“The boss was upset.” Levain’s surmise and an inquiring look brought a shrug from Gilles. “Do you know what you want for lunch yet?”
“I was counting on it.” Again, Maintenon was lost in thought.
The menu was the farthest thing from his mind. He was seated half-crossways on the chair, as if ready to bolt for it.
“Did he forget to ask where we might be reached for the next little while?”
That brought him back to the present. Maintenon smiled like a tiger confronting a sacrificial lamb, tied to a stake in some jungle clearing.
“You know me only too well, Andre.”
“Good.” Andre wiped up wet rings with a napkin as he waited for refills. “That’ll keep him out of our hair. How about a breakfast steak or something? A couple of fried eggs?”
“Sure.”
That was all Andre needed to hear, and the boss settled deeper into his chair, accepting his lot at this moment in time. Andre wondered what was really going through his mind.
Chapter Nine
Madame Fontaine took their hats wordlessly
Madame Fontaine admitted them, and took their hats.
“Alain is here.” Her words had no inflection and her expression was unreadable, which spoke volumes, but required interpretation.
“In the salon?” Gilles had a brief explanation for their visit all ready to go, but she didn’t seem to care.
“No.”
Gilles looked at Levain.
“Where? The studio is sealed off.”
She glared at a wall off to their left, which was the shared wall of an adjacent building. Whatever the message was, it was unpleasant. Then her head snapped right back.
“Gentlemen. The place is yours, but please don’t remove anything without prior permission or signing for it. Thank you.” She turned and marched out of the room, presumably to the kitchen or her office, which was also on the ground floor.
They would speak to her in a moment, but this took precedence.
“What in the hell was all that all about?” Andre made for the elevator with Gilles trailing along in a less hasty manner.
Andre changed his mind and leapt for the bottom stair in an athleticism Maintenon could not match.
“She’s been talking to a lawyer.” Henri squeezed past a grunting Gilles and pelted up the stairs in pursuit of Levain.
The sound of pounding footsteps was loud in his ears, but then it faded away.
Gilles could not help but agree. It had to happen at some point. Depending on who it was, it could make their lives very difficult. So far no one had really pushed them to rule it suicide, but in his mind that was because accident was extremely unlikely. As for Alain, they were about to discover something about his true character.
“The studio.” Levain’s words echoed back to Gilles, who had a bit of a twinge in his knee but was climbing along as best he could.
“Of course.” Gilles kept his anger in check, but it was apparent enough in his heated face and sweating palms.
***
“Nothing in this room was to be disturbed.” Levain’s voice was harsh, unyielding.
“I’m sorry.”
The tone of the younger man’s voice was apologetic as Gilles arrived at the door to a frank look from Henri and with a grimace of some pain on his own face. His knee was giving trouble, and his jaw still throbbed unexpectedly from time to time. He thought it was from surging blood pressure from exertion and the more stressful moments. The notion that an angry man should count to ten before speaking had taken on a personal significance for Gilles.
“All right, Andre. I suppose it is understandable enough.” Gilles took in Alain Duval, who stood a bare two metres into the room, as if frozen in the act of theft. “Have you seen enough?”
With the key in custody, evidence in the case, no one had locked the door and no one had thought to call him or Levain. There was no sense in making a big thing out of it, but Gilles seethed inside. Surely the tape barriers on the door frame and the sign in the centre of the door should have been sufficient to give any thinking person pause for reflection. While there wasn’t much harm Alain could do, the room might yield further secrets, if only they knew what to look for. Now anything that came out of that room was tainted as far as credible evidence went. Civilians knew nothing of the chain of custody, of course. Taking it at face value, it was a perfectly innocent thing to do.
Alain’s face was wet with tears, and they seemed genuine enough.
“How long have you been in here?” Henri’s voice was gruff but not unfriendly.
“Just—just a couple of minutes.”
“Did you touch anything?” Gilles wondered at the truthfulness of the answers.
Alain shook his head. Levain hovered there as if ready to strip-search him. Gilles shook his head, barely perceptibly.
“All right then, let’s seal it up again and pretend that nothing has happened.”
“That’s enough, Andre. Come, young man, we’ll have a little talk down the hall.”
Alain followed Gilles willingly enough, after one last backwards look at the thickly-padded swiveling leather armchair his brother had died in and the rust-coloured stains that showed the true violence of the event.
***
They had an impromptu interview in the stuffy little den.
“Did you and your brother quarrel?” Alain sighed, unable to make eye contact, while Gilles waited patiently.
“Didn’t they tell you? Didn’t she tell you?”
“I had a tooth pulled the other day. My wife died six months ago, and I have only just picked out the stone for her grave.” Alain stared at Gilles as if he was mad.
“Oh, didn’t they tell you?”
On those words, Alain flushed beet red, and half rose from his seat. Either he was a bolter or a puncher. Thinking better of it, he dropped back into the seat with a curse.
