Speak Softly My Love (29 page)

They had
their exhibits lined up, neatly tagged, bagged, labeled and
identified. When the team from Lyon came bounding down the hallway
with their boxes and materials, they were rapidly redirected by
Firmin to the appropriate room.

Tailler had taken to calling it a
think tank.

Gilles
and Levain were off on a case of their own, but after a noisy
greeting, the small group settled down. There were just Hubert,
Firmin, and Tailler. The gendarmes had been sent back, with some
effusive thanks, to whatever duties they had originally been pulled
from.

Now it
was just a case of making sense of what they had.

Tailler
stood awed for a moment as Firmin and Hubert hunched over the
phone, and mumbled away at their one and only clear desk in the
corner.

With
fingerprints, hairs, shaving kits, bloodstains, bodies,
time-tables, railroad and the killer’s as well, it had become
fairly overwhelming.

“
Oh, boy.”

This was
going to take some doing—he knew what must have happened, what
could have happened, what might have happened. Now they just needed
to prove it.

First
things first.

Fingerprints.

***

It was time for
les enfants
terrible
to spell it out.

“
Are you ready to tell me what happened yet,
Emile?”

“
Yes, Inspector.”

Hubert
nodded firmly.

Sure. Why not.

Hubert
began.

“
Well, sir. We have Didier Godeffroy’s fingerprints all over,
all three domiciles. We have hairs from his head, most likely,
according to preliminary analysis. It’s difficult to see where else
they might have come from. We’ve asked around and there are no
other interesting males in any of the women’s lives. We have
Didier’s whiskers from the razors. What’s interesting, is that with
the decedent from the river, the look-alike, we can’t find his
prints anywhere in any of the premises.”

Reports stated the unidentified victim’s whiskers, were in
general thicker and perhaps a bit darker than the real Didier’s.
This part did sort of throw doubt on all other evidence regarding
whiskers, as it was simply not possible to be conclusive. All their
experts agreed on
that.

“
I see.”

“
Okay. This is where it gets fun, Inspector. I have to admit,
it took me a while to figure it out.”

Hubert
raised his hand like a schoolboy.

“
I give Emile full credit for that—this is all his idea,
Inspector.”

Gilles
snorted gently, as Levain grinned and Firmin gave Hubert a blank
stare. The young detective coloured slightly and shut
up.

Tailler
looked shy for a moment, but then plunged on.

“
Okay. The lady in the Rive Gauche—her prints are all over the
Paris residence of Didier Godeffroy. And the hotel room—and nowhere
else. Yet they
were
on the ticket stub, although the ladies of a certain class
still favour gloves, and the weather was cool that day. They were
on the letter.” He cleared his throat. “So—she had gloves with her.
She came in wearing a spring and fall jacket. I noticed it at the
time. The stations are cold inside, and she would have bought the
ticket and stuck the stub in her purse. She might have been wearing
gloves—or, more usually people just toss them.”

Train
stations and the sidewalks around them were littered with just such
cancelled stubs.

Gilles
pursed his lips and even Firmin looked impressed.

“
Go on, my dear boy. Go on.”

Tailler
stammered and cleared his throat.

“
What’s interesting is that the prints from the body in the
Rive Gauche don’t match any of the prints in the Zoe passport. But
all the passports are a mess of mostly unidentifiable smudges. When
we look further, we can match up prints from Zoe’s house, to
fragmentary prints on the Zoe passport. Did I get that
right?”

He was
pretty sure he had. He glanced through his notes, but that was what
it said. He tried again.

“
Now, eliminating the maid and the cook and one or two prints
that clearly don’t belong to anybody—I’m a bit unsure there, but
surely Monique, and even Lucinde, couldn’t have been that isolated.
The most perfect servant will miss the odd print when cleaning,
waxing and dusty. But they can linger for quite a
while—”

Gilles
coughed and he broke off.

“…
getting right to the point, sir, is that the prints of the
lady calling herself Monique appear in the Paris household and the
Lyons household.” His eyes went far away. “What’s interesting is
that the servants haven’t been seen in a while. The theory is that
they’ve been let go and any documents are missing
somehow…”

With
none of them talking under advice of counsel, it would take some
time to find them.

Levain
nodded, a quick little jerk of the head.

“
And the fingerprints of the lady calling herself
Lucinde
are found in the
house in Lyon as well as the house in Molsheim. It’s a regular
fucking shell game going on here, sir.”

Gilles
exhaled in a kind of admiration.

“
The body in the park really did get up and walk away. In the
absence of other leads, other reports, it’s the only sensible
explanation. Following Didier’s movements, and we have hotel
confirmations going back quite a ways, there are a couple of big
gaps. There are two big, beautiful windows of opportunity, one for
the Rive Gauche killing. Also. He was out of the house for the
alleged body you found, Inspector. The time frame is perfect. We
have officers interviewing station attendants all up and down the
line, and we expect to get their reports. It would be nice to know
exactly when he left town. So far we’ve turned up nothing. Part of
the problem is that he was actually fairly well-known. He ditched
most of his own ticket stubs—a sensible precaution. Honestly, he
would have had a handful, and that’s just from his regular job.
People are saying that they saw him come and go—can’t remember
when, but he was a regular customer. Maybe we’ll get lucky
there.”

Tailler
tailed off. The truth was, he still had questions.

“
So.”

“
So, ah, sir. The theory is that the look-alike gentleman was
blackmailing Didier.” He cleared his throat. “That’s probably where
the idea originally came from—he remarked upon the resemblance.
Obviously, he had a real thing for blonde women of a certain height
and build.”

Hubert
spoke.

