Seven Little Crosses In A Notebook

1

‘At home,’ said Sommer, who was making coffee on a hot plate, ‘we used to go to midnight Mass all together, and the village was half an hour from the farm. There were five of us boys. Winters were colder in those days, for I remember going to church in a sleigh.’

Lecoeur, sitting at his switchboard with its hundreds of plugs, had pushed back the headphones from his ears in order to follow the conversation.

‘In what part of the country?’

‘In Lorraine.’

‘Winters weren’t any colder in Lorraine forty years ago, but the peasants had no cars. How many times did you go to midnight Mass in a sleigh?’

‘I don’t know…’

‘Twice? Three times? Perhaps only once? But it impressed you because you were only a kid.’

‘In any case when we got home we had a splendid blood sausage, the like of which I’ve never tasted since. And that’s not fancy. We never discovered how my mother made it, nor what she put into it, to make it different from all other blood sausages. My wife has tried. She asked my elder sister, who claimed to have mother’s recipe.’

He went up to one of the great curtainless windows behind which lay nothing but darkness, and scratched the glass with his finger-nail.

‘Why, it’s all frosted up. And that again reminds me of when I was little. In the mornings when I wanted to wash I often had to break the ice in my jug, although it was standing in my bedroom.’

‘Because they didn’t have central heating then,’ Lecoeur objected calmly.

There were three of them on night duty, and they had been shut up in the huge room since 11 p.m. the previous evening. Now they were limp with 6 a.m. fatigue. Remains of food lay about on the tables, with three or four empty bottles.

A light as big as an aspirin tablet appeared on one of the walls.

‘Thirteenth arrondissement,’ muttered Lecoeur, putting back his headphones. ‘Croulebarbe district.’

He seized a plug and thrust it into one of the holes.

‘Croulebarbe district? Your van’s just gone out. What’s up?’

‘Officer calling, Boulevard Masséna. A scuffle between two drunks.’

Lecoeur carefully made a little cross in one of the columns in his notebook.

‘What are you chaps doing?’

‘There are only four of us in the station. Two of them are playing dominoes.’

‘Have you been eating black pudding?’

‘No. Why?’

‘Oh, no reason. I must hang up; something’s happening in the sixteenth.’

A gigantic map of Paris was painted on the wall in front of him, and the little lights that flashed on represented police stations. As soon as one of these received a warning for one reason or another, the light went on and Lecoeur pushed in the plug.

‘Hello! Chaillot district? Your van’s just gone out.’

In each of the twenty arrondissements in Paris, in front of the blue lamp of every police station, one or more vans stood ready to rush off at the first warning.

‘What is it?’

‘Veronal.’

A woman, obviously. It was the third that night, the second in the fashionable Passy district.

Lecoeur marked a cross in another column while Mambret, at his desk, filled in official forms.

‘Hello! Odéon? What’s happening your way? Stolen car?’

That concerned Mambret, who took notes, picked up another phone, dictated the description of the car to Piedboeuf the telegraphist, the drone of whose voice could be heard immediately overhead. It was the forty-eighth stolen car that Piedboeuf had reported since eleven o’clock.

For other people, Christmas Eve must have a special flavour. Hundreds of thousands of Parisians had flocked to cinemas and theatres. Thousands more had been shopping until a late hour in the big stores where weary-legged assistants were bustling about, as though in some nightmare, in front of their almost denuded shelves.

There were family gatherings behind drawn curtains, with turkeys roasting and blood sausages probably prepared, like Sommer’s, from some private recipe carefully handed down from mother to daughter.

There were children sleeping restlessly, while their parents were quietly setting out presents round the Christmas tree.

There were restaurants and night-clubs where all the tables had been reserved days in advance. There was the Salvation Army’s barge on the Seine, where dossers queued up, hungrily sniffing the good smells.

Sommer had a wife and children. Piedboeuf, the telegraphist on the floor above, had become a father a week ago.

Except for the ice on the windows, they would not have realized that it was cold outside. Christmas Eve, for them, wore the drab yellow colour of their big office facing the Palais de Justice, in the now deserted buildings of the Préfecture of Police, where in two days’ time, and not before, crowds would pour in with requests for aliens’ cards, driving licences, passport visas, demands of every sort.

Down below in the courtyard vans were waiting for urgent calls, with their drivers dozing on the seats.

But there had been no urgent calls. The little crosses in Lecoeur’s notebook were eloquent. He did not trouble to count them. He knew that there were some two hundred in the drunks’ column.

The police were being indulgent that night. They tried to persuade people to go home quietly, and only intervened when some drunks turned nasty and began to smash glasses or threaten peaceful fellow-customers.

Two hundred individuals, some of them women, were sound asleep on the floor in various police stations, behind bars.

There had been five knifings, two at the Porte d’Italie and three at the summit of Montmartre, not the Montmartre of the night-clubs but the outer zone, among the shanties built of old wooden boxes and tarred felt, inhabited by over a hundred thousand North Africans.

A few children reported missing – they were found again soon after – in the throng attending Mass.

‘Hello! Chaillot? How’s your veronal case?’

She had not died. They seldom do. They usually manage things so as not to die. They’ve made their gesture.

‘Talking of blood sausages,’ began Randon, who was smoking a big meerschaum pipe, ‘that reminds me…’

They never learnt what it reminded him of. They heard hesitant footsteps in the unlighted staircase, a hand fumbled at the door and they saw the knob turn. The three of them stared in surprise that anyone should come to visit them at six o’clock in the morning.

‘Salut!’ said the man, throwing his hat down on a chair.

‘What are you doing here, Janvier?’

Janvier was a young detective from the Homicide Squad, who went first of all to warm his hands over the radiator.

‘I was bored, all alone over there,’ he said. ‘If the killer gets going I’ll get the information here soonest.’

He, too, had spent the night on the job, but across the street, in the offices of the Police Judiciaire.

‘May I?’ he asked, lifting the coffee-pot. ‘The wind’s icy.’

He was blinking and scarlet-eared from the cold.

‘We shan’t know anything before 8 a.m. or later,’ said Lecoeur.

For the past fifteen years he had spent all his nights here in front of the map with its little lights and the telephone switchboard. He knew most of the Parisian police by name, at any rate those on night duty, he was even knowledgeable about their private affairs, since on quiet nights, when long intervals elapsed between the flashing of the lights, they could gossip together across space.

‘How are things going with you?’

In this way he knew most of the police stations, too, although not all of them. He could imagine the atmosphere, as the policemen sat around with loosened belts and open-necked shirts, making coffee, just as they were doing here. But he had never seen them. He would not have recognized them in the street, any more than he had set foot in the hospitals whose names he knew as well as other people know the names of their uncles and aunts.

‘Hello! Bichat? How’s the injured man they brought in twenty minutes ago? Dead?’

A little cross in his notebook. You could ask him difficult questions:

‘How many crimes are committed for money each year in Paris?’

He would reply unhesitatingly : ‘Sixty-seven.’

‘How many murders committed by foreigners?’

‘Forty-two.’

‘How many…’

He did not pride himself on it; he was meticulous, that was all. It was his job. He was not obliged to inscribe the little crosses in his notebook, but it helped to pass the time and it gave him as much satisfaction as collecting stamps.

He was unmarried. Nobody knew where he lived or what he did once he had left that office where he spent every night. Actually, one could scarcely imagine him outside in the street, like anybody else.

‘For important happenings, you have to wait till people get up, till the concierge brings up the mail and the maids prepare breakfast and wake up their employers.’

His knowledge did him no particular credit, since things always happened that way. Earlier in summer, later in winter. And today it would be even later than usual, because a large proportion of the population was still sleeping off the wine and champagne drunk at last night’s réveillon suppers. There were still some people about in the streets, and restaurant doors opened to let out the last customers.

More stolen cars would be reported, and probably two or three drunks overcome by the cold.

‘Hello! Saint-Gervais?’

His Paris was a peculiar Paris, whose monuments were not the Eiffel Tower, the Opéra or the Louvre, but sombre administrative buildings with a police van standing under the blue lamp and policemen’s bicycles propped up against the wall.

‘The Chief’s convinced,’ Janvier was saying, ‘that the man will do something tonight. It’s the sort of night for those people. Holidays get them excited.’

No name was mentioned, because no name was known. One couldn’t even say ‘the man in the brown overcoat’ or ‘the man in the grey hat’, because nobody had seen him. Some newspapers had called him ‘Monsieur Dimanche’, because three of the murders had been committed on a Sunday, but since then there had been five more, committed on weekdays, one per week on an average, only there was no regular pattern about that either.

‘Is it on his account you’ve been kept up?’

For the same reason, an extra close watch was being kept throughout Paris, which meant that constables and detectives had to work overtime.

‘You’ll see,’ said Sommer, ‘when we lay hands on him, he’ll turn out to be a lunatic.’

‘A lunatic, but a killer,’ sighed Janvier, as he drank his coffee. ‘Say, one of your lights has gone on.’

‘Hello! Bercy? Your van’s gone out? What’s that? Half a minute. Drowned?’

They could see Lecoeur hesitating into which column he should put his cross. There was one for suicide by hanging, another for people who, for lack of a weapon, threw themselves out of windows. There were columns for drownings, for shootings, for…

‘Listen, you fellows! Do you know what a chap’s just done on the Pont d’Austerlitz? Who was talking about lunatics just now? This man tied a stone to his ankles and a rope round his neck, climbed on to the parapet and shot himself through the head.’

Come to think of it, there was a column for that too: mentally disturbed.

It was the time now when people who had not been celebrating last night were going to early Mass, with damp noses, hands thrust deep into pockets, walking bent double against the cold wind that drove a sort of powdery rime along the pavements. It was the time, too, when children were beginning to wake up, switch on the light and rush, barefooted and nightgowned, towards the wonderful tree.

‘If our chap were really a crackpot, according to the pathologist, he would always kill in the same way, whether with a knife or a revolver or whatever.’

‘What weapon did he use last time?’

‘A hammer.’

‘And the time before?’

‘A dagger.’

‘What proof is there that it’s always the same man?’

‘In the first place, the fact that the eight crimes were committed almost immediately one after another. It would be surprising if eight new murderers suddenly went to work in Paris.’

Inspector Janvier had obviously heard the matter discussed at length at Police Headquarters.

‘Moreover there’s a sort of family resemblance about these murders. Each time the victim has been somebody living alone, whether old or young, somebody without friends or relations.’

Sommer looked at Lecoeur, whom he could not forgive for being a bachelor and above all for having no children. He himself had five and his wife was expecting a sixth.

‘Like you, Lecoeur! Take care!’

‘Another clue is the areas in which he operates. Not one of the murders has been committed in wealthy or even middle-class districts.’

‘And yet he steals.’

‘He steals, but never much at a time. Small sums. Hoards hidden in mattresses or old clothes. He doesn’t go in for housebreaking, he doesn’t seem to be specially well equipped for burglary, and yet he leaves no trace.’

A small light flashed on. A stolen car, at the door of a restaurant in the Place des Ternes, not far from the Etoile.

‘What must particularly infuriate people who can’t find their car is having to go home in the métro.’

Another hour, an hour and a half, and they would be relieved, all except Lecoeur; he had promised to replace a colleague who was spending Christmas with his family near Rouen.

This often happened. It had become so usual that people no longer hesitated to ask him.

‘Say, Lecoeur, couldn’t you take my place tomorrow?’

In the beginning they used to find some sentimental pretext, a sick mother, a funeral, a child’s first communion. They used to bring him a cake, something from a delicatessen or a bottle of wine.

In fact, if he had been able to, Lecoeur would have spent twenty-four hours out of the twenty-four in that room, with an occasional rest on a camp bed, and his meals simmering on the hot plate. Oddly enough, although he was as well-groomed as the rest, more so than some, more than Sommer for instance, whose trousers seldom looked pressed, there was something drab about him which betrayed his bachelordom.

He wore glasses with heavy lenses which made his eyes look round and staring, and it came as a surprise, when he took off his spectacles to wipe them with the chamois leather he always carried in his pocket, to discover his evasive, almost timid glance.

‘Hello! Javel?’

One of the lights of the fifteenth arrondissement, in the industrial zone near the Quai de Javel, had just flashed on.

‘Your van’s gone out?’

‘We don’t know what’s happened yet. Someone’s broken the glass of an emergency call-box in the Rue Leblanc.’

‘Did anybody speak?’

‘Not a word. The van’s gone to investigate. I’ll call you back.’

All along the streets of Paris there are hundreds of these red call-boxes, of which one has only to break the glass to be in telephonic communication with the nearest police station. Might a passer-by have broken this one by accident?

‘Hello! Central? Our van’s just back. There was nobody there. All quiet in the neighbourhood. We’re going to patrol the district.’

