by Angela Wren
“And what was her response?”
“I can’t remember everything she said, but she did tell me that Édouard was happy for us to use the credit cards in that way and that all the directors did the same and something about… Oh yes, she didn’t see why some of the junior members of the organisation couldn’t have ‘the same perks as the senior managers’. And then she made some comments about it ‘only being fair’, I think.” Aimée frowned and then looked at the floor. “I can’t remember anything else, sorry.”
Jacques pulled out some stapled sheets of paper and started looking through them. “I’ve noticed that your claims are all in arrears and that you don’t use the card in cash machines, so why did you not follow what the others were doing?”
“Because it’s not right, Jacques. The company pays for our travel in advance as part of a contract which means that we get subsidised train fairs for any travel we undertake in connection with work. But there is no similar contract with the restaurants in town. So, how is it possible to know what the bill will be? In addition, there are only certain things for which we can claim, and if a meal is offered with a quarter carafe of wine then we cannot claim for anything over and above that. How do you know in advance that you will want more than a quarter carafe? I think that people here are cheating on their expenses and getting away with it because the HR team are so stretched. It’s just a way of giving yourself a pay rise.”
“I notice that all your claims are weekly and completed every week without fail and fully supported by receipts.”
Aimée let out a small gasp. “Of course, they are! It’s the right way to do them.”
“And you’ve never been tempted to just add a little extra here or there?”
“Absolutely not! What are you suggesting?”
Jacques smiled, satisfied that he’d got the right reaction. “Just doing my job, Aimée. I have to ask awkward questions.”
“OK.”
“Thanks, and I’ll move on to something else now. You’ve worked with Hélène for a while and I just want to explore with you how she operates. When we first talked, a couple of weeks ago, you told me to watch for myself and to see what happens.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“I’ve done some delving since then, and I want to ask about Nicolas Durand and why he was interviewed under disciplinary procedures for what seems to me nothing more than a genuine mistake. It was the incident where papers were copied out—”
“That wasn’t Nicolas’ fault,” she interrupted. “That was all Hélène. There was a high-level paper that had been drafted and needed to be circulated to senior managers only. Among other things, it covered the rationalisation of one of our clients’ estate and therefore the potential for office closures. A list of possible sites to be considered for closure was included as an addendum. That addendum was only to go to certain individuals. So, there were two sets of copies needed. Hélène gave the complete document to Nicholas to copy. I was there at the time, and she never pointed out to him that only certain recipients should receive the addendum. Nicolas did as he was asked. But, before he started sending out the document I had read it and realised there was an issue. I told him to check with Hélène and to ask her directly if the addendum should go to everyone. He did ask but Hélène was very clever.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nicolas asked the question specifically so that the answer should have been either yes or no. But she prevaricated. She asked him what instructions he had already been given. Nicolas answered truthfully and repeated what she’d said earlier. Then she made a snide comment. I can’t remember exactly but it was something along the lines of ‘so you do have a memory, Nicolas’, or something similar.”
“What happened then?”
“I got a call from Philippe Chauvin pointing out the mistake and quickly took action to get all the copies recalled. Unfortunately, it was too late for some of them and one or two leaked out to managers within the client’s organisation. Next, the issue was raised at a management team meeting and, what amazed me was that, Hélène told a bare-faced lie. She said that Nicolas had acted without instruction and that she was taking appropriate action to make sure it didn’t happen again.”
“How do you know she lied in the meeting?”
“Because I was there and I heard her say it. I was so astounded that a manager of her status would lie in such a forum that I had to take a few moments to collect my thoughts. Naturally, Madeleine was at her snarling-tiger best in response.”
“What happened then?”
“After the meeting, I warned Nicolas to be on his guard and when the minutes were issued I checked them carefully to make sure that there was no record of the discussion of the action of a junior member of staff. But it was there. All of it. His name, Hélène’s response, everything!”
“And did you do anything about it?”
“I emailed Madeleine and said that I didn’t think it was appropriate for individual staff performance issues to be recorded in the minutes in detail. I suggested that it would be sufficient to detail that a particular issue had arisen and was being handled. That’s how I’ve always managed this sort of stuff or as part of a one to one discussion with my boss or the individual concerned.”
Jacques threw his notebook down on the desk. “Why would anyone want to work in an organisation that was governed by fear?”
Aimée shrugged. “They don’t. Would you?”
Jacques thought about his previous boss, Fournier, and their various, and mostly unresolved, disagreements when he’d been in the gendarmerie and compared that with his time in the Judiciaire in Paris. His relationship with Fournier had been toxic. I made the right decision.
He looked at Aimée. “I wouldn’t want that either.” He tapped his pen against the papers on his desk. “You seem to have a good grounding in management skills, Aimée. You’ve challenged others in the team, but I look around and I see a lot of stress and a lot of discord. Why is that?”
