Folly Du Jour - Barbara Cleverly [39]
Lunch! Suddenly hungry, Joe decided to make for a café and find something he could eat within half an hour. The place St Michel was just over the river. Food over there on the Left Bank was cheap and quickly prepared. The were mostly students and Joe enjoyed the informality, the laughter and the sharp comments he heard all around him. He settled at a pavement table on the square and decided to order a croque-monsieur. Always delicious and quick to produce. He wondered what to drink with it and thought his usual beer might finally send him to sleep. A bottle of Badoit or a plain soda water might be more –
Soda! Campari-soda! The shock of realization was so intense he looked furtively around him to see if anyone was conscious of his reaction to the sudden thought. Ridiculous! These chattering strangers, even if they’d been looking in his direction, wouldn’t have given a damn for an Englishman whose startled expression was that of a man who’d just remembered – too late – his wife’s birthday.
‘Campari-soda’! George had been trying to pass on a message and he’d missed it. Pink and decadent, light but lethal. And always, for him, to be associated with that woman.
George had been attempting to let him know he’d spent the evening trapped in a box with a viper.
Joe, all appetite vanished, chewed his way through his sandwich and planned his next move. Looking around him, he remembered that he was just a few steps away from the rue Jacob and he frowned.
Good Lord! It seemed a week ago he’d met that redhead on the plane. What was her name? Heather, that was it. And she was staying at a small hotel down there. Raking his memory, he had a clear impression he’d promised to meet her again, though he’d left it all a little vague. He doubted she was the kind of girl to sit in her room waiting for him to contact her but, all the same, it would be too rude to do nothing. He could at least explain that he’d run head-first into the most frightful bit of trouble and wouldn’t be at liberty to enjoy Paris with her as he’d hoped. Paying his bill, Joe strode off down the rue St André des Arts and crossed over into the rue Jacob. He wandered along until he found a pretty, flower-bedecked hotel whose name rang a bell.
The receptionist at the Hotel Lutèce admitted he had a guest of that name but Mademoiselle Watkins had gone out over an hour ago and – no – she had not said at what time she expected to return. With some relief, Joe scribbled a note and left it in her pigeon-hole.
And now, he was free to concentrate on a second lady who’d caught his attention. He took out his notebook and checked the address he’d hurriedly memorized from the Chief Inspector’s interview sheets and copied down later. An address in Montmartre. He looked up and north, seeking but not finding, for the press of rooftops, the gleaming white dome of the Sacré Coeur, presiding over the huddle of cottages, mills and cabarets that made up the old village on the hilltop. Too far to walk in the time he had. Joe went back to the place St Michel and picked up a taxi.
‘Montmartre. La rue St Rustique,’ he said. ‘Le numéro 78.’
‘Another liar!’ he thought and began to plan how best he could lay a trap for her.
Chapter Nine
Joe decided to tell the driver to drop him in the place du Tertre in the heart of Montmartre. The cab moved off easily northwards, threading its way according to Joe’s directions, along the Right Bank, taking a westerly route through