Seen and Not Heard Read Online Free PDF

wasn’t yet summer. It wasn’t that he minded the smell of blood as it pooled on the cement floor at his feet, but the flies were a nuisance.
    He’d been working since five that morning, hacking, slicing, carving. He was proud of his profession. He was a butcher, owner of his own boucherie in a tidy little back street in the Belleville section of Paris. He’d worked hard for it, with no one to help him. His foster parents hadn’t given a damn for the brutish boy who’d been foisted upon them, and he’d cleared out as soon as he could, apprenticing himself to old Maître Clerc. He’d been diligent, patient, and not the slightest bit squeamish, not about butchering cattle, not about putting dye in diseased meat and selling it to nursing mothers, not about putting up with Maître Clerc’s drunken affection. He’d put up with worse in his life.
    And he’d waited. Waited until the boucherie had started to show a fair profit, waited until Maître Clerc’s brother died, waited until he’d become indispensable to the old man. And then he’d given him a little push down the stairs and taken over the business he’d worked so hard for.
    He no longer sold diseased meats. He had his own reputation to consider, not Clerc’s. It was his name over the shop now, and every morning he looked on it with pride.
    And he no longer had to put up with the drunken fondlings of a raddled old fag. Instead he could afford a clean, decent-looking whore who wouldn’t complain if he liked it a little rough. He paid well, and he never marked them.
    No, he thought, splashing some of the bloody water over his sweating moon face, life was good. He had his work, he had sex when he needed it, he had friends to drink wine with and play cards. And every few weeks, during the heavy rains, he had the old women.
    Why had she lied to him, Claire demanded of herself. Surely she could have told him the truth after so long? Marc wasn’t likely to pass judgment—he had a laissez-faire attitude about morals that sometimes shocked her.
    After all, she was planning to marry the man. Was she fool enough to think a marriage would survive with secrets between them? Oh, by the way, Marc, I happened to have been involved in a hit-and-run accident just before I met you. One of the reasons I came to Paris with you was because I wanted to get away from the police in case they found out what happened. And you thought I came just to be with you?
    He wouldn’t like it. He wouldn’t like it one bit. But she had lied to him, quickly, instinctively. “The police? Why in the world would they want to see me?”
    Marc had smiled, his charming, beautiful smile. “I don’t know, darling. I must confess, I lied.”
    Relief and confusion washed through her. “You lied?”
    He nodded, glancing down at the grainy photo of themurdered woman with only cursory interest. “I told the man from the embassy that you left me to tour southern France. I had no idea where you were, or if you were even still in the country.”
    Claire held herself very still. “Why did you do that?”
    He shrugged, an elegant, classic gesture. “I have an instinctive distrust of the police. And I knew they could have no good reason for wanting to bother you. What was it—overdue parking tickets?”
    Brazen it out, she ordered herself. Or confess. Don’t just stand there doing nothing. “Something like that, I would imagine,” she said finally. “I really don’t know. It was thoughtful of you to help, but I’d better go talk with the embassy and see what it is they want.”
    “As you wish,” he dismissed it lightly, turning back to his paper. And ever since she’d been cursing herself for a fool and a coward. The more she lied, the deeper the hole she dug herself.
    It was a pretty afternoon—one of the best she’d seen in a long time. The sun had come out, bright and strong, and burnt away the soaking rain. Even the bare trees were delicate against the bright blue of the sky, and Paris was