CHAPTER ELEVENThey raced the weather all the way to Moret-sur-Loing. Small squalls of wind whipped loose along the riverbank and the molten afternoon was stretched to breaking point. On the horizon, clouds accumulated, darkly.
“It’s going to be lively tonight.” Increasing the revs, Colin glanced at his watch and checked the book on the seat beside him. Along the right bank, the trees in the Forest of Fontainebleau closed ranks and the light in the wooded inlets turned to shadow. Birds fretted in the branches and a cormorant, impatient with drying its wings on one of the mooring posts in the river, took flight.
Saint-Mammès was a blowsy village at the conjunction of the Seine, the River Loing and the Canal du Centre. It was a commercial port and already the great black slabs of barges wer
