Read Online Seen and Not Heard by Anne Stuart - Free Book Online Page A

hunched forward, hat pulled down low on his head, hands shoved in his pockets. He ignored the cold, as he ignored everything when he was thinking. Possibilities and suspicions danced around in his head, and he had every intention of walking in the bitter cold until it all began to make some sense.
    Josef was beside him, trotting at his heels like an overeagerterrier tracking a bitch in heat. Malgreave didn’t mind—it gave him someone to talk to, to try his theories on.
    When they’d finished up in the park he’d headed home, taking his assistant with him in a misguided hope that Josef’s presence might deflect Marie’s wrath at being abandoned one more Sunday. The effort had been wasted. The small, neat house in the suburbs was deserted, and there were frozen dinners awaiting him.
    “Sorry, Josef. It looks as if Marie has gone to visit my daughter after all. We’ll have to make do with these things.” He gestured contemptuously at the brightly colored boxes lining the freezing compartment.
    “I would consider it an honor, Chief Inspector,” Josef murmured.
    “The tragedy of that, Josef, is that you mean it,” Malgreave said with a sigh. “No, I won’t subject you to that. We’ll find a café with something decent. God knows their food is probably from the freezer also. I don’t know what France has come to. It’s never failed to both enrage and amuse me, Josef, that the Americans have taken haute cuisine and in return given the poor French people frozen dinners with the taste and texture of cardboard.”
    Josef nodded solemnly, drinking in Malgreave’s words, and once more the chief inspector sighed. Josef was a bright man, second only to himself in the department, and he combined a slavish adoration with a desperate ambition. The poor man was constantly being torn by those two conflicting emotions, hoping Malgreave would meet with disaster and be forced to resign, giving up his place to Josef, and hoping that Malgreave would once more triumph, bringing credit to the entire department. Malgreave had little doubt it was Josef’s harridan of a wife who was responsible for the ambition. Were it left up to Josef, he’d be perfectly content following in Malgreave’s footsteps, just as he was now.
    Malgreave shook his head. “You’d best watch out if that pretty wife of yours starts buying these things, Josef. It’s been Marie’s only act of revenge for the long hours this jobdemands. You can tell her state of mind from the food she offers. If she’s feeling generous and forgiving she’ll leave tiny quiches, pastries, even a ragout to heat up. When we were young and just married she’d even wait up for me herself. Nowadays she’s more than likely to reveal her displeasure in frozen fried chicken and peas the size and taste of goat pellets. It’s a sad life, Josef.”
    “I’m certain Madame Malgreave loves you very much.”
    “Did I say she didn’t?” Louis snapped. “No, you’re right, Josef. But I’ll give you another piece of good advice. There are times when love isn’t enough.” He slammed the freezer door shut. “Back into the cold, my friend. I need to walk.”
    And walk they did. Through the empty, windswept streets, they walked and walked until the nagging questions he had began to make sense.
    “It was Rocco Guillère,” Malgreave announced abruptly when they’d covered five blocks.
    Josef was startled, his ferretlike eyes darting in his egg-shaped head. “What makes you say that? Not that I wish to disagree, Chief Inspector, but there is no proof, no clues, nothing to tie the man to this murder. I agree with you, he must have been responsible for a number of the old ladies, but I can’t see why you suspect him of this one. This was scarcely his area of town.”
    “I know.” Malgreave was weary. “I can only go by my instincts, and they seldom fail me. It was Guillère, all right. That elegant old lady in her beautiful apartment had been stabbed by a filthy hoodlum, then