“I’m sorry, Inspector.” Then he clamped his jaw shut with an act of pure will and just tried breathing through his nose for a while.
There was a pause while he regrouped psychologically.
“I’m sorry, Inspector. I just wasn’t thinking.” Alain glared at Gilles, then Levain, and then Henri, who stood with arms crossed beside the desk.
“You fellows can head down to the kitchen and hang out there for a while.” Gilles nodded, and put his fingers across his belly in a signal, a kind of body language that was equally intelligible to the subject as well.
Alain flushed again.
“What can I do to assist you gentlemen?” It came out better this time.
Henri headed for the door, and on an encouraging nod from Maintenon, Andre got up and followed him out.
“All right, young man. Where do you live? Are you married or single? Are you presently employed?”
In a voice broken from time by strong emotion, Alain opened up.
“I live at number twenty-one Rue Du Maurier. It is a flat, with three bedrooms, and yes, Inspector, we did have a row. You see, Theo was a little bit disapproving when I announced not so much my wedding, which I’m sure he would have been delighted to attend, if only it didn’t take so much time out of his busy work schedule, only it was sort of an afterthought on my part, and he would have very much liked to have been consulted…” He stopped on Gilles’ gesture.
“All right, young man. I’ve been around the block once or twice in my own short but busy life. I would prefer if people speak for themselves, and in fact, we did get a little something, a bit here and there from other witnesses. Do you believe your brother was capable of suicide? What about his feelings for you? Did he have regrets? Was he punishing you for something?”
Alain sighed.
“Yes, this is just going to be great. Just you and me, Inspector. The fact is, I brought the matter up for one reason. I thought he had a right to know. Also, I had hoped for some adjustment in the financial assistance he had been providing up until then. He was adamant in his refusal. Do you want more?”
“No, he did not cut me off. But the idea that two can live as cheaply as one is pure nonsense.”
While he had a good memory, and some filtering was essential, he hesitated as to what to actually put down on the page.
“It’s one of those things. I put it off, and put it off, and then when the baby came, I mean, I really had no choice. Claire only knows what I have told her about my brother, and she sort of pushed me.”
“Ah, yes. The women, you see, they rule the household, eh?”
Alain sighed again.
“Something like that.” He looked Gilles in the eye. “What do you want to know? I would sure as hell prefer to answer specific questions, and if you could, ah, sort of stick to a point? It’s not like I want to tell you my life story.”
“I’ll bet I could get you to do it.” The look on Alain’s face was priceless, and Gilles grinned in spite of himself.
It was exactly the right thing to do, for all of a sudden the man, who must have been eight or ten years the junior of the Duval brothers, flung his head back and laughed outright.
Recovering, he shared a look with Maintenon.
“Thank you.”
“No problem, young man. So tell me about the wife and kid.”
It was a completely different man facing him now. The laugh had brought his confidence back. Gilles liked it much more than the downtrodden role he had been playing up until now. The housekeeper said he was an aspiring actor, and while she said it with a bit of a hiss, Gilles didn’t see it as particularly far-fetched. It’s not like they weren’t out of work most of the time, and Theo Duval was wealthy enough for it not to be a real problem to shell out for a small monthly allowance. He just wondered how Alain felt about it, deep down inside where it really mattered.
The Duval brothers were a lot alike, although the assertion might have been an unwelcome one to both of them.
“Claire and I have been married a year and a half.” Again the young man blushed. “Amie is going to be two years old in August.”
“Ah.”
“That was one aspect of our quarrel.”
“I can see how it would be, for a man like Theo.” Gilles wasn’t trying to provoke him.
He just wanted to see how he would handle it.
“No, that wasn’t it. He wasn’t a strong moralist. But he thought I kept it a secret for all the wrong reasons, like I didn’t trust his reaction or something.”
“Hmn. But you were right.”
Alain nodded.
“My brother wasn’t such a bad person, Inspector. The fault was mine. I should have found the courage to talk to him, but of course I was terrified of being a father, and, and, getting married—”
“And how old are you, Monsieur Duval?”
“I’m twenty-eight, Inspector.” He grinned ruefully. “Okay, she’ll make a man out me, Inspector. I can assure you of that.”
“That’s the least of my worries, Monsieur Duval. Ah, any idea of what’s in your brother’s will?”
Sometimes this was enough to make even an innocent, pure as the driven snow clam up, but Alain forged on with total disregard for the confidentiality of such matters.
“As far as I know, my sister Dominique and I are the only major heirs. There are some small beneficiaries, here in the house. My brother was fond of the cook, and of course Madame Fontaine has been here quite a long time. I don’t know the actual terms of the will.”
“You’ve never seen it, or ever discussed it?”
“Yes, we discussed it about ten or eleven years ago.”
“You mean when you came of age?”
“Yes. That was it. Theo is…he was nine years older than I.” Alain put his hand on his face, but he didn’t shed tears this time.
Alain had grown up in the shadow of a successful, older brother, one with a very strong personality.
