Speak Softly My Love (30 page)

Gilles
looked at Tailler and Hubert.

“
And how would you gentlemen like to proceed?”

Tailler
looked at Hubert, who sat up straight and glanced down at his
briefing notes.

“
Let’s bring the ladies in on charges and see if we can shake
anything loose. Hopefully, if they’re innocent, and yet know
something, anything, they’ll talk. If they’re any kind of
accessory, we’ll have them in custody. Let them feel the pressure
for a while. They’ll talk.”

Levain
piped up for the first time.

“
Here’s what gets me. The ladies. How do you figure that part
worked?”

Hubert
nodded.

“
He’s got all that figured out.”

Tailler
glowed a little.

It shone
out of him.

“
Ah, yes, Andre. Monsieur Godeffroy could have told the one in
Lyon that he and Monique were getting a divorce—he would say that
she had gone to live with her mother or something like that. The
wife went nuts. I stuck her in the asylum. My uncle Albert left me
some money, but he’s a strict Catholic. If he hears I’m divorced,
he’ll cut me off.
Whatever.
He would have told them whatever they needed to
hear. He is nothing if not subtle. He would have
ideas,
this man. He
might have suggested that he had to sell the place in Lyon to pay
the ex-wife off. A lady living in Lyon might have been happy to
move to Paris. A man like that would have thought of something
convincing. She already knew she had a false passport, she was
already in that so-called marriage, one she knew to be bogus. He
would have been able to pull it off.”

“
And the one known as Zoe, and now, as you say, claiming to be
Lucinde?”

“
Pretty much the same deal, Inspector. He would tell her, ah,
that his wife had left him and why not come to Lyon? He would give
her another big story. See, Inspector, she,
she
thinks he lives in Lyon. The guy
lies like a rug. Seriously. Her employer says she just stopped
coming to work one day. This was before, a few days before all of
this started to happen. How much she knows, is anybody’s guess. The
neat thing, Inspector, is that neither one of them really had to
know anything.” He went on. “Psychologically, they were sort of
screwed, sir. They knew what they were doing was somehow not quite
right, in the social sense. It was not so much criminal in their
eyes, it was merely unconventional, something of a potential
embarrassment. This would leave them, especially women of a certain
class, a certain
mindset,
a kind of mental hostage to Didier. I suspect a
very controlling influence. As soon as we started sniffing around,
they knew something was up. But they had no choice but to keep
playing their parts. Soon as we start sniffing around, they would
become very
protective
of Didier—with nothing but their dignity to fall back on.
They were also protecting themselves. Soon as they saw the body in
the morgue, they must have been shitting bricks and wondering what
the hell was going on.”

“
The fact that they are lying about their names
suggests
something,
otherwise. You still haven’t tied up all the threads yet,
gentlemen. Although I admit you’re doing well. So why did one say
the dead male was him, and the other one say it was?”

“
Because they knew something was up—but we were telegraphing
all our punches. They had no information, and each did the best
they could in an unknown situation. It had to be one or the other,
Inspector. The two women simply reacted differently, each in their
own way.” Hubert looked pleased with this supposition.

Tailler
wasn’t the only one who could speculate, his manner seemed to
imply.

“
So. We figure Didier had the germ of an idea, already. He’d
probably met with the blackmailer at least once. Probably put him
off, told him to go to hell. When the crunch came, he was
desperate. The idea happened—I can’t put it any better than that,
and he initiated a plan that was so crazy, so
absurd
, that it might have actually
worked. More than anything, I think he just decided to kill the
guy. And then make it
work
, somehow. Once Monique—the real
Monique, saw the papers, she must have wondered. She must have seen
the papers. She never let on to us, which was what killed her. At
that point,
she
became a threat. There are two separate bodies, and we have
two separate motives. Didier was just making it up as he went
along, sir. Psychologically, there may be a term for it. Whatever
it was, he must have had it real bad.”

Tailler
stared at Gilles, who grinned slightly under the gaze.

“
What was the clincher for me, sir. Didier nipped back to
Molsheim, did some business—all confirmed by Gaston e Cie. He
bought a shit-load of product, and in a very short time,
apparently. He bought a ticket to Paris, and with a bit of quick
thinking, called ahead and got Monique to meet him downtown for a
romantic getaway. We’ve got the day, the time, the ticket-clerk,
and the conductor. He had to get her out of the way first, then get
the
other
ladies
to move on short notice.”

They were convinced the ladies knew
something.

“
Well?” Hubert was on pins and needles. “Some of this might be
backed up by their dental records. Now that we know what we’re
looking for—and why we’re looking for it.”

“
Well, what?”

Tailler’s beady little eyes were upon him.

“
Can we bring them in, sir?”

Maintenon tipped his head on an angle and gave Levain and
Firmin a look. There was a kind of unspoken consensus visible in
their faces. Firmin shrugged and then shrugged again. Levain chewed
on that blasted pencil…

He
caught Gilles’ eye on him and stopped.

“
Sure. Why not.” Maybe they could get to the bottom of this
thing after all. “Let’s see what they have to say for
themselves.”

A coffin
only needed so many nails. As for the guillotine, that only took
one little trip of the lever, and the sometimes surprisingly
cheerful acquiescence of a jury of one’s peers.

“
Hopefully you gentlemen can connect a few more of the
dots.”

