Then he picked up the scent of roasting meat on the faint breeze. Had the hunters caught a wild boar and were roasting it in the open air? But it didn’t smell like boar, or like venison, and there was no smell of woodsmoke that would have signaled an open fire. He felt the ground change under his feet from gravel to what felt and sounded like concrete and then he smelled the stables and suddenly he knew. They have bought me a saddle of my own, he told himself, something that would have been beyond his own slender purse.
Bruno felt straw under his feet and the smell of horses was very strong. Through the blindfold he sensed a glare of light. He was steered forward and then turned, and he heard the rest of the party lining up behind and around him.
“This is the one,” he heard Pamela say, and someone took his hand and placed something round and smooth in his palm. He felt a stem. It was an apple. Then the blindfold was removed and he was temporarily blinded by the flare of light.
“Bruno, this is Hector,” Pamela said. “Hector, this is Bruno, your new master, and he’s going to give you an apple.”
A soft muzzle brushed against his hand as Bruno’s vision cleared and he found himself looking into the intelligent eye of a horse the color of a perfectly ripe chestnut. Its ears were alert and pointed, its mane dark and its teeth white and strong as gently it took the apple from Bruno’s paralyzed hand.
“You can stroke him,” came Pamela’s voice. “You can even ride him if you want. He’s yours. Happy birthday, dear Bruno, from all your friends.”
“We began collecting at Christmas, just after you got those Chinese kids out of the fire. Everybody who signed the card contributed to your gift,” said the mayor, as they took their places around Pamela’s table, every leaf installed to stretch it to the fullest extent.
A generous serving of pate de foie gras studded with truffles lay before each guest, with a glass of chilled Monbazillac to accompany it. There were two more plates beneath the foie, two more wineglasses at every place, and from the array of knives and forks and spoons that surrounded his plates Bruno knew that a feast lay in store.
There was an empty place, and then Ivan bustled in from the kitchen to fill it, sweeping his chef’s toque from his head and sitting down, raising his glass to Bruno. He must have closed his restaurant for the evening to be here, and from the look of him Ivan was doing the bulk of the cooking.
“No,” he said when Bruno began to speak. “I’m not allowed to tell you the menu. I can say it’s half English and half French, but that’s all.”
“The foie comes from the cupboard full of preserves that our friend Hercule left to me in his will, and I’m pleased that something of him is with us tonight,” the baron said. “And that’s Hercule’s wine in the carafes, a Chateau Haut-Brion, ’89.”
“Hercule bought four cases through me en primeur when I told him it was going to be one of the great wines,” said Hubert from down the table. “Back then, I got it for him at three thousand francs a case. Then that American Robert Parker gave it a hundred points, and the prices went through the roof. These days, if you can find it, the prices start at a thousand euros a bottle.”
Bruno looked down the table, where places were set for twenty people and a row of carafes of the richly dark wine stood glowing before them. Most of a case of Haut-Brion, he thought, and looked across at the baron and raised his glass.
“To Hercule,” he said. “Would that he could be here with us tonight.”
He savored the foie gras and its truffles, the creamy, refined richness of the foie and the earthy perfume of the truffle blending warmly together, two opposites that attracted each other and together created something much grander. He sipped the last of his Monbazillac as the plates were cleared, and then Ivan brought in the first of five large tureens, each with its own ladle, and began by serving Bruno.
“Ecrevisses a la nage,” Ivan announced, crayfish atop a broth of celery and fennel, onions and carrots. “I used the same Bergerac Sec that our friend Julien has provided to drink with this course.”
“It’s the one I made with Hubert’s advice,” said Julien, piling freshly opened bottles onto the table. He looked years younger than the dispirited man he had become when his wife was dying, and before the mayor had arranged for the entire town to invest in his vineyard. “We’re calling it cuvee Mirabelle, after her. It’s sixty percent sauvignon blanc, thirty-five percent semillon and five percent muscadelle. At the Domaine we’ll be making twice as much of it this year.”
