by Iain Pears
‘What’s up?’ she asked as he cut the engine.
‘Sleep. I’m exhausted. We’ve still got a long way to go and even if we kept driving we’d arrive at five in the morning, which is too early. So I’m going to have a nap.’
It was a sensible decision, so she let back the car seat, wrapped her mother’s coat around her and took his advice. They were fairly high up in the mountains and the air outside was cold, Argyll noticed as the car cooled down. He began to shiver. Why on earth could they not have gone to a hotel? He was not, he decided, going to spend the entire night listening to his teeth chattering. He slipped as gently as possible underneath the coat as well.
‘What you doing?’ she murmured, half-consciously.
‘Basic survival technique,’ he replied, starting slightly as the brake lever dug into his back. ‘Body warmth. Good-night.’
They stayed like that for perhaps four hours, sleeping remarkably well considering that Alfa Romeos are not really designed for such purposes. Then the dawn chorus and Flavia’s coffee cravings woke them and they drove on to find a café for breakfast.
From there on, the journey was a quiet one. The traffic was as light as expected for a Saturday morning and the conversation was a little muted. Sharing the driving meant they spent about another five hours on the trip and both were stiff and tired when, shortly after lunch, Flavia spotted a small painted sign, half covered with overgrowth, that informed passers by that Balazuc, Village Historique, lay a mere 3.8 kms down a narrow track to their left. ‘Thank God for that,’ Flavia said as Argyll, now driving once again, headed down it.
‘What do we do when we get there?’ he asked. ‘Georges Bralle, Balazuc, is not the most precise of addresses.’
‘Find the bar, I suppose,’ she replied, folding the map and peering out at the rocky hills on either side. She looked a bit surprised by the rough scenery, but as she had not taken her nose out of the map book for a couple of hours she had not had much chance to accustom herself to the changing landscape.
‘Rather pretty, isn’t it?’ he said as he guided the car up the narrow and winding road into the gorge. ‘Good heavens.’
The village appeared suddenly as they rounded a bend, looking as though it had grown out of the rocks of the steep cliff wall that fell directly into the river. It was an extraordinary sight, with scarcely a building to be seen that was not medieval.
‘Most impressive,’she said generously. ‘Almost as good as Tuscany.’
The major disadvantage of the village, whatever its physical attractions, however, was that the one bar it possessed was closed. Nor was it exactly a hive of activity. There was one street, innumerable little alleyways too narrow to drive down and not a person to be seen in any of them.
‘I don’t think anyone has lived here since the Middle Ages,’ Argyll commented. ‘What should we do, shout and see what happens?’
They looked over a parapet and down the gorge while Flavia considered. Then she walked over to the nearest house and pressed the doorbell. No one replied. There was no one in the next house either, or the next.
‘Looks as though they’ve all been converted into holiday houses. Bit of a problem, eh?’ she observed. ‘There must be someone here, somewhere.’
A quiet buzzing sound came to them from the other side of the valley and, presently around the corner, about a mile away, they saw a small yellow van. Argyll squinted at it. ‘A postman,’ he said with relief. ‘And heading our way. All our troubles may soon be over.’
With great attention, they watched the little van curl its way along the road, over the bridge, stop and pick up some mail, go another hundred yards and stop again. Then it disappeared from sight before eventually reappearing. It slowed down as it passed their Milan-registered car, and the driver perused this strange apparition. Evidently a novelty round here. Argyll waved him down and a lengthy conversation ensued. It ended with Argyll pointing in one direction, the postman shaking his head and pointing in the other, then reaching down and handing over a packet of envelopes. Argyll came back.
‘What was all that about?’
‘Apparently it’s a bit complicated. We’ll have to walk, and the postman asked me if I wouldn’t mind delivering the letters for all the houses up there, if I was going in that direction.’
‘But is Bralle there?’
‘He didn’t know. He hasn’t seen him for ten days or more. But he gave the impression that’s not unusual. Come on.’
The little alley they took led them out of the top of the village into open countryside. The view was breathtaking, and Flavia’s breath was duly taken, although that was more due to the incline and her lack of regular exercise than the panoramic beauty of the scene.
‘He’d better be in after all this,’ she said grumpily. ‘Are you sure this is the right route?’
Argyll nodded in order to keep signs of his equally breathless state to himself. ‘Must be one of those,’ he said as they reached the top of the hill and saw a couple of houses in the distance, both perched on the cliff edge.
It wasn’t the first, as that had the wrong name on the gate. Argyll dropped some of his envelopes into the box and they walked on. The gate of the second house announced in small brass letters that Georges Bralle lived here.
