festive season; the Place Kleber was decorated with enormous Christmas trees which lit up at night. In less than ten minutes Lennox was standing at the archway to 49 rue de l'Epine.
Leon Jouvel. The door on the second floor carried the name on a plate beside it. Lennox knocked for the third time but there was no reply. And for once the door of the neighbouring apartment was not opened by the red- headed and enthusiastic Denise Viron; at lunchtime she was still in bed and fast asleep. Leaving the building, he went out to find somewhere to eat.
In the afternoon he visited the shop on the Quai des Bateliers and it was full of customers. The fair-haired girl behind the counter was having trouble coping with the rush and there was no sign of a man in the place. While she was occupied he peered into the back office and found it empty. He decided to go back to Jouvel's apartment in the middle of the evening. If you want to interview a man the place to corner him is at home, after he has finished his day's work and eaten-when he is relaxed. Lennox went back to No. 49 rue de l'Epine at 8.30 pm.
Denise Viron was just going out for the evening, wearing a brilliant green coat which she felt sure suited her exciting personality, when Lennox stopped in front of Leon Jouvel's door. Eyeing him, wondering whether she really was going out after all, she stood outside her doorway with the light still on so it threw into stark relief her full- breasted figure.
`He's away for the night,' she said. 'Was there something I might be able to help you with?'
Lennox, who had his hand raised to knock on the door Lansky had opened with his skeleton keys only a few minutes earlier, took off his hat instead. He moved a few paces towards the girl who took a tentative step back inside her own apartment. Pulling at her long, red hair, she watched him with her lips slightly parted. God, a tart, Lennox thought. 'You mean Mr Leon Jouvel?' he inquired in French. 'It's rather urgent- you're sure he won't be back tonight?'
The girl puckered her over-painted mouth. 'Popular today, aren't we? Jouvel, I mean. I've just had one of those market research blokes asking after him this afternoon. No accounting for tastes.'
`Market research?'
`That's right. You know the type-nosey. Personally I think it's an impertinence the way they ask you all those intimate questions…'
`Mr Jouvel,' Lennox interjected with a smile. 'When will he be back then?'
`Tomorrow-Saturday. That market research chap..
`Is there someone I could leave a message with? His wife, perhaps ?'
`He's a widower. Not interested in women any more.' She gazed past Lennox's shoulder. 'Personally I think when you get to that stage life isn't worth..'
`No one else in the apartment?'
`No. He lives alone.' The girl was frowning, as though making a tremendous intellectual effort to solve a problem. `Funny, I'm having almost the same conversation with you as I had with that other chap. What makes Jouvel so popular all of a sudden? Weeks go by and he sits alone in there glued to the box and now..'
`He's home all day Saturday?' Lennox inquired.
`There you go again-same kind of question.' Denise Viron was beginning to tire of the conversation. 'All day Saturday he's at the shop,' she snapped. 'And it's not a good time to see him-Saturday is his big day. And you won't find him back here before 6.30 in the evening. Are you another market research chap?' she inquired sarcastically.
`I knew him a long time ago,' Lennox replied vaguely and excused himself. He heard a door slam as he went down the stairs and behind him Denise Viron re-buttoned the coat she had unfastened as they talked. She was going to have to go out, and in this weather, for God's sake.
At 5.30 pm. on Saturday evening detective Armand Bonheur yawned in the police office and checked his watch. Soon he would be on the bloody night-watch again, taking over from his colleague who at this moment was discreetly observing Leon Jouvel's shop-front on the Quai des Bateliers. Bonheur would then wait on the quai for Jouvel to lock up so he could follow him and keep an eye on who went in and out of No. 49 rue de 1'Epine. Already Bonheur was getting to hate this duty. What the hell had Paris got on a man like Jouvel anyway?
