Tight-Lipped

Jean-Jacques Marsay wedged himself behind the other side of the table. Le Mistral was a small place and almost all the seats it had to offer were taken. Given that the café was hidden down a side street – much like its neighbour, the Opéra Comique, a theatre from the dying years of the nineteenth century whose very existence was probably unknown to most of those walking on the nearby boulevard des Italians – it was safe to assume that those around them were regulars. As such, they were duty-bound to ignore Marsay, his celebrity being no compensation for his status as an interloper. He laid a bag from del Duca on the tabletop and glanced around him. Nobody came rushing forward to take his order. Franck had suffered the same treatment when he had arrived.