“
Yes, sir.” Hubert grabbed the phone.

His
first call would be Lyon. He and Tailler would pick up so-called
Lucinde personally.

Gilles
sat there watching through lidded eyes, hand clasped across his
belly, which was beginning to rumble.

Both of
them were very highly-talented detectives. They had a lot of
potential. Talent was no substitute for hard work, observing proper
procedures and that painstaking attention to detail.

Their
case, while coming together, was messy—very messy.

Attention to detail had saved his own ass more than
once.

It was a lesson that
once
learned,
would never leave
them.

Chapter
Twenty-Three

It had
suddenly come to Hubert. The solution to all of their
problems.

It was
just so damned simple.

Tailler
was interviewing the one known as Lucinde. He was asking simple,
innocuous questions about her hometown. She was putting him off as
best she could. Her answers were very general, vague even. They
were a little too vague for someone who had allegedly lived there
in Lyon for many years.

Their
voices were muffled on the other side of a panel of one-way
glass.

The girl
stood in breathless silence.

“
Well?”

Hubert
and Maintenon stood beside Ada Bellerose, brought in from Molsheim
by Jeannine, back on the case, and LeBref, who barely came up to
her shoulder.

She
gulped, not really knowing what was going on.

“
Can you tell us who that is, Mademoiselle?”

She
cleared her throat.

“
Yes. That—that is Zoe Godeffroy.”

Maintenon took her arm.

“
Thank you, Mademoiselle. That will be all.”

Hubert
tapped on the glass. Two faces turned to look at the mirror on
their side. The lady was very pale as Tailler went back to the
questioning.

***

“
Monsieur Godeffroy.”

The
gentleman had his lawyer present. Tailler and Hubert sat on one
side of the table and the two of them sat on the other.

Hubert
was letting Tailler handle this part. Emile had definitely earned
it.

“
It seems to us, gentlemen, that Monsieur Godeffroy has three
options.”

Those
blue-black eyes stared across the table as the attorney, a Monsieur
Pichon, shifted in his chair. It was the face from the pictures,
even some of the pictures of the other guy—the dead one.

The
lawyer’s briefcase was on the table between them, unopened. His
jacket, hand-stitched, looked thick and soft in a kind of
multi-coloured grey weave of Italian make.

The
attorney spoke.

“
And what might they be?”

His
intelligent glittered behind thin silver glasses. For professional
reasons, he was completely composed, although his client bore the
signs of nervousness.

“
You can take your chances and go to trial.”

Tailler
waited.

“
You can go to trial, plead your innocence, and who knows—you
might walk away a free man. Or face the guillotine.”

Tailler
paused again, looking into those eyes.

“
Or you can plead guilty, get up on the stand, and tell some
big sob story. You can blame somebody else, claim self defense,
whatever. Talk about the blackmailer threatening you. Hell, it
might have happened, right? Even we can see that. Extenuating
circumstances, throw yourself on the mercy of the court.” The
gentleman might plead to manslaughter, or a homicide in the lesser
degree. “At the very least, you avoid the death penalty. If you’re
lucky. You might get parole in about forty years…”

“
Or?”

Tailler
relaxed.

“
One of our concerns is for the ladies. Lucinde has children.
They, at least, are real. With a little cooperation from you, sir,
we could maybe let them off the hook—we could try and keep the
children out of the limelight.” Tailler was hoping he would go for
it. “They are your children after all.”

Didier’s
face fell into his hands and he sobbed.

“
We can recommend to the public prosecutor, twenty-five years,
with the possibility of parole after twenty. Time off for good
behaviour. Devil’s Island, which, on reflection, might be better
than a metropolitan prison…n’est pas?”

He would
at least get to see the light once in a while. He could have his
own garden and grow vegetables, beets and things.

Tailler
stopped. He swallowed. He looked down at the notes before him.
Didier’s eyes had already fallen. The dead weren’t the only
victims. There were also the living.

“
May I speak with my client?”

“
Certainly, sir. We need for Didier to be very clear on
this.”

Without
hesitation, Tailler and Hubert pushed their chairs back. Hubert
tapped on the door and there came the ringing of keys and the clunk
of big tumblers.

It was
in the lap of the gods at this point.

***

It was another morning, the start of another brand-new day.
Over the course of time, busy as
hell
they were lately, they all
blended into one, or so it seemed.

Tailler
came in, with snow on the shoulders of his coat and on the wide
brim and peak of his battered grey fedora. The radiators along the
front wall steamed with a collection of hats and gloves laid there
in the forlorn hope of drying out before they were needed
again.

He hung
it up, turning and rubbing his hands.

“
What’s up?”

They
were all mostly there, including Archambault, looking a pale and
wan shadow of his former self, and even LeBref.

Levain
looked up from his desk.

“
Have you seen the papers?”

“
Ah, yes, I have.” Tailler grinned and made a little mock
bow.

Didier
Godeffroy, having made an agreed-upon statement of the facts, had
pleaded guilty before the court and had been convicted of two
homicides. His written confession was very detailed, including the
real names of Lucinde and her dead husband.

Didier
Godeffroy was all over the front pages. Tailler and Hubert were
there too, as well as some other important mentions.

Didier
was awaiting his official sentencing, but there was little reason
to doubt that he’d be on the boat to Devil’s Island in pretty short
order. It was one for the history books now.