Sunday by Georges Simenon Page B

God knows what treachery. As for Berthe, she had got what she wanted, had done exactly what she had set out to do, and he suspected old Mother Harnaud of having been her accomplice, just as Palud had been hers.
    Even poor Big Louis, who was no longer with them, must already have had an idea in the back of his mind when he had written to him.
    'You're as green as a new-born babe, Emile!'
    It was not in connection with Berthe that they had said that to him, but at bowls, during the early stages. He had determined to become as good a player as the others, he who until then had never touched a bowling iron. At first, when it was his turn to bowl or set the jack, he would pull a face like a schoolboy who had just been asked a difficult question, and they laughed at him because he let the tip of his tongue stick out.
    Then he would sometimes practise all alone on the terrace, in order to show them one day that he was as good as they were.
    It was Dr. Chouard who, surprising him thus, had made the remark: 'You're as green as a new-born babe, Emile!'
    As far as bowls was concerned, at all events, he had proved that that wasn't true, for he had become one of the best players in Mouans-Sartoux.
    Sometimes Dr. Chouard would come and join in the game. He lived at Pegomas, in a dilapidated house, where Paola, when she had had to leave La Bastide, had found refuge.
    The doctor was as untidy as his servant, his shirt always doubtfully clean, his tie, when he wore one, badly knotted, buttons missing from his jacket and even from his flies.
    Like Emile, he had arrived one day as a fairly young man, from another part of the country, from the neighbourhood of Nancy, and no doubt then he had had his ambitions. He had a wife, a well-kept house, the same one which now, from the outside, looked as if it were abandoned.
    His wife was said to have gone off with an English tourist. But he had not waited for her departure before taking to drink and neglecting his practice.
    For a certain number of years he had been the best bowls-player and had been a member of the four which had won the Provence championship two years running.
    His skill came back to him occasionally, by some miracle, since for some time now people had been unable to tell when he was drunk or when he was not.
    Paola drank as well. Emile had caught her several times swigging straight from the bottle. He hadn't said anything to her. He had been careful not to mention it to Berthe.
    For particular reasons, Emile had reserved an important role for Dr. Chouard in what was about to take place. It could even be said that, without Chouard, everything he had patiently been contriving for the past months would not hold together.
    It was not for nothing that he had chosen a Sunday, nor that he had just made sure that Dr. Guerini was safely out at sea aboard his boat.
    As for Ada, if she now at all gave the impression of playing a leading role in his life, she was in reality only an accessory, a secondary cause. But that nobody would believe.
    The first time he had noticed her she must have been fourteen and she already wore a black cotton dress which might have passed for a school tunic.
    He was following the twisty road down, in his van, when he had seen her coming out of the plantation. He had wondered what she was doing there. He was not aware at the time that she was the daughter of Pascali, the old mason, and therefore that she lived on the far side of the pine-forest.
    He retained in his mind the picture of a scrawny, dark-skinned girl with long legs, hair like undergrowth, an animal expression.
    He had seen her again several times and learned, at Mouans-Sartoux, various details about her father. Pascali, who was not a native of France, had come there young, and started work in the mountains, where there was a new road under construction then.
    By a first wife, since dead, he had had two children, a boy and a girl, who were now approaching forty. The boy, who had become an engineer, lived