The Widow Read Online Free

for the car keys she fished up a fifty-franc note. But even the tiny one showed strict upbringing: it pursed its mouth and shook its head.
    â€˜Don’t be daft,’ said Arlette. ‘You have the right. Packet of crisps all round.’ The child looked, made up its mind, grinned like Norma, crumpled the note in its paw, tongue-tied. She bent to give it a kiss but it was already racing away. She drove off soberly. She had to put the fan on a minute, to get the condensation off the windscreen. That tedious Robert would stand there gibbering and waving his shotgun, but Norma would see to a tactful quiet exit. And would bring up the baby like all the others. Abortion? No way.
    She would be late for lunch anyhow. She had left a word in the electronic notebook on the kitchen table, and Arthur would cope. It was a long way round to the Meinau, and the midday rush was beginning. Quicker to go through the town centre now than round by the quays. Fortune with her turned on green lights all the way to the Hospital Gate, out of the old town and across the bridge to South Strasbourg; the Colmar road out as far as Suchard Chocolate, and turn left after the football stadium.
    The Meinau. Rue du Général Offenstein. Large quiet bourgeois villas with trees in the walled gardens, sombre with closed shutters and locked gates. Nothing distinguished Siegel-the-Dentist’s house from the others, but she had looked up the number in the phone book. Unostentatious, wellbred … Arlette parked down and across the road, where she could observe. The Lancia was not a conspicuous car, and certainly not around here.
    Not that there was anything to observe. Just ‘the lie of the land’. Get a glimpse, if possible, of the protagonists. Everybody came home to lunch in this part of the world. Twelve-fifteen.
    A small, shiny, dark blue Fiat with pale beige leather. Nice little car. Much like her own. Not as nice! But cleaner – very highly polished indeed, as though the cops that stood loitering all day by the side gate of the Préfecture had been rubbing it up. For this surely was step-ma Cathy. Small, neat blonde woman of that lean, hard, rather standard prettiness, in boots and a leopard-skin that might be nylon but wasn’t. As highly polished as the car. She left it on the pavement, locked it, not looking anywhere, disdainfully, unlocked the gate, locked it again after her. Whisked into the house. Not about to snatch up the kitchen apron and go to work – be servants there, and lunch on the table at twelve-thirty on the dot. Career woman, Cathy Pelletier: the Prefect couldn’t get on without her. But we work to a tight timetable here: twelve sharp he has an official ‘apéritif’ known as a wine-of-honour with some chamber of commerce or other, and Cathy’s off, to be in thebosom of her family for two hours precisely. Twelve twenty-two.
    A six-cylinder Jaguar stole silently down the street; lean, hard, elegant in a standard way like Cathy. Siegel’s good taste. Dark burgundy colour like a ripe plum, very nice. Turned haughtily, stopped across the pavement in line with the gates; he wasn’t leaving his car on the street, not even for lunch hour. His office building, on the river by the Pont Royal, has an interior courtyard.
    Siegel got out to unlock the gates – they were very careful with their gates. There wasn’t much to be seen of him; a dumpy man with a full padded profile and a slightly tip-tilted insolent nose – it was this that gave him away as Marie-Line’s father: not much resemblance otherwise that she could see. Dark tight-fitting overcoat and Anthony Eden hat. He arranged the gates meticulously, got back into the Jaguar, which quivered slightly, like Cathy when he got on top of her in bed. Drove in, parked exactly in front of the door on the circle of gravel, came back to lock the gates. She got him full face then. Shrewd discreet eyes, full small mouth in the