‘I’ll have to think about all this and discuss it with the others,’ she said.
‘You’re a very unusual nurse.’
‘And you’re a very unusual policeman,’ she replied, turning her horse and riding off.
Bruno looked after her for a while as Hector pawed at the ground and the other two horses looked at him curiously, waiting for the word to follow. He looked down at Balzac on his chest.
‘Mother kangaroo,’ he said to himself, acknowledging the aptness of her remark, and chuckled as he turned Hector towards the track that led the long way back to Pamela’s house.
An hour later Bruno was in his kitchen with the chicken he’d bought, peeling potatoes with a small heap of chopped garlic beside him, when his phone rang. It was Fabiola, calling from the medical centre.
‘I exercised the horses,’ he told her.
‘It’s not that. I ran a blood test on Louis Junot. He had so much alcohol in him he couldn’t have walked, let alone ride.’
‘He was an alcoholic so he’d have had tolerance. How much did he have?’
‘Just over three. That means zero point three per cent alcohol in the blood. He’d probably have been unconscious.’
‘So you’re sure he couldn’t have driven?’ Bruno knew that this was six times the legal limit in France.
‘Yes, and absolutely not with a motorbike, he’d have had no balance.’
‘So the crash was faked?’
‘I wouldn’t go that far but it’s certainly suspicious. I’ll call the pathologist in Bergerac but you’d better alert J-J and the Procureur.’
If she wanted the prosecutor alerted, she must be pretty sure, Bruno thought to himself.
‘Will do, but will you call me back when you’ve talked to Bergerac, because I’ll need to say it’s their finding. You know how fussy the Proc’s office can be.’
Bruno rang J-J’s mobile to alert him but had to leave a message. He’d wait for her next call before informing the Procureur. He finished the potatoes, peeled some shallots, set the table for two and lit the fire. Back in the kitchen, he opened a can of beer, drank half of it and then used an opener to punch some more holes in the top of the beer can. He took a large chunk of butter and began working it with a knife and mixing in the chopped garlic. He added some fresh rosemary from his garden and then began pushing the buttery mixture under the skin of the chicken as far as he could reach. He used the remainder to coat the inside.
Bruno had already put the giblets on to simmer with some chopped carrots and celery, an onion, peppercorns and water. He’d skimmed it after ten minutes and left it to reduce naturally. He checked his watch; Gilles would arrive soon. He sealed the neck of the chicken with half a lemon and held it in place with a skewer. He turned on his oven, setting the gas at 180 degrees, and put the half-filled beer can into the centre of the roasting pan. Then he carefully impaled the chicken vertically on the can, tossed some duck fat into the pan along with the sliced potatoes and left it to roast.
He was opening a small jar of his own foie gras when Fabiola called again to report that the pathologist had confirmed her finding on the alcohol level and she was going down to Bergerac to attend the autopsy. This time he called the office of the Procureur in Perigueux and left a message with the clerk on duty.
Balzac had been prowling the kitchen and looking for the source of the wondrous smells, so once he’d turned out the foie, Bruno wiped the inside of the jar clean with a piece of bread and handed it to his pup. When Balzac had finished, Bruno took him out to the chicken coop, and with a firm hold on the excited dog he sat with him in the chicken run to get him accustomed to them. The ducks were the first to come up and examine the new arrival, and then came the chickens, pecking at the carrot tops and potato peelings he brought out. Bruno stroked Balzac and spoke to him quietly, restraining him each time he tried to squirm out of Bruno’s hand, until he heard a horn sound from the lane and he went out to greet the journalist.
Gilles came with a bottle in each hand, one of Black Label scotch and the other a bottle of Chateau Nenin from the Pomerol, a wine well above Bruno’s usual price range, even for special treats.
‘If we drink all that you won’t be driving back,’ Bruno said. He had not remembered Gilles being much of a drinker.
‘We’re not going to drink it all, but think of it as a delayed celebration that we survived Sarajevo. There were times I was so hungry I’d have eaten that little dog of yours,’ said the reporter, as Bruno led the way inside. ‘But here’s my real gift to you.’
