Death at Dawn Read Online Free PDF Page A

known to the Reverend Bateman.
    I left the house, filling my lungs with the better smells outside – seaweed and fish, fresh baked bread and coffee. This reminded me that I had eaten and drunk nothing since the message had arrived, back in Dover.I was almost scared of doing either. That message had divided my life into before and after, like a guillotine blade coming down. Everything I did now – eating, drinking, sleeping – was taking me further away from the time when my father had been living. I still couldn’t think of eating, not even a crumb, but the smell of coffee was seductive. I followed it round the corner and on to a small quay. It wasn’t part of the larger harbour where the channel packet came and went, more of a local affair for the fishermen. There were nets spread out on the pebbles, an old man sitting on a boulder and mending one of them, his bent bare toes twined in the net to keep it stretched, needle flashing through the meshes like a tiny agile fish. The coffee shop was no more than a booth with a counter made of driftwood planks, a stove behind it and a small skinny woman with a coffee pot. She poured, watched me drink, poured again, making no attempt to hide her curiosity.
    ‘Madame is thirsty?’
    Very thirsty, I told her. It was a pleasure to be speaking French again.
    ‘Madame has arrived from England?’
    ‘Yesterday.’
    ‘A pleasant crossing?’
    ‘Not so bad, thank you.’
    The sea had been calm at least. I’d stood at the rail all the way, willing the packet faster towards Calais but dreading to arrive.
    ‘Is madame staying in Calais for long?’
    ‘Not long, I think. But my plans are uncertain. Tell me, where do the English mostly stay these days?’
    She named a few hotels: Quillac’s, Dessin’s, the Lion d’Argent, the London. I thanked her and walked around the town for a while, trying to get my courage up, past the open-fronted shops with their gleaming piles of mackerel, sole, whiting, white and orange scallops arranged in fans, stalls piled high with plump white asparagus from the inland farms, bunches of bright red radishes. At last I adjusted my bonnet using a dark window pane as my mirror, took a deep breath and tried the first hotel.
    ‘Excuse me for troubling you, monsieur, but I am looking for my father. He may have arrived in Calais some time ago, but I am not sure where he intended to stay.’
    After the first few attempts I was able to give a description of my father without any trembling in my voice.
    ‘His name is Thomas Jacques Lane. In France he probably uses Jacques. Forty-six years old, speaks excellent French. Tall, with dark curling hair, a profile of some distinction and good teeth.’
    But the answers from the hotels, whether given kindly or off-handedly, were all the same. No, madame, no English gentleman of that description.
    It was midday before I came to the last of the big hotels. It was the largest one, newly built, close to the pier and the landing stage for the steam packet, witha busy stableyard. Carriages were coming and going all the time, some of them with coats of arms on the doors and footmen in livery riding behind. It was so far from being a place where my father might have stayed that I almost decided not to try, but in the end I went up the steps into a foyer that was all false marble columns and velvet curtains, like a theatrical set, crowded with fashionably dressed people arriving or leaving.
    I queued at the desk behind an English gentleman disputing his account. Clearly he was the kind of person who, if he arrived at heaven’s gateway, would expect to find St Peter speaking English and minding his manners. He was working his way through a bill several pages long, bullying the poor clerk and treating matters of a few francs as if there were thousands at stake. I had plenty of time to study him from the back. He was tall and strongly made, his shoulders broad, the neck above his white linen cravat red and wide as a farm