Fatal Pursuit

by Martin Walker

  “Ready to start riding?” Bruno asked. “We’ll start with a trot and then go into an easy canter along the firebreak.”

  He set off, holding Hector back from the gallop he was expecting and glanced back to see Gilles riding well. Balzac was trotting at Bruno’s side, looking up from time to time as if waiting for the pace to pick up. Bruno now loosened the rein and let Hector canter up the shallow slope that led to the forest and the long firebreak that would take them to Pamela’s riding school. At the start of the firebreak, he reined in.

  “Wait a few seconds after I set off and let Victoria set her own pace. She’s too old for gallops, but Hector’s impatient for his run.” Bruno’s horse was tossing his head, eager to go, but Bruno kept him circling until he saw Gilles understood. Balzac was already fifty meters ahead, looking back to see if Bruno was coming. “I’ll rein in at the far end and wait for you. We’re in no hurry, so there’s no need to rush.”

  He loosened the reins, bent down in the saddle and let Hector bound forward, moving almost at once into a stretching run that swiftly became the gallop he and his rider had been waiting for. The trees blurred away on each side, and Bruno narrowed his eyes against the rush of wind as Hector’s hooves drummed on the turf. Within seconds, Balzac was passed and left behind, and Bruno felt the familiar strain in his thighs as he bent far forward, his rump clear of the saddle and his horse moving as if he could run forever. All too soon the end of the firebreak loomed ahead, and he sat back in the saddle, taking deep breaths as Hector slowed. He turned to see Gilles cantering easily in the distance with Balzac bouncing valiantly along beside the horse. As they came closer, Bruno smiled at the way Balzac’s ears flapped like some primitive set of wings.

  “You’re riding well,” Bruno said. “You’re better than me when I was a beginner. Pamela says you have a natural seat.”

  “I certainly enjoy it. I just wish I’d started when I was younger.”

  They walked the horses down the bridle trail that came out on the ridge above Pamela’s new place and paused, looking down at the half-dozen children on ponies walking around the sand-floored ring. Miranda sat on her white mare in the middle of the ring as she watched them circle. Pamela was in the paddock, standing by a low hedge over which two older youngsters were taking turns jumping.

  “It looks busy,” said Gilles. “And Fabiola’s here already; there’s her car, though I don’t see her.”

  “Probably trying out the new horse,” said Bruno, looking down at the freshly painted doors and windows of the office and stables. The old house Pamela had bought along with the riding school still looked down at heel, but Bruno could see men working in the emptied swimming pool repairing the leaks, and the shutters on the gîtes gleamed with new paint. There was a lot of work to be done to get the gîtes ready for the next tourist season, and for the moment Pamela and Miranda along with her children would all be living in the main house. Bruno admired the courage of the two women, each of them determined that her hard work and energy could make a success of what had been a failing riding school. Pamela had a good track record, having made a success of renting out her gîtes at her former house. Miranda had her father’s money behind her, which didn’t hurt.

  As Bruno and Gilles walked their horses past the apple orchard toward the stables, they heard a shout and saw Fabiola cantering toward them on a dappled gray mare with a distinctive, darker mane. The mare was smaller than Victoria, Bruno saw, probably a good size for Fabiola. She reined in alongside them and edged her mare forward alongside Gilles so she could reach over and touch his hand.

  “I’d try to kiss you, but I think we both might fall off,” she said. “You, too, Bruno, consider yourself kissed. How was your ride?”

  “Wonderful, perfect autumn weather, a good gallop, and Gilles is riding well. How’s the mare?”

  “Perfect, but I’m not sure I can afford the asking price until we pay the mortgage on the new house,” Fabiola said. “We might have to wait until next summer when we start getting some money from the rentals. They want four thousand for her. She’s six years old, a Spanish horse, Andalusian but bred in France. Pamela thinks she can get the price down a bit, and then I might be able to afford it.

  “Enough of that,” she went on. “Bruno, I’ve got some good news, well, maybe not good, but you’ll be pleased to know I’m recommending an autopsy on Monsieur Hugon. I’ve already told J-J.”

