“Le débuché! Off we go,” said Jacques, hopping on his bicycle. Jacques and Capucine pedaled away energetically enough but were bridled by Alexandre, whose initially sluggish pace quickly slowed to a squeaky meander. Within a few minutes the hunt was as gone as if it had never existed and the forest filled again with its delicate sounds. Alexandre exhaled an audible sigh of relief.
After ten more minutes of labored pedaling, he stopped with the air of a man who has accomplished something worthwhile and looked ostentatiously at his watch. “Past noon,” he said. “Wouldn’t this be a good time to have an apéro and then start thinking about lunch?”
To Capucine’s intense irritation, Jacques agreed enthusiastically. They found a small clearing covered with drooping ferns, spread a blanket in a ray of sunshine, and ceremoniously laid down Odile’s picnic basket. Alexandre raised his hand. “I came prepared.” He reached into the pocket of his Barbour and produced an ancient and well-dented silver flask of substantial proportions. “It’s a nineteen-eighty-eight Yoichi single malt,” he said, pouring a measure into the cap and handing it to Jacques, who raised it in a toast to his cousin-in-law with an appreciative smile. Capucine shook her head in dismay.
A good hour and a half later they were well satiated with Odile’s hams and cheeses and bubbling over with the effects of her cider. But despite the steaming espresso from thermoses and the rest of the Yoichi from Alexandre’s flask, they felt the autumn chill.
“Well,” said Alexandre with the sort of smile Capucine supposed Napoleon had worn at Austerlitz, “I guess there’s nothing else to do but pedal back to the château. You were quite right, my dear. All this exercise has done me a world of good.”
The road home was Capucine’s favorite part of the forest. Half a mile before the village, the road narrowed into a lane which fed into a wooden trestle bridge over a long and narrow lake. The seventeenth-century architects who had dug the lake had shortened the bridge by building long embankments jutting out from either bank and preserved them from erosion by planting rows of beeches. Over the years the branches had reached across the track to intertwine in a dense canopy, effectively blotting out all the light, save for the occasional dramatic primrose shaft. For Capucine the moment when the cavernous track suddenly debouched onto the brilliance of the lake had always been magical.
But that afternoon the narrow lane was jammed with cars and thronged with olive-clad followers rushing back and forth with the purposefulness of ants or witnesses at a road crash. But this was no accident. The entire hunt in its green-coated glory had taken up position on the pencil-thin bridge.
Capucine, Alexandre, and Jacques pushed their bicycles through the crowd out to the center of the bridge, where a small van with a dinghy strapped to its top seemed to mark the command post. The master grandly sat on his horse next to the van and surveyed the lake, which was covered with dark, dangerous-looking, thin black ice sloshing with puddles of icy water. The center of attention was the stag, which made pained progress across the ice, slipping constantly, falling to its knees every now and then, only to get up and continue on, playing out its last few cards. It was a wrenching sight even for the hardest of hearts.
“Bon,” said the master decisively to the rider next to him, the senior hunt servant, mysteriously called a piqueux since medieval times. “A toi—it’s your move.”
The piqueux dismounted and unsheathed a rifle from under his saddle flap, a lever-action .30-30 Winchester, the rifle that Hollywood Westerns made famous.
“Not exactly the weapon I’d choose for a long shot like that,” Jacques said to Capucine in the tone one professional uses to another. Their intimacy was not lost on Alexandre.
As the piqueux went down on one knee and used the bridge’s railing as a rest for the rifle’s barrel, two paysans began to remove the boat from the roof of the van and prepared to put it on the ice. Their plan was obvious—push the boat across the ice to the deer and use it as a life raft in case the ice gave way.
Jacques resumed his Virgil’s mantle and commented on the scene to Alexandre. “The master’s made a complete balls-up. These big stags love to swim out on the lake to get away from the hounds, but this one must have been addled by all the yummy sex he had last night and made a bad tactical error by going out on thin ice. If they don’t shoot him, he’ll break through, drown, and sink to the bottom. Some left-wing journalist is sure to be lurking and will make coinage of an atrocity of that order.” Jacques indicated the far bank with a nod of his head. A large crowd from the village had collected on the far side.
