Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 26, No. 4. Whole No. 143, October 1955

Alice’s thoughts couldn’t have been any too gay. Unlike the lively Gaby, she had a somewhat melancholy disposition. She was just as pretty as the next girl, but she was the kind who takes life seriously. This morning her eyes were red, and since she did take things so hard it must have been because she had cried a good part of the night. Her make-up was carelessly smudged and her hair in some disorder. She lived in a furnished room, near the Rue Lamarck, and the Little Doctor wondered whether she had even bothered to stop somewhere for a roll and a cup of coffee on the way.

“But I’m not going to worry my head about her,” he mumbled to himself as he left the subway at the Pont-Neuf station.

It was a magnificent day, with the sunlight bubbling like champagne as it dispelled the haze rising up from the Seine. Alice walked quickly, without turning around. She hesitated for a moment before Police Headquarters, and then finally walked by the officer on guard and up the dusty steps. When the Little Doctor saw her again, it was through the windows of the waiting-room. He went straight to Inspector Lucas’s office.

“Look here,” he said. “You said something about getting tough... Don’t be too hard on the girl. She seems to be in a bad state already.”

“Show her in,” Lucas said gruffly to one of his subordinates.

The Inspector was in a very good humor. Spring was pouring through his windows and he was wearing an unusually bright polka-dot tie. If he was trying to be brutal, it was with a twinkle in his eye.

“Sit down, Mademoiselle. I must tell you from the start that this is a very serious matter. You may be in real trouble.”

At once her eyes filled with tears, and she dabbed at them with a soggy handkerchief.

“Yesterday, you didn’t tell us all you know. And you also gave false testimony, which falls under Article... under some article of the law.”

“But I thought...”

“What did you think?”

“I thought no one would ever find out about our... relationship. I’ve been so upset by all that has happened...”

“How long had you known Justin Galmet?”

“For about three weeks.”

“And you became his mistress so quickly?”

“Oh, no, sir! I can swear on the heads of my little brothers...”

“Whose heads did you say?”

“The heads of my little brothers. I’m all alone in the world with the two of them. One of them is at school and the other in an orphanage...”

“But I fail to see the connection between them and Justin Galmet.”

“I’ll explain. If it had been for myself alone, I’d never have paid any attention to him. He was too old for me and not my kind...”

“Excuse me. Let’s begin at the beginning... You first met him in the store?”

“Yes, in my own department. As I told you before, he came every day to buy a snap-hook for his watch-chain. He was very proper, or else I’d never have listened to him. I’m not sure now, but then he seemed to me a perfectly respectable person... On the third or fourth day he said timidly, ‘Mademoiselle, are your affections engaged?’ I told him that the responsibility of my two little brothers would probably never allow me to marry.”

The Little Doctor noticed, that the Inspector had fallen into a kindly manner and barely raised his voice to ask:

“So the third or fourth time you saw him, this total stranger was making propositions, is that it?”

“That’s hard to say... He wasn’t like the rest. He was very gentle and he told me that he’d always been very much alone.”

“Did he tell you all this while you were showing him snap-hooks?”

“No, he asked me to have lunch with him at a little place on the Chaussée d’Antin. He told me that his life was about to take a new turn, that he was going to inherit some money...”

The Little Doctor and the Inspector exchanged looks. Justin Galmet seemed to have had inheritances on the brain. Hadn’t he said the same thing when he left the police force?

“He wanted to settle down in the country, preferably on the Loire, and he asked whether, if he found a suitable house, I’d marry him. Then he said that my little brothers could live with us and he’d give them a good education.”

Alice was crying audibly now, but it was hard to tell whether it was because of fear or sorrow.

“That’s the kind of a man he was,” she went on. “I asked for a day off to go see the house at Cléry, and all the way out he behaved quite properly. ‘A few days from now,’ he told me, ‘there’ll be nothing to keep me in Paris. We can apply for a marriage license’...”

“Just one thing, Mademoiselle,” said the Inspector. “Weren’t you surprised when your new fiancé stopped coming to your department and began directing his attentions to Gaby and her slippers?”

“Yes, on the first day, because he hadn’t given me any warning... But he swore that he wasn’t really interested in her at all and begged me to trust him. As far as that goes, I could watch the two of them from above.”

“And so you thought it was perfectly natural behavior?”

“He’d never spoken to me of his profession, but I imagined he was a...”

“A what?”