20Maron was nervous. He’d never met an actual movie star before, and Esmé Ridding was not just any movie star but the most famous, most beloved in all of France. Her perfect face was everywhere, so that people she met often took odd liberties with her, as though they had known each other for a long time. He vacuumed the police car thoroughly and wiped out any specks of dust, and drove to the station fifteen minutes before the train was to arrive, paced the empty platform and glancing up at the electronic board every twenty seconds to see if there was any change in arrival time.
The train station in Castillac was tiny. Since it took two train changes to get to a station with the super-fast TGV, people didn’t use it much anymore. That morning no one else waited, either to get on the next tr
