Son of Holmes

4

I had supposed that Jacques Magiot, an old acquaintance of mine and the chief of police, would have come out for the investigation, but he sent a young inspector and two gendarmes, who made it clear that their chief’s appearance was by no means necessary for the gathering of evidence. The flics stationed themselves by the door while the inspector walked around inspecting. He leaned down and sniffed the rug where the beer had spilled.

“Prussic acid,” he said.

“Some form of cyanide, at any rate,” I answered.

He nodded. “Are you familiar with poisons?”

“Oh come. The almond smell is distinctive.”

He noted something in his book.

The others stood about nervously. The inspector spent a bit of time looking at a spiderweblike impression on the coffee table and after a series of “ahems” said that he’d like to question each of us separately.

“But before I do, I will say that while you are all free to move about in town, no one is to leave Valence for any period of time without checking with the authorities.”

“But I don’t live in Valence,” said Paul. “I’m from St. Etienne.”

“In that case, monsieur, we will escort you to your home by way of the St. Etienne constabulatory, and you will report to them.”

While we waited to be called to the kitchen for questioning, Tania and I sat without a word on the divan, her arm linked into mine. She seemed too calm, almost to the point of breaking, as though she were under some unbearable pressure. Undoubtedly this local tragedy had turned her thoughts to her sons at the front.

The inspector first called Lupa, then Georges, Paul, Henri, Tania, and Fritz. The first four were led to the back door and excused, while Tania and Fritz waited in the kitchen after their questioning. The inspector interrogated me in the front room.

“Monsieur Magiot sends his compliments.”

I nodded.

“I’ve made no arrests. Have you any suspicions?”

“No.”

“I’m inclined to think of suicide. He was your close friend, was he not? Had he been unduly depressed?”

It went on in that vein for several minutes. I had no information for him, and he had formed no suspicions himself. He thought it odd that so few of my guests had been French, and asked me about it.

I shrugged. “They are my friends.”

Finally, a little after midnight, they left. Tania and Fritz came back to join me, and we sat drinking brandy for a time, pensive. The undertaker had come earlier, and my thoughts went back to Marcel’s body being removed. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine how he had been only that morning, but I could not. Perhaps it was better that way. I couldn’t think of him as a dead man yet. He was the friend of my childhood, and he was gone.

Tania and I went up to bed, leaving the room empty save for Fritz, who sat at the edge of one of the coffee tables, fists clenched and eyes glassy.

I awoke while it was still dark and silently got up. The house was oppressive. I needed to get away for a time.

Two days before, the Rue St. Philip had been warming to a new day as I had walked down it to meet Lupa for the first time. Now, at four thirty in the morning, with a light rain falling-still falling, I should say-it gave no hint that it could ever be a pleasant street. The cobblestones were slick and too widely spaced, and twice I nearly fell. It wasn’t cold, but the wet darkness kept me shivering.

I’d taken the bottle of cognac and headed for La Couronne, planning to see Lupa in the morning, resolving to enlist his aid. It was not professional. It was not even…

That didn’t matter. I had to do something about my friend’s death. At that moment, I wasn’t a professional, and I didn’t care.

The tables at La Couronne were chained in place, but the chairs had been moved inside for the night, so I pulled up an empty fruit crate and sat by the restaurant’s front door, leaning back against the building. With my coat, I performed the futile gesture of wiping the beaded drops from the table, though it was still raining. There was a small gaslight from within, and its slight glare fell across the table. The rain was so fine that it seemed to hang in the air. There was no wind.

I hadn’t been seated more than a minute when the door behind me opened and I found myself facing Lupa.

“Monsieur Giraud, would you care to come inside where it’s dry?”

I noticed that I was, indeed, very wet, and got up and followed him into the bar. He sat on a stool and looked at me without a word until I spoke.

“I’m surprised to find you awake,” I said.

“I was thinking about your friend.”

“Yes. I wanted to speak to you about it.”

“I don’t understand,” he said, standing and going around the bar. He poured himself a beer.

“I think you do.”

He took a long draft. “Come downstairs,” he said finally. He opened the door to the kitchen, and we descended.

“May I take your coat?” he asked. “I’m sorry, sir, but I neglect my manners. I am on edge. Come, let me take your coat. Do sit down.”

We’d entered another room behind the kitchen. It was warmly lit and pleasant. Three of the walls were covered with tapestries of a cheap variety, and there were several bookshelves and assorted stuffed chairs. I took one of them.

