Free Death on the Pont Noir by Adrian Magson Page A

facility before,’ Rocco murmured dryly. ‘But I’ll do what I can.’ Short , he thought, of deliberately throwing myself in the way of a bullet, anyway.
    Massin’s eyes were hooded when he looked up. ‘I’m delighted to hear it. I trust you will not let me down. You hear me?’
     
    Home in Poissons earlier than usual, Rocco called in at the co-op store for some meat for dinner. Mme Drolet, the owner, fluttered her eyelashes and hurried round the end ofthe counter on high heels to join him, bringing with her a rush of perfume and powder.
    ‘I’ve got some nice cutlets,’ she suggested breathlessly. ‘Very filling for a big man like you.’
    ‘Thanks,’ he said, wondering if she spoke to Delsaire, the plumber, this way. He’d met Madame Delsaire, who looked the sort to eat thistles for breakfast. ‘I’ll just take some minced beef.’
    ‘Don’t you know how to cook cutlets?’ She reached up and patted her hair, which was frozen in some kind of unmoving, shimmering beehive. ‘I could pop down and do them for you, if you like.’
    ‘There’s no need—’
    ‘It’s really no problem. I’m nearly done here. Just give me fifteen minutes to freshen up.’
    If she was any fresher, Rocco decided, she’d be as crisp as a newly peeled endive. He pointed at a piece of beef under the glass and said, ‘That minced would be fine. Really.’
    She gave him a half smile, one eyebrow curving upwards. ‘There’s no need to be frightened, Inspector … I was only offering to cook, you know.’ She picked up the beef and fed it through the mincer, turning the handle with what seemed unnecessary vigour, and he wondered whether she had eaten any husbands in the past.
    At the house he rented down the lane from the village square, he found some eggs in a basket on the front step. Mme Denis, his neighbour, making sure he was well stocked with the basics in life. Some days it was vegetables, others it was fruit. Today eggs.
    He glanced through the fence separating their properties and caught a fleeting glimpse of the old lady ducking indoors,and smiled. She habitually wore an apron over a grey dress, and a triangle of headscarf pinned over her head. It was her uniform, her and others of her age; a sign of cleanliness, hard work and a lack of show. She was an independent old bird, and had become fiercely protective of the flic living next door. Her defensiveness had even included flinging hot tisane in a man’s face when he’d threatened her with a gun, saving Rocco’s life in the process.
    ‘You think because I’m old I’m a charity case?’ she had once asked him, eyes flashing dangerously behind thick glasses. Rocco had just offered to take her out for a meal in return for all her kindness since he’d arrived in the village. Big mistake. ‘You are a welcome guest here, Inspector,’ she’d explained primly. ‘We look after our guests.’
    ‘In that case,’ he’d replied, ‘feel free to go out on the town and get drunk and disorderly, and I’ll make sure they drop any charges.’
    She’d giggled and told him she would hold him to it.
    The interior of the house was cold. He lit the fire and fixed dinner, then rang Claude to check if there were any developments from Father Maurice. There were none. Wherever Pantoufle had disappeared to, it was not looking good.
    He did a stint at the ancient hand pump out in the garden. It was reluctant to draw water, a sure sign that the cold in the atmosphere was reaching freezing levels once more. He’d already had to set a fire around it to loosen the ice more than once, and would no doubt have to do so again. The laying of pipes in the road outside had been completed and covered over, but there the work had stopped, nobody knew why.
    Back indoors, the fouines – fruit rats – were skittering back and forth in the loft as if excited by his return. They seemed oblivious to the drop in temperature and intent on playing their nightly games instead of hibernating. Rocco had