Pel And The Staghound

by Mark Hebden

  Pel finished his cigarette and ground it out in the ashtray as Darcy stopped the car on a stretch of ground bordering a reed-fringed pond outside the vast arched entrance. The gates had long since been removed and, inside, the enormous courtyard was a mixture of cobbles and frozen mud. A gigantic cedar grew in the middle, with an oak and a young elm, and all round them the flat walls of the abbey stretched away in a vast square studded with rows of small windows which had once opened into the cells of the monks. The wing to the left had been converted into apartments and there were curtains and lights in the winter gloom. At the roadway end of this wing, under the great gateway, was a small office and an opening through which they could see smoke and smell the sickly smell of boiling meat.

  As they halted in the courtyard, a door opened and a woman looked out. Seeing Pel, she turned and called to someone behind her. ‘They’ve arrived.’

  A man appeared in the doorway. He had the build of a jockey, his eyes flat and brooding, his face deeply lined by the weather. He wore breeches and a cap and was muffled into a heavy checked Canadienne.

  ‘Police?’ he asked.

  Pel nodded.

  ‘They telephoned to say you were coming. I’m Henri Fabre. I’m the huntsman. This is my wife, Michelline.’

  Pel glanced about him. ‘This where Monsieur Rensselaer keeps his hounds?’

  Fabre gestured to where the smoke rose. ‘Through there.’

  Following him, they found themselves in a small yard with a wall constructed of dressed logs. Along it a whole row of stag’s feet hung, trophies of the chase, pickled by the smoke. Several great vats steamed on stoves, and through the open doorway of a hut they could see more, smaller, drums simmering and giving off the sickening odour they had smelled outside.

  ‘We’ve just broken down a cow,’ Fabre said. ‘We got it from Villiers. It broke a leg and had to be shot.’ He gestured as a youngster with a bandaged hand appeared from inside the hut. He was barely out of his teens and was wearing a rubber apron and rubber boots. ‘This is Maurice. He’s the whipper-in.’

  ‘Maurice Cottu.’ The young man nodded at Pel, a strongly-built youth with a gypsy face, dark wild eyes and curling black hair worn in a thick mop round his ears. Despite his small hands and feet, he looked strong and capable.

  Fabre gestured at the muddy bandage. ‘You should get that changed,’ he said.

  Cottu grinned. ‘And you should get that bastard, Retif, out from wherever he’s hiding. Cutting up cows isn’t my job. He’s better at handling the knives than I am.’

  ‘Who’s Retif?’ Pel asked.

  ‘He’s the labourer. He’s an Algerian. He found his way here after the Algerian War.’

  The log wall ended in a wire-mesh fence and, in the field beyond, crowding at the gate, were the hounds. As they saw Fabre, all movement ceased and they waited, frozen in their positions, their bodies tense with excitement. There was a stifled whimper of anticipation then, as he opened the gate and moved into the field, he disappeared beneath a tide of black, white and tan bodies. One big dog-hound rose and put its forepaws on his shoulders; for a moment they stared each other in the eye.

  ‘Come on, old dog – !’

  Pushing the hound down, Fabre moved through the mêlée of eager bodies, addressing each hound by name, bending to look at torn ears and tender pads, talking all the time in the same hypnotic voice, his expression soft.

  ‘Victoire, here, boy! Victoire, good man! Here, Courageux! Valiant, old dog, here, then!’

  The hounds pressed round him, their sterns moving with pleasure as they caught his eye. As he spoke to them, they turned away, one after the other, satisfied.

  ‘This is Archer,’ he said gently, bending over an old hound with a scarred face. ‘He’s Monsieur Rensselaer’s favourite. He bought him himself and raised him in his own home.’

  Pel could just imagine the damage the waving tail would do in his own household, but Rensselaer’s house was doubtless more spacious than his and probably had a kitchen as big as Pel’s whole ground floor.

  ‘He often had Archer up in his apartment,’ Fabre went on. ‘Archer adored him. He misses him now. Perhaps that’s why he’s suddenly taken to escaping. He’ll probably have to be put down. Once they get the bug it’s hard to stop them.’

  ‘After sheep?’

  ‘Perhaps a fox. Perhaps a stag. More likely a bitch on heat somewhere.’

