AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I smiled, remembering his belief that everything ought to make sense. “Looking for the angle, are you?”
“Always.”
“What else did Thierry tell you?”
“Oh, lots of things. It’s hard to shut Thierry up, once he gets
going. He said the death was ruled an accident, but the police originally thought someone else was with Muret that evening, because of the number of wine glasses they found. Which probably explains,” he said, “why they questioned poor old Victor Belliveau, and people like that.” He rubbed the back of his neck, thoughtfully. “Your cousin’s not a violent person, is he?”
I raised my eyebrows. “Harry?”
“Suppose he’d been drinking, or someone made him really angry…”
I finally caught his meaning, and rose bristling to my cousin’s defense. “Paul, you don’t think for one minute that Harry killed Martine’s ex-husband?”
He shrugged. “Not really. I just think it’s a hell of a coincidence…”
“It’s ridiculous,” I argued. Harry would never hurt anyone; he hated fighting, and besides, what possible motive would there have been? Even if Didier Muret had somehow read that article, and written to Harry, and met with him… how could that lead to anything like murder? And even if it was an accident… I shook my head. “Ridiculous,” I told Paul, resolutely. “Harry’s got a great respect for justice. He would never run away from something that he did.”
Paul looked at me, amusement in his eyes, and handed me another cigarette. “OK, OK. I’m sorry I brought it up.” His smile punctured the balloon of my righteous indignation.
“Well, anyway,” I said, softening, “the point is moot, isn’t it? You said the death was ruled an accident.”
“Accident,” Paul replied, “is just another word for chance.” But when I asked him what he meant by that he only shrugged, turning his gaze thoughtfully across the river. “I don’t know, exactly. Just a hunch I have. Tell me again about this theory of your cousin’s. About the lost treasure of Isabelle of Angoulême.”
I told him, and he listened, quietly, attentively. My father looked like that, I thought, when he was doing crosswords. One could almost hear the wheels at work. “So what,” I asked him, “are you thinking?”
“Nothing important.” He lifted his cigarette. “Like I said, it’s just a hunch. Simon’s paranoia rubbing off again, most likely. Gypsies, Nazis, treasures in the tunnels…” He smiled. “This really is a case for Sherlock Holmes.”
“Well, don’t get too carried away with your investigations,” I implored him. “I’d hate for you to spoil your whole holiday on my account.”
“Don’t worry so much,” was his advice. “I’m hardly spoiling my holiday. Here.” He handed me a hunk of bread. “Feed the ducks.”
When all the bread was gone, he stretched and checked his watch. “I’d better go find my brother. He said something about having lunch with Christian—I don’t know. Simon thinks that every German is an expert on the Nazi empire.” Paul smiled. “He never gives up, my brother. He’s bound and determined to find one of those treasures, before we leave.”
“You might never leave, then.”
“Suits me. Hey, are you going back to the hotel? Could you take this with you?” He shrugged his jacket off and held it up to me. “It’s getting kind of warm, with all this sun.”
“Sure. Paul…” I frowned. “I know you like playing detective and all that, but you will be careful, won’t you?”
“What could happen?” Paul stood up, pitching his spent cigarette away. The breeze caught it and sent it tumbling down the steps into the brackish water, where it landed with a soft and final hiss. For a brief instant, with the sun at his back, he looked like some young hero from the Old Testament, a David yearning for the battlefield. But then I blinked and there was only Paul, with his black hair flopped untidily across his forehead and his dark eyes deep and quiet as the river at our feet. “I’ll be careful,” he promised. “Want to meet for drinks in the hotel bar? Say, three o’clock?”
“OK.” I climbed with him to the top of the sloping steps and leaned, half sitting, on the low stone wall, watching him walk back toward the market place. At the other side of the zebra crossing he turned back, grinning, and called out something that I didn’t catch. He seemed to be pointing at the Rabelais statue beside me, but I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. I nodded anyway, and waved. Satisfied, he turned away again and vanished in the crowd.
My cigarette had burned down nearly to the filter. It left an acrid bitter taste upon my tongue, and I bent to crush it out against the wall, holding the torn stub lightly in my fingers while I looked round for a litter bin. There was one not far from me, at the edge of the busy road. Gathering Paul’s jacket in my free hand, I pulled myself away from the river wall with a small sigh, and wandered the few steps forward.
The jacket felt a good deal heavier than it ought to have been. It hung awkwardly to one side, and for a moment I thought he’d left his wallet in it, until one pocket gaped to reveal the dog-eared pages of a thickish paperback, with a cracked disfigured cover. I was smiling as I tossed my dead bit of cigarette into the bin.
The prickling at the back of my neck was my only warning. I barely turned in time to see the gypsy step from the shadow of the brooding statue and cross the boulevard, walking back toward the market square. He didn’t look at me. I might have been a ghost, invisible. Paranoia, I thought, was a sign of creeping age; and yet I did feel more at ease when man and dog had disappeared, and the shifting sea of faces swirled and flowed to fill the wake behind them.
Chapter 23
…the heralds to and fro,
With message and defiance, went and came;
Thierry set my second kir on the low table at my knees, propped one foot against the carpeted step up to my section, and picked up his story where he’d left off. “…and they cannot eat or bathe, or do anything for pleasure—not until the sun has set, tomorrow night. It is a most important holiday. Paul calls it Yom… Yom…”
