Essence of Murder, page 33
‘I don’t know what all this fuss is about anyway, but I won’t, Captain.’
Intending to issue a similar instruction to Barbara, Darac got no further than opening his mouth.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘The same goes for me. Don’t worry.’
‘I don’t. Emil? Off you go.’
Astrid stood aside and the young man took his leave.
‘A quick question, Barbara. Is the filing cabinet drawer you opened usually locked?’
Her pencilled-on eyebrows rose. ‘Uh... No, as a matter of fact, it isn’t.’
‘Thank you. I think that will do for the moment. Take what you came for, by all means.’
‘May I get the forms from the cabinet I need, also? I didn’t get as far as opening it.’
He thought about it. ‘I don’t see why not. Put the key back in the drawer exactly where it was, please.’ He watched her perform the task with her customary efficiency.
‘Thank you, Barbara.’ Darac shepherded her to the door. ‘It need hardly be said that your contribution is inestimable.’
‘I’m used to it, Captain. Three previous directors need hardly have said it, either. And so they never did. Madame Tiron is the only one who has.’
Sharing a look with Astrid so nuanced that it was difficult for Darac to read, Barbara took her leave.
The object of fascination was still lying undisturbed in the drawer. Darac fired off a few shots on his mobile, rang Granot and then asked Erica to zoom right in.
‘Granot? Are you all seeing this upstairs?’
‘We bloody well are. What the..?’
‘Exactly. Send R.O. down here with his fingerprint kit, will you? We’ve got a lookout posted but he knows who he’s looking out for.’
‘Will do.’
‘We’ll pick up the filming again when he gets here.’
He ended the call and turned to Astrid. ‘If you feel you should be back with your class?’ He let a raised eyebrow complete the thought.
‘You two can take it from here? Is that it?’ Astrid took a couple of deep, settling breaths. ‘Look, I know my divided loyalties have been an issue from the start and this development apparently pushes things way over to one side but my opinion is still worth something isn’t it?’
‘Of course it is. What are you talking about?’
She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, Paul, Erica. It’s just... This doesn’t look good for Elie, does it?’
‘We’ve got shots and film of the thing lying in situ so let’s take a closer look.’ Darac took a pair of forensic gloves out of his pocket, stretched them a couple of times and put them on. It was just as he lifted the focus of all their attention out of the drawer that Elie walked in. She appeared more relaxed than before.
‘A party? Thanks for inviting me to...’
Elie’s face froze. Darac was holding a fountain pen. A Lepic. And it bore an inscription. She looked at each face in turn. ‘How have you got that?’
Astrid looked her in the eyes. ‘Babe, I think what... we would like to know is, how have you got it?’
4.26 PM
With Erica looking into the provenance of the mystery pen – now en route to Deanna – and Astrid having returned to her class, Darac had drafted in Flaco to assist him in interrogating Elie Tiron. If she was finding at least some comfort in the familiar surroundings of her office, the presence of a female officer and, by mutual agreement, Darac’s continuing use of her forename, it wasn’t apparent to Granot and the others viewing the live camera feed in in the ops room.
‘Elie, you realise what this development looks like?’
‘I don’t care what it looks like. I have never seen that pen before and I have no idea how it found its way into my desk.’
Elie’s desk phone rang and out of habit, her hand went towards it before she remembered the agreed protocol. The answerphone kicked silently in and after a beat, Darac continued.
‘Well, I’ll tell you what it looks like, Elie – that at some time in the recent past, you purchased a luxury Lepic pen identical to the one Urquelle was presented with by his firm five years ago. In conversations, you have freely admitted that thanks to your obsessional digging into the have-a-go-hero case, you knew every detail about this pen, including the inscription engraved on the barrel.’
‘Yes, I knew all about the pen. So what? I didn’t buy another. I couldn’t afford it, for one thing, nor know where to buy such an item and then have it engraved? No, Captain. I did not buy that second pen. Why would I?’
