 
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.

"Sure beats a soaker from the river." Henri grinned, and Gilles couldn't dispute it.

"With a little bit of luck, I'm thinking they make a pretty good cup of coffee." Henri hustled up the steps to where a bored gendarme rocked on his heels and calmly surveyed the onlookers without actually engaging in eye contact with anyone.

"Bonjour, Inspector."

Following more slowly, Gilles returned the gendarme's sketchy salute and entered the dark interior, blinking after the harsh light of the street outside.

His jaw felt like a giant bee had stung him. It was surprising how quickly it came on.

The floor was marble, as were columns flanking an arch that led into another salon. It had a formal look to it, despite or perhaps because of a blend of rococo design elements and some modern Scandinavian furniture. The whole was rendered more cheerful by well-chosen potted plants in Greek urns, and yet it had a contrived look. This was no womanly influence, turning a building of stone and mortar into a home. This was by design, and expensive design at that. The ground floor was for receptions and formal social events. It was the usual layout for a house of this class.

"What do you think, Inspector?"

"I'm thinking homicide."

"Ah, you're such a great kidder, Inspector." With an outstretched arm, Henri indicated what must be the entrance to an elevator. "It's a little tight. Just push the button for the third floor."

"And you?" Gilles asked with raised eyebrows.

"There must be a kitchen here somewhere." Henri nudged him on the elbow. "Don't be shy, sir. Oh, you are in for a wonderful time!"

With that the rascal turned and headed for a smaller alcove to the left of the entrance hall where nothing was revealed except a small piece of blank wall and a quick turn to the right.

***

"Gilles, I'm glad you're here. We're just about to pick the lock. Take a peek." Rene Lavoie gestured to the keyhole, a big old-fashioned skeleton type lock.

"Apparent suicide, eh?"

They stood in the hallway, outside the private study of Theodore Duval. This was where the man worked on his inventions, which were legion, and where he had his private papers, including technical drawings and patent applications. This was according to Rene. He had gotten all of this from the housekeeper, who waited further questioning downstairs. Gilles remembered the name now, all right. Perhaps there was something interesting here after all.

"What do I expect to see?" Gilles spoke in a level tone but the fact was his jaw was beginning to ache in earnest and his patience was running out.

The psychological release of having the thing done with was over, and all he wanted now was to lie on the couch, lick his wounds, and get some rest after weeks of sleepless nights.

"There's a dead man in there." Rene gave Gilles a reassuring pat on the shoulder. "Don't worry, it's nothing you haven't seen before."

Gilles bent and peered through the keyhole. There was always a little shock of adrenalin in the guts, but it was no big emotional trauma.

"He's dead all right."

It was not a pretty picture.

"All right, be careful, we want to examine that lock." Rene waved forward Albert Giroux, the lab specialist who would eventually be called upon to testify as to his actions and observations here today.

"This is a double-action lock." Giroux thought for a second. "The key can be reinserted, and the inner cylinder unlocked by rotating in the opposite direction."

People locked or unlocked interior doors, but didn't necessarily leave the key in the hole. They often took the keys with them rather than leave them in. In that sense, it was different from a jewelry box or a chest, which only had access for a key on one side.

"Do me a favour. Can you shoot a picture through the keyhole?" Gilles shrugged.

Giroux's eyebrows rose, but he nodded in the affirmative. He sorted through another black bag and came up with another lens. This one required the use of a sturdy collapsible tripod, and more time. The man was maddeningly thorough, looking around inside the mechanism with the aid of special lenses, mirrors, and yet another tiny camera, all of this accompanied by the taking of extensive notes. Giroux was a mumbler, a habit which Gilles could live with if only he would hurry up.

"There's no other key?"

Rene shrugged tolerantly.

"That's what they say."

Gilles nodded. Nothing was ever taken at face value.

"Who do we think it is? Monsieur Duval, I presume?"

Rene nodded in agreement.

"That's what they say."

Gilles studied Rene for a moment, intent upon his own physical misery.

"So how have you been?"

Rene gave him an odd look.

"That hardly enters into the equation." Gilles had the feeling he had missed something. He didn't know how to ask, when it came to personal details from a friend.

"Sorry. It's just that my jaw is killing me." Gilles pointed to his right cheek. "Dentist pulled a molar."

"Ah." Rene accepted this without comment.

There was a long silence as they watched Giroux. He went into his valise and carefully sorted through an extensive collection of skeleton-type keys in assorted sizes. A squad of investigators and the ubiquitous meat-wagon boys hovered at the far end of the hallway, unwilling to engage in pleasantries with the higher echelons. Perhaps it was conversation with Giroux they feared. Photographs, fingerprints, blood-spatters, dead bodies, this was what interested them. Mere locks were beneath their interest, somebody else's department, but of course Giroux was a bit of a bug on the subject of mechanical security devices.

The odd rumble of voices was easily ignored. A quick burst of laughter from down there drew a quick glance, but they were all familiar with the routine by now. Hushed and reverent silence for the dead would have been too much to expect.

"This one should do it. This model should turn easily." There came a sound and Giroux withdrew the key. "Wait."

Suppressing a growl, Gilles watched the man take another set of his damnably peculiar photos, and while he admired his determination to leave absolutely nothing to chance, there was a dead person with their face blown off in the next room. Finally Giroux's gloved hand gripped the knob just so, theoretically preserving any prints that might be there, and he turned the knob with authority. There would either be no prints, or more likely, a million prints. It was that kind of a day.

"After you, gentlemen." Gilles nodded thanks.

Giroux was used to faint praise, and immediately set to work examining the frame, the latch, the striker plate, and the inner portion of the mechanism. Clearly Giroux loved his work. Gilles wondered why the key wasn't in the lock. Men especially, kept them on a chain attached to their belt. Surely the housekeeper must have a key.

A man's is defined by his actions, and in some ways they were a lot alike. In his own case, he would have shown up on the job the day after someone sawed a leg off. The word on Giroux was that he had never missed a day's work in seventeen years, except of course for his stint in the Army.

Gilles wondered if Giroux suffered nightmares.

Chapter Two

A grisly scene

Rene held up a hand, and the more eager of the specialists, notably the fingerprint fellow, froze in the doorway.

It was a grisly scene. There was a suicide note.

'I love you...' The next two words were illegible.

"Damn it."

Gilles tried to avoid the major blood spatters. The note was incomplete. There was a large-calibre pistol on the floor in front of the decedent. There were enough blood spatters to satisfy anybody. His legs were sprawled out in front of him, and his arms hung limp.

"I'm sorry..." The words on the paper had been written in haste, or a state of extreme agitation.

The pen was right there.

"Stuck it in his moth and pulled the trigger." This from the fingerprint man, whom Gilles thought was Boulanger.

They ignored him.

"If he stuck it in his mouth, it sort of rules out an accident." Giroux's dry humour was not without merit.

"Well, well, well." Rene raised an eyebrow at Gilles. "What do you think?"

"It certainly looks like a suicide."

"That's just what I was thinking." Rene waited.

There was a long silence, as Gilles took in the drawing tables, shelves with heaps of rolled-up drawings, strong overhead lights, a small couch and coffee table over in front of the windows. He strolled around the far parts of what was a fairly large room, keeping out of the way of the others while they worked at documenting the scene.

"Interesting."

"What is it, Gilles?" Rene came over and had a look.

"It's a book on hypnotism."

Gilles looked around with a speculative look.

"Monsieur Duval was a very wealthy man." Rene nodded in agreement.

"He was famous. What are you thinking, Gilles?"

"We had better cover our asses on this one, no matter what." Gilles stood looking down at the book on the coffee table. "This was a room for work. What is this book doing here?"

Rene turned and beckoned at the doorway.

"All right gentlemen, we are treating this as a crime scene until further notice."

The silent and invisible cheer that went through the room was almost palpable. It had been a slow week, and this looked like a deviation from the norm, if nothing more.

"Take the pockets." Another fellow, Le Bref, started going through them one by one, after a few quick snapshots by the photo technician.

"Here are the keys." Le Bref jingled them, and there were one or two dark skeleton-type keys on there.

"What are you thinking, Gilles?'

"Two things, first, if there was only one key, he might very well keep it on him. But, why didn't he finish the note? And why lock the door at all? It was his house."

"A little unusual. Was he hurried for some reason? Ten pages would have been more like it." Rene looked around the room. "Huh."

"Interesting."

Henri poked his head in the door.

"Inspector?"

"Oui?"

"There's coffee and cake in the salon, if you'd like to meet the rest of the family."

His eyes met Rene's.

"You want me to take this?"

"Yes, I'll be down in a few minutes. Gilles...I go in for my operation tomorrow."

Maintenon's jaw almost dropped, sending him a sharp jab of pain, but he quickly recovered. Of course! Rene had lung cancer. People told him things and sometimes it was like it went in one ear and out the other. It was like a trap door opening up underneath him sometimes, for Rene was an old friend. His own misery was blinding him to the sufferings of others.

Slapping him on the arm, Gilles turned and marched off to find the elevator, although he was sure there must be a proper set of stairs somewhere in the building. What must Rene be feeling right now?

"Second floor, at the front." Gilles was tempted to follow Henri and use the stairs, but to be afraid of the dentist, something he had been moaning about for weeks, and then to refuse to use the elevator might be to lose the respect of the men, and that was simply unnecessary. It was just a stuffy little elevator, and not that bad, really.

It sure beat lung cancer.

***

When Gilles entered the second floor salon, the gentlemen rose as if to shake hands, while the women remained seated.

An athletic young man of stocky build and with shoulders as big as Andre Levain's began the introductions.

"This is Hermione Fontaine, our housekeeper." The lady nodded politely and Gilles nodded in return.

"First of all, who are you, sir? And who discovered the body?" At that moment, Henri arrived, and behind him came another servant pushing a cart laden with coffee and cups, and something under a polished silver dome.

That would be the cake, then.

"I am Alexis Ferrauld, Monsieur Duval's bodyguard. I found the door locked, and when I looked in through the keyhole...well, you know."

"Do you live on the premises?"

"Yes." Alexis went on. "Third floor. It's the back bedroom, the hallway on the right."

Nodding, Gilles pulled his notebook and pen out of a side jacket pocket as Henri hastened to do the same. Gilles wrote the names down as Alexis continued with his story. It was one of those houses that required a floor plan in the case notes. Henri had an air of repressed triumph about him, but perhaps Gilles was mistaken.

"I knocked a couple of times, as it was most unusual for Monsieur Duval not to be available first thing in the morning. He considered it his most productive time of the day."

"Ah." Gilles scribbled and waited.

They would tell their story in their own way, and it was sometimes best to just let it flow naturally.

"I called for Madame Fontaine. Emilie, the housemaid came as well. After seeing for themselves, we were going to break the door down, but Frederic, he is our driver, insisted upon calling the police." He gave a nod to an older man, very grave and looking like he was recovering from a bout of crying. "He was right, of course."

"Yes, very commendable. The normal reaction is to break the door down. You did the right thing. Who is Monsieur Duval's next of kin? Are they in town here?"

Alexis clammed up, shrugged helplessly, and looked to Hermione for support.

She was angry, it was at the forefront of her grief.

"He had a brother. His sister lives in Martinique."

"Had?" Gilles waited, pen poised over the pale blue lines ruled upon the notebook page. "We'll need to speak to Emilie as well."

"That's me, sir." The housemaid bobbed her head and retreated to the far corner of the room, where she stood in a formal pose of attention, chin up, very straight and with hands comfortably clasped at her waist.

Her eyes looked off into some vast and empty space known only to the servile classes.

"Monsieur Alain lives in town, yes, sir. I will get you the address." Her lips were tight, and she was struggling with the emotions.

Alexis shrugged, giving Gilles an expressive look, as if to imply that he could go no further at the moment. It was a complex set of relationships, nothing new here. He could almost fill in the blanks. Duval was a self-made man. His brother wasn't, so much, and Alexis had some professional discretion.

"We will need a proper identification." This was from Henri, who had a habit of sticking an oar in, unwelcome as it was sometimes, although it was useful at others.

Henri was available, and Andre would turn up when he could. Gilles let it drop momentarily.

"And you, sir?" The other gentlemen extended a hand.

"I am Jules Charpentier, plant manager for all domestic operations." Gilles gave it a brief shake, noting it was a professional handshake with little pressure. "I arrived shortly after nine."

It was pro forma, and while a bit damp, the man did not try to crush his hand in an effort to impress. He knew better. To gain an impression, Gilles smiled faintly and extended his hand to Alexis, whose hand was dry and hard, and very strong. This man could break bones if he squeezed, Gilles understood that instantly, but the man was aware of his strength and surprisingly gentle.

Frederic, who had subsided into his seat again, rose with alacrity and came up to shake with Gilles. He squeezed Gilles' hand, pumping it up and down quickly and for slightly too long.

"Pleased to meet you." It was an Americanism, and an unfortunate attempt at pleasantry. "Frederic Maillot. I have been Monsieur Duval's...I was his chauffeur for nine years."

He clammed up suddenly, eyes moist with tears, and wordlessly returned to his seat, where he sat looking out the window, seemingly oblivious to his surroundings. Stiff as a board, his shoulders suddenly slumped and he allowed himself some visible emotions.

"I can identify...the body for you." It was the other woman in the room, a tall, willowy blonde girl who looked vaguely familiar.

She burst into tears and covered her face with her hands. Madame Fontaine clamped her lips shut in disapproval and looked away in a decisive gesture.

"And she is...?" Gilles asked Alexis in a quiet tone.

"A very good friend of Monsieur Duval's." Alexis' eyes bored into Gilles' in some unspoken message of importance. "This is Yvonne."

The housekeeper spoke up.

"She is Yvonne Verene. She is a nightclub singer." There were certain implications in her statement, polite disapproval being foremost among them.

It didn't ring too many bells, but Gilles might have heard the name, or read it in the paper or something.

"Thank you." Gilles and Henri scribbled, the sound of quiet sniffles in the background adding urgency to their efforts.

"That's quite all right, Mademoiselle Verene. It is best in these cases to have the most immediate next of kin do the identification."

"Is it...bad?" It was the housekeeper.

She shuddered at the memory of what she had seen.

"Bad enough." Gilles understood the nature of grief, and would make it as easy as possible for the survivors.

His eyes flicked up and met hers.

"It is pretty much as you would imagine it."

In the back of his mind he was wondering why he had been called in at all, but there was no such thing as the routine suicide of a very rich man, and they must fill in the blanks as best they could and leave no question unasked, or unanswered.

***

Henri was handy in his own way, and produced paper enough for them to write statements of what they had seen and done.

"Did anyone hear the shot?" Gilles asked the most obvious question first, knowing the answer before they spoke.

"No." Alexis had appointed himself the unofficial spokesman for the group. "It's a big house, solidly built, and as you have seen, Monsieur Duval's studio was on the third floor."

Gilles nodded.

"Unless someone was in the room above or below, or in the immediate vicinity, that is certainly possible." He didn't necessarily buy it, but this was not the time. "Did Monsieur Duval own the weapon?"

Andre nodded.

"Yes, and there are several more in the games room." Alexis hesitated. "It's a very masculine room."

"Ah." There were certain things implied here, perhaps only that Duval had taken an interest in the one room and let a designer do the rest.

The studio was Spartan enough. With a complete absence of decoration, it was a room with few distractions. He tried another question, a trick which had worked once or twice in the past.

"So where was everyone when it happened?" He was rewarded with nothing but blank looks, at each other as much as him, which was pretty much as he expected, but no one took it any further.

"I'm sorry." He shrugged, holding his cheek for a moment. "Of course we have no way as yet of knowing when it happened. There will be an autopsy, of course."

Alexis gave a short twitch of the head that approximated a nod of agreement.

"Just what I was thinking." He gave Gilles a speculative look.

Gilles had the impression he might be useful if he would open up. Clearly he was unwilling to do that here.

He didn't appear to be defensive, just sensible, perhaps even professional, which was what he was purported to be. Good bodyguards were tough and quick-acting in a given situation, but that did not necessarily imply dullness of mind or outright stupidity. Alexis seemed very professional considering the circumstances and his age.

"We will need to have the names of every person who was in the house for the last twenty-four hours, anyone who stays here or works here, your home address if different, and a phone number if you have one." Henri played the bad guy, while Gilles studied them as was his way. "We'll need your date of birth, place of employment, things like that."

The young lady was crying over her paper, and it was possible she hadn't even heard it.

"It's all right, Mademoiselle Verene, just do your best." Gilles used a gentle but firm tone, as their cooperation would eventually dry up.

Anything they could get out of them immediately might be helpful.

"I don't know anything." Then she broke up again in a paroxysm of tears, her body wracked by involuntary spasms. "Oh, God, why? Why, Theo?"

She bawled her eyes out in a very physical kind of release that would be difficult to fake in a convincing manner. The refrain of loss and grief went on and on, until she finally subsided into sobs and sniffles.

"Perhaps the post-mortem will provide us with a time of death, but there is always some leeway in such matters." Yvonne convulsed anew upon hearing Gilles' words, and the housekeeper, who had an air of great dignity in spite of everything so far, gave him a dark look that was also complex, perhaps more complex than it should have been. "Yes, Madame?"

"This is all I can say." She proffered her sheet and Henri hustled over to take it.

She was holding something back. He saw it in the firmly clamped jaws and mouth.

"Thank you ever so much, and we know that this is a very difficult time for all." Henri had a certain charm and Gilles admired him for it. Although in some ways Henri was an indifferent investigator, he had his strengths and usefulness.

Jules Charpentier had written about three lines, and this wasn't surprising. Henri collected all of their statements. He flipped through them to ensure their addresses were legible and complete.

"Did Monsieur Duval own a Colt forty-five calibre pistol?"

The housekeeper began to weep, but she nodded as well, saying something incoherent. She tried to compose herself, and began again, but it was beyond her ability to speak at the moment.

"He had a pistol in his office, and several other guns, rifles and shotguns." Alexis wasn't crying, but he appeared shaken.

"Where in his office?" Henri stood with pencil poised.

"In his desk drawer." It was Madame Fontaine, who had the duty of supervising cleaning staff.

"Was the drawer locked?" Gilles suspected the answer before he heard it—as often as not people were unbelievably careless with firearms, but in a household with no children, they never thought there was any danger.

"No...rarely." Alexis looked at Madame Fontaine, who nodded in the midst of blowing her nose.

"Was it kept loaded?" Henri's question was the obvious one for a cop.

"Yes." Alexis nodded.

She stared out the window for a while, sniffling, her body wracked by the need to breathe and spasms of grief.

Finally she answered.

"Yes, it was only locked sometimes. There were things he needed in there."

"What do you mean, sometimes?" Henri was right on it.

"It's been years, but when he went on a trip or somewhere." Alexis' explanation made humble sense.

It was typical human behaviour.

"Was Monsieur Duval despondent about something? Did he appear troubled lately? How were things going for him?"

"Monsieur Duval was murdered." Everyone's jaw dropped and they all turned to stare at Hermione, who sat with jaws clenched, endlessly twisting her soaked handkerchief, and glaring at the police while refusing to look at anyone else or any other thing around her.

"What makes you say that?" Gilles did not contradict her, as people said the damnedest things in this state, but he spoke reasonably enough.

His tone said it all.

"He wasn't that sort of a man." Her anger was another state of grief he was not unfamiliar with.

Yvonne had a stony look on her face. She appeared in a trance. It was merely one kind of grief, in his experience. One phase of it, anyway. The other woman was trying to force him to believe. It was like she hadn't heard it.

Was it just emotion? A state of denial, or did the Fontaine woman really know or suspect something? There was nothing careful or studied about her attitude or body language. At that particular moment, he had no doubt she believed it implicitly. Rene had been keeping this little surprise up his sleeve.

"Yes." Gilles spoke pleasantly, nodding at Henri to take notes.

The statements weren't much to go on either way, at least not so far.

"I was wondering about that. What sort of a man was he?"

Predictably enough, this brought fresh tears from Yvonne, a glare from Hermione, and a shrug from Jules. Alexis looked into his eyes and nodded in agreement. The driver stared out the window.

"She is right, Inspector. He really wasn't the sort."

"What makes you say that, Monsieur Ferrauld?"

Alexis took a deep breath.

"Theodore Duval was a self-made man. He was born with nothing. He survived Verdun. Surely you must have some idea of what that means."

Jules nodded vigorously in agreement.

"That is exactly right."

Gilles nodded, having been there himself, one of the lucky few to receive a superficial wound in the last stages of the battle. He still had a scar on the outer part of his right leg, just above the knee, from a machine gun bullet.

"Yes. I was there."

"Well, Monsieur Duval struggled to make something of himself, and fought every day of his life to achieve what he has...what he did."

"Yes, I see."

Henri scrawled more notes.

Whether or not it was a suicide, the personality of the victim was crucial to understanding the results or events of their life, and their death, at least in his own opinion.

It was one of Gilles Maintenon's little pet theories, one borne out by time and experience. They all had their methods, and it was by no means as cut-and-dried as all of that, but it was at least something to go on.

"Inspector?" Henri stood by the coffee carafe on the service cart.

"Yes, thank you, Henri. Perhaps a glass of water first?"

Madame beckoned to the maid, who left the room.

Gilles felt in his pocket for the bottle of narcotic pain pills provided by Dr. Etienne.

His jaw ached as if all the fiends of hell were pounding away on tiny chisels with miniature sledge-hammers. He sorely missed Andre Levain, whose perspective was always valuable. Levain knew Gilles better than he knew himself, or so it seemed at times.

Perhaps that was the real problem with Henri—he wasn't Levain.

***

Having taken over a small room furnished with a desk and a few chairs, a private study on the second floor that had book shelves lining one wall, Gilles studied the woman before him in his peripheral vision. There had been some books on a shelf in the salon as well. Those were all leather-bound, a set of matching tomes such as any wealthy person might display more for status reasons than any real reading pleasure. The ones in here, many of them paperbacks like the one in the studio, looked as if they had actually been read.

"I understand your feelings in this matter, and I want you to know I take everything you say very seriously." The Madame's eyes bored into his from across the desk.

"I meant what I said." She hesitated. "I know what you are thinking."

He didn't bother to ask what he was thinking. In her black house dress and flat shoes, she was a stereotype, but he was never fooled by such things. She was a product of her upbringing, rather than any real defect of intelligence or environment.

"Did Monsieur Duval have enemies?"

She shrugged in contempt at his stupidity. He was a fool not to see it, but he needed hard information, and the man was a perfect stranger to him.

"Had he received any threats that you know of? Had he had any unusual visitors lately?"

"No, not really, I—" She flushed and started over. "Yes, and no. They are all unusual. But that's not what I mean."

"Well, take your time." Gilles sat back. "Was Monsieur Duval behaving any differently lately? Were there any deviations from his normal routine? Did he go out, or come in, or stay away unexpectedly? Who has he been with lately?"

The throbbing in his jaw was subsiding, but only a little. He had taken two of the pills. Perhaps he should have tried three or even four, although the doctor had prescribed two.

"Monsieur had some unusual friends?" Gilles jotted a quick line on his page.

He underlined it carefully three times, and then looked up into her hot black eyes.

"What I am trying to say, Inspector, is that he had no reason to want to do this terrible thing, and would have been fundamentally opposed to it. He was a very moral man, strong in his beliefs as well as his character."

The spring sunlight came slanting in through the window and the room was heating up.

"All right. Not the sort of person who commits suicide, and in fact, Madame, people almost always show some signs, that in reflection, looking back, may have been obvious. You saw no such signs?"

"None." The dark-haired woman, about forty-five years of age, stared back at him with a calm dignity in her black, moist eyes. "He had every reason to live, and no reason to go to that extreme."

"What about his health?"

"He seemed fine lately, although you would have to speak to others." She reached again for the pen and the paper. "I will give you his doctor's name and address, and get the addresses for the others."

"Yes, the brother and sister. Give us as many friends, as many names as you can think of." Gilles thought for a moment. "When do you get up? When do you go to the kitchen, or begin work, that sort of thing?"

Hermione was prolific once away from the others, and many of his questions centred on neutral subjects of the daily routine in the house. If anyone could be said to cooperate fully, it was her.

When she showed signs of drying up, he prompted her for more.

"Did he go to church? Did he go to confession, or to Mass on Easter, that sort of thing? Did he ever see a psychologist? Nothing like that?" At one time it was the fashionable thing to do, to get one's dreams analyzed.

"No psychologist, but he did go to Mass sometimes, usually on Sunday."

So he didn't do the evening Masses. That would have been out of character for one such as Duval. He would have gone out at night, but there wasn't much to do on a Sunday morning in the city. The country might be different, but according to her Duval didn't have a hunting lodge or a villa, or anything like that. When he traveled, which wasn't often, he stayed in the best hotels. He had a hard time leaving his work behind, in her estimation, and was never gone for long.

He asked her to write down the name and address of the church. She didn't have the exact street address, but the name of the church and the priest were enough. Apparently he went when the impulse drove him as much as anything else. Perhaps it was a way of breaking away from his routine once in a while, without wasting a lot of time at it. Gilles knew where the place was. He had never attended that church in particular, but a cousin of his wife's had been wed there.

"And how did you get in to clean the studio?" He'd been saving that one up, but she had a ready answer.

"I, or I should say Emilie, cleaned only during the day, when he was there to let her in."

All of this was interesting enough in its own way. During the course of the interview, he made copious notes and began to build a picture of the daily patterns of life in the household.

According to Madame Fontaine, Alexis was a wonderful man, very strong, very brave, and a good bodyguard. While she wasn't very competent to judge such things, that was his impression as well. The driver, Frederic, was a dull person, fond of his wife but not overly faithful by inclination, complained about everything, liked to take a drink, and was basically an honest fool by his own lights. He was perfectly content with an easy job, three square meals a day and spending pretty much every night at home with his family. While the Verene woman was certainly pretty and she could see why Monsieur Duval found her attractive, she was suspicious, subject to nameless fears for the well-being of her employer, whom she had always treated with the utmost in professional deference. This was not hard to believe. As for Jules Charpentier, she didn't know much about him, but he was scrupulously polite and easy to provide for on his short visits, and she had the impression he did not abuse his power with the employees, of whom there were several hundred. He lived in town in quite a nice neighbourhood. Presumably he had shown up on business affairs, which he did routinely, but she did not keep track of Monsieur's appointments. That was between Monsieur Duval and Alexis, who apparently could type and took dictation on the rare occasions when that was necessary. She had picked up most of this by a process of osmosis that he was not unfamiliar with.

Madame Fontaine had four children of her own, a son and three daughters. They were all grown up and had moved out, successful enough people in their own way, as well as seven grandchildren. A widow, she lived with her cat in a small flat at the back of the house on the third floor. At one time, the fourth floor had been rooms for servants, but Duval lived alone and they didn't need a lot of people to look after the place.

"Would children have been a problem for your employer? I mean, if they were running around the house?"

"No. We would have taken a flat elsewhere, but the question never came up."

A knock came at the door. Henri popped his head in.

"A gentleman has arrived from Lyons." Madame Fontaine's hand flew up to her mouth in a look of consternation. "And Andre will be along shortly, he just rang up."

"Thank you, Henri. Well, I guess that will be all for now, Madame."

Chapter Three

No known enemies

The housemaid had only been employed for a short time, and to her knowledge Monsieur Duval had no known enemies, and there had been no recent tension in the household. She was of the opinion that he was a wonderful man, a very good employer, and seemed to be happy with life most of the time. There were the occasional irritants in everyone's life, of which she could not give an example right off the top of her head. He did not press her on it, as he had no wish for her to begin making things up.

She had her impressions of the household but her state of mild shock and a kind of dread of unemployment overcame her. She had never met Alain. Yvonne was a regular in the household, of indeterminate status to Emilie, for the maid insisted Gilles call her that. She knew her own status in this place well enough. Only ladies and gentlemen were entitled to a surname. She waited on Yvonne but didn't report to her or take her orders. She got her instructions from Madame Fontaine and Monsieur Duval, in that order. She knew nothing of Jules Charpentier and not much about Frederic who had flirted with her at first until she made it clear this made her uncomfortable. They had remained distant.

She worked during the day unless other arrangements had been made, in which case she needed some notice as she had an infant and a mother-in-law, who looked after her daughter during working hours. Her mother-in-law had her own life to live and her own responsibilities. Emilie's husband was employed at a dairy, also during daylight hours. They were presently estranged, due to his alcoholism, but she had some hopes of eventual reconciliation. She was from a village thirty kilometres east of the city and had moved here years ago.

After asking her to write down her daily routine, and account in writing as best she could for her movements in the preceding forty-eight hours, he reassured her that she was not a suspect and was startled at the look of sheer terror this inspired in her pallid and rounded features. It was wise to remember that class expectations played a role in his relationship with people at a crime scene, and he spent an inordinate amount of time trying to make her understand that this was all dull, drab routine.

In the end, he didn't think she entirely bought it, but he did his best.

Gilles took down the details of her home address. She lived with an elderly aunt and uncle in a small flat about six kilometres away across the city. A plain girl with a distinct black hairiness to her forearms and side-burn areas, he had little reason to suspect any romantic attachments on the part of Theo Duval, and she was such an innocent kind of person he didn't inquire further. It would only embarrass her and interfere with future conversations.

His interview with the driver wasn't very enlightening and had about the same result. In spite of their stated reverence for their employer, perhaps even some personal liking on his part, Frederic was terrified when he realized there might not be much need for his services any longer.

Although he insisted that he drove Madame Fontaine and Alexis everywhere on their household errands, and that there was some small possibility that Alain might employ him if he took over the house, his heart wasn't in it and his attention seemed elsewhere. Gilles gravely noted that he ate lunch in the kitchen and took his breaks there as well. His movements could be accounted for at least, for his daily routine was a thing of comfort and guidance to one such as Frederic. He had a wife and two daughters, and lived in a small flat on an upper floor about ten blocks away. Gilles knew the neighbourhood, nodding at this bit of information.

It was almost a relief to get rid of the man, and yet such a familiar type to Gilles.

Jules Charpentier had managed the local plant for six and a half years, and was assistant manager before that. He had started with the company at about the age of twenty-five, and was in his early forties. Like the new arrival Babineaux, whom Gilles had briefly met, and who was now awaiting his own questioning, he was balding. In his case, it was simply buzzed short and ignored. This was also a kind of vanity, realized Gilles, the vanity of one who wants the world to know that he simply doesn't care. It was all business. It was a genteel stoicism, rather than a ruthless repression of emotion.