Not to miss out altogether Lecoeur inscribed a little cross in the last column, devoted to the unclassified.

‘Any more coffee?’ he asked.

‘I’ll make some more.’

The same light came on again on the board. It was not ten minutes since the last signal.

‘Javel? What’s up?’

‘Another emergency call.’

‘And nobody spoke?’

‘Not a word. A practical joker. Somebody who thinks it’s fun to disturb us. This time we’re going to try and get hold of him.’

‘Where was it?’

‘Pont Mirabeau.’

‘I say, your friend’s a fast walker!’

It was in fact quite a distance between the two red alarm call-boxes. But these calls were not yet being taken seriously. Three days earlier, somebody had broken the glass of a call-box and shouted defiantly: ‘Death to the pigs!’

Janvier, with his feet up on one of the radiators, was starting to doze off, and when once again he heard Lecoeur’s voice at the telephone he opened his eyes, noticed that one of the little lights was on and asked sleepily:

‘Is it him again?’

‘A glass broken in the Versailles area.’

‘How idiotic!’ he muttered, sinking back into comfortable drowsiness.

Daylight would come late, not before half-past seven or eight. From time to time the church bells sounded dimly, as though from another world. The poor police officers down below in the stand-by cars must be frozen.

‘Talking of blood sausages…’

‘What blood sausages?’ muttered Janvier, who, drowsy and rosy-cheeked, looked like a small boy.

‘The sausages that my mother…’

‘Hello! You’re not going to tell me someone’s broken the glass of one of your emergency call-boxes?… What?… It’s true?… He’s just broken two in the fifteenth… No, they’ve not managed to get hold of him… I say, he can run, that chap… He crossed the Seine by the Pont Mirabeau… He seems to be making for the city centre…Yes, try…’

That made another little cross, and by half-past seven, half an hour before relief time, there were five of them in the same column.

Maniac or not, the fellow was going at a good pace. It’s true that it was hardly the temperature for lounging about. At one point he had seemed to be keeping to the banks of the Seine. He did not follow a straight line; he had made a detour through the wealthy streets of Auteuil and broken a glass in the Rue Fontaine.

‘He’s only five minutes away from the Bois de Boulogne,’ Lecoeur announced. ‘If that’s where he’s going we shall lose track of him.’

But the unknown person had made a virtual about turn and come back towards the river, breaking a glass in the Rue Berton, close by the Quai de Passy.

The first calls had come from the poor, working-class districts of Grenelle. The stranger had only had to cross the Seine to be in a different setting, wandering through spacious streets that were certainly deserted at this time of day. Everything must be shut; his footsteps would echo on the hard, frozen pavement.

A sixth call: he had skirted the Trocadéro and was now in the Rue de Longchamp.

‘He must think he’s Hop o’ my Thumb,’ commented Mambret. ‘Failing breadcrumbs and white pebbles, he marks his trail with broken glass.’

Other messages came through, at rapid intervals: more stolen cars, a shot fired in the Rue de Flandre region, where the injured man denied all knowledge of his assailant, although he’d been seen drinking all night with a companion.

‘Well, well! It’s Javel again! Hello, Javel! I assume it’s your glass-breaker again; he’s not had time to get back to his starting-point. What? Yes indeed, he’s been carrying on. He must be somewhere near the Champs-Elysées by now. What’s that?… Wait a minute… Tell us… What street? Michat?… chat like cat, yes… Between the Rue Lecourbe and the Boulevard Félix-Faure… Yes… There’s a railway bridge near… Yes… I’m with you, No. 17… Who called?…The concierge?…She was up at this hour?…Shut up, you lot!

‘No, I didn’t mean you. I was talking to Sommer, who’s boring us stiff with his blood sausage…

‘So then the concierge… I can picture it… A big shabby block…seven floors…Okay…’

That district was full of buildings that were not old, but so badly built that they seemed decrepit as soon as they were lived in. They stood in the midst of waste ground, with their bare gloomy walls, their gable-ends bedizened with advertisements, towering above the suburban houses and bungalows.

‘You say she heard someone running down the stairs and then slamming the door… It had been open?… The concierge didn’t know why?… On which floor?… The mezzanine, overlooking the courtyard… Go on… I see the van of the eighth arrondissement has just gone out and I bet it’s my pane-smasher… An old woman… What did you say?… Old Madame Fayet?… She used to go out charring… Dead?… A blunt instrument… Is the doctor there?… You’re quite sure she’s dead?… Have her savings been pinched?… I ask that because I presume she had savings… Yes… Call me back… Otherwise I’ll ring you…’

He turned towards the sleeping detective.

‘Janvier! Hey, Janvier! I think this is something for you.’

‘Who? What is it?’

‘The killer.’

‘Where?’

‘At Javel. I’ve written the name on this bit of paper. This time he’s attacked an old charlady, Madame Fayet.’

Janvier was putting on his overcoat and hunting for his hat; he swallowed the remaining drop of coffee in his cup.

‘Who’s in charge of the fifteenth?’

‘Gonesse.’

‘Let them know at Headquarters that I’m down there.’

A moment later Lecoeur was able to inscribe another little cross, the seventh, in the last column in his notebook. Someone had broken the glass of an emergency call-box in the Avenue d’Iéna, a hundred and fifty metres from the Arc de Triomphe.

‘Among the fragments of glass they’ve found a bloodstained handkerchief. It’s a child’s handkerchief.’

‘No initials?’

‘No. It’s a blue and white checked handkerchief, rather grubby. Whoever it was must have wrapped it round his fist when he broke the pane.’

Steps sounded in the stairway. It was their relief, the day shift. The men had shaved, and their cheeks had a raw pink look that came from washing in cold water and facing the icy wind.

‘Had a good party, you chaps?’

Sommer was closing the little tin box in which he had brought his meal. Lecoeur alone did not bestir himself, since he was going to stay behind with the new team.

Godin, a big stout fellow, was pulling on the denim overall that he wore for working; as soon as he arrived he put some water on to boil for a hot toddy. His invariable cold dragged on all winter, and he dosed it, or coddled it, with copious toddies.

‘Hello! Yes… No, I’m not leaving… I’m replacing Potier who’s gone to visit his family… So what… Yes, I’m personally interested… Janvier has gone, but I’ll pass on the message to Headquarters… A cripple?…What sort of cripple?’

It always takes patience to begin with, to get the hang of things, because people talk to you about the case they’re dealing with as if the whole world knew all about it.

‘The bungalow at the back, yes… So not in the Rue Michat… Which street?… Rue Vasco de Gama?… Yes, I know it… The little house with a garden and a railing… I didn’t know he was a cripple… Right… So he doesn’t sleep much… A small boy climbing up the drain-pipe…How old?… He doesn’t know?…True, of course it was dark… How does he know it was a small boy?… Listen, be kind enough to call me back… You’re going off too?… Who’s replacing you?… Big Jules?… The one who… Yes… Okay… Say hello to him from me and ask him to call me.’

‘What’s all that about?’ asked one of the newcomers.

‘An old woman who’s got herself bumped off at Javel.’

‘By whom?’

‘A crippled fellow who lives in a house behind the block of flats says he saw a small boy climbing up the wall towards her window.’

‘Could the boy have killed her?’

‘At any rate it was a child’s handkerchief that they picked up beside one of the alarm boxes.’

They were listening to him inattentively. The lights were still on, but bleak daylight was coming through the frost-patterned panes. Once again somebody went to scratch the crisp surface; an instinctive gesture, perhaps a childhood memory recalled, like Summer’s blood sausage?

The night shift had left. The others were getting organized, settling down for the day, leafing through reports.

A stolen car, Square La Bruyère.

Lecoeur looked at his seven little crosses with a preoccupied air, and got up with a sigh to stand in front of the huge mural map.

‘Are you learning your map of Paris by heart?’

‘I know it already. But there’s one detail that’s struck me. In about an hour and a half seven emergency call-boxes have had their glass broken. Now I’ve noticed that the person who’s been playing this game not only didn’t go straight ahead, or take a definite route from one place to the next, but he zigzagged about to a considerable extent.’

‘Perhaps he doesn’t know Paris well?’

‘Or else he knows it too well. He didn’t once go past a police station, whereas if he’d taken the shortest way he would have passed several of them. And which are the crossroads where one is likely to meet a policeman?’

He pointed them out.

‘He didn’t go past these either. He skirted them. The only risk he ran was when he crossed over the Pont Mirabeau, but it would have been just the same if he’d crossed the Seine anywhere else.’

‘He’s probably tight,’ said Godin jokingly, as he sipped his hot rum after cooling it with his breath.

‘What I’m wondering is why he’s stopped breaking panes of glass?’

‘The chap’s probably gone home by now.’

‘A fellow who turns up in the Javel district at six in the morning isn’t likely to be living near the Etoile.’

‘Are you interested?’

‘I’m frightened.’

‘You don’t mean it?’

Such signs of uneasiness were in fact surprising in the case of Lecoeur, for whom the most dramatic nocturnal happenings of Paris were usually summed up by a few little crosses in a notebook.

‘Hello! Javel?… Big Jules?… Lecoeur here, yes… Tell me… Behind the block of flats in the Rue Michat, there’s the cripple’s house… Yes… But beside it there’s another block, a red brick building with a grocer’s shop on the ground floor… Yes… Has anything happened in that house?… The concierge didn’t say?… I don’t know… No, I know nothing… Perhaps it would be as well to go and ask her, yes…’

He suddenly felt very warm, and he stubbed out a half-smoked cigarette.

‘Hello! Les Ternes? You’ve had no emergency calls in your district? Nothing? Only drunks? Thanks. By the way, has the cyclist patrol gone out?… They’re just going out?… Ask them to look out in case they happen to see a small boy… A boy who’s looking tired and whose right hand is bleeding… No, it’s not a missing person… I’ll explain another time…’

His eyes never left the mural map, where for at least ten minutes no light appeared; and then it was to report a case of accidental gassing in the eighteenth arrondissement, right at the top of Montmartre.

The cold streets of Paris were empty save for the dark figures of people returning from early Mass, shivering with cold.

2

Among the sharpest impressions that André Lecoeur retained from his childhood was one of stillness. His world, then, had been a large kitchen on the outskirts of Orléans. He must have spent winters there as well as summers, but he remembered it chiefly as flooded with sunlight, its door wide open, with a barred gate which his father had put up one Sunday to prevent him from wandering alone into the garden, where hens were clucking and rabbits nibbling all day behind their netting.

At half-past eight his father used to go off on his bicycle to the gas works where he was employed, at the other end of the town. His mother did the housework, always following the same routine, going up into the bedrooms and laying the mattresses on the window sill.

And then almost at once the greengrocer’s bell, as he pushed his barrow along the street, told that it was ten o’clock. At eleven, twice a week, the bearded doctor came to see his small brother, who was always ill and whose room he was not allowed to visit.

That was all. Nothing else ever happened. He barely had time to play and drink his glass of milk before his father was back for lunch.

Now his father had been round several districts collecting payments and had met lots of people, about whom he talked at table, while here time had scarcely moved. And the afternoon, maybe because he had to take a rest, passed even more quickly.

‘No sooner have I got down to my housework than it’s time to eat,’ his mother used to sigh.

It was somewhat the same here, in the big room at the Central Office where even the air never stirred, where the men on duty seemed to grow numb, until they heard voices and telephone calls as though through a thin layer of sleep.

A few little lights flashed on against the wall, a few little crosses were put down – a bus had run into a car in the Rue de Clignancourt – and then there came a call from the Javel police station.

It was not big Jules this time. It was Inspector Gonesse, the one who had gone to visit the spot. They had had time to contact him and tell him about the house in the Rue Vasco de Gama. He had been there, and had just got back, highly excited.

‘Is that you, Lecoeur?’

There was a special note of annoyance or suspicion in his voice.

‘Say, how did you come to think of that house? Did you know old Madame Fayet?’

‘I never saw her, but I know who she is.’

What was happening this Christmas morning was something André Lecoeur had been anticipating for ten years at least. More precisely, when he let his eyes wander over the map of Paris where the electric lights flashed on, he sometimes said to himself:

‘One of these days, inevitably, it’ll be somebody I know.’

Occasionally something had happened in his own district, not far from his own street, but never actually in it, moving nearer or further away like a thunderstorm without ever striking the exact spot where he lived.

Now it had happened.

‘Have you questioned the concierge?’ he asked. ‘Was she up?’

He could imagine the ambiguous expression of Inspector Gonesse at the other end of the line, and he went on:

‘Is the boy at home?’

And Gonesse growled : ‘You know him too?’

‘He’s my nephew. Didn’t they tell you his name is Lecoeur, François Lecoeur?’