“I live here,” he explained. “You are now my guest. Would you care for some heated milk? Coffee?”

I looked carefully at this man who had been changed so completely by the act of my coming into his living quarters. He went into some other rooms to deposit the coat, then back to the kitchen, evidently to prepare the milk. For nearly a quarter of an hour I sat while he moved back and forth, bringing first the milk, then a pair of pajamas that he insisted I change into, though they were much too large, then a warm housecoat in which I wrapped myself. He stoked the fire, and before long we were sitting comfortably in silence.

“Now,” he said after a time, “what is it that you think I understand?”

I smiled. “I am not a fool, Monsieur Lupa. I am older than you, and perhaps not as naturally gifted, but I have been in my business-perhaps I should say ‘our’ business-for over twenty years, and I have learned a few things. My efforts have been checked and checked again since coming to Valence, and I feel that yours have been likewise. I think we should work together.”

“Indeed,” he said. “I didn’t know you’d worked as a chef.” Suddenly he chuckled. “Of course, I jest. I thought it would be necessary that we work together, but I wanted to be sure of you, and certain of your superiors were less than rapturous in their recommendations.”

I bridled somewhat and spoke in clipped tones. “You may be sure of me.”

“I know that. I have been satisfied. But have you? Can you be sure of me?”

My head was swimming with cognac and fatigue, and yet I immediately perceived the import of the question. Here, indeed, was a Rubicon of sorts, and I must either cast my die with this man or count him as an enemy. There was, there could be, no middle ground.

And what, in fact, did I know of him beyond the briefs, the hearsay, the professional reports that-and no one knew this as well as I-often hid as much as they revealed?

He was an agent. Of that there was no doubt. I was reasonably sure that he didn’t work for the Germans, but could I be as certain that he was committed, as I was, to the interests of France? Before hostilities had erupted, Europe had been a checkerboard of conflicting states, and even now, with the combatants clearly defined, only a fool would suppose that the goals of England, for example, everywhere coincided with those of France. Where did Lupa stand?

I felt his eyes boring into my own as his question hung in the room, and yet he didn’t seem inclined to press. Could I be sure of him?

The answer, of course, had to be no. We were both agents at war, trained to trust no one. Hadn’t Lupa been sitting in Marcel’s seat just before he’d been poisoned? But then another thought occurred to me: it really wasn’t my decision to make. I’d been ordered to find and work with Lupa. I didn’t have to trust or respect my superiors, but as a soldier I had to obey them.

And there was another point: I had already revealed myself to the younger man. If he was not to be trusted, then my usefulness here in Valence was at an end. Now my own vulnerability, here in Lupa’s quarters, could become my own best test of his credibility. Simply put, if I were alive in the morning, he would have proven himself worthy of my confidence. It may not have been the most professional of solutions, but in my wearied state it made a great deal of sense.

One final consideration, even more unprofessional, forced itself into my consciousness. With Marcel dead, perhaps I simply needed to trust someone to fill the hole he had left. With more instinct than reason, I felt Lupa to be the man for that role.

“I have to believe in you,” I said at last. “I have no choice.”

He sipped at his beer and stared into the fire. Quite some time passed. “I suspect everyone,” he said finally.

A wave of regret over the loss of my friend passed over me. “Please,” I said. “I need your help.” He started to blur before me as fatigue set in. I put my hand over my eyes and felt his come to rest on my shoulder.

“Come,” he said, “we’ll talk in the morning.”

He took me back to his quarters, down a hall that seemed to be a dead end. He put down a mattress on the floor and brought a thick blanket for it.

“Let us be careful,” he said almost gently. We were by now speaking in the familiar. “We’re going to be needing each other.” I lay down and blew out the candle beside me. He retreated a few steps, then stopped. “Do you mind if I call you Jules?”

“No.”

“Satisfactory.” Another pause. “I am very sorry.”

I slept for seven hours. When I woke up, my clothes had been sent out and already returned, so I dressed and walked back out to the kitchen. No one was there. I went outside and found Lupa on the sidewalk finishing his beer. It was still drizzling, but the awning had been pulled.

“Did you sleep well?” he asked.

I felt miserable, so I merely grunted. He ordered me a petite calva; and I drank it off quickly.

“Have you been awake long?” I asked.

“Since eight o’clock.” I must have looked at him in disbelief, for he continued, “A schedule that may be whimsically broken is no schedule at all. In the end the logical order one tries to impose on one’s life is sacrificed to quotidian cares. Even this beer,” he said, motioning to the brew, “though it doesn’t compare to yours, helps in its way to reestablish the order that last night destroyed.”

