CHAPTER 14
HOTEL MIRABEAU, TOURS
Thirty minutes later, Charlie was sitting on the terrace of the Hotel Mirabeau with Detective Allard, overlooking the Loire River.
The only other person on the terrace was a middle-aged man with dark hair wearing a light linen suit and tucking into a hearty serve of steak frites.
The leather briefcase by his feet suggested he was a travelling businessman stopping at a favourite spot for dinner.
The waitress who poured his white wine giggled and bantered a little, suggesting he was a regular.
Charlie and the detective sat at a small marble table at the edge of the terrace, their notebooks out, softly discussing the case of the dead man in the forest. Vineyards tumbled down the far side of the riverbank, while closer to the hotel, the city was filled with markets, shops and bistros, tourists and locals alike wandering the footpaths, studying menus, deciding where to have their evening aperitifs in the last scraps of the sunlight.
Dark clouds were gathering on the horizon and the air was thick and still.
Charlie had ordered a dry martini with a twist of lemon, Allard a whisky served neat. Charlie was still in her work suit, but the detective had showered and changed into casual trousers, a white shirt open at the neck and a navy blazer. He looked like he was on holidays. At ease.
‘Is there anything you would like to eat?’ Allard asked as he handed Charlie the menu. ‘You look like you’ve been on your feet all day. You must be hungry.’
This was refreshing; the few times she had been out for a meal involving work with a French man—or any man—they usually assumed the responsibility of ordering.
‘Thank you. I’d like a glass of the local white—Vouvray, is it?’
‘We have an excellent one from a small village five minutes from here.’
‘And the potted trout rillette.’
‘They make these in-house,’ he said with pride. ‘People travel to Tours for the rillette.’
‘So I hear. More enjoyable than my reason to visit.’ She grimaced.
‘Thank you for your tip about the man who spoke with the companion of the deceased. Unfortunately, my officers were unable to locate this Mael—they searched every corner of the park. They even went down several kilometres of paths in the forest, but it seems the man you spoke to has disappeared.’
‘He mentioned a soup kitchen that served quality comté.’
‘That would be all of them. I’ll ask around tomorrow.’
‘He was dressed a little like a magician. All I have is his first name. Obviously, that could have been a performance.’ Charlie took a sip of her martini. ‘The deceased’s companion was tall and dark with a moustache and blue eyes. German accent.’
‘German? Was he sure?’
‘He implied he was from a Romani family, wanderers, with an ear for languages and dialect, and I have no reason not to believe him. Other than he had almost finished a flask of red wine—probably not the first for the day. He didn’t give a full name.
And he disappeared when I went to find an officer.
’ She tapped all the points out with her fingers on the linen tablecloth for emphasis.
‘I’m sure, from your experience, you know that killers often hang around to see what becomes of their crime scene?’
‘I do,’ she conceded. ‘I considered that when I spoke to him. But honestly, he was so small, barely five feet. I’m just not sure he could have carried the victim.’
‘Drink enough red wine and a man could carry a bear,’ replied Detective Allard.
‘True. But what about motive?’
‘Thanks to your eagle eye, we were able to get in touch with the limousine company. The deceased has been confirmed as Pierre Jouet. Worked for the company for fifteen years. The Cité Metro Police are currently interviewing his wife. We haven’t been able to deduce a motive yet.
The operator who took the booking said the caller—a man—spoke perfect English. ’
‘Odd to book a French car in Paris using English.’
‘Happens all the time. Most foreigners speak English when they book theatre tickets, cars, hotels. They use the language they are comfortable with and expect everyone else to keep up.’ He sat back and looked at her with amused eyes.
Charlie raised an eyebrow but said nothing. She wasn’t going to take the bait from this gorgeous detective who teased and flattered his way through life.
‘What can you tell me about Jouet?’ she asked.
‘By all accounts, he led a simple life. Lived in the same apartment he inherited from his parents when they died. No debt. Two teenage children. Wife, Anne-Marie, works at the boulangerie downstairs on weekdays while the children are at school, and the owners had only nice things to say about her.’
‘So Jouet was not a gambler? No debts?’
‘The Metro are checking his bank records, but he seems squeaky clean.’
‘No mistress?’
‘Of course.’ He laughed and slapped his thigh. ‘We French men are famous for our mistresses.’
Charlie smiled and shrugged. ‘I’ve heard it’s the national sport. More popular than football!’
