Aristide inquired as he wandered into Brasseur’s office. “Nothing as of this morning,” Brasseur grumbled without looking up from the reports and letters strewn across his desk. “You needn’t have come in.” “Ah, well, what better have I to do?” Aristide tossed his hat on a bench. Hands clasped behind him, he looked over the dossiers in their cardboard folders, crammed onto the rows of shelves that covered one whitewashed wall of the small chamber. Most of them were the tawdry, humdrum records of petty thieves and confidence tricksters, crooked merchants, registered prostitutes; but a few evoked memories of shared chases and challenges. He turned to Brasseur, about to murmur, Do you remember the Martin affair? when he thought instead, Did we really get the right man there? He sighed, thinking back to a few occasions when a murderer had gone to the scaffold although they had never found indisputable proof of his guilt. A junior inspector thrust his head into the office and Brasseur glanced up impatiently.