“Nothing excites the lumpenproletariat more than a cruel death. The part that’s meant to entertain the gentry is the brave chaps in the little boat. They pray the ice won’t break and they can push it out there fast enough to get to the deer before it goes under. You’ll see. It’s going to be a sporting event. I’ll bet you twenty-five euros they get the deer just in the nick of time.”
The piqueux fired his first shot. The sharp crack rolled out across the ice and echoed back from the far bank. The deer took no notice and continued its desperate struggle. The piqueux drew a deep breath, worked the rifle’s lever, and fired another shot. The deer jerked slightly and scrabbled wildly in the icy slush until its forelegs plunged through a breach, imprisoning its body.
“What a buffoon,” Jacques said to Alexandre. “He hit him in the abdomen. That’s not going to do anyone any good.”
The piqueux fired a third shot, another clear miss. Jacques snorted, loud enough to turn some heads.
The men with the boat made good progress, scuttling along on their knees, one hand on the gunwale of the boat, the other on the ice. The ice crackled under their weight but held.
At the fourth shot the deer collapsed and fell over at a forty-five-degree angle, supported by his legs trapped in the hole. Capucine fervently hoped he was dead and not just stunned. At the same moment the ice around the boat gave way and the two men jumped in, soaking wet. A pair of oars appeared and one man began rowing. The ice was so thin that it broke easily at each stroke of the oars. The second paysan sat primly in the stern, his weight raising the bow out of the water, creating a perfect icebreaker.
As the dinghy approached the deer, the surrounding ice fractured and the animal began to sink. The men just managed to secure a loop of rope around its antlers, hauled the deer fast against the stern of the dinghy, and began to row back. The emotions on the bridge were ambivalent, the relief of success tainted by the pathos of the scene.
On the town side of the lake the crowd had grown considerably and seemed to have split around two distinct focal points. Even though they were a good five hundred yards away, it was clear that while most of the spectators seemed riveted on the boat towing the dead deer, a smaller group seemed interested in something on the ground. Capucine saw two gendarmes approach at a run.
She nudged Jacques, who understood immediately. The two cousins jumped on their bicycles and pedaled off at speed. Alexandre, who had missed the exchange, hesitated and then followed at his sedate pace, his bicycle squeaking loudly.
Capucine’s worst fears were confirmed. The crowd was huddled around the supine body of a man. Three gendarmes had given up the effort to keep them at a distance. This time they recognized Capucine as she pushed through, and they straightened up, saluting smartly.
A man was lying on the gravel at the edge of the lake, his sweater soaked in blood, an all-too-familiar black hole gaping in the middle of his chest.
CHAPTER 14
A dank gloom weighed heavily over the dinner table that night. The dining room seemed damper; the Réveillon wallpaper seemed to peel more severely; the root vegetable soup seemed more bland. Even Jacques was despondent.
It turned out that the man who had been shot had worked at the élevage. Oncle Aymerie had learned from Vienneau that he was a native of the village who had been a hand at the élevage for close to fifteen years. Even though the latest death supported Oncle Aymerie’s suspicions, he seemed mo
re depressed than vindicated. Capucine suspected he felt he was letting “his” village down since he was unable to stay the malignant tide.
The minute they rose from the table, Oncle Aymerie shuffled off to his room and Alexandre, Capucine, and Jacques made for the library to seek what solace the château’s cave could provide.
Capucine moodily prodded the logs in the fireplace back into flame. “Three deaths in a month does seem a bit much, even at what Alexandre persists in calling the marchland of French civilization.”
Jacques had his head deep in a cabinet under the bookshelves, noisily shuffling the stock of liqueurs. “Urrrmfllll!” he said, his voice muffled by the enclosure and drowned out by the loud tintinnabulation of the clinking bottles.
“Got it! This will cheer us up. Alexandre, it’s going to be your saint’s day.” Jacques proudly held up a bleach bottle with a faded antique label.
