Essence of Murder, page 17
Nadine was clearly disconcerted by the change of pace and tone in Darac’s mien. ‘Uh... She went home. Terribly upset at what had happened, I suppose.’
‘Where is home, do you know?’
At last, she looked Darac in the eyes. ‘I have no idea.’
‘But your HR department will have her address and phone number?’
‘Of course.’
And they would also have a current photograph. There wasn’t time to go through the process of obtaining the court order strictly necessary to acquire this information. But thanks to Agnès, there was a way forward. Darac opened his bag and handed Flaco his laptop. ‘Check our database for Zena, would you, Flak? I’m just going outside. Be right back, madame.’
Gatekeeper Perand had either abandoned his post temporarily or hadn’t arrived yet. Either way, Darac had no time to go looking for him so with his eyes trained on the stairs, he called Bonbon with the update and instructed him to contact the store’s HR department without delay. Citing store manager Albert Cassani’s imprimatur if anyone got sticky about it, Bonbon was to obtain from them Zena Bairault’s address and photograph. They both suspected, even expected, the address to be a phoney; the photo, however, would necessarily be genuine. Bonbon was then to email these details to Agnès. She would do the rest.
‘Finally, get hold of Perand, will you, Bonbon? He’s needed here now. He knows why.’
‘Will do.’
‘Anything, Flak?’ Darac said, resuming his seat next to her.
‘Not yet, Captain.’
‘Madame Beaumont, you said that when Zena approached Monsieur Urquelle, it was almost as if she were waiting for “this one customer” to appear?’
‘Well, yes.’ Her forehead crumpled in exasperation. ‘But only because she let so many other customers go without approaching them. They were nearly all women, though, and as I said, I think she was waiting for a man because I had told her that it was a much greater challenge.’
‘Uh-huh. Because you were monitoring her performance from the beginning, you are certain that the man later identified as Monsieur Gérard Urquelle was the first customer of either sex Zena approached?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you know if she approached anyone after him?’
‘As far as I know, she didn’t.’
‘Were any of your other staff sassing Chanson de Minuit?’
‘No. Just Zena. I had three other girls working the floor but they were promoting different products.’
‘One or more of them must have witnessed Zena’s encounter with the man who died, surely?’
‘No. We don’t have our girls hunting in packs like wolves. We space them well apart. It’s far more comfortable for our clients that way and therefore far more effective.’
‘After Zena went home, was anyone else given the task of sassing Chanson de Minuit?’
‘No one.’
From the point of view of public health and safety, Darac had been reassured by Nadine’s responses thus far. But there was a way to go yet.
‘Chanson is made by the Arcelle company, I believe.’
‘Ye-es, it is.’
‘You say this promotion has been going on for several days?
‘Since Monday.’
Five days and no other incidents reported until today? Darac’s picture of what had happened was becoming clearer all the time. ‘Are the sales people who sassed customers with Chanson de Minuit earlier this week working today?’
‘No, neither Jeanne nor Muriel is here today or I would have had at least one of them on sass with Zena.’
We may well have to talk to them.’
‘I dare say.’ She set her jaw. ‘But I have to tell you that I count both of these women as friends. Both have worked here for many years and both have spotless records. It’s absolutely absurd to think that either of them could have been involved in anything underhanded let alone something as appalling as murder.’
Statistically, Madame was of course entirely correct. But over the years, he’d encountered many a lovely, reliable person who had planned or executed a murder. ‘However unpromising they may seem, we have to pursue all avenues, madame. Perhaps you would let us have their full names later?’
She shook her head but said, ‘Alright.’
‘Your stock of the product – was it all just one consignment?’
‘One, yes. It hasn’t been popular, as I say. ’
‘That notwithstanding, I think it wise to have all Arcelle products removed from the shelves.’
Nadine sighed at the thought but then brightened, suddenly.
‘Oh, I see. You mean someone, perhaps in the perfumery, might have adulterated the scent and Zena inadvertently sprayed it on the victim?’