“I don’t know, Jacques. There seems to me to be some sort of policy that underlines everything, it’s just that only certain people know about it, and I’m not one of them.”
wednesday, october 28th
Beth sat at the back of the tiny church. Every available space was taken by someone from the village or from nearby Rieutort. The funeral service concluded, Père Chastain led the way out of the church. The coffin, carried by the men of the village, followed with the principle mourner, Ricky Delacroix, head bowed and in respectful silence, behind. Slowly, the pews emptied and the procession moved in slow paced unison along the short and steep incline of Grande Rue to the entrance to the village. Beth glanced at the sign for the street name on the wall of one of the farms and couldn’t help but question how little the length, breadth or nature of the road reflected the grandeur of its name.
At the tall iron cross, denoting the boundary of the village, the procession halted for one more prayer. Moving on, the coffin and Guy Delacroix’s sole mourner, descended the further incline and entered the cattle tunnel to cross to the cemetery on the other side of the route nationale.
Beth, one of the very last, stared straight ahead as she followed Gaston, Marianne and everyone else. Footsteps echoed as they moved under the road and her black coat gently brushed against the white and green of the displays of flowers set in small arrangements along the length of the tunnel. The track on the opposite side of the road was uneven and stony. Treading carefully, the entourage climbed the 450-metre path to the tall wrought iron gate of the cemetery which guarded a small square of carefully tended territory belonging to the dead. Some of the oldest monuments were beginning to crumble and only the carved names of the more recently interred provided a clue to which family they belonged. Père Chastain led the coffin and mourners to a plot towards the centre where a large grey granite headstone declared the occupants of four previous generations of Guy Delacroix’s ancestors.
The coffin in place, Père Chastain began his prayers
at the graveside and Beth, her head bowed out of respect, let her eyes move across the names on the headstone. Guy, Francis, Guy, Bertrand, and their respective wives and some children. And then Émilie with a life span of just two days. Next was Clemence and the dates denoted that the mother had joined her child within the week. The name, probably the very last, to be carved next to it would be Guy Delacroix. Beth considered what the stone was telling her and dabbed a tear from each eye before they could reach fruition and roll down her cheeks.
The holy water cast into the grave and the final prayers intoned, Beth looked up as the principal mourner let some soil fall onto the coffin lid. Père Chastain concluded the service with the final petition and an awkward silence settled. The villagers began to move away and Beth was about to do the same when she realised that neither Gaston nor Marianne had moved. She waited and watched as the recently arrived Monsieur Delacroix let the single white lily he had carried throughout slip into the grave. Then he turned and slowly moved forward through the small crowd, which seemed to draw aside to let him pass without effort. As he drew close to Beth he looked straight at her and nodded, a half-smile crossing his face. Beth looked away and Monsieur Delacroix moved on until the procession was behind him. He kept on walking but, unlike everyone else who moved towards the Salle des Fêtes, he strode out along the D6. Reaching the sweeping bend close to her chalet, he disappeared out of sight, and Beth followed the rest of the village to the community room.
***
Through the transparent walls, Jacques could see Madeleine was at her desk in her office. He noted that the door was closed when he arrived as arranged. He knocked and waited. And waited. Twenty minutes later, the door opened and Madeleine invited him in with her most gracious smile which he returned with one of his own.
“Jacques, take a seat and tell me what you need to know?” She took her place behind her desk.
“I’ve been checking the phone records for everyone in the company, and I’ve come across a couple of things that I just want to check with you.” He pushed a small note across the desk containing a mobile phone number. “Do you recognise this number?”
She barely glanced at it. “No.”
“That’s odd, because there are several occasions when your business phone has been used to dial that number. Can you explain that?”
Madeleine, shrugged. “A mistake on the phone company’s part, then.”
“Hmm. I’ve checked the records for your personal mobile and that number has been dialled from that phone too.”
“Has it? I can’t imagine how that has happened. As I said, I don’t recognise the number.”
And there’s that smile of yours again!
“I have a printout here that shows that they are text messages, Madeleine. So, who have you been texting recently?”
“I only text my own team and other colleagues as required.”
He presented her with another sheet of paper that contained details of the calls to and from the number in question over the last month. “Look at this, and you’ll see that on some days you apparently have whole conversations by text between you and the owner of the number in question. You must know each other quite well by now.”
“As I said, Jacques, I don’t recognise the number, and I would expect that the phone company have made an error. Was that all you wanted?”
“No. Fridays, I believe you have regular meetings in Rodez, is it?”
“What about them?”
“I was wondering what their purpose was, that was all?”
Madeleine smiled. “I was project manager on a contract for a client in Rodez. Both the contract and the work came to an end in January but I am providing voluntary on-going support to a particular manager over there on a one-to-one basis.”