‘They told me.’

‘Well then?’

‘He’s not at home.’

‘And his father?’

‘He came back soon after seven this morning.’

‘As usual, I know. He’s a night worker too.’

‘The concierge heard him go up to his flat, third floor at the back.’

‘I know it.’

‘He came down again almost immediately and knocked at the door of the concierge’s lodge. He looked very upset, quite wild, she said.’

‘Has the boy disappeared?’

‘Yes. His father asked if anyone had seen him go out, and if so, when. The concierge didn’t know. Then he asked if a telegram had been delivered during the evening, or early this morning.’

‘Had there been a telegram?’

‘No. Do you understand anything about it? Don’t you think, since you’re a relative and in the picture, you’d better come over here?’

‘It wouldn’t be any use. Where’s Janvier?’

‘In Mère Fayet’s room. The fingerprints people have just come and have set to work. The first thing they found was a child’s prints on the handle of the door. Why don’t you come along?’

Lecoeurreplied half-heartedly:

‘There’s nobody to take my place here.’

It was true: at a pinch, by telephoning here and there, he might have found a colleague prepared to spend an hour or two at the Central Office. The truth was that he had no desire to be on the spot, that it would have served no useful purpose.

‘Listen, Gonesse, I’ve got to find that boy, do you understand? Half an hour ago he must have been wandering about near the Etoile. Tell Janvier I’m stopping here, and that Mère Fayet probably had a good sum of money hidden in her place.’

Somewhat hectically, he transferred his plug to another hole and rang up the various police stations of the eighth arrondissement.

‘Look for a small boy, ten or eleven years old, rather poorly dressed, and keep a special watch on emergency call-boxes.’

His two colleagues stared at him with some curiosity.

‘Do you think it’s the kid who did the job?’

He did not bother to reply. He was calling the telephone exchange overhead.

‘Justin! Why, so it’s you on duty? Will you ask the radio cars to look out for a ten-year-old boy wandering somewhere in the Etoile region? No, I don’t know where he’s making for. He seems to be avoiding the streets where there’s a police station and the main crossroads where he might come across a traffic cop.’

He knew his brother’s flat in the Rue Vasco de Gama, a couple of dark rooms and a minute kitchen, where the boy spent all his nights alone while his father was out at work. The windows looked on to the back of the Rue Michat, where there were lines of washing hanging out, pots of geraniums, and behind the windows, many of them curtainless, there lived a motley assortment of human beings.

Incidentally, there too the panes must be frosted over. This detail struck him. He put it away in a corner of his memory, for he felt it might be of some importance.

‘Do you think it’s a child who’s been smashing the panes of the call-boxes?’

‘A child’s handkerchief has been picked up,’ he said briefly.

And he stayed there in suspense, wondering into which hole he should push his plug.

Outside, people seemed to be doing things at a breathless speed. No sooner had Lecoeur answered a call than the doctor was on the spot, then the Deputy Public Prosecutor and an examining magistrate who must have been torn from his slumbers.

What was the point of going to the spot, since from where he sat he could see the streets and houses as clearly as the men who were there, with the railway bridge cutting across the landscape in a great black line?

Only the poor lived in that district, young people who hoped to get out of it some day, others less young who were beginning to lose heart, and those, even less young, almost old or really old, who were trying to come to terms with their lot.

He called Javel once again.

‘Is Inspector Gonesse still there?’

‘He’s writing up his report. Shall I get him?’

‘Yes, please… Hello, Gonesse? Lecoeur here… I’m sorry to bother you… Did you go up into my brother’s flat?… Good! Was the child’s bed unmade? That reassures me a little… Wait a minute… Were there any parcels?… That’s right… What? A chicken, a blood sausage, a cream cake and… I don’t understand the rest… A radio set?… It hadn’t been unwrapped?… Obviously!… Is Janvier with you?… He’s already rung up Headquarters?… Thank you…’

He was quite surprised to see that it was already half-past nine. There was no longer any point in watching the Etoile district on the map of Paris. If the boy had gone on walking at the same pace, he’d have had time to reach one of the city suburbs by now.

‘Hello! Police Judiciaire? Is Superintendent Saillard in his office?’

He, too, must have been dragged out of his warm home by Janvier’s call. How many people were having their Christmas spoilt by this business?

‘Excuse me for calling you, Superintendent. It’s about the Lecoeur boy.’

‘Do you know anything? Is he a relative of yours?’

‘He’s my brother’s son. He’s probably responsible for smashing the glass of seven emergency call-boxes. I don’t know if they’ve had time to inform you that after the Etoile we’ve lost track of him. I’d like to ask your permission to send out a general message.’

‘Couldn’t you come and see me?’

‘I’ve nobody available to replace me here.’

‘Send out the message. I’ll come round.’

Lecoeur remained calm, but his hand shook a little as he manipulated the plug.

‘Is that you, Justin? A general message. Give the boy’s description. I don’t know how he’s dressed, but he’s probably wearing his khaki jacket cut down from an American wind-cheater. He’s tall for his age, and thinnish. No, no cap, he’s always bare-headed, with hair hanging over his forehead. Perhaps you’d better give his father’s description too. That’s rather harder for me. You know me, of course? Well, he’s like me, only paler. He looks timid and rather sickly, the sort of man who dares not walk in the middle of the pavement but slinks along beside the walls of houses. He walks a bit awkwardly, because he was wounded in the foot during the last war. No, I haven’t the least idea where they are going. I don’t believe they are together. What’s more than likely is that the kid’s in danger. Why? That would take too long to explain. Send out your message. Let me know here if there’s anything new.’

By the time that phone call was over Superintendent Saillard had appeared, having had time to leave the Quai des Orfèvres and walk across the street and through the empty buildings of the Préfecture of Police. He was an imposing figure in a huge overcoat. To greet the company he merely touched the rim of his hat, then he picked up a chair as if it were a straw and sat down astride it.

‘The kid?’ he asked at last, staring at Lecoeur.

‘I wonder why he’s stopped calling us.’

‘Calling us?’

‘Why should he break the glass of emergency call-boxes if not to draw our attention to himself?’

‘And why, having taken the trouble to break them, doesn’t he speak into the telephone?’

‘Suppose he’s being followed? Or that he’s following somebody?’

‘I thought of that. Tell me, Lecoeur, isn’t your brother in low water financially?’

‘Yes, he’s a poor man.’

‘Only a poor man?’

‘He lost his job three months ago.’

‘What job?’

‘He was a linotype operator at La Presse in the Rue du Croissant, where he worked nights. He always worked nights. It seems to run in the family.’

‘Why did he lose his job?’

‘He probably quarrelled with somebody.’

‘Was that a habit of his?’

A call interrupted them. It came from the eighteenth arrondissement, where a small boy had just been picked up in the street, at the corner of the Rue Lepic. He was selling sprigs of holly. He was Polish and could not speak a word of French.

‘You were asking me if quarrelling was a habit of his? I don’t know quite how to answer that. My brother had been a sick person for most of his life. When we were young he lived almost entirely in his bedroom, all alone, reading. He’s read tons of books. But he never had any regular schooling.’

‘Is he married?’

‘His wife died after two years of marriage, leaving him alone with a ten-month-old baby.’

‘He brought up the child himself?’

‘Yes. I can still see him bathing it, changing its nappies, preparing its bottles.’

‘That doesn’t explain why he was quarrelsome.’

Of course, words hadn’t the same meaning in the Superintendent’s big head as they had in Lecoeur’s heart.

‘Was he embittered?’

‘Not particularly. He was used to it.’

‘Used to what?’

‘To not living like other people. Maybe Olivier (that’s my brother’s name) isn’t very intelligent. Perhaps he knows too much about some subjects, owing to his reading, and not enough about others.’

‘Do you think he’d have been capable of killing the old Fayet woman?’

The Superintendent was puffing at his pipe. Upstairs the telegraphist could be heard walking about, and the other two policemen in the room were pretending not to listen.

‘She was his mother-in-law,’ Lecoeur said with a sigh. ‘You were bound to find out sooner or later.’

‘He didn’t get on with her?’

‘She hated him.’

‘Why?’

‘Because she held him responsible for what happened to her daughter. There was some business about an operation that wasn’t done in time. It was not my brother’s fault but the hospital’s; they refused to take her in because her papers were not in order. None the less the old woman has always held it against my brother.’

‘Did they ever see one another?’

‘They must have met in the street sometimes, since they lived in the same district.’

‘Did the boy know?’

‘That Mère Fayet was his grandmother? I don’t think so.’

‘Hadn’t his father told him?’

Lecoeur’s eyes remained fixed on the map with its little lights, but this was the slack time of day; they seldom came on, and almost always, now, for traffic accidents. Somebody’s pocket had been picked in the métro, somebody’s luggage had been stolen at the Gare de l’Est.

No news of the boy. And yet the streets of Paris were half empty. In the more densely populated districts a few children were trying out their new toys on the pavements, but most houses seemed shut up and most windows were clouded with steam from the warmth of the rooms. Shops were closed, and small bars deserted save for a few regular customers. Only the pealing bells rang out over the rooftops, while families in their Sunday best made their way to churches from which the boom of great organs flowed out in waves.

‘Will you excuse me a moment, Superintendent? I’m still thinking about the boy. It’s obviously harder for him now to smash panes of glass without attracting attention. But perhaps we could have a look in the churches? In a bar or a café he could not pass unnoticed. In a church, on the other hand…’

He rang up Justin again.

‘The churches, old man! Get them to watch the churches. And the stations. I hadn’t thought of the stations either.’

He took off his glasses and revealed reddened eyelids, possibly from lack of sleep.

‘Hello! Yes, Central Office here. What? Yes, the Superintendent’s here.’

He handed the receiver to Saillard.

‘It’s Janvier wanting to speak to you.’

The north wind was still blowing outside and the light was harsh and bleak, although behind the massed clouds a faint yellowness gave a promise of sunlight.

As the Superintendent hung up again, he commented gruffly :

‘Dr Paul says the crime must have been committed between five and six o’clock this morning. The old woman was not killed immediately. She must have been lying down when she heard a noise; she got up to confront her attacker, and probably hit him with a shoe.’

‘Was the weapon found?’

‘No. It looks as if it was a piece of lead piping or a rounded instrument, such as a hammer.’

‘Was her money taken?’

‘Only her purse, containing notes of small amounts and her identity card. Tell me, Lecoeur, did you know that woman lent money at high rates of interest?’

‘Yes, I knew.’

‘Didn’t you tell me just now that your brother lost his job about three months ago?’

‘That’s correct.’

‘The concierge didn’t know.’

‘Nor did his son. It was on his son’s account that he said nothing aboutit.’

The Superintendent sat uneasily crossing and uncrossing his legs, and glanced at the other two men, who could not help hearing. At last he stared at Lecoeur with a baffled air.

‘Do you realize, old man, what…’

‘Yes, I realize.’

‘Have you thought of that?’

‘No.’

‘Because he’s your brother?’

‘No.’

‘How long has the killer been at it? Nine weeks, isn’t that so?’

Lecoeur deliberately consulted his little notebook and looked for a certain cross in a certain column.

‘Nine and a half weeks. The first crime took place in the Epinettes district at the other end of Paris.’

‘You’ve just told me that your brother did not admit to his son that he was out of a job. He therefore went on leaving home and coming back at the usual time. Why?’

‘So as not to lose face.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s hard to explain. He’s not an ordinary sort of father. He brought up the child entirely on his own. They live together, they’re a sort of little household, don’t you see? During the day my brother prepares the meals and does the housework. He puts his son to bed before going out, wakes him up when he gets back…’

‘That doesn’t explain…’

‘Do you think such a man would consent to appear in his son’s eyes as a poor sort of chap who finds every door shut against him because he’s incapable of adapting himself?’

‘And what’s he been doing at night over the past few months?’

‘For a couple of weeks he had a job as night watchman in a factory at Billancourt. It was only temporary. Most often he washed cars in garages. When he couldn’t find any other work he carried vegetables in Les Halles. When he had one of his attacks…’

‘Attacks of what?’

‘Asthma… He got them from time to time… He’d go and lie down in a railway station waiting-room. Once he came to spend the night here, gossiping with me…’

‘Suppose the boy had looked out early this morning and seen his father at old Madame Fayet’s!’

‘There was frost on the window panes.’

‘Not if the window had been left ajar. Many people sleep with open windows, even in winter.’

‘That’s not the case with my brother. He feels the cold, and they are too poor to waste heat.’

‘The child might have scratched the frost with his finger-nails. When I was little I used to…’

‘So did I. We’d have to find out whether the old woman’s window was found open.’

‘The window was open and the light was on.’

