Murder on the Night Train to Paris: A totally addictive cozy murder mystery (The Posie Parker Mystery Series Book 15) by L.B. Hathaway

Author:L.B. Hathaway [Hathaway, L.B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Whitehaven Man Press
Published: 2023-03-12T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

The two women walked quickly away from the busy Vavin Metro Station, south of the Latin Quarter, their high heels clicking on the salt-encrusted pavement.

Posie held onto her pocket map of Paris from Stanfords Map Shop, checking their progress as they walked.

They were on the bohemian-feeling Carrefour Vavin, which consisted of a jumbled clutter of packed-out cafés with bright awnings, most with smart rattan chairs and teeny-tiny round tables outside.

Braziers burned brightly, and large groups of people were at the tables; talking, smoking, arguing, pouting, kissing, drinking coffee.

Shouting. The noise level was high.

There were beautiful women in smart black furs, and others with wild theatrical headdresses and daring green and yellow lipstick, and there were young men in painting-overalls, and bare-headed men with big beards in tatty blazers.

A mixture of American voices and quick French chatter rose in the cold air like frenzied birdsong.

The most prized seats seemed to be at the very front of the pavement; an unobstructed view out onto the world and everything amusing in it.

One café was called the Dôme, and – with its red awning and fairy lights picking out its name – it looked very inviting. Waiters buzzed around with pots of coffee and the famous caramelised apple-cake of Paris, tarte-tatin.

Waiters at all the cafés were beginning to bring out tempting lunch blackboards with ‘PRIX DU MENU FIXE, DÉJEUNER’ chalked on them in scrappy white writing.

Posie’s stomach grumbled rowdily. It was midday, but lunch, or even a solitary piece of apple-cake, would have to wait.

‘Here it is,’ she announced calmly, taking a sharp corner. ‘The Rue Delambre.’

‘What number are we looking for, Posie?’

‘Twelve. Apartment E.’

The street here was narrow, dirty, with many overflowing rubbish bins. But it had a distinctive feel to it, and then Posie saw that rather than grocers and bakers and fishmongers, which you would normally expect to line such a street, this was a street for artists.

Small second-rate galleries and stores selling paint and supplies, and a few rough-looking bars lined the road.

They walked past an all-night bar, with ‘DINGO AMERICAN BAR AND RESTAURANT’ emblazoned in gold above huge, dark, smoked-glass windows.

The smell of old beer and wine snaked out onto the street from the open door, and peering inside, they saw the place was rammed full with both women and men. A saxophonist was playing, and women were dancing in glittering cocktail dresses like exhausted shadows, as if it was already midnight.

‘Goodness,’ said Posie, coming to a stop at the very next door, which was a long, narrow townhouse of typical Parisian grey stone. ‘I think Violette, my pal Dolly’s French nanny, must have found London very boring if this is where she lived before. What a place!’

‘I do not think we have seen the half of it, Posie.’

‘Mnnn, probably not. The mind boggles. Here is Number 12.’

Posie ran her finger down a list of names written in ink beside various bells at the door. ‘ISADORA DUNCAN, JULES PASCIN… Oh, there’s a blank at “Apartment E”. Top floor.

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