Three to Kill by Jean-Patrick Manchette Page A

the Weatherby, Gerfaut and Raguse climbed higher than they ever had before. There had been a few snowfalls, then milder weather had returned. They crossed the forest and went up through the mountain pastures with their bilberry patches and clumps of rhododendrons. Granite crags and snowy hillocks soon defined their whole horizon. The two men followed the rock-strewn path upward. The old man seemed delighted. Gerfaut’s feelings were amorphous. Indeed, for as long as he had been on the mountainside he had remained in a kind of stupor. At this moment, he contemplated the scenery without finding it either beautiful or ugly; he felt his bad leg protest but gave no thought to pausing; sweat trickled down his back and over his rib cage, the wind raked his face, but he paid these things no mind.
    In mid-afternoon they halted at a stone refuge with wooden partitions, a hearth, and charcoal inscriptions on the rock of the interior walls; hikers had clearly wanted to leave a trace of their visit to a place so high above sea level. Gerfaut felt no such compulsion. They carried on, and an hour later Raguse, whose enfeebled vision the Weatherby’s sights made up for quite effectively, succeeded for once in bringing down a horned animal at some four hundred meters. Whether a chamois or an ibex Gerfaut had no idea, for he didn’t know the difference; it might as well have been an antelope or a snail—he didn’t give a damn. They went to retrieve the carcass and spelled each other dragging it downhill. By the time they got home, it was darkest night. Raguse was producing an endless stream of taunts and obscenities directed at the National Forest of La Vanoise and its gamekeepers. Gerfaut never did try to discover the motive for the old man’s animus.
    During the night they cut up their prize. They salted quarters. The hide was set aside, as was the halved head. In the days following, Raguse set about tanning the one and stuffing the other.
    â€œI’ll sell them to idiots. They can stick them in their drawing rooms.”
    â€œWhat in God’s name am I doing here?” asked Gerfaut irritably. “Can you please tell me that?” He had just downed several healthy tots of fruit brandy; these days he was drinking more and more heavily. “I spend my time doing sweet fuck-all.”
    â€œLook here, Sorel. You can leave, you know. Any time you want. You’re a free man.”
    â€œYes,” said Gerfaut, “but it’s the same shit everywhere.”
    By and large, though, Gerfaut got on pretty well with the old man. They went on more expeditions. On other days, and more and more often now that the cattle had come down from the Alpine pastures and been returned to their cowsheds, Raguse was called on for veterinary help, and Gerfaut would go along to give him a hand, hold the lamp, and the like. He learned how to grasp a cow’s horns and force her head down so that Raguse could remove a foreign body from the beast’s eye, which he did with the help of a butter-soaked feather or sometimes merely by flinging powdered sugar into the eye, causing it to water so violently that the irritant was washed out. This was just about all Gerfaut learned.
    In early April, with the cold and the bad weather hanging on, a night came when Raguse, after tying one on, caught a wicked cold. Around midnight he called for Gerfaut and announced that he was going to die. Being three sheets to the wind himself, Gerfaut took this as a joke. But, when dawn came, Raguse was dead.

17
    â€œI didn’t picture you the way you are,” Gerfaut said to Alphonsine Raguse.
    â€œHow did you picture me?”
    She was sitting in the main room, in the old man’s easy chair. She wore pearl-gray corduroy slacks, brown ankle boots, an ecru sweater, and a brown leather coat. Her hair was very black, thick, healthy, and cut simply in the form of a German soldier’s helmet by a hairdresser, the merest snip of