by John Brooke
“I take it you’re not really family, monsieur.”
“From corruption, sweetness,” intones the man, smiling softly, raising his glass in Aliette’s direction. “To the next part of her journey.”
He drinks. She takes pen and notebook from her case. “Could you tell me your name?”
“His name is Marcel.” Flossie Orain is standing at her shoulder. “Dr. Marcel Cyr. As you can see, Inspector, the heat, plus the shock of this...it’s been a difficult day.”
“But he’s...not really family?” she enquires — discreet, although Dr. Marcel Cyr is not the least concerned.
“We think he is,” says Flossie, laying protective hands on the old man’s stooped frame. “We’ll eat together this evening and share some memories. Eh, Marcel?”
He repeats it: “From corruption, sweetness...” and drains his glass and dreams.
6.
The afternoon is well along by the time she gets back to the commissariat.
She goes to the basement and presents Raphaele with the sample of Dorise’s remedy.
“Ah, this could shed some light. Good work, Inspector.”
What was the difference between a flirtatious man and a mendacious woman? In high humidity, not a lot. “What’s the verdict on the camisole?”
“Not in yet.”
“Was the victim moved, Doctor? I don’t recall you mentioning...”
“Moved?”
“Did she die where it was done?”
“Apart from bruising caused by an assailant twice her weight, I found nothing to indicate otherwise.”
She goes across the hall to IJ. “Did you smell it?”
Charles Léger frowns. “As a matter of fact I did...I think. But this thing can’t.” His less than state-of-the-art system, the sort their kind of small operation is obliged to make do with; and when they get around to supplying him with the newest thing, it won’t be any longer. “I’ll go through the place again tomorrow.”
“And nothing to indicate she was transferred to the scene afterward?”
Jean-Marc Pouliot signals negative. “Lots of extraneous feet and hands from everyone needing to have a look before we got there and sealed it. But, no — it appears she was stabbed where she stood and went straight to the floor.”
She sniffs the silky thing one more time. “It’s there.”
Jean-Marc shrugs. “Have to send it north.”
To the much better lab at Divisional headquarters in Strasbourg, ninety kilometres up the road.
“No time for that.” They know. “Try, messieurs.” They will. “Merci.”
She peers through the cell-block door. Claude is smoking away as he interviews the suspect.
Thanks, Claude... In a cop’s world, where a case can be your raison d’être and methodology lives close to the heart, this is tantamount to a slap in the face. This is her case — wasn’t that settled this morning? She had the distinct impression that it was. Mmm, but it’s also par for the course: the new Commissaire feels responsible for his inspectors’ first thoughts and summary report as a case begins. Especially hers. Gets very worried about her ways of proceeding. Everything reflects on him, you see.
There’s not much an inspector can do about it. Except petition for an extra day before submitting her report. It’ll depend on how he’s hearing it...
Claude and Herméné Dupras appear to be going at it quite intensely. Aliette leaves them to it and goes home.
2
Her Friend Georgette
Aliette always walks — her apartment’s not far. Today she stops at Madame Chong’s épicerie for cat food and beer. The rond-point marks the boundary of the old quarter. The traffic cop is working the sweaty, irritated home-bound flow; a blast on his whistle, the sea is parted and she goes across. Her place, just there on the other side — third (top) floor, overlooks the Parc de la République, a large green space leading to the more prestigious neighbourhoods to the north and west. Piaf is slumped on the porch, one hoary white paw dangling through the balustrade. Always well ahead of the game, September’s Marie Claire is waiting in the mail. The cover girl lends credence to the claim that breasts are getting bigger and women more realistically shaped. Good news; she’ll have an extra brownie. Her wiser side knows next month’s cover girl will be another toothpick, to keep faithful readers slightly worried as they peruse the fashions and ponder issues such as Les 5 Secrets du Sexe de L’Homme which...flipping to the page as she climbs the stairs, well!...features a photo collage of penises; or L’Onde Qui Fait Maigrir — the laser beam that will replace liposuction with liposculpture; or, “look at this, Piaf...” coming in, putting her case and groceries down on the kitchen table, still reading as she stoops to give his head a scratch, “Parfois Je Fais L’Amour Pour de L’Argent.” (Sometimes I Make Love for Money)... She gets out of her sticky underwear, takes a quick shower and pulls on a loose shift. Far too hot for a run — all those reports of people overheating and dropping dead... Then she fills Piaf’s bowl with two large spoonfuls of Cheese Dinner Delight, opens a bottle of beer and prepares herself a salad of salmon and cold rice. By the time the inspector sits, the Marie Claire girl has bits of all these substances plus drops from wet hair splashed or smeared all over her chic smile.
