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go then, for lack of evidence. Without apologies.
    Sure, bastardly cops. Everybody knew, Arlette knew. Pack of fascists. This, though, was just a little simple-minded. A bad performance, but the result of their exasperation at these weekend-cottage break-ins. There were too many of them. The police had a lot of work and trouble, and when they caught the authors, the effing tribunal let them go again. This police viewpoint was rather simplistic also, but equally it was understandable. If the population and the police are both boiling with frustration (said Arthur Davidson) and a government riddled with hypocrisy does nothing, you are going to have trouble on both sides. Explaining this to Madame Solange Bartholdi would be a lame performance, and useless. Telling her, abruptly, that Madame van der Valk did not wish to get involved in police matters was no help either. Evasiveness, no denying it, prompted her to point out that there were aspects of all this not as yet touched upon. What had happened to the man who shot the boy?
    This was the heart of it. Honest with everyone, and herself, Solange could not accept this. It had been a fearful blow that her boy had been carried along in a set that thought it funny to break into weekend houses (boredom more than vengeance,but let that pass). The boy had paid with his life, but she was not vindictive. The police were swine. These were facts of life. But that man, who had killed her son for no more than a broken shutter. Wasn’t that a crime? He had got clean away with it.
    The gendarmerie had arrested him. He’d been held for thirty-six hours. The judge of instruction had released him. No, not on bail. Unconditional. She’d found out. Legitimate defence had been claimed and accepted. No prosecution, let alone a trial. The automatic formal charge brought, of manslaughter, had simply been dropped.
    Arlette frowned.
    â€œNot quite good enough, that.”
    â€œI said I’d get that fellow. But what can I do? I went down and I said, I said I lay a charge against that man, for killing my son. They said you can’t, not a criminal charge you can’t, that’s been dropped, they said. No going back on that. You can lay a civil charge for damages they said, you’ll have to get a lawyer. I went to one. He hemmed a lot, said yes, that’s possible, I can do that, I have to have five thousand francs as a guarantee against costs, for taking it up. Five thousand francs! He might as well have asked me for the moon.”
    â€œYou can get legal aid.”
    â€œThose pro deo chaps,” Frenchly and shrewdly, “their heart’s not in it. Nothing for nothing and not much for sixpence. I thought – I thought I’d try and see if you could help me.”
    â€œIt’s what I’m here for. I’ll ask you fifty, for the hour. Another hundred and fifty for whatever I can do, provisional. There might not be an awful lot I can do. Police business I can’t touch; I haven’t the right. Legal – I’m not qualified and can’t infringe on those who are. I can find out exactly what happened, and if anything has been concealed or kept back. I can find you an advocate, and a good one, who’ll advise you and without it costing you a fifth of that extortionate sum you quoted. That, you see, was to get rid of you, because this is a troublesome affair. For now – let me work on it and get in touch with you. It’ll take me a day or two. Is that any good?”
    â€œIt sure to God is,” said Madame Bartholdi.
    Arlette made a face, a lot less sanguine than her words. She knew the snag that made Johnny Sly ask five thousand. Nobody was anxious to plead against a legitimate-defence claim, not without some element giving leverage. The bourgeois feeling, so widespread as to be near universal, was that violence, in defence of property, was quite permissible. What! One is terrorized systematically. Bands of hooligans roam about