Stifling Folds of Love

by John Brooke

  ‘But then she left him,’ continued Claude.

  ‘B’en, she leaves everyone,’ replied Duteil. Like Monique. Like Nanette. As if everyone knew.

  Aliette blurted, ‘And you follow her adventures?’ It seemed everyone did but her. And Claude.

  The man’s eyes turned condescending: Adventures? ‘My father’s good name was part of it. It would be foolish not to know what they were saying.’

  The inspector nodded, Yes, I would too… ‘Le Vrai Tommi?’

  ‘No, that’s garbage.’

  ‘Oh? Then where?’

  ‘Rose.’

  ‘Rose?’

  ‘I forgot, you’re a cop — you only read Le Cri du Matin.’ Curling a dismissive lip. ‘Rose Saxe — in Le Soir?’ The local competition. ‘She’s friends with my mother. Comes to all the parties.’

  ‘Nice job,’ the inspector responded.

  ‘But,’ Claude asked, ‘your father wouldn’t have been after Pearl Serein? To settle the score?’

  Condescension was transformed to incredulity: What kind of question was that? ‘No!’

  ‘Your mother?’ wondered Aliette. ‘Would she have some grudge she needed to — ’

  ‘No!’

  ‘But your mother didn’t forgive him,’ Claude suggested.

  ‘No,’ the banker’s son agreed. ‘How could she?’

  ‘Nor could you,’ Aliette added. Yes, a romantic link creates many suspects.

  ‘We have standards in our family,’ he stated, unapologetic. But, feeling two cops watching, waiting, Duteil Jr. duly reconsidered. ‘If it had been one of her friends…what I mean, my mother can get jealous like anyone. But Pearl Serein? Who is she?’ he asked, and followed directly with the answer. ‘No one.’ Ergo, no one to be jealous of.

  Neither cop replied to that. Claude asked, ‘How did they meet?’

  ‘That filmmaker, Pierre Angulaire, he brought her to lunch with him one day when he was trying to get money out of my father for one of his films.’

  ‘Did he get the money?’

  ‘He got a promise, contingent on other promises. My father believed in supporting the arts.’

  ‘But Pierre lost the girl,’ Aliette noted. ‘Was he bitter? Threatening?’

  ‘Not that we heard about. I heard he fell apart.’

  Exactly as that Nanette had claimed. ‘Then she left your father for Jean-Guy Gagnon?’

  ‘No, she left my father for Pugh, the lawyer. So what?’ Duteil Jr. was now watching the police with something like fear.

  Claude asked, ‘What was your father’s relation to Jean-Guy Gagnon?’

  ‘Papa sued him for defamation. He called Papa one morning, you know the way he does?’

  ‘Yes, I know the way he does.’ This Is Your Wake-Up Call had been a popular item on Jean-Guy’s show. He’d called Claude early one morning about a year ago, waking him, gleefully demanding that a sleepy Claude explain to his listeners why he should be the new PJ Commissaire. Claude thought Jean-Guy Gagnon was a total ass and would not miss his celebrated voice at all.

  ‘It had to do with that hateful rumor about giving money to a local Front National group.’

  The far-right: on the upswing. Which was interesting, but getting off track. Love. Love was the nexus of Claude’s hunch. ‘So she took up with Georges Pugh next — not Gagnon.’

  ‘Pugh was defending Gagnon’s station against my father’s suit.’

  ‘Did they know each other, Georges and your father?’

  Two PJ inspectors certainly knew Georges Pugh. Brash, a publicity hound, he knew a lot of bad people — had made his fortune and name defending them. Could Maître Georges Pugh have arranged for three rivals in love to be killed? He had the money, the right connections.

  Duteil shrugged. ‘A little. From the club. The Quarter Racquets Club? They were never friends. We can’t be friends with someone like that, not with the company he keeps.’

  Claude returned to the basic, most logical motif in this unspooling chain. ‘But was your father bitter? Did he talk about revenge on Pugh?’

  ‘No.’ Whining again, in pain and having it rubbed raw by these insinuations. ‘And he never could have. When she left, it was as if the life went out of him. It was if he wanted to die.’

  ‘Like Pierre Angulaire,’ Aliette noted. At least according to the picture she was getting.