The detective looked momentarily stumped at her audacious comment. Bullseye. Two could play at this game.
‘You didn’t answer my question. Is there a mistress? Could that be a motive?’
‘None so far. I think our victim is more of the church-on-Sunday type.’
‘Are the two mutually exclusive?’ Charlie took another sip of her drink as she raised an eyebrow.
‘No. Of course not.’
‘Must be something.’ Charlie finished her martini, enjoying the warm liquid sliding down the back of her throat. The evening sun hit her shoulders and she moved her hair to one side. The detective looked at her hair, her face and traced the line of her shoulder with his eyes.
He coughed. ‘There’s one significant detail I’m able to share from the limousine company. Jouet had a standard float of twenty-five hundred francs on his person when he left Paris, but this was not on his body. Stolen, along with the limousine—which we cannot track as yet.’
‘That’s a paltry amount to resort to shooting someone in the back of the head for. Could it be an accident?’
‘In my experience, one rarely places the nozzle of a gun at the nape of the neck and pulls the trigger by accident.’
‘Also true,’ said Charlie. ‘Do you know what kind of gun?’
Allard shook his head. ‘We’ll need the autopsy. No shells or bullets found near the body. Handheld.’
‘Okay. If we come back to Mael … Twenty-five hundred francs may not be a paltry amount to him. That could keep him in food and drink for a month.’
‘That wanderer could well belong to one of the finest winemaking estates of the Loire. His velvet suit could be his signature.’
‘I doubt an heir to a Loire Valley vineyard would be napping on a park bench, sipping cheap wine from a flask.’
‘You assume it was cheap wine. But what of the limousine? What if it was a car robbery gone wrong? The perpetrator hired the car, then made it disappear. That’s premeditated.’
‘Do many people murder someone for a vehicle?’ asked Charlie as the waiter put the rillette on the table with a basket of bread. She scooped some rillette onto a slice of baguette. ‘This is delicious, by the way,’ she said with a half-full mouth.
The waiter returned with a bottle of Vouvray and two glasses. He put a glass in front of each of them before holding the bottle out for them to see the label.
‘Merci.’ Charlie nodded, indicating he should pour the wine.
‘Merci,’ said Allard, lifting his glass to the waiter as he walked away.
He smiled as he took a sip. ‘This is good. Back to Jouet. The client could have booked the car to Tours and planned to do away with the driver before stealing the limousine. Whether “doing away” in this case was just dropping the driver on the side of the road and it went wrong and the driver was shot, or whether it was a premeditated homicide, is yet to be determined.’
‘You already said nobody is accidentally shot in the base of the neck,’ said Charlie, helping herself to more rillette. ‘Twenty-five hundred francs and a car. Not just a car, a limousine—that would be pretty hard to hide, non? Ordinary people don’t just get about in limousines.’
‘Unless the culprit has their own uniform. We’ve put a notice out with the licence plates, but that will take time. No police force has the resources to track all the black limousines in France, let alone Europe.’
‘Perhaps,’ agreed Charlie.
‘Hello. Bonjour!’
A familiar voice floated towards them as Violet walked to their table, arms loaded with shopping bags and parcels tied up with string.
Charlie stood to help her friend. ‘This is my colleague, Violet Carthage. She also moonlights as the style director of Paris’s newest design house, Aleksandr Ivanov.’
‘Pleasure to meet you,’ said Detective Allard as he jumped up to pull out the third chair at the table for Violet. ‘Can I help you with the parcels and get you a glass of wine?’ He signalled to the waiter.
Violet remained standing with her arms loaded and looked between the detective and Charlie before shaking her head.
Without putting her bags down, she said, ‘Thank you. Very kind. But I’m tired and I need to go to our room to fossick through all these little treasures and match them with swatches.
I have to make the most of this time away.
You know what it will be like when we get back to the Paris newsroom: busy, busy, busy.
‘If you’ll both forgive me, I think my pretty parcels and I will take ourselves upstairs. I’m going to draw a bath, drink some local wine and order a little plate of local charcuterie. Then work. Please take your time, Charlie James. It will be a treat to have the room to myself.’
‘If you’re sure?’ the detective replied.
‘Very!’ replied Violet. ‘Bonsoir.’ She turned on her kitten heels and walked back along the terrace between the tables until she disappeared inside.
Charlie watched Detective Allard’s eyes follow her elegant friend.
‘Your colleague seems lovely. What exactly does she do?’