Word: vintenon
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Living by Larceny. The dead man was François Vintenon, a habitué of Paris' Latin Quarter. The sensitive, introverted son of a well-to-do merchant, François had joined a group of Left Bank surrealists. He was tall and thin; his friends said he had the face of a "perverse angel." He wrote poems which nobody understood. He lived by stealing. After the German invasion, François' father, who had turned collaborationist in order to save his business, persuaded his son to write for a Nazi publishing enterprise at 10,000 francs...
...Satan. This doctor, Pierre Roumeguere, was as extraordinary as François Vintenon, but in a different way. He had never practiced (except for wartime duty in the Navy), but kept on studying for years while he collected more degrees and diplomas. Three times after they had sentenced him to death, he escaped from the Nazis. He had a weather-browned, bearded face, black eyes, a long, pointed nose. The Maquis called him Dr. Satan...
...Saturday night Vintenon and Roumeguere went to the hut. Next day François' mistress arrived and the doctor left. Sunday night François took the girl to Paris, then returned to Gif-sur-Yvette. In the village tavern he was seen to eat some food and swallow many pills; then he went off toward the hut. "Mon Dieu!" cried the doctor, when he found the body the next weekend, "there's an enormous Negro lying...
...painter who had fought with the Germans against the Russians. In the hut there was also an abstract painting by Lormeau, on the back of which was a remarkable gouache: a black face with bulging white eyes. It looked exactly like the head of the corpse. Had Lormeau killed Vintenon to provide a model for this gouache? Experts testified that the gouache had been done months before the murder...
Last week the Paris hawkshaws did not know who killed François Vintenon, or what the cause of death was, or why the body was black, bloated and burned. If it was not an Existentialist murder, it was at least a very ingenious...
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