All Pure Souls

by John Brooke

  Yes, well, this heat will make you edgy. And he’s just being lazy. Just another pute come to a bad finish at the hands of another man who thinks he owns her. Who cares?

  She also knows Claude’s not trying to steer her away from the murder in the brothel. Since taking over, that’s one thing he hasn’t tried. She has waited for it, but it’s as if Claude hasn’t the energy for that kind of confrontation. Inspector Nouvelle lost out on the big promotion but has won, tacitly, the right to pick and choose her cases, a new level of freedom as her consolation prize. While here, three months later, Claude Néon is still testing the waters of power. Tentative. Still very much the “interim” man. No way he’ll tell her to leave it be. What he is saying is simply true: the thing might not be her concern at all.

  One of professional life’s paradoxes: Eight years prior, Commissaire Moreau had placed his new Inspector Nouvelle in charge of those Mondaine (Morals) cases deemed serious enough to find their way into the third-floor offices of the Police Judiciaire, situated above City Police headquarters in the rue des Bons Enfants. Not an exciting posting, but one is eager and one dives right in... But specialization evolves in a different way in a small force in a minor city on the edge of the Republic. Displaying a style and instinct unique amongst the eleven inspectors comprising la brigade, Inspector Nouvelle had soon outgrown Morals, so to speak. She now deals mainly with a certain kind of potentially international crime involving the three-sided border adjacent to this region of the upper Rhine. Drugs mostly, but it could be anything from stolen cars to the illegal import of labour. Morals cases, per se, are usually handled by someone in Anti-gangs, Claude’s old group. As are the ones they call Violent Crimes.

  No, her boss merely waits, another gaunt victim of the unholy humidity as Aliette reconsiders the two faces: Manon Larivière...and sad old Marilyn Monroe. Not the starlet’s real name, was it; and in quite the same way that this Manon’s face is a borrowed one; i.e., a business decision. And she’s thinking she should take the case. Yes, something endemic there. Something that speaks of people posing...or hiding — which was it?...then paying for it, too dearly. Too horribly.

  But (but, but, but, but!): The inspector’s holiday is coming up in ten days. She has a plane ticket for the 15th that will take her home to Nantes. From there she’ll join Papa, Maman and Anne at Belle Île. Start on something new today and she could be risking those prized four weeks bridging August and September — with the tourist hordes heading home, it’s the best time for the beach at Belle Île. She has no desire to go to Morocco or Côte d’Ivoire in November, the only slot that would remain. Claude Néon won’t dare fight her over selected investigations, but holidays are an eleven-cop free-for-all... Careful, Aliette! You need a break. You deserve it... Still, the inspector finds herself touching the photo of Manon Larivière in the way one does when one is compelled to wonder why a life and a death like that occur. “It’s not perfect at all, is it?”

  “No,” says Claude; “but under the shadow of dim lights, a head full of wine, hashish...” he concludes their meeting with another indifferent shrug: Anything was possible.

  “Mmm,” nodding yes to that. Not a bad place to start, mon Commissaire.

  2.

  From the man at the top to the men in the basement:

  A young (younger than herself at any rate) pathologist by the name of Raphaele Petrucci presides over the small morgue. Smelly — those horrid chemicals; but a cool place on a stultifying morning. And after Claude’s perpetually worried mope, a small pleasure to gaze upon that beautiful Tuscan face. He pulls Manon out and lifts the sheet. Her make-up has been washed away during the autopsy; now, once you look below the dyed blonde hair there’s no trace of an American film queen. The wound under her breast is dried and sore, growing up out of marble white, freshly dead flesh. There is also Raphaele’s long Y-shaped incision, from pubis to breast bone, then out toward each shoulder. “So? Our boss tells me she was primed and ready to roll.”

  “Did he say that?”

  “Words to that effect...full of hallucinogens?” Apart from the way he looks — and looks at her, make no mistake — she enjoys Dr. Raphaele Petrucci because he is the lighthearted kind who knows how to take or leave the Claudes of the world. She guesses she has about five years on him. Oh yes, lots of articles in Marie Claire and elsewhere now, saying this is no longer an issue. Still, she wishes he were a bit older.

