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

Maintenon: Friday, at last.

Louis Shalako

Here it was, Friday afternoon already, and with pretty good weather promised for the weekend. With only Hubert and Lebeau missing, the room had suddenly become very crowded indeed, with everyone trying to get things over and done with, typing like mad in between quick and urgent glances at the clock. They were clearing desks, clearing cases, clearing off little notes with messages and little reminders. It wasn’t just Pelletier, Janine and Hermione had also come along with their lists, and just this once it seemed like practically every damned one of them was in the room all at once—in a room which had been clearly inadequate to begin with.

The door opened and yet another body appeared.

“Firmin.”

“Er, yes, Boss?”

“Don’t go running off. I need to have a talk.”

“Okay, Gilles.”

Taking off his hat, he slung that on the rack along with all the others…

“Margot. You have Pelletier. I want you to have a crack at that list of names and addresses. See if we can find some of these people at home, before they go off to their shift at the Hemingway room.”

“Yes, Gilles.” It took a couple of minutes, but they were at least out of there.

“I’ll be on the phone for a while, Gilles.” Firmin settled into his desk.

“That’s fine. Okay, ladies, let’s have those lists.”

Someone had liberated a battered old wooden chair from somewhere, and the pair of them settled in behind what had become Pelletier’s desk.

Janine passed the first one over.

“Okay. Here’s the list of Hemingway Room employees, who appear to be members of the Croix de Feu.”

“Hmn.” The sheet, double-spaced, was full.

“…Beaulieu, Delain, Genovy, Auguste, Beaudoin, Faubert, Paré, Poulin, Henri, Daniel, Dubreuil, Duquesne and a few more besides…” Fairly common names, some form of verification would be advisable, but.

The addresses also mostly matched up, and a phone number…in at least some cases.

Maintenon nodded at that.

“Okay, here’s the list for the first shift. Not one of them is in the Croix de Feu. Insofar as we can determine, from a list going back a year or more now. One or two have minor criminal stuff, but nothing in recent years.” Yet the second shift was literally packed with them.

Interesting—

“So, I think our question there is why they would want to get all of those people onto that evening shift. Oh, and Madame Bouvier in the front office, is also a member. There is no evidence from the lists and the schedules that wait staff or office people were shifted around, just the kitchen—there’s really only her, and an accountant that does a monthly audit, or more probably, just a balance. He’s not an employee, but a businessman in his own right. He’ll have accounts all over the city, is my guess. With a busy restaurant the, er, inputs are fairly complex. They’ve got invoices from dozens of suppliers, then there’s heat, power, water, taxes, both income and municipal. All of those pay-packets, and all in cash. All those disbursements to the suppliers. That part seems fairly professional.” And the tax pigs, always, lurking in the background.

“Okay.”

Here was the next list.

There are some questions here...

“These are the employees at the Boitard residence. And the family members.”

There were three names on it.

“Monsieur Boitard, as we had already surmised. Louise Boitard, although she doesn’t sound the type to attend meetings or be out there street-fighting with the socialists. I’m thinking it’s not expensive, not for them, and it looks good on paper—it’s just another name on their list, just another five or ten francs a month coming in to the organization and it’s not like they can’t afford it. Maybe Monsieur Boitard is making contributions in both their names and taking some tax relief from that. That would be in character, and people don’t exactly get rich for no reason, right. And then there’s the chauffer. That one also seems a bit off, in the sense the gentleman doesn’t seem to care very much about anything, insofar as we have been told, and that includes personal cleanliness. Yet he might also be a veteran, and we’re trying to find out from the Ministère de la Guerre if he’s ever done military service, or if he was ever wounded in the Great War.” This might account for an apolitical man being in a political organization. “We’ve got quite the long list there, from the restaurant and from the Boitard residence, and it may take a while for them to get back to us.”

“Okay. And Jardine’s not in there. And no Fritz. Huh.” He nodded. “What else have you got for me?”

“As might be expected, at least some of the employees have prior criminal records.”

Janine slid that one over to Gilles for a look.

“Interestingly, Monsieur Lalonde has a criminal record, I don’t know how significant that is, bearing in mind they seemed to have shoved him out for unknown reasons, rather than transferring him to the other shift…”

“And what was the charge?”

“Theft, Inspector. Who knows, maybe they suspected him of pilfering or something, without necessarily being able to prove it, or maybe Fritz just didn’t like him. Reading the notes, it doesn’t sound like he brought anything like that up. And he did say he’d been thinking of quitting anyways.”

“Okay. So Genovy, Auguste, Henri, Dubreuil…and Lalonde for sure.” Reading on, it was quite the extensive list, in fact more than half the shift were on both lists…

She had more.

“At least we have photos of some of them. Oh, and our alleged victims, Joachim and Carlo.”

“What had Carlo been charged with?”

“Mostly theft, assault, resisting arrest, not exactly harmless but fairly low-level stuff. It’s hard to think of someone working in a restaurant as a professional criminal, but then the pros usually have some kind of cover anyways…”

She waited for a moment.

“Anyhow, we got the lab to make a few copies, and Sergeant Pelletier has those with him, er, one must assume.”

Maintenon thought for a moment.

“All right. Janine.” Gilles reached into a drawer and pulled out a small book. “I want you to find a quiet spot; take your time and read this. Read it about five or ten times, but read it.”

Her mouth opened and closed at the sight of the title.

It was the handbook for sergeants, and covered pretty much everything she would need to know in order to pass the exam.

