J. Janes - Beekeeper

Здесь есть возможность читать онлайн «J. Janes - Beekeeper» весь текст электронной книги совершенно бесплатно (целиком полную версию без сокращений). В некоторых случаях можно слушать аудио, скачать через торрент в формате fb2 и присутствует краткое содержание. Год выпуска: 0101, Издательство: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road, Жанр: Исторический детектив, на английском языке. Описание произведения, (предисловие) а так же отзывы посетителей доступны на портале библиотеки ЛибКат.

Beekeeper: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

Предлагаем к чтению аннотацию, описание, краткое содержание или предисловие (зависит от того, что написал сам автор книги «Beekeeper»). Если вы не нашли необходимую информацию о книге — напишите в комментариях, мы постараемся отыскать её.

Beekeeper — читать онлайн бесплатно полную книгу (весь текст) целиком

Ниже представлен текст книги, разбитый по страницам. Система сохранения места последней прочитанной страницы, позволяет с удобством читать онлайн бесплатно книгу «Beekeeper», без необходимости каждый раз заново искать на чём Вы остановились. Поставьте закладку, и сможете в любой момент перейти на страницу, на которой закончили чтение.

Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

‘Of me, too, Georgette.’

‘Yes, of you, too, chérie.

At a nod from the priest, another carafe of the red was brought — the third, or was it the fourth? wondered St-Cyr. People had come and gone. Left alone in their little cocoon, the four of them had lost all sense of time.

‘The hives,’ prompted Father Michel.

‘Ah, oui ,’ said Josiane. ‘“A field lying fallow is a portion of France dying.”’

It was one of the Maréchal Pétain’s many sayings, just as was Travail, Famille et Patrie , but not the Liberté, Egalité et Fraternité of prewar days.

‘I take it the field was leased from the city for the apiary,’ sighed St-Cyr, ‘but the neighbours felt it would be best to grow vegetables there.’

‘And Alexandre would have no part of such a thing, Inspector. You see, to remain content and productive, bees need peace and quiet,’ acknowledged the priest.

‘There was lots of room,’ countered Josiane. ‘He could have freed up half the land. We … we told him this.’

‘We did,’ insisted Georgette. ‘And now the hives are in ruins and what the neighbours wished will soon be possible.’

‘Who stole the honey?’ asked St-Cyr.

Both of the sisters shrugged. Josiane glanced at the priest and then dropped her gaze to her wine.

‘The neighbours,’ sighed Father Michel. ‘Which of them, and how many, will, I’m afraid, be all but impossible to ascertain and take much time.’

‘A fait accompli , is that it, Father?’

‘“Life is not neutral,” Inspector,’ grunted Father Michel, giving him another of the Maréchal’s sayings. ‘“It consists of taking sides boldly.” AJexandre was very much a Pétainiste , but not when it came to giving up his precious apiary.’

‘He could be so very stubborn,’ offered Georgette. ‘ Mon Dieu , if I didn’t submit exactly the way he wanted, he would get angry. I was to stretch out my arms above my head so as to grasp the little black iron bars of the fence around the tombstone while … while knocking the flowers over as I smothered my cries in them. They … they tickled my nose. That stone … it was so shaky sometimes, so heavy I was afraid it would fall and … and crush my head!’

‘I had always to urge him on, Inspector,’ confessed Josiane.

‘Until he would cry out his sister’s name as he released his little burden?’ bleated the Sûreté.

‘Ah oui. Then he would stroke Georgette and tell her to be calm, that she hadn’t really lost her virtue, that this was of the heart, not the hymen, and I would stroke him until … until all three of us were calm.’

‘Tears … were there tears?’ he heard himself asking.

‘Always,’ confided Josiane with a touch. ‘Always and without fail.’

‘Father, you could have warned me. Did he rape his sister?’

They had left the café and were heading up the rue Saint-Blaise towards the church.

‘No, he did not. He was at the Jardin du Luxembourg assisting one of the Society’s beekeepers. Alexandre simply blamed himself. You see, that morning he had asked his sister to pick some flowers in the cemetery but to be careful not to let the custodians see her doing so. He wanted a sampling of their pollen to compare, under the microscope, with that found in his hives.’

‘Then why play a game of rape with those two?’

‘Why not? It was harmless, a punishment — self-humiliation. And there was Georgette’s sister to witness it.’

‘But she had always to urge him on?’

‘That’s of little consequence. Oh bien sûr , he confessed this strange desire to me many times — God won’t punish me for telling you; but I felt it best you should hear it from those two.’