He seemed to know a lot about the inner workings of the corporate side of things. The local plant was the largest one they had, and he was naturally consulted on many aspects of policy-making, especially additions to the product line, some portion or component of which might be built or assembled in his plant.

"Monsieur Babineaux should have been a vice-president at the very least. We've been sort of expecting it any day now." Jules had plenty of observations on the business, not too many on Theo, and virtually none regarding the household staff other than Alexis.

"A good man." That was his impression of the bodyguard. "And Theodore was lucky to have him. A lot of these fellows can't type or spell. But he was in some ways a professional friend, the sort of person that a man like Theo can never really have. Theo enjoyed having him around."

"What do you mean?" Gilles had found that himself over the course of time.

Police work did that to you.

"Think about it. Who were his peers? In some ways the inventive all know each other, but they are also very competitive. Some of them are a little bit unbalanced and some are real back-biters, and emotions can run very high. We have been sued for patent infringement, for example, although it was later dropped. It was a proper nuisance at the time, as you can well imagine. As a matter of fact, Theo was furious."

"Do you think there's a grudge there, with the other party?" Even as he asked, it didn't seem too likely as a motive for murder.

The proper marchand, businessman, moved on to greener pastures.

"Oh, probably." Charpentier took it with a grain of salt. "It was a nuisance lawsuit, without much merit, and Theo bought him off, essentially. What is there for them to be angry about? We're the ones who ought to be angry, and the fellow is still alive and kicking somewhere about town."

"So tell me about Babineaux." Gilles made a face. "He seems like a very high-powered personality, and yet like a well-polished sword, he remains sheathed."

"He's a prodigy. He'll be running the whole place someday." The statement was a recital of fact, nothing more than the truth as Charpentier saw it. "He's brought in efficiencies and found all sorts of economies. He has generated fresh sources of investment capital for the firm. It grew out of cash holdings held at high interest, in savings. To Theo, this was so much better than borrowing at even the most favourable rate."

Gilles saved the prodigy Babineaux for last. Finally the man sat before him as he took a moment to compose his thoughts. He had many questions, some of which could and should wait.

"Your arrival has thrown Madame Fontaine into consternation."

Eduard Babineaux was in his early fifties, with a pugnacious, bulbous nose, a heavily-dimpled chin, and fleshy round ears. His hairline went up and over the back of his head. The strands of black hair combed sideways across his baldness did little to hide the glare of the small light fixture above. He had combed his hair that way since day one and would never change. It said everything and exactly nothing about him. With a face like that, the man might have appeared the fool, if not for the subdued yet expensive and very conservative business suit. It was the sort of brown suit that looked equally good at a business luncheon, a wedding, or a funeral. He could have made a speech in that suit, and yet the man apparently had spent a lifetime eradicating all outstanding traces of personality. This man would take everything, not just seriously, but literally, and himself most of all. The man projected confidence, as upset as he was. He was in total control of his demeanor.

He was an accountant, financial comptroller for the firm's worldwide 'obligations,' a manner of speaking Maintenon had never heard before. Without the suit, he would have felt naked.

"I was expected, of course, but she has obviously forgotten all about it. Naturally I understand. This is a terrible tragedy."

Gilles nodded absently as he put the man's name, title and home address down into his notebook in good form. Bad notes meant bad errors when typing it up, and both prosecutors and attorneys for the accused read them very thoroughly. They looked for problems from both sides of the fence.

"And where is your office?"

"I have a suite and several assistants. Head office is only two kilometres away from this very spot. There are accounts offices in every plant. We have a major production facility on the outskirts of town." The gentleman provided details which Gilles duly noted. "That's where Jules has an office as well."

It was out on the east side, a conflux of industry, rail and canals, close to a large working population, and easier to supply with their own specialized raw materials than some of the establishments that smudged the southern horizon, right in the heart of the city, with their stink and their smoke.

"It has been a very great shock to her, and quite often there is a kind of affection among members of a household."

"Hmn." This man was a professional at communicating—or not.

"This is a terrible thing."

"Yes, Inspector. While I am not a demonstrative man, Theodore will be sorely missed, and of course this will cause quite a crisis within the firm."

"What do you mean?" Gilles listened intently to the tone as much as the words. "Incidentally, are you married, and do you have children?"

The gentleman provided details of his family, including a wife, and two sons, one of whom had taken vows at a Benedictine abbey, and one who was employed at an accounting firm across town. Maintenon played the bait-and-switch, asking an innocuous question and then alternating with a tougher one, just to see how the subjects responded.

"As for the company, day to day operations will continue, of course. The stock will probably fall, at least in the short term, but it's nothing to be alarmed about. The firm is solvent and Theodore had a kind of approach that allowed executives to hold considerable power of decision. The company will go on, we must have no doubts about that."

"I see." Gilles went through a list of questions in his head, but asked none of them.

"This is a great shock to us all." Babineaux sat straight in his chair, with his hands folded in his lap.

"Suicide requires some compelling reasons." Gilles struck a chord, he saw it resonate within Monsieur Babineaux.

"Yes, absolutely." He took a deep breath, pursing his lips together as if trying very hard. "If so, Theo never shared it with me. Or with anyone, I'll bet."

"So far, you are right." Gilles regarded the man for a moment.

Patient, yet sincere, his emotions were under control. It's not that he didn't look stricken. Of course he did. It's not that he hadn't seen or heard similar things before, but Gilles was interested in the subconscious attitudes of anyone connected to Duval. With a little prodding, Gilles hoped to get him to open up ever so slightly. Babineaux would have little choice but to provide something tangible under questioning, no matter how reluctant he might be to discuss business matters or his employer's personal life with the police. He seemed practiced in the art of putting people off of his true emotions. It was a necessary trait, when playing the game at his level.

If he read him right, Babineaux should have been screaming inside, to leap out of his chair and go tearing off to his lair at head office and start the damage control immediately.

"I hope that we don't have to waste too much of your time, Monsieur Babineaux."

"Every company needs direction, not just in business affairs, but also philosophical. Theodore was good at that, possibly the best. But it's more than that. There will be share-holders and the Board of Directors to appease, there will be problems getting short-term credit for day to day operations, including payroll. This will throw everything into a tizzy, no doubt about it. But I was aware of nothing bothering Theo, far from it."

"And you have no idea of why he might wish to take his own life? There was nothing else going on, no big problems, no un-resolvable issues?"

"None whatsoever, Inspector Maintenon, in fact suicide would be quite foreign to his nature. While I know nothing of his personal life, he was a very strong and quite frankly, a persistent man. I can think of nothing that would be sufficiently traumatic, to make him give up on life, let alone commit suicide. If anything, he would only try harder, fight harder. The man was a force."

It seemed to be a consensus, and while not based on any discernable facts, fit with what Gilles knew of what he always referred to as the archetypes of human nature. Duval was used to getting his own way. So far, no one had a bad thing to say about him, and there were no suggestions of problems in his life.

"So you came for a business meeting?" Gilles threw down the pen and leaned back, putting his hands on the back of his head in a familiar and relaxing pose. "Tell me about the young lady."

"Oh, well, Inspector." The implication was that this would not be seemly. "I couldn't really comment."

Gilles knew that much before he asked the question, but it was always worth a try.

"How long have they known each other?"

Babineaux sighed. He would try to accommodate the police, against his better judgment and more civilized manners. It was just a whiff of arrogance. He couldn't conceal it after all.

"I think maybe a few months. Six months, maybe a little longer."

"What does Duval Industries do best? What is the company about?" This was a matter of some pride, and of public record.

It was easy bait. Gilles waited to see what came out.

"The firm specializes in taking Monsieur Duval's drawings and prototypes, and bringing them into production, sometimes by way of licensing agreements, sometimes in partnership with other firms as well as suppliers and stock holders—"

Gilles grinned in spite of himself, and the gentleman coloured, a faint blush in his cheeks. The brightest blue eyes he had seen in some years gazed back at him with a surprising familiarity.

"Yes, but what do you do? What do you make, exactly?" Gilles was more succinct, more specific as to the question.

A small touch of humour, even humanity, might go a long way.

"Ah! I'm sorry. Of course. We produce household, er, forgive me, but I always call them gadgets, for the kitchen. We make sporting goods, tools for work and home, often with a great improvement in design, or convenience, or even just weight. All kinds of things for the farm, and just handy little things made more efficient. We hold numerous patents in the automotive accessory field, for example."

"Weight?"

"Yes, weight. To make something lighter is to often make it more useful, I've heard Theodore say that many times." Those bright blue eyes glowed with something now. "Theodore loved making things more efficient."

Gilles had underestimated him a little. It was possible for a man like Babineaux to like his work, perhaps even to love the company. He wasn't completely cynical, a misjudgment on the part of Gilles.

"You know, my job is a lot like yours." Gilles settled into the seat, leaning forward to make notes if necessary, if any little thing came up. "It is about detail. It is about being meticulous, and not making one single assumption about anything."

"Yes, Inspector, and I agree with you. If there is anything you want, or anything you need, just let me know. And all of our staff members will cooperate fully with the police. I can assure you of that. Theodore was extremely well-liked by all of his people, myself included."

Gilles nodded in approval, as he could think of no other response.

"So you're up from Lyons?" The other man nodded. "What's down there?"

"One of our major plants, a subsidiary. I was there for a week. We're bringing in a new product line. I visit the various production centres to assist in training high-level executives, and of course Theo was always interested in what was going on. Off the record, the cooking's not bad here, either. Our discussions often came over lunch."

Seemingly uncalculated, it was an admission of a little humanity of his own.

"Oh, really." Gilles thought for a moment.

Unprompted, Babineaux went on.

"The company has acquired assets, other small firms that might have run into trouble, or simply been offered for sale. Sometimes the owner wants to move on, or the firm might be acquired from an estate. Otherwise, we would probably concentrate all production in one location."

This was exactly the sort of relationship he was after.

"How so?"

"In other words, if it was an opportunity, and a good fit for us, we often made an offer. I was very much involved in those deals."

"So, as an accountant, you would look over their financial situation?"

"Yes, among other things, and of course others would be involved as well."

Now was not the time to ask. First a little softening up.

"What other sorts of things did the company do?

"Well, Theo was working on a prototype for a better mousetrap, if you can believe it. It's not that the present ones don't work, but the average housemaid or the woman of the house doesn't like the sight of a dead mouse, let alone the thought of touching one for disposal, and of course they have to be removed from the trap."

"And?"

"Monsieur Duval had some drawings which showed real promise. It was a flat-bottomed half-cylinder, containing what is essentially a similar mechanism. The thing is loaded with bait, and then when you shove the mechanism in again, the door locks open, and only closes when the trap is tripped by an unsuspecting mouse. Or a rat, even. The person with the duty of disposing of the dead mouse only has to check and see if the door is closed. There is a little red flag, stamped out of metal. It pops up when sprung. Then they push a button on the other end, and the thing pops open, and the mouse goes right into the dustbin."

"Ah, I see. Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door."

"That's how we all saw it, Inspector. But Theo was truly a genius at that nuts and bolts visualization. Honestly, my explanation is murky at best. It doesn't cover the half of it, really."

"But you had full confidence that it would work?"

"Oh, yes. His prototypes sometimes didn't work very well, and that's where his genius for problem-solving in the mechanical sense came in."

Gilles duly noted it down.

"What if Monsieur Duval came up short? What if he ran dry? How would that affect him?" Gilles wondered if such a thing would be enough to drive a man to suicide.

It seemed unlikely, and Babineaux agreed as Gilles figured he would. Suicides were about love, and honour, and shame. Suicide was about atonement, or punishment, or guilt, or sheer loss of hope. Suicide was about ending the suffering. Gilles wondered when it would dawn on Babineaux that if it wasn't suicide, then it had to be something else.

"Oh, no. Monsieur Duval had many, many years of ideas ahead of him. The truth is, he would never come to the end of work that he wanted to do, and there were never enough hours in the day when he really sank his teeth into something. I don't think he ever really abandoned a project, although he might set it aside when higher priorities intruded."

"Yes, he impresses me the same way, although I've never actually met him." Gilles regarded Babineaux from a few feet away, such a small distance but a gulf which seemed insurmountable sometimes.

If only he could get inside of the man's head for a few minutes. He was sure it would be a revelation. There were too many things that would be hidden, and have to be hidden, in the eyes of a man like Babineaux. The world of business could be cut-throat at times, yet it was also a polite world where there was much that could never be talked about openly. The death of Duval might have opened up an opportunity for someone else like him. Even now, it was not the time to ask, or perhaps Babineaux was not the right one to ask. He'd have to think on it.

"I wonder if you could just write down your impressions of the people on this list. It's strictly confidential, purely for my own understanding. Just whatever you are comfortable saying, n'est pas? Also, we would like to get the fingerprints of everyone closely connected to Monsieur Duval. As you can imagine, the studio is a mass of unidentified prints. Have you ever been up there?"

"Why, certainly, Inspector. Yes, lots of people have been in that room, all over the house in fact, when there was a party or something big going on."

"Something big?"

"The launch of a new product, for example. Theo had parties for all the usual reasons, of course."

"Ah." Gilles nodded his understanding.

A knock came at the door.

"Oh. What was today's meeting about?"

"Pardon, Inspector?"

"What did you come for today?"

"Oh, ah, we go over the books once a week or so, Theo and I."

Gilles rose.

"Excuse me for a moment, s'il vous plait?"

***

While Monsieur Babineaux composed his thoughts and worked on his list, Gilles and Rene conferred in quiet tones in the hall.

"The body's gone, and the lab boys are pretty much done." Rene looked very tired. "We have statements from all the people here, none of whom saw or heard a damned thing."

Deep inside, Rene was a frightened man, and it saddened Gilles to see him that way.

"Very well, thank you." Gilles had no idea of what to say.

"It's all right Gilles. We have no evidence of foul play. If you want to hand this off, that's all academic to me right now." Rene was offering him an out.

Just at that moment in time, Gilles saw him as he once was, a much younger Detective Inspector Lavoie, tall and proud, rather than a suddenly-old friend, collapsing into himself like any street-corner derelict. As likely as not, Rene would not come back. He was old enough to retire on half-pay, and his recovery if he survived the next year, would be long and tedious. Belatedly Gilles recalled Rene was only five or six years older than him. He brushed aside the thought, for he always saw that sort of thing as a kind of weakness, pure narcissism.

The least he could do was to let his old friend go home at the end of a long and tiring day with some dignity.

"In a murder, we don't even consider a charge unless we feel we can prove motive."

Rene shrugged slightly.

"Yes, Gilles? And you're saying the same thing about a suicide. Yes, I see your point."

Gilles reached out and squeezed Rene's bicep.

"I am not happy."

"We both know what will ultimately happen if the wrong person gets assigned this file. It will quickly die."

Maintenon nodded, the sounds of traffic in the street down below muffled but close.

"But you are not happy with it."

"You always had the instinct, Gilles. As for myself, I don't know, maybe not so much. But everyone claims to have loved this man. They say he never had an enemy in the world, and that alone is a bit off. The rich...the rich are rarely beloved."

"Where is the motive?"

Rene smiled fondly upon hearing these words.

"I agree whole-heartedly. Why would a man like that shoot himself, still relatively young, with a good-looking lady at his side, all that money, and quite frankly, the man had everything he wanted. He went where he wanted, did what he wanted. There is no suggestion of delusional thinking on his part. So what happened?"

"Thank you, Rene. I wondered if it was just me." Rene grinned with real affection and shook his head in derision.

"That's why I called for you, my friend. You question everything twice, even yourself." Without a word, screwing his battered charcoal-grey fedora with its bedraggled green featherette securely onto his grizzled brush cut, Rene Lavoie held out his hand and they clasped hands for a moment.

He stared unblinkingly into Gilles's eyes.

"Good luck, Rene."

They embraced as old comrades, and Gilles fought back a few tears of his own. Rene turned and walked away. His footsteps rapidly faded on the soft carpet, and then came silence. Rene took the elevator, a sad and disconsolate sound. This brought a lurch of something to Maintenon's guts, but, just as for Duval and a few hundred million other driven individuals, there was never enough time.

As if the day hadn't been hellish enough to begin with.

Chapter Four

The place could use a new furnace

Their footsteps, hard and resounding in the corridor, echoed back in cold disdain for mere humanities.

"This place could use a new furnace." Andre said it with conviction.

It was an old and tired joke, but the wisp of a smile crossed Maintenon's calm visage.

"Sure beats the old days, though."

"Hmn." Maintenon was preoccupied with Rene's last words, what a loaded expression, but it might be true—he might never see the fellow again, whether he lived or died almost didn't enter into the question.

The same could be said for anybody.

"Imagine all the crowds, pretending to be looking for a lost loved one." Scholarly papers had been written on the morbidity of the old city morgue. "What were they after? Some kind of sick emotional thrill?"

Something to spark their jaded, bourgeois sensibilities, raw sentimentalism, canned and boxed and packaged for easy consumption. Gilles sighed at the thought of their obsession with death above all else. It fascinated them. A funeral was as good as a wedding, in some ways. It bought people together.

It was all about modern communications affecting a kind of mass consciousness exhibited by large numbers of people acting on impulse. It was why perfectly uninvolved strangers flocked to the more sensational trials, jostling in line and trying to get the best seats. It often became emotionally heated, with people hissing and booing the accused, making dire threats and all of that. Oh, yes, and always concerned with choosing sides, and with everyone offering their own unique opinion. There were those calling for quick judgment and a bloody retribution, and those who always sided with the accused, and questioning the validity of the process. It was human nature, at its most elemental, and its most civilized at one and the same time.

"Huh." Gilles was un-moved.

Admittedly he was still a little high from all of the codeine he had ingested. What was it, fifty milligrams per pill? He had never realized what he was missing. A faint noise escaped him.

"This is a fine building, and yet already showing signs of its age."

Levain gaped at him.

"I'm sorry, Inspector?" His bulky shoulders shook with a repressed hilarity.

He was sure Maintenon was joking.

They had been here so many times before, but Gilles must make his own personal acquaintance with their anonymous victim. He wanted another good look at Duval as well. Levain contrived to reach the door ahead of Gilles. Giving it a quick rap, he opened the door with a look and a flourish.

The harsh lights gleamed from thousands of square feet of brushed stainless-steel fixtures and heavily-enameled accoutrements, all barbaric and mostly useless in their impressive efficiency. The press was regularly admitted on tours of the building, a kind of domestic flag-showing operation.

"Come in, come in." A peevish tone, a flushed forehead, and a glare from a man in a smock greeted them upon entrance.

"You cannot dampen the Inspector's ardour for inquiry or even just activity." It was Levain who surprised himself with that one, but the chief nodded in approval.

"That's the spirit, Andre, that's the spirit." Levain silently observed Gilles as he approached the steel table, and the shallow gutter that ringed it, running red with the thin red fluid, precious and cheap, that was the basis of life.

A pinkly-stained sheet was pulled back, leaving only the face and neck visible.

Guillaume was just washing up as Gilles stood calmly regarding the man's face, or what was left of it. The water had puffed him out and distended all of his features. He had a thin, elegant mustache, dark eyebrows and brown eyes. He looked to be about five-foot eight and around early middle age going by the bit of fat on the hips and a receding hairline. Gilles noted several white hairs on the chest, but the bulk were still black. The man gave the impression of good health, as if nothing was wrong with him, if you could ignore the obvious fact that he was dead.

Buried corpses usually decomposed or dried out. Drowning victims seemed awfully life-like sometimes. It depended how long they'd been in.

"Well, well, well. Your other friend is missing a face." The doctor had few doubts, a professional with decades of experience. "On the floater. We have no means of identification, no recent reports, no description matching a recent missing person report."

Gilles stared at the man, drinking in the overall length, the unmarked features, bland of personality or expression now, staring sightlessly up at the glaring overhead fixtures.

It could have been his own brother, considering that he hadn't seen any of them in so long.

"Is there anything that would tend to make this person stand out from a crowd?" Gilles had a genuine interest in any unexplained death.

They were all important, although sordid and squalid enough at times. The corpses were truly humble, though. They all had that much in common. It was a commentary on the human condition every time.

Levain sighed. This looked like being a long one, and the boss was in an odd mood. He didn't care either way after his long night, and now this. Three hours of sleep and his eyes felt like sandpaper.

"Other than the fact that he is already embalmed, and ready for interment, complete with traces of mortuary make-up, including the typical sort of stitches, ones that I did not put there—the organs have been removed. I checked. It's pretty nice work, incidentally, then, ah, well, not really. No." Doctor Guillaume beamed at them from the sink as he washed his hands. "As for the time of death—"

"What?" They spoke at the same time and could not help but to exchange a quick look.

With a real sense of the dramatic, Guillaume now whipped the sheet aside so they could look for themselves.

"What the hell are you saying? Oh, no!" Gilles practically slapped himself on the side of the head.

"You're mad!" Levain almost spat out his unlit cigarette, which he had just taken out in some subconscious impulse.

"I can't come closer than two or three days either way." There was a kind of glee evident in Guillaume's voice as he went on. "I mean in the river—anything else is beyond me. Presumably he died from something somewhere, and it takes a few days for the funerary interment process to unfold."

They glared at the body in disgust.

"That's right, Gilles, Andre. It could almost be a prank." He doubled up in barely-repressed laughter.

"But that's madness! There was money in the pocket! A couple of hundred francs..." Levain was adamant. "You're saying he was prepared for funeral?"

"The body was. As for the accessories, who knows? Just window dressing, maybe. It's a pretty little mystery you've gotten your hands on now. Your hands imbrued in. Think of the headlines. I'm just saying." He grinned happily, for more than anything he lived a boring kind of a life.

"I suppose cuff links and the like are often interred." Guilllaume could only report his findings, drawing conclusions as to what it all meant was some other poor sucker's job. "Generally speaking, any halfway normal man aspires to be buried in a good suit, and almost more importantly, a really good pair of shoes."

Gilles considered this truism of bourgeois values. How much walking did people actually do in heaven?

"I know I do." The fervent tone in Levain's voice said it all, matching what he took for sarcasm with more caustic wit.

Levain was laughing. But Guillaume was serious, as Gilles saw.

It's not that he wasn't trying to help out. He lived alone and had always had a hard time finding any woman willing to go out with him. The job meant everything to him. In a very real sense, these men were his friends, and pretty good ones at that. If a crime had been committed, it was a professional challenge, and he was thoroughly dedicated. He had nothing better to do.

"Drink, anyone? Before we have a look at your next victim?"

"Brats!" Levain was not pleased.

Gilles shook his head at the offer.

"Oh, I don't know." Maintenon sighed. "You're thinking some, ah, filthy-stinking-rich schoolboys? I suppose that's possible. Nothing is impossible."

Gilles shook his head a little. What in the hell did he know? Life was very hard some days.

"Medical students!" Levain might have something there.

It was food for thought.

"Time of death for Monsieur Duval was anywhere from eleven o-clock p.m. last night, to possibly four-thirty a.m. this morning"

"And that's as close as you can make it?"

The staff all said that he hadn't been out last night, at least not to their knowledge, and that he had been working in his studio from shortly after dinner. It was a big house, with only a few people living in it, most of them off duty at the time. The maid was at home and Alexis was in his room reading, during the evening hours. How could anyone prove otherwise?

"Merde."

"You can say that again, Inspector." Levain looked at Guillaume. "But he probably won't."

***

"As you can imagine, this one presents us with certain special challenges." Doctor Guillaume engaged them with a significant look. "I can safely confirm that he died from a large-calibre gunshot wound to the head. Death was instantaneous and he suffered little. Even so, I think his body took quite some time to die."

Gilles nodded at the distinction. There was nothing unforeseen or particularly enlightening in all of this. It had merely been made official. Gilles studied the man for a while, as if trying to get to know him.

"Gilles, we don't have a lot to hang our hats on here." It was a characteristic expression.

"Yes." Gilles foresaw worse challenges, not the least of which was being sure. "I believe Alain Duval, a brother, has been contacted. He was in Brittany. He is on the way. What strikes me, is why do it this way at all? Perhaps if unsure, maybe in the case of a very small pistol, say a twenty-five or so. Maybe the placing of the gun in the mouth makes sense then, but the big gun...he could just as easily put it up to his temple—surely this is the more common method."

Psychologically, it didn't make sense. A shot in the temple would be regarded as cleaner, and perhaps leaving less of a mess. People often committed suicide with firearms in a bathtub, or in a basement, or a garden shed for just that reason. They didn't want to leave a mess.

"Hmn. It takes all kinds to make a world, Gilles, but I see the point." Levain studied the rest of the cadaver. "I don't see a lot of moles, birthmarks, anything like that?"

Doctor Guillaume shook his head in discontent.

"No. I've taken a good set of prints. With luck, he has done some official service, hopefully in the military, or maybe at some time he's been booked for a crime. Other than that, we have the teeth, some of which are fragmented, some of which have had expensive dental work. Gold fillings, but that's the usual anyway. The fact that he even had them speaks volumes."

Guillaume believed in official documents. Eyewitnesses were unreliable. The fact that Duval had been found dead in his own home, with plenty of testimonial evidence that it was indeed him, meant little to a real professional.

Behind its dome of glass, the minute hand of the wall clock clicked ever forward in its inexorable fashion, reminding Maintenon that no one really ever knows just exactly how much time they have left. Death came so unexpectedly to people. You could never really count on reaching your natural age—too many accidents, too much disease, and not much love in the world when you got right down to it.

Gilles understood that one well enough. If it wasn't for that, there would be little need for police at all. The pain in his jaw was just a dull background ache at this moment in time, but it would come back with a vengeance all too soon. There was a world of pain out there.

"So far no one has mentioned any military service, but they have all known him for varying lengths of time...perhaps the brother, n'est pas?"

This was greeted by non-committal looks from Levain and Guillaume.

"I think the company made military equipment during the war." This was from Gilles. "He would have been exempt from service. But that's not to say that he didn't join up anyway, back in the heady days of the summer of 1914."

"Did you notice anything else? What about his overall physical condition?" Levain kept him on topic, as Gilles seemed preoccupied.

The doctor outlined how his subject was about thirty-eight years old, not overweight, how he had fairly firm muscle tone, and while there were no major 'sporting injuries' to report, he had led an active life, which resulted in a bony lump on his left shin that had been there for many years. He was tolerably well-built, but otherwise unremarkable. The man had smoked, lightly thought Guillaume, but definitely a yes. As for drink, again, not enough to scar the liver, but probably, yes. There was a broken vein up in the soft flesh near one eye, very small. His blood work, alcohol levels, nothing appeared out of the norms, and most importantly, he had found no signs of terminal illness, nor anything else to cause any real suffering. There were no recent bumps, bruises, abrasions, or anything like that. Interestingly, he had eaten a good dinner the night before his death. Men like that never went hungry. But a suicide with an appetite? It made for suspicion. Both men appreciated the doctor's use of plain language, as at this point medical terms just complicated the process. His official write-up would be a paradigm of clarity and use all the proper scientific terms.

Stomach contents reflected the menu provided by Madame Fontaine for the night before, just as Gilles had expected.

A full report would be forthcoming.

Levain had learned to trust that look of Maintenon's. When he appeared to be a million miles away, then somebody somewhere had better look out.

"I've been thinking about that make-up." In pure impulse, Gilles stared at Guillaume, and gave a quick and wild look at Levain. "This could all just be make-up. Window dressing. Think about it. We owe something, a little gratitude I might say, to our anonymous floater. Any firm identification of the deceased relies upon those closest to him. It's always up to them, right?"

Interesting.

"Then we need more on him. Dental records, medical history, surgeries, his childhood afflictions, everything." Doctor Guillaume shrugged in sympathy. "Find a record of his prints. That would settle it for me. Assuming they match, of course."

Gilles nodded at his thoughts.

"There are fingerprints in his house." Levain pointed out the obvious.

"Yes, but..." Gilles hesitated.

How should he put it?

"Where there's a will, there's a way. And we are going to need more manpower. For both of them, actually."

To fake a lot of fingerprints wouldn't be easy. You would have to lug your victim, dead or alive, all over the house, and he quickly discarded the idea.

Guillaume's approving eyes gleamed in the lurid glare as he stared into Levain's.

"That's why we keep him around, eh, Andre?"

Levain shrugged. His head sank deeper into his collar, that was about it.

"There's never a shortage of overtime in this department." Guillaume laughed and slapped his thigh with a sharp crack.

Gilles was lost in thought. It could be a suicide, or was it just a bunch of window dressing for a homicide? Duval was a rich and important man, who held many patents. That's what Rene had been trying to tell him without actually coming right out and saying it. He wasn't trying to push a point of view. Rene just wanted him to trust his instincts.

Chapter Five

What was real

What was real, was when you could forget, and those moments when you did forget, but there was always that moment when you remembered. There was always a lurch, a wrenching back from momentary pleasure into the pain of seeing her face again. Lately even her image was fading, which was cause for more heartache. There were times when he literally panicked, with his guts trembling and heart pounding and knowing that it was real, all real, and that life would never be the same again. He could not think her name without pain. It was his new reality.

There were times when the solitude was comforting, and there were times when it was unbearable. It's not that Andre didn't understand, he understood as well as any man could. But there were things that must be borne, and they must of necessity be borne alone. It was a common fate, and an individual cross for each person to bear in their own way. Sooner or later, they all had to do it.

The pair sat in a small, lower-level bistro that had the advantage of being quiet and out of the wind. The other customers, more intent on drinking than eating, ignored them. The blue haze in the air was close and warm, making strangers seem like intimate friends, names forgotten but faces remembered from some other time and place, far, far away and long, long time ago. They were all familiar types to someone who had walked a beat. Everyone had a role to play in life. That was the theory. The surprise was that he loved them so, and for no good reason. It hurt to think on it.

"Listen, Inspector, there's no good way to bring this up." Andre sipped at his beer. "But the boys and I got to thinking..."

"What's this?" Gilles knew he had been sort of absent in spirit lately, and had wondered with a sense of guilt once or twice if it was affecting his job performance.

Of course it had to.

This was something he once would have sworn would never happen, but of course things did happen. Guilt was his constant companion these days, and what was one more thing? It was just icing on the cake. His life was shit, and he had nothing but cake to eat anymore.

