by Katie Penryn
I parked at the foot of the steps to save Jean-Claude from having to walk too far. Felix jumped out to unload the wheelchair and carry it into the hall. I gave my arm to Jean-Claude who shuffled slowly up from step to step calling out, “Hélène? Hélène? Where are you?”
Madame Brune met us in the doorway. “Madame has not returned from her ride, monsieur. I didn’t know whether I should do something about it or not. She hasn’t been gone that long. A few hours. Maybe she found something that took her interest or stopped to visit with someone.”
Jean-Claude bustled as fast as he could in his semi-lame state into the hall brushing Madame Brune aside. “Stupid woman. How could she be talking to anyone? There’s nothing around for miles but vines, and more vines.”
For a man usually so courteous, his treatment of his housekeeper shocked me.
He turned to us. “I’m seriously worried now. Hélène is an excellent horsewoman, but she may have met with an accident.”
Felix exchanged glances with me. The summer joy had flown the moment we walked through the front door. A frisson of alarm ran up my spine. Not another accident when the couple were still recovering from the first one?
“What about her horse?” Felix asked Madame Brune. “Has it returned, madame?”
“No, monsieur,” she said shaking her head. “Nor the dogs. Madame took the two dogs with her and they haven’t come back either.”
Jean-Claude took heart at that. “She could be all right then. If Toto had thrown her, he would have made his way home.”
Another frisson ran up my spine. My intuition would not lie down.
“We should look for her,” I said. “She’s been gone a long time and we don’t have any explanation. And why isn’t she answering her phone when Jean-Claude calls her?”
Jean-Claude put his hand on my arm. “Really? You think we should do something? I’m not being foolish worrying about her?”
“Not in the least.”
Felix started walking back towards the front door and waved to Jean-Claude to follow him outside again. “If Penzi’s concerned we should pay attention. She has special faculties and is seldom wrong.”
“Oh my,” Jean-Claude replied and began to hobble after Felix. I hastened to give him some support and called back to Madame Brune. “Ring Monsieur if Madame returns before we do.”
She nodded. “Of course.”
*
We settled Jean-Claude again in the front seat.
“You know where she usually rides?” I asked him.
He gave me an odd look which I couldn’t interpret. Did he know or didn’t he?
“Jean-Claude, I need to know which way to drive. Left or right?” I insisted.
When he didn’t answer Felix suggested we drive slowly up and down the main road scanning for a sight of the horse which would tower above the vines. The search along the main road proved fruitless.
“She must be off-road, Jean-Claude,” I said. I asked him again if he knew where she usually rode.
“Of course, I know her favorite rides. I often go with her, but obviously I can’t at the moment. Take a right here and run down this track between the vines.”
I turned off and as we bumped our way down the unsurfaced lane, we scanned the vines on either side.
“We’ll see her easily if she’s still on horseback,” he said. “The vines only come up to the horse’s shoulders.”
At the end of the lane we came to a riverlet, and I stopped the car. Felix and I climbed out and had a look around, but couldn’t see anything to suggest Hélène had been there recently with her horse. No fresh piles of manure. No broken reeds or flattened flag irises on the banks.
We reported back to Jean-Claude who said, “I thought she might be taking a break here. She often comes this way and stops to water her horse.”
We had to turn back the way we’d come. As we drew closer to the main road again, Jean-Claude sank down into himself and his face lost its color. I couldn’t help but think he knew something he wasn’t telling us.
“Where next?” I asked him as I again faced the decision to turn right or left.
“Take the next turning,” he said in a subdued tone. “It’s possible she’s gone down there although it’s not her favorite.”
Again I wondered why he thought she might have taken that track, but I took the turning and once more the car bounced over the uneven surface for about a quarter of a mile towards a patch of rough scrubland at the foot of a rocky incline that rose unexpectedly out of the middle of the vines. With fifty yards left to go, a horse appeared in our view. I rolled to a gentle stop a safe distance away and the three of us got out of the car.