  Raphaele admits to being puzzled. “It’s a new one on me. At first pass I did actually have her down as an LSD freak. It looked like there was enough lysergic acid in her system to keep a rock ‘n’ roll band playing at full speed for at least a day.”

  “Find anything that might link that to her job?”

  “You mean teeth marks or sperm?”

  “Along those lines.”

  “No. She didn’t have sex. Not last night.”

  “She took the night off, got high and got murdered. What about him? Maybe they were listening to the wrong song together... One of those stupid death-metal groups?”

  Our pathologist is not a music critic. He shrugs politely and duly reports: “This morning the suspect peed into five different bottles. Last night they pumped his stomach and took blood. What a garbage can. He had everything in him from absinthe to Scotch and wine, lots of sugar, caffeine, a big supper, THC...and the morphine — opium, probably...no acetyls — that put him to sleep.”

  “Whew!”

  “But there was nothing of what she had in her.”

  “This hallucinogen?”

  “Yes. I mean no. The thing is, it was too much, the amount in her. Even by the standards of twenty-five years ago.”

  “I’m afraid I missed all that.” Still happily playing with dolls and attending birthday parties.

  “Apparently everyone was less inhibited.” His urchin-like smile is clearly meant to tease.

  “Except the police, Doctor...except the police.” Does smile-plus-remark equal ask straight out if he’s involved at the moment? No idea... She says, “So then: not LSD, but...”

  “But almost. And natural. LSD is synthetic. She was taking some kind of ergot...a wheat fungus.”

  “Ergotamine? Like for migraines?”

  “More or less, but homemade. Very homemade. A remedy, not a drug.”

  “OK...” weighing it, “a couple of drinks mixed with some of this almost-LSD.”

  “A lot of it. I’m thinking she either had a hell of a headache or was getting ready for one: dry out those blood vessels in the head before it gets a chance to knock you down. It’s not a bad strategy.”

  “But with the booze...”

  “Not a whole lot of booze, Inspector. I’d bet no more than an ounce or so.”

  “Wine?”

  “Stronger than wine: grains, to go with the ergot. A Scotch or an eau-de-vie...although there is a fruity acid in there too: apple, pear...something. It’s difficult to tell where one medicine stops and the other begins.”

  “A house cocktail?”

  “No,” polite but emphatic. “Our victim took something for a headache and she had a drink.”

  “You’re telling me she wasn’t really that...let’s say high, after all.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “But she could have been sleepy, nodding off...”

  “...or on pins and needles trying to hide from a migraine. For some women they come just as regularly as their periods.” Then, almost an after-thought as he scratches behind his ear: “She was having her period. Just starting, I’d say.”

  “So?” Folding her arms, feeling less than enlightened.

  “So I’m still working on it,” replies the doctor.

  Aliette draws near, examines Manon’s forearms, then her thighs and pelvic area, places that are easily bruised, places where most women of her sort, particularly the ones who end up at Raphaele’s, are a telling mess. This woman is white and clean. Aliette touches the rounded, hairless stomach, just to one side of the long gash which opens the way to Manon
’s insides. “In pretty good shape, considering the basic environment.”

  “Healthy, even. Did I mention there was also a lot of milk in there?”

  “Well,” notes Aliette, “milk coats the tummy, doesn’t it? I have a couple of glasses myself if I’m going to be drinking. Or taking a pill.”

  “And it’s good for the bones of women of a certain age,” notes Raphaele.

  Again she confronts that grin. And the extra thing she doesn’t mind at all; it’s there behind his honey-flecked brown eyes. You can tease away, monsieur, that’s just fine. She’s coming up thirty-six at summer’s end, a long way still from that “certain age” — plenty young enough for the likes of him. And yet... Inspector Nouvelle feels herself instinctively withdrawing from the man’s flirty comments, giving her attention back to Manon Larivière. “Pretty clean cut,” she says.

  “Not bad...but not totally.” Raphaele believes the knife was twisted more than once before it was withdrawn.

  “And no real signs of a struggle...”