  Pel eyed his surroundings. They were bleak and cold in the extreme and there was no sign of neighbours. ‘What’s it like living here?’ he asked.

  ‘Bit hard in winter,’ Fabre admitted. ‘There’s not much leisure. For six months we keep the pack at the peak of fitness so they can cover a hundred or more kilometres in the space of a few hours if they have to, and sometimes they have to do it more than once a week. It’s hard work for them and for us. By the end of the season we all need a rest.’

  ‘Who feeds them?’

  ‘Anybody. Me. Maurice. Retif. Not my wife. She can’t stand the smell.’

  ‘What do they eat?’

  ‘Anything as long as it’s meat. These aren’t pet poodles. They’re hunting dogs. They’ll eat what they’re given – stags, horses, sick cows.’ Fabre smiled. ‘You, if they got the chance.’

  Pel eyed the grinning hounds uneasily. ‘What happens when they grow too old?’

  ‘They’re put down.’

  ‘Do you do it?’

  ‘I don’t like shooting hounds. I leave it to Maurice. I used to be a crack shot when I did my military service but these days I just stick to a shotgun for hares.’

  ‘And now? What stage of the season are you at now?’

  Fabre shrugged. ‘We’re right in the middle of it. Or we were. Monsieur Rensselaer was due here last weekend, but he didn’t turn up and we had to go out without him. Now, we’ve just stopped.’ Fabre hesitated as if he were uncertain what Pel expected, then he gestured. ‘Would you like to see the horses? It’s warm in there.’

  It seemed like a good idea to Pel. He wasn’t very concerned with horses but he fancied the warmth.

  The stable was a large stone building and, as they opened the door, a blast of foetid air came out at them. Huge heads, bay, chestnut, black and grey, turned towards them. The atmosphere was heavy with dung and wet straw, but it was as warm as if it were centrally heated.

  ‘If you ever felt like going out with us,’ Fabre said, ‘I could always find you a horse.’

  Pel gave him a shocked look.

  At the other end of the stable there was a chaff-cutting machine where Fabre stopped.

  ‘Monsieur Rensselaer likes to keep things neat,’ he said. ‘He says it’s the Belgian blood in him. His great-grandfather came from Antwerp, I think.’

  ‘Does he come here often?’ Pel asked.

  ‘At least once a week. More in the season, of course.’

  ‘It must cost him a lot, all this.’

  ‘Fodder’s expensive these days,’ Fabre agreed. ‘So’s the feed for the hounds. But we can always get a sick cow. If a horse breaks a leg or grows old he goes to the hounds too.’

  Pel was faintly shocked at the ruthlessness that demanded that a faithful horse which had carried its owner well should end its days as kennel meat.

  Fabre shrugged. ‘They’re not hard to please,’ he said. ‘And Monsieur Rensselaer’s always anxious that they’re well kept.’ He gestured. ‘We’ve got a good pack with good strains, some of them descended from the English hounds Louis XV ran. They were faster than the Norman ones and he brought them over. They’re full of stamina.’

  He paused, studying his feet, his dark jockey’s face intent. ‘He wanted to introduce a few pairs from Rambouillet, but those Paris hunts only do their hunting in forests with paths and avenues where there are joggers and spectators, and the stags have learned to follow the routes the cars use where the scent’s killed by the smell of petrol. There are even protesters. It’s a bit wilder here. More like the English hunts on Exmoor. This is a real pack. We
don’t exist for show. In the end he let me have my own way.’

  ‘Is he often wrong?’

  Fabre’s shoulders moved. ‘I grew up with horses. He’s only come to them recently. But you don’t argue too much. He’s got the money.’

  Leaving the stable, they found themselves once more in the great courtyard of the old abbey. Fabre gestured at the high grey walls. ‘This was once a fortress, as well as an abbey,’ he said. ‘There are dungeons.’

  He showed them into a dark cell, in the floor of which grates were set.

  ‘Oubliettes,’ Fabre said. ‘They used to put prisoners down there. And as often as not forgot to bring them up again. There’s a stream runs through them, bricked into a tunnel. It comes from the pond outside the abbey which is fed from the hills, and it runs out at the other end. It feeds eventually into the Seine. Let’s go to my place. We have a nice marc. We still make it here. The licence will disappear under the new laws if Monsieur Rensselaer —’

  Fabre paused and Pel looked at him quickly. ‘If Monsieur Rensselaer what?’

