Mannequin Read Online Free Page B

horn-rimmed bifocals leapt. ‘I didn’t say anything about mistresses!’
    â€˜Okay, okay, so those are all more classy. Please, I come from Belleville myself, eh? She’s just a girl we are looking for.’
    â€˜Why?’
    â€˜That doesn’t concern you but … Ah but if she’s been murdered, it’s entirely possible we’ll have to summon you to testify.’
    â€˜Murdered … Here? Let me see the snapshot again. Why doesn’t she wear an overcoat and galoshes?’
    The photo had been taken in the fall of 1940. ‘Imagine her in a beige double-breasted overcoat with the collar turned up. Give her a golden yellow mohair scarf from Hermès, monsieur, and a cocoa-brown beret. Gloves of brown suede—pre-war of course— and most probably not winter boots but rubbers over shoes with medium heels. Pumps.’
    â€˜Silk stockings?’
    The quality of the scarf had done its work. ‘Perhaps. Yes, it’s entirely possible but, like the rest, they would have come from long before this war.’
    â€˜Then the clothes would have been handed down.’
    Their eyes met. The detective waited, then said guardedly, ‘Hand-me-downs and recently made over yet again to suit, yes. They were my first wife’s and I gave them to the girl’s mother in the spring of 1934 when that first wife left me because she could no longer stand the nights and days of never knowing if I would return from work alive. She just walked out and left, and one day I came home to find her gone.’
    Had it been a warning, wondered Girandoux and if so, was it but an affair of foolishness then, this matter of the girl? The affectation of one who had adopted the position of surrogate father or ‘uncle’. ‘The girl was afraid, Inspector. I noticed the coat, the scarf and gloves, yes. She was quite handsome but …’
    â€˜When … At about what time? Please be as precise as possible.’
    â€˜At … at about 1.15 or 1.20 perhaps.’
    About half an hour after the robbery. ‘And she was afraid?’
    â€˜Yes. A frown, the constant looking back over her shoulder. Once a pause beneath the trees to watch the gate for a few minutes. Five, I think. Then again under one of the arches, and once more from the arcade in front of the shop of Monsieur Meunier, the engraver.’
    â€˜Please, this shop, which is it?’
    A Pétainiste through and through, a man who liked order above all else, Girandoux removed a black leather glove to place a forefinger on the plan of the garden that was tacked to the wall precisely in front of the plain wooden table and chair that were the sole furnishings of his office, apart from a calendar whose days had been meticulously X’d.
    â€˜It’s at number 27, Inspector.’
    Directly across the gardens from the house …
    Perhaps the frost was the cause of the moisture in the detective’s eyes, thought Girandoux, perhaps the knowledge that the girl had quite possibly been followed and most certainly must have known of this.
    â€˜Was she with the Resistance, Inspector?’ he hazarded. One never knew quite what to say in these times.
    A copy of the Paris weekly Je Suis Partout was sticking out of the worn leather briefcase on the floor. The lunch packet was empty.
    Pro-Nazi and violently anti-Third Republic, the weekly reflected the views of such fascists as this one, thought St-Cyr. The lighted candle would give the illusion of warmth. The black-out curtain was drawn.
    â€˜Inspector …’
    â€˜Yes, I understand perfectly, Monsieur Girandoux, custodian of the gates to the garden of the Palais Royal. Is it that you’ve missed out on the reward of 100,000 francs by not notifying our German friends of such a suspicious character? If she had been apprehended, and if forced to confess, then of course the money would have been paid and you could rest a good deal easier knowing you had rid