  Claude asked, ‘But then how does Pearl Serein end up with Jean-Guy Gagnon?’

  ‘I have no idea! I don’t care!’ Jerôme Duteil’s son stood there, scandalized — and now afraid.

  They watched him, the way cops will.

  The banker’s son cottoned on. Looking toward the morgue. ‘They’re both in there?’

  ‘And Monsieur Angulaire,’ Claude confided. ‘Your father and the other two died identical suspicious deaths on the same day and they shared the same obsession. This woman. Pearl Serein.’

  ‘Obsession. You got the right word.’ Duteil let his confused eyes tell them he had no explanation. He took a breath. ‘You think he was killed?…they, I mean — all three of them? How?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ Claude replied. ‘At the moment I’m trying to get a sense of this woman,’ patting the man’s shoulder, professionally sympathetic. ‘I’m sorry to add distress to your pain but the coincidence is too much to ignore. We’re releasing the body. Of course we’ll let you know when something more concrete develops. Bon courage, monsieur.’

  With that, Claude headed back up the stairs, leaving the bereaved to sign Raphaele’s forms.

  Aliette lingered on the landing. ‘Did you meet her? Pearl Serein?’

  ‘Not really. She was there that time I went to confront him — she didn’t say a word. She was reading a book. She got up and left the room. Almost like I wasn’t there.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I said my piece and left.’

  ‘I see,’ she said. Which meant nothing — a simple ploy, hoping he’d speak further.

  But Raphaele appeared at the morgue door and beckoned the man to come along.

  Monsieur Duteil shrugged glumly and went in to sign for his dad.

  Aliette returned to her large stack of Euro Union paperwork.

  Claude’s report and request for a mandate regarding an investigation into three suspicious deaths constellating around a woman named Pearl Serein were his responsibility and problem.

  4

  Clippings

  Monique’s desk was cluttered with news clippings. Research for Claude.

  Somewhere in a previous life, Aliette Nouvelle had possessed a mean top-spin on her forehand stroke. And so she was immediately drawn to the action shot of ‘The practicing woman’ (Femme qui s’entrain), as dubbed in the cutline below a photo depicting Pearl Serein hitting a ball against a wall — on the practice court at her club, apparently. Pearl had been perfectly captured at the apogee of an elegant and forceful stroke; sunny legs taut, almost air-borne; slim mid-body torqueing surely through her swing, tan arms parallel in follow-through, shoulder-length châtain tied in a flying ponytail, a dead-on intensity in her eyes. A portrait of excellent form.

  ‘Good concentration,’ commented the inspector.

  Monique glanced over. ‘That was after Georges Pugh…last autumn.’

  ‘Who comes after Jerôme Duteil, yes?’ In the line of loves.

  Monique indicated this was correct. ‘We think she was probably sleeping with Raymond Tuche by that point, but Raymond’s not a tennis player, although he is a member of the club.’

  ‘Probably?’

  ‘Pretty sure, but not absolutely.’

  ‘When was Jean-Guy Gagnon?’

  ‘After Raymond Tuche.’

  ‘Did he play tennis?’

  ‘Not that we know of…J-G started in early autumn and went to just after New Year’s.’ After tennis season.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then she ran away to Bruno Martel’s spiritual farm.’

  ‘A spiritual farm?’ The police miss out on all
the fun things.

  ‘Healer — very mystical. Has this high-end spa-cum-meditation place up in the mountains.’

  ‘I see. Not a club member then?’

  ‘Oh, he probably is when he’s in town. They all are. I mean, if you want to be in the right circles, you almost have to be. Can’t see him playing tennis though. A bit large.’

  ‘And then?’

  Monique shook her head. ‘That one ended on Valentine’s Day. She’s been quiet ever since.’

  ‘So: Pierre, Jerôme, Georges, Raymond, Jean-Guy and Bruno. Six boyfriends — in how long?’

  ‘About three years, maybe less. Seven of them, actually. It started with Didi Belfort.’

  ‘That noble…the architect?’ Half-German blueblood; known to consume a lot of speed. She had heard the name in closing down a lab posing as a rowing club at the south end of the docklands.

