Le Bref didn’t say it, but there was a strange similarity in the two men—Ferrauld and Andre. They were both big, strong boys with rugged good looks and some indefinable air that a guy like him would have cheerfully killed for, perhaps when younger, once upon a time.
One of the greatest things about men like that was that they so seldom knew it. It helped with the charm, at least if you weren’t a woman. Otherwise they probably wouldn’t have any friends. It was like God compensated for these little inequities in life by making strong men blind to both their strengths and their weaknesses, and weak men blind to their shortcomings and blinder still to the futility of temptation. It made weak men blind to their strengths, which was sad. But it was all according to God’s plan, apparently.
Outside, birds fluttered momentarily in front of the window, startling in their sudden movement. A figure in gossamer-white, flowing chiffon loomed up on the path through the garden, with two cats following along close beside, tails curled like question marks.
“Here comes the lady of the house.”
“Yes.” Andre glanced at his watch. “There is only so much time to go around. We’ll put a seal on the door and ask her to respect it.”
Le Bref waggled his head back and forth gently, his thoughts somewhere else.
“Do you think Gilles really has something?” Andre was taken aback by his question.
“Oh, God. I sure hope so. But honestly, if he does, he hasn’t told me a thing.”
Le Bref nodded in a philosophical manner and kept further comments to himself.
***
“Roger is right. This man is a prodigy.” Emile looked up from the accounts, with a stack of documents on each side of a small clear spot.
He was using a spare desk off to one side, and it had not been properly cleared.
Gilles waved him off impatiently, the ear-piece rammed in tight to his head. There was some kind of personality conflict going on in the hallway right outside of his door and he wished they would stop it. His eyes lit up for a second.
“Monsieur Babineaux?” He nodded briefly in disappointment. “Yes, I’ll hold.”
Putting a hand on the mouthpiece, he shook his head.
“Of course.” His raised his eyebrows in the direction of Emile and rolled his eyes around. “Yes?”
“It’s nothing, really.” Emile closed the book in disgust, and surveyed the pile of papers and folders to his left.
His mouth worked and his eyes were bleary.
“Get a sandwich or something.” Gilles’ suggestion was a reasonable one, but Emile thought if he went through enough files, it would be time to go home or something.
Maintenon smiled in sympathy.
“Yes? Hello? Monsieur Babineaux?” He swung his feet down to the floor and reached for his pen.
“I had one or two questions for you, and I didn’t want to disrupt your work any more than absolutely necessary.” He listened for a moment. “Yes, yes. No, I won’t take up too much time.”
There was a pause while the sounds of complaint came faintly on the air.
“Of course, of course. It’s just that I was wondering about the hiring of Alexis Ferrauld as Monsieur Duval’s bodyguard…what? Oh, really. Interesting. Yes, thank you. There was something else. I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten it for the moment.”
There were more brief tinny-sounding noises audible to Emile.
“I see. Thank you. Ah, well, I shall let you go, then. Oh! I’m sorry. Do you know if Alexis was ah, painting back then?” He listened closely, making small notes, and then Gilles sat with the thing in his hand for a moment.
Emile wondered if the other man had rung off, otherwise he would hear everything. He got up, took the handset, listened briefly, and then stuck it on the receiver unit’s cradle.
“What?”
“He says he knew Alexis from before. Monsieur Ferrauld was a private security officer, but they lost the contract at year’s end. He lost his job. In fact, Alexis came to him for a reference, and he says he gladly gave it to him.”
“So? That doesn’t really prove anything. What else?” Emile was only half interested. “And the painting thing?”
“Says he was a kind of a figure of fun back then, although he was mostly on night shifts and Babineaux was management. He worked in the accounts office of course.”
“Gilles.” Emile had a thought.
“Yes?”
“I wonder what their books look like. Did they go under, and if so, why? And if maybe Babineaux and Ferrauld know more about each other than they told us.” These were very good points, but Gilles didn’t want to call Babineaux back right away.
Somewhere the books of the defunct company would be filed, with a trustee.
He’d ask Alexis next, and see what he had to say about it. Maybe they would contradict each other. That was the problem with a conspiracy every time. They were usually based on easily understood and easily remembered cover stories, but they were thin on details. When people started making up details to support the cover story, they would inevitably diverge from what their accomplices were supplying in terms of detail. One man claimed a red hammer and the other one claimed it was a blue hammer, that sort of thing. It opened up more questions, which forced the error of more made-up details, and more blunders. It was the thin end of the wedge.
What seemed like an interesting line of inquiry would take some ingenuity on his part. The real killer, if there was indeed such a person, would have to have certain suspicions of their own. If suicide was the official conclusion, then the police should have gone away long before this.
It wasn’t much to go on. Gilles jotted it down, while it was still fresh in his mind. The company name would have to be checked. More man-hours on what was rapidly becoming a fruitless enterprise.
“So. When the lawn furniture company that Babineaux worked for went out of business, he applied to Duval Industries and several other firms. But Alexis was with Duval for quite some time, and Babineaux said he totally forgot all about it, until he showed up one day in company with Duval. It’s an interesting coincidence, if nothing else.”