He handed across a faxed copy of a dental chart.
‘That’s the proof of identity you need. Your dead body is Athenais de Bourbon.’
‘Francoise-Athenais, to be exact,’ said Bruno. ‘A relative identified her from the cropped photo you sent me.’
They ate the first course of Bruno’s foie gras and then Bruno insisted that Gilles join him in the kitchen to see his surprise. He opened the oven door, and with great care not to overbalance the chicken on its can of beer, withdrew the roasting pan and set it on top of the stove.
‘Poulet biere au cul,’ he announced in triumph. ‘Remember when we got that convoy in? The American radio reporter made this, that guy from Texas. I thought it was great, the way the beer steamed and kept the chicken moist from the inside.’
‘Putain, I remember that,’ said Gilles. ‘He kept saying he’d paid ten dollars for the beer on the black market.’
Bruno uncorked the chicken from its beer can, put it on a serving dish with the roast potatoes. He told Gilles to take it to the table and start to carve while he made the gravy.
The chicken was demolished and they were down to the last third of the Pomerol when Gilles’s phone went. It was his office on the line, so Bruno cleared the table, brought in the cheese, and began picking out scraps of chicken from the carcass to feed to Balzac. Gilles was still talking and scribbling on a notepad, so Bruno washed up, tidied his kitchen and took some sheets and a towel into the spare room.
‘Finished,’ Gilles called from the table and poured out the last of the wine to go with the cheese. ‘They just wanted to check headlines and captions and play around with the lead. A good story, but a sad one. They want to know what happens next, after the exorcism. Is there going to be a follow-up?’
‘What do you think? Won’t that put a nice, neat finish on it all?’ Bruno asked.
‘Not until we know who held the Satanist ceremony in the cave and why Athenais made herself a Satanist suicide. Now they want me to get an interview with the Red Countess.’
‘It wasn’t the Countess who identified her, it was her sister. The Countess has Alzheimer’s. She’s bedridden.’
‘Well, I’ll talk to the sister.’
‘She didn’t strike me as the sort of woman who would have much to do with the press,’ Bruno said.
‘I’m used to that, and to getting round it. The name Paris-Match still works wonders.’
They went back to the fire and to the scotch and Bruno told the story from the beginning: the holiday village in Thivion and the Red Countess in her hospital room at the chateau, Foucher’s conviction for insider trading and the defence industry parties at the Count’s auberge. Gilles heard him out, scribbling a few notes, and waited until Bruno finished and had turned to throw another log on the fire.
‘The common factor in all this is the Count,’ Gilles said. ‘What’s he got to say for himself?’
‘I’m still trying to nail him down for an interview.’
‘Would you mind if I had a crack at him, since he’s the dead woman’s cousin? If Athenais was the only descendant then now that she’s dead I suppose that makes the Count the heir to the Red Countess.’
Bruno jerked upright in his chair. Why hadn’t he thought of that? Then he slumped back. The Count couldn’t be the heir.
‘Athenais had a child at some point, according to the autopsy,’ Bruno said. ‘Maybe that’s your follow-up story; I presume you’ve got a correspondent in Hollywood.
You’d have a better chance of tracking her kid down than I would.’
‘More than one,’ said Gilles. For this kind of search, the magazine would probably hire a private detective, someone who specialized in tracking people through hospital records, birth registration, school registries and the like. They had already hired one to find Athenais’s last address from the credit ratings and had found a mine of information. She was flat broke, credit cards cancelled and her car repossessed from the street.
‘The dump she was living in didn’t even have a garage,’ Gilles said. ‘That was earlier this year. We’ve got a sidebar story on her lowlife in Hollywood: porn and bankruptcy.’
‘And then she came home,’ said Bruno.
‘Home to die — that’s one of our headlines. Do you want a last drink?’