“What I was saying, my shapely little cousin, is that I wouldn’t be too hasty assuming these are murders. Don’t forget that our beloved yokelry has been notoriously cavalier with firearms since our suckling days. Where else on earth but Saint-Nicolas would you see someone shooting across a frozen lake in the direction of a large crowd with absolutely no one thinking that might be a dangerous thing to do?”
“What’s in that bottle? I’m hoping it’s not really bleach,” Alexandre asked, loyal as ever to his guiding sense of priorities.
“This, très cher cousin, is one of the château’s great treasures. Just before the war there was a gardener here who was very fond of making alcool de poire—pear liqueur. He would take his pear juice to the copper alembic owned by the canton and distill pure nectar.
“This good man was clever enough to guess what those Boche Nazis would get up to when they reached here, so he put up all his stock of poire in bleach bottles and hid them in the commons. Decades later Capucine and I—when we were taking a short break from our childish pursuits,” he said, leering and elbowing Alexandre in the ribs theatrically—“found the stash.”
“You’re right, of course,” Capucine said. “But it’s just become too much. I’m going to need to investigate.”
“I thought you were already,” Alexandre said. “Spirits are not supposed to age, but this stuff certainly has. There’s not even a hint of pear, but there is a definite note of bleach. I wonder how scrupulous your gardener was in cleaning out his bottles.”
“Sweetheart, there’s a whole world of difference between a little poking around and a proper investigation. For starters, I’m going to pay a formal visit to the good capitaine de gendarmerie and find out what actual work has been done on these cases.”
“You might have a hard time with that one,” Alexandre said. It was no longer clear if the subject was alcool de poire or gendarmes.
Capucine plopped down on her husband’s lap and sipped the water-clear, slightly toxic liquid from a delicately stemmed crystal liqueur glass with a chipped base. It might taste of bleach, but it was certainly effective. “I thought I saw you doing an inordinate amount of gossiping at the rendezvous. What did you find out? Come on, out with it,” she said, rubbing the tumescence of her husband’s stomach.
“Le Capitaine de Gendarmerie Départementale Augustin Dallemagne would appear to be a very frustrated man. It seems his ambition was to become an army officer, but he was neither smart enough nor from a good enough family to get into Saint-Cyr. He was also frustrated in his other great ambition, to marry well—an aristocrat or a grande bourgeoise at the very least. He settled for the gendarmerie and for a woman who is attractive enough and who has a good bit of money since her father owns a large Mercedes distributorship in Lyon.”
“My dear, the things you can learn in so little time!”
“It’s my training as a journalist. And there’s a good deal more,” Alexandre said with studied modesty. “The good capitaine tried very hard to become introduced into the society of Saint-Nicolas when he arrived two years ago. But, naturally, the harder he tried, the more he was rejected. In the end he gave up and is just counting the days until his next posting, which will be in eight and a half months.”
“My heart bleeds,” Jacques said, pouring everyone more alcool de poire.
“The irony is that the village adores Madame Dallemagne, who bakes delicious pastry and is a paragon among mothers. She’s become a welcome addition to all the village teas and bridge afternoons.”
“That must drive her husband wild,” Capucine said.
“It does. And here’s the best part. It seems that the capitaine is particularly jealous of you, not only because of your social position in the village and—I blush to even mention it—your title, but also because of the brilliant success of your career in the Police Judiciaire. I hardly think he’s going to welcome you with open arms as a colleague when you start up your little investigation.”
“Have you been assigned an active role in the investigation? I received no communication to that effect,” Capitaine Dallemagne said crisply over the telephone.
“Good heavens, no, Capitaine. It’s nothing more than occupational curiosity. Since I’ve been down here, three people have been shot. All three worked for the business of one of my uncle’s close friends. Any flic’s ears would prick up, don’t you think?”
“It seems an odd way to spend one’s holiday, madame, but you’re welcome to stop by the gendarmerie if it pleases you. Come at eleven tomorrow. We’ll have a cup of coffee, and I’ll tell you the very little there is to be told.”
