Stonekiller Read Online Free PDF Page B

— she couldn’t have survived without it. Half our rural shopkeepers couldn’t’
    The post office, telephone and telegraph exchange. An inn and a grocery shop — tinned and dry goods mainly, and half-empty shelves for there were shortages here, too, in the South. Extreme shortages.
    â€˜She was always bitching about the parcels. Meat stinks after a few days,’ taunted Jouvet.
    No letters were allowed to cross the Demarcation Line between the Occupied and Unoccupied zones. Only postcards with minimum words now instead of gaps to fill in within the printed message that had had to serve everyone no matter what. But in one of those quirks of Germanic control, parcels had been overlooked in the Defeat of 1940 and postal clerks the country over had simply shrugged and carried on. Forgotten relatives had suddenly been remembered, especially if they had a farm or access to one. Deals had been struck: the tobacco ration every two weeks in exchange for a chicken, a bit of goose liver, some fish perhaps or butter.…
    The meat and other perishables often stayed in the post offices for days on end. Months in several cases, for the second-class postal service paled against that of the postcards which wasn’t all that good either but could sometimes be very efficient.
    St-Cyr crossed the esplanade and went in among the tombstones to face the man and stand in danger of his walking stick.
    Disdainfully, Jouvet shook his head at the offer of a cigarette. ‘I’ve already had mine. I’ll wait until noon, if I can stand it. One has to do such things because of people like you.’
    To contain oneself was often the supreme test not just of an honest détective in these troubled times, but of a patriot. Everyone questioned those who had something they didn’t have. ‘The cave, then, and the site of the murder, Captain? Let us concentrate on them.’
    The Sûreté’s gaze must be returned measure for measure as with the partisans one had had to question before stringing them up. ‘Each year that stupid woman took her little trip. Always on the same date, a Monday, a Sunday, it did not matter. Always to the same place — you’d think she would have got tired of it. First the mushrooms, then the climb up to that hole in the rock and afterwards, after rooting around in there, the bathe in the buff, the dress — ah, I see that you have discovered it. The size of the dress changed over the years as her weight increased but always it was of the same cloth. The strand of pearls, then the little walk through the forest.’
    Ah nom de Dieu, de Dieu , why was he enjoying the telling of it so much? The dark brown eyes smouldered under puffy eyelids. A man perhaps a good dozen years senior to his wife. ‘Monsieur …’
    â€˜It’s Captain , damn you!’
    One must remain unruffled. ‘Captain, you had best tell me what you know of this affair. The ritual of its repetition?’
    Jouvet stank of urine and the thought of its splashes made the Sûreté glance questioningly at the veteran’s right hand and ask himself, Could it have held a stone?
    â€˜A ritual, yes. Call it what you will.’ Jouvet tossed the hand for emphasis and clenched it tightly until he winced with pain just to prove he hadn’t missed a thing. ‘ if you ask me, that woman was crazy. Revering her dead lover like that. Her lover. Ah yes, Inspector, you people from Paris, you come here, you ask the questions but you do not stop to dig beneath the pus to clean the wound. You did not know she had spread her legs in the woods and had conceived without a proper marriage.’
    â€˜Pardon?’
    Was it so impossible to comprehend? ‘I married a bastard, Inspector. A bastard. Everyone thinks it of my wife, no matter what that mother of hers tried to do to cover things up.’
    â€˜Now listen, cut the vitriol and tell me things plainly. Each year she made the