There was a brief rise in the volume of the background buzz in the room. A pair of fellows came in, voices raised and likely with pay-envelopes in their blue coveralls. They were greeted by some men at a big round table in the corner, who up until now had been more subdued.

Gilles belatedly recalled that it was Friday, and not a bad afternoon. He found himself studying the stubbled faces, the strong hands and forearms on some of them. They had the brick-red faces and necks of the typical Poilu. It was a word fraught with meaning to Gilles and the blood-tattered remnants of his generation. No one ever really talked about the affection felt by men for each other on the eve of battle, the night before inevitable destruction and the bliss of their oblivion. They talked about everything else but the war at times like that, in his experience.

Andre pulled a buff letter-sized envelope from his inner jacket pocket. He placed it flat on the table and shoved it across to Gilles.

"They've delegated me to go with you. I've been press-ganged into it, and you know I wouldn't lie to you." Andre leveled a grin and a look. "We took up a collection. I know a place, a really good place, where we can get a tomb-stone."

Gilles nodded glumly.

"Yes, yes, I know." He sighed deeply.

They would take a hand in it sooner or later, and this was better than simple badgering.

"It's been what, about four or five months? The ground has settled, and, spring is here, and honestly, Gilles, there's a bit of a waiting list. It's the practical thing. He has to make the monument, and then it gets put in the queue for delivery. You can expect some kind of delays. They try to stay out of the way of all the funerals, so he can only put them in on certain days. He does it in the mornings if he can. He does beautiful work, and I know. My father and mother are in the same cemetery, and he did the marker."

"Well, this certainly explains the liquid lunch, or puts it into its proper perspective." Gilles scowled mildly at his drink.

He looked up.

"Thank you very much, incidentally." Andre had twisted his arm, and didn't offer to buy lunch all that often.

Gilles had fallen for the trap. The soup was good, and the bread excellent. Soaked in the bowl, the bread made a surprisingly hearty meal. Of course his standards had fallen deplorably in terms of what made a meal these days. The lunch special meant a lot to men like Gilles. The place didn't seem to matter very much. It could be anywhere. It wasn't exactly bliss, nor was there a sense of fulfillment. But he felt half-human, and that was really something lately.

"Hah! That's the spirit, Inspector. That's the spirit. Anyways, you'll like him. He's married to one of my cousins, and he'll take care of everything. All you have to do is pick out a stone and give him the essential details."

"That's very thoughtful, Andre. Thank you." A terribly dark mood settled over Gilles, but then he shrugged it off as best he could and reached for the pill bottle.

Gilles sloshed a couple down and slugged back the last third of a cold dark lager. Levain watched the performance wordlessly, not judging him.

"Another drink, sirs?" The waiter hovered at Levain's side.

"Yes, and quickly." Levain regretted putting Gilles through any more grief, but his wife had been gone for a while now, and quite frankly his old friend would be a lot healthier and probably a lot happier if he took care of one or two simple little things.

He needed to confront some issues, rather than beat himself down. The procrastination he'd been displaying lately was out of Maintenon's character, and it showed the boss's state of mind or rather emotions.

He'd heard the couple's bedroom hadn't even been gone through and cleaned out yet—the boss went home at the end of the day, and crawled into a bed that would be a constant reminder that she was gone. At this point, even her smell might still linger. It probably did. The old man smell would come sooner rather than later. Loneliness was almost a kind of an illness, in that it couldn't go on for too long without proper treatment. If Gilles didn't get some help, from somebody, almost anybody, serious consequences would ensue. Levain was sure of it. Among other things, Gilles needed to redecorate, and a couple of new shirts wouldn't exactly hurt his chances of advancement. The poor fellow was looking distinctly seedy as of late.

***

They were in a straggling neighbourhood of trades establishments behind a major thoroughfare. Gilles realized he was completely lost, not just in symbolic fashion but for real. He hadn't been paying too much attention. He had other thoughts, most of them not good.

The taxi sputtered off up the road, trailing dust from the wheels and throwing up a cloud that hung in the air, yellowing the sunshine and desiccating the nostrils. Maintenon and Levain walked up the gravel drive towards a pair of shirtless workmen who were sweating and grunting as they heaved on the chains of an I-beam lifting device, trying to steady a slab of black granite as it swung back and forth. Their contraption was sturdy if obviously home-made. The stone looked to be several hundred kilos in mass. Clearly there was some hazard, some difficulty involved. It was all so prosaic.

"Hey, Charles." Levain stopped, and they waited for a moment to let them finish the operation.

"Hey, Andre."

This involved setting the stone down on a ramp, and pushing it up on wooden rollers all of fifty millimetres thick and half a metre long, up into the back of a battered Citroen C4. It had the rear seat removed for this purpose. Gilles saw buckets lined up beside the car, all ready to go, with smaller tools in them, and some shovels, long steel pinch bars, and more rollers. There was a pile of sand and gravel in a corner of the yard, and the shop was at the back, set well behind the house. There was a painted wooden sign over the large door that was visible from the street in daylight hours, but otherwise unlit. He saw a black dog on the back porch and one floodlight set high on a post in the farthest back corner.

After a bored look, the dog put his head down and blinked at them with a look of resignation.

The smell of cooking came from the vicinity of the back door. Gilles grinned unexpectedly, and shoved his hands into his pockets. There were birds singing from a shade tree that grew in the next door neighbour's yard. Birds were not his strong suit, but they had a certain pugnacious cheerfulness.

"Merde!" It wouldn't do to get a hand under the slab at the wrong time, but no damage done and the fellow chuckled again just as quickly.

The language was colourful but succinct, and as his apprentice set to lifting the stone with a bar and putting wooden wedges and props under it for security, the sturdy proprietor of the place dusted off his hands and shook first with Levain and then Gilles.

"And, what can I do for you, sir?"

Gilles eyes traveled up and down the lines of stones displayed as they would be set, in that they all sat on a base, although they had no names on them yet. One or two in the front row did have names, and he realized they were all finished and awaiting delivery. His eyes took in the stone laying flat in the back of the Citroen. It had a name on it, an elderly lady going by the dates. She had been predeceased by a husband and an infant. Her child had died. She knew what tragedy was, he thought. She understood loss.

"I want one like that."

"It's for his wife." Levain beckoned Gilles to look at some of the others. "Seriously, Gilles, you might want to look at more than one stone. Come on."

Maintenon reluctantly followed him along the line of memorials, big, small, simple and ornate. None of them had an actual price marked on them, but that wasn't any real consideration. He just wanted to get it over with.

"No. I think the first one—and make sure he puts my name on there too, and my birthday. Then when the time comes, it's a simple matter to chisel in the date of my decease."

"Sure, boss. But please, come on in and talk to the man." Levain turned and led the way, relieved to hear Maintenon's footsteps crunching gravel behind. "I don't think he uses a chisel. It's a sand-blaster now. You won't believe this, but he uses one cylinder of the car as a compressor—"

The boss had been a little funny lately, but no one else could really do this for him. He had to take charge himself.

Gilles found the air inside the workshop cool, a little damp and smelling oddly of something he couldn't quite place. He counted out the bills as the man pulled out a book and took a pen out of the pocket from a shirt hanging on a peg.

Gilles gave her name, and the fellow gave him a quick look.

"He'll pay the balance after inspecting the memorial in place." Levain seemed to know a little bit about it.

"Maintenon?"

"Er, yes." Levain stepped in.

"This is the fellow I told you about, Charles." Charles nodded.

"Oh, yes." He went blank for a moment, but then he seemed to recall the incident. "And you want the black one? With a black base?"

"Yes, and he wants you to deliver it." Levain seemed to be in charge now, and Gilles let him.

The man named a figure, and Levain shrugged, looking at Gilles. Gilles agreed, and the gentleman started putting figures together in a column on paper. It was a fairly simple sales contract.

Levain told him the name of the cemetery, and that affected the price somehow as well. There were certain fees involved, peculiar to the different establishments around the city. Gilles thought he had paid all of them already, but apparently that wasn't so. This was different from a funeral, the fellow explained, and some folks went years without a monument while the survivors saved their pennies.

"For you, sir, I'll let you have the base at half price." Levain gave an encouraging nod.

"Thank you." Gilles accepted it at face value.

It was only later, jammed side by side on the Metro when Levain explained that Charles' wife's cousin had been strangled by her no-good boyfriend, and that Maintenon was responsible for his apprehension and subsequent execution by guillotine. People often congratulated him upon the conviction of a killer. He never knew what to think or to say under those circumstances. There really was nothing valid to say—it sounded like moral condemnation, which he preferred not to do. Most perpetrators were as pathetic as they were dangerous. It was something that happened in the heat of the moment, which destroyed lives and changed people forever.

"Who says justice is only for the rich, eh, Inspector?"

Gilles grinned a little lopsidedly. He really was feeling better about things, and the ache in his jaw was finally fading.

"We have an interesting errand for Monday." Gilles' voice was curiously flat, expressionless.

"Which is?" Levain's eyebrows rose at the answer.

"We're going to see a hypnotist."

Levain thought he was joking.

"At your command, good sir."

"I'm serious, Andre. Anyway, it's better than a dentist."

So he really was serious then.

***

Locking the street door, for they lived above a small dress shop on a quieter side street not far from work, Andre took his bicycle and locked it up in the back room. He hung up his overcoat and put his plain old hat on a peg by the back door. The black rubber slip-ons were a struggle as usual, and as usual, the hard leather shoes underneath stank of moisture and old socks. It went with the job.

Andre wearily climbed two flights up from the street, as the sounds of the heavy evening traffic and the clanging of trams faded. It was hot at the head of the stairs, the air permeated with an enticing aroma. There was a roast in the oven and boiled cabbage on the stove-top. It was a moist, buttery smell that brought an instant arousal to his famished stomach. It felt so good to be home. The door had squeaked on its hinges from the day they moved in. It still did, and he just couldn't seem to get around to oiling them.

"Daddy, daddy, daddy!" Maelys came running from the other end of the hall as he entered.

What a day.

"Nichol. Come and pry your daughter off me." He chuckled as she came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on an apron stained with flour and red juices, hopefully from some kind of pie.

It was a joke just between the two of them.

"That, my fine fellow, is not my daughter. She is obviously yours." She smiled and pulled Maelys off her father. "Let him get his jacket off first, and then you can have him all to yourself."

They had a quick kiss for each other, and then he stripped off the jacket and ran his hand through his hair, much of which seemed to end up in his hairbrush lately, a little more of it going with every morning that came along. He bent and picked up his daughter, fickle as all kids were, and she struggled and wriggled in some spontaneous desire to run off again.

He gave her a quick kiss and let her down. It was for the best anyway, as he was almost dead on his feet.

"Vache sacrée." Andre's head swam and he looked for the antidote. "Holy, cow."

It was right there, an old and familiar friend.

"Do you want me to draw you a bath?" She called from the kitchen as he slumped into his sagging brown armchair.

Andre had only been home a few hours after his night shift, then off to find Maintenon again.

"Naw. I'm having a drink." Andre Levain was home, he had two whole days off and it was the weekend.

This event was kind of a rarity in police work.

"We can have a bath later."

Her giggle acknowledged the signal. They would have a nice, quiet weekend together.

She would bring him a glass of wine when she got a minute. It was all he needed, really. The pair of them would be in bed by ten o'clock, and according to her usual testimony, he would be snoring five minutes later. But he had a funny feeling they might be in for a little treat tonight, and he was quite looking forward to it. They were still young enough and their marriage still fresh enough, that sex had not become a weapon or a bone of contention. For that he was grateful. Maelys was a sound sleeper, which seemed to help. At four years of age, Maelys was still totally innocent of guile, although lately she was learning to manipulate her parents to some extent. For the most part, she was completely absorbed in her dollies and her tea-set. Having a daughter was pretty much the only thing in the world that could have made him read up on the subject of children and child-rearing. At first it had been God-awful, but Andre was a quick convert to the joys of being a father.

He yawned in a kind of surprise, discovering a smile to go with it which made his fact twist, stiff and awkward in its involuntary contractions.

"Aw." It had been a long time since he had enjoyed a good Saturday morning lie-in.

He only hoped nothing came along to spoil it. Reaching for the paper, he put his feet up. Fatigue flushed over him in a wave that when it ebbed, drained much of the day's stress and worry from his tense frame. The room was warm, although windows opened a few centimetres to let in some air promised a cool breeze later. Andre absently reached for his pipe, but laid it aside again as he was too tired to mess with it. It was like he just didn't care, besides, he must have had fifty cigarettes in the last twenty-four hours. It was a special kind of taste in his mouth.

That wouldn't all come off in the shower. He longed for his toothbrush, such a simple little thing. People all said the same things. In the long hours of the night shift, they longed for their beds, their armchairs, and their toothbrushes. They longed for a drink, or even just a hot meal and a friendly face. They longed for their wives, their kids and their homes.

He looked at the bottles on the sideboard. It was just ten feet away. Inertia defeated him. Maybe he didn't need it after all. The smell of cabbage was making him ravenous, and it would be a nice change from their more usual staple diet of anything and everything that went with carrots. These days, it was like everything seemed to go with carrots. There was also the promise of pie in the air, baked this afternoon most likely.

There was something about pie that made everything else all right.

Chapter Six

His life had changed.

In the early days, he never would have brought a valise bulging with work home with him. Back then, his life was compartmentalized. His life had changed, to the extent that he dreaded coming home. Weekends were the worst. All around were objective reminders of his past bliss and present suffering. He lived to work, and he worked to keep on living. It was his escape and his only acknowledged reality. Nothing else existed for him.

There was a book in the parlour. It bulged with the names, addresses and phone numbers of hundreds of people, their old friends, newer friends, aunts, uncles, cousins and acquaintances. There were tradesmen, doctors, and priests. Every one of his wife's relations was in there. It wasn't that Gilles didn't like many of them, although that could be said of some more than others. But they were their friends—not so much his friends. They were the sort of friends that couples had, and not so much the kind scruffy old bachelors had. This was especially true for those with a miserable outlook and nothing but sentimental and often poignant memories to share in a world where life moved on at a frenetic pace.

Seated at his desk in the study, patiently built-in as he recalled, in the spare bedroom that had never been needed for a child, he pulled out the brown envelope with a number of snap-shots, some studio portraits, and other, more candid shots of Theodore Duval. They were provided under some protest by Madame Fontaine, and Gilles had been pressed to sign a receipt for them. Out of sensitivity, he obliged the old girl, but even so. Her cooperation might be priceless, one never knew.

Gilles found some pictures more helpful than others. For one thing some were small, faded, low-key photos that had either been left in sunlight or not developed properly to begin with. He was much younger in the faded ones. That must be it. He was younger and not quite so well-off. He wasn't nearly so sleek-looking.

Gilles wondered if Duval had developed them himself. The young Theo Duval must have been interesting. He wondered what drove people sometimes. A man of real potential, but how often was that actually realized? Life often intervened, and not always for the best. Sometimes death intervened as it had for Duval. So few men ever actually achieved their true potential. Gilles understood it to some extent, having once turned down promotion himself to stay in the homicide bureau. To Duval, it must have seemed the perfect life so far. Either he hated himself for some reason, or someone else had hated him enough to kill him.

Theodore was a tall, athletic, good-looking man with not just money, but also a kind of cachet. He was the sort of man who dashed off to St. Moritz in a sports-car on sheer impulse, often with a bimbo of one sort or another along for the ride. There were a few pictures of him on skis. Again, this was a much younger man, smiling into the lens. They would have champagne in a bucket between the seats. Taking his magnifying glass, he peered into the life of Theo Duval, trying to get a feel for the fellow. It was like he had everything, but of course sometimes that wasn't enough. There was always the possibility of a mental affliction, but somebody would have mentioned it. At one time, Gilles might have found a shred of jealousy for the likes of Duval, for just as any young man, he had railed against injustice more than once. He thought of it as a kind of injustice of abilities, which sort of put it into its proper ludicrous perspective. No two people can have the same life. That much was obvious. A poor man lived a long life of misery, and Duval's reward for his talent and diligence was to be murdered, or to go mad and kill himself. He was in the prime of life. Such was Fate, and of course it made no real sense.

Such a senseless crime.

"Monsieur Maintenon?"

Gilles was so startled he made some kind of exclamation, almost flinging the glass in a spasm of the arm. The lamp on the side table tottered dangerously, and she stepped forward and steadied it.

"Oh, I am so sorry." She put her hands up to her face in a look of sheer horror. "Please forgive me, Monsieur."

"Yes, yes. I'm fine, I was just lost in thought, er, Madame Lefevre. Please don't worry about it."

He had recovered, but she was still agitated. Gilles really should try to get her name right in his head.

"Monsieur, I wasn't expecting you home quite so early, if at all. Pressures of work and of course I understand, but there are some leftovers, and I was wondering if I might heat something up for you?" The woman was practically wringing her hands in hopes of being of service.

She must be going mad around here. It came to him like that. There must have been a little more life in her previous employment. As he recalled, they were a family of seven who had moved all the way across town or something. Children often meant so much to the domestic help. Sometimes that love made up for a lot.

At the time, she seemed quite happy for the position, and he was grateful enough to settle the household chores on her narrow but no doubt capable shoulders. The place seemed well looked-after, now that he took a moment to think it through.

"Oh, yes. Please. That's a very good idea." Gilles stomach rumbled and there was a veritable squirt of juices in his mouth. "I am so sorry. I know I should give you a little more notice, but my schedule..."

It had little to do with his schedule, and much to do with the fact that he just didn't want to come home these days. He suspected that she knew as much, but pretended out of politeness to accept it at face value. This one, Madame Lefevre, had been with him for three or four months. His first hire lasted about three weeks, and then she stopped showing up for work. He had muddled through on his own for a while, subsisting on tinned pate, sardines, a lot of crackers and of course cheese and baguettes. He'd subsisted on Napoleon brandy, cigars, plus whatever was left in the cupboards, and that was the truth of it.

"It will just be a half an hour or so." Nodding, the lady sort of shuffled and backed out of the room and went to get him some dinner.

"Hmn." Gilles wondered if he should give her a raise or something, then went back to studying the pictures of Theo Duval.

If any one of them could be said to be his favourite, or perhaps more accurately the most different in mood and composition, the most revealing of the man, for it showed him in a different light, it was a candid society-page snapshot taken of Duval and a young lady, not Mademoiselle Verene, at a café or bistro. It would be interesting to know who the lady was.

Not a newspaper clipping, it was an original print. The blacks were still dark and he took it to be much more recent.

Something in the cold sophistication and yet intimate heads-together pose struck him that there was much about Theodore Duval that he didn't know, and that so far the picture drawn of the man and his life was all being provided by parties who might conceal or disguise some aspects of his character. In the case of a housekeeper, there would definitely be some things she never saw—like what happened in a small private club in the wee hours of the morning.

The same might be true of the girlfriend or fiance.

At this point in time he was equally torn between suicide and murder. Maybe he was looking at it the wrong way. Maybe there was no big crisis, no sudden bumps in the road of life for Theodore Duval. But, did that hold true for the people around him? If there really was no motive for the suicide, did the same hold true for homicide?

He made a note to find out more about Monsieur Duval's legal affairs, including his heirs, beneficiaries, and any bequests. He also wanted to know more, much more about the people around him.

There were one or two questions about the missing key. How long had it been missing? Was the time frame twenty years, or two months? That would make a big difference in his mind. It might not prove anything either way, but it would give them an excuse to ask more questions. If Duval locked himself in the studio for any reason, the theoretical killer would have had to gain entry one way or another. They might have noticed the spare and picked it up beforehand with just such an eventuality in mind. It was possible Duval had admitted them and then re-locked the door. In which case, how did they re-lock the door? It was possible they had brought their own key.

It was a pretty puzzle.

The way it looked right now, sooner or later there would be pressure to shit or get off the pot from higher authority. Time was a luxury they did not have. Placing a hand across the bottom half of the face, he studied the bone structure of the eyes and forehead. He looked at the way the hairline receded, yet there was the distinct widow's peak. The temples and side-burn areas looked very much like the man on the slab in the morgue. They had all agreed at the time, and he still thought so now. His height was right, his weight was right, and his eyes were the right shape and colour. There seemed little doubt that the man on the slab was indeed Duval.

That was the part that didn't make sense. Why would he do it? For that they had no answer, and some reasons to doubt it. Even without the housekeeper's insistence, it would have been a hard sell. Policemen were notoriously suspicious of anything that couldn't be rationally explained.

Why was his instinct screaming at him not to buy it? Also, men had gone to elaborate lengths to disappear before, for all sorts of practical and more romantic reasons, and he wasn't ruling anything out just yet. The real question there was motive.

Theodore Duval had every reason to live, no good reason to die, and even less reason to fake his own death and disappear for good.

***

"Well, Inspector. It's just as we surmised, but here is confirmation. Monsieur Duval never did military service, and no, he has never been picked up in a raid or booked on even the slightest charge." Levain looked sympathetic, but he got paid either way and would follow Gilles' lead.

"Argh. Hmn." Gilles stuck his hand up under his chin, going back to the reports from the scene. "Yes, but there's that damned book..."

Andre said nothing. It was just a book on hypnotism, and not even worth bothering about in the normal scheme of things.

"It gets worse. Guillaume says he had no mortal diseases, smoked lightly, and as far as he knows has never had any kind of major surgery. We're still waiting on the dental records, but from fragments and whole specimens recovered, Duval looked after his teeth. The body in the morgue admittedly had expensive dental care. My feeling is that there's not much in it, but we can hope for a break."

"Have we received any calls yet?"

Levain knew what he meant.

"No. But the boss knows we're waiting for Alain." He looked at his watch.

Alain Duval, finally located at his wife's parents' home, in a small farm village in Brittany, had readily agreed to return to Paris to identify the body as next of kin. Maintenon was all ready to pounce on the poor fellow, with a list of about forty questions to start with. No doubt more would occur to him, but with a little luck the brother would provide a different perspective on Duval's past, present, and what might have been his future. It was an interesting point. Had Duval been destined for something that someone else might have wanted to prevent? If so, no one had seen fit to mention it so far. Some men were award hounds, but Duval hadn't been up for any industrial or business awards so far. It was like he could care less. Some people took a real hand in soliciting nominations, he knew that from a previous investigation.

Validation for Duval would come from his work, and from his obvious financial success.

"Yes, I wonder what good he will do us." Gilles seemed morose, not his usual self, and Levain for one hoped he would get his confidence back sooner rather than later.

It was kind of hard to live with sometimes. He had to baby the Inspector along, some days, and Levain found it an annoyance at the worst of times. Gilles seemed to be taking a real interest in the case and that was good. Any change was for the better, at this point.

"All right, boss. The gun was his gun, and everyone says it was in the desk drawer. There was the safe, which is behind a picture in his bedroom. At one time, the gun was kept in the safe according to Alexis. Not much in there, a few of the usual odds and ends, such as the deed to the house, and enough cash to run the place for a month or two without actually going to the bank. Some un-cashed cheques, none more than a month old." Levain waited, but Gilles didn't have any questions. "Then at some point, he put it in the desk drawer. Maybe a couple of years ago, maybe longer."

"Giroux says there is no sign of anyone using pliers or other tools before he got there, no marks on the key, and all of that. The housekeeper said she asked about keys when she first took the job, what, eight or nine years ago. There was some discussion, or so she says. But they never got around to calling the locksmith or having it replaced."

"If someone locked the door from the outside, they didn't use Duval's key."

It was the obvious conclusion, and there were no major objections to that. The windows were all latched, and they had screens in them. The screens were in good condition.

Levain glanced at the file.

"Normally, at the end of the day, he locked up his studio and probably put the key-ring on top of his dresser in his bedroom. She says that as well."

The key ring would be detached from his trousers, as a man like Duval didn't wear the same pair of pants for days at a time. He probably changed them twice a day, with one pair for work and something a little more dressy for evening.

"Yes." Gilles was aware of all this. "More than anything, we need to stay away from the phone for a while, and hope for some inspiration."

"I hear you, Inspector." Levain would run a certain amount of interference for them, but he could only play so dumb for so long, or fail to carry out one too many instructions and they would both be in trouble.

"I know what you are thinking."

"What am I thinking?" Gilles' raised eyebrows showed that while it was not unwelcome, Levain had surprised him with this one.

They exchanged a disturbing glance. It was as if Gilles had just awoken.

"You're thinking, why don't we just say suicide, and let it drop? And you can't do it, can you, Inspector?"

Merde! But Levain was right. He just couldn't do it. He trusted his instincts far more than all of their statements, all of the evidence, and all that had been learned so far.

"Very well, then. Murder it is." Gilles reached for the phone.

"Is it just that simple, Inspector?" Levain was astonished.

Gilles ignored him.

He could forestall higher authority and make them sweat a little for a change.

"What are we doing, boss?"

"I'm going to ask Jean-Baptiste to see if we can get a search warrant on the Duval house and holdings."

"But we can't do that! What is he supposed to tell them? What grounds?"

"I want to make a big fuss over that missing key." Levain's jaw dropped even further upon hearing this.

"And the fact that the gun was once kept in the safe, and ended up in the desk?"

"Yes, we can throw that in as well."

Levain nodded thoughtfully. There were still possibilities. It would look like they were doing something.

"And now, get Henri or Joseph, or somebody, I don't care who, to bring the car around. We have an appointment."

As Gilles waited for Chiappe, Andre reached for his own phone.

Chapter Seven

The art and science of hypnotism

Hypnotism had been around since the early 1700s. They had looked it up before coming here. Now the author of The Art and Science of Hypnotism sat before them, expounding on his craft.

"Three forms of hypnotic somnambulism are distinguished clinically. These include classical somnambulism in patients with hysterical neurosis on a juvenile-unstable basis, sensual-lucid somnambulism in patients with hysterical neurosis on a primitive personality basis, and sensual-split somnambulism in patients with pseudo-neurotic schizophrenia with a hysteroid clinical picture. The differential diagnostic importance of such forms of somnambulism is stressed in all the literature."

Without any idea of what to expect, it was a letdown but also revealing that the office was decorated and furnished like any other professional's, whether doctor, lawyer, or some other type of consultant.

"And you say that hypnosis really doesn't involve mental illness, nor cause any lasting chemical or structural changes to the brain? It is a phenomena completely unrelated?" Gilles listened carefully, wondering if he was even competent to ask a proper question. "Well, I can see why you wrote the book on it."

"Essentially, that is correct." The Great Swami, an American whose real name, Edward Cole, was all over the passport and professional documents he had provided, was a showman but also a scientist in his own way.

He had to thoroughly understand the medium, which involved heavy audience participation in terms of individual but also group consciousness, and he had to understand his art, which Gilles took to be one of misdirection.

"The trance state is primarily a physiological state, which alters the state of consciousness, rather than a transcendental state, where I sort of impose my will upon yours. In purely psychological terms, most subjects actually do resist the trance, at least at first. It is not a magical spell, not in any sense of the word. The fact that popular ignorance often prefers this view is no concern of mine. It actually makes my job easier. The public performance is a show, after all. The subjects participate by choice, at some conscious level, for the practitioner has made them comfortable, relaxed, and they feel safe in letting go. They often believe the audience will keep them safe enough, at least onstage."

"So you're a real doctor, then?" Levain stumbled along as he tried to make notes, knowing he would never be able to reconstruct all of this later from the squiggles in his notebook.

"Oh, absolutely, I am a doctor, yes. But I am so much more than that." The Great Swami nodded complacently. "I am also an avatar of Shiva, but that is beside the point."

Gilles coughed politely, sure it was a joke. He was as stumped as Levain.

"Totally off the record, none of your subjects are plants?"

Cole grinned.

"Never, although that is a common misconception."

Gilles wondered whether to believe him or not.

"So you liked my book?" Gilles wondered at the insecurity of the vain, or was it just the writers.

"Yes, I couldn't put it down. I stayed up all Saturday night to read it."

The Great Swami beamed at the statement.

"I'd be happy to sign it for you."

"No, that's quite all right, besides, it may be evidence in a homicide. But you may have misunderstood my question."

"Not at all, Inspector, but there are no easy answers. The classical feeling, the belief among professionals, is that it is impossible to induce a person through a hypnotic trance, to do or perform some act of which they are fundamentally incapable, or which they have no real need to do. They must be predisposed to it, and even then I believe, and many experts believe, that to over-ride a person's natural sense of caution, or consequence if you will, the basic instinct for self-preservation at all costs, makes the task impossible. The organism would react where the whole was threatened."

"You mean it is impossible to over-rule the subconscious mind?" This was the meat Gilles was looking for.

"Something like that." The Swami, who looked like a perfectly ordinary person in the quiet comfort of his office, was trying to be helpful, but unfortunately they could only tell him so much. "There is perhaps one exception, which I deal with in chapter nineteen."

"Oh...oh, ah..." Gilles thought furiously. "Yes. Group consciousness. With a large enough sample you believe anything is possible?"

The sound of Andre's pencil overwhelmed the brief silence as The Great Swami gave him a look. They were serious.

"I believe that crowd psychology, and a kind of mass hypnotism, is likely more effective than attempting to suborn a single individual, considering the mass media and its reach and influence in modern society. Bear in mind the results would be general rather than pin-point."

Gilles wondered if the Great Swami had ever been consulted by the government, but he didn't think so or the man would have mentioned it. Also, he was unlikely to say anything that was too controversial, or likely to be contradicted by any other competent practitioner. That much was self-evident, in fact a common element with the lesser breed of expert witnesses.

"What about quitting tobacco?" Levain's shrugged at Gilles' inquiring glance. "Why not, Inspector? We might as well ask, now that we have him."

A feeble grin escaped Maintenon. He had been expecting a fast-talking charlatan, a real shyster, and the man was nothing like expected.

"I might be able to help you quit smoking. It's a long process, and it is by no means certain. Nicotine is one of the most addictive substances known to man. It's a hard habit to break, and that's just the truth. As far as convincing someone to commit a serious crime, let alone murder, in my opinion, it cannot be done. It would be harder, or at least take more time, than getting them to quit smoking."

"And how do you feel about your book being found at a crime scene?" Gilles was floundering.

"It sold hundreds of copies world-wide. I suppose I should be pleased, or something." He settled back in the deeply-padded leather chair and crossed his fingers on his belly. "I'm flattered, really."

There was an air of resignation in this statement. He must have had high hopes for it.