Darac hadn’t pegged Elie as a particularly gifted actor but if she was lying, she was turning in quite a performance. ‘Why would you? How does this sound? Familiar with Urquelle’s habit, you doctored the cap of his own pen, not knowing exactly when the poison would take effect, but knowing enough to be sure it would happen while he was here at the Villa. What you couldn’t have known was that he was going to dash off into the city before class this morning. Dash off never to return.’
‘But I didn’t poison his pen,’ she said, more a plea than a rebuttal. ‘I wouldn’t have the faintest idea how to.’ Her defiance may have given way to distress but, like a boxer on the ropes who sees an opening for a counterpunch, she suddenly found the energy to throw it. ‘Yes, yes – that forensics person,’ she said, sitting forward in her seat. ‘Monsieur Ormans, he didn’t find a single fingerprint of mine on the second pen, did he? Did he, Captain.’
‘Elie, he didn’t find a fingerprint, full stop. The pen had been wiped.’
‘Ah.’ She slumped back but, perhaps because she had at least thrown a punch of her own, appeared to take the blow well. ‘Tell me something,’ she said, a little more settled than before. ‘What was I supposed to have done with this second pen?’
Although it was still early days, changing the angle of attack was a tried and trusted ploy in any interrogation and Darac had additional reasons to go for it now. Flaco’s interrogation face was a thing of such Jesuitical severity, it had been known to unnerve hardened criminals into making mistakes. Whether it would unnerve a fundamentally good and valuable member of society like Elie Tiron remained to be seen but Flaco had recently added a new string to her bow. The coaxing, conversational technique she had learned from her mentor Darac was just one of many approaches he had picked up from his own mentor, Agnès Dantier. He judged this a good moment to put it to the test.
‘I’ll bring Officer Flaco in here.’
‘What are you supposed to have done with the second pen?’ she began. ‘You knew that wherever and whenever the poisoned Urquelle eventually collapsed here on site, you, as director, you would be called immediately to the scene. At which point, you intended to remove the murder weapon itself from, say... Urquelle’s jacket pocket, and replace it with your harmless exact copy. Even if they thought of doing so, our forensic teams could examine the copy forever, couldn’t they, and never find anything amiss. Unfortunately for you and for lovers of natural justice, you never got the opportunity to execute that substitution.’ Flaco’s scowl explored an even deeper level of scrutiny. ‘Why? Because Urquelle and his pen were in the morgue, weren’t they? Where they belonged, if you ask me.’
Darac watched Elie carefully as she returned Flaco’s gaze. Frank and with no suspicious tells, it would have convinced many a young detective of her innocence.
‘Officer, I told Captain Darac earlier that I’m glad Urquelle is dead. I can’t deny it. It would be a lie and five minutes checking on your part would prove that. But I didn’t kill him and this business with the pen changes nothing. I have no knowledge of it at all.’
Flaco gave Darac a look and a little eyebrow semaphore between them established that she should carry on. Employing a variation on a skill honed by years of playing in a high-quality jazz group, Darac was able to listen attentively to one conversation while constructing a second one in his head. The presence of a replica pen in the desk drawer of self-confessed Urquelle hater Elie Tiron was hugely incriminating. But incriminating to whom? If she had acquired the second pen as a substitute, why didn’t she ditch it once she had learned that Urquelle had died off-site? She had certainly had enough time to have secreted it somewhere far more secure than a desk drawer. She could have transferred it to the glove compartment of her car, hidden it somewhere in the grounds, any number of things.
And if she had known that the second pen was sitting in her desk drawer, albeit jumbled in with a lot of other items, would she have left her office door unlocked for Barbara, someone she knew would be rummaging around for things in her absence? And it had then been Barbara who had found that a normally accessible filing cabinet drawer had been locked, a circumstance that led her directly to the drawer containing the pen.
And from whom could Elie have acquired the poison, acrylamide? The team had ruled out Vivienne Urquelle as a possible source. There could have been a connection between Elie and Ralf Bassette, but a number of officers were working expressly on finding one and coming up empty.
