While the Music Lasts

by John Brooke

  It appeared Jérome had been reading an article on South African rugby before heading out to the Saint-Brin Boar Hunters’ Association season-opening party — where he had some wine and carried a glass of it to the corner, where he’d died violently. Bénédicte had reported that Aline Dafy rued the thought of her husband and his pals drinking all day, in fact, since the night before as they prepared for the morning’s hunt. Was an unfinished glass of Pernod a detail in a day-long tear that had put Jérome in a rage that sent him out to confront Luc Malarmé?

  But he’d had the presence to secure the shutters before venturing out. The bottle of Pernod was capped and back on the shelf, barely a quarter empty. His rifle was stowed on its stand. An orderly house indicated Jérome Giffard had left for the party more or less in control of himself.

  Aliette wanted to know what or who had induced him to leave the party and go to the corner, defying her order to let the matter lie.

  She climbed the stairs. His bedroom was airy compared to his mother’s stuffy boudoir where the shutters remained closed. She searched his dresser drawers, bedside table, armoire, glanced under the bed.There was nothing deviant immediately apparent. Nothing obsessive. She glanced outside. The gendarme was there by the gate. The street was quiet. Normal. In a normal French town. Jérome Giffard had crusaded for ‘normal’ and the children’s parents had loved him.

  Inspector Escande was still poking around in the study. ‘Could this be something?’ Isabelle stood over a yellowed photocopy of a surveyor’s mapping of parcels of land, spread out on the desk, obscured by sundry mail. But not hidden. The name Fernandez and some measurements were inked in the top corner.

  ‘His papa brought it home,’ surmised Aliette.

  ‘Why did his son need to look at it…what?… fifteen years later?’

  ‘Sixteen.’

  They searched every cupboard and drawer for a can or bottle of something that smelled like nail polish remover, but found nothing. The shadowy front hall opened to a bright kitchen with a terrace behind it, which Jérome Giffard had apparently used. The small garden had rose beds on one side of a recently raked gravel path, patches of tomato, beans and lettuce on the other. There was a carefully pruned plum tree by the shed. The garden wall was a mess of vines and laurel rose, but under control, not one brown leaf to be seen. The man had been conscientious. A son’s way of honouring his disappointed mama? It had not been enough to impress Chloé Dafy.

  Nor Isabelle Escande.

  ‘Did he invite you over?’

  Isabelle rolled her eyes. Reached to feel the plums.

  ‘What did he talk about? I mean if he was trying to, you know, strike up a conversation.’

  Testing plums, Isabelle reluctantly divulged, ‘He talked about the children, how the children had to be protected. How he and I shared a duty and how the world’s such an awful place.’ With something like anger, she ripped a plum from a stem and pitched it over the garden wall and into the forest. She preempted Aliette before she could ask. ‘I told him I was no longer on the case.’

  The door to the garden shed was not locked. Jérome obviously had trusted his neighbours and friends. On the middle shelf in plain view beside a trowel, hand-rake and a rusty bug sprayer was a rust-speckled tin labelled Paris Green.

  The first part of the mystery was solved.

  Isabelle Escande folded her arms across her chest, looking vindicated.

  Aliette Nouvelle wanted to cry. For an innocent dog. For an ineffectual man.

  The headline on the front page of Midi-Libre screamed:

  Malarmé Carries the Curse of Misfortune to the Midi

  Chaos and fatal violence linked to the presence of beleaguered pop star and ex-convict Luc Malarmé tragically marred the Night of Music in Saint-Brin. An incident Saturday evening in this quiet Midi town has left a primary school principal dead, and pushed Luc Malarmé back into the spotlight.

  After serving nine years in La Santé prison on a manslaughter conviction for the killing of his lover, actress Miriam Monette, the vilified musician disappeared from Paris last autumn, seeking peace and a new start in Midi wine country. The former darling of the politically hip owns a retreat in the Saint-Brin wine-producing district of the Languedoc. According to someone at his former attorney’s office who refused to be identified, Monsieur Malarmé was ‘planning to grow vines and rekindle his sound.’

