“I didn’t know you were interested.”
“French people were killed, Mr. Barclay. Killed by a bomb, a terrorist bomb, we think. Naturally we are interested.”
“Yes, I didn’t mean —”
“So, now you will answer my question: do you think you can find anything we might have overlooked?”
He shook his head.
“No,” she agreed. “And let me make some guesses. You have been talking to... sailors. Just as the Special Branch agent did. You have been interviewing all the people he interviewed. You have read the local police report. You have been concentrating on the boat, on the people who died on it, on people who might have seen it. Yes?”
“Basically correct.”
“Yes. We made the same mistake. Not me, I was not involved at the beginning. But now I am here to...”
“Assist?” he offered.
“Assist, yes, I am to assist you. So, what I say to you is...” She leaned forwards and lowered her voice. “You are not thinking about this the right way.”
“I’m not?” He tried to keep the acid out of his voice. She was shaking her head, deaf to nuance.
“No. The way to work is backwards, backwards from the departure of the boat.”
“Yes, that’s what I’ve been —”
“Farther back. Much farther.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“I will tell you.” She checked her watch. “You are dressed to go out. You’re eating out?”
“Yes.”
She was on her feet. “I know a good restaurant. Not here, out of town a few kilometers. We can take my car.” She called over to the hotelier. “I’ve told him to put my drink and yours on your bill.”
“Thank you. So kind.”
She stared fixedly at him through narrowed eyes. “Irony?” she guessed at last.
“Irony,” he admitted.
She had a Citroën 2CV, not a recent model. The sides of the car were dented and scraped from years of Parisian lane courtesy. The suspension was like nothing Barclay had ever experienced, and she drove like a demon. The last time he’d been thrown about like this had been on a fairground ride. She yelled to him over the noise from the motor, but he couldn’t make out a word. He just nodded, and smiled whenever she glanced towards him. His responses seemed enough.
By the time they arrived at what looked like someone’s cottage, deep in the middle of nowhere, he felt that he would never eat again. But the smells wafting from the kitchen soon changed his mind.
“My employers’ treat,” she said as they took their seats at a cramped table for two. Menus the size of the table’s surface were handed to them, and she immediately ordered two Kirs before gazing over her menu at him.
“Shall I order?” she asked. He nodded his head. Her eyelashes were thick but not long. He was still trying to work out whether she dyed her hair. And her age, too, he wondered about. Somewhere between twenty-one and twenty-eight. But why not twenty or twenty-nine? She kept her head hidden behind the menu for a full minute, while he looked around him at the diners occupying every other table in the place. There had been no sign that their table had been reserved, and she’d said nothing to the waiter about a reservation, but he wondered all the same...
At last she put down the menu. “You eat meat?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Good, here in France we are still a little... recidivist about vegetarianism.”
“Recidivist?”
She looked appalled. “That is not the right word?”
He shrugged. “No idea,” he told her. “Not only is your French better than mine, I’m beginning to wonder about your English, too.”
This remark seemed to cheer her enormously. She straightened her back and gave another red-lipped smile.
“For that,” she said, “I order the second-cheapest bottle of wine rather than the cheapest.”
“Your employers are very generous.”
“No, they are very literal-minded, like security organizations all over the world. Do you enjoy Thomas Pynchon?”
“I don’t even understand Thomas Pynchon.”
Barclay was remembering that, foreign territory or not, he had the ability to charm if nothing else. She was still smiling. He thought she probably was charmed.
“Do you ever read Conan Doyle?”
“What, Sherlock Holmes? No, but I’ve seen the films.”
“The books, the stories, they are very different from these films. Sherlock Holmes has an exaggerated power of deductive reasoning. He can solve any case by deductive reasoning alone. To some extent, Mr. Conan Doyle has a point.” She paused, suddenly thinking of something. “The Mr. Doyle from Special Branch, do you know him? Is he perhaps related to Mr. Conan Doyle?”
“I don’t know him, but I shouldn’t think so.”
She nodded at this, but seemed disappointed all the same. “You know,” she said, “Mr. Conan Doyle was interested in deductive reasoning, yet he also believed deeply in spiritualism.”
“Really?” said Barclay, for want of anything better to reply. He couldn’t see where any of this was leading.
“Yes,” she said, “really. I find that strange.”
“I suppose it is a little.”
The waiter had appeared, pad and pen at the ready. To Barclay’s mind, it seemed to take a lot of talking for the meal to be ordered. There was much discussion, backtracking, changing of mind. And glances from both Dominique and the waiter towards him; even, at one point, a conspiratorial smile. The waiter bowed at last and retreated, accepting Barclay’s unused menu from him with exaggerated courtesy. A new waitress had arrived with two glasses of Kir.
“Cheers,” said Dominique, lifting hers.
“Santé,” replied Barclay. He sipped, sounded his appreciation, and put the glass down. A basket of bread now arrived, courtesy of the original waiter. At a nearby table, something sizzling was being served onto two plates. The diners at surrounding tables looked eagerly, unashamedly, towards the source of the sound, then exchanged remarks about the quality of the dish. When Barclay looked back at her, Dominique was staring at him from behind her tall glass.
“So,” he said, shifting his weight slightly in the solid wooden chair, “what were you saying about Conan Doyle?”
“Not Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes. Deductive reasoning. This is my point. We should be working backwards, asking ourselves questions, and deciding on probabilities. Don’t you agree?”
Lateral thinking, following an idea all the way through... that was how Dominic Elder had put it. Barclay nodded. “So what would you do?”
She leaned forwards, resting her elbows on the tabletop. “The assassin, we think probably she is a woman, yes?”
“Agreed.”
“Now, think of this: how did she come to arrive in Calais?”
“By train or by road.”
“Correct. Which is the more probable? Road. Perhaps she came from Paris. But trains are very public, aren’t they? While assassins are not. So, it is more probable that she arrived by road. Yes?”
He shrugged. “If you say so.”
“Then either she drove or she was driven. She is said to enjoy working alone. An independent woman, self-sufficient.” She paused, waiting for his nodded agreement that she had chosen her words correctly. “Probably therefore,” she went on, “she did not have an accomplice. She may have hitchhiked, or she may have driven to Calais by herself. Yes?”
“Yes.”
“Now, the easiest hitchhiking is by lorry. Lorry drivers will more probably pick up hitchhikers than will car drivers. I know this from experience.” A flickering smile at this, but she was too busy concentrating on her English for the smile to last. “So,” she said, “this woman probably either hitchhiked by lorry or else drove here herself.”