On Sunday December 2nd 1945, on the Boulevard des Invalides in Paris, a man was changing the flat tyre of his car. His companion had just gone to get a taxi. He was alone and it was raining. His body was found a few metres from his vehicle, dead, with a large-calibre bullet in his back. In his pocket, twelve thousand francs and his papers : Robert Denoël, forty-three years old, one of the greatest French publishers, had just been murdered.