Have Mercy On Us All by Fred Vargas Read Free Book Online Page A

doing the shopping, making the dinner, and keeping the sole bathroom clean and tidy. Decambrais did all the other chores – hoovering the hall and stairs, washing the woodwork, laying the table for breakfast. For a man of his years, he certainly wasn’t taking it easy.
    Joss dipped his bread in the coffee, took a bite and chewed it slowly as he waited for the shipping forecast to come up on the radio that he’d set to low. The bookworm’s vacancy had everything going for it. It was a stone’s throw from Gare Montparnasse, just in case. It was roomy, it had central heating, a proper bed, oak flooring and well-worn rugs. When she’d first got there Lizbeth hadn’t worn shoes for days on end, for the sheer pleasure of feeling warm carpet underfoot. Then there would be hot dinners every day. Joss could grill bream, open oysters and squeeze a lemon, but that was just about all he could manage in the galley; so for seven years he’d been eating mostly out of tin cans. And last of all there would be Lizbeth in the next room. No, of course he would never try anything, never put his callused old hands on a woman who was his junior by a quarter of a century. And in fact, Decambrais had also always done the right thing by Lizbeth. She had told Joss a dreadful story about her first night, when she lay down on the carpet. Well, the toff hadn’t batted an eyelid. Hats off to him, I say – that’s what you call style. If the toff could cope in that quarter, well so could Captain Joss. Say what you like, the Le Guerns may be rough customers, but they never took anything that wasn’t theirs.
    But that was the sticking point. Decambrais thought Joss was a rough customer, and so would never let him have the room. No point dreaming about it, then. Or about Lizbeth, or hot dinners, or central heating.
    But he was still thinking about it when he emptied out the urn an hour later. He saw the thick ivory envelope straight away and ripped it open with his thumb. Thirty francs inside. The rate was going up all on its own. He glanced at the text without bothering to read it all through. The incomprehensible witterings of that crackpot were getting really tiresome. Then he sorted the “can dos” from the “better nots” almost unconsciously. The latter pile included the following message:
Decambrais is a queer and he makes his own lace
. Same as yesterday, but the other way round. Not very original, my friend! You’ll soon be repeating yourself. Just as Joss was about to put that message in the “return to sender” pile, his hand hovered in mid-air for a little longer than it had the day before. Rent me the room or I’ll put the whole bang shoot into the newscast. Blackmail, that’s what it would be.
    At 0828 Joss was on his orange-box stand ready to go. All the cast were in position, like members of the corps de ballet in a show that had now been running for more than two thousand performances: Decambrais on his doorstep, with his head down in his book; Lizbeth to starboard in the middle of a little group; Bertin to port behind the red-and-white-striped curtains of the Viking; Damascus to the stern, leaning against the shop window of Rolaride, not far from the tenant of Decambrais’s room number 4, almost hidden by a tree trunk; and finally all the regular fans standing round in a semicircle, each occupying as if by ancient tradition the same spot they had been in the previous day.
    Joss launched the newscast.
    One: Looking for a fruitcake recipe that stops the raisins from all settling at the bottom. Two: There’s no point in your closing your door to hide your filthy habits. God above will judge you and your little tart. Three: Helen, why didn’t you come? I’m sorry for everything I’ve done. Signed, Bernard. Four: Lost in the square: six bowls. Five: For sale: ZR7750 1999, 8,500 km, red, alarm, windscreen and engine cowling, 3,000 francs.
    Some newcomer raised a hand in the crowd to indicate his interest in the last item.