  Fabre lifted his head. ‘If he’s dead,’ he said bluntly. ‘As each owner dies, the licence goes with him. Monsieur Rensselaer got his from the previous owner, the Comte de Boulay. It’s been going for generations. But it’ll disappear if anything’s happened to Monsieur Rensselaer.’

  ‘Do you think something has happened?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Why do you say that then?’

  ‘Well, he’s disappeared, hasn’t he? Or so they say.’ Fabre made a helpless gesture with his hand. ‘We had to make excuses for him. I got in touch with his home and then with Maître Pujol, who looks after his legal affairs. He seemed to think he’d disappeared.’

  ‘Did they think so at his home?’

  Fabre shrugged. ‘Not so much as Maître Pujol. They seemed to think he’d just gone off and forgotten to say where.’

  He led the way back to the courtyard. Under the archway, he stopped at the glass-panelled door of the office. Beyond was a small square room containing a desk and a huge cupboard. ‘This is where we do the accounts,’ Fabre said. ‘Or where we should do them. It’s usually too cold except in summer and I use my kitchen.’ He gestured at the files. ‘We keep the records here, too. That cupboard’s full of breeding books and pedigrees. It doesn’t get opened much.’

  Fabre’s home had been constructed by knocking several of the monks’ cells together and its windows were deep-set in thick walls. But it had been modernised and was attractive in an old-fashioned country way, faintly suburban but comfortable nevertheless and devoid of the chrome so many country dwellers enjoyed.

  In the kitchen, sitting at a table covered with linoleum, they waited as Madame Fabre produced a bottle. The marc was yellowish and had a bite like a gin-trap.

  ‘Santé!’

  Pel let the fiery liquid run down into his stomach, feeling it move into all the veins and arteries like sap down a branch, driving out the cold with its warm fingers. Michelline Fabre filled his glass again. She was an attractive woman with a good figure and he noticed that her dress was surprisingly fashionable and even looked expensive, though her manner was sullen and her face wore a dissatisfied expression.

  ‘How’d you come to work here?’ Pel asked.

  Fabre thought for a minute. ‘I’m from the Ardennes,’ he said. ‘I worked on a farm. I was always good with horses. When I was about eighteen a man from Soissons saw me handling a horse that had fallen on a frosty road and asked if I’d like to work for him. In Eure-et-Loire. I decided it was better handling horses than pulling swedes and carrots and just handling horses as an extra. And his weren’t Percherons either. They were hunters. He ran a riding stable.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘He hired them out. Then a type in Haute Marne who ran a pack of hounds asked me if I’d go along and work as kennelman for him. Then I got a job as whipper-in near Fontainebleau and it was there that Monsieur Rensselaer saw me when he was just setting up this pack. Nobody up there wanted to know him, of course. You have to have a title to get on with them there. But this is now one of the best hunts in France. After running this one, I could get a job with any pack in the country if I asked.’

  ‘Have you ever thought of asking?’

  Fabre shook his head. ‘I like it here,’ he said dourly.

  Michelline Fabre turned from the sink where she was preparing a meal. ‘I don’t,’ she snapped. ‘It’s too lonely. I lived too long in Bar-le-Duc.’

  Her husband turned angrily on her. ‘You didn’t object when we went for the interview,’ he said. ‘You seemed to want to come then.’

  ‘That’s a long time ago.’

  ‘Were you both interviewed?’ Pel asked.

  Fabre’s shoulders moved. ‘The wife’s part of the set-up. If she’s not happy, it’s no good taking her husband on. Besides, occasionally, we have to provide meals for him.’

  ‘Does he pay you well?’

  Fabre shrugged. ‘You don’t do a job like this for pay.’

  Madame Fabre joined in again. ‘It’s pathetic what he gives you,’ she said.

  Fabre’s shoulders moved again. ‘Be quiet, woman,’ he growled. ‘I’m happy.’

  ‘Well, I’m not,’ she snapped. ‘This place’s too hot in summer and too cold in winter. And you have to drive miles to meet anyone.’

  ‘There’s me. And Maurice. And Retif.’

  ‘Retif’s leaving!’

  There was such dislike in her voice as she stared at her husband, Pel joined in.

