Free The Prisoner of the Riviera (The Francis Bacon Mysteries) by Janice Law Page B

realized, or someone else dispatched from Joubert.
    “Did she say anything?”
    “I complimented her on the car. She agreed it was a fine one.” His cigarette glowed in the darkness. “How strange to think that she had only days to live. Maybe not even that long.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    “I heard that the body had been kept for some time.”
    This was a disagreeable thought, though, if true, it surely put me beyond suspicion. “In this climate?”
    He took another drag of the cigarette. “We have to keep our fish cold. There are many facilities with refrigeration and ice. Not impossible.”
    “So my Madame Renard might have known nothing about the murder.” I really hoped that.
    “If she’s smart, she knows nothing and forgets even that.”
    “I’m wondering if she might be local,” I said cautiously. Pierre was special, but who knew what his politics were—or had been—and what he might feel about the Chavanel ladies. “Thin, pretty, short dyed blond hair, no older than you. She looked like a dancer. I thought maybe an entertainer of some sort. Sound like anyone you’d remember?”
    “The only dancer I know was dark, black hair, black eyes.” He spoke almost too quickly and dismissively.
    “Hair can be bleached. For professional reasons.”
    “Possible,” he said, but if he knew more or guessed which way my interest ran, he did not say. His cigarette arched away into the shadows, and he came back to bed, putting questions quite out of my mind but starting the day in a highly satisfactory manner.
    Sunup and both of us hungover with various excesses, Pierre dropped me at the station. “A fine dinner,” he said. “A fine evening.”
    “If I can come into money, we must do it again. Perhaps at the bike race.”
    “In eight days, then.”
    “How will I find you?”
    “Look for the support cars for our regional team, Southeast France. You’ll see our colors. Allez la Sud-Est! ”
    “Allez la Sud-Est!” I repeated.
    He paused as if he wanted to say something more, and perhaps he would have, but the express was called for Nice, Menton, Ventimiglia. I gave him a hug and started for the platform.
    “Francis.”
    I turned for a last look at him, standing straight and handsome, the early sun lightening his thick, curly hair.
    “Be careful,” he called. “Remember our politics are strange, and you are a stranger here.”

Chapter Seven
    I had a lot to think about in the train. For one thing, there were my brand-new papers and my brand-new name, trifles in my sea of troubles, but easier to obsess about first thing in the morning than armed bully boys. Though I’d never much fancied the name, “Marcel,” I must now think of Proust and make my way through life as Marcel Lepage, furniture refinisher and decorator. I hoped said Marcel could stay clear of the glum, and probably corrupt, Inspector Chardin, who had detained me for reasons that seemed increasingly mysterious.
    Of course, my new cognomen came courtesy of the charming old Chavanels, which led me direct to another source of anxiety, since they might well have had connections to Desmarais during the war. If so, I guessed they would have a much better chance of locating their niece than I ever would, and what their game was with me, I couldn’t begin to guess. Even Pierre, with his splendid back and magnificent legs, was not safe for contemplation. He had told me a good deal but I guessed that he knew more.
    With all these considerations, I was well on my way to radical skepticism by the time we rattled into the belle epoque station at Nice, with its high glass canopy and fine ironwork, so airy, so elegant, so redolent of leisure and light. Being a creature of darkness, myself, I concluded that the faster I located Cybèle Chavanel, got a passport, and left the splendors of the Riviera, the better I’d be.
    Eight a.m. Too early for clubs to be open or nightlife to be awake. I stashed my valise in left luggage and set out in the morning