, "Wait a moment. I can’t go far.”
I humored her by stopping in the hallway. “Oh?”
"I'm in the very middle of a round.”
"On which you have staked an entire seven francs?" I asked tartly.
She flushed. "Everyone will be waiting on me," she said with an edge of a whine in her voice. "What is it you want?"
I frowned. Being a madame means being mother, favorite aunt, nurse, and headmistress in turn, and one must know which persona to choose at any given moment. Presently, I thought headmistress was called for, so I crossed my arms and adopted a severe tone. I also added a touch of enchantement to ensure obedience. "Mireille, did you know that Pierre was being followed before he was killed?"
She flushed again and dropped her gaze, but my charme forced her to answer. She spoke reluctantly, like a petulant child. "Yes, I knew."
“Who was it? Do you know anything about him?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t know his name or anything. But I did see him once. He came here, and Pierre pointed him out to me.”
"Oh? Can you describe him?"
"Yes…” Despite her argumentative tone, she closed her eyes and concentrated. "Probably in his fifties, lanky. Very pale skin. Black hair a little too long, bushy black eyebrows, a prominent nose, a long philtrum, a down-turned mouth, and a weak chin. Satisfied?"
"Mireille." I put a little warning into my voice, which forced her to meet my gaze. "Do tell me everything."
Her gaze slipped away from mine. "There's nothing else to tell," she insisted. "I don't know why that man was following Pierre, and neither did Pierre. It made him nervous, to be sure, but he didn’t know what the explanation was."
Monsieur Talbot appeared at the threshold. “Mireille, it’s your play.”
Yells came from the gambling room. “Mireille, come play!” became a chant.
“They need me,” she said to me by way of apology, and she went back into the gambling room.
I walked away frustrated and wondering what else she knew, and why she and Pierre’s colleague at the Banque de France were trying to conceal that they knew one another.
8
Well, at least I had a description now, and that was something. I felt I had a solid lead now.
I had no way to visit the commissariat central, because it was across the Seine, and you no doubt recall that I’m unable to cross the moving waters of the Seine. So I was forced to write it all up in a letter, which I dispatched to Inspector Baudet with a servant.
As I went back out into the drawing room to check on how business was going, I was delighted to see Hélène Bachelet half-sitting on the banister, her skirt hitched up and showing off where her garters held up her stockings. She was smoking a Gauloise while she engaged in a vigorous conversation with Melodie Bouvier and Anaelle de Gall, two of my mesdames.
“Why, no, his wife had no idea, right up until he died,” Hélène was saying cheerily. “Pierre was masterful at concealing it. He told me himself that he never came unless she was out of town. Don’t you think him a man of restraint? Not to come for months at a time?”
“Oh, but she did have some suspicion,” I added as I drew up with the girls. “Salut, Hélène.”
“Salut,” she said and hopped down from the banister to exchange kisses with me. “But how do you know?”
“She told me herself she had a sixth sense about it, or something along those lines,” I said.
“Ah, yes,” the lovely dark-haired Melodie said sagely as she tapped her cigarette into an ashtray. “I believe in the sixth sense.”
“Oh, you’ll believe in any nonsense,” Anaelle declared crossly, tossing the golden hair that she kept long despite current trends. “You and my lame-brain sister, both. Avid Spiritualists.”
“And Mireille too,” Melodie said defensively, her dark eyes flashing.
“Oh, poor Mireille,” Hélène said, her mouth turning down at the corners. “To find her customer drowned in the tub. Quel horreur!”
All the girls sighed sadly in unison.
Melodie’s eyes misted over. “I’ll never forget Pascal Lemare and how he…” She trailed off, no doubt remembering the young man who had attacked her before he died some months ago.
“My girl, let the thought go,” I said, squeezing her gently on the shoulder. “It’s no good to keep your mind on it.” I clapped my hands to get all the women’s attention. “Now look, you have a room full of customers below. If you can’t find company, you’re not trying. Touch up your lipstick and get out there. Go, shoo!”
Melodie and Anaelle set out, with Anaelle rolling her eyes and uttering a sigh. That girl was always in a bad mood, or so it seemed to me, yet it didn’t seem to hurt her at all when it came to finding a gentleman.
“And you, Hélène,” I said, “I have a puzzle for you to solve. But we need Monsieur Ravel.”
“Ruff Ravel? The sketch artist?” Her eyes widened.
Should I have been surprised that she knew the name of the police sketch artist? Who could say? “Yes, unless you know of anyone else with a remarkable ability to draw?”
“Monsieur Ruff is often at my studio,” she said with a wicked smile. “He loves my parties.”
“Oh, really?” I let an eyebrow drift upward. “That’s very convenient.”
“I’ll see if I can find him, and if I can, I’ll bring him around.” She flashed me a smile, gave me a kiss and a bonsoir, and set out.
Not an hour later, Hélène and Monsieur Ravel appeared in my drawing room, and twenty minutes later, the artist’s pale, sensitive fingers had produced a rendering that was faithful to the description given me by Mireille. And as he finished, he tilted his blonde head and said, “Why, I believe I’ve sketched this man before.”
Hélène and I uttered exclamations and urged him to go on, an
d he said, “It may have been only a month or so ago. He’s been in prison, and he’s been wanted for murder before—as a hired gun. I’m sure of it.”
Hélène and I exchanged wide-eyed glances.
“But who would have hired him to kill Pierre?” Hélène asked. “Surely not the auntie with the little dog.”
Auntie wouldn’t have murdered her nephew-in-law with her own hands, but would she have hired someone else to do it for her? “Hélène, what do you know of the auntie?”
“Well, she’s a member of the Parisian Moral Society, but I imagine you know that already. She’s married, but she left her husband in Lourdes with the rest of the family when she came here to keep an eye on Pansy.”
“She must not have been close with her husband,” I said, surprised at their choice to separate.
“I’ve heard that they’re simply mad about each other,” she said with a shrug, “and heartbroken to be apart. But she dotes on Pansy too much to let her live alone in Paris.”
“Not alone,” I protested. “She had a husband.”
“The aunt was never fond of Pierre,” Hélène said. “She didn’t think he was good enough for Pansy.”
“I’ve heard she wasn’t pleased with his income, either,” I said. “I don’t suppose Pierre had life insurance?”
Hélène’s eyes widened. “Oooo,” she said appreciatively as she lit up a Gauloise. “Now that’s an angle on it that I hadn’t even considered.”
Monsieur Ravel diplomatically cleared his throat. “Mesdames, shall I consider myself excused?”
“If you like,” I said, at the same time as Hélène leaned toward him as if pouncing and declared, “Never!”
We all laughed. “Monsieur Ravel, you may make your escape,” I said as I handed him payment for his services. “Please do take the drawing to Inspector Baudet at the commissariat central as soon as possible, and let him know your suspicions as to the man’s identity.”
The Parting of Pierre Page 3