Three To Kill. Jean-Patrick Manchette

didn’t bother to scold them, even though, as he saw it, it was still too early to get up.

      The girls were dressed. Gerfaut dug out denim shorts and a Lacoste shirt, and all three left for the seafront. It was already hot. The beach was completely deserted. A wooden refreshment stand showed no sign of opening up. The Mercedes made a right, cruised by a motionless funfair and a cemetery, turned left, and finally parked in a side street near an antique shop that also dealt in detective stories, varnished seashells, and comic books translated from the Italian. Gerfaut and the girls found a café open and settled themselves on perforated plastic seats in red, yellow, and pastel blue. They drank bowls of gray café au lait speckled with stray coffee grounds and ate butter croissants from a nearby bakery. Then they headed back. A breeze had come up, sand whirled across the beachfront road, and the shrubs planted in wooden boxes waved back and forth like carnivorous plants. The milky coffee formed a resinous lump just below Gerfaut’s sternum.

      He left the car in the street outside their rental house. In the main room, with the blinds raised and windows open, Béa sat in an immense white robe dipping a zwieback in Special for Breakfast tea from Fortnum & Mason’s. She removed a crumb from the corner of her mouth.

      “Where’ve you been? What got into you? Did you go to look at the sea?”