Cold Winter in Bordeaux Read Online Free Page A

knees and was rewarded with a scratch behind the ear and one of the maid’s little biscuits.
    ‘I realise this may be difficult,’ Lannes said, ‘and you don’t want to involve Anne-Marie in what is a nasty business or expose her to questioning. I fully understand that. But in a case like this it’s only by understanding the victim and learning all that I can about her that I have any chance of finding her killer.’
    ‘I’m seventy-five,’ the professor said, ‘and sometimes my memory plays tricks on me. Anne-Marie and Michel are all I have now, all I care for. I don’t want any harm to come to them. It’s dangerous loving someone, giving your heart to them, when you’re my age. Does that sound feeble?’
    ‘Not at all.’
    You don’t, he didn’t add, have to be seventy-five to have learnt that.
    ‘She said she was creepy. Madame Peniel. Just that, creepy. I didn’t enquire further. The word was enough. She’s an honest child and an intelligent one. She was – what shall I say? – uncomfortable with her. As I say, I didn’t press her. That word and the look on her face were enough.’
    ‘Yes,’ Lannes said, ‘I see.’
    If it had been Clothilde, wouldn’t he have behaved in the same way?
    ‘You’ll want to speak with her,’ the professor said. ‘I realise that. I’m sure I can trust you to be gentle. She’ll be home within the hour. Meanwhile, would you like a game of chess?’
    ‘I doubt if I can give you a match.’
    ‘I’m sure you can. So much of your life must be like the game.’
    ‘In life,’ Lannes said, ‘I try to avoid sacrificing a pawn.’
    * * *
    The girl was slightly-built, blonde like her brother, but with pale skin and milky-soft blue eyes. Lannes remembered that when they first met the professor had said that his dead wife had had German cousins, and indeed Anne-Marie looked like an illustration from the fairy-tales of the Brothers Grimm, Gretel perhaps. He had forgotten the young people’s German ancestry, and it now occurred to him for the first time that Michel looked like the perfect Aryan poster boy for the Hitler Youth.
    ‘This is Clothilde’s father, darling,’ the professor said. ‘He is, as you may know, a policeman, and he has some questions to ask you.’
    ‘Questions for me? What fun!’
    ‘You won’t mind if I remain, superintendent?’
    ‘Not at all. I want to ask you about Madame Peniel, Anne-Marie.’
    ‘Is she dead?’
    ‘Why do you ask that?’
    ‘Because I can’t think of any other reason why you should ask me about her. Unless, of course, she’s been caught out.’
    ‘Caught out? In what? You told your grandfather she was creepy. In what way?’
    She crossed to the professor’s chair and perched on its arm. She smoothed her skirt, and said, ‘You didn’t ask me, grandpa, did you? I was glad at the time, but now … is she dead?’
    ‘Yes, she’s dead. She was found murdered this morning. Your name was on her list of pupils, that’s why I’m here. I need to find out whatever I can about her.’
    ‘I can’t say I’m sorry.’ She stroked the old man’s cheek. ‘I’m not being hard, grandpa, but she really wasn’t a nice woman. She used to stroke me – just like this – and it was creepy when she did it. Then she said she knew someone who would like to meet a lovely girl like me – ugh, lovely girl indeed. It gave me the creeps, which is why I told you she was creepy. Does this help? I never saw her again after she spoke like that and stroked me in that way.’
    ‘Do you know if she made any similar approaches to any of her other pupils?’
    ‘No, but then I don’t know any of them. But I’d be surprised if she didn’t. Don’t ask me why. I just know.’
     

V
    A policeman would like to be able to work on a single case to the exclusion of other matters. But it was never like that. When Lannes went to report his preliminary investigation of the Peniel case to Commissaire Schnyder, the Alsatian’s interest was