  ‘Didi gave her the magnificent penthouse on top of his father’s apartment building. Pierre charmed her away when he was making his movie about Didi’s work.’

  ‘Yes, and then Jerôme charmed her away from Pierre…And this Bruno guy? He’s the last?’

  ‘So far.’ Monique left that open-ended. Because a new tennis season was just now starting.

  The line under the picture of the practicing woman asked, ‘Can no one match her? ’Aliette placed a finger on it. ‘Is this the work of that Tommi person?’

  ‘Of course. Tommi’s our main source.’ Monique handed over a clipping. Le Vrai Tommi. The photo beside the column showed Pearl gripping a shopping bag in each hand, staring at the camera. The cutline below it read, ‘Shopping around again?’ In the body of the column, following news from Rome concerning Mussolini’s right-leaning granddaughter and her penchant for push-up brassieres, was an item under the subhead: Local Scene

  Pearl Serein has been shopping alone since splitting from artist Raymond Tuche. Pearl is not reported to have run to anybody. She just ran, leaving Ray in a sorry state, according to a source who assures us the sculptor will surely transform his melancholy into another masterpiece. How romantic. But not, it seems, romantic enough for our Pearl, who continues to blaze a trail through the lives of some of this city’s most eligible men. The fascinating problem for each of us to consider as we watch the broken-hearted parade is, Why? What happened, Ray?

  All we can do is wonder, Has no one got the stuff to make her happy?

  Aliette accepted a cup of coffee from Monique. ‘Our Pearl?’

  Monique assured the inspector, ‘She’s incredible.’ Lifting the page from Aliette’s fingers, she found its proper spot in her larger pile. ‘The boss said be careful of chronological order.’

  ‘Right.’ The inspector was quietly rueful. She felt her respect for Monique fall a notch. Respect was suddenly contingent. It was wrong to judge like this, but she could not suppress the surge of scorn. Was Monique’s life really so empty? Was Raphaele Petrucci’s? Aliette Nouvelle was no fan of celebrity gossip. It seemed premised on the notion that the lives of a magical few were meant to provide benchmarks, both the high and the low. She had never felt the need of those benchmarks. Not for love and happiness. Or unhappiness, come to that — which it often did.

  No thanks, my own little life will do fine.

  She was bemusedly perusing Monique’s collected clippings when Claude came out of his office in a rush. ‘In the mood for a funeral?’ Jerôme Duteil’s was set for eleven at Notre Dame de Bons Secours. Claude straightened his tie as he directed Monique to a file in the computer, commanding her to spell-check, read for grammar, then print and send attn. Procureur Souviron, cc. Chief Magistrate Richand. ‘Thanks… Back by one, if anyone’s looking.’

  Aliette followed Claude along the hall to the stairs. ‘Did Raphaele find something?’

  ‘He’s still working on it.’

  ‘You don’t mean to tell me that gossip garbage is the basis of your case for Gérard?’

  ‘Of course not. I’ve been running searches on all of them.’

  ‘All of who?’

  ‘Pearl’s boys. Gérard will see it.’

  ‘See what? …Claude?’

  When someone is caught in the act by police it is termed flagrant délit. There is a case; but not until the police bring the information and materials to the procureur, who examines it, decides on the charge and appropriate legal action, then passes the file along to the judge of instruction. When it’s obvious, the judge opens a rogatory enquiry and begins to build the case, interviewing people, collecting evidence and facts to be put before the court. When circumstances are less clear — when the police think there is case, or want a case — the judge, upon receiving the proc’s opinion, will initiate a preliminary enquiry. The case has to be established. The police sniff around, trying to determine if a crime exists, collecting pertinent facts to be presented to the judge…to be offered back to the procureur, who decides on the charge and the ensuing legal action. A preliminary gets considerably less attention (and budget) than a rogatory. But in either situation it is the judge of instruction, a referee of sorts, operating impartially and independent of the court, who monitors the activities of the police and controls the development of the case. Or its closing.

  In this sense, the police work for the judge. We have eight in our prefecture. They occupy the offices at the shady end of the top floor at the courthouse. (The proc’s team gets the sunny end.) When PJ Commissaire Néon took the lead in a matter, it usually meant Gérard Richand, chief of the eight, would be instructing. And they did not like each other much.