“It’s Toto,” said Jean-Claude stumbling towards him. “But no sign of Hélène,” he said as he gave the surroundings a quick survey. I don’t like this. She’d never leave her horse and go off.”
At that moment a dog barked in alarm in the scrub away to our left, startling the horse which was already snorting with fright at our sudden appearance. He shuffled and bucked against the reins which held him tethered to one of the posts holding up the wire supports for the vines. While Jean-Claude took hold of his reins and gentled him, Felix and I ran towards the bushes homing in on the barking. A few feet in, we met a German shepherd his feet planted in a stance of challenge, his ears back and his hackles up. Felix crouched down, tendering his hand, and called out softly, “Here, boy.”
The dog ignored his overtures and increased the pitch of his barks.
Felix whispered, “Penzi, do your stuff. Talk to the poor animal before it tears itself apart.”
I stepped out from behind Felix. “He has to be one of Hélène’s dogs.”
“I would have guessed so,” said Felix.
I thought back to our first visit to the château. What were their dogs called? Something and something. Juno and… of course, Jupiter.
I turned sideways to the anxious dog and looked off to the side to show I wasn’t a threat and coaxed him in my best witch’s voice. “Hey, Jupiter. It’s us. You know us. We’re your mum’s friends.”
I held out my hand and advanced slowly towards him keeping my body aslant. “Come on, boy.”
He jerked his head forwards and took a quick sniff of my hand. His posture relaxed. He gave me a half wag of his tail, but he was still on guard.
“What have you got here, Jupiter?” I asked him.
His ears pricked up and his tail wagged again as he advanced towards me.
He let me stroke him and I swear he sighed.
“Oh, thank goodness, you’re here,” he said. “I thought no one was ever coming to investigate. How wonderful that you can talk to me.”
“I’m a white witch, Jupiter, and like all my kind I’m here to listen to your problems. Now tell me what’s wrong.”
“Here, I’ll show you. Follow me.”
Chapter 9
Jupiter turned and walked slowly further into the scrub and fetched up right against the high rocky outcrop. At the foot lay the other dog, his sister Juno. Her tongue hung out of her mouth and flopped up and down as she panted heavily. She tried to rise as we appeared in her line of sight, but it was obvious she couldn’t. She had to be hurt. Felix and I hurried up to her.
“What monster is responsible for this?” Felix asked as we both saw the cause of her distress.
The teeth of an iron trap had snapped closed around her foot pinioning it to the ground which was soaked with her blood. She’d aggravated the wound in her attempts to free herself. Her flesh was torn and the bone exposed.
Felix immediately set to work to spring the trap. Surprisingly, it opened at his first attempt. I’d expected it to be stiff with rust, but the spring answered Felix’s touch smoothly, and Juno was free. She tried to stand on her three good legs and made it for a moment only to fall back weakened by the loss of blood.
Jupiter snuffled up to her and licked her to comfort her. She whined and shuddered.
“Is she going to be all right?” he a
sked me.
“If we’re to save that foot we have to get her to the vet immediately,” I said, “but we have a problem. We can’t find your mum. Do you know what happened to her?”
“Come with me,” he said.
Felix picked up Juno, saying, “I’ll put her on the back seat and hurry back.”
Jupiter looked at me and cocked his head towards the left along the foot of the outcrop. I pushed through the bushes following him closely, trusting that he would scare away any snakes in the neighborhood. We arrived at a clump of tall reeds growing out of the soggy ground. There had to be an underground spring thereabouts.
“Careful,” Jupiter called out. “We’re almost on it.”
It?
Light filtered through the last few feet of the reeds. We’d arrived at a small clearing. Sprawled across the edge closest to the rocks lay Hélène, her body in the open, her legs in the reeds. My guts somersaulted and dread halted my steps.