A spoon was being tapped on a glass at the far end of the table. Bruno looked up to see Ivan standing there.
“Now for the English course, courtesy of Pamela,” he announced, and on cue, Pamela entered bearing a giant silver dish on which steamed an entire shoulder of beef.
“Courtesy of Ivan’s ovens,” Pamela said as she put the dish down on the table. “Mine wasn’t nearly big enough.”
With a theatrical flourish, Ivan waved a huge Sabatier knife and began to carve.
“The roast beef of old England,” said Ivan. “With Pamela’s own raifort which the bizarre English called the radish of horses, so it is very suitable for tonight.”
Dishes of roast potatoes and petit pois appeared on the table as Ivan piled slice after slice of perfectly done beef, still pink in the center, onto big serving plates that were passed down. Ivan’s server went back to the kitchen and returned with a tray filled with gravy bowls. Hubert rose to start pouring out the Haut-Brion and Pamela returned to Bruno’s side. She looked cool and serene, not a hair out of place, as if the vast joints of beef and the gravy had all appeared by magic and without the slightest effort on her part.
“This is magnificent, what you’ve done for me,” Bruno said, taking her hand.
“It’s not every day you have a big birthday,” she said, squeezing his hand in return.
“This is the first time I’ve really had a birthday at all,” he said. “I never knew what I was missing.”
“Well, brace yourself, because next year won’t be quite so special. And besides, it’s not over yet.”
“How can there be more to come after such a gift, such a feast?”
“Well, I presume you’ll want to ride your new horse in the morning. That means you get to spend the night here,” she said, releasing his hand to run her fingertips up his thigh. “And now behave, because your friends want to drink another toast with the Haut-Brion and I can’t wait to taste it.”
17
Bruno and Pamela strolled arm in arm through the early morning light to the stables as she told him of his horse. Seven years old, it was of a breed known as a Selle Francais, the best-known sporting horse in the country and a national legend since it had won a gold medal for France at the Seoul Olympics. The Selle Francais was mainly of Anglo-Norman breed, which Pamela explained had combined English Thoroughbreds descended from Arab stallions with the medieval warhorses of Normandy. The result was a classic show jumper and hunter, easily trained, sturdy and of calm disposition. Hector was a gelding and had been a good jumper but a little slow for steeplechasing and so had spent the last three years in a riding school that was cutting back because of the recession. One of Pamela’s friends had heard that Hector was for sale at a bargain price, and she and the mayor and the baron had decided this would make the perfect gift for Bruno.
“I’ve ridden him and he’s intelligent, safe and very strong,” she said. “He won’t get you into trouble and he’ll probably manage to rescue you from anything stupid.”
“He sounds like you,” Bruno said, and kissed the side of her neck. Despite last night and this morning, he still felt amorous.
“Not in the stables,” she replied, hugging him quickly before pushing him away. “Now, Bruno, this is serious. This is your first ride on Hector and it will define your relationship. Remember what I told you.”
Repeatedly and softly murmuring his horse’s name, Bruno let himself into Hector’s stall, a carrot in his hand, and waited for the horse to approach him. Hec
tor ambled across, took the carrot and stood still for Bruno to caress his head and neck, to run his hands over the back and chest and legs and get the horse accustomed to his touch. Hector meanwhile was turning his head to watch and sniff at Bruno, probably smelling the extra carrots he carried in his pocket.
Bruno carried out the full inspection as he had been taught, eyes, mouth and ears, hooves and fetlocks. He gently put on the bridle and led the horse out to the yard and walked him around while Pamela saddled Bess, and Fabiola emerged yawning from her gite to attend to Victoria. Once the other two horses were saddled and mounted, Bruno brought Hector back into the stable, saddled him and walked him out to stand between the others. He kept patting Hector’s neck and murmuring into his ear and waited until the horse settled before mounting him.
“We’ll just walk around the paddock at first,” said Pamela, leading the way.