Some of the time, perhaps, but it didn’t look as though he did at the moment. The thickly-built stone house was shuttered up, and there was no sign of life at all from the outside.
‘Oh, dear. I think we may have had a long and tiring voyage for nothing.’
Flavia grunted in disappointment. ‘Better go and make sure, I suppose. Damn the man. Why on earth can he not have a telephone?’
They knocked hopefully and heavily on the door, without much expectation of getting anyone to answer. Nobody did. They walked around and banged on the shutters. Nothing again. Argyll looked disgruntled, Flavia as though she was about to cry.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said comfortingly. ‘Maybe he’s gone for a morning constitutional.’
‘After lunch? With the windows shuttered up? No chance. He’s not here.’
She sat down on a stone in the driveway to be fed up in comfort, so Argyll wandered off on his own for a last chance examination for signs of life. Not all the windows were shuttered, he noted. One small opening – a bathroom, maybe – had none. He peered at it, a worrying idea coming into his head. Don’t you dare, he thought. On the other hand, Flavia was feeling miserable and, what was worse, could well decide to sit there the entire day, just in case Bralle turned up.
Without considering the matter further, he searched for footholds and handholds and levered himself up. And up. And when he was nearing the window, he glanced around and realised what he was doing. If he dropped off, he would not only fall fifteen or so feet down to stony and irregular ground, he would probably bounce off the narrow ledge into the gorge below. He paused and considered. It was probably more dangerous to go back down than to go ahead, so he inched his way further, wondering what he was to do when he reached his destination.
The window was fastened, but fitted its frame so badly it hardly required an expert burglar – which Argyll surely wasn’t – to force it open without damage. He eased himself forward through the opening, got half-way, realised there was no way of turning round, panicked, overbalanced and toppled head first into a bidet. This was followed by a prolonged silence while he eased himself complainingly off the floor and made sure all bones were still in the right place and of the requisite length.
‘Monsieur Bralle?’ he called, just in case the old man was sleeping and had been woken up by the intrusion. ‘Hello?’
No reply, so he cautiously opened the bathroom door and ventured out into the corridor. Not a sound. It was an old man’s house, no doubt about that, with the odd, musty, decayed smell that they often have. He flicked on a light switch, and the light came on. A good sign, surely. If anyone had gone away for a long period they would have cut it off at the mains. He located the staircase, and went down.
A hallway, with doors on either side. He opened the one to the left, which led into a dining-room with a kitchen just visible beyond. Neither had any sign of life. Then into the next room, a sitting-room, again empty but with a much stronger smell. Beyond that was another door, which led to a study and which contained the source of the now sickly odour.
‘Yuch,’ he said in horror. Georges Bralle – or at least, he was willing to assume it was he and was not overdisposed to check on minor details – sat in a chair. He was slumped over the desk, and had evidently not moved for some time. He was, to put it another way, dead and rapidly going off.
It wasn’t the shock of coming suddenly and unexpectedly across a dead man, although Argyll had little enough experience of this sort of thing; nor was it particularly the thought that the death might have been violent in some as yet undetermined fashion. Rather it was the distinctly shiny green tinge to him, the overpowering smell and the large, overnourished bluebottle buzzing lazily around that made Argyll take two steps back, swing round and deposit what remained of breakfast in the corner of the room with a violent and overpowering upsurge of nausea.
The effort exhausted him, and he sat himself on the sofa to recover, hardly daring to look at Bralle. His dominant feeling was now one of considerable embarrassment, although, thinking as rationally as possible, he considered that throwing up was an entirely natural reaction in the circumstances. Anybody would do the same, he told himself as he staggered off to where he remembered the toilet was located.
That finished, and deciding he had already done enough damage to whatever evidence the house might contain, he went to the front door to find Flavia. It was locked, but not bolted, and there was no key. The back door was both locked and bolted. He thought about that, then opened the main window of the dining-room, unfastened the shutters, and climbed out.
Flavia, still sitting on her stone and contemplating the iniquities of life, was surprised to see him emerge from the building, and evenmore concerned when she noticed his very pallid complexion.
‘Bralle’s in there,’ he said as he approached. ‘He’s dead.’
‘Another one?’ she said with some surprise but still taking the news a bit more calmly than he had done. ‘Killed, or natural causes? He was nearly eighty, after all.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘To see for myself,’ she replied as she marched off to the window.
‘I don’t think that’s a very good idea,’ he protested as he chased after her, half worrying that she would be upset by Bralle, but equally concerned to conceal the evidence of his own reaction. ‘You said you didn’t like dead bodies.’