“Hélène?” I called out. “Hélène?”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t move. Fearing the worst I shook myself alert and rushed over to her. One look and I knew, but I had to check. I felt her neck for a pulse hoping against hope, but in vain. Hélène was dead. Dead all alone out there in the middle of acres of the vines that produce eau-de-vie, the water of life. The fateful irony hit me hard. I swayed on my feet for a few seconds before I managed to recover my balance. I quickly surveyed her body noting nothing out of the ordinary until I reached her calves. Like a vicious blow of déjà-vu, her left foot hung almost off her leg, caught in a trap; this one four times the size of the one Juno had stepped in. For a moment I blacked out unable to accept the evidence of my eyes. Beautiful, charismatic Hélène lying mangled all alone.
My vision cleared when Jupiter licked my hand.
“I couldn’t stay with her,” he said. “She was dead, but Juno was still alive and needed me. I had to make a difficult choice. It wasn’t that I was disloyal.”
I stroked his ears. “Jupiter, No one could fault your decision. You’re a good brave dog. Now, let’s get some help.”
I scrambled part way up the rock face to a ledge above the reeds and scrub. The car was a good sixty yards away. Felix was on his way back to us.
I shouted, “Over here,” and waved my arms to save him from having to trace my path. “Hurry.”
“Right,” he called back.
He skirted the rough terrain at a run and then dived into the scrub and ran towards us as the crow flies.
“What?” he said breathlessly as he broke into the clearing.
He stopped short when he caught sight of Hélène on the ground.
“Felix, she stepped in a trap. Another one much larger than the other. She’s dead.”
“She can’t be?”
He knelt down beside me to get a better look at her injury and gasped.
“Cruel fate must be laughing. It’s the same injury as Jean-Claude suffered but this time she’s bled out. It’s as if Jean-Claude’s accident was a dress rehearsal. We must free her and cover her up before he sees what’s happened to her.”
“No,” I said staying his hand as he was about to release the spring. “I don’t like the look of this. See how clean the trap is. This has been placed here recently.”
Felix scoffed at me. “Penzi, man traps have been illegal for nearly two hundred years.”
“I know that. And I know leg-hold animal traps like the one that got poor Juno have been outlawed in the EU since 1995. I was involved in a case of animal cruelty in England which involved wolf traps.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Both the traps we’ve seen today have been maintained recently. They aren’t just lying here hidden in the bushes as a left-over from decades ago. Someone has placed them here recently. We mustn’t touch anything or move Hélène. I’m phoning the police now.”
As I shut down my phone after making the call Felix asked, “You suspect foul play… murder even?”
“Difficult to say,” I answered, puzzled by the whole scenario. “How would anyone know who the victim would be? And it’s not as if you’d get poachers in the middle of a vineyard, is it?”
“Or wolves,” said Felix.
“Wolves are making a comeback, Felix. They’ve been sighted this far north. But it’s still illegal to trap them.”
“Oh my God… Jean-Claude. You’ll have to tell him we’ve found Hélène. I’ll stay here while you deal with Jean-Claude and the police. Here,” he said thrusting his hip flask at me. “You’ll probably need this. For Jean-Claude.”
I put in my pocket and turned to leave. “And we must get Juno to the vet,” I called back to him as I hurried away.
“Penzi?” Felix shouted out.
“Yes?” I stopped to listen.
“Slow down. There might be more traps out there. We don’t want you to be the third victim. Bad things tend to run in three’s around here. You don’t have nine lives like me.”
For someone with such a hard business head, Felix could be incredibly superstitious at times, but I took more care on the way back than I had on the way into the bushes. As I emerged from the undergrowth, Jean-Claude was limping his way to meet me. Fortunately, he hadn’t made much progress, and I was able to stop him and lead him back to the car where I made him sit down in the passenger seat.
“What’s happened?” he asked. “I know something has. Did you find Hélène?”
I crouched down so that I could speak to him at his level. “Jean-Claude, brace yourself.”
