Maintenon: The Dead Man's Touch, Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery #11, Chapter Twenty. Louis Shalako.

Cynthie, strangled in her bed. (Image by #Louis.)

Louis Shalako

Rain loomed on the horizon, the sky was dark and the air heavy.

There had been a couple of dull booms of thunder, and after that, nothing.

Pelletier had dropped Gilles off at his doorstep after a long and fruitless day or so it had seemed.

During the course of the day, they had generated reams of information, most of which would turn out to mean nothing—as usual.

Édouard was beginning to get that part…

The young officer had found a secure place to park the car after hours, which was city property after all, and therefore he could take it home with him…in a manner reminiscent of Alphonse, the older man being something of an influence down in the motor pool. This wasn’t so much about saving him money for the bus, as it meant saving time for everyone, and so it made sense.

As long as Gilles had food, tobacco, coffee, and of course cognac, he would be all right.

And then there was Sylvestre—

Maintenon had felt a moment of guilt, on coming in the door, but surely the animal was used to it, what with being alone all day, and he generally spent at least half of each and every day, right here at home. As for the cat, it spent at least half and probably more of its time sleeping anyways. The animal had just spent the last couple of months with LeBref and family, and no doubt it would take some time to adjust.

“All right, all right.” He fed the animal and got that out of the way.

This was one reason why Gilles habitually left the radio turned on, set down low, twenty-four hours a day. He had a couple of days off, and they could get reacquainted. He could barely hear it from the bedroom, and so it didn’t interfere with the sleep. The cat could listen to Guy Charles and his Orchestra, or whoever. He could sit on the ledge and look out the window, drink water, eat food and poop in his box; and if nothing else, it was some kind of a life, and some kind of a metaphor as well.

He supposed it really was time to set about finding another housekeeper, and yet that depended so much on routine. A routine which he only half remembered, even now, and with that thought came a sharp pain to the head…what he did recall, was that it was also something of a pain in the ass.

Considering the last lady, it was also something of a crap-shoot.

A pain which was random enough, and which had occurred rather less frequently lately, in fact this one was a bit of a surprise. They really had told him to take it easy.

The cat had to be fed, and then he would worry about himself. He could jot down some kind of an ad, and phone that in to the newspaper on Monday morning…there were all kinds of things to be done.

More than anything, those God-damned shoes had to come off—

He had two whole days, the weekend to recover, from his first week back on the job.

Fuck.

On the long drive home from work, which had taken them all over the city, the pair had spoken of many things.

One of which was the experiment, which Pelletier had proposed and Gilles had authorized, due to costs, which was to take place as soon as possible, even though it was the weekend. This involved long strips cut from a roll of white carpet, approximating as closely as possible, the rug in the Boitard residence.

Gilles had good reason to remember the Schleischer case. (A Stranger In Paris, Maintenon Mystery #9)

The other big thing was Maintenon’s own contribution. Pelletier simply didn’t have the information, but Gilles did. This was the fact that in the Schleischer case, the Unit had raided the Paris offices of every major political party in France. This had been barely a year before. While the younger detectives weren’t all that familiar with the case, Gilles himself had very good reason to remember. He could explain all of that later, and probably would. It was a question of what was important for them to know, right now.

Bearing in mind Jardine’s visit to the Croix de Feu, this might be of interest. The fact was, they had copies of all that stuff, which would include memberships, mailing lists and all kinds of correspondence, letters and telegrams, business accounts, even miniature biographies of major figures in the organization in the sense that they were, or might become relevant. Some of it was just hand-out copy for the journalists of course. There would be cancelled cheques and financial records of all kinds.

And the Nazis were nothing if not thorough.

As for the files from the Croix de Feu, that would be about thirty stout cardboard boxes, all of which had been copied, cross-referenced, and deposited in the Archives; the originals all returned to the relevant parties who might have even forgotten about the whole thing by now.

That too could wait for Monday morning.

As for weekends, they had their uses—an enforced absence if nothing else. This was life upon the wicked stage, where most sins were menial if not utterly boring, and devil take the hindmost.

Sooner or later, we all have to die—

There would be plenty of time to think, and that went for both of them.

Maintenon went looking for his bottle of aspirin.

***

Without too many other places to work, they had unlocked their new room, two-oh-seven, and Pelletier and Garnier had gone to work with utility knives and ultimately, a pair of heavy shears to cut up their chunk of lush, pristine white carpet into long strips a half a metre wide.

So far, the contractors hadn’t started on the room, although someone had taken a quick sweep with a broom. Probably Édouard himself, if Gilles was any judge of character.

Pelletier had ordered in a couple of bags of potting soil, commercially available in a hundred shops in town. He’d found a big mixing bowl, either in his mother’s kitchen or more likely a hardware or department store on the way to work. He had his trusty spoon, and a small paint-brush to apply the goop.

And now, it's time for the goop.

He had all those shoes to choose from, and he had picked a size ten, which would fit either Monsieur Boitard or the oldest boy. This was merely a starting point as he put it…

While it might not have been strictly necessary to cut the carpet into strips, Gilles could see the logic in it as the young men mixed up a bowl of muck. There was some logic in the camera, up on its tripod, the lights, augmented by simply grabbing hold and ripping down the horrible old dank curtains, which all had agreed would be going anyways…everything would be properly labeled. If the curtain rods came down with it, so be it.

And off to one side, having found one solitary swivel chair in one of the interview cubicles, sat Roger himself, eyes gleaming in sardonic humour, and knocking ashes off of his cigar onto the tiles beside him.

“All righty, then.” Pelletier took the paint brush, dabbed up a generous portion of thick, sticky mud and began dabbing the bottom of one shoe while Garnier held the other shoe in expectant fashion. “Okay, sirs. Bearing in mind we don’t have the analysis of the potting soil samples back from the lab…hence the multiple strips of carpeting, among other reasons, ah…here we go.”

He would try to get some sort of natural spacing, a normal pattern of footsteps.

With Garnier on the camera, which he had some familiarity with, certainly compared to Pelletier, the young man squatted on his heels and began, painstakingly and methodically, and not without some gentle cussing due to the strain on the knees, to put shoe-print after shoe-print down on what had once been a very nice strip of carpet.

Garnier took a photo, after each and every foot-print, and taking extensive notes besides.

All in a good cause, of course, and not without some expense to the department and consequently to the taxpayers.

“Okay, ah, sirs, as you can see, this in no way really represents what would happen if a person stepped in a mud puddle, right outside the front door as it were, across the lobby and then went up two flights of stairs and down a hallway, which represents a good thirty or forty metres through what is a rather large house…” He had stopped after the third or fourth footprints, having to reapply mud to the shoes, both of them, right and left. “And again, we have what appears to be an impossible crime—or rather, impossible evidence, bearing in mind we do have a dead girl, Cynthie…”

***

And then there were the files—

It was Roger himself who had spoken to housekeeping, getting them a half a dozen folding tables, a couple of stackable chairs in metal tube and birch plywood, even a phone, and their stack of boxes had been all lined up in a row.

He’d made a call or two, and drafted in exactly two policewomen, with Janine, whom Maintenon at least had met before, the senior. Hermione of the silken blonde hair was straight out of the Academy and on her first assignment outside of running errands and making coffee for the boys in the back room, down on the first floor and in behind the reception desk. Their job was a simple one: open up every damned box, and find the membership list, first and foremost. Second would be the mailing list, and third would be their telephone list. Financial records, lists of donors…all that sort of thing. They wanted it all.

After that, depending on what they might find, they would improvise.

END