The Lying Down Room (Serge Morel 1) by Anna Jaquiery

Marco were out talking to every religious organization that seemed most relevant. Morel made some calls of his own, but drew a blank.
    He tried to picture the sort of man who would produce a pamphlet like the one he had before him. A man who seemed to be acting on his own behalf. Chesnay was right. There was no consistency in
the message. Morel had the impression that the pamphlet’s author was confused.
    Maybe it was a sign of the times, Morel thought. Every day he encountered people who had lost their way. Many who were down at heel and many who had only recently fallen on hard times. Often
when he worked nights he saw people brought in looking like they had no clue how they’d arrived here. Once when he’d been working late, it had been a middle-aged woman in a Chanel suit.
A couple of the regular girls who worked the Place Dauphine had got into a brawl with her for trying to sell her wares on their patch. Bloody and dishevelled, she’d stayed at the station
until her husband was tracked down. When he’d come to fetch her Morel had recognized him as the CEO of one of the larger banks. It was getting harder to predict what you might see, who might
come staggering through the door, who might be handcuffed because they were a threat to others or to themselves.
    Lila and Marco returned empty-handed. None of the people they’d talked to had seen or heard of the two evangelists described by the widows. His officers looked as discouraged as he
felt.
    ‘We’ll reconvene tomorrow at eight o’clock sharp. Now get out of here,’ Morel said.
    He spent another hour in the office, going through the Dufour folder for the tenth time and typing up a brief report for Perrin, which he intended to leave on the other man’s desk.
    It was close to 7 p.m. when he finally turned the lights off and left the building. For a moment he was tempted to cancel dinner and head home, but then the thought of Solange reminded him of
what he would miss.
    It was time to go if he didn’t want to be late. First, he would pick up a nice bottle of wine and some flowers. White, always her favourite.
    Morel parked his car in a no-parking spot right outside the entrance to Solange’s building and got out. For a moment he stood under the streetlight, feeling like he had
left something behind. But he held the flowers in one hand and the bottle in the other. His wallet and car keys were in his pocket. He pushed the doorbell and waited.
    Solange had once told Morel there was something old-fashioned about him that made it seem as though he’d landed in the wrong decade. Maybe even the wrong century. It could have been what
drew her to him, Morel thought. Her husband Henri was a relic too. A man twice Solange’s age, who rarely left the house and struggled to face the world outside his lavish home. Most of the
time he was cooped up in his expansive sixteenth-century apartment with its barrel-vaulted stone cellars and elaborate staircase.
    The door buzzed and Morel pushed it open. He climbed the stairs to the first floor. The apartment stretched over three floors of the five-storey building.
    It was lucky, Morel reflected, that Henri was enormously wealthy, thanks to a family inheritance and a portfolio of properties left to him by his father, including a nice little vineyard in the
Saumur region where, according to Solange, Henri had proposed to her.
    At the top of the stairs, the door was open and Solange stood waiting for him, wearing a green silk dress he hadn’t seen before.
    ‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ he said. The dress with its clingy material and low décolletage left little to the imagination. His eyes travelled back to her face. She was
flushed and seemed happy to see him.
    ‘You look beautiful, Solange.’
    She smiled and opened the door wider to let him in.
    ‘Come in and make yourself comfortable. I’ll get Henri.’
    He watched her climb the stairs.
    ‘Morel is here,’ she called out to her husband.
    ‘Good,’ Morel heard