Darac was leaning heavily towards the theory that someone else had planted the pen to incriminate Elie when his mobile groaned against his chest. Two texts had come in, the first of which he had missed in the rush to set up the interview. Checking the ID, he felt his spirits lift. It was from Suzanne at Hôpital St. Roch.
Paul, in case you were thinking of it, it would be better if you didn’t contact Armani at the moment. There are complications with Noëmi and the baby.
I’m sure everything will be fine in the end but I’ll let you know later.
Kisses, S
Complications? A chill ran down Darac’s spine. Hadn’t the Tardellis suffered enough for one day? For a lifetime? Two lifetimes? But Suzanne was still confident, it seemed. Or were her reassurances... Not now. He looked at the second text, just in. It was from Erica.
Call me immediately.
4.39 PM
‘You alone, Paul?’
‘Yes, I’m outside the rear entrance. You’ve got something on the pen already?’
‘Plenty. Part of the ego-massage of a luxury item such as a Lepic pen is its exclusivity, right? But that makes their provenance easy to trace and not only because just a few outlets sell them. The pen we found was numbered, Paul, and not a batch number, either; a number that identifies it individually. It was purchased at 2.27 in the afternoon of May 18th this year at a store by the name of, hang on... Pedersen og Reiter, a jewellers on a street called Strøget, in Copenhagen, Denmark. The pen cost 6,700 Danish krone – about 900 euros – and was not engraved at that point, incidentally. It must have been done later.’
Copenhagen? And May? Annie Provin’s analogy of the rollercoaster ride was up and running once more. ‘And the purchaser’s name?’
‘A Madame Jeanne Dubois, apartment 3, Rue Racine, 2bis, Paris 75006. You know what’s coming next.’
‘There’s no such person at said address?’
‘Or said address, either.’
‘Erica, not more than two minutes ago, I’d made up my mind that someone had planted that pen in Elie Tiron’s desk to incriminate her.’
‘And now?’
‘Put it this way. I know for a fact that Elie spent a few days in Copenhagen this last May.
‘Ah.’
‘Ah, indeed. I take it the fictitious Madame Dubois didn’t write a cheque or use a traceable card to pay?’
‘No, she paid in cash.’
‘Didn’t the store people think that unusual?’
‘Unusual, yes, but not unprecedented – especially for us card-phobic French, apparently. Paying in cash wasn’t the only way in which she made an impression. I spoke to the under-manager of the store, one Laura Madsen, who although her accent was execrable, has serviceable French. When she overheard the somewhat hit-and-miss conversation in Danish going on between Madame Dubois and the assistant serving her, Masden stepped forward to take it on in French. Declaring that she was keen to practise her Danish, Madame D rebuffed her in a way that was less than polite.’
‘Impolite? A Parisienne? Sounds as if Elie had got into character pretty well.’ If it indeed was her. ‘Do you have more, Erica?’
‘Oh, yes. CCTV covers the front door, the till et cetera, and so everyone entering and exiting the store is filmed. The security firm they use is going to send us the file from that afternoon and we should have it any time. I know you’re not its biggest fan, but that’s the wonder of digital technology, Paul.’
‘You’re right, it is. Let me know the second you get it, will you?’
‘Of course.’
‘Great work, Erica.’
He ended the call and rang Agnès with the update.
‘You had entirely reasonable grounds for doubting Madame Tiron’s guilt, Paul, but this Copenhagen development does appear to remove them. If the CC evidence backs it up, cautioning her and bringing her in is really your only option.’
‘Agreed.’
Lost in thought, he barely acknowledged Officer Emil Balaise at the door, or Barbara at her desk as he walked back into the building. Despite everything pointing to it, he was still harbouring a nagging doubt about Elie. Partly, it was the postcards from her Copenhagen trip which had sparked an open and free conversation about it. There were three possibilities here. One: Elie had been negligent in leaving such a clear connection to the purchase of the substitute pen in plain sight. Two: she had left the postcards on display deliberately, reasoning that it would have been more suspicious to have not done so. Three: she was innocent of the crime and it was the person who had ultimately planted the pen in her desk who, somehow knowing when Elie was due to be in Copenhagen, had travelled to the city at the same time and purchased the pen as one “Madame Dubois,” thus initiating the sequence of incrimination.
