The Art of Murder
Louis Shalako
This Smashwords Edition copyright 2014 Louis Shalako and Long Cool One Books
Design: J. Thornton
ISBN 978-0-9916716-3-2
The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person living or deceased, or to any places or events, is purely coincidental. Names, places, settings, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination.
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Chapter One
A Floater in the Seine
“Hey, Andre.” De Garmeaux nodded at the floater. “Anything special?”
“Nah.” Sergeant Andre Levain shrugged. “It’s just another poor and anonymous soul who couldn’t take it anymore.”
A small group of onlookers on the street above stood in contrast to the pedestrians with umbrellas open and faces to the wind, refusing to even acknowledge their presence as they scurried past to their workplace. A line of buildings, windows impenetrable due to glare and grime, ignored the disruption and reflected and amplified shouts, bicycle bells and car horns. A few bleary-eyed faces were visible in a brightly lit café on the far side of the street as they read the papers and sipped scalding coffees.
It was another morning in Paris. Life had its logic and a certain pace in spite of all distractions. A barge headed past downstream. The faces in an open window ignored the event and the spectacle, intent upon their own business undertakings.
Andre shivered involuntarily. The slanting grey rain hissed down, making puddles jump and splatter with its violence. The river, serene in its relentless push to the sea, made its own contribution to the wetness of the sounds all around them as it lapped at the shoreline and gurgled past small rocks at the edge. His shoes squelched as he shifted from side to side on the narrow shore. There was a smell of rotting fish in the air, suggestive of darker events.
This weather always made his knees ache. The dead man bobbed face down in one of the recurrent eddies along this stretch. They looked on as one of the attendants reached with a borrowed boathook and dragged it closer. The junior was reluctant to grab it, but he waded out into the shallows when it hung up on a snag. They were all soaked anyway, even the boys in uniform with their glistening slickers, always dripping down the necks in his recollection. Even so, he wished he had one now.
Grabbing the corpse by the collar, the attendant dragged the thing up as high as it could go. Heavy and limp, probably weighing fifty or a hundred kilos more due to the passage of time and resultant soakage, he was going to need help.
This one didn’t look likely to come apart at the seams, and that was always a blessing. Andre pushed the sodden fedora up on his forehead, where it chafed from sheer weight and a long night.
“So where’s Gilles?” Hubert De Garmeaux and Maintenon went back a long time.
They were on the beat together. It was hard to visualize either one of them as a young man of twenty. De Garmeaux was tolerable, unlike some others, and treated Andre with familiarity. It was a kind of professional friendship. You would never know, with De Garmeaux, whether he really liked you or not. He gave no one any cause for complaint, whether they were a colleague or a customer. His partner, whom Andre didn’t know, stood gazing silently at the far side of the river, oblivious to the proceedings.
“The dentist.”
“Yes, it would take a lot to keep him away.” De Garmeaux gave a nod of sympathy.
“Hah!” Andre grinned. “What are the odds this bugger is going to have a wallet?’
“Slim to none.” De Garmeaux was probably right. “What are you doing here?”
“Swapped shifts with Couteau. His sister’s getting married.” De Garmeaux nodded.
“Just your luck.”
“I’ll be home in a couple of hours.” Andre was philosophic about the extra shift, and he might need a favour someday.
The money wasn’t everything.
“Something’s got him real good!” The fellow, Jacques, wrestled with the weight.
It was probably a submerged tree trunk, whole and entire, with the stub of one stout branch sticking out.
Whether it was suicide, accident or murder, these folks never seemed to make it easy for the police. Genial cursing came from Francois, the senior attendant, as he waded into the chill green water. His arms held high, he sighed deeply when his crotch submerged. With a hold under the armpits, one on each side, they dragged the decedent in and unceremoniously flopped him down beside the stretcher. They looked down at themselves, and Andre saw the younger one’s knees knocking from the cold. Excess water flowed out from their shoes. Their lips moved, but they had some sense of propriety, mostly for the sake of the audience. They kept it quiet as they got a proper grip on ankles and shoulders. An officer moved in to assist Jacques at the heavy end.
“Ready?” The younger fellow nodded, giving a flick of the head and a brief grin. “Heave, ho. Up we go.”
They put it down again at the base of the concrete seawall.
Andre Levain nodded grimly at the macabre cheerfulness of the meat-wagon boys. When they got home from work, no one ever asked how their day had been. They probably had an answer. It’s just that no one ever asked.
“I keep thinking Gilles will be along shortly.” De Garmeaux waited for them to carry it up the embankment, an affair replete with more carefully studied cursing, not so good-naturedly now, for the mud and the filth on their obligatory hard leather shoes was as slippery as hot oil on marbles.
An officer up above had a rope tied to the guard rails, and that probably wasn’t going to help much as no one had a free hand, but Andre was used to seeing such things.
