The Art of Murder (10 page)

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?”