“You’d think there would have been some warning signs.” Emile was just being obtuse.
“What?”
“Never mind.”
Just then the door popped open and Le Bref and a gendarme came in laden with a big package.
“Where’s Andre?” Gilles was waiting for him to come in right behind them, but no.
“He’s off on his own somewhere.” The gendarme propped the package up on a desk by the wall, and began tearing the brown paper wrapping off of it.
“What do we have here?” Gilles didn’t know if he was impressed, or what, but clearly poor old Alexis had been spending at lot of time at the Louvre, making a bad copy of a Poussin or someone that Gilles vaguely remembered from a school book a long, long time ago.
***
Andre sat comfortably in the chair provided and of course the Swami was at his desk. It was a fantasy of a room, just exactly what a man needed to relax in, a room all to himself. He wondered how the female clients felt about it, or what a lady doctor’s office should look like.
“And the dream?”
The Swami nodded and with no hesitation, jumped right into his interpretation.
“I’ve never run into exactly this variation before, but it’s certainly understandable enough.” He cleared his throat. “For one thing, in your profession, to make a mistake is tragic. You carry a lot of responsibility on your shoulders on a daily basis, and yet you probably never think consciously about it. But your subconscious is working all the time—and it thinks about it quite a bit. You also mentioned the tension in your belly, even when you’re at home or out with the family on other occasions.”
“So you’re saying I’m afraid of making a mistake?” Andre sat and breathed deeply, trying to extend the warm, cottony-soft calm he felt right now.
What all the other reports said was apparently true. Even in the depths of
a trance, which felt real to virtually every subject interviewed, they all said the same thing. You retained a sense of self, and a kind of awareness of your surroundings. He could confirm that. He had heard traffic outside the building even as he sank deeper and deeper into a pit of helplessness. There was one brief jab of panic at losing control, and then you sort of went with it out a kind of curiousity—you wanted to see if he could really do it. You wanted to see what happened next, as long as it didn’t go too far.
The fact that it was real, and that he could do it to you was the revelation, hence the moment of panic. And yet subject after subject reported that they felt safe enough in the trance. They were convinced they retained some ultimate control. Andre wondered at the rapport of the man, and why people would actually trust a perfect stranger. But they did, and so had he.
“I think there’s more. There is a kind of guilt there as well.”
“Guilt?” Levain was genuinely puzzled. “I don’t know. If I made a mistake, which I’m sure I must have at some point along the way, I can’t quite recall…”
“I’m sure you’re a fine police officer, and there are many checks and balances in the system. That’s why you have a partner and supervision. You gather evidence, and somebody else prosecutes. Otherwise, you would probably go mad with self-doubt. But no, I think you have a sense of guilt because deep down inside you know that you cannot know everything, and you cannot keep up with everything. You must learn to forgive yourself, and to accept your own inadequacies, for surely we all have them.” The Great Swami, composed, sure of his powers and completely in his element, sat there beaming in approval at a slightly confused Andre Levain. “And yet you also know the price of a mistake can be very high for the suspect, or person under scrutiny. You might feel guilt at a failure, an unsolved case, rather than the conviction of an innocent person.”
“And that’s it?” Andre’s voice still had a dreamy quality. “We have plenty of unsolved cases, that’s true.”
“I’m sure of it. And just for the record, I have planted a post-hypnotic suggestion, just a little thing, that you will no longer suffer the dream. I sincerely believe that you will forget quite quickly that you ever had such a dream.”
“Really?” Andre had a hard time believing that.
He didn’t recall anything of the sort. Had he really been totally unconscious, then?
“Yes. And now I suggest that you go home, Andre. You have made great progress in our sessions. I might suggest that we take a break for a while. If you continue to have problems, of course, come back and see me. N’est pas?”
Andre blinked at this idea as the Swami smiled amiably and pushed his own chair back. Andre rose, a little unsteady on his feet. He felt refreshed, and totally calm.
“Thank you!” Andre shook hands and examined the face of The Great Swami. “Thank you, thank you.”
“Good luck to you all.” The Swami patted him on the back of the shoulder and reached for the door handle.
Light spilled in from the front waiting room, angled shadows announcing that the sun was back out and in another moment, Andre was gone.
Chapter Eighteen
“You are getting very, very sleepy.”
“You are getting very, very sleepy.”
Gilles sat bolt upright, mouth open in a stupid look, and then looked wildly around the room. Levain grinned in delight, and sauntered casually over to his desk, where he plopped his backside down with an audible sigh.
“Andre! What is this?” He sat up straight, and looked at his coffee. “Argh.”
Putting a hand on it, it was dead cold.
“Why, I hypnotized you, boss.” Andre leaned back and folded his hands behind his head.
“Like hell you did.” Gilles had fallen asleep at his desk, after the others had left.
“No, I did. And now, you’re going to have some great and intuitive leap of the imagination, and thusly, I know how you hate that word, thusly provide us with the insight to move forward and solve this case…if we actually have a case, which no one can say for sure because you haven’t told them. But I digress.”
