A Case of Matricide by Graeme Macrae Burnet

Author:Graeme Macrae Burnet
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Biblioasis
Published: 2024-10-16T00:00:00+00:00

If Gorski now called again on Madame Duymann, it was not because he had any real reason to do so. Robert Duymann received him with mild annoyance and repeated his joke about not yet having murdered his mother.

Gorski found the warm and over-scented atmosphere of Madame Duymann’s bedchamber strangely soothing. Their conversation was accompanied by the faint clacking of the typewriter below. He now insisted that Madame Duymann call him Georges. She suggested that Robert would be happy to bring them some tea, but Gorski went downstairs and made it himself, returning a few minutes later with the things set out on a tray.

‘How very kind you are, Georges,’ she declared. ‘If only my own son was so obliging.’

Gorski told her about his father’s pawnbroker’s shop. He described the special smells of dust and leather and varnish, and how on Saturdays he had been charged with recording the day’s transactions in the great ledger. Even then he had known this to be an onerous responsibility, but his father never looked over his shoulder or checked his work.

Madame Duymann remembered the shop on Rue des Trois Rois, but had never been inside. It had always seemed so dingy. Gorski explained that the low lighting had been intentional. He repeated his father’s dictum: People are ashamed of entering a pawnbroker’s shop. They do not wish to be illuminated when they do so. Madame Duymann expressed the view that this seemed very wise.

‘Your father sounds like a very agreeable man,’ she said.

‘I sometimes think,’ Gorski confessed, ‘that I could have done worse than to take over the business.’

‘Then who would I have to call on me?’ Madame Duymann had responded.

The room was warm, and Gorski felt his eyelids drooping. He collected the tea things and took them back downstairs on the tray. Duymann looked askance at him. Gorski understood his perplexity. If challenged, he would have been hard pressed to explain why he had paid this visit.

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