‘I wonder where François can be.’

‘The kid?’

It was surprising and somewhat embarrassing to find him thinking solely of the child. It was even more embarrassing to hear him calmly saying such devastating things about his brother.

‘When he came back this morning his arms were full of parcels; have you thought about that?’

‘It’s Christmas.’

‘He’d have needed money to buy a chicken, cakes, a radio set. Has he borrowed any from you lately?’

‘Not for the past month. I wish he had, for I’d have told him not to buy a radio for François. I’ve got one here in the cloakroom which I was going to take him when I went off duty.’

‘Would Mère Fayet have been willing to lend her son-in-law money?’

‘It’s not likely. She’s a queer sort of woman. She must have enough savings to live on and she still goes out charring from morning till night. She often lends money at a high rate of interest to the people she works for. The whole district knows about it. People go to her when they’re hard up at the end of the month.’

The Superintendent rose, still feeling ill at ease.

‘I’m going round there, ‘he said.

‘To the old woman’s?’

‘To the old woman’s and to the Rue Vasco de Gama. If anything fresh turns up, give me a ring.’

‘There’s no telephone in either of the buildings. I’ll send a message to the police station.’

The Superintendent was on his way down and the door had closed behind him when the telephone bell rang. No light had flashed on. The call came from the Gare d’Austerlitz.

‘Lecoeur? Inspector on special duty speaking. We’ve got your chap.’

‘Which chap?’

‘The one whose description we were given. His name’s Lecoeur, like yours. Olivier Lecoeur. I’ve checked his identity card.’

‘One moment.’

He ran to the door and rushed downstairs into the courtyard, catching Saillard just as the latter was getting into a small police car.

‘Gare d’Austerlitz on the line. They’ve found my brother.’

The Superintendent, who was a stout man, sighed as he climbed up the stairs again. He took up the receiver.

‘Hello, yes… Where was he?… What was he doing?… What does he say?… What?… No, it’s not worth your questioning him now… You’re sure he doesn’t know?… Keep up your watch at the station… That may very well be… As for him, send him here right away…’

He hesitated, with an eye on Lecoeur.

‘Yes, send somebody with him. It’s safer.’

He took time to fill and light his pipe before explaining, as though he were addressing nobody in particular:

‘When they picked him up he’d been prowling for over an hour about the waiting-rooms and platforms. He seems to be in a very excited state. He’s talking about a message from his son; he was waiting for the boy there.’

‘Has he been told of the old woman’s death?’

‘Yes. It seems to have terrified him. They’re bringing him along.’

He added, hesitantly:

‘I thought it was best to have him come here. Seeing you’re his relative, I didn’t want you to think…’

‘I’m grateful to you.’

Lecoeur had been sitting on the same chair in the same office since 11 p.m. the previous evening, and he felt just as he used to as a child in his mother’s kitchen. Nothing stirred around him. Little lights came on, he thrust plugs into holes, time flowed by smoothly without one’s noticing it, and yet, outside, Paris had lived through another Christmas; thousands of people had attended midnight Mass, others had supped noisily in restaurants, drunks had spent the night in the police station and were waking up now in the presence of an inspector; later, children had rushed towards the bright lights on the tree.

What had his brother Olivier been doing all this while? An old woman had died, and before dawn a small boy had walked the empty streets of Paris to the point of exhaustion, and thrust his fist, wrapped in a handkerchief, through the glass panes of a number of emergency call-boxes.

What had Olivier been waiting for, with such tense excitement, in the overheated waiting-rooms and on the draughty platforms of the Gare d’Austerlitz?

Less than ten minutes elapsed, just time enough for Godin, whose nose was really running by now, to brew himself another toddy.

‘Would you like one, Superintendent?’

‘No, thanks.’

Saillard whispered anxiously to Lecoeur: ‘Would you rather we went into the other room to question him?’

But Lecoeur had no intention of leaving his little lights and his switchboard that connected him with every corner of Paris. Footsteps came up the stairs. Olivier was flanked by two policemen, but he had not been handcuffed.

He looked like a bad, faded photograph of André. His eyes turned to his brother immediately.

‘François?’

‘We don’t know yet. They’re looking for him.’

‘Where?’

And Lecoeur could only point to the map and his switchboard with its innumerable holes.

‘Everywhere.’

The two policemen had been dismissed, and the Superintendent said:

‘Sit down. You’ve heard that the old Fayet woman is dead, haven’t you?’

Olivier wore no spectacles, but he had the same pale, evasive eyes that his brother revealed when he took off his glasses, so that he always looked as if he had been weeping. He glanced briefly at the Superintendent, taking little notice of him.

‘He left me a note,’ he said, hunting in the pockets of his old raincoat. ‘Can you understand it?’

He finally held out a scrap of paper torn from a schoolboy’s exercise book. The writing was not very steady. The lad was probably not one of the best pupils in his class. He had used a purple pencil, moistening the tip, which had doubtless left a stain on his lip.

Without saying a word, André Lecoeur handed the paper to the Superintendent, who turned it round several times in his thick fingers.

‘Why Bib?’

‘It was my pet name for him. Not in front of people, because it would have embarrassed him. It goes back to the time when I used to feed him as a baby.’

He spoke in a neutral, unemphatic voice, probably seeing nothing around him but a sort of fog in which figures were moving.

‘Who is Uncle Gédéon?’

‘He doesn’t exist.’

Did he even realize that he was speaking to the chief of the Homicide Squad, in charge of a criminal investigation?

His brother explained:

‘Or rather he no longer exists. A brother of our mother’s, whose name was Gédéon, left for America when he was very young.’

Olivier was looking at him as though to say: ‘What’s the good of telling them all that?’

‘It had become a family joke; we used to say: “Some day we shall inherit from Uncle Gédéon.” ’

‘Was he a rich man?’

‘We didn’t know. He never sent us news of himself. Just a New Year’s card signed Gédéon.’

‘Is he dead?’

‘He died when Bib was four years old.’

‘Do you think there’s any point, André?’

‘We’re trying to find out. Leave it to me. My brother carried on the family tradition by talking to his son about Uncle Gédéon. He’d become a sort of legendary figure. Every night before going to sleep the boy demanded a story about Uncle Gédéon, and we made up all sorts of adventures about him. Of course he was fabulously wealthy, and when he came back…’

‘I think I understand. And he died?’

‘In hospital. At Cleveland, where he washed dishes in a restaurant. We never told the boy. We kept up the story.’

‘Did he believe it?’

The father put in a timid word, almost raising his hand like a schoolboy.

‘My brother says he didn’t, that he had guessed, that it was just a game for him. But I’m practically sure, myself, that he still believed it. When his friends told him Father Christmas didn’t exist he went on contradicting them for two whole years.’

When he spoke of his son he came to life again; he was transformed.

‘I can’t understand why he wrote me that note. I asked the concierge if there had been a telegram. For one moment I thought André had played a trick on us. Why did François leave home at six in the morning, telling me to meet him at the Gare d’Austerlitz? I rushed there like a madman. I looked everywhere, I kept expecting him to appear. Look here, André, are you sure that…’

He was looking at the map on the wall and the telephone switchboard. He knew that all the disasters, all the accidents in Paris were inevitably recorded here in the end.

‘He hasn’t been found,’ said Lecoeur. ‘They’re still looking. At eight o’clock or thereabouts he was in the Etoile district.’

‘How do you know? Did anyone see him?’

‘It’s hard to explain. All along the way from your house to the Arc de Triomphe someone has broken the panes of glass in the emergency call-boxes. A child’s blue and white checked handkerchief was picked up beside the last of them.’

‘He had handkerchiefs with blue checks.’

‘Since eight o’clock there has been nothing.’

‘But then I must go back to the station at once. That’s where he’s sure to go, since he told me to meet him there.’

Surprised at the silence that seemed suddenly to gather oppressively around him, he stared at each of them in turn, puzzled and then anxious.

‘What…’

His brother lowered his head, while the Superintendent, after a slight cough, finally asked in a reluctant tone:

‘Did you pay a visit to your mother-in-law last night?’

Perhaps, as his brother had implied, his intelligence was not quite normal. Words took a long time to reach his brain. And one could practically follow the slow progress of his thought by watching his face.

He stopped looking at the Superintendent and turned to his brother, suddenly flushed, his eyes glittering, and cried:

‘André! You dared to…’

Without any transition his excitement lapsed, he leaned forward on his chair, buried his head in his hands and started weeping with great hoarse sobs.

3

Superintendent Saillard looked at André uneasily, surprised to find him so calm, and possibly a little shocked at what he must have taken for indifference. Perhaps Saillard had no brother. Lecoeur had been used to his since early childhood. He had seen Olivier subject to such attacks when he was quite small, and in the present circumstances he was almost relieved, for things might have been worse; instead of tears, of exhausted resignation, of this sort of numbness, Olivier might have embarrassed them by bursting forth in declamatory indignation, giving them all a piece of his mind.

Wasn’t that how he had lost most of his jobs? For weeks, for months at a time he would be meek and subservient, brooding over his humiliation, nursing his pain; then suddenly, when it was least expected, almost invariably for some trivial reason, for a casual word, a smile, an unimportant contradiction, he would flare up.

‘What shall I do?’ the Superintendent’s glance questioned.

And André Lecoeur’s eyes replied:

‘Wait.’

It did not take long. The sobs, like a child’s, grew less violent, almost dying away, then broke out again for a moment with increased intensity. Then Olivier sniffed, ventured to glance around, but seemed to sulk a little longer, hiding his face.

At last he drew himself up in bitter resignation, and said with a certain pride:

‘Ask your questions, I’ll answer them.’

‘At what time during the night did you go to Mère Fayet’s? One minute. Tell me first at what time you left home.’

‘At eight o’clock as usual, after putting my boy to bed.’

‘And did nothing unusual happen?’

‘No. We had supper together. He helped me wash the dishes.’

‘Did you talk about Christmas?’

‘Yes. I’d hinted that there’d be a surprise for him when he woke up.’

‘Was he expecting a radio set?’

‘He’d been wanting one for a long time. He doesn’t play in the street, he’s got no friends, he spends all his spare time at home.’

‘Did you never think that your son might perhaps know that you’d lost your job at La Presse? Did he never ring you up there?’

‘Never. He’s always asleep when I’m at work.’

‘Could nobody have told him?’

‘Nobody knows about it in the neighbourhood.’

‘Is he observant?’

‘He misses nothing of what goes on around us.’

‘You put him to bed and you went off. Didn’t you take a snack with you?’

The Superintendent had just thought of that on seeing Godin unwrap a ham sandwich. Then Olivier Lecoeur suddenly looked at his empty hands and muttered :

‘My tin!’

‘The tin in which you carried something to eat?’

‘Yes. I had it last night, I’m sure. There’s only one place where I could have left it…’

‘At Mère Fayet’s?’

‘Yes.’

‘One minute… Lecoeur, pass me the phone… Hello! Who am I speaking to? Is Janvier there?… Call him, will you?… Is that you, Janvier?… Have you searched the old woman’s lodging? Did you notice a tin containing some food?… Nothing of the sort?…You’re sure?… Yes, I’d rather you did… Call me back as soon as you’ve checked… It’s important…’

And turning to Olivier, he asked :

‘Was your son asleep when you left?’

‘He was just going to sleep. We kissed each other goodnight. I began by walking in the neighbourhood. I went as far as the Seine and sat down on the parapet to wait.’

‘To wait for what?’

‘For the boy to be sound asleep. From our flat we can see Madame Fayet’s windows.’

‘You’d decided to call on her?’

‘It was the only way. I couldn’t even afford to take the métro.’

‘What about your brother?’

The two Lecoeurs looked at one another.

‘I’ve asked him for so much money lately that he can’t have any to spare.’

‘You rang at the door of the block of flats? What time was it?’

‘A little after nine o’clock. The concierge saw me go in. I wasn’t hiding, except from my son.’

‘Had your mother-in-law not gone to bed?’

‘No. She opened the door to me and said : “So here you are, you bastard!’ ”

‘Did you know that she would let you have some money none the less?’

‘I was practically certain of it.’

‘Why was that?’

‘I only had to promise her that she’d make a big profit. She could never resist that. I signed a paper saying I owed her double the sum.’

‘To be paid back when?’

‘In a fortnight.’

‘And when it fell due, how would you have paid it?’

‘I don’t know. I’d have managed somehow. I wanted my son to have his Christmas treat.’

André Lecoeur longed to interrupt his brother to tell the astonished Superintendent :

‘He’s always been like that!’

‘Did you find it easy to get what you wanted?’

‘No. We argued for a long time.’

‘About how long?’