After he and De Garmeaux made it up, they looped the rope around the bar at the top of the stretcher for additional pull from above. With a turn around the upper railing, it was a bit like a pulley. One man would take up the slack, and they could stop in place if necessary. With pushing and shoving from a pair of uniformed officers below, and the two attendants braced by whatever footholds and cracks in the sloping concrete abutment that they could find, the corpse was carried up to street level.
“Let’s have a quick look, then.” De Garmeaux studied the face and then shrugged. “Have you ever noticed they always lay them face-up?”
Andre rewarded De Garmeaux with an appreciative grunt.
“It’s more comfortable that way.” Andre was hardened, impervious to the coarse humour of his brother officers.
“Oh, look, it’s my uncle Raoul.” De Garmeaux’s tone was priceless, and one of the huddling gendarmes, face haggard in the early light, laughed out loud.
The onlookers muttered softly in the background, as Andre smiled for the first time since coming on shift at eleven-thirty last night. Jacques, having borne the brunt of unpleasantness this morning, squatted by the body and began checking the pockets for personal articles.
“He’s got a watch.” He checked more pockets, pulling out coins and some small bills from the gentleman’s right front trousers pocket.
He pulled a silvered flask from inside of the jacket breast pocket.
“That’s a nice coat.”
He looked sideways at the senior police officers.
“Good shoes.”
“Thank you, Jacques.” Bending, De Garmeaux pulled one off and took a serious look at it.
“Well, it’s not
a robbery, anyway.” Levain pulled out his notebook. “No wallet yet?”
“No. Gin.” Jacques’ nose was legendary, although he could be a pest at times.
De Garmeaux put the booze aside with the watch and the money. The man had no rings, but the cufflinks looked nice, perhaps even expensive. Jacques gave the flask a longing glance, but knew better than to say anything untoward. He kept digging, but it was Hubert who struck pay dirt.
“He’s got a wallet, but no identification.” De Garmeaux grimaced. “Odd.”
“Huh.” Andre was unmoved.
“Yes, thank you, Jacques. Francois.” De Garmeaux’s eyebrows rose at the thought of the heap of missing persons reports, a heap replenished every single morning, in every town of any size or significance across the entire country. “Oh, boy.”
The boys put him in the back of their little van, bickering back and forth about which of them was wetter and more miserable. The voices of the crowd, and the people themselves, faded away. There was nothing more to see.
The hiss of the rain and the pushing of the wind through the sycamore branches, barely showing the first hint of green buds breaking open, lifted his hair and warmed his neck as a thin shaft of April sunshine cut across the city from the east.
***
The whine of the drill faded. Doctor Etienne spent an inordinate amount of time poking, prodding and peering into his mouth. He gave a grunt of approval at the appearance of his own work. Gilles lay in a puddle of sweat, fingers stiff and cramped from gripping the armrests.
“That should be sufficient.”
“Thank you, Doctor.” Gilles made as if to sit up, but Doctor Etienne, not the most fashionable dentist in town but highly recommended, put his hand on his chest in restraint.
“What? There’s more?” Gilles stifled a groan.
After screwing up his courage in spite of a life-long distaste for doctors in general and dentists in particular, he had been prepared to bolt if things got too bad. After the pin-prick of the needle, the pain was less than expected, but it turned out after some years that he was a gagger—an additional complication that he wasn’t aware of until the appointment. It might not have been so bad, if only the man didn’t have such a damnably complete set of tools, which he seemed to use and just as quickly abandon with cheerful dispatch. Etienne placed a thing, some gauzy cylindrical object between the upper molar and the new empty socket in his lower jaw.
“Bite down gently on this.”
Gilles subsided into the chair, glad that the ordeal was over. He watched as the doctor put tools and things on a tray, wrote in a file, and hummed a busy little tune, of which he seemed completely unaware.
“I’ll want you to come back in ten days.” Critical blue eyes gazed at him over the gauze mask.
“Of course.” Gilles wondered what it was about.
It must have been ten years since he’d been in, but the pain of a rotten tooth was driving him mad. What blessed relief.
“I always do a quick check to see if it’s healing correctly. Now, I’ll just put in a couple of stitches.”
Gilles endured it, tempted to check his watch, but since there was nothing he could do to speed the process along, there was little point. There were a few little jabs of pain in spite of the anesthesia, and then it was finally over.
The doctor stepped in a certain place and the chair lowered. Doctor Etienne extended a hand and helped Gilles up from the seat, then carelessly tossed aside his mask. Gilles, focused on the thickly numbed patch in his jaw, was nevertheless pricked in the lower back by small aches which he put down to tension and cramp. There might have been a little old age in there as well. His lips were rubbery and barely manageable.
“You’re a free man, Gilles.” He had an understanding grin. “You’ve been a good boy, would you like a sucker?”
“Thank you, thank you.” It came out just a little too fervently, but whatever happened in this room stayed in this room.
