The Art of Murder (7 page)

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.”