‘Half an hour. She reminded me that I was a goodfornothing, that I’d brought her daughter nothing but misery and that it was my fault she had died. I didn’t say anything. I wanted the money.’

‘Did you threaten her?’

He flushed and hung his head, mumbling: ‘I told her that if I didn’t get the money I would kill myself.’

‘Would you have done so?’

‘I don’t think so. I don’t know. I was very tired, very disheartened.’

‘And once you’d got the money?’

‘I went on foot as far as Beaugrenelle station, where I took the métro. I got out at the Palais-Royal and went into the Grands Magasins du Louvre. The place was very crowded. People were queuing up at the counters.’

‘What time was it?’

‘Maybe eleven o’clock. I was in no hurry. 1 knew the store would stay open all night. It was hot there. There was an electric train running.’

His brother looked at the Superintendent with a slight smile.

‘Didn’t you notice that you had mislaid the tin with your supper in it?’

‘I was only thinking of Bib’s Christmas.’

‘In short, you were very much excited at having cash in your pocket?’

The Superintendent was beginning to understand, even though he had not known Olivier as a child. Whereas when his pockets were empty he was dim and depressed and would slink along timidly, crouching against the walls, when he had a little money on him he became self-confident and almost reckless.

‘You’ve told me you signed a paper for your mother-in-law. What did she do with it?’

‘She slipped it into an old wallet she always carried about with her, in a pocket she wore fastened to her belt, underneath her skirt.’

‘You’re familiar with that wallet?’

‘Yes. Everybody is.’

The Superintendent turned to André Lecoeur.

‘It hasn’t been found.’

Then he said to Olivier: ‘You bought the radio, then the chicken and the cake. Where?’

‘In a shop I know in the Rue Montmartre, next to a shoe-shop.’

‘What did you do the rest of the night? What time was it when you left the shop in the Rue Montmartre?’

‘It was close on midnight. Crowds were leaving the theatres and cinemas and hurrying into the restaurants. There were some very lively gangs of people and a great many couples.’

His brother, at that time, had already been sitting here at his switchboard.

‘I was on the Grands Boulevards, near the Crédit Lyonnais bank, carrying my parcels, when the bells began to ring. People were kissing one another in the street.’

Why did Saillard feel impelled to ask a preposterous, cruel question: ‘Did anybody kiss you?’

‘No.’

‘Did you know where you were going?’

‘Yes. At the corner of the Boulevard des Italiens there’s a cinema that stays open all night.’

‘Had you been there before?’

Somewhat embarrassed, and avoiding his brother’s eye, he replied:

‘Two or three times. It doesn’t cost more than a cup of coffee in a bar, and you can stay there as long as you want to. It’s warm there. Some people go there to sleep.’

‘When did you decide to spend the rest of the night in the cinema?’

‘As soon as I’d got the money.’

And the other Lecoeur, the calm, meticulous switchboard operator, longed to explain to the Superintendent :

‘You see, these poor wretches aren’t always as miserable as you think. Otherwise they wouldn’t hold out. They have their own world, too, and in the corners of it they have a certain number of small joys.’

It was so typical of his brother that, having borrowed a few notes -and heaven knows how he’d ever repay them – he had forgotten his troubles and thought only of making his son happy next morning, and then, none the less, had given himself a little treat!

He had gone to the cinema all alone, while family parties were gathering round loaded tables, crowds were dancing in night-clubs and other people were finding spiritual exaltation in dark, candle-lit churches.

In short he’d had his own Christmas, a Christmas cut down to size.

‘What time did you leave the cinema?’

‘Shortly before six o’clock, to take the métro.’

‘What film did you see?’

‘Burning Hearts. And there was a documentary about the Eskimos.’

‘Did you see the programme only once?’

‘Twice, except for the news, which was just being shown again when I left.’

André Lecoeur knew that this would be checked, if only as a matter of routine. But this proved unnecessary. His brother fumbled in his pockets and pulled out a scrap of torn cardboard, his cinema ticket, and at the same time another bit of pink cardboard.

‘Here you are! Here’s my métro ticket too.’

It bore the time and date and the stamp of the Opéra station where it had been issued.

Olivier had told the truth. He could not have been in the old woman’s room between five and half-past six that morning.

Now there was a flash of slightly scornful defiance in his eye. He seemed to be saying to them all, including his brother:

‘Because I’m a poor specimen, you suspected me. It’s the rule. I don’t bear you ill-will for it.’

And curiously enough a sudden chill seemed to fall over that great room where one of the clerks was having a telephone discussion with a suburban inspector about a stolen car.

It was probably due to the fact that, now Lecoeur had been cleared, everyone’s thoughts were once more concentrated on the child. This was so true that all eyes now turned instinctively to the map of Paris; for quite a while now, the lights had stopped coming on.

It was the slack period. On any other day there would have been, from time to time, some traffic accident, some old lady run over at a busy crossroads in Montmartre or some other densely crowded area.

Today the streets remained almost empty, just as they are in August when most Parisians are in the country or at the seaside.

It was half-past eleven. For three hours now they had had no news of the little boy, had received no signal from him.

‘Hello! Yes… Go on, Janvier… You say there’s no sign of a tin in the flat?… Okay… You searched the dead woman’s clothes yourself?… Gonesse had already done so?… You’re sure she wasn’t wearing an old wallet under her skirt? You’d heard about that?… The concierge saw somebody go up last night about half-past nine?… I know who that was… And then? There were comings and goings in the house all night… Of course… Will you go over to the other house, the one behind?… I’d like to know if anyone heard a noise during the night, particularly on the third floor “… Call me back, that’s right…’

He turned towards the father, who was sitting motionless on his chair, as meek again as though he were in a doctor’s waiting-room.

‘Do you see why I asked that question? Does your son often wake up during the night?’

‘He sometimes calls out in his sleep.’

‘Does he get up and walk about?’

‘No. He sits up in bed and screams. It’s always the same thing. He thinks the house is on fire. His eyes are open but he sees nothing. Then, gradually, he looks at you with a normal expression and he lies down again with a deep sigh. Next day he remembers nothing about it.’

‘Is he always asleep when you get back in the morning?’

‘Not always. But even if he’s not asleep he pretends to be, so that I should go and wake him up by kissing him and tweaking his nose. It’s a gesture of affection, don’t you see?’

‘The neighbours are likely to have been noisier than usual last night. Who lives on the same floor as you?’

‘A Czech who works at the car factory.’

‘Is he married?’

‘I don’t know. There are so many people in our block of flats and the tenants change so frequently that one scarcely knows them. On Saturdays the Czech usually gets together half a dozen of his friends to drink and sing their own popular songs.’

‘Janvier is going to let us know if that was the case last night. If so, it may have woken up your son. In any case he was probably overexcited at the thought of the surprise you’d promised him. If he got up he may have automatically gone to the window and seen you with old Madame Fayet. Did he have any suspicion that she was your mother-in-law?’

‘No. He didn’t like her. He called her the bed-bug. He often met her in the street and he used to say she smelt like a squashed bed-bug.’

The child must have known what he was talking about, for there was probably no lack of such creatures in the great tenement where they lived.

‘Would he have been surprised to see you in her room?’

‘Certainly.’

‘Did he know that she was a money-lender?’

‘Everybody knew that.’

The Superintendent turned to the other Lecoeur.

‘Do you think there’d be anyone at La Presse today?’

The former typographer replied for him :

‘There’s always someone there.’

‘Ring them up then. Try to find out whether anyone has ever asked for Olivier Lecoeur.’

The latter, once again, averted his head. Before his brother had opened the telephone directory he gave them the number of the printing press.

While the call was going on, there was no alternative for them but to stare at one another and then to stare at the little lamps which obstinately refused to light up.

‘It’s very important, Mademoiselle. It may be a question of life or death… Yes, please take the trouble to put the question to anybody who’s there at the moment… What did you say? I can’t help that! It’s Christmas for me too and yet I’m ringing you up…’

‘Little bitch!’ he muttered between his teeth.

And they waited again, while the clatter of the linotypes could be heard down the telephone.

‘Hello!… What… three weeks ago? A child, yes…’

The father had turned very pale and was staring at his hands.

‘He didn’t ring up? He came himself? About what time? On a Thursday? And then?… He asked whether Olivier Lecoeur was working at the press…What?… What did they tell him?…’

His brother looked up and saw him flush and hang up the receiver with a furious gesture.

‘Your son went there one Thursday afternoon… He must have suspected something… They told him you’d stopped working at La Presse some weeks before.’

What was the point of repeating the words he had just heard? What the boy had been told was: ‘That fool was fired some time ago!’

It may not have been meant cruelly. They probably never imagined that the visitor might be his son.

‘Are you beginning to understand, Olivier?’

Every evening the father went off, carrying his sandwiches and talking about his work-place in the Rue du Croissant, and the son knew that he was lying.

One might surely draw the conclusion that he knew the truth, too, about the mythical Uncle Gédéon.

He had played the game.

‘And I’d promised him his radio…’

They scarcely dared speak to one another, because words might call up terrifying pictures.

Even those who had never been to the Rue Vasco de Gama could now visualize the shabby dwelling, the ten-year-old boy who spent long hours there alone, the strange household of father and son who told each other lies for fear of hurting one another.

One had to imagine things as they appeared to the child: his father leaving after a goodnight kiss, and Christmas everywhere around, neighbours drinking and singing at the tops of their voices.

‘Tomorrow morning you shall have a surprise.’

It could only be the longed-for radio, and Bib knew how much that cost.

Did he know, that evening, that his father’s wallet was empty?

The man went off as though he were going to his work, and that work did not exist.

Had the boy tried to go to sleep? Opposite his room, on the other side of the courtyard, rose a huge dark wall with lighted windows, behind which lived a motley crowd of people.

Had he leaned on the window-sill, in his night-shirt, to look out?

His father, who had no money, was going to buy him a radio.

The Superintendent gave a sigh as he knocked his pipe out against his heel and emptied it on to the floor :

‘It’s more than likely that he saw you in the old woman’s room.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll check up on one point presently. You live on the third floor and she lives on the mezzanine. It’s probable that only part of the room is visible from your windows.’

‘That’s correct.’

‘Could your son have seen you leave?’

‘No! The door is at the back of the room.’

‘Did you go up to the window?’

‘I sat down on the window-sill.’

‘One detail, which may be important. Was the window ajar?’

‘Yes, it was. I remember it struck cold down my back. My mother-in-law always sleeps with her window open, winter and summer. She was a country woman. She lived with us for a while, when we were first married.’

The Superintendent turned to the switchboard operator.

‘Did you think of that, Lecoeur?’

‘The frost on the window? I’ve been thinking about it ever since this morning. If the window was partly open the difference between the temperature of the air outside and that of the room would not be great enough to produce frost.’

A call. The plug was thrust into one of the holes.

‘Yes…What did you say?…A boy?…’

They stood watching him, tensely.

‘Yes… Yes… What?… Yes, send all police cyclists to search the district… I’ll deal with the station… How long ago was it?… Half an hour?…Couldn’t he have informed us sooner?’

Without giving himself time to explain things to those around him, Lecoeur thrust his plug into another hole.

‘Gare du Nord?… Who am I speaking to?… It’s you, Lambert?… Listen, this is very urgent… Have the station thoroughly searched… Keep an eye on all the premises and on the railway lines… Ask the staff whether they’ve seen a boy of about ten years old wandering around the ticket offices or elsewhere… What?… Is there anybody with him?… That doesn’t matter… There may well be… Quickly!… Keep me informed… Of course, get hold of him…’

‘Somebody with him?’ his brother repeated in bewilderment.

‘Why not? Anything’s possible. It may perhaps not be him, but if it is we’ve wasted half an hour… It’s a grocer in the Rue de Maubeuge, close by the station, who has an open-air stall… He saw a kid take a couple of oranges from his display and run off… He didn’t chase him… Some time later, however, as a policeman happened to pass he mentioned the fact.’

‘Had your son any money in his pocket?’ asked the Superintendent. ‘No? None at all? Didn’t he have a money-box?’

‘He had one. But I’d taken the little it contained two days ago, on the pretext that I didn’t want to change a big note.’

All these details seemed to have become so important now!

‘Don’t you think I’d better go to the Gare du Nord myself?’

‘I think it would be pointless, and we may need you here.’

They felt imprisoned in this room, held captive by the great map with its lamps, the switchboard that connected them with every corner of Paris. Whatever happened, this was where they would get the first news of it. The Superintendent was so well aware of this that he did not return to his office, and had finally resigned himself to taking off his big overcoat, as though he now belonged to the Central Office.

‘So he can’t have taken the métro or a bus. Nor can he have gone into a café or a public call-box to telephone. He’s had nothing to eat since six o’clock this morning.’