  “That’s great. Thanks very much,” said Bruno.

  “The autopsy might not tell us much because, if it’s what I think it is, detection after this amount of time won’t be easy,” she went on. “I’ve asked J-J for a forensic check on the room where the body was found.”

  “What do you think it was? Poison?”

  “It’s possible, only possible, that cyanide was either put into his drink or sprayed straight into his face. But it’s not easy to be sure. Cyanide traces dissipate very fast after death, and then human tissue can produce cyanide gas as part of the decomposition process.”

  “What kind of drink? Could it have been coffee?” Bruno recalled the three dirty coffee cups beside the sink. Madame Hugon had said they were her favorite cups and had been surprised that her husband had used them. Could he have been killed by his visitors?

  “Yes, indeed,” Fabiola went on. “Half a gram of potassium cyanide is usually fatal, and in crystallized form, mixed with sugar or artificial sweetener, the victim is unlikely to detect it. You don’t need much, less than the amount of salt you’d put on your pommes frites. Or it could be delivered by a spray, which could be indicated in this case by the irritation around the victim’s nose and mouth.”

  “Isn’t cyanide a controlled substance?” Gilles asked. “You can’t just go into a pharmacy and buy it.”

  “No, but it’s used a lot in the metals industry and in electroplating and by some photographers. I can think of several workshops and garages in town that would probably have it. You even find it in some fertilizers,” she said. “And it isn’t hard to make for anybody with a basic knowledge of chemistry. I could make enough for a fatal dose from heating green almond shells and then running the hydrocyanic gas that’s released through a solution of baking soda. It would be even stronger if I excluded air when I heated the shells and replaced it with an inert gas like helium or nitrogen. I could even do it through heating polyurethane. Some fire victims actually die of cyanide poisoning from the polyurethane in a mattress.”

  Bruno stared at Fabiola, stunned by the contrast between what she was saying and the bucolic scene around him, the autumn countryside and the laughter of children in the riding ring, the snorting of the horses and Balzac’s busy foraging beneath the apple trees.

  Fabiola followed his glance and added, “You could even make cyanide from apple seeds, if you had enough of them. One of my teachers in medical school had a grisly sense of humor and used to talk of ways to commit the perfect murder. Cyanide was his top choice, especially for anyone with heart or respiratory problems. It works by stopping the body from processing oxygen.”

  “Why is it hard to detect?” Bruno asked.

  “It breaks down so fast. The usual toxicology tests don’t work too well just one day after death, and they’re almost useless after two days. If Hugon drank it in coffee, we might get an indication from signs of burning in the esophagus or stomach. If he was killed by a spray, then we’ll have to use a new technique, by looking at his liver cells with a biomarker called ACTA, which stands for ‘aminothiazole and carboxylic acid.’ We don’t have that capability in the Bergerac lab, so the body would have to be shipped to Bordeaux.”

  “What made you think of cyanide?” he asked.

  “I found a trace of potassium on the nasal hairs and something else that I think might be DMSO, dimethyl sulfoxide. DMSO is a terrifyingly efficient way of carrying cyanide into the body, so efficient that it’s known in chemistry labs as liquid death. That’s why I recommended an autopsy and a full forensic check of the room where the man died.”
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  Bruno’s mind was racing. Who had a motive to kill Hugon? His wife was in the clear; her alibi in Sarlat had been confirmed. Bruno had spent part of the afternoon on the phone with the Périgueux archives and the Resistance archives at the Centre Jean Moulin in Bordeaux, trying to trace the subjects of Hugon’s research. In Périgueux, it turned out, Hugon had been working on property tax records and files for registered foreigners in the département in the prewar years. In Bordeaux, he’d called up files covering the earliest years of the Resistance, from 1940 until the end of 1942, when German forced-labor requirements sent floods of young Frenchmen fleeing into the Maquis, hiding in the woods. In both places, Hugon was well known enough that he was allowed to roam at will through the stacks, so not all his searches could be traced.

  “So are you going to buy the horse or not?” Gilles asked, jerking Bruno from his thoughts.

