Murder in the Rue Dumas: A Verlaque and Bonnet Provencal Mystery (Verlaque and Bonnet Provencal Mysteries) Read Online Free PDF Page A

obsessed with finding more. He showed the coin to whomever came into the house—from family members to the guy who came to read the electricity meter—and although the inscription was too worn to read, he was fairly certain that the bust, clearly visible, depicted Hadrian: bearded, with a long aquiline nose, wearing a toga and crown of laurel. Alceste Paulik had, overnight it seemed to his son, become a fanatic amateur historian, having Bruno drive him into Aix—his parents had never liked driving in “la grande ville”—so that he could borrow Roman history books from the library.
    “Papa!” Léa moaned, holding her small blond head in her hands. Bruno Paulik turned around and faced his daughter. “
Solfège
!
Solfège
! I hate it! Why do they make us do it? I can read music already!” She took her right hand off her head and shoved aside her papers, some of them sliding across the pine dining table and one or two falling on the floor. Paulik left the window and came and wrapped his arms around her.
    “You know that in order to go to the
conservatoire
in Aix, you have to take all of the music reading classes, even if you can already read music,” he said. When his daughter didn’t reply, Paulik continued, “Léa, you love singing, but with every job, no matter how much we love it, there come some tasks that we don’t like doing. But, in order to do our job really well, we also have to do some…” He searched for the right word, but the only thing he could come up with was, “shitty stuff.”
    “Papa!” His nine-year-old daughter couldn’t decide if she should laugh or groan. She chose the latter, and Paulik silently agreed with her. He saw the overly difficult but obligatory music theory classespotentially doing more harm than good. What a perfect way to kill a child’s love of music, Hélène had once said. And if he, Bruno Paulik, son of Luberon farmers, had been forced to take the same
solfège
classes that his tiny daughter was now taking, he would have, he was sure of it, given up his opera passion. Léa loved to sing—why couldn’t she just keep on singing, and take the theory classes when she was older?
    He bent down and picked up the fallen papers, and whispered, “Mint chocolate-chip ice cream.” Léa beamed and nodded, holding up two fingers, which meant that she wanted two scoops. Paulik got the ice cream out of the freezer and Léa reached up in the cupboard for two bowls. They were just finishing the bright green ice cream when the back door opened.
    “Maman!” Léa shrieked. “We’re having a
solfège
break with ice cream!”
    Hélène Paulik stared at her husband, pretending anger, and then laughed.
    “Would you like some?” Léa asked. Hélène couldn’t understand how her husband and daughter could eat ice cream when it was cold enough to have a fire in the fireplace.
    “No, I think that a hot toddy is more what I need.” She leaned her back against the wall and struggled to take off her rubber boots.
    “Coming right up!” Paulik said, putting on the kettle. Léa walked over to the liquor cabinet and asked, “Rum, Maman, or whiskey?” The Pauliks looked at each other.
    “Do you think that it’s a good sign that a nine-year-old knows what goes in a hot toddy?” Bruno Paulik asked his wife.
    “Rum, sweetie!” Hélène replied. “Our daughter’s brilliant, what can I say?”
    “You look tired and wet,” Paulik said, bringing Hélène her favorite woolen poncho and draping it over her shoulders.
    “Both, but more wet, and frustrated. We had set aside this weekend to plow the vineyards…. You know what that’s like; you did it plenty enough for your dad.”
    “Why, Maman? Don’t the vines have enough soil?” Léa asked. Hélène moved over to her favorite armchair, beside the fireplace, and sat down. When the Pauliks had renovated their village house in Pertuis, they had kept only the supporting wall and made the ground floor as open as possible, the focus a