Bruno shook his head. He’d had more than enough. ‘I need to get to bed. I’ll have an early start, getting ready for Father Sentout’s exorcism. There’s a spare bed for you here. If you even touch your car keys, I’ll have to arrest you.’
25
The Gouffre looked magnificent. The lighting effects that Bruno had seen in Our Lady’s Chapel had been moved to the vast cavern, so that the images of giant rose windows shimmered on each side of the assembled audience. Another rose was beamed onto the concave roof of the cave and its glowing reds, blues and golds were reflected in the stillness of the lake. On the far shore, where orchestras would give concerts, stood the choir of St Denis in their white surplices. Picked out by a spotlight, a long table covered with a white cloth and serving as an altar bore a silver cross, two tall white candles and the accoutrements of the Mass. Behind it stood one of the treasures of St Denis, the great carved crucifix that usually lived behind the altar of the town church.
Solemn organ music played as the last arrivals took their seats. Four TV cameras were focused on the choir. Half the town was there and more people stood in the car park outside listening to the loudspeakers that would carry the words and music out to them. Reporters sat on a row of chairs to one side and photographers crouched and scurried to find the best angles.
The organ music fell silent and, from his vantage point on the balcony alongside the Mayor, J-J and the Baron, Bruno could almost feel the audience hold its breath when the thunderous notes of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor rang out. The beam of the spotlight on the choir swivelled down to the lake itself and crept with slow and steady purpose towards the audience, then back further to the stairs. At their head stood Father Sentout in full priestly regalia. Behind him and carrying a tall silver crucifix was the sacristan in his white robe. Behind them and also in white surplices were Marcel’s son Jean-Paul and Philippe Delaron’s nephew Luc.
Father Sentout led them down the stairs and across the rocky floor to the strand where a single boat stood waiting. It was not one of the usual jaunty plastic vessels with pedals but the Baron’s sturdy wooden fishing boat that could seat six or even eight with ease. Father Sentout climbed in and sat in the bow, the sacristan stood solemn and silent at the stern. The two boys clambered aboard and in unison took the two short oars and put them into the water. Luc loosened the knot that held the boat to the dock and pushed off. The boys began to row the boat slowly across as the Toccata died and gave way to the first slow notes of the Kyrie of Mozart’s Mass in C minor.
As the boat reached the middle of the lake the choir had begun to sing, and by some miracle of timing just as the boat reached the far side and the priest rose to step ashore, Florence began her solo and the high, sweet notes of Kyrie Eleison, Lord have mercy, filled the cave.
‘They’ve been practising this half the night and since seven this morning,’ whispered the Mayor. Bruno nodded as he glanced at the order of service to identify the music that had been chosen.
‘I wouldn’t have missed this for the world,’ murmured J-J to Bruno. ‘But we need to talk later.’
When the Kyrie ended, Father Sentout raised his head, lifted his hands to bless the crowd and began to speak. Bruno could not see the tiny microphone he must be wearing beneath his robes but the words rang out powerfully through the vast space.
‘In a famous discourse in the year of Our Lord 1972, the Holy Father Pope Paul VI said that he sensed that “from somewhere or other, the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God”. And here in this majestic cave, surely itself a great work of Our Lord, the smoke of Satan has crept in to pollute and defile the very chamber dedicated to Our Lady.’
He turned and knelt on the small prayer stool placed before the altar as the choir began the triumphant opening notes of the Gloria. When it ended he rose, turned and spoke again. This time his first words were in Latin.
‘Exorcizo te, immundissime spiritus, in nomine Domini nostri Jesu Christi’ — I exorcize you, unclean spirit, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
He paused, the spotlight on him faded and the music swelled, the first almost jaunty notes leading into the glorious affirmation of faith, the Credo, and the choir roared out the words:
Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentem, factorem c?li et terrae, visibilium omnium et invisibilium. I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.
The music and the singing rang around the great chamber with such force that Bruno saw tremors appear on the usually still waters of the lake, sending the reflections of the stained-glass windows shimmering.
‘The spirit of Almighty God is with us,’ roared out the priest.
