criminal minds

It was years since he had been here, but it was impossible for his feet not to follow in his old footsteps. The watchmaker Vilmos and his watches, and his famous garden, these were perhaps his most vivid childhood memories.
Even before reaching the door, he seemed to recognize the smell of the house, which had always had old people in it, since as far as he was concerned the watchmaker Vilmos and his sister had never been young.
Frank took a dark handkerchief out of his pocket and tied it around his face below his eyes. Stan was about to protest.
"You don't need one. They don't know you. But if you like . . ."
He handed him a similar handkerchief; he had thought of everything.
He still remembered Mademoiselle Vilmos's cakes, like nothing else that he had ever eaten, tasteless, thick, decorated with pink-and-blue sugar.  She always kept them in a box with pictures from the adventures of Robinson Crusoe on it.
And she insisted on calling him "my little angel."
Vilmos must be over eighty now, his sister around seventy-five. It was hard to tell exactly, since children have a different way of judging age. For him they had always been old, and Vilmos had been the first person he had ever seen who could remove all his teeth at once, since he wore dentures.
They were misers, brother and sister, each as bad as the other.
"Should I ring the bell?" asked Stan, who was uneasy standing there in the deserted square under the moonlight.
Frank rang, surprised to find the bell rope so low, when once he had had to stand on tiptoe to reach it. He held his automatic in his right hand. His foot was ready to keep the door from closing, like the first time he had gone to Sissy's.  Footsteps could be heard inside, a sound like in a church.  He remembered that, too.  The hall, long and wide, with dark walls and mysterious doors like those of a sacristy, was paved with gray tiles, and two or three were always loose.

 Dirty snow - Georges Simenon