I thought he was being peevish, so I said nothing. He looked at me and smiled, emptying his glass. “Come with me, Jules. I have an appointment.”

We went back down to his quarters, which seemed smaller than they had been in the early morning, or even a half hour before. The hall I’d slept in was off to the left of the sitting room, but we crossed over to a door at the right and into a rather large office. The right-hand wall was covered with pots and pans, costly copper and cast iron, while the left sported a picture of Dreyfus and, somewhat incongruously, a bull’s ear. Behind the desk was another of the cheap tapestries that he used to cover the bare rock wall. His entire quarters seemed to be a type of bunker-certainly nothing like the typical cellar one finds around here.

He walked to the corner nearest the bull’s ear-a memento from Spain, I later learned-and lifted away the tapestry, showing a large hole opening into blackness, into which he stepped, motioning for me to follow. He lit a tallow and we moved through a narrow, high cave for several hundred meters. So this was where he disappeared to in the afternoons. I wondered where the cave would come out.

“Handy having all the limestone around here,” he said. “It took comparatively little work to finish this passage after I arrived here.”

I found that difficult to believe, though I knew that some of the natural caves in the region extended for incredible distances. In the end, the cave proved to be nearly a kilometer in length, and I was totally unprepared for where it abutted. Lupa pulled aside another bit of rug and stepped into a cellar of amazing fragrance.

“Where are we?” I asked. The smell alone had nearly driven away my headache.

He seemed almost playful as he leaned back against a waist-high bench. He held the candle out behind him, and I could make out rows and rows of flowers. He breathed deeply.

“Marvelous,” he said. “It always affects me.”

Then quickly he straightened up again and moved to a door, which led to a stairway, which in turn opened into a well-lighted planting room. There was a partition in front of the door, and we waited behind it while Lupa peeked out to see who was in the shop. When he was satisfied, we walked out. A woman, about thirty, with dark hair and features, stood talking with a man whose back was toward us as we approached. Lupa went up to the woman, kissed her on the cheek, and said something to her in a language I didn’t understand-and I speak five languages. She disappeared to where we’d been.

“Watkins.”

“Hello.”

The two men embraced and began speaking in English.

“Where have you sent Anna?” asked the stranger.

“She forgot to turn on the cellar lights again. The plants will surely die. I’m glad you’re here. We’ve had problems.”

“I’ve heard already. Routier’s been killed. No clues. You were there. Who did it?”

The man was in his twenties and would have looked perfectly nondescript except for the great swelling in his left cheek. His hair was short and brown, his suit common, and he wore no tie. Occasionally he chewed at his cheek.

“I haven’t much of an idea,” said Lupa. “It could have been any of us. Oh, excuse me, this is Jules Giraud. Joseph Watkins.”

We shook hands as the woman returned.

“Look at his cheek, will you?” she said. “Those damned olives again.”

Watkins grinned crookedly. “Addicted,” he said. “Can’t get enough of the blasted things.”

“He’s been horrible all morning,” said the woman. “Eating so many of them he can’t talk, spitting the pits wherever he happens to be. I should have tossed him out long ago. If he wasn’t so…” She smiled and touched his arm. He moved aside. “Hello,” she said, crossing to me, “my name is Anna Dubrov. I’ve seen you before in town.”

I nodded. “Jules Giraud.”

Lupa suggested we go to the back of the shop. On the way, Watkins leaned over one of the potted plants and straightened up again without the swelling in his cheek. He was grinning broadly.

“Anyone care for an olive?” he asked, taking ten or fifteen from his coat pocket. When no one responded, he deposited the entire handful into his mouth.

Lupa stood with an arm around Anna, waiting for this frivolous Englishman to finish chewing. When the pits had been stuffed into his cheek, Lupa began.

“Any news?”

“Yes, and specific.” Once he started talking, he was entirely businesslike. Perhaps he wasn’t as frivolous as he seemed.

“Continue.”

“Well, naturally you’re here on your own affairs, something about assassinations and so forth, but I thought-”

“You can drop that,” said Lupa. “M. Giraud, as you know, is an agent of the French, and he is now in our confidence.” He turned to me, continuing, “I am a free operative working for the English government. I know all this has been denied time and again in your inquiries about me. You know how that is. My uncle is a nonambulatory genius whom I detest, but he is probably the most important man in England, and we share some views during wartime.”