He hovered outside the office door for a moment. At his back, Barbara worked tirelessly on.
On re-entering the office, the first thing he noticed was that the Brigade’s new camera gizmo was still broadcasting sound and vision back to the ops room from Clarice’s desk. The second was something he hadn’t noticed before: the leave calendar attached to a pin board on the wall behind it. The working week of May 16th to 21st contained two entries. Elie had been off from the 17th to the 20th; providing further damaging evidence against her. Barbara had been off for the whole week. The two of them off at the same time? How did that work?
‘Sorry I’ve been so long,’ he said, and whispered “It’s looking bad for her – more in a moment” in Flaco’s ear as he resumed his seat. ‘We might have to draw things to a close very shortly but I have a quick question.’
‘Yes?’ Elie said, apparently none the worse for her solo encounter with Flaco.
‘I’ve just spotted that back in May when you were in Copenhagen, Barbara was also on leave. Unusual, surely, for you both to be off simultaneously? How did Clarice cope by herself?’
The question appeared to wrong-foot Elie. ‘Oh, uh... no, I don’t think it has ever happened before – but she wasn’t. Clarice wasn’t by herself, I mean. Our night man Bruno stepped in. Not a patch on Barbara, of course, but he’s fine and he gets on with the students brilliantly.’ The wary look persisted. ‘Why is this of interest, Captain?’
‘It isn’t, really. We both manage teams, don’t we, and staffing issues interest me, I suppose.’
‘I see.’
Actually, as Flaco herself knew, few things interested Darac less but he didn’t want to show his hand just yet. ‘Please continue for the moment, Flak.’
‘Of course, Captain. So, madame...’
Darac stared at the floor. Yes, things were looking bad for Elie but perhaps that was exactly what the true culprit had intended the Brigade to conclude. His thoughts turned to Barbara, who certainly knew when Elie was taking her Spring break, and almost certainly knew her destination. Barbara who had also been absent from work on the day the substitute pen had been purchased. Barbara, the true and trusted factotum, addressed by all by her forename only, like a child. Barbara, whose mixed messages on Elie couldn’t hide the bitterness she so obviously felt at being overworked, overlooked and undervalued. Barbara, the woman with eyes in the back of her head. Barbara, the finder, when all alone in Elie’s office, of the incriminating pen.
He felt a throb against his chest. Erica:
That CCTV file is in. We’re holding.
He replied:
Flak and I will be right with you.
‘Flak, the officer on point at the rear entrance – will you bring him in, please?’
‘Immediately,’ she said, taking her leave.
‘Elie, classes are going to break shortly, aren’t they?’
She consulted her watch. ‘Any minute now, yes.’
Good. I need Astrid. ‘We’re going to leave you in the care of Officer Balaise. Not for too long, I hope. You’ll find him quite sympa.’
‘I’m sure.’ She gave a tired smile. ‘But I don’t really need a babysitter. Or do you think I might make a run for it without one, Captain?’
‘No, I don’t think that but this way, I would know you wouldn’t think of it, either.’
She nodded, exhaled deeply and sat back in her chair. The door opened and Flaco entered with Balaise. For a moment, Darac wondered about removing the live camera but then realised how useful it could prove.
‘Look after Madame Tiron, would you Emil?’
‘Certainly, Captain.’
‘Feel free to chat but I would remind you that the camera set up on the desk over there is sending a live feed back to the ops room. Continuing a protocol we’ve already established, Madame cannot send or read emails, texts or answer the phone. Alright? ’
‘Check.’
‘Just quickly, Elie,’ Darac said, setting the tone for Balaise, ‘When will Barbara be going home this evening?’