“Thank you, sir.”

“Call me Gilles.” He leaned forward a bit and engaged Hermione. “I’m sorry, my dear, I am afraid we’re going have to send you back downstairs for a while. This is no reflection on you, it’s just that we just don’t have the room in here—as you can see.” He wasn’t all that sure what they could safely have her do, and the room was crowded enough already.

“Sir?”

“Yes, Constable?”

“I have a better idea.”

“…and what’s that?”

“I’ll just go down and speak to Sergeant Simard. I’ll get us a car. And then, when you’re done speaking to Detective Firmin, and whatever else you need to do, we can whip over to the newspaper and put that ad in for you—you do still need to find a housekeeper…at your rank, you are entitled to the driver of your choice, and I’m pretty much useless downstairs.” It was like they just couldn’t take her seriously, as she said. “I’m tired of making coffee and chasing down lost parking tickets…besides, Édouard, Sergeant Pelletier isn’t a driver anymore, is he. He’s a sergeant in this Unit, and he’s out on an investigation…”

Ah.

“And then?’

“And then, we take you home, and I can bring the car back—or not, the choice is yours.”

“Would Simard give you a car on your own authorization?”

“I don’t know—wouldn’t you?”

Mouth open, he stared into those innocent blue eyes.

He had to admit, it was one hell of a good question.

“Please. Call me Gilles, everybody else does.”

The quick smile and the sudden faint blush were more than adequate reward.

It was important not to stare at that back-side as she moseyed out that door. That sort of thing didn’t do a man any good at all…Firmin had caught his eye from right out of nowhere and there was this odd twinge of something, either guilt or just plain embarrassment.

It was an acknowledgement—which worked both ways sometimes.

Besides.

They were all professionals here.

Firmin: not exactly blind to the facts...

***

Having written the simplest, most basic advertisement for a housekeeper, Maintenon stepped out of the building. It was one of those little things, the sort of thing that was easy to put off, and he had at least finally done it. And he would live with the consequences.

A day which had begun balmy enough had now become oppressively hot, with a breathless quality and some damned angry-looking clouds on the horizon.

The car was right there at the curb, in what was a no-parking zone, and an officer was standing on the side-walk, bent over, hand on the roof, and speaking to Hermione through the passenger side window.

“Excuse me, young man.”

And of course she had already dropped his name. The officer stepped back and gave him a smart salute.

“…and may I just say, what an honour it is, sir—not to give you guys a ticket…”

Gilles grinned at that one, returned the salute, and the young fellow moved in and opened the door for him.

“And don’t think we don’t appreciate it, because we do.”

One more salute, and then they were off.

“Friend of yours?”

“I’ve never seen him before in my life, ah—Gilles.”

“Well, he’s certainly a handsome devil.”

“Hmn. They’re the worst, sometimes.”

Gilles laughed outright. He just couldn’t help it, there was such a ring of truth about it.

“And what about a beautiful woman?”

She snorted.

“She can be bad as any man…?”

Turning to Gilles, he was treated once again to a look from those devastating eyes.

There was the ring of truth about that one as well.

She was also about as tough as nails under there, something to consider, and to consider well.

***

Hermione, not yet stricken with the Unit’s moral contagion regarding vehicles and radios, had the radio turned up, just barely audible unless a bus was passing or when talking.

“…base to Maintenon. Base to Maintenon…”

“Sir? That’s us—”

“What? Oh.” Gilles pulled himself out of his reverie, caught daydreaming again.

She pulled the mic from the clip and handed it over, and then gave a twist to the volume control.

“Maintenon to Base. Maintenon to Base. Go ahead, please.”

“Base to Maintenon. Base to Maintenon. Go to Channel Six and contact Car one-oh-seven. Channel Six, contact one-oh-seven, please. Base out, base out. Over.”

“Maintenon to Base. Copy that and will do, thank you. Over.”

“That’s Margot and Pelletier.”

“All right, let’s find out what they want.”

Her eyes were better than his, and the reading glasses took a little time to pull out. By that time, she’d changed the channel for him. Other than that, he might need to jot something down, although the memory was still pretty good these days…for a man of his age.

***

“Well, well, well.” Gilles hung the microphone back on its clip.

“So. They got Duquesne and Genovy? Duquesne was crashing on Genovy’s couch?” She gave her head a little shake…

“Yes.”

Having made false statements to the police, and in the case of Duquesne, having provided a false address, they’d been charged with various things, obstruction, making a false statement, interfering with an officer in the course of an investigation, and they would be held over the weekend. There would be a bail hearing, but not before Tuesday. This was because it was late in the day and the documents would be filed before a court first thing Monday morning. More serious charges might even be forthcoming, perhaps at some later date—like when they ever figured out what it was all about, as Maintenon put it.

It would also give them a chance to interview the pair of them, also first thing Monday morning…in the meantime, let them sweat.

And when they failed to show for work, it would put more pressure on Faubert, Fritz, and the others.

This, was tactics. The odds were, they would get that bail—but they might not know that, especially in the darkest hours of the night, when men were at their lowest, and this included the inside of a prison cell.

This uncertainty, would weigh upon their minds; and this was simple enough psychology.

And, as long as he had Hermione, he had a responsibility to train her in the homicide business; or even just proper police work in the general sense.

Having made up his mind, he was prepared to do just that.

And sometimes, a cigar was just a cigar.

Idly, he reached into a pocket.

END

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