"Yes, I see your point. Well, thank you for your time." They rose for the obligatory round of hand-shaking and back-slapping.

Doctors were all the same in his opinion, although the fact that the Great Swami was a real doctor, with all kinds of degrees hung up on the wall, was of some anecdotal interest. The thing was, now he'd have to put a man on verifying the degrees were real. He probably made more money from all the quackery or perhaps the richer or more foolish people were more willing to pay good money for it. Judging by the house, he seemed to be doing all right, and had never heard of Theo Duval other than reading something about him in the paper.

His game seemed to consist of a lot of listening and a lot of talking, in about equal amounts. Maybe their jobs had more in common than he cared to admit.

***

"Oh, Lord, where did you get that?" Leblanc was nothing like Gilles had expected. "When you called, I was expecting a newspaper clipping. I thought you should be able to get some information from them..."

Leblanc was much more interested now, and his attitude changed to one much more amiable. He had a lean, hawkish face with intellect written all over the eyes and brow, and a firm but sensual mouth.

"Yes, I remember taking that. Twenty francs or something. I was hungry back then. The game was a simple one. I approached people, asked permission, and took their picture. I gave out a business card, and the people would contact me if they wanted a print."

He studied the photo of Duval and the young woman with more than professional interest.

Where he was expecting artistic flamboyance, Gilles found professional confidence, and if he was expecting turgid, incoherent theories, he wasn't going to get it. Leblanc was renowned for his social commentary, and he reputedly had an encyclopedic memory of his subjects over the years.

"That's Theo Duval and Elmira Dobbs. Ah, let me think. It was maybe October of twenty-two. I'm not sure if she's still around, or what."

"Where was it taken?"

"The White Hart, it's in Montmartre. I might have their card in my file." Leblanc pressed a button and his secretary appeared in the doorway. "Please have a look and see if there's anything in the files on the White Hart, a club in Montmartre."

She left on her errand and he looked at them with several obvious questions written all over him.

"It's owned by a fellow by the name of Marcel. He's all right to talk to, as long as you reassure him with a few coloured bits of paper." Leblanc rubbed his fingers together in a universal gesture. "If he thinks you're the vice cops, or after any of his regular customers, he'll clam right up."

"This photograph is different."

"All of my photographs are different."

"Yes, of course. But what is your philosophy of creativity, for surely that is what it is?"

"My pictures say exactly what I intend them to say. They are created, not captured. They are candid, not posed. What this implies is that I must take a lot of pictures, most of which never see the light of day. My pictures reveal what the eye cannot see. My camera looks deeper than you can ever know, for it sees inside, to the person who hides within. We all wear a mask in this society. You must have figured that out by now."

There was a silence as the gentleman assessed them. They sat there, impervious behind their professional masks, figuratively speaking, and he grinned engagingly.

"There is a new interest in social criticism in general, and in my work, a deeper examination of character. I'm not that interested in pretty pictures. I work in an intimate key pervaded by a subtle vein of decadence. The old ideas are no longer valid, and the current of escapism in modern life is strong. There is a mood of sensual restlessness and insecurity in the world today, and many doubts about established values. This is a good time to be an artist."

"I see." Gilles most assuredly did not see, however, it was refreshing to get some temperament from the man, otherwise he would not be the person he was, which was a very successful and well-regarded artist and entrepreneur. "Andre?"

"I have no more questions, Inspector." Andre spread his hands palms up in the universal gesture for helplessness, which was not surprising, given the last answer.

"When was the last time you saw either of them?"

"Ah, I might have seen them around at various clubs, although not together anymore. I don't think she lasted long, maybe a few weeks or so."

"So Monsieur Duval was a player?"

"That's one way of saying it." Leblanc thought for a moment. "Theo wasn't into trophies, or carving notches on his bed-post, if that's what you mean."

He thought some more.

"She, on the other hand, might have had an agenda. That would have turned him off quicker than anything."

"So he was looking for true love, then?" Levain could be uncommonly perceptive at times.

"Yes, I think so." Leblanc's look was appreciative. "That's sometimes a tough thing, for a rich and handsome man."

There was a light tap at the door. The secretary returned and offered Leblanc a file, from which he selected a card and then wrote the information down for them. He returned the card to the file and she took it away again. This whole exchange happened wordlessly.

"In short, gentlemen, my style has evolved over time. We live in an age that is so rich in innovations, a decisive era in the history of European civilization, that anything is possible, for a man like me, but even more so for a man like Theo Duval. Oh, yes, I knew him well enough. But he was a type of man...if you will forgive the expression, he was a psychopath. Most modern psychopaths are unsuccessful in life, because we no longer measure the justice of our desires by the strength of our arms or the length of our swords. But he had the sort of intellectual focus many lacked. He knew what he wanted, and he knew what he had to do to get there. For him, ultimately it was about more than just the money. It was about validation, a validation of who he was and who he wanted to be, although he was definitely obsessed by the work."

"There is no doubt he had a good brain."

Leblanc nodded at Levain's assertion.

"And you?" Gilles was still curious about Leblanc, who had insisted he had no other name, no prenom.

"For me it is about the art, and I suppose it's about living the life of an artist, if you accept that photography is an art. I was born in a very small town in the Cevennes. Look at me now. Money makes all other things possible, or I would ignore it entirely. It is also the measure of success."

The officers pondered that briefly, but there was no way to verify such a statement either way.

"If there's anything else..." He was leaving the door to further questions open for them, and showing them an exit at the same time.

"Yes, we'd better go." Gilles looked over at Levain, who shrugged expressively.

They rose to take their leave of the gentleman.

***

They sat waiting in the back room, which passed for Guillaume's office. Levain checked his watch.

"He should be along any minute now." Andre's voice was a harsh whisper. It echoed all up and down, around their heads, and it would be a dead giveaway if the man showed up at the wrong time.

He just wanted to get an impression of Alain Duval, and this was as good way as any. To identify next of kin was bad enough, but a brother with his face blown off would be extremely tough on almost any person. He had the idea that Alain was some moral weakling, but had no idea where the notion had come from or why it had taken root. He couldn't take Madame Fontaine's obvious dislike as fact. Her petit-bourgeois attitude was deeply-embedded, but hardly enlightened. The doctor muttered to himself as he worked on another cadaver, another case, another series of notes and observations. He at least, seemed happy with life this afternoon. There was a loud noise and Gilles visualized the door opening in the other room, the one from the corridor. There were scrapes and light foot steps. The sounds faded away.

"May I help you?" Guillaume sounded like he had been surprised in a nap.

It wasn't exactly acting. He was so absorbed in his work. The doctor's muffled voice came to him, and another man spoke, sounding slightly breathless. It was the tension in the diaphragm that did it. Gilles had once been asked to identify a fellow officer, a single man, an orphan with no living relatives that could be located quickly. He was killed in the line of duty, and there was a reluctance to see the truth up close and at first hand. His partner had been overcome, and as his commanding officer, Gilles had little choice. It was tough duty.

Andre was already on his feet, and now Gilles rose carefully on the dimness. This was why he had taken a hard wooden seat instead of the creaky old swivel chair behind Guillaume's desk, and he made it to the door, standing slightly ajar, without any unwanted noises. Easing back, Andre let him have a look.

True to his word, Guillaume had the man on the far side of the tablet. The sheet was pulled back. There was a gasp, more like a wince, and then more silence. The man, a slender person but tall enough, looking to be about thirty years old, shook his head.

"There's not much left, is there?" Silence ruled the scene as the pair watched. "Oh, wow."

The fellow straightened up from the body of Theodore Duval.

"What do you want from me?" He seemed resigned, and he had been warned. "You need me to sign something, I guess."

He was seeing what he expected to see.

"Forgive the formalities, but is this the body of your brother, Theodore Duval, a resident of the Rue Duvivier? Take your time please. I know this is hard for you." Guillaume had his hand on the man's shoulder, and some emotions were visible in the heaving for breath and the sort of straightening up of Alain's head and shoulders.

"Well. I suppose it is. It must be." He looked wildly around the room for a moment, as if the walls, the ceiling, the stainless steel fixtures and glaring work lights could give him any real assurance.

Andre coughed right on cue, and the pair made their way into the room.

"Did your brother have any identifying marks? Are you aware of any birthmarks, injuries or tattoos, that sort of thing? Is this his ring?" Levain went by the usual routine.

Brothers often knew a lot about each other, but there was the difference in their ages.

"I don't know." Alain accepted the presence of the two officers with no remark as they came up and around on the other side of the table now. "Yes. That's his ring, or one very much like it."

"Was Theo the sort of person to commit suicide?" Gilles saw the look on Alain's face.

"No. Never." He seemed sure enough of that.

"Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to kill him?"

The fact that Alain Duval wasn't shocked at the question didn't mean much. He must have had some time to think on the way back from Brittany. His answer to this question didn't surprise Gilles either.

"Huh. On some level, oh, probably hundreds or even thousands. On the one you mean, not really. He really was a good person. All, or I should say most, of his former lovers speak well of Theo. They parted with regret, rather than outright hatred."

"On some level?" Gilles wanted more, something specific.

"His competitors." Alain had a dry tone that showed he had recovered well from his initial shock. "Are you saying this isn't my brother?"

"No, young man. I'm saying that I would like to know for certain. Which is just what you can't do for us, apparently." Gilles wasn't trying to sound mean or angry. "It's all right, it's just a fact of life for us."

It wasn't just the physical damage to the tissues, there was also a lot of bruising. Other tissues were swollen and distorted.

"I guess it could be him." Alain shrugged in a kind of exhaustion. "It could hardly be anyone else."

He'd been though an emotional roller-coaster ride. It was the anticipation, the forewarning of what lay ahead. The long journey must have been a sleepless one, judging by the eyes.

"Yes, well, look, it probably is him." Levain stated the obvious. "He was in his house, in his studio, in his own suit, wearing his own watch, his shoes, and his own underwear. Sorry, but we're all tired."

"I wish I could be of more help." Alain sighed in futility. "We weren't exactly close, these last few years, but of course we never know how much time we have left."

Gilles couldn't have put it any better himself.

"When was the last time you saw your brother?" Levain was poised with his pencil.

"It would have to be a month, or maybe a month and a half ago."

"I suppose you'll be going to the house." Gilles wasn't making a statement, and yet neither was it a question.

"Yes, but first I'll need to do something about my baggage. I came straight here from the Gare."

"Ah, yes. We also have another appointment, and a few other dockets to deal with this week." Gilles extended a hand to Alain. "Our condolences on your loss, and if there is anything we can do, please let us know."

To no one's surprise, tears welled up in Alain's eyes, and he turned as if drawn by magnetic force to what remained of the person on the slab.

"It's probably him." The sobs were torn from Alain, the words almost indecipherable. "Poor Theodore! He missed the point, in so many ways, and now he's gone."

"The point?" Levain looked into Gilles' eyes, knowing it was the details of personality revealed that he sought.

"The point of life, Inspector. Theo...Theo had no idea of what life was actually about." Alain broke up into an inconsolable grief, one perhaps explained by the worship of a younger for an older brother, no longer embittered by the long years of some personal misunderstanding.

"We will be in touch, Monsieur Duval." With a nod at Andre, Maintenon turned and headed for the door.

His last sight of Alain was of the man bending over Guillaume's desk, blinking through tears as he signed the paper.

Chapter Eight

"Ta da!"

"Ta da!" Giroux stared triumphantly from the doorway. Andre and Gilles looked up from the endless written reports, wondering what had kept him.

"The locked room puzzle, so beloved of fiction and readers of the mystery genre everywhere, is actually a bit of a myth." He strutted into the room now, snapping the door closed quietly and carefully as was his habit. "The killer who uses it as part of a well-laid plan is fooling himself. That's not to draw any conclusions about your current case. I am just stating a simple fact."

Giroux grinned fiendishly and laughed like a ghoul feasting on human flesh, which he was in some ways.

"The problem with using another key to lock the door behind you after a successful murder is that there really isn't room inside the lock mechanism. The butt end, which is the rounded-off portion of the key, sticks in too far. The keys hit each other and it's simply impossible, hence the reliance on needle-nose pliers and the like. Once the lock is turned, the first key, the inner key, is locked in position. It has to be turned an equal distance in the opposite direction, and then returned to the vertical position in order to withdraw it. It cannot go too far in because of the metallic safety ring which all such keys should have. Otherwise it could go right through and stick out the other side. This one has some rings which are purely decorative, similar to the one at the Duval house. The tongue, to use a highly-technical word, is what actually engages the cam and moves the bolt. In our case, the key was in his pocket, an even simpler variation on the theme."

The key, along with others, was on a ring in Duval's pocket, but Gilles let him have his moment. The weakness of skeleton keys was the small number of pins in the actual lockset. It was the possibility of another key that was of interest. Was Giroux nothing more than a hobbyist? He bit back a bitter laugh.

"All right." Gilles pondered the significance, but there was more.

"Now, the other key, the one that has disappeared. If the end was sawed off, it would still be too long. The tongue would still be engaged with the cam. If it was still in the lock."

"Right!" Andre nodded as if this was some brilliant revelation.

"Well, you've got our attention. Go on." Gilles threw down his pen and tidied up the papers in front of him.

He had them lined up in rows and piles depending on whether he had read them, had questions about them, or if they still remained to be read. Gilles rubbed tired eyes as Giroux continued his performance.

"Sit down if you can bring yourself to do it." Levain had only so much patience for the little peccadilloes of his brother officers.

The technician had other ideas.

Giroux went back to the office door and gave a series of taps. The door swung open, and an assistant, complete with a white lab smock and an upper pocket with a row of pens and pencils denoting that this was indeed another like-minded individual, entered the room pushing a trolley on which was mounted a framework and a two-thirds scale model of a door. The lock was remarkably similar to the one at the Duval residence. His name-tag was unreadable at even this short distance, but they all seemed to wear one.

"Ha! Now I've seen everything." Levain shook his head in admiration. "I always thought you were insane, but now I know for sure."

"All right, Albert. What do you have for us?" Gilles was interested in anything up to and including the most far-fetched fantasy by now.

"Take a look at this." Giroux handed each of them a small slender object.

There was almost instant comprehension on the part of Gilles, who looked over at Andre, studying the short length of rubber tubing in his hand with a quizzical look. His face came up and the look on his face was priceless as his jaw dropped open and his head spun to Gilles.

"No!"

Gilles shrugged.

"That's just too easy!"

"Maybe." Gilles was interested in spite of himself.

It certainly fell within the scope of professional interest, if little more.

"I want to go back to the house. I want to check once more, to see if the lock has been oiled recently, or even if this trick works on that door. What do you think, Inspector?" Giroux had a look of triumph on his face.

"Well, if we try for a search warrant, we'll need something to put on the application." Gilles bit his lip. "It's something, anyway."

"No." Andre didn't believe it.

"Give it a try." Giroux beckoned and Andre reluctantly pulled himself up out of his seat.

"All right. First give the end a lick, but don't put moisture inside, only a little on the outside of the tube."

Andre complied with the instructions as Giroux made sure their test door was latched and the deadbolt was indeed set.

"The rubber is tight in the hole." Andre pushed the tube in from the outside, with a look of intense concentration on his face.

"Huh. I can feel the end of the key..." He gave another little grunt. "Hmn. It's on the end! Unbelievable."

With a quick and decisive gesture, he gave a little twist and the sound of the deadbolt being withdrawn was clearly audible from a few feet away where Gilles sat observing.

"Nice!" Levain was indeed impressed.

"Interesting." The Inspector was still unmoved. "But can you close it? That's the real thing here."

An even greater problem was how to get the key back into Duval's pocket. Gilles let him have his fun anyway.

"What's important is that in a lock of this age, there is sufficient slop for the rubber tube. Once I saw that go on, I knew we had it beat." Giroux had been looking ahead, and still would be looking ahead—to an eventual trial date.

Andre worked his wrist in the opposite direction.

"I don't know. I don't think it will go."

Giroux looked cross.

"Merde. It worked in the lab. Isn't that the way."

"You got it to lock in the lab? Merde is right!" Gilles was more animated now. "You try it, Albert."

Giroux took over from Andre but he couldn't get it either now, in spite of jiggling and wiggling the door back and forth so the bolt aligned properly with the hole in the striker. Doors sagged on their hinges over time. Gilles knew that much. He had a couple of sticky doors at home, and one even had a bad lock. Where the key for it might be, was anyone's guess. That was the usual way with interior doors, they were left unlocked for years at a time.

Giroux said a bad word.

"What's happening is the tube is slipping." He was undaunted, and reaching into a side pocket on his smock, he pulled out another devious device. "Take a look at this baby."

Andre gave it a quick look and handed it over to Gilles.

"I made that in about five minutes." Giroux was a proud craftsman.

"Very nice." It was a short piece of shiny chrome tubing, with very thin walls. One end was cut like the nib of a fountain pen.

"It's just a piece of tube."

The other end had a small hole drilled in it crosswise, and the nib end had two slots machined into it, slots of different widths and lengths.

"Explain."

"Why, certainly, sir." Giroux pulled something else out of his pocket. "This is our T-handle."

He stuck it through the hole in one end of his makeshift key, and inserted it into the lock from the outside. The sound of the bolt being driven home and then retracted, back and forth, back and forth several times was enough to convince Gilles and Levain that it was at least effectively possible. But this device was only useful if there was a key on the other side of the lock.

"What about your pictures, and your examination of the actual mechanism?"

"I would have to take that lock apart and examine it further before making any sort of determination. My photos were clear enough, but they really don't show a whole lot of scratches from foreign objects such as bent needle-nose pliers. I would need microscopic analysis. But interestingly, I don't see any marks from any kind of tool. Which is the real issue here."

So Giroux wasn't a total fool then. He just liked a spectacle.

"And the rubber tube?"

"I think maybe we got the end, inside the tube, a little too wet. But it is so much less likely to have left marks. As for losing a bit of material inside the lock, I would have to look again. If there's anything there, we can analyze the sample."

"I see." Gilles chewed on that silently for a moment. "Albert, in your carefully studied opinion, how was that door locked?"

"Most probably, with a proper key. One that fit."

"All right. Thank you, Albert, and I would appreciate it if we all kept this under our hats for a while."

Giroux's eyes gleamed at them as he bobbed his head, shuffled his feet, and then hastily ushered his amiable side-kick out of the room, leaving behind two very thoughtful homicide detectives. His assistant grinned knowingly at them on the way out.

"Well, at least we have something to put on that warrant now." Levain seemed amused more than anything.

"Yes, but that other key has been disposed of in some way. I'm almost sure of it. One reason for the experts, Andre. No man can know everything, but we needed to be sure."

Giroux, more than anything, had demonstrated the weaknesses in his thinking.

Levain's next comment, which dealt with motive, was apparently lost on deaf ears, but he didn't mind. When the boss got that look on his face, it was usually bad news for some devious bastard somewhere. Every so often Levain had this terrible dream about the guillotine, when he was the one on the receiving end of it. The feeling of having your neck locked in the block was indescribable, the sound, the knowledge, was enough to make you sit up in bed and scream your damn fool head off.

Why him, and not some devious murderer? That was just his bad luck.

***

The place had a strange kind of charm, and Andre wondered what it might be like late on a Saturday night. Or better yet a Sunday morning, in the wee hours just before dawn. He wondered at the entertainment in such a small establishment. The end of the place was black, with another section painted a dried-up blood-red colour and then the front of the place had lighter paint on the walls. It might have originally been white, but the smoke of a million cigarettes had stained it a cream yellow colour. Posters lined the wall behind the patrons, and they could only see the art in the mirror over the bar, which, as was the usual in these places, was lined with easily a thousand different bottles and decanters, in about an equal number of sizes, shapes and colours. Underneath the bar was a line of shiny stainless-steel lockers which he assumed were jam-packed with rows of icy-cold bottles of lager, ale, Pilsner, and whatever else a thirsty refugee from the outside world might desire.

A faint blue haze of tobacco and the lingering smell of fried onions reminded Andre of a thousand night shifts, and thousands of indifferently prepared meals that nevertheless were extremely welcome at the time. It was a refuge, in every sense of the word, with a row of newspaper boxes outside the door and a coin-operated vending machine with a dozen popular brands of cigarettes inside the front lobby. Up above they had a few rooms. One or two of the present patrons looked like they might live there. They had the look of men settling in for a day of reading the newspapers, some sporting gossip, and maybe even one or two small wagers.

There were times when he thought of retirement, or even just quitting, and having a place like this of his own. It was a nice enough daydream, but he didn't take it too seriously. What looked like an oasis of cool, quiet sanity in daytime might be tacky, noisy and rushed during the evening hours. You worked for your money in this world. Owning such a place would be long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of stark terror, he realized.

Gilles conferred in hushed tones with the Commissioner from a coin-operated telephone kiosk at the back end of one of the long, narrow, glass-fronted storefront bars this quarter was famous for. The front half of the room was a low, lunch-bar type grille with nothing but short round stools, and the back half, empty now, had a dozen tables and a dance floor the size of a handkerchief. There was a stage the size of a billiard table, and a stand with a microphone. There was a black curtain at the back of the stage, and near that, a hall marked as a fire exit. There would be bathrooms back there, storerooms and the like. Andre sat with his powerful arms crossed, two tables from the end, facing the street entrance almost forty metres away. A cooling breeze gushed past him on its way out the open back door, where heat and brightness ruled, and he identified the sound of wind rushing through tree branches. The half dozen customers were at the end by the front door, either alone or in a clump of two or three individuals. A couple of young males were trying to appear unconcerned, but intelligence had it that certain goods and services might be available here whenever someone had time to look into it.

As he recalled from the big Monday multi-departmental briefing sessions that Maintenon and he were obliged to attend from time to time, no one had done anything about it so far. Those two knew there were cops in the room, and yet he had the impression of coolness, most likely small-timers with nothing really big up their sleeves. Andre was perfectly comfortable. The beer was cold, and with a little fast talking Gilles might rustle up a search warrant for them after all. If he remembered, he would write up a quick memo for intelligence circulation. Nothing much going on here that you couldn't find in a hundred other clubs within a kilometre's radius. How he knew that was another mystery. It stood to reason, though.

The rumble of Maintenon's voice came in short snatches.

"Yes, Commissioner." Levain grinned faintly.

He could easily imagine the squawk the other was making.

"With our new discovery thanks to Giroux, and the missing key, plus the book on hypnotism...Alain took off for Brittany two, sorry, three days before the incident. Then there's...ah, what?"

Levain made out some thin, scratchy sounds from the booth as Gilles held the thing away from his ear for a half a moment. Chiappe wasn't easily fooled, he knew that much.

"Yes, yes, but there is something else." Gilles listened intently. "Listen. The chair Duval was in was not facing the desk. It was turned to one side. It was facing the door. Surely there must be someone who will sign it. Giroux wants to look at all the windows, there's a whole row of them. The ledges are fairly wide, there are a couple of balconies on that floor, and on the corners of the building we have the usual drain-pipes..."

Maintenon listened some more. Levain didn't recall Giroux saying anything about windows. He chuckled quietly to himself. The boss knew the tricks of the trade, all right.

"Yes, sir." He hung up the phone abruptly.

"Well?" Levain waited.

"He says he will try." Gilles inclined his head in polite inquiry. "What, did you drink mine too?"

Andre allowed sharp tangy gas to escape through throat and nostrils. With a dainty flourish, he carefully wiped foam from his lush brown mustache.

"Yes, but that's okay, Inspector. I promise to make it up to you." And with that, he gave an imperative wave at the barman, mindlessly occupied in the never-ending task of wiping the thoroughly-etched bar glasses, milky and almost opaque as they were, and as futile as that might be over the course of his lifetime.

The man looked up with a semblance of interest on his pinched and sallow but otherwise unremarkable features.

"Yes, sirs! Coming right up."

"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?"

"So you were living with your wife." Maintenon's pen hovered over his notebook page. "Did he cut you off?"

"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 people."

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.

"Your patient is dead." Gilles was having another one of those days when life didn't seem worth living.

Having made the appointment, and having explained over the phone what it was about, the doctor's reaction was a little bit unexpected.

The man shrugged expressively.

"I would like to reassure you that there is no question of any wrongdoing on your part, and no one is suggesting that there was anything you could have done to avert this tragedy."

He shrugged again, not meeting their eyes, but straying everywhere, from the documents on his desk to the door, the window, and the floor. As might be expected, the room was expensively furnished, with scale models of human bones, including a section of spinal column on the desktop and several colourful posters of the human anatomy on the walls.

"We were wondering if there was some reason for despondency. Was he suffering from some mortal disease? Did he have something that might have brought long suffering, or a lingering and painful end?"

"Was he on dope? They autopsy says no, but they have been fooled before." Levain was trying to help, but to no avail.

The doctor would take some convincing.

"If I thought it would do any good, I would just get a court order." Gilles was bluffing, but the doctor didn't know that. "I would of course prefer cooperation, as it is usually more trustworthy."

The doctor's face reddened, and he glared at the walls, still not making eye contact.

"Your patient was rich, and successful, and very talented. He had a nice life. Why would he throw it all away on a whim? I understand there is a stigma attached to mental illness. Nice people don't like to talk about it. But it happens in all the best families, in fact in my opinion it can happen in any family. You could even say it does happen in every family. I'm not suggesting that this was the case with Theodore Duval. If there is anything that you can do to help us, it would be greatly appreciated."

Taking this as his cue, Levain spoke up in a completely different tone.

"Searches can be very disruptive."

"Pardon?" The doctor was shaken by the thought. "What do you mean?"

"Oh, you know. It's a normal business day, perhaps a day when the waiting room is chock full of the literati, the intelligentsia, you know—the movers and the shakers of our fine society. I'm referring to the bourgeoisie, Doctor." Levain had clearly been reading some leftist leaflets, while he was sitting on the toilet or something. "A posse of gendarmes show up, usher every damned one of them out the door, perhaps with some inconvenience or embarrassment to them, writing down all their names and addresses, and then proceed to tear the place apart looking for evidence of a homicide..."

"Andre!" Gilles was apparently livid, although he approved of the tactics.

"Well, Inspector, if he can't tell us anything about Monsieur Duval, then he should certainly be ethical enough not to let on that he was, or at least might have been, ah, murdered. Right, Inspector? Our secrets would be safe with him."

"Did—did you say homicide?" Doctor Hachet's voice cracked and he trembled with either rage or fear, it was hard to say which.

Levain went silent, and Gilles just as silently blessed his impetuousness. It was one reason why they kept him around.

"I would appreciate it if you kept that to yourself, doctor—since you seem to be able to keep the secrets of your patients. You're not providing them with narcotics, are you? All in a day's work, eh?"

Gilles' mild manner could not obscure the steel that lay within, although there would be hell to pay if this ever got out.

"But there was nothing!" The doctor pulled out a crisp white linen handkerchief and mopped a profusely sweating brow. "Oh, God."

They waited, more certain now.

"All right." He was about to speak again, but thought better of it.

He might have cursed them, or been tempted to, and most likely preferred to stand on his professional dignity.

The doctor got up, left the room, and closed the door behind him.

"Where's he going?" Andre cracked an evil grin, but Gilles just shook his head. "Was it something I said?"

"I don't know. Maybe to call the commissioner." At this remark, some of Levain's humour evaporated.

There wasn't much point in talking, and they listened for footfalls in the hallway. Sure enough, when Hachet returned, he had a thick sheaf of papers in a file-folder in his hand. He walked around his desk and fell into the chair.

"Theo was my patient for many years. He was a remarkably healthy individual. There was never any complaint or suggestion of problems with his mental hygiene, and he suffered from no mortal or painful diseases. This file is full, and complete, and you will return it to me after you copy it or whatever you plan to do."

The doctor did not open it, but spent a long moment staring down at it. Looking up directly into Maintenon's eyes, he shoved it across the desk in a decisive move. There was some unspoken promise in the look he gave them.

"Thank you, Doctor Hachet, and this will be returned to you in a day or two. We will never mention this unless we have no recourse but to make use of it. And I meant what I said. Please forget the word homicide was even mentioned today." Gilles held his gaze a little longer, and the doctor swallowed.

Then he spoke, leaving no doubt as to his meaning.

"Inspector Maintenon, if someone killed Theo Duval, I want you to find them. You will arrest them, and try them in a court of law. And when that day comes, I would very much like to attend at their execution, if such a thing is permitted." His face was very long somehow, as if grief and anger combined with gravity to pull his loose flesh towards the floor. "Theo Duval was a very good man, and insofar as it is possible between doctor and patient, he was also my friend."

"I'll see what I can arrange, Doctor Hachet." Gilles thought a moment. "And please forgive my impulsive friend here, but it was true enough what he said. And don't put it past us. Thank you for your help."

"Get out of my office." Doctor Hachet crossed his arms in front of him and glared at them as if there was to be no tomorrow.

Levain was careful not to smile. The man had his dignity to consider, and he wasn't a bad sort, when you understood his awkward position. Without a word, they did exactly that.

***

On reading of the death of Theo Duval in the newspaper, Charles Fauquier phoned police out of a sense of duty, of outrage, and possibly to head off some bad publicity. Fauquier and Sons was an old and established gunsmith, with world-wide renown. The papers were full of the affair for a short time, but had inevitably moved on to something else.

"I sold Monsieur Duval a shotgun, and I understand that he owned several other weapons."

Gilles nodded as he took notes.

"Do you know if he possessed a 1911 model Colt forty-five calibre automatic pistol?" Levain was handling the questions.

"Yes, I believe he did. In any case, I serviced such a weapon for him several years ago." The man sighed, in perfect understanding of the nature of the question.

Hopefully, from his point of view, his firm's name might be kept out of the affair.

"There is no suggestion of wrong-doing on your part." Gilles reassured the fellow in the interest of continued cooperation, although Fauquier had contacted them rather than the other way around.

"What sort of work did you do?" Levain had a professional interest, and always enjoyed his time on the range in annual competitions and in the odd practice session.

It was like he just never had time these days, but in pistol shooting, knowing your weapon, practically living with it, gave a competitive edge.

"Yes. I would have to check our records, but as I recall, it was just cleaning and checking for serviceability." The man nodded to his assistant, a small, balding fellow of about forty years of age.

The man turned and headed for the door leading to offices and the workrooms.

"I believe it was a gift from someone, an old soldier who admired him. It's just an impression, and I can't recall the exact words."

"Did he talk about any threats? Sometimes people mention that sort of thing."