There were other possibilities but Nadine’s eagerness to help Zena looked certain to ensure her co-operation and that was a useful line to take. While he still could.
‘It’s possible that’s what happened,’ he said, quite truthfully. But then he got to the real nitty-gritty. ‘And the scent itself, Zena sprayed. It was an eau-de-toilette, I imagine?’ Whoops. ‘Or something else?’
Nadine raised her perfectly sculpted eyebrows. ‘You imagine correctly. Are you sure you’re not Martin Darac’s son? You resemble him, actually...’
‘Madame, please.’
‘Yes, sorry. For sassing a customer, initial impact in a fragrance is key and anything less concentrated than a toilette doesn’t have it; anything more concentrated is too expensive.’
‘And was the scent she used regular stock, a tester – what?’
‘Tester. In the form of a glass vial, 25 mil capacity.’
‘An atomiser?’
‘Yes, she took it from a small box in the supply cupboard.’
‘Containing how many originally and how many now?’
‘Twenty-four, originally. If there was still some left in it, she would have put it back in there at the end of her shift. Each girl does that. How many now? I’m not sure. Over twenty. Possibly, twenty-two.’
‘And was the one she used, new and unopened at the start of the day, or was it half-full? Did you notice?’
Nadine hesitated. It was clear to Darac that she realised there was an opportunity to give Zena a helping hand here. ‘Yes, madame?’
‘No,’ she said, her gaze lowered like a flag at half-mast. ‘I’m afraid I can’t say I did notice.’
Darac had already formed a largely favourable opinion of Madame Nadine Beaumont. It had just become more favourable still. ‘But could you see that the atomiser she used during the encounter with Monsieur Urquelle appeared to be the same as all the others?’
‘Oh yes, it had the black concentric circle design all their products have. That I did see.’
Darac ran a hand through his hair. ‘We need to impound that box of testers which, thanks to its diminutive size, one of my team can carry out quite discreetly. May I have your key?’
‘Uh... Certainly.’
As if on cue, the door opened and Perand appeared in the crack. ‘Here, chief. Got caught up. Sorry.’
‘Come in, I’ve got a job for you.’
Darac told him what he wanted. ‘And don’t, repeat don’t spray any of the stuff. Or sniff any empty vials. Got that?’
‘Got it.’
‘Here’s Madame’s key. Bring it back immediately afterwards. En route, call André and get him to detail someone to stop people coming down here.’
‘Check.’
‘Don’t lose my key!’ Madame called after him as he took his leave.
‘As for clearing the shelves of stock, madame, what would be the quickest and most unobtrusive way of achieving that?’
‘If you would permit me to call the stockroom, Hamad and his crew would have the shelves cleared and the stock stacked neatly away in ten minutes at the outside.’
‘OK.’ Darac looked into her eyes. ‘Madame, I am relying on you—’
‘I won’t say anything out of turn, I swear. And in fact, it will seem far more natural if the order comes from me. There’ll be no fuss at all about it.’
Darac was sure she was right. ‘Go ahead, please.’
While Nadine fished her mobile out of her handbag, Darac gave Flaco a look. She shook her head. That there was still nothing on Zena Bairault meant it was almost certainly an alias.
‘Hamad? It’s Nadine. Sorry to be a pain, but we’ve had a bit of a stinger from head office.’ She listened. ‘Yes, again. I was going to mention it before but with that poor man collapsing...’ She listened, indicating by a look that it would have seemed odd not to have referred to the incident. ‘Yes, people should look after themselves better.’
Darac gave her an approving nod and she continued.
‘Anyway, would you be a darling and get a couple of your people to remove all the Arcelle stuff from L’Éspace?’ She listened. ‘Yes, straight away, please. Everything with de Minuit after it, that’s right.’ More listening. ‘Just in the stockroom and put a please leave on it. Thanks, Hamad. I must get on.’ She ended the call. ‘There.’