Hector was a couple of hands taller than Victoria, Bruno’s usual ride, so he felt much higher in the saddle. The spring of the ribs was about the same, so his thighs and knees were comfortable, and Hector felt well balanced beneath him. He responded smoothly when Pamela led them into a trot, showing no signs of impatience or tugging on the reins. Pamela paused by the gate to watch as Bruno took Hector on a couple more circuits and then she opened the gate from the paddock and led the way out to the open land that stretched up to the ridge above St. Denis.
From the trot she raised the pace to a slow canter, and for the first time Bruno felt the power of Hector’s muscles as his horse stretched into an easy rhythm that was as familiar as if they had been riding together for years. He could sense Hector’s enjoyment of the run, the open land and the feel of the wind going past them, the effortless way the horse ate up the distance, his pace not slackening as they took the slope to the ridge.
“I told you he was a good horse,” Pamela said, laughing with pleasure as he reined in beside her atop the ridge.
“He seems happy,” Bruno replied. He looked at Pamela and felt a rush of tenderness. Hector walked in slow circles around Pamela and Bess, as if eager to start again as they waited for Fabiola to catch up on Victoria. Hector’s breathing was normal, but plumes of mist came from his nostrils as his warm breath reached the chill morning air. Bruno leaned down to pat Hector’s neck. “And I’m a very happy rider.”
“We’ll walk them round the edge of the woods and then try a gentle gallop,” Pamela said. “I don’t want him going through trees until you know each other better.”
She took them from a trot to a canter and then as the last of the trees passed behind them she bent over Bess’s neck and loosened the reins and urged her into a gallop. Beneath him, Bruno felt the surge as Hector followed, running well within himself but seeming to bound forward as if he’d been yearning for this. In a few strides, he drew level with Bess and then pulled ahead as if all Hector wanted to see before him was open ground.
From the wind around his ears Bruno knew he was going faster than ever before, but Hector’s stride was smooth and his seat felt as steady as rock. A fleeting thought struck Bruno that he might almost be able to hold a full glass of wine without spilling a drop. Putain, but this was a marvelous horse. Moving as one with another living creature, sharing the same rhythm and the same movement and feeling the play of strength and muscle of another being merging with his own, was an exhilaration. What was it that made him feel so close to animals? Bruno wondered. With his dog when they hunted, it was almost as if they could read each other’s mind, and now with Hector he felt the promise of a similar intimacy.
“I can see it in your face,” Pamela said when he finally reined in and she and Bess caught up before the slope that led down to her home. Her smile was wide and her eyes bright, even as her chest heaved from the gallop. “You felt it. You were at one with your horse. And on your first ride together, you lucky man. And now comes the hard part, rubbing him down and mucking out his stall. It’s not all thrills and gallops, Bruno. Just like love.”
Bruno was drying off from his shower in Pamela’s bathroom when he heard the town’s siren start its eerie whine, just before his phone rang. It was Albert telling him there had been some kind of fire at Gravelle’s, the small foie gras canning plant on the road to Les Eyzies. Bruno dressed in a hurry and skipped his shave, telling himself he should get one of those travel razors to keep in his van. He downed a coffee while explaining to Pamela his need to rush, kissed her good-bye and was on the road within three minutes. At least this could not be blamed on the Dutch girl, he told himself. She should be in Amsterdam by now.
“I found it when I came to open up,” said Arnaud Gravelle when Bruno arrived. He was the grandson of the founder of the family firm and now the manager since his father’s retirement the previous year. He was white faced and shaking. “I said it was a fire, but all this damage, I don’t know…”
The entire showroom at the front of the small factory was demolished, the windows gone and the remains of the flat roof sagging. Scores and perhaps hundreds of tins of foie gras and other delicacies were scattered around the parking lot amid broken bricks as if they had all been tossed by a giant hand. Gravelle also sold wine, and the floor of the place was awash with broken glass. By his foot Bruno saw a spiral of metal, like a spring. Whatever could that have been?