  ‘Why is he leaving?’

  ‘Rensselaer sacked him,’ Fabre explained. ‘He said he was drunk. I don’t know. I wasn’t here at the time.’

  Michelline Fabre’s mouth twisted. ‘And that’s what he calls company,’ she said. ‘The whipper-in and a half-witted Algerian who got here God knows how, stinks like a polecat because he doesn’t wash after cutting up cows, and is leaving anyway.’

  She slammed the bottle of marc to the table and vanished. Fabre frowned again.

  Pel decided it was time to put aside Fabre’s problems and get down to the real reason for the visit. ‘What do you know about Monsieur Rensselaer?’ he asked. ‘Where did he get his money, for a start?’

  Fabre gave him a long cool look. ‘He married it, didn’t he?’

  ‘Madame Rensselaer?’

  ‘He has a way with women. She was Angélique Morand. Her father was Alfred Morand, who started Produits Morand. Rensselaer was one of the salesmen. Old Morand wasn’t very pleased, but he took him into the firm. It was difficult at first because workmen don’t like that sort of thing. There are a lot of left-wingers among them and there was a bit of trouble.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘We often talked as we rode about. I don’t think he found much in his family to interest him. His wife was like mine.’ Fabre sounded bitter. ‘She wasn’t interested in horses and hounds either.’

  ‘Go on.’

  Fabre shrugged. ‘The workmen got over it in the end and Rensselaer turned out to be very good. He went through every department. Selling. Travelling abroad. Accounts. Production. Old Morand decided he’d got a good bargain for a son-in-law after all. He was made a director after a year or two and when the old man died he became managing director.’

  ‘Does he have any women friends?’

  Fabre’s face went blank as if he had no wish to be disloyal. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  Pel looked about him. ‘The other two – Retif and Cottu – do they live here?’

  Fabre shook his head. Retif lived in St Julien, an hour’s walk away. He had a hut there and came through the woods, which he knew like the back of his hand. Cottu came from Champette on a motor bike which, he claimed, he needed to get round all his girlfriends.

  Pel indicated the grey walls stretching away into the winter gloom. ‘What about all these rooms? What are they used for?’

  Most of them, it appeared, were empty, though some were
used – one for a tack room, one for a saddlery, one or two for bitches with pups. Some were store rooms, one or two had been converted into stables for when the hunt was working, so that visitors could leave their horses there. One or two had been made into garages – one for Fabre’s car, one for Rensselaer’s, one for the van they used for fetching meat for the pack, one for the tractor, one for the trailer.

  ‘A hunt’s a big organisation,’ Fabre pointed out. ‘You need a lot of equipment.’

  ‘Anybody searched through them for Rensselaer? A man could have a heart attack in this place and nobody would miss him.’

  ‘Not Rensselaer. He was too fit.’

  ‘You never know.’ Look at me, Pel thought. Only he knew how close to death he was.

  ‘He never went near the cells, anyway,’ Fabre said. ‘Why should he? He had other people to do it for him. Me. Retif. Maurice. My wife sometimes.’

  ‘Nevertheless, have you searched for him?’

  ‘Yes.’ The answer surprised Pel. ‘But I found nothing. He’s not here.’

  There was a long pause before Pel went on. ‘Does anybody ever come out here?’

  ‘Vets. Saddlers.’ Fabre shrugged. ‘That sort. It’s busy, of course, when the season’s on. Monsieur Rensselaer has an apartment a bit further along. It has a bedroom and a dining room and a living room. He came occasionally.’

  ‘No one else?’

  ‘Just the postman. We have cattle, so we have our own milk. We keep a few pigs.’

  ‘Do you have any family?’

  Fabre’s brows went down. ‘I was a bit late marrying. Perhaps if Michelline had had children, she wouldn’t complain so much. She wouldn’t have time. We do most of our shopping in Autray. Sometimes Maurice brings things we want. Or Retif. Occasionally, we get groups of people coming to look round. Students of history or architecture. Sometimes groups of priests. We get a lot of photographers, too. It’s beautiful in summer.’

  To Pel it looked like the back of beyond. ‘I’m told the last time Rensselaer was seen was on the 16th,’ he said.

  Fabre shrugged. ‘I heard so.’

  ‘Did he come here?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was at Beaumarchais looking at a horse.’