The Art of Murder (4 page)

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.