Fauquier shook his head.

"Nothing as far as that." His eyes went up and back a bit, blinking a couple of times as he tried to recall. "I don't think that he had ever fired it. As I recall, it was extremely dirty inside. I think it was a pilot, maybe."

"Any names mentioned? Did he have anyone with him?"

"None that I can recall. He was alone when he came in." More than anything, he seemed to regret calling them.

"What about the shotgun? What kind?" Levain must have an endless series of questions all lined up in his head, a good trait.

"It was a sporting weapon, with decorative plaques, all in silver and engraved with his initials."

The gun had been kept in a room of sporting trophies, and in the opinion of the police expert who had examined it, had never been fired.

"Do you know if he ever used it?"

An expressive shrug was the only answer he could give.

"It might have been."

"How well did you know Monsieur Duval?" Gilles stuck in an oar for a moment.

"Not very well, really. He was famous enough in his own way, and you tend to remember a customer like that."

"I see." This fit the pattern well enough.

An expensive shotgun, hung up on a wall with other weapons, a fairly common high-status decoration. And a rugged, dependable gun with plenty of stopping power kept according to the housekeeper in a desk drawer in his business office, which was also on the same floor as the studio. Basically, they were taking the maid's and her word for it. Alexis said the same thing. It was one of many troubling aspects of the case. Assuming they were innocent, they had no reason to lie. The question was who else might have known about it, besides them.

"A gun like that, the shotgun, was really more of a status symbol, although there are definitely people who use them regularly." Fauquier understood his customers very well. "Some of our customers enjoy competitions, and hunting ducks, geese, pheasants. All that sort of thing."

They weren't hunting for the pot, his attitude seemed to imply.

"And the pistol?" Levain brought him back to the point.

"Not a piece of sporting equipment."

"Do you sell them?"

"The Colt? No, but we can order one in, and I have a couple of used ones. I pay better than a pawnbroker, especially if the weapon is in good condition, and has some interest to collectors."

They listened politely as he explained the history of the big Colt, which had been proven in service by the U.S. Army in the Philippines against rebel Moro tribesmen. Apparently they had good morale, and used drugs to combat pain and fear of injury.

His assistant returned with a receipt in his hand. Fauquier gave it to Andre, who stuck in between the pages of his notebook.

"Would you like to fire one?"

Gilles, already concluding that there wasn't much here said no, but Andre wanted to try it. Fauquier unlocked a cabinet and took a heavy black gun out and selected a box of shells of the appropriate calibre. This one looked very clean, and Fauquier removed a paper tag on a string.

He handed it to Andre.

"Heavy." He passed it to Gilles for a routine look.

Gilles nodded and gave it back to Fauquier after operating the slide and looking through it.

"A very big gun." Andre and Fauquier nodded.

"These aren't a common item, but we sell a few."

There were still quite a number of them around, in Gilles's experience, as U.S. servicemen had pawned any number of them at war's end. They turned up from time to time in homicide and other investigations. All of that stopping power was something that just couldn't be argued with.

With the assistant left in charge of the store, Gilles followed them into the basement shooting range. It didn't hurt to indulge the hired help when they had earned a reward, and Andre was just itching to have a go.

The first report made Gilles flinch.

"Unbelievable! Nom de Dieu." Upon Andre's look, Gilles gave him a nod and he turned and emptied the clip at the target at the far end.

Even though he knew better what to expect after the first shot, being beside the thing was formidable. The noise and the concussion were impressive, and caused him to flinch with each report.

"Sacre bleu." Andre seemed impressed.

"Hmn. That's good shooting." Fauquier gave Levain an appraising look.

Gilles squinted and saw a tight grouping of black holes in the target in the vicinity of the upper chest. Thanking their host, the two men left the building and went down the street a ways, pausing by the car but not opening up just yet.

"All right, Inspector, what are you thinking?"

"It's hard to believe that no one heard that thing go off."

"Interesting."

"That's my line." Gilles grinned and slapped his thigh. "But it's an interesting discovery. We shall have to test my little theory, if we get the opportunity."

Henri rolled down the window.

"Are you folks getting in, or what?" The ebb and flow of pedestrian traffic swirled around them.

"In." Levain reached for the handle.

Gilles nodded pleasantly at this response. Andre opened the door for Gilles, and then went around to the other side. When he got in, there was this look on the other man's face.

"Are they all lying to us, then?" Other than that, Maintenon would go no further.

Chapter Eleven

"What's next?"

"What's next, Inspector?" Andre had a pleased air about him.

The excitement of trying out a new toy had done him some good.

"I think Monsieur Charpentier is next on the list." Gilles stared out the side window as the cityscape flowed past in silent counterpoint to his thoughts. "He went to the house fairly often, and he is in a position to know something about the man and his world."

"Yes, Inspector."

Gilles gave him a sharp glance, but Andre was looking out his side, and the tone of the remark was almost absent. Andre was far, far away.

"Is everything all right?

"Huh?" The shocked look he got was not very informative.

"How are things?" Gilles knew that he had been too obsessed with his own pain lately.

The world slid by outside the windows, giving a brief glimpse, ever-changing, of the urban life of the city. Everyone was anonymous, and they were all going somewhere else.

Surely other people in the world had problems of their own, problems not including homicide, but problems that were serious enough. Not everyone had the ability to cope with the things life threw at them. Not that he had either, when he thought about it.

"We're having another baby." The fact, simply stated, covered a multitude of issues.

"Congratulations!" Henri beamed at them in the rear view mirror. "Yay."

It was like this made Henri's day somehow. Maybe it did.

"Thank you." Levain's tone indicated something more, and Gilles wondered if he was really all that happy with it. "We're hoping for a boy this time."

A sergeant's pay was nothing like an Inspector's, and of course there would be costs, there would be stress, and worry, and endless trips to the doctor, and once the baby came, a good night's sleep would be a thing of the past. Gilles thought he was lucky to have skipped all of that, and at the same time he sometimes felt deprived of the so-called joys of parenthood, which were over-rated but that was the way things were always stated.

There were many things he would never understand because of lack of experience, and he accepted that, but what the hell could you say? The affection he felt sometimes for the people around him might be a poor substitute for the love of a father for his children. It wasn't like he didn't know what love was. His present state of existence was the result of love being gone, taken away long before it was time. He knew somehow that he would never replace her, and he ached to think on it, so he tried not to any more.

"It will be all right." Gilles was tempted to pat Andre on the back of the hand or something, but perhaps that wasn't appropriate.

He wondered if Andre saw him as a father-figure. Many younger cops felt that way about their superiors, at least the more trustworthy ones.

"Yes, of course you're right."

"Don't worry. You'll have us to guide you." Henri's shoulders twitched in silent humour and he went back to focusing on the driving.

Henri had the good Catholic's attitude, and six children under the age of ten of his own to prove it.

Levain grinned in spite of himself.

"You'll never have to worry about days off, and things like that." Hopefully it was the right thing to say.

"He'll take all the overtime he can get, Inspector." Perhaps Henri had more wisdom than Gilles gave him credit for.

Andre nodded thoughtfully beside him.

***

Gilles had been reading a little bit more about Leblanc and what he called the 'sensual restlessness' of the age. Perhaps that was what he was feeling right now. The song was haunting, full of regrets, and he wondered. If love was such a beautiful thing, why were there so many sad love songs?

She knew they were there, of course, but making any assumptions as to how she might feel about it was tricky. She might hate them, but he thought not. She might resent them, and he could understand that. She might see it as heaping additional trials on her slender yet well-formed shoulders, and yet at the same time she might accept that. He wasn't even sure why they were there, but seeing her in her own natural environment was informative.

She had beautiful shoulders, and Gilles felt a strange stirring of something deep inside of him. When she turned, the bone structure of her naked back, and of her shoulder blades, was amazing...just amazing.

The lady clearly belonged there. She had found some inner well of fortitude, enough to make her smile a sad, tired smile when she saw the pair of strangers come in and find a small table off to one side and near the door. She had smiled when she recognized them.

She smiled sadly at the inevitability of it all, and that said something. It was an acceptance of all that had to be, an acceptance of life's tragedies, and the knowledge that they were going to do their job no matter who got hurt. Gilles had never felt less like smiling when he saw that.

She must know a lot of things that he never would. Yvonne would be easy to fall in love with for almost any normal man. He was a very small boy when it came to women like her. Maybe that was what she saw.

She was a mystery, and he was a very small boy.

The song was a lullaby, an old standby, but rather than putting the baby to sleep, she was saying something about the human heart in all its tenderness and all of its potential coldness. On her lips it was a lover's song, the kind of song you wished you hadn't heard just then, and you knew it would stick uncomfortably in your mind for a long time afterwards.

Andre had eyes for no one but her. Gilles was a little more objective. It occurred to him that the five piece ensemble might be an indifferent sound without her. On listening further to the soft drums and the cadence of the bass, he realized it was perfect. They highlighted her, and she was the sound, with the drummer playing in shirtsleeves, and the soft slow rasp of the drums, and then the piano, played by a smallish man in evening attire, beads of sweat glistening in the dim lamplight of the overheads, the slash of blue light falling across the face of the man on the saxophone. He didn't know much about modern music, but he found he quite liked it.

The saxophone had its own song, but only when she went quiet. It was superb.

Gilles watched and listened to the bass for a while, noting again its restraint, and along with another man with a different kind of horn, he thought a bassoon, trying to isolate each sound and feel its place in the composition. As individuals, there were intent upon their own work, and yet they had to play as a group. It was a team, in every sense of the word. He saw them play off of each other, and the way she turned and engaged with them, in some unspoken way from time to time, and marveled at just how many things a man might never comprehend, not even at the most superficial level. It was two entirely different worlds up there under the lights and down here in the shadows, with the clink of a glass or a dull murmur coming to remind him that he was not alone, and would never have to be alone as long as there were places like this in the world.

She had the perfect voice for it, low, and husky, and perfectly controlled in the trills, and in harmonious resonance with the low-ceilinged, intimate club.

The orchestra without her might not be lost—they were the consummate professionals, for surely they understood their art and their medium far better than he ever would. She was beautiful, of course, and yet there was clearly something strong, deep inside her, and not just the superficialities of skin and hair and eyes, and red, red ruby lips almost touching the microphone as she made eye contact and nodded at him and Andre. With a life like hers, she must have a kind of resilience.

A tear falls to the sand

Waves and wind sigh in mourning

Over the sea to a far distant land

Up to the horizon and then a pause

And then he is gone

Heat of the sun never ceases

Gulls plaintive cries without cause

Forlorn hope never stops to sing

Blinking in the glare, she waits

The end is also a beginning

When ships with butterfly wings

Beat into the wind on a quest so fine

Lovers torn apart for a time

No one can say the why of these things

The bonds have been released

Each is free to be their own

This is a seed that must be sown

And no one can say its fate

Sometimes there is no way to win

But only to endure.

When ships with butterfly wings

Beating into the wind

Carry your heart across the ocean

It is all you can do, sometimes

To wait and to pray.

And to mourn...

Gilles would remember those words as long as he lived.

***

"I deeply regret the necessity of troubling you." They sat behind her on a low and beaten yellow leather couch, as she examined her make-up in the garish lights of the vanity in her dressing room.

Her evening gown was the kind that leaves the shoulders exposed. He wondered how many men had sat here waiting for her, and a thousand other singers. They all had a story, usually a sad one.

She regarded him in the mirror. Her long elegant neck reminded him of some Egyptian sculpture. Nefertiti or somebody like that.

"That's quite all right, Inspector. You must do your job." There was something tragic in her, something from a long time ago.

He wondered if this was what had attracted Duval in the first place. Gilles wondered who would speak next.

"Theo never tried to pick up women." Her eyes gazed appraisingly back at them from the mirror.

"Oh, really?" It was Levain's question, as Gilles nodded in response, grateful for the easy opening.

"He didn't have to." Gilles got the meaning pretty well.

"That's right, Inspector. Theo was a very handsome man, but there was something more. He rarely complained, although he had a normal temper. He was indulgent to the mistakes and weaknesses of others. But Theo knew what he was doing. He knew who he was, and was totally comfortable within his own skin. That sort of confidence is very attractive to a woman. He didn't even really need money, although it would help with a certain type. Some would go along just for the ride, if a man was rich enough."

"I see." Gilles studied her as she combed her hair carefully.

It was a glorious pile, one of the healthiest heads of hair he had seen on anyone in quite some time, and it put his own thinning patch in its proper perspective. It didn't look quite so blonde in this light. She was still young, and he envied her for it. He hoped she wouldn't be alone for long. Probably not, he decided. He felt a sudden dread at his own prospects.

"Did you throw yourself at him?" Andre was just doing his job, but it could be a pain in the ass sometimes.

She smiled tiredly at Gilles in the mirror.

"You know better than that."

"Yes, young lady. I do." Gilles had a few questions, and for her sake thought they'd better get on with them. "Where did you meet, and who else was there?"

"We met at another club where I was working at the time." She mentioned a name.

It was a club in Montmartre, smaller than this one and not the sort of place where the wealthy congregated. She mentioned one or two others, all of them already on their list.

He wrote down the names for effect.

"Was he slumming?" Levain was playing the role of the hard-bitten, cynical cop and Gilles the understanding uncle.

She seemed hurt by his attitude, but answered reasonably enough, with just the hint of a blush on her cheekbones.

"No. Theo went where he wanted, and he loved music."

"What did he tell you about his brother?" She nodded at Levain's question.

"Yes, Alain was married for a while before he told Theo. He could have handled that a little better. They fought, and Theo regretted their strained relationship. But he also thought Alain should learn some responsibility." This was obviously a safer subject for her, and Gilles intended to ask all of them the same question, for want of anything better to go on.

"I see." Levain scribbled on his side of the couch.

"And what did you think about all this?" Gilles watched as she made an elaborate shrug.

"Perhaps Theo could have unbent a little, or Alain might have apologized. It's like they were deadlocked in some great moral struggle. But they are...were both very stubborn men." Her eyes flicked back to them as she put the fine touches on her lip-stick. "You know what I mean."

Gilles nodded gravely that he did. There was a sudden scraping in the hallway and she looked up at the clock. There was a tap at the door.

"Three minutes." It was a deep male voice.

Footsteps faded back up the hall. She ignored it and went on.

"Theo could fit in with any crowd. He was an engaging man, and genuinely loved people, especially if they were interesting."

It was something Gilles had in common with the victim. He often felt like that. But he also felt something in common with their killers, a feeling he had accepted long ago.

"We won't keep you." She nodded at Gilles's words.

"Stick around if you like, although my sets are at least forty minutes, sometimes a little longer."

"The drinks are a little watered-down." Levain was easing up and giving Maintenon the lead.

"Ah, why not, Andre? God knows I don't get out too much anymore."

"I must visit the powder-room, and if you gentlemen wouldn't mind?"

"Of course, Mademoiselle."

"Mmn. I have a former husband out there somewhere, but I appreciate the thought. Can we talk about that some other time?"

"Of course, and we thank you for helping us." They rose to go.

She stood up, as lithe and athletic as a panther.

"Was Theo murdered?"

The question took him by surprise, and Gilles hesitated.

"I wish I knew the answer to that question, Mademoiselle."

She smiled, eyes bright with bitter tears. It was enough for her. She brushed past them with a glaze in her eyes, and again he was convinced there was no way to fake that kind of reaction. It still didn't prove anything, as killers were notorious for weeping as they confessed to their crimes.

They closed the door firmly but gently behind them and followed the hall back the way they had come.

Chapter Twelve

Gilles wanted to go

Halfway through her second song, Gilles was so distinctly uncomfortable with it that he wanted to go and Andre made no argument. Standing on the steaming pavement outside of the club, Andre looked at his watch. It seemed like it was always raining these days.

"It's early yet. Want to grab a sandwich?" He had such a hopeful look on his face, but Gilles didn't want to keep him from home, and there was nothing about the case that would benefit from being discussed in a public place.

He was feeling his age. In terms of his personal life, again, there was nothing there that couldn't wait. A pub crawl had some allure. But he must resist. At one time it might have been a relief, but there was just so much he didn't want to talk about. He didn't want to weep in front of Andre, and that's how he felt just then.

"No, Andre. You go home."

Andre looked a little down in the mouth. At first Gilles had the impression that Andre was worried about him, but then the reverse thought came, that maybe Andre would like a little male company once in a while. Gilles wondered if their friends were really his friends, or if they were just the sort of friends that couples had together. After the baby came, Andre wouldn't be getting out much, if he did at all now.

"Are you sure? They make a pretty good sandwich over at the Ham Bone." Andre waited but a moment. "All right, then, it's your loss."

With that, he spun on a heel and headed for the corner, where he turned and disappeared. The pale orb of the moon hung low on the south-eastern horizon. The sounds of Paris at night were all around him on the light breeze. He'd been locking himself in lately, reading old books, listening to music turned down so low he could barely hear it, and smoking like a fiend.

Gilles looked at his watch. He didn't live so far away. He wished it was further. It was such a beautiful night. He hadn't had a positive thought like that in some time. A few blocks in that direction lay life, and light, and people. He turned in the opposite direction and with an air of aimlessness, began to wander in the direction of home. Madame Lefevre would be gone by now of course, and he really didn't have any idea of whether there would be some sort of a cold meal laid out or not. He shook his head in mild irritation. She might have left something out for him.

He should have asked where in the hell exactly the Ham Bone was. Loosening his tie, and with some regard to his surroundings, for Paris could be dangerous at night even in the best of neighbourhoods, and this wasn't one of them, he was quickly lost in his thoughts.

Gilles took the longest way home he could reasonably think of. The exercise might help him to sleep a little better tonight. Sleep was the last refuge, he'd read that somewhere.

***

His neck felt the squeezing of the block. While he couldn't see anyone, just an empty bucket in front of him on the cold and moisture-oozing concrete, there were murmurs all around. Their voices mocked him in their indifference, in their mutual, hollow-sounding good cheer.

"No! No! I am innocent." Andre cried, and wept, and could not even speak meaningful words. "My wife! She will tell you. I didn't do it!"

They murmured all around him, but they ignored him, and then he saw a foot, and a hand came and took the bucket as his tears fell unheeded. All the time, Andre was trying to get his attention, but the man, clad in blue trousers and the sturdy black work shoes they all wore, simply ignored him.

"Please, please listen."

Andre waggled his head back and forth as best he could, clasping and unclasping his hands in the hope of attracting someone's attention. He was being ignored, and deliberately. He understood that well enough. The feet moved suddenly with a scrape of grit underneath. The bucket, having passed inspection, was replaced. Andre sniffled and gasped, breath ragged in his throat.

A voice came close beside him, loud in his ears compared to the others in the room, all speaking in hushed tones, waiting, waiting for the blade to fall so they could go back to more pleasant duties, some home to their wife and kids, and some to homes empty and desolate from a lifetime of alcohol, abuse and anger. How he knew all that was one of the great mysteries of life, but cops were human beings too. They were just like anyone else.

"That's what they all say, my reluctant friend. But don't worry, this won't hurt a bit." He heard cynical chuckles and a few snide remarks in the background.

"Nothing to worry about!" There came the remark and a bust of laughter.

"Keep your shirt on!"

"Well, if you feel that way about it, maybe you shouldn't have done it." There were other voices.

"I didn't do it! You've got the wrong guy! I swear to God, please don't, please listen..." He didn't even know what it was about, and no one cared.

The voices didn't come again, not with any clarity.

No one listened. They had heard it all a thousand times before. They had heard men beg, and weep, and make promises, and cry and whimper for a mercy they had never shown their victims. They had watched them when they pissed themselves and smelled their shit. He saw all that so very clearly, but in his case it was all true and no one would listen.

"Please...please, please wait..."

Now came the sound of a crank being turned, and the blade being drawn up, and the terrible gush of adrenalin was almost more than he could bear. His body trembled and shook of his own accord, and his hands writhed and twisted, trying to escape the blocks that held them.

"Please! Please listen..."

Andre began to scream when he heard the latch click into place.

"Oh, God, oh, God." Andre blubbered like a baby, and then the room was silent. "Please."

He said it one more time, the word echoing around the room, to be absorbed by tired patient faces that had heard it all one too many times before.

"Please." Andre begged for his life, and they wouldn't listen.

They couldn't listen, for it would drive them mad.

There was a click, an accelerating rumble and the blade was coming down...

"Andre! Andre!" She was there, cradling a grown man, sweat pouring off of him, and with him weeping like his mother and sisters had when Papa went, and the realization that he was simply having the dream again, washed over him with its cooling jet of hope, and then came another kind of anguish, the question of why this was always happening to him.

"Oh, God." Andre wept into his wife's shoulder. "Oh, God."

Her hair glued itself to his face as he wept, and the snot ran out of his nose, and he didn't care, he was just so grateful that this was real. It was real, and it was her.

"There, there. It's over." It was all she said, holding him and rocking him back and forth, but it was enough.

***

At first, the brilliant white half moon was visible through crystal-clear patches in the sky. They quickly gave way to low-scudding black clouds with silvered edges, throwing a vast dark shadow over the streets. The warm lights at all levels and the wan light of the street illumination was enough to guide him. He had always wondered who was on the other side of those panes.

One might reveal a man reading a newspaper under a lamp with a radio beside him, and on all other floors the lights were out behind the curtains and anonymous windows. In the next building, three flats above ground were lit up, and while one flat was clearly hosting a party, the others showed more mundane tableaux. For the most part, no one was visible, yet surely someone was home. Virtually all of the storefronts were dark, with only the small lobbies leading upstairs to residential apartments, separate entrances with their locks and double doors, lit up to attest that there was life above.

Where there was an alley, a tangle of fire escapes loomed, hanging overhead in invisible threat. The windows up high along the alleys were smaller in comparison to the ones out front. They seemed lonely and isolated. It was easy enough to interpret them as hallways, a small bathroom, or maybe some child's bedroom, although it was late. It was almost as easy to imagine them a garret, with an avid painter, or a poet, struggling to make a go of it in an uncertain profession where there was much pretension and even more competition, and where cash money was more priceless than true love. The moon popped in and out of sight behind yet another black cloud. He paced along, feeling guilty of a momentary truancy or some other nameless sin.

The sky opened up and a thick, heavy mist began to fall straight down. He knew this weather, the kind of spring rain that would drench the valley of the Seine and move slowly across the terrain. The creeks and rivers would barely rise. It would all be absorbed by the land, and sucked up by the sewers, and the river would be muddy and brown for days.

Later the colour would change to something a little more pleasing, green and glassy, but at this time of year, Paris was subject to as many grey, wet days as the highly-romanticized sunny ones. The nights were still long, and a chill wind could whip up out of the northwest on a whim.

Tonight was mild, warm and close, and now very wet.

There was a car idling by the side of the road ahead, and he saw a man and a woman inside. The interior light was on, and their heads were close and intimate. The light was switched off and the crunch of gears came. Their heads were black silhouettes, sparsely illuminated by the distant street-lamps. They moved slowly off up the street, with the vehicle hesitating at the first intersection. There was much you could guess, so much you could read into it, but they were just an anonymous couple, perhaps going home after an evening visit with friends or some lonely and decrepit old relative. It was all up to the imagination, and a need for human contact. It was loneliness and longing, emotional transference, and applied sentiment. His feelings were understandable, he supposed. He would always be an outsider. He would remain isolated.

On a nearby block, there were horns and distant shouts and the sounds of vehicles moving. It was a stream of life over there, but here and now on this street it was very quiet. It was a moment to savour, in a way. He wasn't tired, although for one thing he was aware that he hadn't been eating properly lately. He wasn't uncomfortable. The emptiness in his gut was nothing compared to the emptiness in his life, the sickness in his soul.

Behind him, there was the sound of another vehicle rounding the corner from a side street. Light washed over him from its headlights, throwing the blocks of flats and shops into a new and harsher light.

He thought he heard a car door open up, and he thought that wasn't right somehow as the vehicle still seemed to be accelerating in a low gear.

"Slow down, you stupid bastard." The shout came over his left shoulder and he wondered if they were speaking to him.

Startled, he turned to see what they were talking about, and who they were talking to, and that was when he saw the bare-headed man in a long black coat standing on the running boards, braced against the wide-open door, and holding something that looked suspiciously like a machine pistol in his right hand. When the arm came up and the man took careful aim in an unmistakable motion, the end lit up and the air was split by a rapping sound that bounced and echoed off the walls all around. Gilles flung himself to the ground, desperately trying to scrabble his way under a parked vehicle.

Unfortunately it was a small two-seater, with a removable fabric top. Hot lead spat and sang off the ground and punched through the bodywork as if it was a wicker basket, while Gilles clutched his hands up around his head and waited for the hit that would take him out.

"Go, go, go!" There was a final burst, and the sports-car rocked on its chassis, while fluids splashed out onto the street a few feet away from holes punctured in a radiator and other places.

Gilles popped up on his knees, brought up his own 7.65 millimetre pistol, and began pulling the trigger as fast as he could. Even as he did, he saw that the street had a bit of a bend in it, and that there were houses along there with lit windows. Sparks flew off the street where his rounds were going. They showed he was low and behind at first, and then one for sure went way ahead, and so he pulled down after taking a more careful bead, trying to lead by shooting at the front end of the vehicle in spite of the extreme angle. He had the weapon pointed just ahead and above the corner of the windshield, but the damned gun jerked around so much. He grunted in anger and tried again.

The snap of rounds hitting the metal trunk lid confirmed the accuracy of his shooting, but he didn't think he had done any good, as the man had awkwardly scrambled back in and the swaying vehicle zoomed up an incline at the end of the block. The glare of brake lights indicated a right turn. There was a squeal of tires, and the sound of an engine under stress finally faded about three or four blocks away.

Gilles stood panting, blinking sweat out of his eyes, and cursing with precision. He put the gun up and dropped the spent clip into his jacket pocket. He re-loaded. A second car with another machine-pistol would be fatal right about now.

The vehicle was almost certainly stolen, but he had some vague impression of a couple of letters from the license plate.

"Argh." In the distance, dogs barked, people shouted and there were running footsteps, for fools rush in where angels fear to tread. "Nom de Dieux."

He put the gun away. Dogs barked all around him, but they were all either on chains or behind fences and walls.

"What in the hell was that all about?" Who they were or why they had tried to hit him was a question he would very much like to answer.

It wasn't exactly unprecedented, but even for the busy Paris underworld, it was a little unusual. Loud voices, frightened voices, came from above and across the street, as an apartment window or two opened cautiously and dim faces peered down. Hopefully there was a phone about and someone would call the gendarmes momentarily.

He must have pissed off somebody somewhere pretty badly. Someone with a lot of pull, in all the wrong places.

***

Guy Lenormand studied Gilles closely. The Inspector didn't appear to be too badly in shock, although a lot of people would have been hysterical.

"The last three digits were oh-one-three." Gilles sat in the passenger seat of an official car as other officers dug around inside storefronts, stepping carefully on the shattered glass that littered the pavements and the interiors.

They were looking for slugs, of course, and it was all pointless, except that once in a while they caught a break. To match a slug with a weapon in this type of incident would be very pleasing, but unlikely. The weapons were probably already disposed of, and of course there were interchangeable barrels. That would be the mark of a pro.

"Did you get a look at the driver?" Guy had pretty much wrung him out, respectfully of course, but Gilles was a trained observer and he had some hopes.

"No. It all happened so fast. I've heard it so many times, but it's true enough. All I can say is that it appeared to be a male, possibly in his early thirties. He was clean shaven and had no hat, although he may have taken it off in the car."

"Anything else?"

"I think the driver was wearing a dark suit. Bah. He had on a white shirt and a dark tie, but that is just an impression." Gilles tried to visualize it all as it had happened. "The tie was dark. Bah."

He was saving the best part for last.

"There was a woman in the back seat."

"Oh, really?"

"Yes. She seemed to sit up and gape, all wide-eyed and terrified when the shots came. She might have been asleep or drunk. Her hand flew up to her mouth." Gilles chewed on his lip. "As an act, or as a diversion, or what I don't know, it doesn't make any sense. Bringing an innocent girl along, or any useless person, doesn't make much sense either."

"Yes, I see what you mean." Lenormand put his notebook away. "No one saw anything, although pretty much everyone we have canvassed admits to hearing it. Strange neighbourhood. It's right on the brink, you know?"

Gilles thought knew what he meant.

"Ah."

Lenormand meant that the area was in decline, and the prognosis was not so good. It would likely get worse before it got better.

"What's the problem?" Lenormand shook his head.

"The usual thing. Not enough money, or not enough love to go around." He sighed.

"I see." Gilles shrugged, not so much expressively, as out of a sense of pure futility. "Yes. There is always that."

"And you, my friend, need to go home and get some sleep. I'll have one of the men drive you. Hell, I'll drive you myself. And I would advise..." Lenormand reached for the key, as it was his personal automobile.

He had been called at home in the middle of the night, but he seemed very fresh and alert.

"You would advise me to do all the same things that I would advise any victim in similar circumstances to do." Gilles would be a little more careful from then on. "I will watch my back, n'est pas?"

He twirled a fez hat in his hands, just another incongruity. The prevalent theory, made up on the spot, was that it was connected. The thing had been found jammed under the car immediately to the left of where Gilles had been cowering. While it was certainly possible that it had been there for some time, the thing was brand-new and fairly dry when it was recovered. The inference seemed obvious that it was taken off in the car by the gunman or another occupant, and that it must have spilled out when the thug opened up the back door to take the shot.

Human beings being what they were, Gilles had politely offered no theories, but his mind was caught up in thoughts of window dressing. There was a distinct possibility.

Lenormand's lips flattened in a thin line.

"I want you to take this seriously." He turned and gave Gilles a stern look, eye-to-eye and man-to-man. "I mean that."

He drove along steadily, checking the mirror frequently.

"This is no coincidence." Gilles's voice was emotionless.

"Hah!"

"No, seriously. It has to be connected to something big, and I have only so many cases on my desk."

"Too many, and that's just the truth." Lenormand took his eyes off the dimly lit street for a moment. "And this is the slow season."

The remark had no irony in it. It was just a fact. The pre-dawn light coming from the east and the lights of the dashboard lit up his features, throwing them into cold relief.

"What are you saying?"

"I have two new cases, and who knows, probably more tomorrow. But of all the ones lately, I can't think of a single one that has that much clout. Or involves that sort of crowd." Gilles chewed his lip some more. "As for the floater, we don't know enough yet. That one looks like a prank. Anything else, anyone else, is just plain ludicrous."

