“Ready?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s go, then.”
We helped Georges with his packages. There seemed to be enough gauze for the entire army, but he explained that there was to be a huge shipment to the front with the St. Etienne factory as the central warehousing point. It took several trips but finally we loaded all the bags, and after a demi at one of the cafes bordering the square, we left. Paul took particular delight in sitting atop the bundles of gauze. I’d removed the top to the car, and as we drove along he sang off-key but with great enthusiasm. He wanted to forget the funeral as soon as possible.
Finally, when the wind kept blowing his tobacco away before he could roll it, he joined us in the front seat.
“Never had that problem on a horse.”
We rode along, then, quietly for a while. The trees passed quickly by on either side of the road. Paul smoked in what he called the “French manner,” blowing the smoke out of his mouth and up into his nose. Georges sat against the other door, looking reflectively at the passing scenery.
“Has it occurred to anyone,” he asked, finally, “how incredibly inept the police have been about this whole thing? You’d think that it wasn’t a possible murder they were investigating but something more in the line of a petty theft.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Paul. “I have to register every day at St. Etienne to make sure I don’t try to leave the country.”
“That’s because you’re not French. Here I go off on business for the next four or five days, and they’ve asked me to prepare an itinerary of my stops, but no check-in in the towns themselves. If I had killed Marcel, I could be beyond Algeria if I decided to leave. It makes no sense.”
“It’s the war,” I said. “Even forgetting that the heart of the force is gone to fight at the front, for the rest, all of their routines are upset, and without their routines . . .”
“Well, they might as well be at the front for all the good they do here.”
“Now, Georges,” said Paul, “I suppose they’re doing something, and we just don’t know about it. Besides, if you decided to go to Africa, that would be punishment enough for any crime I can think of. What heat!”
We were approaching St. Etienne, and Paul asked to be let out at a crossroads on the outskirts of town.
“I live just about a mile down the road. I mean two kilometers. And I feel like walking. I’ll see you all—when?”
“Wednesday?” I ventured. “It would be good to get back to normal.” Actually, it would be good to be able to predict where everyone would be at a certain time.