  “Yes, if Pamela can get the right price, or if we can reach an agreement that we buy her jointly, put her to a stallion, and then I get the mare, and Pamela gets the foal.” Fabiola turned to Bruno. “Pamela plans to buy mares so she can grow the herd more cheaply than by buying new horses.”

  They rode down to the stables to greet Pamela and Miranda, and by the time they had unsaddled and brushed down the horses, Crimson had arrived in his old Jaguar with the baron. They carried the half case of wine they had brought into the old house and put it on the kitchen table next to the baron’s old iron cooking pot, which was sitting in a box of hay to keep it warm. Beside it were stacked two cans of the baron’s homemade pâté, a large apple pie and a wooden platter crammed with small round cabécous of goat cheese, a wedge of Stéphane’s Tomme d’Audrix and a cylinder of English Stilton that Crimson had bought on his last trip to London.

  The dinner to be prepared was a new ritual that had begun when Pamela and Miranda had first moved to the riding school, and Bruno, Florence, Fabiola and the baron had taken turns bringing dinner for the two women. The evenings had been so enjoyable that now each week they held a similar dinner, with each of the friends taking turns to provide the food and wine. This evening was the baron’s turn to feed all eight of them, and since Crimson claimed to be a hopeless cook, he provided the wines from his well-stocked cellar.

  They were now so accustomed to preparing the meal that they fell automatically into their usual roles. Fabiola polished the wineglasses and set the table, and Miranda’s father decanted the wines he’d brought before starting to slice the big, circular tourte of fresh bread. The baron opened his cans of pâté, explaining that he’d brought one of venison and one of rabbit. Pamela went to the vegetable garden to pick lettuce for the salad while Bruno and Gilles took the big plastic bidons to the spring that burbled from the hillside to bring back some water. Meanwhile Florence and Miranda bathed their children and prepared them for bed, but they would eat with the adults before heading upstairs to snuggle into the old feather beds that had come with the house.

  It was the kind of evening that Bruno most enjoyed. It felt like being part of a family, with friends and good food, the presence of children, even when they squabbled, and the comforting knowledge that this had taken place last week and the week before that. Above all, he could expect to be with these same people the following week and uncounted weeks ahead. Strange, he thought, that they never ran out of things to talk about: local politics, the economics of riding schools, the merits of local vineyards and the best way to prepare various dishes.

  As he and Gilles staggered back with the now-heavy bidons, Bruno thinking how to run a pipe system down to the house from the hillside, they ran into Pamela with her lettuces. He asked her to wait a moment when they reached the house and explained his concern for young Félix and his interest in horses. Could she find a use for the youngster around the stables, perhaps in return for riding lessons?

  “If he’s prepared to muck out the stables, I certainly could, but he doesn’t sound like an attractive youth or even particularly trustworthy,” she replied. “Still, bring him round, and I’ll take a look at him. How’s he going to get here?”

  “I’ll take care of that,” Bruno said. He’d taken some garden waste to the déchetterie that weekend and seen an old bicycle that Jacquot, the custodian of the recycling center, had salvaged. He’d found it to be in working order and put it to one side. Bruno had already called Jacquot to say he had a use for it.

  Inside the large kitchen, where Crimson had lit a fire in the elderly wood-burning iron range that stood against one wall, the baron was explaining to the freshly bathed children the art of making a cassoulet périgourdin.

  “Down in Toulouse they think they know about cassoulet, but we know better,” he was saying as he lifted the lid on the pot to let them smell the rich aroma. Four pairs of young eyes hung on his every word. “A real cassoulet has to contain stuffed neck of duck and some duck sausage, and I like to add some manchons of duck as well because my grandmother always put those small pieces of duck into hers. A cassoulet is always based on white beans with onions and tomatoes. It’s fine to add some ordinary pork sausage as well, as long as it’s been made with plenty of garlic, but without the duck it’s just a pale shadow of a true cassoulet. It also needs to cook very slowly, which is why I made it this morning and left it cooking in the haybox all day.”