‘But what’s he doing?’ exclaimed the father, his agitation reviving. ‘And why did he send me to the Gare d’Austerlitz?’

‘Probably to help you to escape,’ Saillard said in a low voice.

‘To escape, me?’

‘Listen, my lad…’ The Superintendent had forgotten that this was the brother of Inspector Lecoeur and spoke to him as though to one of his ‘clients’.

‘The kid knows that you’ve lost your job, that you’re broke and yet you’ve promised him a splendid Christmas…’

‘My mother used to stint herself for months to give us Christmas treats…’

‘I’m not blaming you. I’m just stating a fact. He leans at the window and sees you visiting an old harridan who lends money at high interest. What does he conclude from that?’

‘I understand.’

‘He says to himself that you’ve gone to borrow from her. All right. He may have been touched, or sorry, I don’t know. He gets back into bed and goes to sleep.’

‘D’you think so?’

‘I’m practically .certain. If he had discovered at half-past nine last night what he discovered at six o’clock this morning he’d not have stayed put quietly in his room.’

‘I understand.’

‘He goes back to sleep. Perhaps he’s thinking more about his radio than about what you may have done to get the money for it. Didn’t you yourself go to the cinema? He sleeps restlessly, as all children do on Christmas Eve. He wakes earlier than usual, while it’s still dark, and the first thing he sees is that the windows are covered with frost-flowers. Don’t forget that it’s the first frost of the winter. He wants to look at it close, to touch it…’

The other Lecoeur, the man at the switchboard, the man who made little crosses in his notebook, gave a faint smile when he observed that the big Superintendent was not as remote from his childhood as one might have expected.

‘He scratched it with his nails…’

‘As I saw Biguet doing right here this morning,’ broke in André Lecoeur.

‘We shall have proof of that, if need be, through the fingerprints people, since the prints will show once the frost has thawed. What is the first thing that strikes the child? Whereas it’s all dark in the neighbourhood, there’s a light on in one single window, and it happens to be that of the room where he last saw his father. I shall get all these details checked. I’m willing to bet, however, that he caught sight of the body, at any rate of part of it. Even if he’d only seen the feet on the floor, this, combined with the fact that the light was on, would have been enough.’

‘Did he believe?…’ Olivier began, his eyes starting out of his head.

‘He believed you had killed her, yes, as I was inclined to believe myself. Think, Lecoeur. The man who for a number of weeks now has been killing people in the outlying parts of the city is a night bird like yourself. It may be somebody who has suffered a grave shock, like yourself, since one doesn’t become a killer overnight for no good reason. Does the child know what you’ve been doing every night since you lost your job?

‘You told us just now that you sat down on the window-sill. Where did you put your sandwich tin?’

‘On the ledge, I’m practically certain.’

‘So he must have seen it… And he didn’t know at what time you left your mother-in-law’s… He didn’t know if, after you’d gone, she was still alive… He must have imagined the light staying on all night…What would have struck you most, in his place?’

‘The tin…’

‘Exactly. The tin which would enable the police to identify you. Was your name on it?’

‘I’d scratched it on with a pen-knife.’

‘You see! Your son assumed that you’d be coming home at your usual time, that’s to say between seven and eight. He did not know whether his venture would be successful. In any case he decided not to come home. He wanted to keep you out of danger.’

‘Was that why he left me a note?’

‘He remembered Uncle Gédéon, and wrote to tell you that his uncle was arriving at the Gare d’Austerlitz. He knew that you’d go, even though Uncle Gédéon didn’t exist. The message couldn’t possibly compromise you…’

‘He’s ten and a half!’ the father protested.

‘Do you think a lad of ten and a half doesn’t know quite as much about such matters as yourself? Doesn’t he read detective stories?’

‘Yes…’

‘If he’s so keen on a radio, perhaps it’s less for the sake of the music or broadcast plays than for the police thriller serials…’

‘That’s true.’

‘Before anything else he had to get back the incriminating evidence, the tin. He knew the courtyard very well. He must have played there often.’

‘He’s spent days playing there with the concierge’s daughter.’

‘He knew, then, that he could use the drain-pipe. He may have climbed up it before.’

‘And now?’ asked Olivier with striking quietness. ‘He retrieved the tin, okay. He left my mother-in-law’s house without difficulty, for the front door can be opened from inside without summoning the concierge. You say it must have been a little after six in the morning.’

The Superintendent grunted. ‘I follow,’ he said. ‘Even without hurrying, he could have reached the Gare d’Austerlitz in under two hours. He’d told you to meet him there, but he didn’t go there.’

Oblivious of these arguments, the other Lecoeur was thrusting in his plugs, saying with a sigh: ‘Still nothing, old man?’

And the answer came from the Gare du Nord: ‘We’ve questioned about twenty people accompanying children, but none of them answer to the description we’ve been given.’

Any child, obviously, might have stolen oranges from a stall. But not every child would have smashed in the glass of seven emergency call-boxes in succession. Lecoeur kept reverting to his little crosses. He had never thought himself much cleverer than his brother, but he had patience and obstinacy in his favour.

‘I’m sure,’ he said, ‘that we shall find the sandwich tin in the Seine, close to the Pont Mirabeau.’

Footsteps sounded on the stair. On ordinary days one would not have noticed them, but on a Christmas morning one listened involuntarily.

It was a police cyclist bringing the bloodstained handkerchief that had been picked up beside the seventh call-box. This was shown to the boy’s father.

‘Yes, that’s Bib’s.’

‘So he’s being followed,’ the Superintendent declared. ‘If he were not being followed, if he’d had time, he wouldn’t confine himself to breaking glass. He would speak.’

‘Excuse me,’ said Olivier, the only one who had not understood. ‘Followed by whom? And why should he call the police?’

They were all reluctant to enlighten him. His brother took on the job.

‘Because, if when he went into the old woman’s room he believed you were the murderer, when he left her house he no longer believed it. He knew.’

‘He knew what?’

‘He knew who! D’you understand now? He had discovered something, we don’t know what, and that’s what we’ve been hunting for for hours. Only he’s not being given a chance to tell us.’

‘You mean…’

‘I mean that your son is on the murderer’s heels, or else the murderer is on his. One of them’s following the other, I don’t know which, and won’t let go. Tell me, Superintendent, has a reward been offered?’

‘A big reward, since the third murder. It was doubled last week. All the papers have talked about it.’

‘Then,’ said André Lecoeur, ‘it’s not necessarily Bib who is being followed. It may be he who is following. Only in that case…’

It was twelve o ‘clock, and it was four hours since the child had given any sign of life, unless it was he who had stolen the oranges in the Rue de Maubeuge.

4

Perhaps, after all, his day had dawned? André Lecoeur had read somewhere or other that any human being, however dim and unfortunate he may be, has at least one glorious hour in his life during which he is able to fulfil himself.

He had never had a high opinion of himself or of his potentialities. When he was asked why he had chosen a sedentary and monotonous job instead of putting his name down, for instance, for the Homicide Squad, he would reply: ‘I’m so lazy!’

And sometimes he would add: ‘And perhaps I’m scared of getting hurt!’

That was untrue. But he knew he was slow-witted.

Everything he had learned at school had cost him a lot of effort. The police examinations, which are child’s play to some people, had given him great trouble.

Was it because of this self-knowledge that he had never married? It might well be so. It seemed to him that whatever wife he chose, he would feel himself her inferior and let himself be dominated by her.

He was not thinking of all that today. He did not know that his hour, if there were such a thing, was at hand.

The morning’s team had now been replaced by another lot, looking spruce and smart, who had had time to celebrate Christmas with their families and whose breath was redolent of cake and liqueurs.

Old Bedeau had taken up his position at the switchboard, but Lecoeur had not gone away; he had simply remarked :

‘I’m staying a bit longer.’

Superintendent Saillard had gone for a quick lunch at the nearby Brasserie Dauphine, asking to be called if anything fresh turned up. Janvier had returned to the Quai des Orfèvres, where he was writing up his report.

Lecoeur did not feel like going to bed. He was not sleepy. In the past, he had once spent thirty-six hours at his post, during the riots in the Place de la Concorde, and on another occasion, during the general strike, the men from the Central Office had camped out in their room for four days and four nights.

His brother was more impatient.

‘I want to go and find Bib,’ he had declared.

‘Where?’

‘I don’t know. Somewhere near the Gare du Nord.’

‘And suppose it wasn’t he who stole the oranges? Suppose he’s in a quite different district? Suppose we get news of him in a few minutes or in a couple of hours?’

‘I want to do something.’

They had made him sit on a chair, in one corner, since he refused to lie down. His eyelids were red with fatigue and anguish and he had begun to twist his fingers as he used to when, as a child, he’d been put in the corner.

André Lecoeur had tried to rest, by way of self-discipline. Adjoining the main room there was a sort of closet with a wash-basin, two camp beds and a coat-rack, where the men on night duty sometimes took a nap when things were quiet.

Lecoeur had closed his eyes. Then he happened to lay his hand on the notebook which he always kept in his pocket, and lying on his back, he began to turn its pages.

It contained crosses, nothing but columns of minute crosses which for years he had persisted in inscribing of his own free will, without knowing exactly what purpose they might serve some day. Some people keep a journal, others note down their most trivial expenses or their losses at bridge.

Those crosses in their narrow columns represented years of the city’s nightly existence.

‘Coffee, Lecoeur?’

‘Yes, please.’

But since he felt too remote, in that closet from which he could not see his illuminated board, he pulled the camp bed into the office, and after that spent his time alternately consulting the crosses in his notebook and shutting his eyes. Sometimes, between half closed lids, he watched his brother hunched up on his chair, his shoulders bent, his head drooping, the only sign of his inner tension being the occasional convulsive clenching of his long pale fingers.

Hundreds of policemen now, in the suburbs as well as in the city, had been given the child’s description. From time to time a police call brought a ray of hope; but the child in question turned out to be a little girl, or if a boy was either too young or too old.

Lecoeur had closed his eyes again and then suddenly he reopened them, as though he had just dozed off, looked at the time and glanced round in search of the Superintendent.

‘Has Saillard not come back?’

‘He’s probably gone round by the Quai des Orfèvres.’

Olivier looked at his brother, surprised to see him striding up and down the great room; Lecoeur scarcely noticed that, outside, the sun had finally pierced through the white dome of clouds, and that Paris, on this Christmas afternoon, had a bright, almost springlike air.

He was watching out for a step in the stairway.

‘You should go and buy a few sandwiches,’ he said to his brother.

‘What sort?’

‘Ham, or whatever you like. Whatever you can find.’

Olivier left the office after a glance at the map on the wall, relieved in spite of his anxiety to be getting a breath of fresh air.

The men who had replaced the morning team knew scarcely anything about the affair, except that it concerned the killer and that somewhere in Paris a small boy was in danger. For those who had not spent the night here, it wore a different complexion; it was, as it were, decanted, reduced to a few cold, precise data. Old Bedeau, sitting in Lecoeur’s place and wearing his headphones, was doing a crossword, barely breaking off for the traditional: ‘Hello! Austerlitz? Your van’s gone out?’

A drowned woman had just been fished out of the Seine. This, too, formed part of the Christmas tradition.

‘Could I speak to you a moment, Superintendent?’

The camp bed had been replaced in the closet, and this was where Lecoeur now took the head of the Homicide Squad. The Superintendent was smoking his pipe; he shed his overcoat, and looked at his companion in some surprise.

‘Please forgive me for interfering in what’s not my business, but it’s about the killer…’

He had his little notebook in his hand, but he appeared to know it by heart and to consult it only so as to keep himself in countenance.

‘Forgive me if I tell you rather confusedly what’s in my mind, but I’ve been thinking about it so much since this morning that…’

A short while ago, while he was lying down, it had all seemed dazzlingly clear to him. Now he was searching for words, and his ideas had become less precise.

‘It’s like this. I noticed first of all that the eight crimes were committed after 2 a.m. and most of them after 3 a.m.’

From the Superintendent’s expression he realized that this observation implied nothing particularly disturbing for other people.

‘Out of curiosity, I investigated the time at which most crimes of this sort have been committed during the last three years. It was almost always between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m.’

He must be on the wrong track, for he got no reaction. Why not say openly how the idea had occurred to him? This was not the time to be held back by embarrassment.

‘Just now, while looking at my brother, I thought that the man you’re looking for must be somebody like him. For a moment I even wondered if it could be him. Wait a minute…’

He was on the right track after all. He had seen the Superintendent’s eyes expressing something more than merely polite but bored attention.

