A German staff car drove up before the entrance, and an SS guard opened the door of the building before stepping back at rigid attention with an arm thrust out in a stiff Nazi salute. Colonel Derrick Albrecht strode forth, a striking specimen of Hitler’s ideal of an Aryan male, tall, handsome, blond, confident, physically fit, scary as hell. Maurice waited until the Mercedes-Benz had pulled away and he was beyond view of the car’s mirrors before walking across the street to the entrance, his papers already in hand, by all appearances just another Frenchman come to betray a fellow citizen. He showed the documents and his police badge to the guards, then headed down a hallway to the room marked CUSTODIAL SERVICES and BOILER ROOM that he had noticed on his previous visit.

He reminded himself again that in pursuing a certain line of inquiry into the murder of Beaumont Fournier, he put at risk not only his position as chief investigator of the homicide division of the French National Police, but also his person. His superior had ordered him to have no further contact with Colonel Derrick Albrecht. “The man says the author did not keep his appointment, and that’s that,” he’d said. “Why don’t you believe him, Maurice?”

“Because the taxi driver said he let the author off at Sicherheitsdienst headquarters, and my cop’s nose tells me the colonel is lying.”

“Your nose could be wrong, and anybody could have gotten to the writer before he set foot inside the Sicherheitsdienst’s door. The man wasn’t exactly a saint.”

“Nobody else but his butler knew he’d be there at that time of the morning. And wouldn’t the door guards have seen something if he’d been abducted off the street?”

“So the butler says, for all he knew. And the door guards and colonel’s aide confirm that the author did not show up. I believe them, and you need to, too, Maurice, for your own sake, regardless of your nose. I’m ordering you to drop the man from your suspect list, not only for the reasons that should be obvious to you, but because the man is probably a waste of time.”

But Maurice’s nose could not stop bothering him and neither could his professional conscience. Somebody was responsible for a French citizen’s murder, and according to the agreement reached with the occupying authorities, French crimes committed on French soil were the purview of the French police to investigate and solve. Maurice supposed the key word in the agreement was French. It did not extend to Germans who murdered French citizens.