Lenormand nodded, thinking along with Gilles. Most homicides were no mystery at all, in fact the reverse was usually true—a stabbing over a domestic dispute, a few drinks and a row between friends, with ten witnesses and no doubts at all about what happened. People often fled of course, and finding them quickly was the real challenge. That took proper detective work, and a lot of it sometimes.

"And that leaves?"

"Just one real possibility, Guy, just one."

Lenormand rounded a corner, his big peasant hands resting lightly on the wheel. Just a few blocks ahead lay the side street where Maintenon lived. As they approached, a couple of pedestrians arrived at the intersection. The city was either waking up or hadn't fully gone to bed yet. There were always the night people. He assumed it to be true of any major city.

"Interesting."

"Yes. Very much so." Gilles gave a short, sharp nod of decision. "Right, then. If that's the way you want it."

He was no longer talking to Guy Lenormand, although he was the only one there. Gilles let himself out and stood looking off contemplatively into nothing and nowhere.

"Good night, Gilles." With a sardonic grin, and a quick check of the mirrors, Lenormand put it in gear and drove away.

Finally Gilles dug around in his pockets for his key, still lost in thought although much calmer now.

Chapter Thirteen

Gilles endured a fitful sleep

Gilles endured four or five hours of the most fitful sleep, constantly tossing from side to side and trying to convince himself that he was going to drop off in the very next minute. To focus too much on the event was a time-waster. It was a distraction. But if it was connected, there had to be some other salient points that they had missed. They weren't asking the right questions yet.

Adrenalin took some time to be absorbed back into the body. As his thoughts raced back and forth, searching his memory for clues, it was surprising how easy it was to frighten himself all over again.

After a time he got out of bed, and as the chill dawn sky gradually paled, he lay on his left side on the couch, forearm held straight up to keep the smoke out of his eyes, his mind racing with the permutations. If only he could find the classic framework, for there was nothing new under the sun. The attempt on his life did not come out of the blue. It came from somewhere, and almost inevitably, it would spiral out of control. The investigation would draw manpower, cost the department hundreds if not thousands of man-hours, and would come up with nothing. Nowhere on his list was there the sort of case that involved anyone remotely likely to have this much power. But if so, was it political? If Gilles was nothing more than a symbol, what was he a symbol of? Authority, unwanted and unloved, perceived as oppressive? Was he simply available? Was it a spur of the moment, crime of opportunity? If so, what was the purpose, except to send a message?

He and Andre had visited the club, and then shortly thereafter, someone tried to kill him. The logic was inescapable, and yet he hated assumptions. It was very difficult not the see the two events as connected.

He prayed for the night to end and for the dawn to come, if only so he could occupy his mind with some tangible actions. There was a time to think, and a time for physicality.

At some point, he was aware that he might be sleeping, and then he was awake again. The room was bright, with hot sunshine beating across the floor, and he started up off the couch with a bang, wondering if he might be late. It was all right, he had just enough time by the clock on the mantel, its soft yet insistent ticking oblivious to mere mortal concerns.

He was at his desk by seven-thirty and Andre drifted in ten or twelve minutes later. Predictably, he had already heard the news. The others turned up right on time or even a little early.

"So what do you think, Inspector?" It was Henri, puffed-up with righteous indignation on behalf of the department as much as his boss.

Now that his life was under threat Gilles wondered if Henri would pay a little more attention to rank-based propriety, but alas, it was not to be.

"I'll bet you just about shit your pants, eh, Inspector?" Levain suppressed a growl, while Le Bref and his sidekick Emile Niguet chuckled but tried to look disapproving.

Le Bref was a nickname for another senior detective, Robert Campon, short as he was. Henri went silent upon a look from Gilles.

"One thing I know for sure, you would, Henri." Levain glanced at the papers on his desk. "The big question in my mind, is where is the connection? There is relative peace between all the various political factions. You are not exactly known for any political leanings, and while a political factor can't be ruled out, it is more likely connected to some important case, or some important personage who feels threatened. Am I right, Inspector?"

Andre could get away with calling him Gilles away from the office, and Henri's insubordinate behaviour could be ignored.

"That's all I can come up with." He heaved a deep sigh. "We still need manpower. In the absence of any better ideas, I'm at the point where we start shadowing suspects just to see what they do."

"We have suspects?" Le Bref's eyebrows rose. "When did that happen?"

"Late last night, when the Inspector was walking home." Now Henri was championing his cause.

Of all the nerve, but Gilles let it go.

There came a rap at the door.

To everyone's astonishment, Chiappe stuck his head in.

"Mind if I come in?"

Gilles blew air out with a sound like a horse, and rose with alacrity, as Levain shot a look at Henri. Henri gave up his chair for the boss, and most annoyingly went to stand at Gilles' right side, casting shadows that fell long and awkward across the room in the light that came from the fly-specked windows behind the Inspector's desk.

"What's interesting about this case is that no one has an alibi. Everyone who is anyone seems to have been there when it happened. This is almost unprecedented in the annals of crime." Chiappe was a controversial choice for head of the Surete. "Except for Alain, of course."

"Sir?"

He was always in hot water politically, often from both sides of the fence and all across the spectrum. There were whispers of corruption, but that was nothing unusual. It was an occupational hazard.

"I've got a little present for you, Gilles." Maintenon's face went blank.

"Yes?"

Jean-Phillipe reached into an inner breast pocket of his expensively-tailored black suit, the bulge under his armpit moving back and forth in what would be a dead giveaway in any other place. Here it was a matter of course. What some saw as an affectation in the big boss seemed mighty practical to Gilles right about now. Gilles didn't listen to jealous rumours, and didn't judge the supervision any more than he had to. For the little judging he did, he needed fact, not surmise.

Jean-Phillipe pulled out a long white envelope, with the familiar black monogram on the upper left corner. A sharp hiss came from Levain. He laid it on the front of Gilles's battered old desk.

"Good luck to you, gentlemen." With his legs comfortably crossed, Chiappe leaned back, put his hands behind his head, and endured, in spite of the need for disciplined behaviour, a brief wave of congratulation and hilarity amongst the employees.

His right foot tapped lightly in air, which would have been interpreted as a state of high excitement, if only he had been a suspect.

With hands still trembling slightly from shock, lack of sleep and sheer hunger, Gilles poked a finger in the loose corner of the flap and pulled it open. It was a search warrant for the Duval residence, duly signed, sealed and delivered. It must have been done very early this morning.

"How?" His jaw hung slack for a moment, then his eyes came up to meet Chiappe's huge grin.

"How did you do that?" Chiappe didn't need Henri's translation to get the question.

"Hmn." Jean-Phillipe had a grin to beat all tomorrow. "Let's just say that a certain injudicious individual, who is innocent until proven guilty, and who has a right to privacy, and bearing in mind that we don't disclose information regarding private citizens...well, let's just say that after last night, he owes me a favour. A big one."

"Whoa!" Le Bref saw the name on the warrant. "No, way."

"Yes. And I don't like it very much when someone tries to assassinate one of my men." Chiappe gave them each a glance in turn, biting his lower lip and looking pleased enough. "Now justify our faith in you and bring us back a killer—or sign the fuck off on this case. Comprenez vous?"

"Yes, sir." There was nothing further Gilles or the commissioner needed to add to that.

No one dared comment.

"As for manpower?"

"Yes, yes, Gilles. You are never happy. Take what you need and get on with it." The boss got up, exuding an air of triumph, and left them to get on with their day.

To say the small office was a little noisier for the next few minutes would have been an understatement.

***

Jules Charpentier was a most unhappy man. The warrant said 'properties belonging to the late Theodore Duval, of the Rue Duvivier, Paris, France,' which the judge may have interpreted as meaning the residence. Since Jean-Baptiste had enough foresight to put it in, Maintenon had the presence of mind to make full use of it. Charpentier, whose first thought was not for minority shareholders, did not have the presence of mind to call the company's lawyer, although surely they must have had someone on retainer.

They stood in front of his desk, in a room that paid no attention to luxury and where wall space was at a premium due to blackboards, permanently painted in rectangles in graphic display, with notes and numbers chalked in some cryptic manner only the initiated could comprehend. There were cork boards papered like the scales on a goldfish with orders and forms and schedules. The display was riddled with brightly coloured push-pins, and there were shelves from floor to ceiling laden with supplies of one sort or another. There was a portable blackboard on rollers, hastily scuffed clean and pushed back into a corner where a coat rack sagged under miscellaneous long smocks and coats. A boot-bench competed for floor space in amongst other, less easily-identified objects, perhaps spare parts or consumables for the production process, and there were stacks of filing boxes in a corner.

The clatter of stamping machines, cutters, shears, choppers, grinders and the squawk of air powered tools was an omnipresent dull roar on the other side of a thin partition. There was a thumping vibration through the floor, and Gilles wondered how a man could focus with all of that going on but Jules probably didn't even hear it anymore.

"What is the meaning of this, Inspector Maintenon?" The harried plant manager was astonished that he and the affairs of the plant might somehow be involved in their investigation.

"I would prefer not to execute this part of the warrant. May I discuss the company records with you?" Gilles tapped the document on Charpentier's desk. "What is the payroll? How many employees are in the building? Is Monsieur Babineaux in his office today?"

Charpentier gulped like a landed fish, his predisposition to jowls making itself evident in the slackness of his features.

"I, I...I don't know anything!" He realized the protest was impotent, and yet he still wanted to consult with someone.

Of course he knew something, he must have at least some answers to the basic questions Gilles had asked.

"I will decide what is appropriate." Gilles's jaw was set. "Could you at least answer a couple of questions without mindless argument?"

Jules Charpentier reddened, clamping his mouth shut and glaring at the cluster of grim gendarmes behind the detectives in sheer resentment.

"This is an outrage."

"Yes, it is."

Gilles' head and shoulders took on a posture that was a clear warning that he was running out of patience. Charpentier threw down his pen and abruptly shoved his chair back from the desk. It was on rollers, so he could scoot around the room without rising. He sighed deeply, bent at the waist and with his hands on his knees as if about to rise.

"What do you want to know?" He shook his head in anger. "We have a hundred and fourteen employees present today. We have eight or nine in the administration of the plant. Some of those double in other areas, such as accounting and in our engineering and maintenance department. Their duties extend across product boundaries. Is that what you want? Did you really need a warrant for that?"

"Apparently so, Monsieur Charpentier." Gilles stuck his arm up and made a swirling motion with his hand. "All right boys, interview every single one of them."

Gilles regarded Jules calmly.

"Do you keep the plant accounts separately from overall operations?"

The man winced at the import of this, but nodded soberly, subsiding into a more stable emotional state.

"Yes, we keep running totals on any number of items on a daily basis."

"Would you get them for us, please?"

"Aw, no. No!" Charpentier knew exactly what all of this entailed, and reached for the phone with no hesitation. "Merde."

Time was the most precious element of all and he was going to lose a lot of it. The disruption to his production schedule could be extreme, and cooperation was the only option.

"We will try to make this as easy as we can." Gilles stared him down.

"Thank you, Inspector." Mouth set in grim lines from frustration, Charpentier was a very tired man all of a sudden.

Chapter Fourteen

The search took hours

The search of the house took hours, with another half dozen officers involved. Since they had little idea of what they were looking for, other than a putative skeleton key, this involved a lot of taking things out, making an inventory, and putting them back again. The studio was reserved for a small, highly-specialized team, and extra care was taken by the senior officers in the case of Monsieur Duval's more conventional business office and his rather formal-looking bedroom. This had clearly been designed with some attention to the pages of prominent home-décor magazines.

Extra special care was taken with the private bathroom adjoining Theodore Duval's bedroom suite. Their first priority was fingerprints, but as for why, no one could truthfully say. With this one last golden opportunity to find some evidence, they were under orders to make the most of it. Among other things, the contents of the bathroom medicine cabinet attracted close scrutiny. Unfortunately, there wasn't much in it that was remarkable either way. Apparently the man shaved, brushed his teeth, and got a headache once in a while. The most glaring omission was the lack of remedies for heartburn and upset stomach, or sleeplessness. This fit in with what they already knew about Duval. A box of condoms was no great revelation, and a rubber douche with some requisite woman's products under the bathroom sink didn't require a whole lot of imagination to account for.

Nothing was too small to be overlooked. With Maintenon starting his day out at the plant, this undertaking was under the supervision of Le Bref and the imperturbable Andre Levain. With a half a dozen officers under their employ, it shouldn't take all day. Certain items were put aside, catalogued, and taken away for further analysis, but for the most part, the household was to be disturbed as little as possible.

The crew started off in the servant's quarters, up under the eaves, and worked their way down. Four and a half hours later, after a certain amount of boredom and routine, they found the other key to Duval's studio in the back of a kitchen drawer. It was under a few other items. Carefully picking it up with tweezers, it was put in a labeled envelope with a kind of reverent contempt.

It was a special drawer, and every kitchen seems to have one. The purgatory of the household, this one had odds and ends including parts of the head of a lamp, a putty scraper, a ball of twine, a small tape measure, and a three-fold menu from a local Chinese restaurant, and a hundred other things. There were copper objects that might have been plumbing parts, a box of washers for the kitchen taps, a tube of soldering flux, yellowing old papers, and a few other keys, some of a more modern type.

They were all singles, and Madame Fontaine had no clear recollection of what they were for. A sweep of all the locks and cabinets of the home revealed that most of them didn't fit anything.

Among the loot were cancelled bus tickets, a half a dozen old shoe-horns, and a combination screwdriver, the kind where the butt of the handle unscrewed and removable tips were stored inside. Not surprisingly, it had the logo of Duval Industries embedded in the handle, which appeared to be of some modern synthetic material.

"I wonder what the Inspector will say about that." Le Bref gave a look of bafflement to Levain, who had some concerns of his own. "What are the odds of getting a print?"

"He'll probably going to say that we have no way of proving whether the killer put it back after committing the crime, which doesn't necessarily make it completely irrelevant. And he's already off on another tangent, knowing him. But it keeps us going in the meantime."

***

It was an early morning council of war. There were heated comments and voices tended to rise in equal proportion to the amount of resistance or opposition to any idea presented. There was Maintenon, silent through it all, and Andre, and Henri, who had strong opinions, which unfortunately were not very clearly expressed. There was Le Bref, and Chiappe, and several others.

Finally Jean-Phillipe turned to Gilles, brooding behind his desk. He sat there chewing on his lip.

"What do you think, Gilles?"

It took a moment for it to sink in that the boss was talking to him.

"Eh, what? Oh. Nothing, really." Gilles uncrossed his legs and leaned forward in the seat and began scribbling furiously on a sheet of letter-sized paper.

"What do you suggest we do next?" Chiappe had to account for all of these man-hours, and Gilles was on the spot.

He watched curiously as Gilles wrote.

"I would suggest...I would suggest that we are at an impasse. Perhaps if we let the case go cold for a while, and we do have other files. You can have most of the men back..."

"What are you getting at?" Chiappe saw the good-news bad-news thing coming and wasn't sure he liked it too much. "Just let it drop? What do we tell the press? Are you ready to sign off?"

"No. We'll tell the press what we want them to report." Gilles slid the paper to a reluctant Commissioner. "We'll say it is a probable suicide but there are unresolved questions and the case remains open-ended."

"What the hell does that mean?" Le Bref chuckled. "I've got an idea, Gilles. Why don't we mention that you're ill or something and you can take a couple of days off? Seriously, you've been working too hard and not getting much in the way of results."

"Hmn!"

"No, I mean it. Every other officer takes a normal vacation, yet you insisted the case—what was it, the counterfeiters—you insisted it was too important, and you had to stay around. That case was cut and dried, so much so that they took a plea. Months have gone by. Honestly, Gilles, a bit of a rest may spark that well-known inspiration of yours."

Gilles threw up his hands in resignation.

The Commissioner studied the few lines of simple handwritten text. He nodded.

"I know just who to give this to. They'll never suspect it's a plant." He looked at Gilles and the others. "In the meantime, I get my gendarmes back, and you'll just have to handle things on your own. See what you can find out about our mystery man, the one in the Seine."

There was a groan or two when he said that. More than one glance was exchanged. An extensive canvas of the funeral industry, taking in a radius of a hundred kilometres in every direction, was not a popular option. Cooperation from other towns wasn't always a top priority for the local detachments. There was some jealousy involved. Paris cops were sometimes thought to be a little snotty among other detachments. They were no better trained, it was just that they got a lot of practice. He got up and stood in front of Maintenon's desk. Gilles uttered a deep sigh of resignation.

"Yes, yes, yes." He grunted in disgust.

Maintenon's jaw was mostly healed, giving pain only when he bit down wrong on something sharp and hard. Even so, he was still having trouble sleeping at night, and the thought of enforced idleness was unwelcome. The other cases on his docket were all pretty routine.

"Seriously, Gilles. Take a couple of days off." He looked at Andre. "I thought you had some kind of an idea, on that one."

Levain shrugged expressively, as it was better than a straight answer when a man had nothing. With another glance at Gilles, the boss left to take care of his errand.

Chapter Fifteen

Yvonne wasn't overly despondent

Yvonne Verene did not give the impression of a woman bereaved. While she didn't skip gaily along the street, neither did she seem overly despondent. She was attired in a navy blue skirt and a white blouse that belied her profession. She might have been a sales assistant in some bourgeois millinery shop. Her charcoal grey coat was casual and functional, made for cool-weather wear rather than show.

Her daily routine began shortly before nine when she exited the small bed-sitting suite she inhabited in the Latin Quarter, and then went to the nearest Metro entrance in a rather anti-climactic fashion. They followed her down, first Le Bref, the near-midget who hadn't actually been seen by Mademoiselle Verene at the scene. He hadn't been involved with them at the time. As a bonus, he wasn't too well known from the papers.

Gilles followed fifty or sixty metres farther back, relying on Le Bref's body language and well-rehearsed hand signals to avoid detection by the subject.

After a few stations, she got up and left the train. Le Bref sat in the next compartment, with the subject, but Gilles could see him through the glass door panels as he was just on the right angle. When Le Bref gave him a quick glance and then rose in a rush to exit, Gilles went out the door of his own compartment at a casual pace, fairly well disguised by a rough working man's cap, and a long white raincoat that he never would have chosen for himself. The shoes, with six or seven millimetre-thick soles and obvious steel toes, made the man. She brushed past him without a second look, intent on her own business. Le Bref touched the brim of his hat on the way by and Gilles inclined his head politely. Unfolding his newspaper, he watched her go up the stairs as his friend followed. Stuffing the paper back in his pocket, quickly rolled up for later, he followed as well.

She was going somewhere different today. That much was clear.

All the crew agreed that the seven days growth of whiskers he now affected made him look fifteen years older, considering the amount of white in his beard. That part shocked him, when he saw the white in amongst the black. The odds were he could remain anonymous. It was Le Bref that he was worried about, but the man was a marvel to watch. They'd never been partners before, certainly not undercover like this, and Le Bref had a way of hovering in behind someone else, where with a little side-step, he could keep the subject under surveillance, and before the next stride, was completely obscured again. Gilles thought he was also using the windows very cleverly, especially the ones on the opposite side, but the thought came that she might do that as well. That would require a certain amount of paranoia, or experience or expectation on her part. If she was doing it, she was good. From this far back, she would never recognize him, and if she spotted the tail, then she was some kind of pro and that would say a lot about her.

Yvonne entered a small shop, and Le Bref, convinced that she was completely oblivious to them, stepped right smartly up to the door and went in without a backward glance, trusting that Gilles would be properly deployed when he came out.

Seeing something that would suffice, Gilles stepped into a recessed doorway, and intently examined the wares in a tailor's window. With a couple of oblique panes of glass in the way, he could still see the ten or fifteen metres necessary. After a few minutes, Le Bref came out with a bundle wrapped up in brown paper under his arm and strolled past whistling a merry tune. He was headed back the way they had come.

Gilles focused on where she ought to be, and was rewarded by the sight of her silhouette coming back out onto the street. Like Le Bref, she had a bundle as well now, although hers was larger. She continued in her original direction. As he swung out onto her tail, walking slower so as to drop back as they went and not look like he was in a big hurry to go somewhere, he wondered how he was going to justify a couple of pounds of summer sausage or whatever it was on the departmental expense account.

Le Bref strode past him at a good clip, ignoring his presence. Gilles dropped back further.

Yvonne went past the next Metro entrance, paused in front of a flower seller's display, and then after dallying for some time, checking her watch at least once that Gilles saw, she went another half block, turned a corner, and by the time Gilles got there, she had, for all intents and purposes, disappeared.

Maintenon took a quick glance at the street sign screwed high on the side of a corner grocery store, and with a jolt of recognition, realized that this was a fairly long block, and that she must have gone into one of the tall and narrow pension-type apartments that lined both sides of the narrow but rather quiet thoroughfare.

"Merde."

Le Bref was at his shoulder.

"I see a kid, Inspector." He proffered a coin. "Shall we give it a try?"

Gilles shrugged.

"I don't see why not. We have nothing to lose at this point."

"Kid! Kid!" Le Bref's hoarse whisper could be heard a mile away, as Gilles grimaced in embarrassment.

Le Bref waved him over and the youngster complied.

"Yes?" The kid's natural caution showed through his slightly-cocky demeanor, but he was a big strong boy and probably thought he could look after himself.

"I'll give you five francs—no, ten—if you can answer a question for me."

The kid's eyebrows rose, his internal bug-like antenna quivering at the obvious temptation. He had some smarts. He stayed out in the light at the opening of their alley, which was dead-ended and arrived at a cellar door and some dustbins, sheltered and cold on this side of the street all year long.

Le Bref handed it over.

"It's no big thing, but did you see a tall blonde lady, pretty and young, come into this street or go into any of these houses? She was wearing a scarf, and a mid-length coat, and stockings but, ah, shoes with sort of flat heels...she had a shopping bag, pretty heavy."

"No. Sorry." The kid stood looking at the money for a second.

"Aw, for crying out loud." Le Bref was flustered at giving up money for that.

Gilles gave the kid a wry grin.

"That's okay, he'll get over it. Thank you."

The youngster, easily up to Gilles' shoulder and sturdy-looking in his hand-me down trousers and jacket, had this odd look that came across his features suddenly.

"There's some kind of artist guy who lives just over there. He's new here." The fellow pointed up at a set of small windows on the top floor, about three doors down on the opposite side. "Maybe she's a model or something."

Le Bref gave him a significant nod. It was something to go on, and the girl didn't vapourize into thin air.

Gilles dug hastily in his pocket and came up with a couple of small bills. Taking the smaller, he handed it over with a sense of glee.

"Can you do us another favour?" Le Bref flashed him his badge.

The boy was a little staggered, but recovered quickly.

"Maybe." His wits were still with him.

"I want you to go somewhere and get yourself something to eat. Stay there for a while, and don't talk about us, okay?"

The kid was gone in a heartbeat.

"Don't forget to put that on your expense report." Le Bref wasn't kidding.

This sort of thing could add up after a while.

"Say look, Gilles. I'm all right here on my own. I wouldn't mind Henri if you could send him back."

Gilles glanced at the doors across the way, all residential and all locked up as tight as a drum. The street was quiet, and it was still fairly early in the morning.

"I'll call in and find somebody to relieve you. There's a place around the corner." Gilles thought for a second. "How long after she turned the corner before you got there?"

There was a brief hesitation.

"Twenty seconds. She couldn't do it, Gilles. My hearing is good, and she was in that coat. She had a package with a fair amount of weight."

Gilles took an oblique look to the other end of the street. Even if it had been thirty or forty seconds, the distance was simply too great, and not silently at that. There were no dustbins, and no obviously-discarded packages littering the ground. Shoes with thin, flat soles would only be painful to run in, and to be observed by a tail in this type of behaviour could lead to immediate arrest and a thorough questioning. She didn't impress Gilles as being stupid, far from it.

The house across the way, on the other hand, was at least within the realm of possibility.

"What's in the package?"

Le Bref handed it over before responding.

"Five pounds of freshly-killed kosher baby beef liver." Le Bref grinned at the look on Gilles' face. "It's okay, Gilles, I can always eat it. Marie is a wonderful cook."

Gilles sighed deeply, and lowering his head, stepped out and turned to their left.

"Hey Gilles!"

He glanced back.

"Get a job, Maintenon." Le Bref put his back to the wall, and sank down into a crouch like a tired old man basking in the hot Mexican sun.

The only thing missing was a serape and Sombrero.

"I'll buy you a beer later." Gilles headed back to find a phone.

***

Gilles found a corner grocer's with a pay phone uncomfortably close to the counter, up front right by the door. While it was a courtesy and a convenience, it wasn't very suitable for confidential talk.

"Henri?"

"Yes? Oh, hey! Boss! You're not going to believe this!" His voice was uncomfortably loud in Gilles' ear, but his natural inclination was to jam the thing in tighter to his head to drown out the sound, wincing as he did so.

"No need to shout, I can hear you just fine." Putting his hand over the mouth-piece, he nodded at the store-keeper. "It's my mother, she's half deaf, you know?"

The fellow nodded knowingly, but didn't move a muscle as he sat on a high stool and read the paper, spread flat on the counter in front of him. While business was slow, a couple of shoppers moved in a desultory fashion along the aisles of foodstuffs.

"Boss, the boys followed Alexis to another apartment. He went in and hasn't come out, and he never mentioned it to anybody. Not as I recall." Henri was breathless, his excitement getting the better of his breathing. "Isn't he still living at the house?"

They had sort of assumed that he was. This was the trouble with losing contact with the principals in the case, however briefly.

"Hmn. Very well. Where is this place located?" Gilles waited, presumably Henri had it written down. "What time was that, exactly?"

"It was maybe twenty minutes ago. It was..." He carefully read out the address twice, so that

Gilles could make a note of it, but it was hardly necessary.

It was right around the corner, where he had just left Le Bref.

He hung up on Henri's breathy speculations and bolted for the door.

Chapter Sixteen

On a hunch

Instead of going back to where Le Bref was, on a hunch Gilles continued in the opposite direction, made a left at the next street, and went all the way to the end of the block, a distance of about a hundred metres. Then he went left again, to the next intersection, where there were a couple of familiar figures loitering like the street-corner thugs that plagued certain neighbourhoods.

It was a fellow by the name of Le Clerc and Le Bref's partner Emile Niguet.

"Well, well, well. There goes the neighbourhood." Le Clerc bid a caustic greeting, and Gilles waved like he lived there.

"Hmn. So which one did he go into?" Gilles stepped forward a half-metre and took a quick glance up the street.

He had a funny feeling that he knew already.

"Third from the far end, other side of the street. It's the faded yellow-painted stucco one. Somebody, we think it was him, opened up all the windows within four or five minutes of his entry. Top floor." Emile was more businesslike now.

"Did you see the girl go in?" They looked at each other.

"No." Le Clerc stepped backwards, craned his neck, glanced at the far end of the street, and explained. "Le Clerc went to find a phone, and I didn't want him spotting me. What time did she get here?"

"Maybe a half an hour, now. No, it's only ten or fifteen minutes." Everyone checked their watches.

"Interesting." Emile's look was appraising, and fraught with unspoken suspicions. "Maybe they have something going on, eh, Gilles?"

Gilles ignored it for the moment, looking at Le Clerc.

"What's your first name again?"

"Claude."

"Ah. Yes, this is interesting. The question is what to do about it." They chewed on it for a while as Gilles thought furiously.

"Merde. With the two of them, we have four men tied up, and they could be in there for hours."

"And in the meantime, Inspector?"

"What in the hell am I supposed to do with the five pounds of Kosher beef liver Le Bref picked up on the way?" He offered it to Claude, but he waved it off.

They chuckled at bit on hearing it, but otherwise had no suggestions, although Emile had other concerns.

"What are we doing here, just hanging around and talking about the weather?"

"Claude and I will have lunch and be back in half an hour or forty-five minutes. Le Bref is just down the street, in a small cul-de-sac on this side. He's in between the first and second house. If they come out, beat it like hell to the next block and then turn around and come back slowly. If they are aware of the tail, we're already blown, otherwise it should work."

They were both strangers to the case, unknown to the suspects.

"Well, there will be two of us." Emile looked around for a discreet vantage point, and at the same time wondering how he was supposed to fit into the role of aimless inactivity.

"Oh, Lord, where in the hell do we go to take a shit around here?" Emile's question was a purely rhetorical one, but not without practical impact.

Emile sighed at the prospect, as this type of daylight surveillance was the worst, and the hardest to do without alarming the subject. But if one or both came this way, he had a plan, and if either of them went the other way, he would follow them. As for hanging about on a street-corner trying to look innocent, he would do his best. This part of the city was all narrow blocks, with tall buildings, no trees, and vacant lots were almost unheard of. Almost totally residential, there were no businesses, where he could get in off the street.

He could only do it for so long, for someone local and attuned to the area would surely remark on his presence. His shoulders slumped at the necessity.

"Oh, joy." He thought of something. "Got any smokes?"

Claude reached into a pocket and quickly pulled out a packet.

"I can get more."

Gilles nodded at him and Claude.

"Come on. We'd better let Le Bref in on all of this, or it doesn't stand much of a chance."

"What if one comes out and then the other? What if they go in opposite directions?" One-man tailing jobs were notoriously hard to maintain for any length of time without blowing it.

Gilles pulled on Claude's arm as there was little more he could do and his stomach was rumbling.

"Follow whichever one comes your way. When in doubt, improvise. Or even just break it off."

Emile's resigned yet sardonic nod expressed his feelings perfectly. He would just have to wait for his lunch. Today, he was getting paid to stand around and smoke, and trying to look like he didn't have a care in the world. It could have been worse.

Out of the blue, for no particular reason, Emile gave a nasty grin.

"What if three people come out?"

Gilles ignored it.

***

Le Bref studied the girl, who sat with a look of total revulsion at him and their surroundings. She had been posing nude for Alexis, who was an indifferent painter of misshapen forms in what were surely the most austere colours, interspersed with small daubs in a rainbow of garish hues.

The police knocking on the door and boiling up the stairs and crashing into their intimate plans for dinner, complete with a roast chicken and potatoes slowly cooking in the kitchen set the rather negative tone of this interview.

