Killer Critique Read Online Free PDF

told me a commissaire of the Police Judiciaire wanted to see me, I imagined a big, fat old man with a pipe.”
    â€œThe look may have changed, senhor, but Commissaire Maigret is still our role model. I’m here because we have a case that may involve curare, and I thought you might be able to tell me something about it,” she said, beaming her most fetching smile while gently retrieving her hand.
    â€œIn that case,” Mello said, “you must come up to my office.” He winked with a charming parody of a leer. “I don’t have any etchings, but I do have all sorts of intriguing Indian artifacts.”
    Mello’s office could equally well have belonged to a museum curator or an editor of a fashion magazine. Almost every inch of wall space held a brightly colored tropical painting and even more were stacked upright in the corners. Bookcases were jammed with multiple copies of cocktail-table books about Brazil, obviously to be used as gifts. The sofa and chairs were heaped with Carnival masks and costumes. One sprawling leather chair, which Capucine recognized as Sergio Rodrigues’s famous Poltrona Mole , was piled high with Indian handiwork: clothing, jewelry, gourds. On top of the pile, a collection of long bows, eight-foot arrows, and blowguns was poised precariously.
    â€œFirst things first. We need a cafezinho after all that emotion.”
    â€œThank you, but no,” Capucine said. “I already had two coffees after lunch.”
    The attaché laughed his charming, boyish laugh. “ Pas question,” he said with a perfect Parisian inflection. “The ambassador would never forgive me if I let you leave the embassy without tasting our coffee, particularly now that he is secure in his job once again.”
    He picked up the phone and spoke briefly. After an impossibly short pause, a servant in a high-collared, starched white jacket arrived with a small silver tray holding two demitasse cups, a silver coffee pitcher, and a small silver sugar bowl. The servant handed Capucine a cup and saucer, proffered the sugar bowl, then poured in the coffee. When it was the attaché’s turn, he filled his cup almost half full of sugar, leaving little room for the coffee. Mello stirred the sugary sludge vigorously and then downed the contents in one go. Capucine imitated his gesture. It was several times stronger than even the most powerful French express, but rounder in the mouth and with none of the sharp bite. The attaché had been right. That was something not to have been missed.
    â€œTell me about the reception,” Capucine asked.
    â€œIt was part of a year-long program we sponsor to raise money for a fund that protects Brazilian Amerindians. The focus is on their art. This is just some of the collection,” he said, waving his hand vaguely around the chaos of his office. “The exhibits include objects from prehistoric times to the present. You know, masks, feather finery, jewelry, weapons, statuettes, pottery, musical instruments, that sort of thing.” He smiled seductively at her. “But it’s the curare darts you’re interested in.”
    Capucine nodded.
    â€œWell then, let me show you.” He rooted around in the pile on his beautiful leather chair and produced a glass-fronted wooden case about three feet by two, flat as a picture frame, exhibiting about fifty darts in different stages of manufacture. At the beginning of the series the sticks were rough and irregular, but the last half dozen stood stiff and straight, as if they had come off a Bavarian assembly line.
    â€œIt’s amazing the skill that goes into making these things. These particular darts are made from the central stalk of the leaves of a palm we call the inayuga and are smoothed and sharpened with piranha teeth, then hardened over a fire. Of course, each tribe has its own method. They use all sorts of plants. Some tribes even make the darts from rolled-up leaves. And