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often, he stayed
in the best hotels. He had a hard time leaving his work behind, in
her estimation, and was never gone for long.
    He asked her to write down the name and
address of the church. She didn’t have the exact street address,
but the name of the church and the priest were enough. Apparently
he went when the impulse drove him as much as anything else.
Perhaps it was a way of breaking away from his routine once in a
while, without wasting a lot of time at it. Gilles knew where the
place was. He had never attended that church in particular, but a
cousin of his wife’s had been wed there.
    “ And how did you get in to
clean the studio?” He’d been saving that one up, but she had a
ready answer.
    “ I, or I should say Emilie,
cleaned only during the day, when he was there to let her
in.”
    All of this was interesting enough in
its own way. During the course of the interview, he made copious
notes and began to build a picture of the daily patterns of life in
the household.
    According to Madame Fontaine, Alexis
was a wonderful man, very strong, very brave, and a good bodyguard.
While she wasn’t very competent to judge such things, that was his
impression as well. The driver, Frederic, was a dull person, fond
of his wife but not overly faithful by inclination, complained
about everything, liked to take a drink, and was basically an
honest fool by his own lights. He was perfectly content with an
easy job, three square meals a day and spending pretty much every
night at home with his family. While the Verene woman was certainly
pretty and she could see why Monsieur Duval found her attractive,
she was suspicious, subject to nameless fears for the well-being of
her employer, whom she had always treated with the utmost in
professional deference. This was not hard to believe. As for Jules
Charpentier, she didn’t know much about him, but he was
scrupulously polite and easy to provide for on his short visits,
and she had the impression he did not abuse his power with the
employees, of whom there were several hundred. He lived in town in
quite a nice neighbourhood. Presumably he had shown up on business
affairs, which he did routinely, but she did not keep track of
Monsieur’s appointments. That was between Monsieur Duval and
Alexis, who apparently could type and took dictation on the rare
occasions when that was necessary. She had picked up most of this
by a process of osmosis that he was not unfamiliar with.
    Madame Fontaine had four children of
her own, a son and three daughters. They were all grown up and had
moved out, successful enough people in their own way, as well as
seven grandchildren. A widow, she lived with her cat in a small
flat at the back of the house on the third floor. At one time, the
fourth floor had been rooms for servants, but Duval lived alone and
they didn’t need a lot of people to look after the
place.
    “ Would children have been a
problem for your employer? I mean, if they were running around the
house?”
    “ No. We would have taken a
flat elsewhere, but the question never came up.”
    A knock came at the door. Henri popped
his head in.
    “ A gentleman has arrived
from Lyons.” Madame Fontaine’s hand flew up to her mouth in a look
of consternation. “And Andre will be along shortly, he just rang
up.”
    “ Thank you, Henri. Well, I
guess that will be all for now, Madame.”
     
     
     

Chapter Three
     
    No known enemies
     
     
    The housemaid had only been employed
for a short time, and to her knowledge Monsieur Duval had no known
enemies, and there had been no recent tension in the household. She
was of the opinion that he was a wonderful man, a very good
employer, and seemed to be happy with life most of the time. There
were the occasional irritants in everyone’s life, of which she
could not give an example right off the top of her head. He did not
press her on it, as he had no wish for her to begin making things
up.
    She had her impressions of the
household but her state of