‘A very convincing performance, madame.’ Worryingly so, perhaps. ‘I may need you to reprise something similar.’
‘Ah, yes?’
‘It would be useful to know if anyone other than Monsieur Urquelle purchased an Arcelle product this morning. We may need to trace them. Could someone check that?’
‘It could be checked, and if the customer paid by card, it would be easy to trace them eventually. We French still prefer cash to cards but our clientele is truly international and so there would be many such purchases recorded. You have to bear in mind, though, that this is a huge, open store, Captain. Customers go from one department to another. A list of Arcelle sales could be put together but it would have to be done overnight, not before.’
‘Understood.’ Once again, Darac gave Flaco an enquiring look. Once again, she shook her head. Once again, he returned to Nadine.
‘Madame, you mentioned that Zena sprayed Urquelle’s pulse points. The usual practice is to spray a card, isn’t it?’
‘It is but she had forgotten to take them out on to the floor. It shows just how talented she was to be able to persuade a man to offer his person in the way she did.’
‘She was bright as well as talented, you say?’
‘Very.’
‘And yet she left behind an essential tool of the trade? Along with the sample of Chanson de Minuit and the cupboard key, a supply of cards was one of only three things she needed?’
Nadine looked away, considering the point. ‘Yes.’ She gave a sad little shake of the head. ‘That’s not what I would have expected.’
‘Madame, before his encounter with Zena Bairault, Monsieur Urquelle seemed to you to be well and functioning normally?’
‘Apart from a slight limp, yes. But he didn’t pay any attention to that – it was obviously something he was used to. I was called away a minute or so after he had parted from Zena and he seemed as perfectly well and happy then as he had before. As did Zena herself.’
‘So she didn’t dash away immediately after the encounter?’
‘No.’
‘The store’s CCTV – does it cover the spot where Zena approached Urquelle?’
Nadine stiffened. ‘Don’t you believe my account?’
He gave her a mildly rebuking look. ‘Please just answer my question.’
‘Yes, alright.’ She took a breath. ‘No. There are cameras all around the store but they cover the tills areas and most of the entrances and exits. Including the lifts. Nowhere else.’
‘Flak, anything?’
‘Still trying.’
‘How long were you absent from the department, madame?’
‘About 25 minutes all told. You see I was—’
‘And how long did it take you to discover that a man you learned had collapsed and been removed to hospital in your absence was the same man Zena had sassed earlier?’
‘Not for about another... twenty-something minutes.’
‘What led to that discovery?’
‘It was when I...’ She hesitated but, perhaps sensing that she was going to be given the hurry-up once more, she pressed on. ‘It was when I realised Zena was not on the shop floor. She didn’t answer a staff call and so I went to check the junior staffroom. Her locker door was ajar. She had gone.’
‘Earlier, madame, you said she had gone home, upset.’
‘That’s what I supposed.’
Darac stared at the floor for a moment while he put the thing together in his head. In not rushing off immediately after approaching Urquelle, the salesperson-cum-possible assassin Zena Bairault had potentially achieved four objectives. One: she hadn’t drawn attention to herself. Two: she hadn’t planted in the minds of onlookers that her flight was connected with her contact with Urquelle. Three: in waiting until the man had collapsed, drawing all eyes to him, she had been able to melt discreetly away, apparently unnoticed. And, finally, she had had ample proof that her handiwork had paid off. Or to put it another way, her mission had been carried out successfully.
‘You said earlier that, culminating in her flight from the store, the sequence of events involving Zena which led to the sudden death of her customer looked “bad” for her. In other words, it suggested her guilt. Madame, did you share that assessment with anyone else?’
‘For the very reason that it did look bad, I kept it to myself. But there wasn’t time to share it, anyway.’
‘It was at that very moment you began to feel ill?’
‘Oh, I didn’t feel ill at all. It was just my nose starting up. It’s a strange reaction to stress, I know, but there it is. I’ve always had it.’
She didn’t feel ill, Darac noted. And no other members of staff had reported sick, either.