"How long have you known him?" Emile Niguet was the better looking and much easier-going of the two. "Weren't you supposed to be going with Monsieur Duval, and wasn't there some talk of marriage?"

She shrugged eloquently.

"Since I met him." She glared in contempt at Robert Campon, 'Le Bref' to his friends.

He studied her calmly.

"When was that?"

She let out a breath and thought about it. Yvonne weighed things up in her mind. He saw it as it happened.

"Theo and I were out one night, and Alexis came to the club with a message for him."

"How long ago was this? What club?" Emile and Robert alternated questions.

It gave them a moment to think and to observe.

"Three, four months ago, I think. I was wearing my stole."

"Ah." This sort of reasoning was perfectly clear to Emile, who glanced over at Le Bref to see if he caught the significance.

Le Bref nodded slightly.

"So when? Maybe January, February, March? Something like that?"

She nodded soberly, more cooperative in her outlook now. She didn't seem afraid, only angry, and perhaps highly-embarrassed by the situation.

"So how long has this been going on?" Le Bref just put it out there as naturally as could be, and she looked away, blushing slightly, and swallowing.

"Just...just a few days." She looked at each in turn, very briefly, and then dropped her eyes.

Her voice was a low monotone.

"All right, Mademoiselle, that's certainly understandable enough. Your fiance, am I correct in thinking that? He was dead, and Monsieur Ferrauld is a nice-looking young man and everything. No, really, he seems quite nice."

Le Bref cut into these pleasantries.

"Were you going to have sex with him? After a nice little roast chicken dinner?"

"Go to hell." She glared at him from two and a half metres away. "It's none of your business. You are just pigs. All of you."

They tried very hard not to smile.

"I'm sorry, young lady, but it's our job to ask these questions. How long had you been posing nude for him? Not long, judging by that painting."

"No. This was only my second time." She shut up them, her mouth a firm down-curved line across her face.

It didn't look like they were going to get much more out of her.

"Why did Alexis kill Theo? So he could have you? Is that it?" There were times when Le Bref regretted the necessity.

This was one of them. She looked like she had been slapped. Her jaw worked back and forth.

"Va ta faire foutre."

In spite of himself he grinned, cruel as it was. Yet in a way he was pleased, and liked her even more for it. It was only too bad that he couldn't say so.

"Thank you Mademoiselle Verene, that will be all for now." Emile rose to open the door for her and Le Bref jotted down the last sentence of his notes.

"I meant what I said." She was defiant and contemptuous.

"We don't take it too personally, young lady." Le Bref gave her a respectful nod. "Neither should you."

Wrapping herself in the remaining shreds of her tattered dignity, she whirled and strode out into the corridor with Emile.

***

Alexis was apologetic, and sweating lightly. Andre and Henri were taking this one, as Gilles observed from the other side of a one-way mirrored glass.

"It's strange." Alexis was in a far-off place as he sat there.

He didn't seem too worried about being in trouble.

"What is?" Andre glanced at his watch.

"It's like I fell in love at first sight, you know? I mean, you hear about it, and people talk about it. You read about it in books, I guess. But I never would have believed it, and then one day there she was. There she was with Theo, and it was like I could barely tear my eyes off of her."

"I see." Andre wrote something as Alexis went on. "I went there to tell him about some offer from some Swiss firm. Some deal, you know? He went out on his own quite a bit. The body-guard thing was over-rated. I think he just liked having someone capable around."

"Yeah. That's one thing I wanted to ask you about. If he never had any big threats, why did he need a bodyguard at all?" Henri was shaping up nicely.

It was the influence of being with more experienced and competent detectives. His listening skills were improving. While Gilles admired enthusiasm, it had to be backed up with a little caution. Among other things, people had rights. It was better to play dumb and just listen sometimes.

Passing the sergeant's exam was the beginning, not an end as so many saw it. He was fairly intelligent, doggedly persistent, and he had a streak of niceness that engaged the subject like a buddy trying to help out rather than an officer conducting an investigation.

"Oh, yes, we had threats. It's not that we didn't take them seriously enough. He thought having someone like me around was a deterrent to anyone but a professional, and he just didn't seem to acquire that sort of enemies."

"Give me a couple of examples. Please." Andre of course had much more experience than Henri, and he had a much more sophisticated way of following up.

"There was this one guy. He was fired or something. He turned up at the house one day, shouting and screaming, and demanding to see Theo. Monsieur Duval, Theo, he came running to see what was going on and the fellow tore off his shirt, beating on his chest sort of thing. I think Theo was frightened by that one. I checked the man out later. He had, I must say, a big chest and pretty big shoulders on him. He was strong, you know? But it was Madame Fontaine that sent him packing."

This hadn't been mentioned before, but the police were familiar with people telling them what they thought they ought to know, and little else. People kept a lot back that they thought was unconnected. As often as not it was unconnected. It was sheer instinct on their part.

"Really?"

Alexis grinned.

"Yes. She has her own ways."

"What did she do?" Henri yawned and looked at the clock, not coincidentally mounted above the mirror.

Gilles let it go on.

"She walked straight up to him, put her hand in the middle of his chest, pushed him out, and, ah, she said a few things as well. Not a swear word among them, but it was effective enough."

There was the sound of notes being scratched on paper with dry ball-point pens. They were running out of ink on this case and they had nothing to show for it so far.

"Any others spring to mind?" Levain was wonderfully stubborn when it came to questioning potential suspects.

"Ah, there was a bomb threat out at the plant, but that's not my department. In my opinion, it was just some nutcase making a phone call. They never found anything on that one."

"When was that?" Henri pounced like a cat.

"Maybe a couple of years ago."

"What about at the house? Ever see any Moroccans around there?" Alexis just smiled at Levain's question and shook his head.

"No, I don't think so. Ah, he had an anonymous letter once. I think we sort of concluded that he had been in the society pages quite a bit, and we thought a certain woman must have written it. Jealousy, the discarded lover thing."

"Ah." Henri never thought to ask her name, and Levain apparently thought it unimportant.

Gilles would have to put some thought into it, but cleverly-planned murder seemed extreme in such cases, and not with this modus operandi. It seemed unlikely. She would have made an entrance. She would have made a melodramatic, highly-operatic scene, and then shot him. Then she would have fallen across the body and wept for their tragic fates. People like that were famous for pre-trial jailhouse interviews and easy convictions.

"So tell us about the girl. Tell us about your apartment. This is all so new." Henri was sticking to the basics of the program.

"Yes, well. It was clear that my employment is over soon. They really don't need me, at least the company doesn't. They have their own security arrangements out at the plant. It's a contract job, uniformed stuff and not really my cup of tea. The apartment is cheap. You saw the place, right?"

They had seen the place, hot as hell up there, and this early in the season.

"I have other paintings. Don't get the wrong idea. They're stored in a shed at a friend's house."

"We wondered about that. Only one painting, Oh, yes, and a naked girl. Did you have some sort of a plan?"

"I know how it looks."

"So. Theo hasn't been dead that long." Andre turned the screws a little tighter.

"She's alone now. Her only means of support is singing. I offered a few francs, not much really, if she would pose for me. For all I know, she might have done it before, or even been a whore. I don't care about any of that. By the way...if you harm one hair on her head..."

He didn't finish. There was no need to. The rest remained unsaid, and no one took it too seriously.

"No, we just wondered why she killed Monsieur Duval." Henri's timing could have been a little better.

Alexis threw his head back and laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

"You guys are just too precious." Alexis sat with sparkling good humour in his eyes and a look of real affection on his face.

Except for some details, such as his landlord, who would vouch for when he rented the place, putting a small deposit on it until he moved in, there didn't seem to be as much here as they had hoped. Gilles was about to tap on the window when Henri, in some blinding fit of inspiration, asked what clearly Levain thought was a dumb question, although there really are none.

"Do you have any suggestions for us?"

"Suivez les argent, mes amis. Suivez les argent."

Follow the money, my friends. Follow the money.

It was good advice, if only they had something to go on. Maybe the man was right. Maybe it was time to wade a little deeper into the paper trail. Gilles wondered if Alexis really knew anything, or if he was being just intuitive.

On that note, the interview was over, and Maintenon's rap on the panel was welcome enough to those inside. The wink Alexis gave to the mirrored panel was just an afterthought, yet there was an ironic message there as well.

Alexis was an extremely intelligent young man. It would be wise not to under-rate him.

Chapter Seventeen

Roger was a forensic accountant

"Charpentier's daily running totals for the local plant all look pretty clean." Roger Desjarlais was a forensic accountant, often consulted by police and other authorities on matters such as this. "The other plants are similar, with varying degrees of sloppiness, according to the individual manager's personality, and I suppose the help available. The more overworked a person is, the more sloppy the book-keeping. He's actually the best of the bunch."

"He seems very competent as far as that goes." Gilles nodded in agreement.

His knowledge of business was all related to police work, in which he had spent his entire life. It was another field of human endeavour where he would always be a stranger. Running totals involved things like people on hand on a given day, and their hours, and their rates of pay. These were kept and submitted on a daily basis by department heads and foremen.

"Things like consumables, shipments received, and orders shipped from their warehouse. Things like the electricity are entered in a monthly ledger. Parts from other suppliers have to be kept track of and paid for, or shipped for return. But the errors are of a small order, and in fact there is a small surplus of unaccounted-for cash. It's nothing too outrageous, but it just goes to show you what can happen."

"Ah." Gilles listened intently as always. "Anything else?"

"Yes." Roger's beady gaze transfixed him just slightly below the heart, and then he met Gilles' look with a shrug. "More instinct than anything."

Gilles' heart leapt strangely.

"What?" His own instincts so far hadn't done them much good.

But Roger had instincts too.

"That Babineaux—amazing."

"What? What do you mean?" The needed a new angle, or that most dangerous and self-fulfilling of desires, fresh blood.

"The man is a psychopath."

"What? What the hell are you getting at?" Gilles hung on his every nuance, almost afraid to breathe, as who knew what might set Roger off on a tangent. "Come on!"

This case was becoming personal to Gilles, which theoretically shouldn't happen.

"I have, and I can say this unequivocally, never seen a set of books like that. They're perfect, Gilles, I mean it. They balance perfectly, right down to the last centime. Oh, Gilles, but you haven't heard the best part."

Gilles jaw was hanging and he shut it. He'd never heard of this before himself, in fact his own household accounts were never perfect even in their simplicity. He didn't know exactly what he had in cash in his own pocket, for that matter, nor how much he had at home, or in the bank. He didn't really know what his next pay-cheque might be, not exactly, not down to the last hundredth of a franc.

"Hah! Unbelievable! But maybe that's why they hired him, eh? For all that high-powered expertise." Gilles recalled from his notes that Babineaux had been with the firm for about two and half years, which wasn't that long, really. "Hmn. Interesting."

"No, seriously, Gilles. They were perfect. And this is the best part. He hadn't made one single false entry. That's when we put a big 'X' in there and go to the next line. That's so the next person can read it. But he never missed one. No scribbles or deletions. I find that frightening."

Roger considered his next words.

"It's possible he keeps a rough copy, but even so—even so."

"All right, Roger, we'll bear it in mind. We have to talk to him again anyway, I don't know, we'll find something to ask him about. Security threats, disgruntled ex-employees, or something."

"Really? I'd like to meet him." Roger was only half joking.

In his eyes, Babineaux was quite a specimen, which was just what Gilles had him down as anyway. Still, it was food for thought.

***

His feet were wet, his socks were wet. His shoes were wet, his jacket steamed on the radiator and his shirt still felt damp on top of his shoulders and down his back. The really strange thing was that he actually felt good. It was hard to fathom sometimes. The grey of the day, the dim light coming in through the window, held at bay by the cheerful light of the desk lamp, wasn't the source of this mood. It was something inside of him that did it. Some well of inner strength came up and made everything all right again. He wished it would happen more often. The knowledge that it could happen, was enough to keep him going sometimes, waiting for the blessed relief.

Attitude is the filter of perception, which forms the basis of subjective reality. While Gilles understood that he had been suffering for some time, what really surprised him were those odd moments of happiness. When someone told a joke and the laughter went on a little too long, it was a release. It was the contrast that made the effect of his misery more apparent.

He was reading the case notes for the twentieth time, or at least trying to when the phone rang. It was Roger, who he thought had only just left the office a half an hour ago. He glanced at the clock. Hours had gone by, a discovery he had been making a lot lately.

"Yes?" Gilles wondered if he had left an umbrella behind, as the day was pissing rain and everyone and everything was slightly damp.

"Gilles. In the last few days, the stock of Duval Industries has dropped a little over twelve percent."

"Ah. That is interesting, but by no means pivotal." Gilles had expected some ramifications to the firm once the primary shareholder was dead.

He wondered how the other shareholders felt about it. However, this was a motive against murder, rather than in favour of it.

"It's interesting, Gilles. I'm going to keep an eye on it." Roger was calling from somewhere public.

There were voices and clinking spoons or something very much like it in the background.

"On what? What are you saying?" Gilles was grateful for the distraction, for his eyes were very tired and all the notes were becoming hard to read.

He was becoming burned out by his emotions.

"Gilles, after Duval, there are a small number of shareholders. One or two have in fact put shares on the market, which is a common thing, and they're selling blocks of them. There is nothing really unexpected there. That's no reason to kill someone. It's better to sell when they're high, right?"

Gilles knew that much about commerce.

"Where are you? At the Exchange?" Gilles was a little confused, as Roger was an accountant, although he was also very sharp with his own investments.

Roger knew everybody, and handled his own transactions.

"Ah, no, I'm having lunch with a friend. Anyhow, what is interesting is that someone else is buying up those stocks. They're buying them up in large quantities. It may be nothing, but it's interesting. It's a pretty sound investment, although there is some risk. The company wasn't in any financial trouble, and the product line is good. But if you think about it, that's not a bad premium—you buy low and you sell high. Right?"

"Of course." Gilles thought it was awfully thin, but of course murders committed in the heat of the moment didn't compare to the well thought out ones. Most killings were over a few heated words, or fifty centimes worth of cigarettes.

Most murders were domestic disputes, or back-alley stabbings over turf or pride, or vanity, or happened in a drunken brawl between friends. The average murder was senseless, yet this one, if indeed it was murder, must have made some sense to the killer.

"Talk me through it, if you will." He listened intently as Roger did just that.

"Let's see here. You kill the owner, and then wait for the stock to take a dive and for someone to sell off some of their assets in a panic. Maybe the person selling gets cold feet or they want to make another investment. The drop in prices spooks them. So then you buy up as much as you can at a reduced price. But think of this, Gilles. What if you already had some stock in Duval Industries, and thought the company had good prospects. You could consolidate a position."

"And if you hated Theo Duval on top of that...interesting." Gilles didn't know what to make of it. "And who is buying up all these shares?"

"Yes, there's the rub. They're mostly smaller sales. One company in Switzerland is pretty active, but they seem to be a bit of a predator and opportunism is in their blood. Other than that, it's possible that they know something we don't."

Switzerland.

Gilles began pawing through stacks of handwritten case notes to no avail.

"Such as? What do you mean?"

"I don't know. Maybe Duval had a new product coming out, and they had some inside information. That's just speculation. As I said, Gilles, it is a good investment. I think the stock will go up again, and fairly soon. If it wasn't a conflict of interest right now, I'd seriously look at it myself. It's probably nothing, but I just thought you ought to know. It's something to think about in terms of motive. You mentioned that."

"Yes, I see." Gilles jotted a couple of quick lines. "All right, Roger, thank you. And keep in touch. You have no idea, really, but we're just sort of floundering around on gut instinct here."

The pair rang off. Gilles rose and checked his pockets for small change. Whistling a small and subconscious tune, he went looking for a good cup of coffee.

***

Andre and Le Bref didn't know each other very well, but they got along just fine. For lack of any real inspiration, they had been assigned to find Alexis' other paintings, and were about to get a belly full.

"What in the hell have we got here?" Le Bref's disdain for the artistic temperament was understandable given the dim light, the moldy smell in the air and the clear evidence of moisture damage to the gritty concrete floor, breaking up under their feet as they stood.

"So it's true, then." Andre regarded row upon row on canvases, leaning back against the shed wall just under the hanging garden tools.

On the opposite side were dusty pots, brushes, palettes, all of it looking old and disused. There was a smell of turpentine and general mustiness. There were big paintings and small ones, some dark with age and smoke damage, some almost pristine until you saw the grey spider-webs draped over the corners and onto the next half-dozen pictures. Le Bref picked one that didn't look too heavy and held it up, moving over into the spill of light from the low-set window. With no other source of illumination, they left the door standing wide open. The fresh air was cool and very welcome inside the small building, with its line of windows exposed to the hot sun at the back of a fine formal garden.

"God, I hope he didn't paint in here." Le Bref said little, studying the painting, which appeared to Andre's eyes as a crude still life of flowers, a bottle, and a vase.

"Is that an onion?" Andre's joke fell on deaf ears. "Everybody wants to be an artist these days."

Finally Le Bref spoke.

"Well, the man has some talent." He looked up at an astonished Andre. "Actually, it's a little out of date in terms of style. He clearly admired Cezanne, or imitated him a little too much. But it's a common thing to show our influences in our early works."

"Hmn. I read somewhere that writers talk mostly about themselves at first."

"Maybe. Maybe." Le Bref grunted as he studied it.

He put it down and rifled through the stacks of paintings leaning back on one another, and pulled another one out.

"Hah! It's me!" Le Bref was delighted with it.

Andre took a closer look.

Sure enough, it was signed 'Ferrauld' and everything.

"This is a midget and you're not...quite."

Le Bref's quick grin showed there were no hard feelings. This was actually a better painting in Andre's opinion. At least some attention had been paid to what the subject actually looked like, rather than some raw and violently emotional impulse driving every brush-stroke and choice of pigment or hue.

"My crazy brother-in-law asked me to pose naked for him once."

Andre's jaw dropped.

"I hope you told him to go to hell." He was firmly convinced.

"After seeing his style, I wasn't too worried about anyone recognizing me." Le Bref was cool on the subject. "It was an easy hundred francs, and you can't complain about that."

"Huh. Anyhow, Monsieur Ferrauld said he has paintings in a shed, and here they are. What it proves, I don't know, but this much is true."

"At least he has an outlet." Le Bref's crooked grin reminded Andre of Maintenon when he was on a roll.

"Yes, and that Yvonne is a beautiful woman."

Le Bref gave him an odd look.

"Did he really impress you that way?"

"What? Oh, God, I don't know. I was just saying."

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-hole. 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.

"It was just a light thud, or a pop like a motorcycle backfiring a hundred metres away, like on the next block or around the corner." He had a look of uncertainty on his face. "For all I know, that might have been what I heard."

He looked around at the others, but none could say for sure.

"Well." Gilles was contemplative. "It would have helped us with the time of death, which has some importance. If only someone had heard it. But we know a fact now, and that always helps."

The notion that no one had heard the shot was at least credible.

"Merde. I'll buy that for a dollar." Henri put the mass of old books, now seriously holed and distorted by the impact of three slugs, into a clean white pillow case for study and eventual disposal.

It would be unfair to expect Madame Fontaine to clean up the room, so the men gave it a quick once-over with an eye to disturbing nothing.

"Thank you for helping us, Alain."

Alain had the sheen of tears in his eyes.

"But of course."

Maintenon, understanding what pain was perhaps better than most, wished there was something he could say. Trust me? I know what I am doing? This must all end, sooner or later?

But that would have been complete and utter nonsense.

***

Gilles had an inner conflict. While he loved his brother and his sister-in-law, and while his nieces and nephews were certainly adorable, it was like he didn't have anything to talk about. He had never spoken about individual cases to any family member, and the visit was more effort than pleasure. He hadn't been keeping up with all the family news, and to be truthful, they weren't that good about writing letters and making phone calls anyway. The fact that one of his nephews was getting married held some interest, but he didn't know or recall anyone from the bride's family, and had no real observations to offer. Of course Gilles was happy for young Raymond, whom he remembered from his last visit home as a callow and sarcastic fellow of about fourteen or fifteen years of age, a gangling, emaciated youth with pimply cheeks and a lazy way of sleeping in until noon. Raymond must be in his twenties now.

They knew he was floundering, of course, but cheerfully soldiered on in their stated goal of 'livening him up a little.' Their visit had been announced some weeks ago, yet it seemed like it happened by default. They were in town, and so he was privileged to be their host.

It annoyed him when they spoke of her. He wished they would stop. The adults should have understood. The children were practically rolling their eyes whenever her name was mentioned. Gilles manfully resisted the urge to look at his watch or the clock on the mantel.

Madame Lefevre brought the smallest one in from the kitchen, beaming with a kind of surrogate joy, having given the little one her bottle. Gilles hoped his look of relief wasn't misinterpreted by Isobel, looking sleek and polished on the sofa opposite. He found himself slightly repelled by her dark, bold-coloured lipstick and painted toenails.

Paul was his youngest brother, and he wasn't quite sure of his birthday anymore. Too many years away and you became a stranger to your own brother. There were so many of them in this family. Stolidly optimistic and with a more rounded face than Gilles, there was still a sense of love there. He analyzed it as he listened.

"Marcel, he's still got a bit of hair. But look at me." Paul gave a quizzical grin. "You really should come down home for a visit soon. Oh, I' sure any one of them would be glad to have you, but you can stay with us. We've got plenty of room."

What in the living hell would he do there? Sit around in parlours talking to his relatives? The word 'egads,' popped into his mind, but hopefully, he kept his expression unchanged.

"Oh, thank you." Gilles smiled dutifully, noting a glance from Madame Lefevre. "Yes?"

"Monsieur, I was wondering how many for dinner?"

"Ah..." Gilles' eyes rounded and his eyelids fluttered at the question. "Oh."

He looked blankly at Paul and Isobel.

"Oh, no, that's all right, Gilles." Isobel was sharp.

He remembered that much. It must have been eight or ten years since he was last home.

"We're going to the opera, and we really should be getting along." Paul looked at the wife. "We're having dinner out. It'll be a nice treat for Isobel and the kids."

"Oh, ah."

She was a nice person, and Gilles could have found a modicum of affection for her, if the hugs and goodbye kisses with the family last time were anything to go by. He was glad they had found each other, for if any couple seemed happy they did. But Gilles wasn't party to their no-doubt romantic tale, hadn't been at their wedding, and had spent a grand total of about six hours in her company in his entire acquaintance with Isobel.

She looked at her husband. Sighing as if it was a real heartbreak, she turned to Gilles and nodded, casting her eyes to the mantel clock.

"Yes, we're sorry, Gilles, but we really can't stay." Turning to Madame Lefevre, she made a universal gesture. "May we use the phone?"

"We'd better phone for a cab. Gilles, you really need to get a car some day." Paul was a great automotive buff, as though his own little three-cylinder puddle-jumper validated his racing mystique or something.

He took it seriously, to the extent of buying magazines and wearing that ridiculous hat. Considering what that car actually was, their decision to come up by train was probably a wise one.

"I have a card in the kitchen." Madame Lefevre turned with authority and went to make the phone call.

His brother liked cars. He could wax enthusiastic on the subject, but in that moment Gilles had a real liking for his sister-in-law. She had planned it perfectly, and perhaps she understood him a little better than it was polite to let on. Gilles was tempted to wink at her, but thought better of it. They all stood, with the kids almost bolting for the front hall and their coats and shoes. His brother stood close and they clasped both hands. Paul looked down a little on him, being something like nine centimetres taller, and a little thicker through the jaw.

"Well, brother." They embraced, and then Isobel stepped in for a peck on both cheeks, which he dutifully returned.

Madame Lefevre returned with a bright look.

"They're just on the next block. A car will be here shortly." She looked at Gilles. "Dinner will be in an hour."

"Thank you, Madame Lefevre." The lady went back to the kitchen.

Paul slapped him on the shoulder.

"She's a good old girl. You're lucky to have her."

"Hmn, yes." Gilles coloured slightly, as there was just the fine edge of some other suggestive thought in there.

It was the thin end of the wedge or something.

***

There was a phone in his den, one beside his bed, and one in the end of the kitchen.

Gilles was just sitting down to a braised lamb chop, mashed potatoes and gravy with buttery small peas and a tossed green salad when it rang. For a moment, anger raged internally, and this had better be important.

Considering his social life and his isolation, this could only be bad news or official business.

He was struggling to his feet but she came in from the kitchen and held up a hand.

"Let me get it." The thing rang yet again.

He subsided and cut a couple of hasty bites of lamb, chewing and gulping one down as she picked up.

"Yes?" She listened. "Yes."

His guts flipped over when she said it again with a certain inflection.

"Yes."

She stuck her head in.

"It's for you."

Unless it was one of her family, calling on some sort of emergency, it could be for no one else. He took the phone from her outstretched hand as she retreated.

"Gilles! Gilles."

"Yes? Who is this?" The voice was very familiar, warm and intimate in his ear, but he couldn't place the man immediately.

It wasn't anyone from work, and that confused him.

"Gilles, this is Roger."

"What? Roger who? Oh. What's going on?" Gilles settled instantly into professional mode, recognizing his friend's voice now.

"I'm at the station. Guess who has a little weekend vacation?"

"Hah? Who? What are you talking about?" Gilles' heart began beating strongly.

The tension in his friend's voice was palpable, his breath hoarse and ragged as if he was desperately afraid of something.

"Our friend Babineaux. I'm sure it's him. He's been in the papers. He spoke at a meeting once, I'm sure it's the same fellow."

"Oh, really? Well, they're under no restrictions." Not since their own planted story in the paper, not if it was to be believable.

Who else was likely to bolt, now that the case was semi-officially closed in the public eye? He would have thought Alain, or even Madame Fontaine before Babineaux, who was very much a staid and sober individual.

"Yes, yes, I get all that." Roger was hurried, rushed for time and for air. "Gilles, there was some significant activity on the Exchange today. We don't have time to talk about it. Your friend is going to Switzerland. I'm at the Gare de Lyon now. He's bought a ticket and he's having a sandwich, and I'm hungry as hell too."

"What? There's nothing to stop him." Gilles mind was blank for a moment.

What could he do about it? And what was the significance?

"There's just time, Gilles. Why don't you get down here?"

"What?"

"Come on, Gilles, what do you have to lose? Besides, it might be fun."

Roger was mad. There was a brief slash of anger, deep in his lower abdomen.

"What? Are you out of your mind?" But Gilles' thoughts were already turning to his coat, his shoes, his keys, and his passport.

Money. He would need a little money, maybe even quite a lot of it.

"Damn you, Roger. Damn you. All right, I'll be there as quick as I can make it."

Merde.

"Gilles! Listen. If you miss the train, take the next one. I'll leave word at the kiosk, but we're going to Geneva. When you get there, if I'm not waiting at the station, check into the Hotel Flamberge and wait for me, all right?"

Damnation.

"Yes, yes, yes." Gilles flung the mouthpiece on the hanger and raced to find his passport and open up the safe to see how much money he had.

What the hell. As Roger said, it might even be fun, and as the good Lord knew, he had nothing better to do. The clothes on his back and that stinking white raincoat would have to suffice. It would have to do as a disguise. He could be someone else for a while. It was the weekend, after all.

Merde. It was the only word he could think of, as he wondered frantically where Madame Lefevre might keep that damned taxi company's card.

Chapter Nineteen

A mad dash across Paris

It was a mad dash across the middle of Paris and then a frustrating wait behind other people at the ticket kiosk, all the while blessing his good luck. It could have been so much worse. With the cab company dispatcher recognizing Maintenon from the address and phone number more than any actual familiarity, the car waiting out front was big, black and fast. The driver was a real pro, and evening traffic was light. The man appeared to have a lot of experience. The ride was smooth but fast. Gilles threw money at him and bolted, leaving the door open behind. He took the steps three at a time.

Standing in the line-up, there were only two people ahead of him at this particular window, and it was the last train of the evening for this destination. People seemed to know what they wanted and had the correct change. This was unusual, in his experience.

"Oh. Just in time sir, I am about the make the announcement." Like just about everybody in the place, he glanced at his watch in some unconscious habit.

He totaled it up. He had the neat little pieces of pasteboard lined up in front and was stapling things on them. Gilles shoved a hundred-franc note through the slot and waited in aching suspense.

"Keep the change." His anger was building in direct proportion to the man's pettifogging attention to detail.

"It's perfectly all right, sir. They can't leave until I announce it." If only he would push the ticket through the slot.

This was worse than the post office. In his limited international travels both professionally and personally, having once been to Belgium, people everywhere reviled the post office. Perhaps it was better to say that they just didn't appreciate it.

"Ahh..."

"No, honestly, it's quite all right. Inspector Gilles Maintenon of the Surete." The clerk's eyes stabbed into his. "I recognized you from the paper."

He grinned at the look on Gilles' face.

"Give 'em hell, eh, Inspector?" He had a fiendishly clever look.

"Oh, this is strictly for pleasure."

The man counted out his change in jig time, nodding in a knowing fashion and sensing Gilles's mood. He put the change on top of his ticket and pushed it to him.

"Monsieur Phillipe is in the third carriage."

"Argh." Gilles grabbed his small valise up off the floor and bolted for the platform.

Striding along, there was a catch, perhaps even a suppressed giggle apparent in the voice that attempted to calmly and patiently announce in a clearly audible fashion that the train was leaving in one minute. Like all such announcements, the words were indecipherable, rattling and echoing off the tiles and hard surfaces of the walls.

"All aboard!" The conductor was staring straight at him with an expectant look on his face.

Of course, of course. His disguise clearly wasn't very good, judging by all the attention.

Gilles prayed that the fellow didn't bellow his name from seventy-five metres away, and was eternally grateful that he didn't. Monsieur Phillipe. Was that the best Roger could come up with on the spur of the moment?

Without any training, having a financial specialist, a civilian, along for company on the trip would be challenging. That was one thing. But Gilles hoped that it wouldn't be as irritating as all hell. It was also extremely dangerous working with amateurs.

***

"Did you bring me something to read, Gilles?" Roger's greeting was glad enough, and they shook hands like old friends. "Why so grumpy?'

"Argh."

"The game is afoot, mon ami." Roger looked like a cat that had just swallowed a canary.

"Effing Geneva." Gilles settled in beside Roger, and in his role as a rough workman-type, replete with baggy trousers and steel-toed shoes, the expletive was in complete character. "Four hundred kilometres on a train."

