byUntil the morning he discovered the dead man in his refrigerated display case, nothing very exciting had ever happened to Jacques Beauregard.
Beauregard was a butcher. Not a “purveyor of meats,” mind you. Not yet a “provisioner” dealing in quality viands. M. Beauregard was much too unpretentious to allow himself and his vocation to be described in these agreeable modern terms. He was a plain man who believed in calling a butcher a butcher. He had a small, cool, spotless meat market in a side street off the Avenue de la Victoire in Nice. There, he sold cuts of top-grade meat to any who sought them. He was well-liked and well-patronized. He, in turn, liked his customers. And he liked his work.
He lived above his shop, alone, having never, alas, acquired a wife—a fact he laughingly explai
