Marielle listened with narrowed eyes. "So after three days we're no closer to finding out where they're coming from than we were when we started, is that the substance of your report?"
"Well, yes," Noyon replied, scrambling for a good side to things, "but we do have several more bones than we started with."
Marielle lifted his eyes to the ceiling and resigned himself to the inevitable; he'd come to the end of the line and he knew it. To wait still longer without notifying the judicial police would be disastrous.
And turning to his secretary with a heavy heart, he said: "Get me Perigueux."
Chapter 2
The Peyraud "vegetable garden" was scarcely large enough to hold the four men, one woman, and one dog that stood in it. Lucien Anatole Joly, inspecteur principal of the Police Nationale's Directorate of Judicial Police, Department of Dordogne, had been looking steadily at Marielle for some time without speaking.
"You are telling me, then," he said without expression, "that since the matter has been in your charge, no action has been taken other than to observe the animal? For three days?"
He wasn't really surprised. He had had dealings with Marielle before: a puffed-up functionary better suited to have been the village postmaster, where he could have known everybody's business even better, and without having to exert himself.
Under his stiff, blue uniform collar the back of Marielle's neck burned, but he wasn't about to let this bloodless dandy in his fine Paris suit get on his nerves, especially not in front of Noyon and that old crank, Peyraud. He smiled knowledgeably at Joly, colleague to colleague. "Well, it's not as if the bones were going to go bad in three days, you know, inspector."