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and made his way to the Café Régent in the Place Gambetta. It was still cold, and threatening rain, and the terrace was deserted. He shook hands with the old waiter Georges whom he had known since he first frequented the café in the days long ago when he was a law student, and Henri, Gaston and himself would gather there with a few friends to talk and play billiards two or three evenings a week. How simple life had seemed then when he was happy because he had survived his war and the future was like a summer morning under a blue sky.
    When Georges had brought him his Armagnac and coffee that was more chicory than coffee, and had shuffled off on his waiter’s flat feet, Lannes took the note from his pocket and read it again. The reading wasn’t necessary, he knew just what it said, but now it occurred to him that the second ‘his’ – as in ‘his Jewish boy-friend’ – might be intended to refer to him rather than to Alain. It wasn’t improbable if the writer was, as he had first guessed, the advocate Labiche, who had once asked him in the rue des Remparts if he had been visiting his ‘pretty Jew boy’. Yet the more he thought about it, the less likely it seemed that it was Labiche who had sent Schnyder the note. He couldn’t say why. It wasn’t out of character, and yet it didn’t ring true. He wondered if Madame Peniel was indeed Jewish, and was disturbed that the thought had come to him. Miriam hadn’t recognised the name. It was Henri who had spoken of a Peniel, who might have been a Jew, the mysteriously disgraced acquaintance of his father’s. Nevertheless, the thought wouldn’t go away, even if it was probably this note and the Alsatian’s talk that had put it in his mind.
    He made his way to Mériadeck. It was the Jewish quarter and the few people in the streets looked tired and pinched. The old tailor’s sign had been removed. He would have been forbidden to carry on his business, but, when Lannes rang the bell and was admitted, there was cloth on the table and it was evident that he was still working, if only perhaps for a few old customers who relied on him.
    ‘So, superintendent, and why do you come to see old Léopold? To check that I am still alive? Or to ask me questions? Of course you have come for that reason. So how can the old Jew help you?’
    ‘Have you had any trouble?’ Lannes said.
    ‘Trouble? Why would I have had trouble? But then why wouldn’t I? By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, when we remembered thee, O Jerusalem. You see, the old Communist can still quote scripture. Brandy or tea?’
    ‘You told me once you drink brandy only when you are afraid.’
    ‘So: tea then. What do I have to be afraid of? But for you, superintendent, I think brandy.’
    There was mockery in his voice. There had been mockery in his voice each time Lannes had talked with him.
    ‘Peniel,’ Lannes said.
    ‘Peniel?’ the old Jew laughed. ‘My wife’s cousin. My very late wife’s cousin. Second cousin or third cousin, I don’t know. Is he dead that you come to me? Not that it matters. We shall all soon be dead. Isn’t that so?’
    ‘I don’t know if he’s dead or not.’
    Léopold took a pinch of snuff and sneezed.
    ‘So you don’t know if he’s dead, but you still come to me, and I tell you that I know nothing about him. Ephraim he was called, but he left the synagogue a long time ago. I left the synagogue myself but I found another faith, as you know. And that faith too left me long ago. So there we are. Ephraim became Édouard. He had ambitions to become a gentile and a gentleman. So who is dead, superintendent?’
    ‘A woman who may have been his niece. She called herself Madame Peniel, but I suspect she was never married. She taught music.’
    ‘And now she has been murdered.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And you come to me. But I can tell you nothing. Except this. Ephraim – Édouard – was no good. As for a niece, well, I can’t tell … I know nothing of any niece.