“So, this is contracted work?”
“On a voluntary basis, as I said.”
“But if you are claiming expenses for the visits, even though your support is on a voluntary basis, there will still be a contract, won’t there? And where would I find a copy of the said contract?”
“I wouldn’t know, Jacques. Is there anything else?” She looked over to the door. “I’ve a lot of work to do so if you wouldn’t mind closing the door on your way out.”
Jacques grinned and got up. “You know, I’m surprised at you, Madeleine. There was a time when you would have said that a manager in need of this level of support for such a lengthy period is someone who is really not up to the job in the first place.”
She made no response and he walked out, leaving the office door wide open. As he skirted round the first bank of desks on the way to his own, the door to Madeleine’s office was slammed shut with such fierceness that everyone in the room looked up.
Jacques took his place in front of his own computer and grinned.
The large house on the outskirts of Mende, stood in its own grounds, and fitted Jacques’ view of the kind of property that Édouard Vaux and his wife would share. The grounds were gated and the substantial property was fronted by pillars and a round tower at each corner with a traditionally styled and pointed roof.
The entrance hall, with its polished wooden floor, Indian rugs, sweeping staircase, and extensive landing on three sides at first floor level, was surmounted by a large stained glass cupola above.
Madame Vaux, immaculately dressed in pale blue skirt and jacket and a fresh white blouse, greeted him warmly.
“We can talk in my study,” she said, leading the way through a door just off to the left. The square room was lined with books and had a large antique partner’s desk by the windows which looked out over the gardens at the back. Madame Vaux took a seat on one of the sofas that flanked the large fireplace and indicated that Jacques should sit opposite.
“I like a mint tea in an afternoon, Monsieur Forêt, would you care to join me or would you prefer something else?”
“Tea will be fine, thank you.”
She poured the tea and passed Jacques an elegant china cup and saucer with decoration that perfectly matched the decor of the room.
“I wanted to talk to you about your time working for the Vaux organisation before you left to look after your children. I understand from Mademoiselle Lapointe that you were your husband’s personal assistant for a while.”
“That’s correct. I joined the company – it was called Vaux Business Management at that time – in 1972 as a typist. I didn’t work as Édouard’s PA until the company was reconfigured into Vaux Consulting and Vaux Investigations in 1975.”
Jacques made a note of the date and then produced the photocopy of the scrap of the letter. “Can you tell me anything about this, Madame Vaux?”
She looked at the page and read the text and then shook her head. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before but I know what it refers to.”
“Can you tell me about it?”
She handed the sheet back. “Before Édouard and I were seeing each other, he was accused of being the father of a baby to someone he had never met. There were a number of letters that came to the company address. I’m not sure what’s happened to them, but Édouard’s mother told me about it. She decided that they all should be kept.”
“Do you know where they were kept?”
“Are they not in the company files? That’s where I would look for them.”
“I will check. Can you remember what your mother-in-law told you about the matter.”
Madame Vaux placed her empty cup and saucer on the tray. “She said the letters had come from a young woman claiming to have met Édouard whilst on a student exchange. She had subsequently found herself pregnant and was asking for help and support for the child. She was Catholic, so it was against her religion to have an abortion, and then, of course there was no morning-after pill. I believe the child was born and then given up for adoption, but we never heard anymore. I can’t be sure, really, about what happened after that.”
“And the name? Do you know her name?”
Madame Vaux shook her head. “I h
ave no idea, but if you search the files you should be able to find out the details from the letters or ask Eloise. She should be able to find them for you.”
“Eloise! You are must know Mademoiselle Lapointe very well to be able to address her as Eloise. She is most insistent in the office that we all use her surname!”
“She has always been very formal. Even when we were at the lycée together. She was always very—”
“Was that the lycée here in Mende?”
“Yes. She was in the year below me, but we were great friends and always have been. It was a great surprise for me at the time that it was my old friend from school that took my post when I left to have the children.”
“Twins, I understand.”
Madame Vaux got up and collected a framed picture from her desk. “Twin boys,” she said, showing Jacques a photograph of them both in their caps and gowns. “Both with their own careers now, and one with his own family. I don’t see them as often as I would like.” She resumed her seat.
Jacques smiled. “Why was it a surprise that Mademoiselle Lapointe was appointed?”
“We lost touch after school. Eloise went travelling, I think, and I started work. And of course, when the applications came in for the post I didn’t recognise the name. It was only when she turned up for the interview that we realised we knew each other.”
“I see and can you remember what was her name when she was at school with you?”
“Yes. There are some things you never forget, Monsieur Forêt. It was Nowak.”
“And now it’s Lapointe, did she explain the change to you?”
“Not really. She said something about her mother wanting a more French-sounding name and I never really enquired.”
“I see. Well thank you for your time and the tea and I’ll see myself out.”
