31Chief Charlot, unlike her predecessors, spent most of her working time at her desk. She sent Paul-Henri out to do preliminary interviews for the murder case and to take care of the kinds of incidental problems that crop up in a small village. He took Madame Bonnay’s dog back home, found Monsieur Vargas in the cemetery and returned him to his wife—it sometimes seemed to Paul-Henri that his main job at the gendarmerie was taking lost creatures back to their homes. Which he did not resent, to his credit.
“Have you driven past the Broussard house yet today?” the chief barked, startling him when he returned to the station.
“Not yet. I went by yesterday in the late afternoon. There was no car in the drive. Do you want me to ask Anne-Marie again if she has heard from him?”
“Of course that’s