  Malarmé and a female companion were participating in Night of Music rites, playing some of his standards on a street corner, when their performance was disrupted by disapproving townsfolk. According to witnesses, heated words escalated into a brawl. Jérome Giffard, director of the town’s primary school, tried to intervene. At the moment Monsieur Giffard confronted Monsieur Malarmé, he was struck by a single gunshot. The unidentified assailent fled.

  Monsieur Giffard was pronounced dead at the scene. Monsieur Malarmé was unharmed.

  The shocked general consensus here is that the bullet was meant for the musician. The victim, a much-respected figure in this tight community, stepped tragically into the way.

  To a person, townsfolk interviewed say Luc Malarmé’s presence has stoked tensions since his arrival last autumn. There have been a series of incidents. The Judicial Police are in the midst of investigating the deliberate torching of two parcels of vines surrounding the former star’s villa retreat.

  Now they have what appears to be a bungled assassation attempt on their hands.

  It seems Luc Malarmé can escape Paris, but he cannot escape himself.

  As of Sunday evening Police were withholding comment pending further investigation.

  (Midi-Libre will update as more facts come to light. Subscribe to our online edition for the latest breaking news and ongoing hourly coverage! Visit our website at…)

  The cover photo was a diptych: the victim, smiling — supplied by the Saint-Brin rugby club, set beside a wire service file shot of Luc Malarmé being escorted from the Palais de Justice in Paris, looking ten years younger, perplexed but otherwise unemotional.

  • 31 •

  COP AT THE WINDOW

  A long line of vehicles emblazoned with media logos was parked along the place on Monday morning. They stayed all day, as things kept happening. It was now past four and Chief Inspector Nouvelle felt the collective eyes of encamped journalists and a gardenful of citizens trained on her as she stood at her office window with a much needed cup of tea. She ignored the crowd as she watched two gendarmerie vehicles leave the place and turn up the hill, conveying Simon and Paul Dafy to Béziers. The twins were not being helpful in the face of some damning facts. On the order of Substitute Procureur Dilobello, they were being placed in garde-à-vue.

  Aliette took her tea back to her desk, where she began sorting through a chaotic mess of notes and files. It had been an extraordinary, at times bewildering, day.

  A horrible day for the Dafys.

  Saint-Brin had got through Sunday, following the deeply instilled regime of mass, market, family lunch, siesta. Monday morning revealed a collective state of shock. Arriving, Aliette had felt a palpable disconnect everywhere — in the boulangerie waiting in line for the morning’s supply of brioche, collecting the mail, in the devastated eyes of Mayor Michel Velosa, standing at the door to the mairie mumbling into a ring of proffered microphones. She had climbed the stairs to find Mathilde Lahi in tears. ‘Poor Jérome. What a lousy life.’

  But theirs went on.

  Aliette had called Henri first. The cocaine-distribution investigation was as important as the killing of a primary school principal — at least to the police. They had reviewed Henri’s updated request to move against the baker in Murviel who delivered the drug with his baguettes to retail points around the region. She approved his next planned moves. She had refused his offer of extra manpower. Junior Inspector Escande’s social skills, as it were, were proving invaluable in attracting useful info
rmation. Henri had built too much critical momentum to pull her off the cocaine case and send her knocking on doors for the Giffard investigation. ‘No, Isabelle stays with you. Magui and Bénédicte and I can manage to start.’

  ‘Good, boss.’ Henri left.

  Waiting for Inspectors Barthès and Barnay, Aliette reflected that Isabelle’s social skills had caused a useful rupture in the Miri thread and attracted the hapless eye of Jérome Giffard. And that neither instance could be part of her report. Isabelle’s presence in the case was strictly sub rosa. How would a botched assassination affect that status? Saint-Brin was a small pond. Murder was a stick of dynamite. If Isabelle floated to the surface, her boss would too. She closed her eyes and waited for a solution. But Magui and Bénédicte arrived instead, and they got to work.

  The three investigators were discussing the logistics of interviewing everyone who had attended the boar hunters’ party at Simon Dafy’s and the rugby club members (again) and the neighbours whose yards converged on the abandoned orchard, when Mathilde had buzzed with a call from Identité Judiciaire. Inspector Daniel Drouin relayed his news and the day had veered toward the surreal.