Inside, Marie Claire’s journalist had premised her investigation with the basic question: “What woman has never asked herself, if only for five minutes at some point in her life, would I be capable of being a prostitute?” She went on to describe two case histories: “Lulu” was a down-and-out film industry artisan who did it out of desperation, only for enough money to eat. Lulu succeeded in eating but ended up considerably more miserable and alienated from herself than when she’d started. By contrast, “Nadine” held a good management position in a department store. Her problem was an ex-husband who chronically missed his alimony payments. Nadine felt she needed extra cash, not for her child, but for her own needs. Nadine said it was “so easy,” and that most male fantasies were “so depressingly banal.” Nadine got out of prostitution when she fell in love. Marie Claire’s reporter concluded that there were probably thousands of women like these two, “all of them ultimately the victims of economic crises, needing to live and consume in an urban society.”
Aliette wonders if that isn’t a sly bit of editorial self-service on the part of Marie Claire.
She sips her beer and turns to the piece on laser liposculpture. Cellulite is not one of her worries, not yet, but there’s no harm in being prepared for “the battle,” as it is commonly called in these glossy pages...
Eight o’clock sharp: the disappearing sun squints orange and bleary through the hazy dusk; three blasts of the horn as Georgette Duguay, the artist’s model, pulls up in the old VW van. Aliette Nouvelle, apprentice artist’s model, waves from the porch and hurries down to join her. Twenty minutes later the two women are standing naked in a room on the upper floor of the Institute, a fine, albeit dusty, old building in the business sector that had been abandoned by the business types and subsequently claimed by groups of artists, dancers, sculptors, cooks, AA adherents, practitioners of tai-chi, grass-roots politicos and the odd jazz or blues band working on its stuff.
Members of the drawing group are trooping in, their portfolio cases and materials under their arms, silent, anonymous, each with his or her own sense of the day just lived. They set up at easels spaced round the room. Georgette takes her position on the riser at the front and eases into her pose. Aliette ponders it, then attempts to ape it. Georgette’s method is not to plan a pose but to arrive at it, bringing feelings and thoughts of the moment to inform. “Finding it” is what she calls this crucial part of the exercise. Aliette feels she is beginning to understand what that means. The hard part is forgetting yourself and focusing on Georgette, especially after a difficult day at work. The interesting part is that when she gets it, she always knows it; not because the form looks like Georgette’s, but because the feeling it evokes feels as if it must be her own.
&nb
sp; As the dust surrounding Jacques Normand settled, Aliette, in the spirit of new friendship, held true to her claim that she would be interested in trying to do what her new friend did; i.e., be a model. Here, four months later, her poses are still far less than subtle; yet she perseveres, showing up as regularly as her work permits. She finds she enjoys this role as a basic shape, a touchstone for the form and content of life. Now this amateur understands it’s a vocation that takes a lifetime to perfect. And although they’re as tricky to extract as an ingrown hair from a soft crevice, there have been some words of encouragement, if not compliment, on the part of her teacher.
