Three to Kill Read Online Free PDF Page B

clattering about in the kitchen and swearing between clenched teeth, the little girls came downstairs. Gerfaut didn’t bother to scold them, even though, as he saw it, it was still too early to get up.
    The girls were dressed. Gerfaut dug out denim shorts and a Lacoste shirt, and all three left for the seafront. It was already hot. The beach was completely deserted. A wooden refreshment stand showed no sign of opening up. The Mercedes made a right, cruised by a motionless funfair and a cemetery, turned left, and finally parked in a side street near an antique shop that also dealt in detective stories, varnished seashells, and comic books translated from the Italian. Gerfaut and the girls found a café open and settled themselves on perforated plastic seats in red, yellow, and pastel blue. They drank bowls of gray café au lait speckled with stray coffee grounds and ate butter croissants from a nearby bakery. Then they headed back. A breeze had come up, sand whirled across the beachfront road, and the shrubs planted in wooden boxes waved back and forth like carnivorous plants. The milky coffee formed a resinous lump just below Gerfaut’s sternum.
    He left the car in the street outside their rental house. In the main room, with the blinds raised and windows open, Béa sat in an immense white robe dipping a zwieback in Special for Breakfast tea from Fortnum & Mason’s. She removed a crumb from the corner of her mouth.
    â€œWhere’ve you been? What got into you? Did you go to look at the sea?”
    â€œWe had breakfast!” cried the girls, as they raced noisily out of the room and up the stairs.
    Gerfaut sat down at the table.
    â€œDo you like the house?” asked Béa.
    â€œFor God’s sake,” said Gerfaut, “why can’t we go to a decent hotel? In North Africa, the Canaries, any damn place—”
    â€œStop it—stop swearing!” chided Béa.
    â€œJust so long as daylight doesn’t come into the room at half-past five in the morning, and dogs don’t bark, and cocks don’t crow, and you don’t have to hear all those horrible noises. Tell me why we can’t! We can afford a good hotel, so why not?”
    â€œYou know perfectly well why not! It’s not worth talking about it. You’re only trying to bring me down.”
    â€œI want to bring you down? God in heaven!”
    â€œYes, you’d love that. But I’m not going to let you, so it’s no use talking. If you don’t like it here, you can go back to Paris.”
    â€œIf I don’t like it here! Christ!” Gerfaut surveyed the mildewed leather couch, the likewise mildewed easy chairs, the two Henry-the-Second sideboards, the two massive dining tables with their carved legs, the ten chairs (two sideboards, two dining tables, ten chairs—Christ!), and the door to the toilet, opening directly into the main room, adorned by the picture of a small boy in short pants, socks about his ankles, with blond curls, mischievous bright eyes, and rosy cheeks, turning his head cutely toward the viewer as he pisses against a Montmartre-type gas lamp.
    Misreading Gerfaut’s pensiveness, Béa thought he had calmed down and rested her head on his forearm. She told him he was tired from the journey and that he had slept badly and that she understood. Granted, the house was hideous—but they hadn’t come to the seaside to stay indoors all the time. Anyway, they would rearrange things, take down the awful picture, consign one of the tables to the attic—“Christ alive,” grumbled Gerfaut, “do you realize how much those things weigh?”—and the bedrooms weren’t too bad, and the garden was just fine.
    â€œEvery year,” said Gerfaut, “I think it’s worse than the year before. Even if it’s not.”
    â€œEvery year,” retorted Béa, “you decide that we’ll never set foot here again, then you refuse to look