  The round removed from the wall at the corner of rue Cours de l’Abbé, having lodged there after passing through the victim’s head, was identified as a Remington product for rifles carrying the same brand, and favoured by most local boar hunters. They were sold in numbered boxes of twenty. A search had revealed that two cartons containing a total of 800 twenty-round boxes had been purchased by Simon Dafy under the duly registered aegis of the Saint-Brin Boar Hunters’ Association the previous autumn — time of the usual start of boar hunting season. Légiste Duflot confirmed that the extensive damage to the victim’s skull was consistent with the calibre.

  To avoid the media, Magui and Bénédicte had crossed the passerelle and left via the annex. Magui went to the BatiMat store, seeking Simon Dafy. Bénédicte went to Simon’s home in rue Canal de l’Abbé in search of his rifle and the stock of ammunition.

  At the store, Simon resisted rudely. Magui responded in kind, drawing her sidearm. Magui Barthès could be bloody minded. Indeed, to make a point, she had escorted Simon Dafy directly across the place through the media encampment and in the front door of the mairie. Simon’s good friend Michel Velosa had been there doing another interview.

  With Bénédicte’s knock on her front door, Aline Dafy had begun to unravel. Informed that she could not call her husband, as he was now in police custody, Aline watched a summonded gendarme string police tape across her gate and observed with mounting agitation as two IJ officers arrived and searched through her husband’s desk and gun locker. Serious tears started when the search moved up to her bedroom. Bénédicte came down to find Aline at the kitchen table, frantically pounding out a message on her tablet. When Bénédicte confiscated the machine, Aline had begun to hyperventilate, then collapsed on the floor in front of the dog and her two children. Bénédicte summoned medics. She called BatiMat and got a number for Claude Dafy, who was up at Assignan, supervising the installation of new windows. Monsieur Dafy was more concerned for his son than his daughter-in-law and distractedly suggested Bénédicte take the children to the library, presumably to his wife. He was on his way to the mairie to get to the bottom of ‘this ridiculous mistake.’ Bénédicte called Mathilde, who’d come and collected the kids and the dog and walked them back to the library, where Christine Dafy, clearly not yet apprised of the situation, suspiciously accepted delivery. Leaving them with a volunteer pushing a book trolley through the stacks, Christine had followed Mathilde back across the passerelle, getting the gist of the story on the way. She’d found her husband pacing in the waiting area, murmuring into his cellphone to a lawyer. Christine had promptly smacked Claude’s face.

  The medics had attended at the Dafy residence, leaving with Aline in the back of their truck.

  As Inspector Barnay was departing, leaving the Dafy residence to the Identité Judiciaire team and their endless tests, she’d found Francine Tabler waiting at the police tape in the company of a gendarme. Asked to explain her presence, Francine said that she’d come to clean the house. Aline Dafy was one of the clients she had kept on after winning the mayor’s seat at Prades. Yes, regular, she even had her own key, and produced it. It occurred to Bénédicte to ask Francine when she’d last been in to clean. Friday afternoon was the reply, in preparation for Aline’s party Saturday night. Bénédicte had sent Francine home with an advisement to remain in the area.

  While all that was happening, Aliette had been getting nothing but denial from Simon Dafy.

  Yes, he’d purchased the ammunition and kept it at his house.

  … ‘Of course under lock and key!’

  … ‘Because that is how we do it. You get a better price if you buy bulk quantity.’

  … ‘Yes, I sell them at a bit of a mark-up to our members… B’eh, so we can have a party!’

  … ‘You think I would do a scam like that on my friends? These are my friends, Inspector.’

  … ‘Yes, I get receipts. They are in my desk… though maybe not till the end of the season.’

  … ‘These men are all licensed, responsible hunters.’

  … Of course his rifle had been recently fired. ‘We were out all morning chasing boars.’

  … As for the party. ‘Sure, the guns were out, they’re always out when we get together. And some of the boys brought theirs. Obviously there were no children at the party! Why do you keep implying we’re stupid ploucs?’

  … ‘Yes, people were coming and going all night. It’s that kind of night.’

  He’d probably said hi to Jérome, but, ‘with wives and what-all, we were close to a hundred, and being the host, well, you know how it is.’