Tonight it’s going to be that flying pose again, a position they have tried on a fairly regular basis and the second time in as many nights: The arms are spread out, low — from the hips, like a jet. The face is fixed with purpose but the eyes are filled with a strange woe, a haunted look. All weight is forward, just short of falling... Now the model shifts, easing into the maximum lean, the point of inevitability, her chest forward, breasts suspended. There, holding, she strikes the pose.
Inevitability? The flying pose seems to coincide with the model’s darker moods, and the bleak centre of this one is a mystery. One does not ask Georgette to explain. But allowing herself to relax into not-knowing, Aliette arrives at something, and holds it as best she can. Georgette, well into her seventh decade, yet still strong, straight and the consummate mannequin, is balanced and unstrained in all aspects of the position. If, in contrast, the neophyte appears gangly and contrived in her manner, her face is nothing if not dedicated as the drawing group begins to draw.
Just an hour, with a break to stretch and roam the room to see how they see her; and in complete silence, according to Georgette’s unspoken law; such is the social aspect of an inspector’s life at this particular time.
Afterward, the group packed up and silently dispersed, Aliette and Georgette stroll the plaza in front of the Institute. More comfortable now, but still too humid for a decent night’s sleep. Their steps and conversation are desultory. Georgette has a problem; Aliette’s problem is how to bring it out. She tries but it’s not easy. They nibble tentatively at the edges of a subject, then, without cause or resolution, leave it for another as Georgette turns and heads the other way. Georgette curses, peremptory, “putain!” in response to Aliette’s complaints about the weather. Doesn’t care that the tailor’s rendering of her flying pose has turned mawkish...or that the butcher has broken a barrier of sorts with the exquisite pain he has managed to bring to Georgette’s eyes with a simple piece of charcoal. Isn’t even much interested in the plight of her friend Anne-Marie, Jacques Normand’s ex-partner/lover, still stuck in prison, refusing to utter a word: “J’en ai marre!“ (I’m sick of it!) Mmm, ornery and almost not worth the effort...
But we need friends and friends have to try.
Yes. So what about the Tapie scandal?...what is it with all these rich and famous, best and brightest, who keep getting caught with their hands in the most blatant merde?
“Je m’en fous.“ (Who cares.)
Fine. A trying friend gives up. Time for bed, Georgette. They head toward the van.
From four steps behind Georgette demands, “Did he really kill that woman?”
Aliette turns. “Herménégilde Dupras?”
A nod.
“I don’t know. It looks like it. But — ”
“But he wouldn’t!”
“No? How do you know?”
“I know him.”
“You do?”
“I used to.”
Oh, Lord. Is she going to find out something about her new friend she might not want to know? If anyone needs a little extra cash from one week to the next it’s an artist’s model.
“...and he wouldn’t kill anyone.”
“Georgette, are you telling me you once — ”
“That’s none of your business, so don’t you think it!”
She can be fierce, as if life itself were the enemy. “Sorry... Why wouldn’t he do it?”
But Georgette is silent, angry at Aliette’s presumption. Remains silent long enough for Aliette to believe she may be frozen there. Even in this heat. Oh well, forget it; besides, it’s been Aliette’s policy not to bring her work to the group. She continues down the steps. Georgette’s voice comes through, low, heavy with contempt. “It’s not in him to kill. What Herméné is, is pleasure-bound, pure and simple. There’s no pleasure in killing unless one is crazy. Herméné is too much of this world to be crazy. He wouldn’t do it.”
Right or wrong, Georgette’s theories always come with the force of conviction that can be daunting. Aliette floats a different one. “Flossie — one of the women there — she said it has to do with love and that he’s one of those men who craves control.”
“Flossie has been trained to say anything.”
“You know her too?”
“I don’t know any of them! But if she works there, that’s her job.”
“Sex is her job.”
“Deception is the job...the sex is just sex.”
“How well did you know him?” asks Aliette — gently, sensing fragile territory.
“Well enough, for a while.”
