The Paris Directive by Gerald Jay

Along with the English policeman, she too had been wondering what the three Indian jugglers seen in the neighborhood had to do with the disappearance of Miss Verinder’s enormous diamond, when she heard them scratching at the window, trying to break into the house. Opening her eyes wide, Ann Marie sat bolt upright. The sound had awakened her. Thankfully, the small bedside lamp was still on. She swiveled her head from side to side as she tried to pin down what it was—weird, frantic scraping sounds that resembled bony skeletal fingers clawing their way out of a sealed vault. She looked up. The noise seemed to be coming from directly overhead.
    “Woodchucks,” said a sleepy Schuyler awakened by the commotion. He remembered the ferocity of the digging under the cabin they once rented in the Laurentians. “But what are they doing up there?”
    “Bats.”
    “Well … maybe.” He pulled up his blanket and turned over. “Could you please shut off the light, dear?”
    “Taisez-vous!” Ann Marie shouted at the razor-toothed nocturnal revelers, but the racket continued. Picking up her book from the floor, she hurled it at the ceiling—all at once, silence.
    “That’s better.” Rather pleased with herself, she crawled back intobed, switched off the light, and, burying her head under the blanket, was soon fast asleep.
    But that night there would be no rest for Schuyler. Unable to get back to sleep, he climbed out of bed. It was warm in the room, but at a little after three, he’d no wish to go downstairs. He carefully unlocked the French doors and slipped out into the pleasantly cool air on the balcony. Glancing up, he scanned the canopy of stars. The moonlight silvered the treetops, the thin ribbon of road, and the fields beyond. The silence was magical. Schuyler was astonished at how long it had been since he last thought about anything that had to do with his work and wondered why he was doing so now. Guilt, he supposed, smiling. These days in Taziac with Ann Marie and Ben and Judy had been a wonderful change. He was thinking what a good time they were all having when he heard something moving on the dirt road below.
    Though he couldn’t see through the trees, he imagined from the sound that it was a large animal. He’d seen deer in the fields while driving. Or perhaps one of the neighbor’s cows had wandered away from the herd. The footsteps, though not loud, grew increasingly clear in the stillness. They sounded almost human the closer they came to the house. He searched the shadows, straining his eyes.
    The shape that emerged into the pale moonlight was unquestionably human. Schuyler pulled back from the balcony railing lest he be seen. He’d no idea who it was. No one he recognized. The dark figure moved furtively up the hill to the top and, just before disappearing behind the house, turned.
    The moonlight flashed on something in the figure’s hand. Schuyler shifted his weight and felt a sudden sharp pain in his right thigh. Only a cramp, he guessed, but it was almost as if he’d been hit by a bullet. Damnit, he thought, annoyed with himself for not yelling at the poacher. Hunting was forbidden anywhere in France at night.
    Of course, he might have been wrong about the gun, but it had looked like a rifle barrel to him. The poacher was probably after rabbits or some nocturnal feeder. Rabbits were all over the neighborhood. Schuyler had nothing against hunting and wasn’t a bad shot himself, but people with guns trespassing about at night gave him the creeps.

    The next morning at breakfast Ann Marie was full of their previous evening’s adventure with the bats in the tower. She explained to Judy and Ben, who had a nasty hangover, how they had finally gotten to sleep after being shaken out of bed by the weird noises of the bats.
    “Owls,” Ben corrected irritably.
    Ann Marie didn’t think so.
    Judy noted her husband’s badly bloodshot eyes and, intent on keeping the peace, recounted what Monsieur