Gilles wondered if dentists thought that far ahead, what with sugar and tooth decay and all. He gravely accepted the candy. Plenty of grown men were afraid of the dentist, and at least Gilles had conquered that fear insofar as it was necessary to do so. The doctor opened the door and a wave of cool, clean and refreshing air hit him as he blundered through it. How could dentists stand the smell of their own work, no matter how much they charged? It must be a kind of love, he thought.
It wasn’t that dentists were bad fellows. Doctor Etienne was a fine person. But he just didn’t see how they could stand it.
***
After making another appointment, and enduring the social pressure of amiable but overly long goodbyes, during which Gilles wondered if Etienne shook hands with every patient he ever had after a visit, he stood on the pavement looking for an available cab.
He was just raising his arm in a desperate bid for attention, hoping against hope that the speeding taxi going past on the wrong side of the road was indeed empty and available. It was so hard to tell in this gloomy, overcast light, but a familiar black car pulled out of its parking spot forty metres up the road with a honk and the roar of a powerful engine that had seen some hard wear.
“Hop in, Inspector.” A youthful face beamed out of the driver’s side window.
The roar of traffic almost drowned it out, but he caught it.
“Henri! Am I ever glad to see you.” Gilles was almost impressed by this thoughtfulness, but it was not to be.
“Yes, well.” The humble words, spoken in a non-committal tone, spoke or implied volumes of things he was unaware of.
“Ah.” Gilles settled back on the hard-stuffed leather cushions as the car sped through traffic with little hindrance. “I had forgotten what it was like. Thank God, but it’s over with.”
He leaned back and closed his eyes. Only a few more hours and he would sleep the sleep of the damned.
“Sorry, Inspector, but we are in a hurry.” Henri squealed the tires going around a typically bumpy street-corner, and he became aware that this was not the way to the Quai.
“Where?” Gilles gave a quick shake of his head, sitting up again.
A fresh case should not surprise him.
“It’s not that one in the river?” Gilles listened to the radio in the mornings while having his morning coffee.
It helped him to keep a finger on the pulse of current events. This was the sort of bullshit statement they were trained to make in public relations interviews. Henri caught his eye in the mirror.
“Yes, that one, but another one besides. That’s where we’re going now.”
Gilles checked his watch with a sigh. He was hungry, but limited to soup for the rest of the day. He hadn’t had any breakfast, either, and lunch was still a couple of hours away. The doctor had told him to chew on the other side, which he had been doing for quite some time now anyway.
“Very well.” All in due time. “Try not to kill us on the way, s’il vous plait?”
Henri grinned, but kept his face turned to the road. So the floater was his then. Nothing he couldn’t deal with.
“Why, sure, Inspector.” It was no big surprise when the throttle went down a little harder. “Whatever you say, sir.”
There was nothing to be done about it. They all drove like that. The badge was an excuse for bad driving and a hardened outlook towards the slower breed of pigeon and even the occasional unwary pedestrian, who at least rated a quick blast on the horn.
Gilles grimaced as a set of handlebars came perilously close to the right wing-mounted mirror. A white-faced cyclist made a rude gesture, but Henri repressed the urge to respond. The official car might be remembered.
“Oh, don’t you worry, Inspector. We have a real beauty lined up for you today.” Henri looked back in the mirror at an attentive Gilles Maintenon. “I think we can safely promise you this much, Inspector. You are really going to love this one.”
The subdued chatter on the radio, turned down but always there, reminded that crime and human tragedy never slept
.
***
Henri parked in front of the building, a four-storey maison in the Rue Duvivier, with a line of dormer windows above that. A gaggle of spectators muttered at their arrival. There were no shouted questions from the one or two reporters present, which was unusual. On the right leaf of a pair of imposing, ten-foot tall walnut doors, a simple bronze plaque proclaimed to the world that this was the home of Theodore Duval. The name rang a bell, but Gilles couldn’t immediately place it. Henri came around and let him out, befitting his status, as if he couldn’t or shouldn’t operate a door. The man was an industrialist. Gilles had read something about him in the papers. On this block was a Utopian mix of flats, hotels, and typical for Paris, private palaces, all or most with adjoining walls and zero clearance. It was only the facades that showed individuality. It wasn’t immediately clear if there was an alley or if the rear walls were shared with the next block.
Duval’s facade was sort of hung, he’d actually watched some workmen do it once, in a nice white Norwegian marble, with bronze framing at every opening, and with a smoked flat slab of glass in windows and doorway. At ground level were ornate awnings covered with chocolate brown and gold trimmed material. There were a number of bays up above, and a pair of balconies linked by a narrow walk on the third floor. On the fourth floor were two small balconies, one at each end. The railings were of wrought iron.
“Nice.” Gilles stood regarding the imposing edifice.
The curved drive, arcing in from the street, fronted right on the steps, and then bent back out to another exit. There was a low, thick stone wall joining the two entry drives. Iron gates provided night-time security, although he wondered if they were ever actually used. The house was a statement in reserved elegance. ‘Le Faubourg’ its ancient designation, was one of the most fashionable neighbourhoods in Paris.
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