“
The blackmailer may have actually contacted the wife—Monique.
That would precipitate events. He didn’t have to tell her anything,
in fact he probably didn’t.
But she took
the call.
The guy got pushy and called
there—and she picked up. It’s all she had to do. It would put a
hell of a lot of pressure on Didier. It would show that the
blackmailer meant business—or else.”

“
Very well.”

Maintenon looked at Hubert.

“
And that’s our motive?”

“
Oh, yes, sir. Ah…the guy is demanding money. He might have
phoned the house. It’s a big threat. Didier arranges to go and have
a drink with him. That’s what he tells Monique—the real one.
It’s just a guy from work, Honey.
He’s changed clothes, he’s all set to do his
gambit in the park—that shows real inspiration, Gilles. He’s got
some crazy old stiletto—none of them are going to tell us that, are
they? That’s because he had it, a souvenir or something, and of
course Monique is dead. It was from the house in Paris. She can’t
tell us anything now. So. Someone reports a body in the park. Off
he goes. The suit is dark enough, he can go into a bar if needs be,
but I think he met the victim near the river. The guy’s waiting for
a payoff. One quick stab in the guts and in he goes. Didier dumps
the body off the bridge. He could never carry a body there. We
might look for car rentals, certainly no taxi would have taken him.
Not with a dead body, and remained silent. We could ask around, but
dead drunk passengers, ah…maybe. But he could
walk
to the Pont Tolbiac, or get
there by cab fairly quickly. Keep his appointment.”

“
I see. So he arranged to meet the blackmailer near the point
of disposal. What then?”

“
Well, sir, he did have a railway locker key in his possession
upon his arrest. The locker was empty—he probably had a fresh suit
in there. He changed in the rest room, and either ditched the black
suit he was wearing, or took it with him on the train for disposal
somewhere more suitable.” A dark suit wouldn’t show the
blood.

“
At first, he had no idea we would find out about the other
wife—taking off, dead scared probably, he simply forgets or can’t
quite bring himself to call the one in Lyon. When he doesn’t turn
up as expected, she calls the police. Because honestly, there was
nothing about our mystery man in the Lyon papers.” That had been
checked with a long and involved set of phone calls to several Lyon
newspaper offices.

Tailler
had more, admittedly much of it speculation.

The
beauty lies in the details—the Inspector’s own words or so it
seemed.

It was
night and the light in train stations often pretty garish. He could
change in the restroom and sling it out the window, once on the
train and out in the countryside between stations.

“
That explains why our dead man was wearing a different colour
of suit—according to Monique.” There were bloodstains on it, but
mostly washed out by the cold water. “If the guy showed up in a
blue suit, it sure as hell wouldn’t make much difference to
Didier.”

“
Ah, yes, Monique.” They were doing well. “Tell me more about
her.”

“
Okay. She’s the dead one at the Rive Gauche—”

Firmin’s
left eyebrow, unseen by Tailler and Hubert but definitely in
Maintenon’s field of vision, was climbing higher and
higher.

“
Ah.”

“
Yes, sir. It has to be her. One thing we noticed, but didn’t
properly remark upon, was how drawn she was the second time we saw
her. But by this time it wasn’t her at all—it was
Lucinde.”

Firmin
laughed. He shook his head, and picked up a few papers, still
listening though.

Emile
shrugged, face reddening.

He gave
Firmin a look.

“
Yeah, but think. Every time we turn around, we’re being
presented with another beautiful blonde—we’re so busy staring at
their tits and their asses, we can’t see the forest for the trees
kind of thing. No wonder we missed it.”

“
Keep going, gentlemen.”

“
And here’s another thing. Didier was just fucking
praying
that the body
never surfaced. It’s his bad luck that it did, or his plan might
have worked out fairly well.”

It was
true enough, that bodies went into the river and were never seen
again.

Maintenon had to admit, it was ingenious. And they were
right—the blanks could be filled in with some intensive
investigation, now that they knew exactly what they were looking
for.

“
Okay, sir. Interestingly, because we took the case over from
Delorme, those boys never had the chance to show Didier’s picture
around the hotel. They’ve never even seen it, although I’m sure
they got the bulletin. It’s just one of those things. It would
appear completely unrelated to them. Nothing but another pain in
the ass missing-person report. And we were so excited, so busy, I
guess, we never even thought of it.”

There
was a long silence. Gilles closed his eyes, he appeared to be
thinking deeply.

“
So who is our mystery man?”

“
I’m thinking someone connected to Lucinde. That whole set-up
in Lyon stinks to high heaven. Since she is so obviously not his
wife, and the other one, Zoe, wasn’t claiming to be, I have to
wonder if we’ll ever know her real name. She had the newspaper
clipping. I’ll bet that’s Monique in the picture—and she knows it,
too. Zoe, on the other hand, good question. But think about it.
This bozo, our mysterious victim, goes out of the country for a
while. Maybe he’s in jail or something. He and Lucinde—I don’t know
what else to call her, they’re estranged. But they’ve never really
gotten divorced. Years later, he comes back, and he’d dead broke.
Goes back to the old home town, you know. He probably wonders about
the ex-wife. He’s hungry, he’s hurting. He makes inquiries. He sees
them around. He learns they’re living as husband and wife…and he
knows that just can’t be.”

“
He was killed in Paris.”

“
True—but that just shows he knows who Didier
was.
It shows that
Didier was a good target for blackmail—Didier was a successful man
with a good reputation. A guy with a piss-pot full of money. Life
must have seemed very unfair to our blackmailer. And poor old
Didier had a lot to
lose,
Inspector.”