Free Dead Clever by Roderic Jeffries

understand their own language when incorrectly spoken by a foreigner. He leaned his head through the open car window and for the third time asked directions to the Rue de la Paix, and for the third time the elderly man on the pavement shrugged his shoulders. ‘Forget it,’ Ware said in English. The Frenchman inclined his head—in contempt, in triumph, in commiseration?—and walked on.
    Ware studied the small road map of Changres which the car-hire firm had given him at the airport and he tried to work out why, since he had taken the third road to the right after the cross-roads, he had turned into Rue Mortel which, to add to the confusion, wasn’t marked. A woman, past her youth but maturely smart and very aware of that fact, approached. He leaned out through the window and asked her to help him and this time his accent was an advantage since it marked him as a foreigner and she had a soft spot for the underprivileged. She listened to his halting French and then replied in good English that he was in Rue de la Paix, but the name had recently been changed to Rue Mortel to commemorate the town’s late mayor. He thanked her and she walked on, satisfied that although he was considerably younger than she, he would be watching her.
    He left the car and walked along the pavement, past houses which had been built at the turn of the century for the well-to-do bourgeoisie and whose rather bleak exteriors gave no indication of the elegance to be found within many of them. He reached No. 45, pressed the entry button, and the door latch slipped free with a quick buzz. There was a short passage, to the right-hand side of which were the concierge’s rooms, to the left-hand side stairs, and at the end a small courtyard.
    He climbed the stairs to the third floor. There were two flats on each floor and in the small brass holder on the left-hand side of the landing was a handwritten card naming Miss S. Collins. He rang the bell.
    The door was opened by a woman he judged to be in her early thirties. ‘Miss Collins? My name is Robert Ware.’ She was not beautiful, yet she had a face which attracted because it expressed character; by some visual trick, it seemed to alter in composition when seen from different angles. Her brown eyes were warm, but her nose had a touch of Roman arrogance; her mouth was generous and her lips full, suggesting a capacity for passion; her hair was black and wavy and cut tightly to the shape of her head; she wasn’t fashionably thin, but neither was she plump. A woman to remember and to wonder about. ‘May I have a word with you?’
    ‘What about?’
    There was a touch of huskiness in her voice which reminded him of a distant cousin who rode sidesaddle. He did not answer immediately, but brought out his wallet and from this extracted a card which he handed to her.
    She read it, looked up. ‘I don’t understand.’
    ‘I’d like to discuss something that concerns us both.’
    ‘But what? I’ve never heard of this insurance company before. How can anything to do with it concern me?’
    ‘A few years ago Mr Timothy Green took out a life insurance with them.’
    ‘Oh! . . .’ She turned away so that he could no longer see her face. ‘I . . . I can’t . . .’ Her voice trailed off into silence.
    ‘I’m very sorry, but I do have to talk to you,’ he said firmly. It was, he thought, a tribute to her acting ability that until he reminded himself that it was ridiculous, he felt guilty because he was causing her such distress.
    She did not move for several seconds, then, shoulders slumped, she stepped back. He accepted this as an invitation to enter, closed the door.
    ‘I . . . I just can’t get used to knowing he’s dead,’ she murmured.
    He noticed, for the first time, the black armband she wore. Since Green must have considered a visit such as the present one to be unlikely, it was a tribute to his skilful planning that he had still taken the possibility into account and arranged for her to wear a