The Montmartre Investigation Read Online Free PDF

to identify the blonde and by then he would have had his vengeance. As for the young thug he had hired, there was no risk that he would give him away or try to blackmail him – when they found his body they would imagine it had been a settling of accounts. No one would link the two murders. He let the curtain fall. A detail was troubling him. That fellow at the first floor window…had he spotted him? He would have to reassure himself, find out who the man was and perhaps…
    â€˜You’re mad,’ he said out loud.
    But he let this thought go, and instead gloated over his plan, which he considered ingenious, cunning, brilliant – it had come off without a hitch, except that when he’d arrived at Killer’s Crossing 5 he had noticed that the blonde was only wearing one shoe. It would have been much too risky to return to Rue Linné. At first he had panicked – that kind of error could be fatal. Then the solution had presented itself: all he had to do was remove the other shoe.
    He poured himself a cup of coffee.
    â€˜The flics will easily trace the owner of the stolen carriage but so what! Where will that get them, the fools?’
    As he hunted in the pocket of his overcoat for some cigarettes, three little stains on the grey material caught his eye. Blood? It was an alpaca coat; it would be costly to get rid of it.
    â€˜Just wine,’ he decided.
    He inspected his trousers and shoes: spotless. He sat down at the table and regarded the red silk shoe sitting beside a flask of sulphuric acid.
    â€˜The police will think it was a crime of passion.’
    It was an amusing idea, and it soothed him.
    â€˜In fact, I can make use of the shoe.’
    He opened a drawer, took out some writing paper, a pen and an inkwell and wrote out an address:
    Mademoiselle C. Bontemps
    15 Chaussée de l’Étang
    Saint-Mandé. Seine
    Victor sat on a bench outside a building on Rue des Mathurins, leafing through Paris Photographie , a review to which he had just subscribed. He looked half-heartedly at an article by Paul Nadar and a collection of portraits of Sarah Bernhardt. His mind was elsewhere; he had not warned Tasha he was coming as he planned to surprise her. He consulted the pneumatic clock and decided to wander slowly to Tasha’s apartment. Making a detour to avoid Boulevard Haussmann, which stirred up unhappy memories, he turned off down Rue Auber and walked along Rue Laffitte.
    As he passed 60 Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette he felt a sudden wave of nostalgia. He pictured Tasha’s miniscule loft, and the memory of the early days of their affair produced an ardent longing to share his life with her.
    On Rue Fontaine he noted with satisfaction that the little notice was still up in the hairdresser’s window:
    Shop and Apartment to Let
    For information contact the concierge at 36b
    He had made up his mind. He went in under the porch.
    On Thursdays the courtyard overlooked by Tasha’s studio became the domain of the joiner’s little girls, who were energetically playing hopscotch using a wooden quoit. A washing line stretched from a second floor window to the acacia tree in the middle of the courtyard. On windy days Victor loved to watch the washing billow like the sails of a boat. He circled the water pump splashed white with bird droppings and made his way over to the back room of the hairdresser. He shaded his eyes to make out the layout of the room through the dirty window: it was a well-proportioned space. Once done up it would make a splendid photographic studio!…Yes, it was the ideal solution; he would only have a few yards to cross…
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    Tasha was leaning over a pedestal table mixing colours on her palette. Lemon yellow, Veronese green and Prussian blue echoed the tones of the canvas she was working on, which depicted a laurel branch and two ears of corn emerging from an iridescent vase. The slanting rays of sunshine caught the brilliant copper lights of her