“So you work for England?”

“For the time being, yes, but I direct my own inquiries.”

“By the way,” said Watkins, “ Altamont says-”

“That will do,” Lupa said abruptly. “Let us get on with your information.”

“Yes, well, um…” He fumbled a moment, then leaned over and spit out the pits. “We’ve got information that he is not here for assassination. You’re aware of the arms and munitions factory at St. Etienne?”

Lupa’s gaze was withering.

Watkins pressed on. “It’s going to be blown.”

I found myself smiling. “How do you know?”

“One of the boys flushed a Kraut spy and persuaded him to drop a few tidbits, and this was one of them. Unfortunately, our man brought some friends. They all got a bit carried away during the interrogation, and the Kraut died before he could be of much more use.”

Lupa looked at me. “And they say that we are fighting the barbarians.” To Watkins: “Did you get any descriptions, anything definite?”

“Not of your man, no. But there was something.”

“What was that?”

“It’s to be an inside job.”

I laughed, and the man looked at me angrily.

“What’s funny, mate?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, “but it would have to be. Have you seen the place? It’s guarded rather completely.”

Lupa was absently running his fingers through some dirt in a pot next to him. He seemed lethargically calm until he spoke, at which time he fired his questions at the other man.

“Where was he caught?”

“ Marseilles. Usual narcotics stuff. He was delivering to their man in St. Etienne.”

“Why didn’t the fools let him deliver?”

“I think you’ve answered your own question. The fool-that is, our man-wanted to make sure he didn’t escape. They knew something big was going on in this area. He wanted to get a piece of it.”

“And lose the pie in the bargain.” Lupa was annoyed, and I could see why.

“One other thing bothers me,” Watkins said.

“What’s that?”

“I think he is here to assassinate. That is patently a part of it. Remember, we have had-what is it now?-three deaths of operatives in the past year. It’s just a hypothesis, but it is corroborated by the lack of any other overt activity until he moves. That’s all. Of course, no clues. But the man must sooner or later make a mistake. He must.”

He shrugged and reached into his pocket for some more olives. Someone walked into the store and Anna went to the front. Lupa pulled up a stool and sat down. He seemed completely engrossed in the plant beside him. Suddenly he looked up and spoke.

“I hope you’re right. Because if he is only here to blow the factory, then when the job is done, he’ll disappear. Whereas if he is here for a dual purpose, one job may give us the clue to the other.”

“You think he’s the man who killed Routier?” asked Watkins.

“Do you think he isn’t?”

“Then he must have been…”

“Precisely,” Lupa said, “he must have been among our gathering last night.”

I started to object. After all, everyone who had been there was a friend. But even as I began my defense, I realized that there was no other conclusion.

“That’s good,” Watkins said. “It narrows the field considerably.”

“Yes,” Lupa agreed. “Yes, it does.”

He got up and beckoned me to follow him. He paused at the screen to the back door. “Joseph, you’ll have to go to St. Etienne.”

Anna turned around to wave good-bye, and we proceeded back through the cellar, which was now brightly lit and stunning in color as well as fragrance. Another walk through the tunnel, and we reappeared in Lupa’s rooms.

I sat across from him. The weight of my friend’s death had begun to settle on me again. I must have looked tired.

“What are your ideas?” Lupa had gone to an oversize, overstuffed chair. “I’d like a beer,” he said, but he didn’t get up.

“I’d like some sleep,” I said. We spoke in English.

“I’d say you need it. But first, what do you think of St. Etienne and our list of suspects?”

“That’s been bothering me,” I said. “I mean the fact that it looks like the man we’re after is a friend of mine. Going on that assumption, everyone has a plausible opportunity, but…” I stopped.

He grunted. “It begins to look that way.”

“More than you know,” I said.

I got up, walked out to the kitchen and up the stairs, ordered two beers at the bar, and returned. He nodded graciously when I handed him a bottle, and took a long drink.

“I detest drinking beer from a bottle, but what can one do?” He drank again. “More than I know?”

“List our suspects,” I said. “Paul Anser lives in St. Etienne. Georges Lavoie delivers there, as does Henri Pulis-I would assume even to the arsenal itself. Georges with his first-aid supplies and Henri, of course, with his food. It’s one of those newfangled buildings where the workers have their own cafeteria and medical facility. I’ve heard Tania talk about it.”

“Tania?”

“That’s the worst part.”