‘If I’d had time I’d have set my thoughts in order. But you’ll see… A man who kills eight times, almost in quick succession, is a maniac, surely? A person whose brain has been disturbed suddenly, for some reason or another…

‘My brother lost his job, and in order not to admit it to his son, not to lose face in his eyes, he went on for weeks leaving home at the same time, behaving exactly as if he were going to work…’

The idea, translated into words and phrases, lost some of its force. He was well aware that, in spite of an obvious effort, Saillard could not see light there.

‘A man who finds himself suddenly deprived of everything he had, everything that made up his life…’

‘And who goes off his head?’

‘I don’t know if he goes off his head. Perhaps you could call it that. Somebody who thinks he has reasons for hating the whole world, for needing to be revenged on all men…

‘You know, of course, Superintendent, that the other sort, the real murderers, always kill in the same way.

‘This one used a knife, then a hammer, then a spanner. He strangled one woman.

‘And nowhere did he let himself be seen. Nowhere did he leave a single trace. Wherever he lives, he must have covered miles in Paris at a time of night when there are no taxis or underground trains. Now, although the police have been on the watch ever since the man’s first crimes, although they scrutinize passers-by and challenge all suspicious characters, he never attracted their attention on a single occasion.’

So sure did he feel that he was on the right track at last, so anxious was he that his hearer should not tire of his argument, that he felt like murmuring:‘Please listen to me to the end…’

The closet was a constricted place, and he was walking three steps forward and three back, in front of the Superintendent who sat on the edge of the camp bed.

‘These are not logical arguments, believe me. I’m not capable of any remarkable arguments. But it’s because of my little crosses, the little facts I’ve noted… This morning, for instance, he crossed half Paris without passing in front of a single police station or going over a crossing where there’s an officer on duty.’

‘Do you mean that he knows the fifteenth arrondissement well?’

‘Not only the fifteenth, but two others at least, to judge by the earlier crimes: the twentieth and the twelfth. He did not choose his victims at random. In every case he knew that they were lonely people, living in circumstances where he could attack them without much risk.’

He almost lost heart when he heard his brother’s melancholy voice.

‘The sandwiches, André!’

‘Yes, thanks. You have some. Go and sit down…’

He dared not close the door, out of a sort of humility. He was not a sufficiently important person to be closeted with the Superintendent!

‘If he took a different weapon each time, it’s because he knows that this will confuse people’s minds, he knows that murderers generally stick to a single method.’

‘Look here, Lecoeur…’

The Superintendent had stood up and was now staring at him abstractedly, as though following out his own thoughts.

‘Do you mean that…’

‘I don’t know. But it occurred to me that it might be one of our own people. At any rate, somebody who had worked with us.’

He dropped his voice.

‘Somebody to whom the same thing had happened as to my brother, don’t you see? A fireman who’s been sacked would readily think of arson. That happened twice in the last three years. Somebody from the police…’

‘But why steal?’

‘My brother needed money, too, to make his son believe he was still earning his living, that he’d still got his job at La Presse. If the man’s a night worker and wants to make out that he’s still employed, he’s bound to stay out all night, and that explains why he commits his crimes after three in the morning. He can’t go home till daybreak. The earlier hours of the night are easy. There are bars and cafés open. After that he’s alone in the streets…’

Saillard grunted, as though talking to himself: ‘There’s no one in the Personnel office today.’

‘Perhaps we could contact the Personnel manager himself? Perhaps he might remember?’

Lecoeur was still unsatisfied. There were many things he would have liked to say but which escaped him. Perhaps the whole thing was merely fantasy. At times he thought so, and at other times he felt that what he had discovered was as clear as daylight.

‘Hello!… Can I speak to Monsieur Guillaume, please? He’s not at home? Do you happen to know where I’m likely to find him? At his daughter’s, at Auteuil? Do you know her telephone number?’

There, too, they’d been enjoying a pleasant family lunch party, and must now be sipping their coffee and liqueurs.

‘Hello, Monsieur Guillaume? Saillard here, yes. I hope I’m not disturbing you too much? You weren’t still at table? It’s about the killer. There’s something new. Nothing definite yet. I’d like to check a hypothesis and it’s urgent. Don’t be too surprised at my question. Has any member of the force, of whatever grade, been dismissed during these last months? What did you say? Not one this year?’

Lecoeur felt his heart sink as though a disaster were overtaking him and cast a despairing glance at the map of Paris. He’d lost the game. From now on he’d give up; but to his surprise his chief persisted.

‘It might be earlier than that, I don’t know. The person involved would have been a man on night duty, working in several arrondissements, including the fifteenth, the twentieth and the twelfth. Somebody who strongly resented his dismissal. What did you say?’

Saillard’s voice as he uttered these last words renewed Lecoeur’s hopes, while those around them were nonplussed by the conversation.

‘Sergeant Loubet? Yes, I’ve heard speak of him, but I wasn’t on the disciplinary committee at that time. Three years, yes. You don’t know where he lived? Somewhere near Les Halles?’

Three years, however, was too big a gap, and Lecoeur lost heart once more. It was unlikely that a man should nurse his humiliation and his rancour for three years before taking action.

‘You don’t know what’s become of him? Obviously. Yes. It won’t be easy today…’

He hung up again, and looked at Lecoeur attentively, speaking to him as though to an equal.

‘Did you hear? There was Sergeant Loubet, who was given a whole series of warnings and moved from one station to another three or four times before finally being dismissed. He took it very badly. He used to drink. Guillaume believes he joined some private detective agency. If you’d like to try…’

Lecoeur did so without conviction, but after all it meant taking action instead of waiting in front of that map of his. He began with the most dubious agencies, assuming that a man like Loubet would not have been taken on by a reliable firm. Most of the offices were closed. He called people at their homes.

Often he heard children’s voices.

‘Never heard of him. Try Tisserand in the Boulevard Saint-Martin. He collects all the riff-raff.’

But he drew a blank at Tisserand’s, whose speciality was shadowing. For three quarters of an hour Lecoeur stayed glued to the telephone, and finally he heard an angry voice protesting :

‘Don’t talk to me about that swine. Over two months ago I fired him and he’s threatened to blackmail me, though he hasn’t lifted a finger yet. If I meet him I’ll punch his nose.’

‘What work did he do for you?’

‘Watching blocks of flats by night.’

André Lecoeur was once again transfigured.

‘Was he a heavy drinker?’

‘The fact is he was always drunk after an hour on duty. I don’t know how he set about it, but he always managed to be given free drinks.’

‘Have you got his correct address?’

‘27 bis Rue du Pas-de-la-Mule.’

‘Does he have a telephone?’

‘He may. I’ve no desire to ring him up. Is that all? Can I get back to my bridge?’

As he hung up, the man could be heard explaining things to his friends.

The Superintendent had already seized a telephone directory and found Loubet’s name. He rang the number. There was now a tacit understanding between himself and André Lecoeur. They shared the same hope. Now that their goal was within sight they were both tremulous with excitement, while the other Lecoeur, Olivier, sensing that something important was happening, was standing up and looking at each of them in turn.

Without being asked to, André Lecoeur took a liberty which, only that morning, he would never have dared allow himself: he seized the second receiver. The bell could be heard ringing down there in the Rue du Pas-de-la-Mule; it rang a long time, as though the place were empty, and Lecoeur’s heart was beginning to sink again when someone lifted the receiver.

Thank heaven! It was a woman’s voice, an elderly-sounding woman’s voice, that replied:

‘Is that you at last? Where are you?’

‘Madame, this is not your husband speaking.’

‘Has something happened to him?’

She sounded almost pleased at the idea, as though she had been expecting such news for a long time.

‘Am I speaking to Madame Loubet?’

‘Of course.’

‘Is your husband not at home?’

‘In the first place, who is speaking?’

‘Superintendent Saillard…’

‘What d’you want him for?’

The Superintendent briefly held his hand over the receiver and whispered to Lecoeur:

‘Ring up Janvier and tell him to go there immediately.’

There was a call from a local station at the same time, so that three telephones were in use simultaneously in the room.

‘Has your husband not come home this morning?’

‘If you policemen did your job properly, you’d know.’

‘Does this often happen?’

‘That’s his business, isn’t it?’

She probably detested her drunken sot of a husband, but since he was being attacked she took his side.

‘You know he’s no longer in the Force?’

‘I suppose he’s not enough of a bastard for that!’

‘When did he stop working for the Argus agency?’

‘What’s that?… One moment, please… What are you saying?…You’re trying to worm things out of me, aren’t you?’

‘I’m sorry, Madame. It’s over two months since your husband was fired from the agency.’

‘You’re lying!’

‘In other words, for the past two months he’s been going to work each evening?’

‘Where else would he have gone? To the Folies Bergère?’

‘Why hasn’t he come back this morning? Hasn’t he rung you up?’

She was probably afraid of being caught out, for she simply hung up.

When the Superintendent himself replaced the receiver and turned round, he found Lecoeur standing close behind him, averting his head as he said:

‘Janvier has gone over there…’

And with his finger he wiped away a trace of moisture at the corner of his eye.

5

He was being treated as an equal. He knew that it would not last, that tomorrow he would be merely an insignificant clerk at his switchboard, obsessively putting down little crosses in a futile notebook.

The others did not count. Even his brother stood unnoticed, staring at them each in turn like a timid rabbit, listening to them without understanding, wondering why, when his son’s life was at stake, they were talking so much instead of taking action.

Twice he had tugged André by the sleeve.

‘Let me go and look… ’ he had begged.

Look where? Look for whom? The description of ex-Sergeant Loubet had already been circulated to all police stations, railway stations and patrols.

Now the search was on not only for a child but for a man of fifty-eight, who was probably drunk, who knew Paris and the Parisian police like the back of his hand, and who was wearing a black overcoat with a velvet collar and an old grey felt hat.

Janvier had returned, bringing in a breath of fresh air. An aura of freshness invariably lingered for a while round those who had just come in from outside; then, gradually, they became submerged in the drab atmosphere in which life seemed to be lived in slow motion.

‘She tried to shut the door in my face, but I took care to put my foot in the doorway. She doesn’t know anything. She claims that he’s brought back his pay these last months as usual.’

‘That’s why he was obliged to steal. He didn’t need large sums, he’d not have known what to do with them. What’s she like?’

‘Small, swarthy, with very bright eyes and dyed hair, almost blue. She must have eczema or some skin eruption, for she wears mittens.’

‘Did you get a photo of him?’

‘I took one practically by force, off the sideboard in the dining-room. She didn’t want me to.’

It showed a thickset, full-blooded man with protuberant eyes, who must have been a lady-killer in his youth and still wore a look of stupid arrogance. Moreover the photo was several years old, and today Loubet had probably gone to pieces, become flabbily fleshy, with a shifty look instead of one of self-confidence.

‘Were you able to discover what places he frequents?’

‘As far as I can see she keeps him on a tight rein, except at night when he’s at work, or supposed to be. I questioned the concierge. He’s very much afraid of his wife. In the mornings, the concierge often sees him come staggering along, but he pulls himself together as soon as he puts his hand on the stair rail. His wife takes him shopping with her, he never goes out in the daytime except with her. When he’s asleep and she has to leave the house, she locks him in and takes away the key.’

‘What d’you think about it, Lecoeur?’

‘I’m wondering whether he and my nephew are together.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘They weren’t together to begin with, at half-past six this morning, for Loubet would have prevented the boy from smashing the glass of the call-boxes. They were some distance apart. One of them was following the other…’

‘Which, do you think?’

It was disconcerting to be listened to thus, as though he had on the spur of the moment become a sort of oracle. Such was his fear of making a mistake that he had never felt so small in his life.

‘When the boy climbed up the drain-pipe he must have believed his father was guilty, since he used the note about the legendary Uncle Gédéon to send him to the Gare d’Austerlitz, where he probably planned to join him after getting rid of the sandwich tin.’

‘That seems likely…’

‘Bib can’t have believed…’ Olivier attempted to protest.

‘Shut up!…At that point the crime had just been committed. The child wouldn’t have ventured on his climb if he had not caught sight of thebody…’

‘He did see it,’ Janvier asserted. ‘From his window he could see the body from feet to mid-thigh.’

‘What we don’t know is whether the man was still in the room.’

‘No,’ put in the Superintendent. ‘No, for if he had been, he’d have stayed hidden while the boy came in through the window, and then done away with such a dangerous witness, as he’d just done away with the old woman.’

It was essential, however, to get the whole thing clear, reconstructing it down to the slightest detail, if they were to find young Lecoeur, for whom a Christmas present of not one but two radios was waiting.

‘Tell me, Olivier, when you got home this morning was the light on?’

‘It was.’

‘In the boy’s room?’

‘Yes. It gave me a shock. I thought he must be ill.’

‘So the killer must have seen the light. He was afraid of having a witness. He certainly never expected anyone to get into the room by way of the drain-pipe. He rushed out of the house.’