Georgette looks away. Still angry? Aliette discerns something more akin to shame. She gazes at the profile: the green eyes, slightly bloody with the humidity; the shoulder-length silver hair, pulled back and tied up like a dancer’s; the long nose, reminiscent tonight of Holbein’s Ursula, on a wall in the Swiss city just down the line...but the strong, horsy jaw is nothing like the saint’s. “This Flossie said he had a horrible childhood. Did he ever tell you anything about a petit Jésus?”
“Jesus?” The name is framed in one of Georgette’s cold half-laughs. “He told me angels were meant to provide laughter. I hated him for that.”
Aliette, as per their pattern, must prod. “Yes?”
“It was his weak excuse for getting rid of one and going on to the next... Herméné Dupras is too weak to kill anyone. The man doesn’t love strongly enough to kill.”
The inspector has no reply. She has never thought of it in quite that way before.
The tension of her secret out, Georgette is now simply old womanish as she opens the door to the van. “I detest this heat...detest it!” muttering, fussing, she climbs in and starts it up.
Aliette will walk back, thank you. In parting, she demands, “Then why do you care?” Not so gentle; needing far more clarity on this one.
“Because it would make the insult of his life that much worse... Salut.”
The van jerks away, jolting off in the direction of the model’s tiny basement bed-sitting room.
Aliette wanders home through the heat, mulling over her day.
So Georgette Duguay knows — and hates — Herméné Dupras. Small world. But it is! In a small and typically provincial city? Never hard for outsiders to find each other. Artist’s models are outsiders. Putes and pimps are too.
And cops. Don’t forget cops, Aliette...
Mmm, a murdered pute equals a cop’s full day. Because Aliette trusts her nose, she has serious doubts the murder occurred inside the brothel. The inspector’s nose has given her to believe Manon Larivière was brought to the office of Herménégilde Dupras after the fact. Raphaele and IJ contend to the contary. The inspector contends that a clean killing such as that one can be staged. A knife in a barely conscious old man’s hand is easy... And that one or some of the other girls would have to have known. Or Dorise Ménou. Claude’s contention that the guests cancel themselves out of the picture makes sense. The territorial factor: They’re tight-knit, these women. And they’re prostitutes; that house is their patch. If it happened outside, there was inside help. Aliette has to start inside and her feeling is that anyone involved would have to be closer than a client. That leaves only the members of the Mari Morgan’s family, so to speak.
Family? Mari Morgan’s surprised her. At the very least, a well-coached team.
Georgette’s ri
ght: deception is the job.
Poor Georgette. And what is her relation to that family?
She’s a cranky angel if ever there was one.
Not poor Georgette! Stop it! Because sympathy could be one of the inspector’s shortcomings. Always feeling sorry for someone, aren’t we, Aliette? Yes, always some poor so-and-so to deal with. Poor Georgette. Poor Piaf... Now it’s poor Manon Larivière. There are cops in her circles — Claude Néon is one — who cannot abide this sympathetic streak. Impulsive. Unprofessional. Dangerous. Ultimately it’s dangerous, is what they say.
Maybe so; Aliette can’t separate it.
Even poor Claude. Sometimes.
It’s why I’m here, ma belle.
I know, I know. She listens...
Now lying on a sweat-stained pillow, porch door and windows wide open, senses attuned to just a touch of air, please! in lieu of the lover who isn’t there.
3
Day Two
Friday August 7th; heat wave holding stubbornly. She’s in Claude’s office with her breakfast — plain croissant and coffee, comparing notes.
“Says it was business as usual. Says he slipped away to have some dessert with the victim up in her room...says she was ill and wasn’t working. But they argued...says she said she was going to leave.”
“Leave? Like quit?”
“Says she sprang it on him, right out of the blue. Says she had it in her head to go that night.”
“Why?”
“He doesn’t know. He thinks she was sort of crazy from the heat and her period and these headaches that she always had. Says her pain could do that.”
