Dark Summer in Bordeaux Read Online Free PDF Page A

a plane tree in his irritation.
    Miriam was behind the counter of the tabac.
    ‘Stranger,’ she said.
    ‘I can’t trust myself to come here too often,’ he said, and was surprised to see her blush at what he intended as levity.
    ‘Go through to the back room. I’ll close up and join you.’
    She brought him coffee and a nip of marc.
    ‘You look tired.’
    ‘So do you.’
    ‘We’re all tired,’ she said, ‘tired of this war which isn’t being fought and tired of the conditions of this peace which isn’t peace.’
    Lannes knew what he had come to say, reluctantly, because it was bound to alarm her.
    ‘You haven’t been bothered, haven’t had unwelcome visitors?’
    ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
    ‘No, of course you don’t. I’ve had such a visitor. It makes me uneasy. Since I don’t know what to do, I was going to say nothing. But . . . I think you should know. There’s a German officer I have to deal with, quite a decent type as it happens, who has taken a fancy to Léon. Well, that’s natural enough, he’s an attractive boy and an intelligent one. But it’s been remarked on. There are people who want to use Léon to compromise the German. Do you see?’
    ‘Oh yes, I see and I understand.’
    ‘I don’t like it. It puts the boy in danger. I’ve spoken to him and warned him. I think you should do so too.’

    Moncerre was in the inspectors’ room, paring his nails, when Lannes returned to the office.
    ‘Well,’ he said, ‘that bastard was no help, no help at all. “So my brother’s dead,” says he, “murdered, you say. I can be of no assistance to you. We haven’t spoken to each other for a dozen years. It’s news to me that he had returned to Bordeaux. Why he should have done so is no concern of mine. Good day to you.” And that was it.’
    ‘You believed him?’
    ‘Of course I didn’t. He’s a twister, that’s obvious. I tried to press him. “Surely you must have some information?” “None at all,” says he, “his death is a matter of complete indifference to me. As far as I am concerned he’d been dead for years.” I asked him if it was on account of politics that they had fallen out. “None of your business,” he said, “and none of Superintendent Lannes’ either.” He stinks, but I suspect he may have been telling the truth. It’s clear anyway that he doesn’t give a damn about his brother’s murder. Frankly I don’t think we are going to get anywhere, and I have to say that I don’t know that it matters. That’s how browned off I am.’
    Lannes usually enjoyed Moncerre’s spurts of irritation, but this one depressed him. It wasn’t like the bull-terrier – as they called Moncerre – to relax his grip on a case, not even, it seemed, to have applied the leverage of which they had spoken. And to hear him say that it didn’t matter whether they found the old professor’s killer or not, that was somehow symptomatic of the mood of demoralisation which had led so many to acquiesce in the extinction of the Republic and to accept the aged Marshal as their guardian, if not indeed as their saviour. That he should have accepted the advocate’s refusal to interest himself in his brother’s murder, and by his own account done so without demur – well, it didn’t bear thinking about.
    ‘Let’s be honest,’ Moncerre said, ‘we’ve nothing to go on. Young René’s been through all the hotel fiches and there’s no record of our professor. Of course, as the lad says, he may have had false papers and another name, but that doesn’t help us. We’re stuck.’
    ‘Agreed,’ Lannes said. ‘So we must find out more about him.’
    It was something he had learned early. In any but the simplest of murders, it was knowledge of the victim that turned the key.
    ‘What of the daughter?’ he said.
    ‘Denied all knowledge of her, hadn’t seen her for years.’
    ‘Did you believe him?’
    ‘Not particularly, but, short of twisting his arm or beating him up, what