Nadine continued: ‘And then within a minute or two, this young lady and the other officer arrived, and then you.’ She shrugged. ‘There we have it.’
Flaco’s eyes finally left the screen. ‘Captain?’
Darac got to his feet. ‘Just remain there, madame. Officer Flaco and I are going outside for a moment. We can see you through the door so you’ll be quite safe.’
‘Of course I’ll be safe!’
It also meant that they would see if she tried to phone anyone. As soon as the door closed behind them, the sound of feet lurching down the stairs suppressed Flaco’s news for the moment. The feet proved to be Perand’s and the bottom-up reveal disclosed he was carrying a small cardboard box in one hand and a paper bag in the other. ‘Twenty-one unopened testers in the box,’ he announced, still descending. ‘Two empty ones in the bag. I got those out of a bin in the supply cupboard. Before you ask, I didn’t sniff the empties and André will be here any second.’
‘So that’s just one missing. One, note. Good work, Perand. The bag and the box will have to go over to the lab.’ He indicated the laptop. ‘But we’ve got something. Flak?’
‘I’ve discovered the existence of five Zena Bairaults living in France. None is our suspect. Whoever she was, she was using an alias.’
Three crucial calls now needed to be made and as speed was of the essence, Darac opted to share the load.
‘Perand, you haven’t heard this yet but Urquelle’s death is looking more and more like a targeted hit.’
‘What?’ he said, carefully setting down his treasure trove. ‘Jesus.’
In three succinct sentences, Darac summarised the evidence.
‘Now we need to get busy.’
It was a mark of the complete trust he had in Flaco that he had no qualms in giving the young woman from Guadeloupe the most crucial task.
‘Flak, call Agnès and outline the Zena Bairault development. That will ensure all relevant wheels are set in motion here in the store and beyond. Tell Agnès I’ll call her a.s.a.p. Then start checking out Gérard Urquelle. We’ll get more eyes on this later but see if you can find a motive for his poisoning. It could be something quite clear and obvious – like he was an ex-KGB officer who had defected. It seems Zena has an East European accent, remember.’
‘A Litvinenko-style assassination?’ Perand said. ‘Jesus Christ.’
‘Considering the setting and so on,’ Darac said, ‘I think it most unlikely but nothing can be ruled out.’
‘Urquelle’s never been inside’ Flaco said. ‘That we do know. Managed to run a quick eye over the convictions database.’
One of these days, Darac knew he would lose Flaco to a promotion. It would be a great day for her; a sad one for the team. ‘Well done. Keep looking, if you can.’
She nodded.
‘Perand, call Deanna or Map at the Path Lab and update them on what you’ve just heard. Don’t forget to point out that they have come by a useful control: Urquelle’s effects contain an unopened bottle of the same perfume brand, fragrance and concentration that Zena is supposed to have had in her vial tester – an atomised sample of which wound up on Urquelle’s wrists and may have killed him. Also, the other testers you’ve got there will be with them shortly. Clear?’
‘Clear.’
‘Right, whoever finishes their call first, that person calls Granot and updates him. The sooner we get him here, the better – especially if we end up having to triage witnesses.’ He looked up and down the corridor. ‘I’m going to swap updates with Bonbon but we can’t have three voices echoing around.’ It was only then he noticed the brace of pay phones attached to the end wall. ‘You two go there – the cowls should muffle things sufficiently. I’ll call from here and keep an eye on Madame through the door. When I’ve finished my call, I’ll resume with her. OK, that’s it.’
With Perand loping along after her, Flaco hastened away and Darac put in his call. He gave his own update first and then Bonbon reported that, without the sanction of a court order, HR had indeed been averse to divulging information on the woman calling herself Zena Bairault. Nor did they take Bonbon’s word that store manager Cassani would okay the request. Valuable time was wasted arguing the toss but a call to Cassani was eventually made and the information – address, phone number, photograph and all – duly provided. With no further delay, Bonbon emailed it to Agnès at the Caserne.