He finished his beer and waited.

“One of Tania’s oldest acquaintances, through her husband, who was a French officer… Anyway, one of their friends was Maurice Ponty, who happens to be the director of the St. Etienne arms factory. She still sees him about once a month.”

Lupa leaned back in his chair and sighed deeply. “That’s everyone.”

“Except Fritz.”

“No, not except Fritz.”

“You have something on him,” I asked, “some connection?”

Lupa shook his head. “I was loath to consider him because of his cooking. He is so sympathetique. Still, that is a flaw in my own method.”

“But you just said you have nothing on him.”

“Nothing definite, Jules, but certainly something. It stretches the bounds of coincidence that every one of your guests has some foreign connection. Until I have satisfied myself with Fritz’s references in Germany before the war began, I have to include him among the suspects. I have a man working on it now.”

“But what possible…?” I began.

“Jules, please. I must suspect everyone.”

“Even me?”

He was young. A look of ineffable sadness crossed his countenance. “I’m afraid, my new friend, even you.”

I stood up. “The beer is terrible, but it isn’t that. I must be getting on home. Would you like me to have Fritz send up a case of my beer, if it wouldn’t spook you?”

“That would be excellent,” he said, lifting the corners of his mouth in what perhaps he thought was a broad smile.

“Meanwhile, I’ll get some sleep and then try and contact everyone and see what I can find.”

Lupa seemed to consider something, then stopped me from leaving by raising his hand. “Jules,” he said, “a small point, but in English the word ‘contact’ should never be used as a verb.”

“Au revoir,” I replied with dignity, then turned on my heels, left him, and began walking home through the gray and dismal afternoon.

Stones crunched noisily under my feet as I trudged homeward, the sound a somber coda to the theme playing over and over in my mind. Lupa had said, “I must suspect everyone,” and he was right. I walked slowly, hands deep in my pockets, head down.

Everyone…

I thought of the word as a sledgehammer pounding into the wall of reluctance I had built against suspicion of my friends. And they had been my friends, every one of them. Now, until this was all over, they would not be friends, and they might never be again.

I remembered how it had all begun, with Paul Anser. It had been in Paris around 1911. What had he been doing there? Ah yes, publishing something. He did actually publish poetry. I had two or three of his bound collections and even an autographed manuscript at the house. There had been a party, I recall, with lots of young men from London taking the Grand Tour, as well as several charming young women. I had the feeling that I’d been asked to chaperon, but that suited me. The crowd was lively and intelligent, a far cry from the stultifying soirees held by the wives of military men to further their husbands’ careers.

Paul had been the entertainment, or part of it, and he was well received. Afterward, though, when most of the younger set had paired off, I had seen him standing alone, looking rather at sea, and I took pity on him. His command of French then was not so good as it has become, and we spoke English, discovering to our mutual delight that we were neighbors. When he had returned to Valence several weeks later, he had called on me while Marcel had been visiting, and we’d had such a good time drinking beer and-significantly?-talking politics that we all decided to make a regular event of it.

So it had been Paul, Marcel, and me from the start. Seen from a certain perspective, and one that I had truthfully never considered until this moment, it had been, or could have been, a most fertile field for espionage. Back in the beginning, we’d all shared the common confidences of new-found friends. Had it all been masterful grilling on Paul’s part?

I thought back. I had aired my disagreements over policy rather freely. Marcel had done the same. To the extent that Paul had been fascinated, hanging on our words, we had felt flattered, viewing him with friendly condescension. Those naive, neutral, isolationist Americans, we had thought. Now I bitterly recast the litany in my mind: we naive, romantic, gullible French!

Dark rain clouds scudded against the overcast sky. I had been wandering, lost in contemplation. Though Valence wasn’t a particularly large city, I found myself in an unknown neighborhood as a light drizzle began to fall. Ancient houses leaned threateningly over narrow stone streets. I considered turning around, trying to retrace my route, but since I’d been paying no attention whatever, I realized that I was truly lost. Turning back wouldn’t help. There was nothing to do but continue walking, hoping I would stumble upon some familiar landmark.

Everyone…

Henri had been the next. It had come about naturally enough, since I bought my beer-making supplies from his shop. I remember the first time we’d gotten into a discussion of technique. He had a particularly dependable supplier of excellent German hops. German hops! His interest was so genuine, his personality so forthright, that I had spontaneously decided to ask him around.

