The Little Man From Archangel Read Online Free PDF Page B

had asked him:
    'Haven't you got anybody yet?'
    He had replied no, and Le Bouc had leant over his counter.
    'You ought to have a word or two with Angèle.'
    He had been so surprised that he had asked, as if there could have been two Angèles:
    'The greengrocer?'
    'Yes. She's having trouble with Gina. She can't do anything with her. I think she wouldn't be sorry to see her working outside so that someone else could break her in.'
    Up till then Gina had been more or less helping her mother in the shop, and slipping off at every opportunity.
    'You wouldn't like to talk to her yourself?' Jonas had suggested.
    It seemed to him incongruous, indecent almost, on his part, as a bachelor, although he had no ulterior motives, to go and ask a woman like Angèle to let him have her daughter for three hours a day.
    'I'll have a word with her father. No! I'd better see Angèle. I'll give you her reply tomorrow.'
    To his great surprise, the reply next day was yes, or as good as yes, and he was almost frightened by it. Angèle had told Le Bouc, to be precise:
    ' Tell that Jonas I'll come round and see him.'
    She had come, late one afternoon during a slack period, had insisted on seeing over the house, and had discussed wages.
    That meant changing his habits, and it was not without reluctance that he gave up going at half-past twelve and sitting in Pepito's little restaurant, where he had his own pigeon-hole for his table-napkin and his bottle of mineral water.
    'After all, if she's going to work at all, it might as well be worth her while. It's high time she got down to some cooking, and we hardly have time in our place at midday to eat more than a piece of sausage or some cheese.'
    Didn't Gina resent his having engaged her, at first? Anyone would have thought she was doing everything possible to make herself unbearable so that he would throw her out.
    After a week with him she was working from nine o'clock in the morning until one. Then Angèle had decided:
    'It's absurd to cook for one person alone. It costs no more to do it for two. She might just as well have lunch with you and do the washing-up before leaving.'
    Suddenly his life had changed. He didn't know everything, because he didn't hear the gossip, perhaps also because people didn't speak freely in front of him. He didn't understand, at first, why Gina was always in low spirits and why she would suddenly turn aggressive only, soon afterwards, to burst into tears in the middle of her housework.
    It was then three months since Marcel Jenot had been arrested and Jonas hardly ever read the papers. He had heard his name mentioned at Le Bouc's, for it had created quite a sensation. Marcel Jenot, the son of a dressmaker who worked for most of the women of the Market, including the Palestris, was under-cook at the Commercial Hotel, the best and most expensive in town. Jonas must have seen him at some time or other without paying any attention. His photograph, in the papers, showed a young man with a high forehead and a serious expression with, however, a rather disquieting curl to his lip.
    At twenty-one he had just finished his military service in Indo-China and was once more living with his mother in the Rue des Belles-Feuilles, the street beyond Pepito's restaurant.
    Like most young men of his age he owned a motor-cycle. One evening on the Saint-Amand road, a large car-load of Parisians had been stopped by a motor-cyclist who seemed to be asking for help and then, brandishing an automatic, had demanded money from the occupants, after which he had punctured the four tyres of the car and made off.      
    The motor-cycles number plate, at the time of the hold-up, was covered with a layer of black paint. How had the police managed to trace it to Marcel? The papers must have explained it, but Jonas didn't know.
    The investigation was under way when Gina had gone into service with him, and a month later the trial had taken place at Montluson.
    It was Le Bouc who had told the bookseller