  And Claude had nothing. Inspector Nouvelle ran back for her coat, suddenly very worried for her commissaire’s professional credibility.

  The church was packed, attesting to the banker’s large career and wide circle of influence. Claude pointed out Le Soir society columnist Rose Saxe in the second row next to the deceased’s estranged wife, her good friend, according to the deceased’s son. From where she sat, Aliette felt the society scribe may have overdone it with her lipstick. Looking around… Ah. There she was. Pearl Serein had found a place at the back. She appeared so ordinary. She remained alone and unnoticed.

  They all hushed as the casket was wheeled in.

  And when the service was done and the casket wheeled back out and the congregation had shuffled along behind it, Pearl Serein left without a word to anyone. The two cops watched her as they made their way through the throng of mourners milling quietly on the church step. They saw Pearl walking away from her banker’s final moment without glancing back.

  There was a man leaning against a ’58 Citroen Deux Chevaux, beige with black fenders and trim, a bona fide French classic. He was wielding a camera decked out with a flash attachment for a cloudy day. As Pearl Serein turned up the city stairs to Rue Victor Hugo, he raised it to his eye and flashed off some pictures. Pearl Serein must have known she was being photographed — the way the unnatural shimmer of green-white light spread, momentarily enclosing her in a halo before diffusing into the overcast air. But she held her stride, kept moving up the stairs and disappeared.

  They approached Tomas Bonneau. Le Vrai Tommi (The Real Tommi), as his readers knew him, was tall, willowy, in that nebulous thirty-five to forty-six age bracket. Tommi’s face was never shown at the top of his column, at least never in full. The editors of Le Cri du Matin reduced the image to a pair of probing eyes. An allusive touch. Aliette now saw that the face Tommi hid from his readers showed the beginnings of jowls, which tend to make a willowy man look sad. Adding to this effect, his gaze, so steady in the morning paper, was tired in person, cloudy. In fact he did not look well. There was an orangey tint to the rings under his pale green eyes.

  ‘Getting anything good?’ Claude asked with an intrusive cop insolence that usually provokes.

  ‘Not yet.’ Nonchalant, looking the two of them up and down. ‘And who are you: friends of the family or fans of the story?’ Bonneau’s voice had an oddly high pitch, boyish, with a smirky edge.

  ‘We’re from t
he police,’ Aliette said.

  ‘Oh, good.’ Bonneau aimed, focused and flashed a shot before either cop could react.

  ‘Hey!’ A blinking Aliette turned away, focusing on the church spire till the world held steady.

  Claude Néon was not amused. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘My job. Is there some crime connected to this? I saw Serge Phaneuf’s note yesterday. That would be perfect.’ Dutiful reporter, he pulled a writing pad from his pocket. ‘Names?’

  ‘Put it away,’ Aliette said, implying he’d better.

  ‘Inspector Aliette Nouvelle, right?’

  ‘Put it away,’ repeated Claude.

  Tommi Bonneau complied. Then he extended a large hand to Aliette, tired eyes suddenly lit in a playful mode, as if daring her to accept it. ‘I am thrilled.’

  She shook his hand, but warned, ‘I don’t want to see my name in your space, monsieur.’

  Claude asked, ‘What’s so special about Pearl Serein?’

  Tommi Bonneau began to dismantle his camera and flash. ‘Everyone wants her.’

  ‘Yes, but why?’

  ‘B’en, because everyone wants her.’ This was well known and understood.

  Claude persisted, ‘But why? There has to be something.’

  ‘You’d be surprised.’ Now methodically packing his stuff into a battered old schoolboy-type leather satchel. ‘She’s got the basics: looks good enough, she can dance, plays decent tennis. Amazing apartment, apparently. More than that?’ A shrug to indicate nothing special.

  ‘But still, they all love her?’

  ‘These things have a way of snowballing.’

  ‘Which things?’

  ‘These Pearl things, les femmes très recherchées, they tend to go up in value.’

  ‘How high?’

  ‘The be-all and the end-all? That one today, Duteil: he gave her half his bank, apparently.’

  ‘Ah.’ Claude nodded knowingly. Lots of people kill for money.