The Three Evangelists by Fred Vargas Read Free Book Online Page A

it in and tonight by nine o’clock we’ll be in bed. I’m worn out.’
    ‘No,’ said Vandoosler. ‘Tonight, we’re going out.’
    ‘ Commissaire,’ said Mathias, ‘Lucien is right, we’re dead on our feet. You go out if you like, for us it’s kip.’
    ‘You’ll have to make an effort, St Matthew.’
    ‘Stop calling me St Matthew.’
    ‘Fair enough,’ said Vandoosler, shrugging, ‘but what does it matter? Matthew, Mathias, Lucien, Luke, same difference. It amuses me. I’m surrounded by evangelists in my old age. Where’s number four? Nowhere. A car with three wheels, a chariot with three horses. I find that funny.’
    ‘What’s so funny?’ asked Marc irritably. ‘Is it heading for the ditch?’
    ‘No,’ said Vandoosler. ‘Because it never goes where you expect it to, or where it ought to go. It’s unpredictable. And that’s funny, isn’t it, St Matthew?’
    ‘Oh, please yourself,’ said Mathias, pressing his hands together. ‘But that won’t make me an angel.’
    ‘Forgive me,’ said Vandoosler, ‘but an evangelist and an angel are not the same thing at all. However, let’s forget it. Tonight there’s a drinks party at the neighbour’s. The Eastern Front. It seems she likes partying. I accepted on behalf of us all.’
    ‘Drinks party?’ said Lucien. ‘No thanks. Plastic cups, vinegary white wine, nibbles on paper plates. No way. Even when we’re down on our luck, or especially then, no way. Three-horse chariot or whatever. Either a grand reception or nothing at all. No compromise, no middle way. In the middle way I lose my bearings, totally.’
    ‘It’s not in her house,’ said Vandoosler. ‘She runs the restaurant down the road, Le Tonneau. She would like to offer you a drink. Nothing objectionable there. I think this lady, Juliette of the Eastern Front, is worth looking at, and the brother is in publishing. Who knows, that could comein useful. And what’s more, Sophia Siméonidis and her husband will be there. They always come. It would interest me to take a look.’
    ‘Sophia and our other neighbour are on friendly terms?’
    ‘Yes, very.’
    ‘Collusion between the Eastern and Western Fronts,’ announced Lucien. ‘We’re being caught in a pincer movement. We’re going to have to make a sortie. Oh well, plastic cups or not …’
    ‘We’ll make up our minds this evening,’ said Marc, rather rattled by his godfather’s changes of heart and peremptory commands. What was his game? A distraction? An investigation? The investigation was over-before it had begun.
    ‘We told you, there was nothing under the tree,’ he said. ‘Forget the night out.’
    ‘I don’t see the connection,’ said Vandoosler.
    ‘I’m sorry, but you see it very well. You want to go on looking for clues. And it doesn’t matter where, or who with, so long as you can go on sniffing around.’
    ‘What’s your problem?’
    ‘Don’t start inventing something that doesn’t exist, just because you threw away something that did exist. We’re off now, to fill in the hole.’

XI
    IN THE END, VANDOOSLER SAW THE EVANGELISTS ARRIVE AT LE TONNEAU at nine o’clock that evening. The trench had been filled in, their clothes had been changed, and they presented themselves with smiles and freshly combed hair. ‘Volunteers reporting for duty,’ Lucien whispered in the commissaire’s ear. Juliette had prepared a meal for twenty-five people and had closed the restaurant to customers. And in fact it became a good night out, since Juliette, as she circulated among the tables, had told Vandoosler that his three nephews were attractive, and he had passed the message on, with embellishments. This had immediately changed Lucien’s view of his surroundings. Marc had been touched by the compliment and Mathias had no doubt appreciated it in silence.
    Vandoosler had told Juliette that only one of the three was really his nephew, the one in black, gold and silver, but Juliette was not one for technical or