The Little Man From Archangel by Georges Simenon

plunged in thought, he had not recognized him immediately.
    'Where is my sister?' Frédo's hard voice was demanding.
    He stood in the middle of the shop, in a leather jerkin, his black hair still damp, showing the track of his comb.
    Since the day before, Jonas had been expecting something to happen, but he was taken by surprise, and still holding his croissants in their brown tissue paper wrappings, he stammered:
    'She hasn't come back.'
    Frédo was as big as, and broader in the shoulders than his father, and when he became angry, his nostrils would palpitate, alternately dilating and closing together.
    'Where has she gone?' he went on, without taking his suspicious gaze off Jonas.
    'I . . . but... to Bourges.'
    He added, and perhaps it was a mistake, especially addressed to Frédo:
    'At any rate she said she was going to Bourges.'
    'When did she say that?'
    'Yesterday morning.'
    'What time?'
    'I don't remember. Before the bus left.'
    'Did she take the 7.10 bus yesterday morning?'
    'She must have done.'
    Why was he trembling in front of a mere boy of nineteen, who was taking liberties in demanding an explanation from him? He wasn't the only one in the neighbourhood to be afraid of Frédo. Since his earliest childhood the Palestri boy had had a sullen character, some even said sinister.
    True, he didn't seem to like anybody, except his sister. With his father, when the latter had had too much to drink, he behaved intolerably and the neighbours had overhead some highly unsavoury rows. It was said that once Frédo had hit Palestri, and that his mother had gone for him, locked him up in his room like a ten-year old.
    He had climbed out through the window over the roofs, had stayed away for a week, during which time he had looked in vain for work at Mondugon.
    He had not passed his certificate at school and had refused to learn any proper trade. He had worked with a few shopkeepers as errand boy, delivery-man, later as a salesman. Nowhere had he remained for more than a few months or a few weeks.
    He was not lazy. As one of his ex-employers said:
    'That lad rebels against any form of discipline. He wants to be a general before being a plain soldier.'
    As much as Jonas liked the Old Market, Frédo appeared to hate it, just as he despised and hated, in the mass, its inhabitants, as, no doubt, he would have hated anywhere he had happened to be.
    Angèle alone liked to treat him as if he were still a child, but it was by no means certain that she wasn't a little afraid as well. When he was fifteen she had found a long clasp-knife in his pocket, which he spent hours fondly sharpening. She had taken it away from him. He had said, unconcerned:
    'I'll buy another.'
    'I forbid you to do any such thing!'
    'By what right?'
    'Because I'm your mother!'
    'As if you'd become it on purpose! I bet my father was drunk!'
    He didn't drink himself, didn't go dancing, used to frequent a small bar in the Italian quarter, in the shady part of the Rue Haute where Poles and Arabs mixed and where there were always to be seen groups of men holding disquieting conferences in the back of the room. The place was called the Luxor Bar. Following Marcel's hold-up the police had taken an interest in it, for Marcel, before Frédo, had been a regular customer.
    All they had found had been a retired boxer on probation, whose papers were not in order. Ever since they had nevertheless kept their eye on the Luxor Bar.
    Jonas was not afraid in the real sense of the word. Even if Frédo had hit him in a moment of fury, it would not have mattered to him. He was not brave, but he knew that physical pain does not last indefinitely.
    It was Gina whom he felt he was defending at this moment, and he had the impression that he was making a mess of it, he could have sworn that his face had reddened to the roots of his hair.
    'Did she say she would not be coming back to sleep?'
    'I . . .'
    He thought very rapidly. Once already when the question of Bourges had arisen, he had spoken