Stonekiller Read Online Free PDF

into a brooding, surly silence. The children had watched their father in alarm before casting warning glances at each other and retreating to bed.
    It was not good. Ah no, it wasn’t. Murder and domestic problems so often went hand in hand. Madame Jouvet had had a painful welt and bruise from a fist high on her left cheek — now her lower jaw might well be swollen, a worry. The skin had also been yellow and dark around the half-closed eye, a massive shiner that was at least five days old.
    How had she borne the shame of it, a teacher in a little place like this? Had the argument, preceding the death of the mother-in-law, signalled trouble?
    Fortunately transport had arrived with two flics from Sarlat. They had soon got the woman home and it was then that Hermann and he had discovered what had transpired.
    Word had reached Domme that a body had been found but that its identity was still unknown. Abruptly she had left her students without explanation, had run frantically outside to grab her bicycle and pedal the twenty-five or so kilometres. First downhill to the bridge across the river, then on to Vitrac, Montfort and Carsac-Aillac before turning northwards towards Sarlat and then east. Tears, prayers, perhaps exhortations of remorse and then … then the dropping of her bicycle on the railway track, the running through the woods. They had found one of her shoes. She had known exactly where to find her mother. Exactly.
    Longing for his pipe and tobacco, he studied the distant terrain noting every little nuance as his mind probed the murder until a stick whacked a tombstone behind him, a throat was cleared. Spittle darted to one side. ‘Monsieur …?’ he began. The set of his lips was grim.
    â€˜It’s Captain ,’ spat Jouvet. Hammered by the early-morning light, the veteran stood stock-still in the graveyard. There was a stout walking-stick in his left hand and he leaned heavily on this to relieve the constant pain of the bullet-wasted leg the Russian partisans had given him. Once handsome, now grey with fatigue and unshaven, he wiped his nose with the back of a right hand that was far from good. ‘So, you have some questions. Why not start asking them, eh? She’s still sleeping it off but will have to do her duty. No replacement can be found and I cannot be expected to fill in for her. Not yet. We need the money.’
    â€˜The money, ah yes.’
    The grey-green trousers the Germans had given the husband in lieu of the promised French Army uniform, were unpatched in places, the wooden sabots and faded blue denim jacket with open-collared dress shirt disrespectful of his former status as a teacher who had once had students to command. An Iron Cross Second-Class clung defiantly to the left breast. A frayed rope had replaced the belt whose buckle would have borne the words Gott mit uns , God with us. The black beret was filthy.
    He made no move to come closer. The no man’s land of the esplanade separated them.
    â€˜Captain, was your mother-in-law to visit with you and your family after first going to that valley?’
    â€˜To the cave, Inspector. Why not say it?’
    â€˜All right, the cave.’
    â€˜Madame Fillioux could well have been on her way here afterwards. I would not have known. Lies … all I get from that wife of mine is lies. I’m not well. I can’t get around easily.’
    â€˜Then why bother to convince me of it?’
    The smile was crooked, the stick was waved. ‘Only that I could not possibly have killed her.’
    There, does that satisfy you? St-Cyr could see this clearly written in the man’s expression but he calmed his voice and kept control. ‘Tell me about her then. She was a shopkeeper.’
    â€˜Her papers will have told you that. Why waste my time?’
    â€˜Yes, but what kind of a shop?’
    â€˜An auberge-épicerie , what else in a lousy little dump like Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne? With the PTT of course