Capucine thought that he didn’t seem to be anywhere near as bad as the village made him out to be. But that was before things started to go downhill.
The coffee turned out to be more drinkable than what the Police Judiciaire usually offered, and the gendarmerie, as clean and efficient as an army facility, was poles apart from the seediness of any Paris PJ installation.
“So what precisely is it you want to know, Commissaire ?” the capitaine asked as prissily as a cormorant, his lips tightly pursed and his neck muscles stretched.
“I just wanted to learn what the official view was on these deaths. Purely informally, of course.”
“By these deaths, Commissaire, I assume you mean the one at the demonstration in the town square and the one at the hunt yesterday. The view of the gendarmerie is that they were both the result of accidental discharges of firearms, nothing more.”
“And was that confirmed by the autopsies?”
“Madame, the gendarmerie only performs autopsies in the event of a criminal death. Obviously, for accidental deaths we do not. It intensifies the grief of the family, serves no useful purpose, and increases the burden on the taxpayer.”
“So no autopsies were performed?” Capucine was astonished.
“Madame, we are not in Paris here. The gendarmerie surgeon examined the body of the victim who died at the demonstration and extracted a Brenneke solid from the wound. As I’m sure I don’t have to tell you, these Brenneke solids are used commonly by paysans when they hunt big game. The fact that he was killed by one is an obvious indication that the shot was fired by one of the villagers during the commotion. This is exactly the sort of tragedy that will continue to occur until more stringent arms controls are put into effect.”
“I see. And what about the death at the lake?”
“The body is still downstairs. The gendarmerie medical officer will examine it when he arrives at some point this week. But I can tell you, I have had a great deal of experience with gunshot wounds and this one is fully consistent with a thirty-thirty fired from the piqueux’s Winchester.”
“But the trajectory is all wrong. Since the piqueux had been aiming at the deer, the elevation would not have been sufficient for the bullet to have reached the other side of the lake.”
“Ah, you see, that’s exactly why it’s so obviously an accident. The piqueux missed the deer. The bullet ricocheted off the ice and into the crowd. It seems impossible for it to have been otherwise.”
“I see,”
said Capucine. “And what about the man who died three weeks ago at Maulévrier? Was an autopsy done on that one?”
The capitaine looked sincerely puzzled and shuffled through the papers in the right-hand drawer of his desk. He finally extracted a thin file and said, “Of course, the shooting accident. I’d forgotten about it. That sort of thing happens all the time. We certainly don’t have the time to investigate those. Good Lord, if we did, I’d have to ask for another platoon of gendarmes.”
“So what happened to the body?”
“I have no idea. I’m sure it was buried.”
“Capitaine, you have a very different way of treating these incidents than we do in Paris.”
“Of course we do, madame. What would be highly suspicious on the streets of Paris is nothing more than commonplace on the dirt roads of the country.”
CHAPTER 15
At eight o’clock the next morning, while Capucine was at breakfast in the petit salon, Gauvin announced she had a phone call. As he accompanied her to the cloakroom, he whispered conspiratorially, “It’s Capitaine Dallemagne, and he sounds very official.”
“Madame,” said Dallemagne, “if you would care to stop by the gendarmerie today, I have some supplemental information that will resolve our discussion of yesterday and put your mind at rest. I would be able to receive you at ten this morning.” Gauvin was right. Dallemagne did seem to have risen to new heights of self-importance.
At the gendarmerie she was shown into Dallemagne’s office and invited to sit across the desk from him. It was as if she were being interviewed formally in a case.
“Voilà, madame, the gendarmerie surgeon came by on his rounds yesterday and examined the body of, ahh”—he glanced down at a file on his desk—“Bellec, Lucien. The death was from a gunshot wound in the chest. He extracted the bullet and measured it. Seven-point-eight-four-nine millimeters. Exactly the diameter of the bullet from the thirty-thirty Winchester the piqueux was shooting. So you see it is irrefutable that it was an accident.”
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