There were scorch marks on the walls of the factory, and some of the wood of the shattered window frames was still smoldering, but the inside of the place looked as if it had been destroyed by something more violent than fire.
“Have you looked around the whole building, or is the damage just here?” he asked.
Arnaud shook his head helplessly. “I got here and saw this and rang the pompiers.”
“Come with me, tell me if there’s anything unusual,” Bruno said. They set off to make a circuit around the outside of the plant. The wall nearest the road was clear apart from scorch marks, and the rear of the plant looked untouched. On one side of the building, he was not greatly surprised to find that someone had used an aerosol paint can to write arretez foie gras-peta. fr.
“Ever heard of these PETA types?” he asked.
Arnaud shook his head. “Heard of them, yes, but that’s all. We’ve had some nasty letters, but that was some time ago.”
“What are all these bricks doing, scattered around everywhere?” Bruno asked, hearing the siren of the fire engine coming down the road from the bridge. “Your showroom was mainly wood and glass.”
“We had a stack of bricks around the side for the extension we were planning,” Arnaud explained. “We hadn’t started building it yet, and now we’re ruined.”
“Are you insured?”
“For the building, yes, but not the stock. Putain, that was a bad mistake.” He turned away, putting his fist to his mouth as though to prevent himself being sick. The sound of the siren stopped and the fire engine pulled into the yard.
“You might be all right,” Bruno said. “This looks like more than just a fire to me.”
“I thought I told you to keep away from fires,” Albert said to Bruno by way of greeting, before peering into the wrecked showroom and looking curiously at the collapsed roof. He scratched his chin beneath the strap that secured his helmet, more like a habit in reflection than to relieve an itch.
“ Merde, this is a mess. But there’s not much of the fire left. In fact, I’m not sure this was a fire at all. See the way those tiles from the roof have been scattered out to the sides rather than fallen into the room. And most of the glass has been scattered inward.” He turned to Arnaud. “Did you have any explosives stored here? Propane gas tanks, dynamite, anything like that?”
“Explosives?” he looked bewildered. “Why would we need explosives?”
Ahmed climbed down from behind the wheel of the fire engine, and he and Albert clambered through what had been a window, trying to keep their balance on the small tins of foie gras that were underfoot. Albert turned back to Bruno, sniffing. “It smells a bit like cordite. Can you call Jeannot at the quarry?
I think we need his expertise.”
Bruno called him and asked Jeannot to come as soon as he could. It was no comfort that Albert shared his suspicions.
“How come you didn’t hear anything?” Bruno asked. “That’s your house around the back.”
“I didn’t spend the night there,” Arnaud said, hesitant.
“Well, I hope she’s not married because I’m going to have to check with her.”
For the first time, Arnaud smiled. “It’s not like that. It’s Mireille, from the florist’s, and we’re engaged. I’m at her flat in town most nights.”
“Congratulations,” Bruno said. “You kept that quiet. I hadn’t heard.”
“It’s my dad. He’s against it, you know, that old family thing.”
Bruno nodded. Arnaud’s grandfather had been wounded when serving with the Resistance in the war, and Mireille’s granddad had been a collabo. There were families where this still mattered.
“I think it was dynamite, and they certainly knew what they were doing,” said Albert, clambering out of the ruined showroom. “See those bricks and those metal springs?”
Bruno nodded. “I was wondering…”
Albert held up a bit of scorched rag. “I think it was a mattress. They used it to tamp down the explosion, covered with those bricks to weigh it down. It would direct the force of the explosion. That’s why the roof tiles were blasted off to the sides.”
He turned to Arnaud. “You must have some pretty serious enemies. Any idea who it could have been?”
Arnaud shook his head, hands in the air and mouth agape. “This is crazy. Who’d want to…” He broke off and turned to Bruno. “You saw that slogan on the wall. We get some of our ducks from Maurice. Do you think…?”
“Let’s hold our horses until Albert’s sure of what happened,” Bruno said. “We might need a forensic report.”
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