  … ‘As the sirens kept blaring and the news got round, we all went to the corner to see.’

  Puzzled, Aliette had asked, ‘But why did they bring their guns to the party?’

  ‘We are boar hunters, Inspector. It was a boar-hunting party.’

  She did not accept that. He tried again.

  ‘I mean, Inspector, that their guns were in the back of their vehicles and the conversation gets very dedicated at a party of this sort and some of the guys who have guns in the back of their vehicles go out and get them and bring them in. We like talking guns. You see?’

  Aliette had never been to a party with boar hunters and was trying to see it, when Paul Dafy had come barging into her office, dragging a flustered Mathilde in his wake, making much fuss but failing utterly to restrain him. He’d received a call from his father. What was going on? As often happens when two virtually identical faces appear in front of you — same hair, same beard, same missing rugby teeth — there was a moment of confusion. Paul took advantage of Aliette’s befuddled eyes to launch into an aggressive complaint. She endured the unseemly noise for ten minutes, till Paul’s insistence on his brother’s innocence and the absurdity of the situation seemed to burn itself out.

  While Simon sat there looking embarrassed.

  Paul had demanded to see his father…his father was supposed to be here!

  (But his mother had dragged his father back across the passerelle to her own territory.)

  Magui Barthès had come, weapon drawn. She escorted Paul Dafy to her office.

  Magui’s questions soon let Paul see the same implications his brother was struggling with down the hall. Although they were identical, Paul was impulsive, excitable — you could see why Simon got to be the president and the captain and his father’s right-hand man.

  Downside to Paul Dafy’s volatility was a seething well of urgent remorse. And fear?

  Magui’s notes indicated that she felt so, ‘definitely.’ She had turned on the tape and worked the interview in that direction and within an hour, a confused and weeping Paul Dafy had felt the need to tell her, ‘All right! I confess to beating that shit musician at Easte
r. I did the market rounds with my wife, I heard someone say something. We walked home, I got the car and went on my way to rugby practice, but I went up the high street first and found a spot. I had a level in the back that I use when I go out to a site. I put it in a shopping bag and walked back as if I was going to the market. I saw him there in the passage with his guitar. There was no one around, so I went down the stairs and put it to him. And to his fucking guitar. Then I went to rugby… Yes, I did that, and I was glad to do it. For Jérome. And I’d do it again. But my brother — he would never do what you are accusing him of. He just wouldn’t. You ask my mother. Sure, put me in jail for beating up the Paris freak. But my brother did not do this! He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. I know my brother!’

  Magui said she had heard that line from twins before.

  Paul took a moment to get the inference. He’d bellowed, ‘And neither would I!’

  Such that Mathilde Lahi had knocked to make sure everything was all right.

  ‘It was like he finally realized they’re identical,’ reported Magui. She felt that fact should be the basis of a line of inquiry. Maybe their main one. She had added, ‘No, he did not say a word about his sister.’

  Both Dafy brothers had been behind closed doors doing a bad job of explaining themselves when Chloé Dafy came rushing up the mairie stairs in a panic. A client had mentioned Simon’s ‘perp walk…like on American television?’ as they’d sat down to discuss retirement programs. Why had no one informed her? Mathilde summoned Bénédicte, who took Chloé into her office and tried to explain their problem. Bénédicte reported that Chloé was instantly consumed by fury at her brothers. And at her parents. At everyone in ‘this fucking backward place!’ After which, Chloé had stormed out of Bénédicte’s office and into Aliette’s and begun to flail at Simon.

  Sad. But though Aliette had no brother, let alone two large twin bear-like brothers, she felt she’d seen something germane as Chloé Dafy pounded at Simon’s barrel chest with wretched futility. Simon did not strike back or even push her away. Or say a word. He endured it — as he had endured Paul’s tirade. When Chloé’s anger finally subsided and she could hardly even cry, the inspector took advantage of the moment to face Simon. ‘So, now tell your sister that you did not slip out of the party with your rifle, cross through the adjoining gardens to the far corner, climb the wall and take a shot at Luc Malarmé.’ (She did not add, ‘and miss and kill your friend Jérome Giffard.’) Simon had done exactly as commanded, using exactly those words.