  “He’s huge. He could hold her, immobilize her completely and slide it straight to sources.”

  “But he must have been completely befuddled...almost passed out. They found him collapsed on top of her.”

  Raphaele does not disagree. He only adds, “But anger or desperation or...you could call it a reserve of contingent adrenaline: this will guide a killing hand after the mind turns off.”

  The victim was wearing a nightgown, basically unsullied; and there’s a plastic zip-lock bag, waiting by the victim’s hand. The inspector opens it, unfolds a silk camisole, smeared and blotched with blood in the area of the wound, but, for the most part, still quite clean. Holding it up to the light, she recognizes an example of very fine couture. The needlework along the hem is exquisite. “Beautiful!” ...passing a careful hand across the creamy opalescent silk. Nothing she owns comes near this quality. “IJ had a go at this yet?”

  IJ is Identité Judiciaire. Front-line forensics. In a town of this rank, IJ consists of Charles Léger and Jean-Marc Pouliot; under-funded and too often over-loaded like everyone else, they have their own small lab directly across the hall. “This afternoon,” says Raphaele.

  Aliette holds the victim’s garment close and sniffs it. Tobacco, perspiration, perfume. And something else. She sniffs the victim’s wrists, her cleavage, around her ears and neck... It’s not her perfume, which is almost gone in any case, overcome by the antiseptic odours of Raphaele’s work. Ah: Her hair still holds the smell of tobacco smoke. And this same, almost sweet scent on top. No — another whiff of Manon’s chemise, then the body: whatever it was, she had not been wearing it; but it, or someone carrying it, had been in the room. Aliette proffers the camisole under Raphaele’s nose. “Do you smell what I smell?”

  He sniffs it a couple of times. “I don’t know. What do you smell?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I smell cigarettes. Maybe a cigar.”

  “Lighter,” murmurs Aliette, as if smell were a whispery medium; “like a candle wax...an incense, maybe. But lighter than that. Wood?”

  He tries again. Shrugs, “No. Sorry.”

  She folds the camisole twice and replaces it under the lifeless hand. “Could you tell Charles to take it apart for me. And he should try at the scene.” Charles’ pug nose is always more in sync with hers than that huge beak the Lord had attached to Jean-Marc.

  He promises, “I will... Do you want coffee, by the way? I have my steamer hooked to my sterilizer, some excellent biscotti from my mama.”

  “Thanks. Maybe tomorrow.”

  Raphaele Petrucci seems surprised as she leaves him — with her own kind of smile and something less than a promise. Well, everyone plays differently and everyone plays to win. No?

  She proceeds twenty paces down the hall and into the cell block.

  The suspect is sitting on his cot, bent over the morning paper, a large lump in a green velvet smoking jacket, swaying, yawning, shaking himself, then slumping forward; still in rough shape. Finally twigging to her presence, he attempts to pull himself into a standing position — and now she sees that the velvet jacket has been ruined with bloody smears. Very rough shape; but he is a gentleman nonetheless. His glazed eyes, bulbous and bloodshot, try their best to focus on the visitor and bestow the charm of welcome. Lurching forward, offering his hand, as if still unaware of both setting and circumstance, “Bonjour...Herméné Dupras.”

  She declines to put her own hand through the cell bars but does not mind being cordial. “Herméné...Aliette Nouvelle.”

  “Hot,” he comments, swaying on tree-trunk legs.

  “Hot,” agrees the inspector.

  “Horrible!”

  “Horrible murder!” Prompting. Like talking to your deaf granny.

  “Horrible...” Trying to think. Then, “...big mistake!”

  “Yours?”

  “My Manon...” He whispers, and takes another step forward and grabs the bars. His overfed face is wrinkle-free, moonishly round. It shines in varying shades of crimson and is everywhere lined with broken vessels like the surface of Mars. He has to be closing in on seventy. “Aliette, was it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Mmm... Pretty.” Then Herméné Dupras collapses against his cell door.

  He slides like mud to the floor. She stands back and calls for the duty cop.

  3.