It would not have been possible for even Borisov, his trainer, to recognize Lansky easily as he left the Hotel Terminus with a group of people who had just come out of the lift. Wearing a German suit and a Tyrolean hat he had purchased during the Commando's brief stay in Kehl, Lansky was also equipped with a pair of thick-lensed, horn-rim spectacles of the type normally only worn by old men. Even his walk had changed as he shuffled across the wind-swept Place de la Gare with his hands deep inside his overcoat pockets, a coat also purchased in Kehl. To complete the transformation he carried an umbrella which he had previously ruffled and dirtied. Muffled up inside a scarf; shuffling across the cobbles, Antonin Lansky now looked more like a man in his late sixties.
Reaching the station, he mooched inside the glassed-in restaurant which fronted on the square, sat down at a table and ordered coffee in German. Occasionally as he sat there amid people waiting for trains he checked his watch. He would be visiting Leon Jouvel somewhere between 6.30 and 7 pm, catching him off guard soon after he had arrived home.
At 6 pm Alan Lennox sat at a window table in the cafe next door to Jouvel's television shop drinking coffee. It was well after dark and under the street lamps the cobbles on the quai gleamed from the recent snow flurries. He had decided to take Denise Viron's advice, to let Leon Jouvel, whom he had seen at the other side of his shop window, get his big day over with before tackling the Frenchman. And since it was Saturday he thought it highly likely Jouvel would stop off at a bar on the way home-and what better place to get a man talking than in a bar?
A trained observer-trained by long experience-Lennox had automatically noticed the man in the raincoat on the far side of the quai who stood under a lamp reading a newspaper. Probably waiting for his girl, Lennox surmised: at intervals the waiting man checked his watch and looked up and down the quai as though expecting someone. Lennox finished his third cup of coffee. To spin out the time he had ordered a pot, and the francs for the bill were already on the table so he could leave at a moment's notice.
At 6.5 pm a short, plump figure with a bushy moustache came out and locked up the shop.
As Jouvel said goodnight to his assistant, Louise Vallon, and crossed the quai Lennox emerged from the cafe and paused at the kerb to light a cigarette. No need to follow too close in this part of Strasbourg and the shop owner was wearing a distinctive yellow raincoat. Putting away his French Feudor lighter, Lennox was on the verge of stepping into the road and then stopped before he had moved. The man under the lamp had tucked his paper under his arm and was strolling after Jouvel. A coincidence: he had got fed up waiting for his girl.
As the traffic stopped against the lights, Lennox hurried across and then slowed down again. On the bridge crossing the river Il to the old quarter he saw the man with the paper and ahead of him Jouvel. The shop owner, who had crossed the bridge, had stopped to peer in through the lighted windows of a restaurant as though wondering whether to go inside. The man with the paper had also stopped, bending down as he pretended to tie his shoelace. It was now quite obvious to Lennox that Leon Jouvel was being followed by someone else.
As Jouvel left the restaurant and crossed the road to turn up the rue de l'Epine-which meant he was going straight home- Lennox changed direction to approach No. 49 by a separate route. The man with the paper had left the bridge and followed Jouvel. In that lonely and deserted street a second shadow would be a little too conspicuous. Familiar now with the immediate area, Lennox walked rapidly up the rue des Grandes Arcades and then into a side street leading into the rue de l'Epine, arriving just in time to see Jouvel turn in under the archway. Lower down the street the man with the paper disappeared inside an alcove as Denise Viron, wearing her bright green coat, came out of the archway. She stopped when she saw Lennox.
`You've come back to see me?' she inquired hopefully.
`Another night maybe? There are plenty of nights yet,' Lennox told her.
Their voices carried down the narrow canyon of the empty street to where detective Armand Bonheur waited, huddled inside the alcove. His instructions had been complex, too complex for his liking. He must keep Jouvel under surveillance. He must not let the shop owner know he was being watched. He must keep an eye open for an Englishman called Lennox, and the description had been vague. Hearing the reply to the girl's invitation given in perfect French, Bonheur did not give a moment's thought to the Englishman he had been told about. He settled down to a long wait.
As far as Bonheur was concerned the form of surveillance was very unsatisfactory-it was impossible to station himself inside the building, to keep close observation on Jouvel. The only positive factor in his favour was that the building had no rear exit. Everyone who entered No. 49 had to go in under the archway. It was just after
