The Montmartre Investigation Read Online Free PDF Page A

softening agent. After a long soaking, they would be hung out and beaten by apprentices, releasing clouds of dust that covered the countryside like snow.
    Determined not to drop his find, Berlaud guided the goats on to the riverbank where tomatoes, petits pois and green beans grew. He hurried past the wickerwork trays of the peat sellers and the coaching-shed of Madame Guédon who leased hand-carts for use on Ruelle des Reculettes, which opened out just beyond the crumbling wall behind the lilac hedge.
    Old buildings with exposed beams housed the families of the curriers. Blackened twisted vines ran over their packed earth façades. The sound of pistons, and the occasional shriek of a strident whistle, served as a reminder that this was the town and not the countryside.
    Letting his dog and beasts trot ahead, Grégoire Mercier stopped to greet Monsieur Vrétot, who combined work as a concierge with his trade as a shoemaker and cobbler to make ends meet. Then the goatherd started up the stairs, whistling on every landing. Thirty years earlier he had left his native Beauce for Paris, and settled at the heart of this unhealthy neighbourhood, ruled by the misery and stench of the tanneries. A delivery boy for the cotton factory by Pont d’Austerlitz, he had fallen in love with a laundress, and they had married and had two little boys. Three happy years were brutally cut short by the death from tuberculosis of Jeanette Mercier. Moved by the plight of the little motherless boys, public assistance had given them a goat to provide nourishment, until consumption carried the little boys off in their turn. When he had overcome his grief, Grégoire decided to keep the goat and take in others as well. He had never remarried.
    He reached the fifth floor, where his flock were massed before a door at the end of a dark corridor. As soon as he closed the door of his garret, the goats went into the boxes set up along the wall. He went into a second room, furnished with a camp bed, a table, two stools and a rickety sideboard, shrugged off his cloak and hurried to prepare the warm water and bran that his goats expected on returning from their travels. He also had to feed Mémère the doyenne a bottle of oats mixed with mint, before opening the cubby hole where Rocambole the billy goat was languishing. Finally he heated up some coffee for himself and took it to drink beside Mélie Pecfin, his favourite. It was then that he noticed Berlaud. He was sitting on his blanket, wagging his tail, his find from the Botanical Gardens still between his paws, but with his eyes fixed on the sugar bowl. Grégoire pretended not to know what his dog was after and Berlaud growled meaningfully.
    â€˜Lie down!’
    Instead of obeying, the dog adopted an attitude of absolute servility, flattened his ears, raised his rump and crept stealthily forward, begging for his master’s attention. Grégoire distracted him by throwing him a sugar cube and grabbed the dog’s spoils.
    â€˜What’s that? That’s not a bone, that’s…that’s a…How can anyone mislay something like that? Oh, there’s something inside…’
    Grégoire was so puzzled he forgot to drink his coffee.
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    Lying back with his hands under his head, the man reflected on the enormity of what he had done. He had returned exhausted at dawn and sprawled on top of the rumpled sheet under his overcoat, going over the events of the previous night. The journey to the wine market on Rue Linné had barely taken him ten minutes. The blonde girl had slept deeply under the effect of the sleeping draught and he had carried her to the carriage without difficulty. No mistakes, no witnesses. And then? Child’s play; she had not suffered.
    He put a coffee pot on the still warm stove, went over to the window and looked down into the street. It was an autumn day like any other. He had managed everything to perfection. It would take the police a while