“I knew it,” he said with a sob and dropped his face into his hands. “She’s hurt isn’t she?”
I reached up to cover his hands with mine. “I’m so sorry. She’s met with an accident.”
He gave a great gulp. “Oh no, not Hélène? We must phone for an ambulance.”
I drew his hands down and held them tightly. “Jean-Claude. We’ve phoned for the police. Hélène is dead.”
He dropped his head onto the dashboard and gave way to great heaving sobs. I unstopped the flask and poured some whisky into the cap. Gently raising his head I held the cap to his lips and encouraged him to drink. He gulped it down and began to beat his head with his fists. “I can’t believe it,” he said. “What happened?”
As kindly as I could, I explained to him what Felix and I had found. “I must go to her,” he said struggling to push me out of the way so he could get out of the car.
“There is nothing you can do. We have to wait for the police.”
“Why the police?” he asked. When I didn’t answer, he sat back and stared out at the rough land in the distance. “Oh,” he said suddenly as he put two and two together. “You don’t think it was an accident?”
“Let’s say I’m uneasy about the circumstances. We should treat this as a suspicious death.”
He wiped his tears away on his sleeve. “If only I’d been with her as I would have usually been.”
He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes, lost in his despair and grief. I meanwhile had to work out the logistics of getting Juno to the vet, and Jupiter and Toto back to the château with only one vehicle. The horse was the most difficult problem to solve. Felix wouldn’t allow me to ride him back on my own, nor would he ride him back leaving me on my own. I asked Jean-Claude if there was someone I could call to come and fetch Toto. It turned out he had some friends from Paris staying and one of them was a good rider. Jean-Claude dialed the number for me and I arranged for the couple to come immediately to pick up Hélène’s horse. The husband would ride him back and the wife would take Jupiter back to the château. Next Jean-Claude phoned the vet and told him we had an emergency. He’d be there immediately he said. Juno whimpered. The sooner the better.
As I rang off, the police siren sounded in the distance. Toto kicked up his feet and pulled at his reins as the volume increased with the approach of the vehicle. I suggested to Jean-Claude he go over and soothe the poor horse. It gave him something to do while the police veh
icle drew closer and closer and stopped alongside our car. Four gendarmes stepped out and my heart lightened. I’ve never been so pleased to see anyone in all my life as I was to see Dubois. At least we’d be dealing with someone we knew.
“What are you doing here, Dubois? So far from your usual location?” I asked him as we shook hands.
“Penzi, I might have guessed you’d be somewhere around. You have an instinct for finding trouble. I’m on secondment to the Cognac office; passing on my knowledge of murder investigations.”
“This looks like an accident, Dubois.”
“But you’re not happy about it?”
“I wouldn’t say happy was the right word, but, yes… as you would say, quelquechose cloche. Something’s not right. Can you leave one of your people here with Monsieur de Portemorency if I show you the way? The monsieur’s lame, and he needs to be here to see his horse back home.”
We set off to the scene of the accident. Behind us the vet drew up. Juno would be receiving emergency treatment and maybe her paw could be saved. I wished the same could be said for poor Hélène. And then I remembered her children playing happily at home in the château all unknowing.
When we reached Felix and the crime scene, Dubois knelt down and examined Hélène’s injury and then the man trap.
“I see what you mean, Penzi. Someone has placed this here recently. At the very least we’re looking at the illegal use of a man trap and the resulting manslaughter of Madame de Portemorency. At the most… well…” and he shrugged. “Murder requires intent. How could the perpetrator have targeted Madame de Portemorency? The whole incident doesn’t make any sense from that point of view.”
“I’m as confused as you are, Dubois. Man traps used to be laid to catch poachers or burglars.”
“To protect one’s assets,” Felix said. He waved his arm indicating the clearing and the rock face. “What could anyone be protecting here? You can hardly steal vines.”