He rubbed his eyes from the fatigue of travel, and the stress of worrying about his family. The shock would wear off, and he had their future to consider. Gilles understood that well enough.
“Was Madame Fontaine fond of Theo?”
“Oh, yes, absolutely devoted, Inspector. But I think, I mean more like a mother. You know?”
Gilles smiled faintly, not bothering to write it down.
“How much of the company does Theo own?”
“Last I heard a majority. Call it fifty-one percent, which is all anybody needs.”
“Did he ever discuss business affairs with you?”
“No, but when I was much younger he used to lecture me on certain things. Business things. Scientific things. It’s not that he didn’t care, but I wasn’t that interested. He and I were on a different wave-length, Inspector. We cared about different things, we were interested in different things. In a way it was a blessing, that we were so different.”
“What do you mean by that?” Gilles was getting some of the meat and potatoes, as his old chief used to say.
He strongly doubted if they were really that different.
“It means that Theo was a very competitive person, Inspector. And so am I, but in ways which he and possibly you might never recognize.”
“You mean like the acting?”
“Yes. And other things too.”
“Such as?”
“Theo could have had any woman in town that he wanted. But he never had a wife, and he probably never would have had a child. Not by choice, anyhow. That changes you, Inspector, and not always for the better. But he never could have handled it. I can tell you that much. Not well, anyway.”
Gilles didn’t go any further. It was eerily similar to something an older brother had once told him. As a childless person, and now a middle-aged widower, there were certain things he didn’t care to learn.
But from long experience as a policeman, and at some fundamental level as a human being, he knew that a parent would cheerfully kill in order to protect their children, and yet he couldn’t quite see how that had happened here. Alain, perhaps sensing that he was on dangerous ground, didn’t see fit to enlighten him any further. He had a thought that seemed safe and he shared it.
“Kids take up too much time for a man like Theo. They’re a terrible distraction. I doubt if he could have accommodated his way of life.”
They had arrived at an impasse on the emotional level, and he got back to more routine, more easily-verified details of Alain’s circumstances and routine.
“And why were you in Brittany?”
“My wife and Amie live with her parents, since I couldn’t feed them here.”
“You went to visit them?”
“Yes, and to take them some money…”
“How much money?”
“Five hundred francs…all I had.”
The phone rang in a distinctive buzz.
“That almost has to be for you, Inspector.”
Chapter Ten
Gilles took the call
After letting Alain go off to his own home, under the most polite advice to remain available for further questioning, Gilles took the call.
Not unexpectedly, it was the boss, Chiappe. The news was not good.
“No search warrant.” There was a brief silence. “I’m sorry, Gilles, I did my best. My advice to you…”
“Would be inappropriate.” There came a long sigh from the other end.
The chief hung up without another word. Gilles had written a little monograph some years before. The thing sort of took off, and even nowadays was still used by some instructors at the academy.
“There is no power on Earth or in Heaven which can prevent a police officer from laying a charge if he sees fit, and there is no power, Earthly or otherwise, that can force him to lay a charge if he chooses not to. It is called officer’s discretion, and it is a sacred trust. Anyone who interferes with this duty, or abuses it, is not worthy of the badge, the uniform, or the oath he takes before the peop
le.”
If necessary, Gilles would throw the book at the boss, unless he was completely satisfied that he had determined an accurate picture of the events leading up to the death by whatever cause or means of Theodore Duval. Was it a random suicide, on pure, momentary impulse? Gilles wondered about the man’s doctor, and if there was some other trouble he didn’t know about.
One way or another, he needed answers.
He owed the victim, and the people of Paris that much. The trouble was, Gilles wasn’t satisfied, not yet. Not by a long shot. He had a duty, and that took precedence.
There came a quick knock at the door. Andre stuck his head in, had a look and then entered.
“I’ve sent Henri to get some coffee. What’s next, Inspector?”
Gilles looked at his watch.
“We’ve got that damned doctor’s appointment.”
“Yes, I know how you hate waiting around in doctor’s offices. I doubt if he will talk without persuasion.”
“That’s why I bring you, Andre”
Levain chuckled at that one.
“And in the meantime, let’s start with the cook. Then the driver again, and later on we’ll pay a little visit to a certain rather attractive young lady.”
“That’s the idea, Inspector. Save the best bits for last.”
Gilles nodded sagely.
“The maid?”
Gilles thought about it, but then shook his head.
“Not unless you can think of anything.”
Andre couldn’t think of anything.
“When in doubt, look busy.” He was saving Charpentier for later, when he had some time to think of a few questions about the business side of things.
Andre inclined his head, shrugged in acknowledgement, and wordlessly got up to fetch the cook. Gilles opened up his briefcase, and thumbed through his stack of papers, trying to find her statement and see what she had said before.
***
“I’m sorry, but I cannot divulge any information regarding my patients.” The doctor peered over the top of his thick lenses.
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