Andre knew how he hated that one as well.
“No. No, you’re right. I need a kick in the pants, Andre.” Gilles was glum. “Maybe even a couple of them.”
Sooner or later there would be an order from above. When that happened it was over barring some later revelation.
“Boss, I want to give it a try.”
“What?” Gilles was at a loss as to what Andre was talking about. “You want to hypnotize me? You’re mad. Andre, I always knew this would happen.”
He smiled, which took the sting out of it.
“No, seriously. I want to hypnotize them—them, Inspector.”
Gilles’ eyes popped at the sheer audacity of it. If nothing else, it would scare the shit out of their anonymous killer.
“We’ll save that for a last resort.”
“Just promise me you’ll think about it.” Andre’s retort fell on appreciative ears as Gilles grinned and nodded again.
***
With the permission of Alain Duval, in consultation with his attorney, they were going to conduct an experiment.
Madame Fontaine had been close to tears at their announcement, but Alain, who was still living in his apartment for the time being, told her to take the rest of the day off. With no one living there, just a couple of servants coming in daily, there was little enough for her to do. Alain hadn’t yet decided whether to sell the place, or let it out, or stay there himself. In the short term, the expense was bearable to the estate, which would take some time to settle.
Jules, the driver, had already been let go. The word was that he was seeking other employment, and none too successfully the last anyone had heard. He had been ruled out as a suspect long ago, and when Gilles had a moment to think about it, he wondered if that wasn’t a little short-sighted. There were limits to what he could do.
“Monsieur Duval…”
“Alain. Please call me Alain.” He was pale, but otherwise calm. “Yes?”
“We’re a little short of manpower.” Levain phrased it carefully indeed. “I wonder if you might help us? I know it is a terrible thing to ask, but, if you would be so good as to wait until we take our places. Then fire the weapon into the books.”
They had taped together twenty hard-cover books hurriedly purchased from a used bookseller. The bundle was propped up on the very same chair, in the exact same position, as when his brother died.
All the experts agreed, they would be enough to stop the slug. Getting a suspect to help in such a matter was a little unusual, but not unheard of. Gilles quietly studied the man, who paled, but took the gun readily enough. Alain looked up grimly into Gilles’ gaze.
“This is a shitty thing to ask.”
“Yes, sir, we know.” Andre stepped in to assuage Alain’s nameless fears. “It’s just that we are conducting this investigation on a shoestring, and we only have so many people.”
“We’re not trying to play a trick on you.” Alain’s haunted eyes took in Le Bref, Emile, and then back to Gilles. “Please, just try and have a little faith in us, Monsieur Duval.”
His jaw worked back and forth like an addict late for a fix, and for all they knew, that was exactly what he was.
“All right, all right. Let’s get on with it, for Christ’s sakes.”
Gilles nodded at the others and they cleared the room.
“We’ll give them two or three minutes to get in position. This is just my opinion, Monsieur Duval, but the likelihood is that we really can’t hear it.” Gilles was tempted to comfort him further, but it would be unwelcome and probably wouldn’t do any good anyway.
In his career, Gilles had offered reassurance to more than one person who turned out to be not so nice after all. He didn’t see it as a major contradiction. Alain looked at his watch. Gilles went into the hallway and closed the door. Rather than go to his assigned position, he simply bent over and peered through the key-h
ole. To his surprise, Alain either had no idea of how to cock it, or he might have been the greatest actor the world had ever seen. The look on his face said it all, as he looked in frustration at the now-closed door as if wishing for some help.
This hadn’t been foreseen, and Gilles had no idea of what to do. Finally, Alain managed to get a sharp click from the weapon and a shell ejected onto the carpet. Alain stared at it stupidly, then bent down to pick it up. He put it on the desk. He shoved the slide mechanism forward again.
After another moment, Alain was convinced it would fire. His hand shook almost uncontrollably now. He steadied it by clutching his right wrist with his left hand. He squeezed off three shots, a full two seconds apart as instructed.
The reports were loud enough where Gilles was standing, yet even then they weren’t as loud as he had expected. The house was of brick, and stone, and mortar, and solidly built, but it was the door that surprised him. Even at two and a half inches thick, solid oak, he was surprised it wasn’t louder.
He retreated down the hallway to wait for the others. Turning around and pretending to be on the return trip, he was rewarded by the sight and sound of Alain opening the door and sticking his head out.
“Don’t ever ask me to do that again.” Alain was understandably bitter about being asked to essentially re-enact the death, perhaps even the murder, of his brother.
“I’m sorry, Monsieur Duval, I really am.” Gilles was full of sympathy.
“For the love of God, call me Alain. I am my own person, for fuck’s sakes.”
Maintenon carefully took the gun from his willing hand and put the safety on.
“They’ll be here in just a minute, and then we will have our answer.”
Alain’s face was set in stone. Soon they were all back in the room, with Andre for one shaking his head in disappointment. Le Bref, who had been stationed in a bedroom directly overhead on the floor above, thought that he might have heard it, he was almost sure of that, but also doubted the noise would have woken a sound sleeper.
The Art of Murder Page 17