And he became the most regular of the guests. His attendance was never in doubt, which, now that I thought of it, was provocative. With a wife and a large family as well as a prospering business, he might have been expected to have the most demands on his time. Instead, our weekly gatherings were obviously a matter of great priority to him.

Why, just the past night he’d left his wife in the middle of a disagreement, as Lupa had pointed out. Were our beer meetings more important to him than his domestic harmony? And if they were, why?

Again I reflected on his bluff exterior-a happy, life-loving Greek. And the more I thought on it, the more incongruous were his business successes and his easy camaraderie with our varied and rather highbrow group.

A dead-end street brought me up short. I was just as content to be lost-the physical disorientation matched my mental turmoil. I was losing faith in the world I lived in-a world where my friends were not as they seemed, where love and trust might be bargaining chips, and duplicity the coin of the realm.

Everyone…

I could not have met Georges more innocuously. Late last summer, just after I’d come down here, I was returning from a bit of business in St. Etienne in my motorcar when I came upon a well-dressed limping figure hitchhiking on the roadway. New to the area, Georges had miscalculated the distances between a few of his sales calls in St. Etienne and so had missed his train back to Valence. During the drive, we struck up a fascinating discussion on the question of reincarnation, and I sensed that he would fit in perfectly among my beer guests. And so it had proved.

And yet there were coincidences that a mind more suspicious than my own might not have overlooked. That first Wednesday meeting with Georges in attendance was also Marcel’s first day back in the area. In other words, it was within two weeks of our first operative’s death. And that of course meant that Georges’s arrival in Valence occurred within days of that “accident.” Further, of all of our number, he had the least history. I had known of, or had references to account for, each of my other friends, each of the other suspects.

Finally, and more subjectively, I have had a great deal of experience with members of my profession, and if there can be said to be a “type” of mind in the field, Georges’s most neatly fit that category-heavily reliant on facts, possessed of enough originality to deduce from those facts (Marcel’s glaring flaw and Lupa’s forte), plus a certain glibness, a way of getting by on the surface of events while chaos reigns on the operative level.

The psychological babble was fine in its place, and yet the fact remained that Georges had not even been in the same room when Marcel had taken his last draft. And no service in the world would hire a man with Georges’s limp-it was simply unheard of.

A recognizable square loomed ahead of me in the drizzle, and I found myself suddenly almost too dispirited to keep moving toward it. What was the point of going home? What, indeed, was home? Another hollow concept such as loyalty, duty, honor-all fine words to fight and die over, but nothing to take too seriously.

But the old discipline directed my footsteps just as my training led my thoughts back to the issue. The stakes here were nothing less than survival, and sentiment must be viewed only as a dangerous luxury, an enemy as deadly as any I would ever face.

Everyone…

How could Fritz have lived in my house for a year without causing me a moment of suspicion? And yet who was more ideally suited to keep tabs on my movements and report on them? No one had had a better opportunity to place poison in Marcel’s bottle, except of course Lupa, who had been sitting in that seat. But my trust in Lupa had proven itself well grounded. Or had it? Perhaps he’d kept me alive last night for another, future purpose. Perhaps in some other game, I was a bishop and Marcel a quickly expendable pawn-perhaps and maybe and again perhaps. My mind was beginning to reel with uncertainties, with possibilities.

Everyone…

And even Tania…

No! Not Tania! Not the only woman I had ever loved. It was unthinkable. Even if it killed me, I would not suspect her. I shook my head, trying as best I could to purge the poisonous thought…… and looked up to find myself in the middle of the square, still confused and lonelier than I had ever felt before.

The rain became fierce, and again I found myself soaked. In no mood to continue an already disagreeable walk, I hired a carriage back to my home. Fritz greeted me at the door with undisguised concern, tempered with reproval.

“Are you well, sir?”

“Damn it, Fritz, no. No, I’m not well. I’m drenched, my clothes are ruined for the second time, I’m tired, and my oldest friend has been murdered in my house. No, I’m not well at all.”

He stood back and silently took my clothes.

“I’m sorry to snap,” I said, “but it has been a trying time.”

“Monsieur Lupa came by this morning and told me you were in good hands. Madame Chessal went home after breakfast. Would you like some tea or brandy?”

He handed me my robe, and I went into the front room to sit before the fire, where I brooded for a while about my age until Fritz came back with tea laced with brandy. After one cup I fell off to sleep.

Fritz woke me again when it was already dark, served me a small meal of coddled eggs with sherry and black butter, and suggested I retire, which I did.