It was a round and jovial police officer trying, in vain, to look important.
Half-an-hour later, Jacques was trying his best with the café telephone. He had already, with difficulty, dictated his article to the newspaper and was now trying to obtain Professor Richard’s number. Eventually he heard the other’s gruff voice and was able to explain:
‘Between two crimes, I had come here to interview a notable foreigner: the violinist G... who is travelling through here and is also, as you know, an important politician in his own country. Completely by chance I was practically an eye witness to the seventh crime.’
‘Explain yourself.’
When he had finished his report, Richard told him:
‘You’re right. It’s important. I’m on my way.’
The public prosecutor had been quick off the mark and the investigation had already begun. No clues on the crime scene. The unfortunate René had been killed outright. A search for the document he’d claimed to have on him proved fruitless. There seemed no doubt that the white object that the murderer had been seen to take was the envelope containing the secret he had planned to deliver.
The investigation continued inside the café. The examining magistrate tried to determine who might have overheard the conversation. Against all the odds, that turned out to be easy, since everyone had been grouped around the four players. But they were all long-time customers, none of whom appeared likely to be the mysterious killer.
The waiter, however, added a detail:
‘Next door to the players was a stranger. He bought a grog and paid for it on the spot. I didn’t see him again after that.’
Although pressed, he was unable to be more precise. During the rush, he hadn’t noticed the physical appearance of the customer, who was well wrapped up.
The report of the expert, who had been dragged out of bed, was quickly available. The bullet came from the same automatic pistol. The killer had struck again. But this time, at least, they knew that it wasn’t by chance.
At six o’clock in the morning of Thursday, November 25th, Sainte-Catherine’s day, a Bugatti arrived with a great roar and came to a rumbling halt in front of the café where Jacques—who hadn’t slept a wink—was on his seventh coffee. Maryse and her uncle got out, only too happy to warm themselves up.
Despite his fatigue, the professor went straight to work. For forty-eight hours, he desperately tried to find the link which tied the unfortunate René to the murderer.
He did eventually discover a clue, without being able to make anything of it. The only inexplicable recent event in the young man’s life was a sudden and brief trip to Paris on the preceding May 25th. No one knew the reason for the twenty-four-hour displacement—at a time he was low on funds. It seemed strange that he would spend the price of a return trip to the capital—and, it was verified, in first class—on a joy-ride.
That was the extent of the information gleaned on the spot.
The professor seemed very depressed by the negative results of the films taken.
‘I’m afraid it was foreseeable,’ he said. ‘In any case, I was right about one thing: it’s now been proved that the man in grey is not killing without motive.’
VIII
ARRAS – A THICK-SKINNED WOMAN
Monday, November 29
‘I’m tired of you making a fuss. I added some salt, and that’s an end to it. I’m fed up, every day there’s a new complaint. Yesterday, it was about this blue dress, the other day it was about the steak. You’re always trying to find something. I don’t know why I still come to work for you. There’s not another housekeeper who would stay a week.’
‘But, Madame Jules, it’s quite natural that I want to eat according to my taste.’
‘I didn’t put sugar in that disgusting macaroni. If I had to eat that, I’d be sick.’
‘I’ve never forced you to eat it.’
‘Just as well. I’m not one of your spoilt Parisian whores. I’ll not stand for it.’
Hippolyte Stacier, fifty-seven years old, bachelor and mathematics teacher at an Arras school, raised his arms to the heavens, even though he was used to such quarrels. Each time that he left his constant state of distraction to make a timid observation to his housekeeper, or to naïvely reproach her for an error she had made, he was assaulted by a flood of reproaches as vehement as they were unjustified.
Whatever the subject matter, cooking, clothing, politics, or even the weather, the diatribe always ended with an allusion—explicit or not—to the professor’s dissolute private life in comparison to the chaste and faithful attitude of the widow.
Melodramatically, she went out slamming the door behind her. As she was about to take the dark stairs, using the sticky hand-rail, she found herself face to face—which meant, because of her snub nose, very close—with a man in his thirties....
We shan’t continue the description, which our readers must know by heart. However, this time, the man was wearing a black overcoat.
‘Does M. Stacier live here, madame?’ he asked politely, but without removing his hat.
‘That door there.’
‘Is he in?’
‘Yes. Go right in. The key is in the door, and if you knock, he won’t hear it.’
She continued on her way, which consisted of stopping at several shops in the neighbourhood for food and conversation. It was at the third stop, as she had just recounted her argument with her employer for the seventh time, when she stopped in mid-sentence. Just as a beautiful flower may blossom in a desert, a thought had just crossed her obtuse mind:
‘Suppose it was him?’ she exclaimed.
‘Who, him?’ asked a curious bystander.
‘The man in grey.’
A stunned silence greeted her unexpected question. After a while, the shopkeeper asked:
‘What are you saying? Your boss is the man