‘Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus,’ sang the choir in the three great and soaring chords. ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts.’
Bruno felt transported. He had never attended any religious ceremony with a fraction of this power and meaning. The sceptic in him was whispering at the back of his mind that the setting of the cave, the skill of the lighting and the magnificent acoustics that enhanced the power of the choir were all working on some childhood memory of church and faith. And the presence of hundreds of his fellow townsfolk, equally rapt and awed by the power of light and music and the newly commanding presence of their own familiar priest, was carrying him on a great communal wave of an experience that was as dramatic as it was unique.
Father Sentout began the sacrament of the Eucharist, raising the chalice of wine and the silver plate of the host to the great crucifix in consecration. And then one by one, still singing Hosanna in Excelsis, the members of the choir came down to kneel before the altar and take communion and then return to their places to begin the Agnus Dei.
‘Ite, missa est,’ said Father Sentout, and it was over.
At least, Bruno thought it was over. But hardly had the thought formed when a great whirring sound filled the air, followed by a mighty crash, a cloud of dust and a brilliant shaft of daylight coming from the sky.
Then came a chorus of screams followed by the sound of chairs falling as people rose and turned to run. Father Sentout still had his microphone and with great presence of mind he roared: ‘A sign, a sign that the Lord our God is with us.’
‘Let there be light,’ he shouted, pointing at the ray from the sky that pierced the vast space of the cavern. ‘And the Lord said let there be light.’
He turned to the choir behind him and like a conductor raised his arms to get them to join him. Amplified by the microphones they chanted in chorus and all that could be heard in the great cavern as the dust began to settle was that single phrase from the Book of Genesis echoing endlessly. The crowd calmed. Many were crossing themselves.
Bruno looked up and saw that the shaft of light came from an evenly shaped circle. He looked at the ground below the hole and saw the crumpled remains of the cradle that could be winched up and down, available to any tourist who was prepared to pay the twenty euros for the ride. The rope that raised and lowered the cradle had come free from the winch and lay in forlorn loops amid the wreckage. Bruno dismissed the idea of any accidental release of the cradle; the timing had been too perfect for that. Some of the crowd wer
e already calling out that it was a miracle.
‘And if that doesn’t get us onto the TV news tonight, nothing will,’ said the Baron, as he slapped the Mayor on the back.
‘This way,’ said the Mayor as they emerged from the cave’s entry tunnel and into the sunlight. ‘We’re all going to lunch.’
He shepherded Bruno, J-J and the Baron into the minibus the town used to take its old folk on outings and went back to the cave entrance saying he would fetch Father Sentout, the hero of the hour. J-J climbed back out, signalling Bruno to follow, and apologizing to the Baron. ‘Police business,’ he said and steered Bruno towards the bushes.
‘The Prefect came into my office this morning early, something he’s never done before. He told me to think again about pursuing that fraud inquiry into your holiday village project. Then he pointed his finger at the ceiling and left.’
‘Pressure from the top?’
‘Very high,’ came J-J’s reply. ‘So I made a discreet check with his secretary and he’d had a short call just before he came to see me from the office of the Defence Minister followed by another from the Elysee. Since I have a tender regard for my pension …’ J-J said, and shrugged.
‘I understand,’ said Bruno, momentarily distracted by the sight of Foucher coming down the slope towards the ticket office on the path that led up to the staff housing. Bruno caught himself. It also led up to the winch that controlled the basket. ‘Thanks for trying,’ he added hurriedly to J-J.
‘It stinks to me, but there we are. And I think you might want to reconsider your own priorities here. Talking of fraud, I suppose you want me to believe you weren’t involved in that little performance in there with the falling cradle?’
He gave Bruno a playful punch on the arm with the false bonhomie of a decent man feeling ashamed of himself. In silence, the two of them walked back to the minibus just as the Mayor extracted Father Sentout and Florence from the knot of reporters and cameras. As Foucher joined them, Bruno made a point of shaking his hand, and saw, as he’d expected, a streak of oil on the man’s palm.
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