‘And waited outside to see what would happen.’

That was all they could do: put forward hypotheses, trying to be as logical as possible. The rest was up to the police patrols and the hundreds of policemen scattered about Paris; in the last resort it was a matter of chance.

‘Rather than go back the way he’d come, the child left the old woman’s house by the front door…’

‘One minute, sir. By that time he probably knew that his father was not the murderer.’

‘Why?’

‘I heard someone say just now, I think it was Janvier, that the old woman had lost a great deal of blood. If the crime had just been committed, the blood would scarcely be dry and the body would still be warm. Now it was the previous evening, about nine o’clock, that Bib had seen his father in the room.’

Each fresh piece of evidence brought fresh hope. They felt they were getting somewhere; the rest looked easier. Sometimes the two men spoke at once, struck by an identical idea.

‘It was when he went out that the boy must have discovered the man, Loubet or someone else, probably Loubet. And the man couldn’t know whether his face had been seen. The child was frightened and rushed straight forward…’

This time the boy’s father interrupted to contradict them, explaining in a monotonous tone of voice :

‘Not if Bib knew there was a big reward. Not if he knew I’d lost my job. Not if he’d seen me borrowing money from my mother-in-law…’

The Superintendent and André looked at one another, and because they felt that the other Lecoeur was right, they both felt frightened.

It was a nightmare picture. An empty street in one of the loneliest parts of Paris, while it was still dark, two hours before dawn. And here was a man with an obsession, who had just committed his eighth murder in a few weeks, out of hatred and resentment as well as from need, possibly to prove heaven knows what to himself, a man who put his ultimate pride into defying the whole world through the police.

Was he drunk, as usual? No doubt, on Christmas Eve when the bars stay open all night, he had been drinking more than usual and saw the world through an alcoholic haze; there, in that street, in that wilderness of stone, behind the blind house-fronts, he saw a child, a small boy who knew, and who was going to get him arrested, to put an end to his frantic adventures.

‘I’d like to know if he had a revolver,’ the Superintendent sighed.

He did not have to wait for an answer; it came promptly from Janvier.

‘I put that question to his wife. He always carries an automatic, but it was unloaded.’

‘Why?’

‘His wife is afraid of him. When he was in a certain condition, instead of submitting meekly he sometimes threatened her. She had shut away the cartridges, on the grounds that in case of need the sight of the weapon would be enough to frighten anyone without his having to fire it.’

Had the pair of them, the old maniac and the child, really been playing cat and mouse in the streets of Paris? The ex-policeman could not hope to run faster than a ten-year-old boy; the child, on the other hand, could not hope to overcome a man of that bulk.

Now that man, for the child, represented wealth, the end of all their miseries. His father would no longer have to wander through the town at night, pretending that he was still working in the Rue du Croissant, nor to carry vegetables in the market, nor finally to go crawling to an old woman like Mère Fayet to obtain a loan which he could scarcely hope to repay.

Words were scarcely needed now. They stared at the map, at the names of streets. No doubt the child was keeping at a prudent distance from the murderer and no doubt, too, the man had shown his weapon to frighten the child.

The houses of the city were honeycombed with rooms where thousands of people were sleeping who could be no help to either of them.

Loubet could not stop for ever in the street watching the child, who kept warily away from him, and he had begun walking, avoiding dangerous streets, the blue lamps of police stations and the crossroads where policemen were on duty.

In two or three hours there would be people on the pavements, and the boy would probably rush at the first he met, calling for help.

‘Loubet was walking in front,’ the Superintendent said slowly.

‘And my nephew smashed the glass of the call-boxes because I’d told him how they worked,’ added André Lecoeur.

The little crosses were coming to life. What had seemed a mystery to begin with was now acquiring a kind of tragic simplicity.

The most tragic aspect of it was possibly the question of hard cash, the reward for the sake of which a child of ten was deliberately undergoing such terrors and risking his life.

The boy’s father had begun to weep, quite gently, without sobbing or gasping, and he did not attempt to hide his tears. His nervous tension had dropped and he had ceased to react in any way. He was surrounded by strange objects and barbarous instruments, by men who talked about him as though he were someone else or were not there, and his brother was one of these men, a brother whom he scarcely recognized and at whom he looked with involuntary awe.

Their sentences were becoming briefer, for Lecoeur and the Superintendent understood one another’s slightest word.

‘Loubet couldn’t go home.’

‘Nor enter a bar with the child at his heels.’

André Lecoeur suddenly gave a sudden smile.

‘It can’t have occurred to the man that the boy hadn’t a centime in his pockets and that he could have escaped by taking the métro.’

That would not have worked, though; Bib had seen him and would give an exact description of him.

The Trocadéro. The Etoile district. Time had elapsed. It was nearly daylight. People came out of houses; steps sounded on the pavements. It was no longer possible, for a man without a weapon, to kill a child in the street without attracting attention.

The Superintendent pulled himself together, as though awakening from a nightmare. ‘Well, however it happened, they must have made contact with one another,’ he decided.

At that moment a light came on. As though he knew that it concerned their problem, Lecoeur took the phone instead of his colleagues.

‘Yes… I guessed as much…Thank you…’

He explained: ‘It was about the two oranges. They’ve just found a North-African boy asleep in the third class waiting-room at the Gare du Nord. He still had one of the two oranges in his pocket. He had run away from his home in the eighteenth arrondissement this morning, because he’d been given a beating.’

‘Do you think Bib’s dead?’

Olivier Lecoeur was twisting his fingers as though to break them.

‘If he were dead Loubet would have gone home, because, after all, he’d have nothing more to be afraid of.’

So the contest was still going on, in the Paris streets where the sun was shining at last and family parties with children in their Sunday best were out walking.

‘Probably Bib was afraid of losing track of him in the crowd. He edged up closer…’

Loubet must have spoken to him and threatened him with his gun :

‘If you call out, I shall shoot…’

And thus each of them pursued a separate aim: the man hoping to get rid of the child, by leading him on to some lonely spot where murder could be done; the child trying to give the alarm before his companion had time to shoot.

Each was wary of the other. For each of them, life was at stake.

‘Loubet won’t have made for the centre of the city, where there are too many policemen about. Particularly since most of them know him.’

From the Etoile they must have gone up towards Montmartre, not the Montmartre of the night-clubs but the working-class district, towards drab streets which on a day like this must be looking particularly provincial.

It was half-past two. Had they had anything to eat? Had Loubet, despite the threat hanging over him, been able to last out so long without a drink?

‘Tell me, Superintendent…’

In spite of himself, André Lecoeur could not bring himself to speak self-confidently; he still felt as though he was usurping a function to which he was not entitled.

‘There are hundreds of small bars in Paris, I know. But if we began by the most likely ones, and put a great many men on the job…’

Not only did those present settle down to it, but Saillard contacted the Quai des Orfèvres, where six detectives on duty each took up his post at a telephone.

‘Hello! Le Bar des Amis? Has a middle-aged man in a black overcoat, accompanied by a ten-year-old boy, been in at any time since this morning?’

Lecoeur was once more marking crosses, not in his notebook now but in the telephone directory. Here there were ten pages of bars, with more or less fanciful names. Some were closed. In others the sound of music could be heard.

On a map which had been spread out on the table he ticked off the streets with a blue pencil one by one, and it was somewhere behind the Place Clichy, in a passage with a somewhat unsavoury reputation, that the first red mark was made.

‘A chap like that came in about noon. He drank three calvadoses and ordered a glass of white wine for the boy. The kid didn’t want to drink it but did so in the end, and ate a couple of hard-boiled eggs.’

Olivier Lecoeur looked as if he were hearing his son’s voice.

‘You don’t know where they went?’

‘Towards the Batignolles… The man was pretty well soused already…’

The boy’s father would have liked to seize hold of a telephone himself, but there was none available and he walked about from one to another, with knitted brows.

‘Hello! The ZanziBar? Has a middle-aged man…’

It had become a regular refrain, and when one of the men had ceased uttering it another took it up at the far end of the room.

Rue Damrémont. Right at the top of Montmartre. At half-past one; the man’s movements were becoming uncertain and he had broken a glass. The boy had made as though to go to the lavatory and his companion had followed him. Then the kid had given up the attempt, as if he’d been frightened.

‘A queer sort of chap. He kept on sniggering as though he were having a good joke.’

‘You hear, Olivier? Bib was still there, an hour and forty minutes ago.’

André Lecoeur, by now, was afraid to say what he thought. The struggle was nearing its end. Since Loubet had started drinking he’d go on doing so. Would this be the boy’s opportunity?

In a way, yes, if he had the patience to wait and did not embark on any futile venture.

But suppose he was mistaken, suppose he believed his companion to be more drunk than he really was, suppose…

André Lecoeur’s eyes fell on his brother, and he had a sudden vision of what Olivier might have become if his asthma had not, by some miracle, prevented him from drinking.

‘Yes…What did you say?… Boulevard Ney?’

That meant the outer limits of Paris, and implied that the ex-policeman was not as drunk as he appeared. He was making his way along quietly, leading the child out of the city gradually and almost imperceptibly, towards the waste ground on the outskirts.

Three police vans had already left for that district. All available police cyclists had been sent there, and Janvier himself rushed off in the Superintendent’s little car; they had great difficulty in restraining the child’s father from accompanying him.

‘I’ve told you, this is where you’ll have the first news of him…’

Nobody had time to make coffee. They could not help being overexcited; their words came in nervous jerks.

‘Hello! The Orient Bar? Hello! Who’s speaking?’

André Lecoeur, at the telephone, stood up as he listened, made peculiar signals and was practically dancing with excitement.

‘What?… Not so close to the phone…’

Then the others caught the sound of a high-pitched voice like a woman’s.

‘Whoever you are, tell the police that… Hello! Tell the police that I’ve got him… the killer… Hello! What? Uncle André?’

The voice dropped a tone lower, took on an anguished note. ‘I tell you I’m going to shoot…Uncle André!…’

Lecoeur had no idea to whom he handed the receiver. He rushed up the stair and nearly broke in the door of the telegraphist’s room.

‘Quick! The Orient Bar, Porte de Clignancourt… Every available man…’

He did not wait to hear the call put through, but leapt down the stairs four at a time, then halted on the threshold of the big room, where to his stupefaction everyone was standing motionless, with the tension relaxed.

Saillard was holding the receiver, listening to a hearty working-class voice saying :

‘It’s okay…Don’t worry… I hit him on the head with a bottle… He’s out now… I don’t know what he was trying to do to the boy, but… What’s that? You want to talk to him?… Come here, kid… Give me your popgun… I don’t much like that sort of toy… But say, it isn’t loaded…’

Another voice: ‘Is that you, Uncle André?’

The Superintendent, holding the receiver, looked about him, and it was not to André Lecoeur but to Olivier that he handed it.

‘Uncle André?… I’ve got him… The killer!… I’ve got the re…’

‘Hello, Bib!’

‘What?’

‘Hello, Bib, it’s…’

‘What are you doing there, dad?’

‘Nothing… I was waiting… I…’

‘I’m happy, you know… Wait… Here are some police cyclists who want to talk to me… And a car’s stopped…’

There were confused sounds, a buzz of voices, the clink of glasses. Olivier Lecoeur held the telephone receiver awkwardly and stared at the map, probably without seeing it. It was happening a long way off, right up in the northern part of the city, in a great windswept open square.

‘I’m going off with them…’

Another voice. ‘Is that you, Chief? Janvier here…’

Olivier Lecoeur looked as if he was the one who had been knocked on the head, the way he held out the receiver into empty space.

‘He’s completely sozzled, Chief. When the kid heard the phone ring, he realized it was his opportunity; he managed to snatch the gun from Loubet’s pocket and took a leap… Thanks to the patron, a tough guy who knocked the man out on the spot…’

A little light flashed out on the board, up in the Clignancourt district. Stretching his hand over his colleague’s shoulder, André Lecoeur thrust the plug into a hole.

‘Hello! Your van’s gone out?’

‘Someone’s broken the glass of the emergency call-box in the Place Clignancourt to say there’s trouble in a bar there… Hello!… Shall I call you back?’

There was no need to this time.

Nor was there any need to mark a little cross in his notebook.

A very proud small boy was being driven across Paris in a police car.

[scanned anonymously in a galaxy far far away]

[collected in Maigret’s Christmas: Nine Stories. Despite this, it is at most a “semi-Maigret” in which the Inspector does not appear himself, so has no episode number]

[for a complete bibliography of all 103 episodes of The Maigret Saga, check out Steve Trussel’s amazing fan site at http://www.trussel.com/f_maig.htm ]

[March 29, 2007—v1 html proofed and formatted]