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his smile, “To find that out, you have to come and have coffee with me.”
    ----
    He had turned and left the room without waiting for a reply.  It could just as easily have been explained there and then, but the nausea was rising in him and with it his breakfast; he needed to get out.  Grateful that his memory of the convoluted route that they had taken through the Prefecture was correct and did not leave him floundering in some remote corner asking for directions, he was waiting in her office holding out her hat and coat when she came clacking across the lobby to the door. 
    “Herr Lieutenant!  This is my day off, it is not my case, and I don’t....”
    “Give me ten minutes,” he implored, “I promise you that my theory is interesting and will take no longer than a cup of coffee.  Come on, let’s go,” he finished, thrusting her hat and coat into her unresisting grip as he turned to lead. 
    As they walked south over the bridge and off the Île, and then turned east along the bank of the Seine, Marner seemed oblivious to the glances from passers-by at an SS officer and civilian woman walking together.  Lemele was only too aware and cringed inside, sure that they were assuming that she was his mistress, one of the crudely termed collaborateurs horizontals .  She yearned to run back and tell them that it was not so.  His attempts to start conversation, in both French and German, faltered into defeat in the face of her monosyllabic responses.  They passed several busy cafés before Marner finally settled on one on the Quai de Montebello, facing north across the river.  The edifice of Notre Dame was visible through the leaves of the trees towering up from the bank below, the south side of the steeple alternating light and dark as the sun was now forced to compete with the scudding dark rain clouds that were invading overhead. 
    Once served with the coffee he seemed content to sit in silence and idly scan the streets and watch the passing people.  In fact his preference would have been to look at her, but what he considered to be a ridiculous Parisian penchant for placing all of the chairs facing out into the street meant that he would either have to crane his neck or move his chair. 
    Uncomfortable again with the looks that they were drawing from those at the neighbouring tables, ill at ease simply in his presence, she broke the silence, “Okay, tell me why you are not happy with your own theory.”
    “First, please, let’s agree on our working language,” suggested Marner, wanting to be done with this game that they were both still stubbornly playing, her speaking in German and him in French.  “We’re in France, so let’s work in French, and...” raising his voice immediately to ride smoothly over her coming protest, “…and that way you’ll get fewer curious looks from your fellow Parisians too, hmmm?” To which she paused and glanced around, then nodded. 
    “But I am curious to know where you learned your excellent German.”
    “I studied for a while at the University of Leipzig.  My father was a teaching professor there.”
    “Really!  I visited Leipzig many times when....”
    Lemele cut in sharply, “Your theory?  About the murder?” she prompted. 
    Sighing, rebuffed again in his attempt to foster any warmth from this hostile woman, he shrugged in defeat.  “Well, we are currently working on the premise that both of them shot each other fatally at the same moment.  Therefore Schull’s shoulder wound was inflicted first, from behind; he then turns to shoot his attacker.”
    “And so....”
    “I’ve seen enough to know that a shoulder wound like that, with that amount of muscle damage, would render his arm useless.  But it is the same right shoulder and arm that, if the theory is correct, he then goes on to shoot with.  We know that because his weapon was still in his right hand.”
    Lemele’s expression confirmed that he had indeed caught her attention and, more