  Mari Morgan’s is discreetly housed in a three-storey building in rue Louis-Pasteur, between a three-story sixplex over the Boulangerie Erly at street level, and a clunky but grand six-storey Second Republic apartment building. Inside, the brothel is elegant in the style of a time gone by and the inspector is at first reminded of no place so much as her own late grandmère’s home. The fine Aubusson carpet spreading to the borders of the dark oak flooring in the foyer reception area. The wine-coloured broadloomed path up the stairway bordered with shiny brass plating. The brocade on the drapery separating the entrance to the drawing room...where she spies a gleaming mahogany bar. The hand-carved chestnut backing and padded armature on the lounge chairs...and the tiny wheels under each elaborate leg. The dominating chandelier. Even the mock crystal handles on the doors. Although, c’est sûr, Aliette’s Mémé would never have countenanced a full-sized bar.

  The foyer and the bar make up the public area; the crime-scene lies beyond the double glass doors by the foot of the stairs, in that part of Mari Morgan’s main floor where (as the small framed notice advises) clients are not supposed to go. A City cop, trim and soldierly in shorts and polished black belt, ushers Aliette along a corridor to Herméné’s office, where the victim and suspect had been discovered. She peeks in, then takes a quick tour of the rest of this back area, to orient herself as to access points. The office is directly across from a well-appointed dining room (more echoes of Mémé’s house in Nantes). At the back, on the dining room side, is the kitchen, entered from either the dining room or a door at the end of the hall. In the kitchen there is a back-stairs up to the second and third floors. The back door opens onto a scruffy but serviceable alley. There are fire balconies and stairs leading down from the rear of the two upper floors. No basement.

  Now ducking under the strands of yellow Police tape... In fact Herméné’s office is a suite: an office with an inner door to a bedroom inaccessible from the hall. The inspector notes barred windows in both rooms, and that there is no door from the suite out to the back alley. These rooms show the same tasteful vestiges of a style almost a century old. The Louis XV secrétaire. The white satin divan. The well-oiled parquet floor... Manon Larivière’s blood had leaked into the plushy Tabriz rug where she was found with the suspect sprawled on top of her in a stupor, a knife tight in his hand.

  The bookcase displays framed photos of the “girls” of Mari Morgan’s, present and past, usually with Herménégilde Dupras, in a variety of poses and scenes, giving the impression of one big happy family. The victim is featured prominently in several — always Marilyn Monroe, down to
the smallest detail. From one image to the next, the inspector notes the faces of some of the other girls becoming older; but wherever her eye rests on Manon, time stops... There’s a formal portrait of a large woman, clearly Herméné’s mother, looking regal standing beside a baby-grand piano with a vase of violets placed upon it. There is also a blurry snap of a gangly, grinning man in dusty clothes standing on the front steps of a large provincial house; the bulbous eyes suggest the suspect’s father. And here’s a pewter bowl, sitting unobtrusively but certainly not hidden amongst these mementoes, containing a supply of the sticky black sap which Raphaele says made the suspect pass out.

  Aliette puts her nose to work. There’s leather, wood, paper, the wool and dust from the rug...the many smells of a dandified old man in the bedroom adjacent. She sniffs the dirty residue of opium. But there is no lingering hint of this other thing she detected around the hair and garment of the victim.

  The girls occupy what could pass, if inspected, as bed-sitting apartments on the second and third floors. Manon’s is on the second. Aliette holds still, closes her eyes and breathes.

  Nothing... Well, soaps and oils in the bathroom. But nothing to connect the victim’s chemise to the victim’s boudoir where she took it off for a price, nor the victim’s hair to the victim’s pillow on this bed where men could pretend they were touching Marilyn Monroe. No smell at all in here. No air, in fact. Aliette goes to the window, opens it and breathes in the inviting scent of Erly’s baking. Would it be so bad waking up to that after a night of being Marilyn Monroe? Manon Larivière hasn’t left much of an answer. No stray papers or notes to herself, no family pictures. No books. Only a small pile of old movie magazines and a closet full of dresses copied from MM’s films. The rest, from bidet to bras, is all generic. Standing there trying to fathom a deeper link, Aliette becomes aware of humming from the room across the hall.