2 Éclair Murder Read Online Free PDF

HD or anything, but we’d be able to see if this Dupont was here that day and whether Raoul had anything to do with this.”  

    “Great! I wonder why that inspector didn’t ask to see the store surveillance footage. Probably because he’s so clueless. I’m going over there right now.”  

    “I’ll give you the card of the company,” said Caroline, who disappeared into the back office to get it.  

    ***

    Clémence took the Métro to Avenue Emile Zola. She’d made an emergency appointment with the surveillance company and knocked on the door of a storefront with dark tinted windows. A guy in his early thirties with scruffy facial hair answered the door.

    “Bonjour,” Clémence greeted him. “Are you Monsieur Ralph Lemoine?”  

    “ Oui . Clémence Damour?”  

    “ C’est moi .”  

    He let her in. The place was set up more like an apartment. The kitchen was at the front, with a living room that was really scattered with plenty of surveillance equipment, including TV screens and computers. There was a staircase that led to a floor upstairs.  

    Ralph was wearing scruffy jeans, sneakers, a ripped grey T-shirt and a white hoodie. His brown eyes were rich in color, but his dark under eye circles suggested that he hadn’t slept much.

    “Do you live here as well?” Clémence asked out of curiosity.  

    “Oh, no,” said Ralph, “It’s not an apartment, although I live in the neighbourhood. There are a few other guys working upstairs surveilling your stores and some other companies. I’m only dressed this way because we don’t need to dress up for this job since we look at screens all day, excuse me.”  

    Ralph rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. In Paris, appearances were everything, but she knew how liberating it was to dress like a slob and not have to worry about what people thought. She had dressed in sweats during a good portion of her travels abroad.

    Clémence smiled. “Don’t apologize. You can dress however you want. I’m the one taking up your time.”  

    “Do you want a café ?” Ralph asked, moving near the expresso machine on the kitchen counter. He looked like he needed one.  

    “ Non, merci .”  

    He made one for himself and sat down at the counter.

    “So you’re looking for someone in the surveillance tapes?” Ralph asked.  

    “Yes. This guy named Alexandre Dupont. I just want to look through the footage of Thursday morning to early afternoon. This is in the patisserie section of our store in the 16th.”  

    “Sure,” said Ralph. “Let me find it.”  

    He went to his workspace, switched on a screen and began typing on a keyboard. After a few minutes of fiddling, he was able to find the footage.  

    Clémence sat beside him as he started playing the footage at the beginning of the work day. The camera had a view of the profile of the customers in line, as well as the cashiers. She looked carefully at every man’s face in the sped up footage. After a couple of hours of reviewing each customer carefully, rewinding and freezing the footage at times, she shook her head.

    “He wasn’t there,” she said. “Are you sure this footage is from yesterday?”  

    Ralph pointed to the date on the bottom right of the screen. “I’m 100% sure.”  

    “So this Dupont guy wasn’t in the shop,” Clémence said.  

    “If you don’t recognize him, then he didn’t.”  

    “Apparently he had bought two pistachio éclairs,” Clémence said.  

    If Dupont didn’t buy the éclairs himself, someone else must have bought it for him that morning.  

    Cyril had mentioned that he ate two pistachio éclairs. He could tell because of the glazing smeared inside the bag. There was no receipt to go with the purchase, but they had to have been bought in the morning. Clémence knew this because the nub of the éclair that she had inspected on the ground had been fresh indeed. She could tell by the texture, by the shine on the glazing. Besides, Damour never