Page 29 of Be Less Panda

‘Why would it bother me?’

‘It looked like you enjoyed your business meetings with her.’

Hans chuckled. ‘Are you trawling?’

‘Trawling?’ Nancy was baffled.

‘Yes, trying to find out information in an indirect way?’

So much for being subtle, Nancy!‘You mean fishing.’

‘Sorry. Are you fishing?’

‘Why would I be fishing?’ she said innocently.

‘I don’t know. But if you were fishing for information on my colleague, I have known her for several years, and we are just friends, not lovers.’

‘I wasn’t fishing, but that’s nice that you’re friends.’

‘Friendship is very important to me.’

15

It was another quiet day in the bookshop.

‘Shall I put the kettle on?’ Nancy asked Philip as he lugged another box of new titles out of the office.

‘Good idea,’ he said, dropping the box by the bookshelf near the window.

Nancy headed into the office. The kettle had just started to whistle when she heard an even more piercing sound coming from inside the shop. It must be some sort of alarm. Was someone breaking into the till? She turned off the hob and started to head back to the shop floor when the office door burst open and Philip ran in.

‘Watch the shop!’ he shouted as he snatched open the door marked Privé and ran up the stairs to Madame Dubois’s private apartments.

What the hell was going on? Nancy was torn between following him and heading back into the shop. She supposed she should do as she was told, but this would be the perfect opportunity to find out what was going on upstairs. She hadn’t heard the tinkle of the bell on the shop door since the arrival of Madame Dubois’s latest client, so there shouldn’t be any customers around. She went inside to check. No. Not a soul. She looked at her watch. It would be lunchtime infifteen minutes. It wouldn’t hurt to shut a bit earlier. It was hardly likely to cost them a sale.

She dropped the lock on the front door and turned the closed sign over, then dashed upstairs to make sure there was no one on floors one or two. They were both empty, but she could hear some muffled shouting and grunting from Madame Dubois’s private apartments.

She ran back downstairs. As she opened the door to the back room, Philip ran from Mme Dubois’s apartments and picked up the phone.

‘Ambulance please,’ he said in French, ‘It’s an emergency. Yes. Yes. Heart problem, I think. Yes. Dubois’s books, on the corner of Rue de la Cour and Rue Saint Aubin. Come in via the shop door. Thank you.’

He put the phone down.

‘But I’ve locked the shop door,’ Nancy said.

‘Well, unlock it,’ Philip snapped. ‘Monsieur Ferrier has had a heart attack. The ambulance will be here in five minutes. Stand outside and wait for them.’

He ran back upstairs before she could ask any questions.

Nancy didn’t argue. By the time she’d unlocked the door and gone out onto the top step, she could hear the distinctive, almost musical sound of an emergency siren.

‘We had some excitement at work today,’ Nancy said to Olivia when she arrived home. ‘I finally got to see inside Madame Dubois’s flat’

Nancy had Olivia’s complete attention. ‘How?’

Nancy explained about poor Monsieur Ferrier. ‘I followed the ambulance men upstairs, and there he was, spark out in the floor of the living room.’

‘Was he alright?’

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