21Paul-Henri Monsour, junior officer of the Castillac gendarmerie, was feeling queasy. “If it’s all right,” he said, officious as usual, “I’ll just trot downstairs and let Nagrand know where we are?”
“Yes, fine,” said Gilles Maron, smiling to himself because he understood very well why Monsour wanted to leave the room. The sight of Maxime Coulon lying on the rug in a gigantic pool of blood was enough to put anyone off, no matter how experienced in the grisly matters of murder one might be.
Chief Maron crouched next to the body, looking at it from different angles. A clear slit on the side of the neck, but Maron could see nothing lying around that could have made it. He stood and went into the bedroom across the hall, apparently Coulon’s own, noting a sculpture of a swan and a few framed