He estimated it in his head. They might make an average of sixty or even eighty kilometres an hour, and he mentally added on time, a lot of time, for getting up to speed and braking down again at every stop. He groaned inwardly.

Taking in his companion with cynical eyes, Roger nodded.

"The change will do you good."

He wished he really believed that, but it looked more like a big pain in the arse.

"Have you ever been on the front page?" Gilles had some concerns about the two of them being recognized instantly by their prey even at a distance.

After all, that was what Roger had done.

"Yes, a few times. But this is new." Roger stroked his finely-barbered mustache, with a goatee and long sideburns.

"Oh, yes, very nice." Maintenon had been clean shaven in the past, but in recent years had adopted a neatly trimmed professional man's mustache.

Tonight he also sported a week or more's worth of whiskers. This only added to his discomfort. He was discovering that he had a pretty strong self image, and what perfect strangers thought of another perfect stranger meant a lot to him. Perhaps it had something to do with personal status, whatever that was. It might take some getting used to beyond the physical sensations of greasy lips and an itchy stubble of a sort which begged stroking.

Roger had some other interesting news.

"I hear Alain has transferred all of the stuff from the studio out to the plant. He's setting up his own professional design bureau." Roger nodded thoughtfully. "It doesn't take much brains, I suppose. I wonder how he'll do with the company."

"With somebody like that, one wonders how well he will listen to advice."

"Yes, I suspect you're right. He's an actor at heart, and he's now in charge of his own company. I guess the sister owns half, but of course she's out of the country. Still, money always talks." Roger at least had an open mind. "He can act like he knows what he's doing. This is often surprisingly effective."

He grinned at Gilles, who was at least listening.

"It's his responsibility now." Gilles wondered at the vagaries of Fate, and how Alain might do.

Roger was interested in anything that had anything to do with making money, as well as the people and personalities that inhabited that world. Gilles might learn something from him.

Maintenon was hungry, and wondered just exactly how long it took to get to Geneva. Far too long, he reckoned. Just getting out of the city took what seemed like forever, but metropolitan Paris was one of the most heavily populated areas in the world, and while a relatively compact city for its population, it was still a sprawling place. Taking in satellite towns, villages and suburbs, the train was restricted to lower speed limits. It was only once they got out into the country proper, by which time it was pitch black and he couldn't see anything anyway, that the sensation of speed, as the wheels clacked faster and faster over the rails, began to pick up.

The pair of them waited until the crush was over and then went to find the restaurant car. Gilles groaned when the train slowed down for the first of many stops. Sleep was the farthest thing from his mind, and there was just no way. What if Babineaux got off somewhere before Geneva? It was a distinct possibility. They had to watch him like a hawk.

Gilles hunch was right. It was a long way to Geneva. Monsieur Babineaux must have some compelling reason to go there, but that was the only conclusion they could draw. Due to being consulted by police in the past on financial aspects of certain crimes, Roger was not just an expert witness, but also trustworthy with confidential matters. Quick-witted, adaptable, and with a seemingly endless repertoire of pithy and amusing observations, he wasn't a bad travelling companion.

In the course of a couple of hours Gilles came to know a great deal about Roger, and his wife and children, and got a brief snap-shot into his life and work. It was interesting to find out that Roger had run away from his village, with its priest and nun-ridden parochial school, and was largely self-educated. He had been thinking that Andre might miss the odd night out and male companionship. But it was he who needed other interests, other friends and experiences outside of work, and what passed for his home life these days. He found he was enjoying the trip perhaps a little more than he should. Every so often one or the other took a little walk to check up on Babineaux. There were plenty of others who found that train rides required stretching the legs from time to time, and it drew no unwarranted attention.

While Gilles couldn't go into names and specific incidents, Roger asked the inevitable questions about police work and Gilles was glad enough to oblige him. It was something to talk about and helped to pass the time pleasantly.

"As for Babineaux, let us hope that this doesn't result in nothing more than a bizarre anecdote." Gilles sighed from the tiredness, and Roger was nodding off in sleep as he made the remark.

Roger brightened up.

"Yes, maybe he has a mistress, or visits a heroin pusher." That would make sense, judging by the look on a very sleepy Roger Desjarlais.

As for Babineaux, he stayed in the first-class carriage where he belonged, and finally it was time to lay back and pretend to sleep.

With the constant swaying back and forth, the clicking of the wheels over the points and the thoughts racing around in circles inside of his head, and the odd stop where they had to carefully observe whether the subject got off the train, it was an uncomfortable night. He might have dropped off, however briefly, at about four thirty a.m.

***

As the train crept into the station, they had the plan all set, but Roger suddenly had cold feet about his role.

"Seriously, Gilles."

"No. Seriously, Roger. What did you expect to happen when you called me? I have no jurisdiction in Switzerland." Gilles laid it all out again. "Look. I have some cash. They probably will accept francs, hopefully the cabbies. But I'll go to the hotel, get some money changed, and you'll just have to follow him. He knows me too well."

Any real evidence they obtained would be tainted by several things, not least of which was the unofficial nature of it, plus the fact that having a civilian doing part of the legwork was pretty much forbidden by all the canons of the trade. Yet he had no choice, and if they actually got anything interesting, there might be another, more properly legalistic way of getting something that would stand up in a court of law. Most likely it was nothing anyway. Gilles could think of a hundred reasons why Babineaux might reasonably go to Switzerland. He didn't really have to answer to anybody.

"What if he spots me?" Roger was adamant.

"Chat him up!" Gilles was equally adamant. "Better you than me. That would be a dead giveaway."

"What if he really is a killer?"

"Look, as soon as he gets to a hotel, go to ground and call me. I'll be there as quickly as I can. If he goes somewhere else, keep following him." Gilles pressed a package, a couple of beef sandwiches wrapped up in colourful waxed paper into his hands. "We really don't have time for this, Roger."

It was too early in the morning for this sort of thing, but in the event, all of their carefully-laid plans came to naught. The subject caught a cab right outside the station and all they could do was to tag along in another taxi. It was singularly uninspired. Some time passed in muted suspense, but then the taxi ahead signaled a turn.

"We're in the heart of the financial district." Roger's quiet announcement confirmed Gilles' suspicions.

"Are they open on a Saturday?"

"Private counsel by appointment, and some of the banks, for sure."

It was hard to say what it all meant. They trundled in between buses and trucks, momentarily losing sight of the other cab. Gilles dug in his pocket as Roger leaned over the seat in front.

"I think that might be our friend!" He pointed excitedly at a black saloon car with a yellow sign on top. "We're supposed to be meeting up with him. Our train was late and I think he left in disgust."

Gilles proffered a wad of small bills over the man's shoulder.

It disappeared quickly into an inner pocket.

"I'm still leaving the meter on." The admonition was greeted by thin smiles and hearty nods from the men in the back.

"No problem." Roger seemed to have taken charge in terms of travel and local transportation, although Gilles probably could have managed on his own.

"Nice town." Gilles was trying to make conversation, while completely familiar with how odd it must or could look.

Perhaps the man bought into it, but they would never know. A lot of people were bilingual in Geneva.

"It looks like we're here, or wherever your friend is going." The driver looked at them in the mirror. "The Credit Suisse."

After a quick and non-verbal consultation, Roger got out. Gilles waited in the car for a moment, and then told the man to drive another block or two after watching Roger's elegant back and hat disappear into the gleaming front doors of one of the most famous banks in the world.

Then he asked the fellow to pull over and made sure he had enough for the fare. He walked back on the opposite side of the street. With a little luck, he could find a good vantage point and wait for somebody to come out again. He hoped for luck. He hoped it wouldn't be too long. His back ached, his head swam with the scenarios, and his belly rumbled in complaint, as this morning they were afraid to take a chance on the dining car. There were a few stops on the way into Geneva, and Babineaux might exit the train at any one of them.

It might be a long day in a strange town with not much to do but to try and blend in and not draw unwanted attention. In three minutes he was across the street, loitering in a doorway, chain-smoking Roger's last few cigarettes and wondering just what in the hell he had gotten himself into. One way or another, he had some explaining to do when he got back to Paris. Another thing, sooner or later they might find a telephone and let somebody know where he was and what was going on.

Checking in a window, Gilles was grateful to see that at least in terms of physical appearance he fit the profile of a half a dozen other men in the area. Not everyone was in the typical banker's garb of pin-striped suits with a bowler hat and an umbrella. He'd always thought that an English affectation, but it seemed to hold true here as well.

Trying to watch the doors of the bank while trying to do look like he was doing everything else could wear on a man after a while.

***

Babineaux spent a half an hour in the bank and then came out with Roger not far behind, sporting a full-colour brochure and a confident look. He imperiously waved at the first cab, then in a moment of amiable confusion, offered to share it with Babineaux! But Babineaux must have asked where he was going, and Roger in a moment of decision made something up.

Babineaux waved over another passing cab as Roger took his time about getting in the one he had engaged. With a look at Gilles, he made a motion with his hand and then seemed to be consulting with the driver. Gilles began sauntering across the street in a moment clear of traffic and watched the cab bearing Babineaux ease into the stream and then zoom off. Gilles thought that neither the driver, nor the occupant, looked back in the mirror, but one can never be sure.

He opened up the door and dropped in with a sigh. Pedestrians passed on the sidewalk, oblivious to all but their own fates. Gilles wondered how the guilty found life in a city, where you were on display at all times, and everybody ignored you. It probably made them as paranoid as all hell.

"Driver. Follow our friend in the other car." Roger nodded at Gilles. "How have you been?"

It was an attempt at humour, perhaps an attempt at subtlety. Roger's Swiss wasn't bad. The driver had ears, after all.

"Fine." Gilles eyeballed the cabbie. "So."

"So." Roger was holding something back for later. "Yes."

He turned half sideways on the seat.

"We're going to another place. It's right nearby. He didn't recognize me, or if he did, he's damned good." The driver ignored them, but Gilles wondered how good his French might be in this international centre. "I did recognize the name of the firm. He was quite open about it."

"Ah." There wasn't much to be said, but this was one of the nightmares of working with someone completely untrained.

Roger was scribbling away at a notebook as they motored along about fifty metres behind the other cab.

"Here's the name. Les Societe Anonyme des Marchands." Roger gave him a look. "One of our more active friends on the Exchange."

Gilles pondered the meaning of all this.

For all he knew, Babineaux was travelling on official company business. That was the trouble when a case went cold—you never knew what was a crucial moment. They simply didn't have the time or the means to tail every single person involved twenty-four hours a day.

"Oh, look, Gilles." The place where Babineaux's cab stopped was an unremarkable building, with gold lettering on the front windows, up on the second floor overlooking the street.

Fairly bright interiors with white venetian blinds on every window gave a professional impression of solidity and trust. The lower level was all shops and cafes.

"Hmn." Gilles was keeping an open mind.

This was giving few clues and no inspiration.

"Pull up a little farther on." It was Roger's turn to proffer a thick wad of small bills.

The driver took one look, noting the French francs and the beaming face of Roger. He gave Gilles a quick look and took the money.

"All right, gentlemen." It was all he said as he put it away in a bulging wallet.

"Can you adjust that mirror a little bit?" Roger had the right idea.

"But of course, sirs."

Perhaps he had seen it all before.

Chapter Twenty

When Gilles arrived back at the office

When Gilles arrived back at his office two and a half days later, he was well-rested and refreshed.

They had returned to Paris the previous afternoon and he had plenty of time to lie up and finally take care of the persistent stubble on his face. It was strangely deflating to find the office empty, although there was a lingering haze of cigarette smoke, the usual overflowing ashtrays, and still-wet coffee rings on the desks, including his own. He'd have to speak to them about that.

He was just settling in when Andre sauntered in, gave him a curt nod and sat down to go through a stack of case notes. Then Le Bref came in.

"Hello." He took a chair behind another desk, and sat sipping a scalding hot cup of coffee while staring dreamily out the window.

Gilles was just opening his mouth to speak when Henri entered, bearing a pair of cups. He brought one over and put it on the corner of the desk.

"Boss." His good-morning nod was cheerful yet reserved, unusually so for Henri.

"All right, all right." Someone must have seen him coming, perhaps looking out the window at the time, and they were having a little bit of fun with him. "So—"

"So. Where were you? And why didn't you call home? God, I hope it was a woman." Andre spoke in resignation and despair, although he wasn't much of an actor.

Gilles sighed.

"No, it wasn't a woman." There were snickers from the others. "Look, I'm sorry—"

But there was to be no appeasing them.

Henri, at his most insufferable now that he had sufficient justification, sat on the corner of Le Bref's desk, and put his hands up to his temples. His eyes rolled back and his mouth went slack in some abominable parody of a medium's trance.

"Ah...ah, he followed somebody. Babineaux! And he's only just returned to tell us the gory details. Am I right, Inspector?"

"Yes, damn you! How did you know that?" He was almost impressed.

"Easy. We called the plant looking for Babineaux and his secretary said he was sick. When you didn't show up, we sort of put two and two together, bearing in mind there wasn't a whole lot of activity at his home. His wife said he went to work as usual, but got tied up late in meetings and had to stay overnight. That was Saturday morning. You weren't at home, either. We only made a few calls. We, ah, didn't want to give the game away. We've been sitting on pins and needles ever since." Andre beamed at him from across the way. "So, Gilles. What happened? Where did you go?"

The three pairs of eyes regarding him were steely in their determination, both to have a good time and get his story without further delay.

"I see, yes. It would have to be something like that." Gilles swung his legs up and put his feet on the corner of his own desk. "So Monsieur Babineaux has been lying to his wife as well? Interesting."

"What must she be thinking right now?" Henri shrugged in a kind of mockery.

Babineaux had taken some personal risks with his wife. Interesting. For a brief moment of time he enjoyed the sight of them all grinding their jaws and looking at each other in consternation.

"He isn't going to tell!" Henri approached with hands extended as if he was either going to strangle Gilles, or tickle him to death in an attempt to pry loose the secrets locked up inside of his head.

"I'm waiting for a call from Roger Desjarlais. In the meantime, someone takes notes while I talk."

Henri raced back to his seat to grab a pen and paper, all eyes and ears at this announcement.

"Roger Desjarlais?" Andre perhaps understood the significance a little better than Henri, while Le Bref just smiled amiably, licking his lips and waiting.

"You mean Babineaux is dirty? Financially?" Henri caught on fast. "I suspected all along, of course."

This remark raised a hoot that could be heard on the next floor, which he seemed to consider suitable reward for his efforts if his subsequent grin was anything to judge by.

"We have a little surprise for you too, sir." Le Bref picked up a file and brought it over wordlessly. "When you have a minute."

Gilles flipped it open and read the names and the first three paragraphs.

"Nice." They had found the funeral home, the one missing a corpse.

They had simply asked around in a few places, relying on the rumour mill and gossip to take a hand. They only just got the call this morning.

Andre and Le Bref had signed an application for exhumation, and they confidently expected the coffin to be empty, weighted down with sacks of waste, old clothes, a few bricks, and whatever else the poor bastards doing the job had found to put in there.

Gilles threw his head back and laughed.

"Ah, but that's not the best part." Andre nodded insistently. "Read the last bit on the next page."

Gilles flipped the pages and had a look.

"Incroyable!" But people were often stupid, and drunks stupider than most, and young men the stupidest of all, or so it seemed sometimes.

Less than six blocks away from the scene of the crime, a noisy party of young men from a private military academy had been having a wild party, in a rented room at an inn, not exactly unusual for the type, and had drawn some attention to themselves from the local gendarmes.

"Say it isn't so!" Gilles was smiling like the village idiot after three beers.

"Looks all too true to us." Andre was patiently waiting to deliver the punch line. "When do you want us to pick them up?"

Gilles thought it through. Then his mouth closed again. He shrugged expressively.

"It's not a big priority." He shook his head. "Let me think about it for a while. In the meantime, I have work to do. Gentlemen."

Henri sat up, pencil poised. With that, Gilles proceeded to tell his own story, in as great a detail and with as much precision as he could scrape up from his own rather sparse notes.

***

Gilles stood behind the mirrored glass and observed the proceedings. It was time to delegate a little authority, and also to see how far Henri had progressed.

An unhappy young man sat across the desk from Henri, squirming in his seat. The peremptory summons from the police must have come out of the blue and like a fool he had arrived without a lawyer. At his age, calling his father's solicitors would have brought unwanted complications on the Home Front.

Henri weaseled it out of him. While he was the cadet son of a very prominent family, his bluff and bluster did him no good today. Now the boy, chairman of the Spider's Web, a kind of bad-boy association with deep roots and a long history among the ruling classes at his school, sat there ashen-faced. He was in a lot of trouble and he knew it. Gilles assumed that he had consulted with his colleagues and a consensus had been arrived at: to deny everything, and tell the gendarmes to go to hell. Henri had thoroughly disabused him of that notion.

Laying all the facts before him, pointing out that 'a gang of youths' had broken a window on the mortuary and then pelted off up the street, and how several of them had missed classes the next day, ostensibly due to influenza, but more likely in Henri's opinion due to exhaustion from carrying a body a kilometre and half to the bank of the river...what with the hangovers and all.

And how he and one or two others matched descriptions given by witnesses.

Most of it was bullshit, but the kid didn't know that.

Henri told him the facts, which were that they had become inspired, and came back later and crawled in through the broken window and opened up a coffin. One that had the lid down, but it wasn't nailed on or anything. How they had gotten in as a prank, but then someone made a suggestion, and in their drunken irresponsibility had stolen the body and walked off with it. How they had tossed it in the river from off of a bridge, most likely the nearest one, suitably embellished in the form of a little money, and an empty wallet. They didn't really think about it too much, or they would have realized that corpses were embalmed.

He had threatened the lad with fifteen years on Devil's Island, and that was the thin end of the wedge that found the chink in the boy's armour. He had obviously heard some stories about the place. The word, 'homosexuals,' clearly scared the shit out of the young would-be warrior. He had a suitably graphic imagination. When Henri shoved a piece of paper across the table, saying it was both an admission of guilt and a promise of restitution, the boy broke down and cried.

"What I'm saying, is that all you have to do is accept responsibility, and admit that it was wrong. I have better things to do, believe me. Take up a collection among your friends." Henri took a long hard look at the young fellow, with silence hard on the air. "Would you like to speak to your father?"

The boy's horrified look said it all. His father sat in the Chamber of Deputies.

"I'll sign." His voice was low and broken.

"Can you and your friends stay out of trouble for the next two years?"

The fellow's face dropped after some consideration.

"How about six months, then?" Henri had the hint of a laugh in his voice, but he resisted the urge to glance at the window. "I guess that's all we can hope for, eh? After that, all bets are off!"

The boy raised his head and looked at the paper.

"Go ahead, boy. Just get it over with and make sure you pay the people, okay? I will be checking up on you. My boss will be checking up on me, just so you know."

"Yes, sir." The young man signed, and then Henri pointed at the door.

"Get out."

The young man took him at his word and wasted not a moment's time in vacating his chair and the interview room, face flushed with what was hopefully some sense of shame. Whether it was from the rough talk by Henri, or simply the fact that they had been caught and somehow would have to pay for hundreds of man-hours of police work, an exhumation, and the damage to the window, was of no concern to Gilles.

Henri had scared the crap out of him, and that was the main thing. As for whether or not it would do any good, only time would tell.

Henri came out as Gilles opened his door.

"Good work, Henri." He slapped him on the arm on the way by and headed back to his office to think about things and hopefully tidy up some loose ends.

"Thank you, Inspector." The look on his face was priceless.

Henri was shaping up, and Gilles didn't begrudge the odd compliment to a man who was working hard and learning on the job.

He had an appointment with Chiappe in fifteen minutes or so.

***

With a face like that, the boss had better stay out of trouble. Pushing that thought aside, Gilles made his report. Chiappe had a lean and hungry look, as always.

Jean Chiappe's big office befitted his status, but was hardly palatial. It was still a room for work, albeit a different kind of work, for his role included staff promotions, political considerations, and in keeping responsible oversight over the daily activities of the men and women under his command.

He had deep, comfortable chairs, for which Gilles was grateful. A cold drink, with genuine ice-cubes, stood at his elbow on a small round gilt and marble stand. Smoke curled up from his cheroot as he spoke, permeating the air with its acrid smell.

The boss and his assistant, Gerard, listened intently. Word had it that Gerard was going back into regular duties. No one could say if this was a reward or punishment. It was just the talk around the building.

"Babineaux was angry when this Charles Leroux, a purely nominal figure, was appointed a seat on the board of directors, a seat he felt he should have had?"

"Mostly speculation on our part." The admission came easily enough.

Leroux was an old family friend of the Duval clan, and had a seat on a number of other company boards. Gerard scribbled notes as Maintenon talked. People said that Chiappe couldn't type worth a damn. Perhaps it was true, but why he should have to do his own typing anyway was a mystery to Gilles.

"Yes. That's our theory so far, but it makes some sense." Gilles consulted his notes. "And this was after only two or three years of service with the firm. He thought he was the indispensable man. Look at the meticulous paper trail that he has left for us. When he signed his agreement of employment, he elected to take stock instead of a cash bonus. He has an insufferable ego, which he carefully suppresses in public. He is aware of his weaknesses."

"And this shell company in Geneva?" Chiappe nodded in comprehension. "Not the first time, eh, Gilles?"

"He might have done this before." Or something like it, perhaps not including murder on those occasions. "Very quietly, he had already accumulated just under ten percent of Duval Industries, and the ease of doing so must have given him cause to think. Once he had enough shares, he might have been eligible for a seat on the board. More importantly, he saw a chance to own a significant part of the firm and then he would literally own a piece of Theodore Duval. This must have been very attractive to one such as Babineaux, who is a bit of a megalomaniac on certain matters, including what he thought was his due."

Babineaux had a sense of entitlement.

"I see. You have arrested Babineaux, but you found no physical evidence in his office or home?" Chiappe winced at that one. "And of course the Swiss authorities are notoriously uncooperative when it comes to crimes of international finance, especially when one of their most famous banks is involved."

"Yes. They're also a haven for just such shell companies as Babineaux was using. They pay nominal taxes, and there are fees involved, often granted to concessionaires for the re-selling of permits and licenses."

"Of course." Jean-Baptiste gave a jerk of the head.

"Monsieur Babineaux has one key on his chain which he cannot account for."

Chiappe eyed him curiously.

"What of it?"

"He says he can't recall, but I find it interesting that he would answer that question, while pointedly refusing to answer our questions about his little trip to Switzerland. The Societe Anonyme des Marchands isn't returning our calls, incidentally."

"And it doesn't fit anything at the Duval household?"

"No."

"It doesn't fit Alexis' apartment, or a garden shed somewhere?" Chiappe was merely trying to be helpful, but Gilles grinned at the thought processes. "Roger has been very quiet."

Roger Desjarlais took a deep breath.

"Wasn't this whole thing about a key to begin with? And yet it's never been anything but irrelevant." The assistant Gerard, pen poised, looked from one to the other.

"It has also been useful, if only in getting us a warrant." Chiappe looked at Gilles. "Right?"

"No. It is relevant. I would imagine that Babineaux was at one of Duval's parties, perhaps a new product launch, or merely an evening with friends. He went rummaging around in a kitchen drawer, looking for a cork-screw or something, and that key gave him ideas. Trust me, this was premeditated murder—not a moment of passion. He had it all plotted out before he ever set foot in the place."

"And. Alain took the billiards table." Chiappe tilted his head from side to side in contemplation.

It was a lucky break. The Duvals loved billiards. Alain couldn't decide whether to sell the house or not, but he grabbed that table.

"Most cases couldn't be solved without the assistance of the public, Gilles."

When Alain sank a ball in a corner pocket, but it only rolled part way down the return tube, the solo game he was playing was rudely interrupted. Alain, frustrated at first, but then becoming curious, called a service company. Their technician quickly found the source of the problem. Someone had shoved a rolled-up children's school scribbler down into it, filled with columns of numbers in Theo Duval's loose and idiosyncratic handwriting.

The numbers bore a strong correlation to Babineaux's bonuses, and his subsequent purchases of stock, as well as the stock purchases of the shell company. The inference was that Theo had confronted Babineaux, probably by telephone, with evidence of his perfidy, although it wasn't on the face of it illegal. What it was, was sneaky. Babineaux knew his game was up and went to the train station in Lyons immediately.

"A man like Theo Duval wouldn't have liked that at all, and it was a simple matter of extension to infer some sort of confrontation. When the time came, Duval was working in the studio. Babineaux got the gun from the unlocked drawer. It really says something about him, but I think he stuck it in his mouth and made him beg..."

It was clear enough even though Babineaux was denying everything and had engaged a lawyer.

"So you checked at the train station?"

"Yes. That will be the final nail in his coffin. Babineaux actually arrived the night before. He tore up the ticket stub, or got rid of it in some other way. This was a man who was conscientious about saving receipts and the like for his expense account, and as a matter of fact it looks like the only one unaccounted for. It's out of character for Babineaux. This is hardly conclusive. But we have a positive identification from several witnesses. It was a slow night insofar as large numbers of passengers are concerned, and he arrived very late. He is always extremely well dressed. There is little doubt that it was him. We're looking for a certain cab driver. It's prime turf there. Dozens of cabs come and go at peak times. There are big firms, small firms, and then the privateers, but they all know each other, and sooner or later we'll find the one who took him to Duval's."

They were also conducting inquiries in Lyons.

"Gilles, how did Babineaux get into the house unobserved by anyone else?" Chiappe's eyes glinted at him over the rim of his glass.

Gilles sighed, shoulders slumping slightly.

"I'm thinking he used the key under the mat by the back door in the alley?"

"What? Whoa! No one mentioned that before." Chiappe was shocked.

"No." Gilles had a look of anger and regret. "It was the one obvious question we forgot to ask. How in the hell did the killer get in? But of course I kept thinking of someone actually in the building already. I'm very sorry about that, and I take full responsibility. Monsieur Babineaux is a clear thinker. As I said, the key in the kitchen drawer gave him some ideas. In all likelihood, wearing gloves the whole time, he simply dropped it back in on the way out. He was cool enough, I suppose."

"What about the Moroccans?" Chiappe had a point, but Gilles was satisfied with his case.

He shrugged in a non-committal fashion.

"We'll offer him life imprisonment, and ask him the question. But first, he can have a few weeks in a cell to think about it. It might actually be completely unrelated. We're asking around. If someone dirty gets picked up on another matter, the information will be a bargaining chip for them. They'll sacrifice Babineaux, or whoever, for their own hide. It's a good bet."

"All right, Gilles. And thank you for your help, Roger. We couldn't have done this without your inspiration."

Roger gave a nod of acknowledgement.

"Well, ah, Gilles does deserve a lot of credit. If he hadn't gone along with it, I probably would have just turned around and gone home."

"That's why we keep him around." Chiappe exchanged a look with Gerard, who glanced quickly at his watch.

Then they stood and engaged in a brief round of congratulations, the chief and his men. It was all over bar the shouting.

Chapter Twenty-One

Another long day faded into night

Another long day was fading into night. Gilles closed up his office door with a sigh and a sense of real accomplishment. For some reason, the usual dread of going home was absent. He exited the building, almost relieved that he saw no one he knew, and yet surely word had gone around the building about the arrest of Eduard Babineaux and the successful resolution of another case. It was not like he needed their acclaim.

It was all up to the courts now, and a jury of Eduard's peers.

The life of the city went on, and the worst position a man could find himself in was to not have a friend in the world. People were people, essentially, and they would do what they would do, some for the better, and some for the worst. They all sought their own natural level, and every single one of them had earned their fate. He wondered if that thought was what made him different. The truth was, that he did have one or two friends. The thought brought a gush to his midriff. He was luckier than most, and it was best to try and keep it in mind.

While few on the pavement dared to make eye contact, intent upon their own business or some internal misery, he peered into the faces, acknowledging that in some ways he loved them all.

It was better than hating everyone, and in some indescribable fashion he realized that he loved himself as well. It was a big improvement, and he wondered just what had happened to cause this change in attitude. But he was no longer exclusively wrapped up in himself. He was thinking about other people again, and you couldn't argue that it wasn't his job, for surely it was.

He thought of Henri, who looked up to him almost as a god, and yet didn't let it faze him. He thought of Andre, and LeBref, and Le Clerc, and above all, Chiappe. He thought of Alexis and Yvonne, and Madame Fontaine, and Monsieur Charpentier. He thought of a few others, closer to home.

The faces in the crowd of pedestrians told a thousand stories and implied a thousand mysteries, and that was good, for when you stopped caring life was over and you might as well die. He walked for the sake of walking, not caring about anything for a while.

Maintenon stuck his hand in his pocket, and felt some coins, and his wallet bulged as it did every pay period, at least until he got home and began paying the bills. On the other hand, he couldn't remember the last time he was actually short of cash. Maybe he could loosen up a little, but the peasant values he had been raised with died hard.

There was a cab sitting idle by the curb. Gilles went over and tapped on the window. The driver leaned over and rolled the window down.

"Yes, sir?"

"Do you know where the Ham Bone is?"

The driver smiled.

"Yes, sir, I do. Would you like to go there?"

"Yes. Would you like a sandwich? And a beer, or maybe a good cup of coffee?" This spontaneous impulse didn't appear to surprise the fellow at all.

He grinned, and gave a quick nod. That's what they said about cops and cabbies—that they had seen it all, and who knows, maybe it was true.

"Sure. Why not?" The man was about thirty-five, and he seemed genuinely cheerful, even glowing with a ruddy good humour and a sense of his own fortune.

It could have been worse.

His hand came up and he turned on the meter with what appeared to be a kind of reluctance.

Maintenon settled in and closed the door with a sigh of gratitude, and with a quick glance in the mirror and also over his shoulder, the driver eased the car out into the busy evening traffic. For the driver, who gave him an appreciative glance in the mirror, perhaps liking what he saw or at least feeling not too threatened by it, it was just another day and another dollar, and another day closer to death, and in the meantime, he had a living to make and there was no point in not enjoying it as best he could.

Perhaps this was the secret of life after all. You did the best that you could with what you had, and when it was all done and over with, you let it go.

The End

Louis Shalako began writing for community newspapers and industrial magazines. His stories appear in publications including Perihelion Science Fiction, Bewildering Stories, Aurora Wolf, Ennea, Wonderwaan, Algernon, Nova Fantasia, and Danse Macabre. He lives in southern Ontario and writes full time.

http://shalakopublishing.weebly.com

