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influence it, but on average a corpse lost heat at a little over two degrees Centigrade an hour—that was the figure Louis often used. And from thirty-seven degrees this one’s had fallen to …
    ‘Nineteen and close enough.’
    Death had occurred at between eight and nine last night, though the coroner would have to confirm it. ‘Did the evening’s entertainment begin with him?’ asked Kohler sadly.
    Was it a portent of things to come? wondered St-Cyr. ‘And then the girl who telephoned?’
    ‘Was this one her pimp?’
    ‘Perhaps, but for now we must wait.’
    One of the lanterns was reached for. Dutifully Hermann started up the stairs to get a blanket.
    ‘I’m going to have to watch over him,’ confided St-Cyr to the victim. ‘He was forced to witness some terrible things only a day or two ago, was showered with broken glass and has been hating himself ever since when no blame should ever be attached to him. He’s not responsible for Hitler and the Nazis, or the Gestapo and the SS, or what the Wehrmacht are doing in Russia and have done elsewhere. As a detective, he had to belong to the Kripo—one couldn’t have resigned in protest. He has never had anything to do with any of them, has always been apart and himself and, since coming to France, has become a citizen of the world to whom a little polishing is necessary from time to time.’
    At 7.45 a.m., the light was pitiful and the sleet had changed to such a heavy downpour one had to be mindful of the marker that was along the quai de la Tournelle, right where there was a fabulous view of the Notre-Dame on warm, sunny days. Normally the river’s level stood at two metres, Kohler knew. At four, all traffic had had to stop before the Defeat, though now that was, perhaps, less of a problem, but anything beyond that level and the city would need its water wings.
    ‘When this quits, Louis, there’ll be fog for days,’ he grumbled. In war, as in this Occupation, there wasn’t any sense in getting sentimental about anything.
    The Lido had yielded zero about the caller of last night. No one had mentioned anything about anyone having been forced to telephone the police, nor had anyone gone missing.
    It wasn’t good. It was terrible, and yes, at least three-quarters of the audience of last night or any other would have been of the Occupier, the rest their friends. And that, too, wasn’t good, for both Louis and he knew damned well that the Occupier craved female company and could and did commit murder or any other common crime.
    While they’d been there, the quartier ’s commissariat had found them and now, more than soaked to the skin and freezing, they were standing in the rain, waiting. The warden of the Parc Monceau, one of the city’s loveliest and not far from the préfet ’s school or the Lido, had found freshly dug earth and hastily replaced flagstones under the shelter of an arbour and had let the flic on patrol know about it.
    ‘The fingers can’t be here, Hermann. The gates to the park would have been locked at the time of the killing.’
    Yet chance could and did play a part in things these days. Bourgeois—wealthy beyond mention, some of the quartier ’s residents—the park was second home to the establishment.
    ‘Financiers, Hermann. Bankers, lawyers, men of commerce but writers too. Proust lived nearby and loved this park. It comes out in what he wrote of it. Old money, new money …’ Brusquely Louis indicated the surrounding hotels and mansions as if even within les hautes there were substrata that did not mingle.
    It was tough being a Socialist, thought Kohler of his partner. They were standing near the northeastern end of the park, overlooking the naumachia where frozen, moss- and ivy-covered Corinthian columns formed a horseshoe at the far end of an ice-clad pond atop which water had rapidly pooled. Rose beds in winter’s burlap, were to the left. Pigeons—perhaps the few that hadn’t yet been trapped and eaten—suffered atop