  “Time to eat,” called Pamela, putting out a bowl of cornichons to go with the pâté. Bruno stared at her with affection and admiration as they took their places. Crimson poured them each a glass of white Bergerac from Château Montdoyen, and Miranda gave the children water from the spring. Pamela picked up the large serving spoon, and Florence began passing her the children’s plates.

  “This cassoulet smells magnificent, Baron,” Pamela said. “Bon appétit, everyone.”

  11

  The next morning, after an early ride with Hector, Bruno picked up the elderly bicycle from the déchetterie and arrived shortly after eight at the project where Félix lived. He walked up the stairs with Balzac at his heels and tried the bell. He heard no sound of ringing, and no one came to the door, so he began knocking. After a moment Félix’s mother opened it, wearing a wraparound apron over her working clothes, and invited him in for coffee.

  “I heard you sorted things out for Félix at the supermarket,” she said, leading him into a cramped kitchen before putting the kettle on and washing a bowl at the sink. Even after all the years in St. Denis, she still spoke with a West Indian accent. “Thank you, we don’t seem able to do much with him.”

  “Unless you do, he’s going to get into real trouble,” Bruno said as she spooned a coffee-chicory mixture into the bowl from a jar and poured in boiled water, followed by a splash of milk. “I saw from the pictures in his room that he seems to like horses.”

  “Horses and cars, anything mechanical, but it’s mainly cars he likes. I sometimes think he only likes the horses because it gives him something to talk about with his dad, but he’s always liked animals. He’s one of those boys who collects stray dogs. They always follow him home, but we could never afford to keep one.” She looked down at Balzac and smiled. “Would your dog like a bowl of water?”

  “Yes, please,” he said, knowing that people with little money took pride in offering something to others. “That would be very kind.”

  She washed another bowl at the sink, filled it with water and bent to give it to Balzac, who gave her hand a tentative lick. She fondled his ears as Balzac drank. “We used to have a dog when Jacques was working.”

  “Is Félix up yet? He’s got to get to school.”

  “I get him up about now, so he comes with me when I go to work.”

  “Perhaps you could get him up now. Tell him I’m here and want a word with him before school.”

  When she left, he took a sip from the mixture Félix’s mother called coffee and grimaced. Rather than offend her, he poured most if it down the sink. After a couple of minutes Félix appeared, his face washed and his hair wetted down, wearing the same clothes as the previous day.


  “Bonjour, Félix. You like horses?” Bruno asked.

  “Don’t mind them.” His mother gave him a bowl of the chicory mixture and the heel of what looked like the previous day’s baguette. The boy looked down at Balzac and tore off a piece of the stale bread to give to the dog. He dunked the rest of it in the muddy-brown liquid and began his breakfast. His mother gave him a nudge, and he said a grudging “Thank you for helping yesterday.”

  “How would you like to learn to ride?”

  “What?” His head jerked up, and he swallowed some food the wrong way, choked and coughed his throat clear. He swallowed and then looked up. “Ride a horse, me?”

  “You’d have to work hard instead of paying for it, but do a good job and there might even be some pocket money in it for you. But if you do a bad job, or don’t turn up for work, it’s over.”

  “How d’you mean? Where are you talking about?”

  “The riding school near Meyrals is looking for a part-time stableboy. They’re willing to give you a trial. You’ll spend Saturday mornings and some evenings cleaning out the stables and putting hay in the horses’ mangers, and they’ll get you started, learning to ride.”

  “That’d be great.” His eyes lit up, but then they dulled again. “How’d I get to Meyrals? It takes two hours to walk there. What time would I have to start?”

  “You’d have to be there by eight on the dot.”

  “I’d have to leave before six.” He looked down at his shoes. “I could run part of the way.”

  “Can you ride a bike?”

  “Yes, but I haven’t got one.”

  “Your mother says you like mechanical things. Could you fix up an old bike, repair punctures, keep it oiled and the brakes working?”

  “Yeah, Édouard used to let me help him sometimes on his bike at his dad’s garage. That’s where I learned to ride one.”