‘On the contrary, I have abounding faith.’
‘You shouldn’t question the Bible. Job was a good man. There is a Christian message in the
‘But Job didn’t know that.’
‘How do you know? We have a lovely Bible, there. Why do you want to change it? You should look after your wife and have a family, and be a good husband, with all your advantages, and the business doing so well. Your Uncle Joe refused the merger.
‘Well, Auntie Pet, it’s been a pleasure to talk to you. I have to go out with my lawyer for lunch, now. I’m glad you managed to get my number so you could put your mind at rest.’
‘I got your number with the utmost difficulty.’
‘Yes, I was wondering how you got it, Auntie Pet.’
‘Money,’ said Auntie Pet.
‘Ah,’ said Harvey.
‘I’ll be in touch again.’
‘Keep well. Don’t take the slightest notice of what the newspapers and the television say.
‘What about the radio?’
‘Also, the radio.’
‘Are you starting a new religion, Harvey?’
‘No.’
Stewart and Harvey crossed the Place Stanislas at Nancy. The rain had stopped and a silvery light touched the gilded gates at the corners of the square, it glittered on the lamp-posts with their golden garlands and crown- topped heads, and on the bright and lacy iron-work of all the balconies of the
‘The square always looks lovely out of season,’ said Stewart.
‘It’s supposed to have crowds,’ Harvey said. ‘That’s what it was evidently made for.’
Two police cars turned into the square and followed them at a crawl.
‘The bistro I had in mind is down a narrow street,’ said Harvey. ‘Let them follow us there. The police have to eat, too.’
But they had a snack-lunch in the police station at Nancy, two policemen having got out of their car and invited Harvey and Stewart to join them.
‘What’s the matter, now?’ Harvey had said when the police approached them.
Stewart said, ‘I require an explanation.’
The explanation was not forthcoming until they were taken later in the afternoon to the police headquarters in Epinal.
‘A policeman has been killed in Paris.’
NINE
Stewart Cowper, having invoked the British Consul, was allowed to leave the police headquarters the same afternoon that he was detained with Harvey. He refused to answer any questions at all, and his parting advice to Harvey was to do likewise. They were alone in a corridor.
‘The least I can do,’ said Harvey, ‘is to defend Effie.’
‘Understandable,’ said Stewart, and left to collect his luggage from the chateau and get a hired car to Paris, and a plane to London.
Harvey got home later that night, having failed to elicit, from the questions he was asked by an officer who had come to Epinal for the purpose — the same old questions — what had exactly happened in Paris that morning, and where Effie was supposed to fit into the murder of the policeman.
‘Did you hear about the killing on the radio, M. Gotham?’
‘No. I’ve only just learned of it from you. I wasn’t in the chateau this morning. I was in the cottage with my English lawyer, Stewart Cowper.’
‘What did you discuss with your lawyer?’
‘The different versions of the
Harvey’s interrogator looked at him with real rage. ‘One of our policemen has been killed,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry to hear it,’ said Harvey.
They escorted him to pick up his car at Nancy, and followed him home.
Next day the Sunday papers had the same photograph of Effie. There was also a photograph of the policeman, lying in the street beside a police car, covered by a sheet, with some police standing by. Effie had been recognised by eye-witnesses at the scene of the killing, in the eighteenth
That was the whole of the news, though it filled several pages of the newspapers. The volume of printed words was to be explained by the length of the many paragraphs ending with a question mark, by numerous interpolations