‘You told me he went there, you thought, perhaps to humiliate Madame de Bonnevies.’

‘He did! But by the time of their marriage he had discovered he couldn’t stop himself. Those two understood him far better than Juliette could ever have done.’

‘They said nothing of his wife.’

‘Because they had nothing to say about her.’

‘And did he tease his daughter the way he teased his sister?’

They were shouting at each other. ‘Absolutely not. Danielle was everything to him — everything that is, except his bees, but he included her among them, so it really didn’t matter.’

‘Included her among them …? As a virgin queen? Well?’

‘Don’t be an ass, Inspector. He knew very well she wasn’t a bee.’ ‘Even so, Father, I’m going to have to talk to those two again.’

‘Of course. It’s understood. Now that the introductions are over, feel free to contact them whenever necessary. They’ll answer you truthfully, or they’ll answer to me.’

Parting at the church, Father Michel watched as the Sûreté, somewhat disgruntled, it had to be admitted, plodded up the steps into the driving snow. Had he been right, he wondered, to short-circuit things and open that door into a very private and tragic matter now seldom mentioned?

‘I had to do it,’ swore Father Michel. ‘Otherwise that one and his partner would have looked elsewhere and this they must not do.’

More snow began to fall, and with the wind, it made life miserable, thought Kohler, wishing he’d driven over instead of leaving the Citroën in the place de la Bourse. But he’d wanted to come upon Herr Schlacht on the quiet.

Most people didn’t look up as they hurried along. Bundled up in anything they could lay hand to these days, all pretence of fashion had long since vanished from the minds of everyday citizens. Even the boys in grey-green had given up on their seemingly endless window-shopping. And as for the filles de joie who had migrated from the vast emptiness Les Halles, the central market, had become, the girls were listless and frozen stiff.

Bicycle-taxis vied with one another and with the bicycles. Pedestrians took their lives into their hands at the white-studded crosswalks. At the corner of the rue Réaumur and the rue Montmartre, sandbags were being unloaded from two Wehrmacht lorries. Here, too, as elsewhere in the city, the air-raid shelters were being converted into bunkers and machine-gun nests.

Instinctively, Kohler flicked a glance down the rue Montmartre towards the central market to gauge the field of fire, was right back at the front in 1914 and ’15. Bang on. These boys knew what they were doing and that could only mean the OKW — Old Shatter Hand and von Stülpnagel, the Military Governor — still feared an uprising once the defeat at Stalingrad was officially announced, as it would have to be.

Louis and he had seen such pillboxes before heading south to Avignon. Unsettled by the thought, he went on up the rue Montmartre searching for the smelter.

A big Renault was parked outside the café À La Chope du Croissant. No sign of its owner, nor would Herr Schlacht have wasted time in that cafe.

A nearby signboard, in flaking off-white paint, read: Imprimerie. Printers.

Pushing open the tall, wooden doors, he found himself in a rubbish-littered, ice-encased courtyard. Soot all over the place. Soot in these days of so little coal. Soot and iron bars on the windows. Were all the doors locked? he wondered. In one broken window the wind teased a peeling paper notice in German and in French: Jüdisches Geschäft. Jewish business. All were gone now. Gone since July of last year. But the smelter would have coexisted with the printers for as long as the years immediately after the Russian Revolution, when so many had fled to Paris.

The courtyard was narrow and at its far end it must take a bend to the right. Tattered handbills rattled around inside the printing shop, the presses as silent as a frozen tap that had burst its lead pipe.

Читать дальше
Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

Похожие книги на «Beekeeper»

Представляем Вашему вниманию похожие книги на «Beekeeper» списком для выбора. Мы отобрали схожую по названию и смыслу литературу в надежде предоставить читателям больше вариантов отыскать новые, интересные, ещё непрочитанные произведения.


J. Janes - Gypsy
J. Janes
J. Janes - Clandestine
J. Janes
J. Janes - Carnival
J. Janes
J. Janes - Stonekiller
J. Janes
J. Janes - Betrayal
J. Janes
J. Janes - Carousel
J. Janes
J. Janes - Mayhem
J. Janes
J. Janes - Dollmaker
J. Janes
J. Janes - Bellringer
J. Janes
Отзывы о книге «Beekeeper»

Обсуждение, отзывы о книге «Beekeeper» и просто собственные мнения читателей. Оставьте ваши комментарии, напишите, что Вы думаете о произведении, его смысле или главных героях. Укажите что конкретно понравилось, а что нет, и почему Вы так считаете.

x