she said. “Not to me, not that I care. Who cared where he’d been?” What mattered was the war, “La guerre etáit finie,” and with it over, she’d returned, and found she was still the housekeeper, thanks to the saintlike beneficence of the late Monsieur Landers, “God rest his most generous heart. And your Jew returned too, and crawled right back into his wretched little hole.” What he’d been up to in the meantime, “God knows.” It was something he never said. Céleste paused for a while. “Not that I care a whit.” And she paused a while longer, a longer pause this time. “I have some idea, though,” she said. “As it turns out.” I had been relieved, as usual, when Drôlet dropped me off and I’d gotten my tired bones back up the stairs to my wretched little hole, but it soon became clear that it would do me no good to be home that night. I had no luck sleeping, none at all, thinking on what I’d seen and done that day and what it might mean for tomorrow. I could see where Odile’s prediction might come true, that the police might find a way to track Corie home.