There was no dissuading her. ‘God, what a smell. Where is he?’
Argyll led her through into the study. Flavia wrinkled her nose up in disgust, observed carefully and turned pale. But her digestive system, as usual, was made of stronger stuff than Argyll’s.
‘I know how you feel,’ he said supportively as they left the building. ‘What do we do now?’
There were, she decided, two, or rather three, things to be done. Argyll would go back to the village and call the police. Then he was to telephone Pierre Janet, Bottando’s Parisian alter ego, and tell him what was going on. For her part, she would stay and do a little investigating. But first she sat on a stone outside the house to recover.
‘You feeling all right?’ Argyll asked before he headed off.
She shook her head silently, then stood up, and burst into tears, her body shaking with heavy, mournful sobs. For days she had been battling with this case, and every time she seemed to be making progress, it slipped away. Finding a new body every couple of days merely emphasised her confusion and made her realise how unpleasant her task really was. The effort to keep collected and professional finally proved too much.
‘Oh, my dear Flavia,’ Argyll said, taken completely by surprise. He put his arms around her and squeezed reassuringly. She clung on to him tightly.
‘Sometimes,’ she said breathlessly between sobs, ‘I think I’m not very good at this. I’m not sure I’m cut out for it.’
Argyll rocked her from side to side and stroked her hair, saying nothing at all but feeling deeply moved. He was used to her rages, but was absolutely unprepared for this side of her. ‘Perhaps. But you’re better at it than I am. At least you weren’t sick.’
She laughed and snuffled and sobbed some more.
‘We could just go home afterwards and forget it, if you like,’ he added.
She let go of him and then extracted a tiny handkerchief from her pocket, blew the last trump into it, and sniffed loudly. Then shook her head fervently. ‘No. Off you go. I’m sorry. I shall just grit my teeth and get on with it.’
She watched as he disappeared down the hill and then, with immense reluctance and still feeling shaky, forced herself to go back into the house. It was the very last thing she wanted to do and, besides, she knew it was both unprofessional and discourteous. As an Italian, she had no right to look at, or touch, anything concerning a murder of a Frenchman that had taken place on French soil. Assuming it was a murder, of course.
Which was, of course, the problem. The French would probably sit on all the evidence and would fail to recognise anything significant even if it was there. Ordinarily this would be fine; the information would come through Janet eventually. But she was mindful of the omnipresent budget submission and aware that the clock was ticking. Bottando wanted a solution and her continued employment depended on it. The only sensible option was to have a quick sniff around before the locals went all territorial on her.
Sniff, alas, was too appropriate a word. She reckoned she’d have about forty minutes before the police turned up, but only ten or so before she felt overwhelmingly sick. Steeling herself, and moving very carefully so as not to disturb or leave any prints, she began the distasteful business of searching Bralle’s desk. It was full of papers, but contained nothing she was interested in, except for a letter thanking Jones College, Massachusetts for the invitation to write a reference for James Miller but declining on the grounds of his retirement. It recommended Masterson instead. They knew that already, of course. But on second thoughts, she folded it up and tucked it in her bag. Just in case.
On the floor, underneath the desk, was a diary that was a more profitable read. A spidery, old man’s hand had written in the space for October 3rd, ‘St Gall’. They knew that as well; but it was nice to have confirmation. What remained to be established was what he and Masterson had been doing there.
Most of the diary was blank. Evidently Bralle led a quiet life. But, four days after the first entry was the notation ‘St Anthony’. What a busy little saint he was. Crops up everywhere in this case, she thought.
She put the diary down and examined the rest of the room. All along one wall was a bank of green metal filing cabinets which, when opened, seemed to contain the old man’s life work of notes and writings. There was an awful lot of it. But then, if you spent sixty years doing little but writing away, there would be a hefty amount. She glanced into the first drawer. Dozens upon dozens of green files, all neatly arranged and organised, with little white tags at the top saying what, supposedly, they contained. She ran her fingers along them; nearly all files on paintings and painters of the Italian Renaissance.
She went through the papers methodically. There was no time to look through the contents, of course, but at least she could glance over the titles. It was a waste of time. Even his correspondence files seemed deadly dull and unproductive. But she at least fished out the originals of the documentation that Bralle had given to Benedetti. Bit naughty, but Argyll might find it useful.
By now she’d had more than enough. The smell was making her feel really ill and, although bearable if her searches were producing anything, it was insupportable otherwise. She climbed back out of the window, took deep breaths of clear fresh country air to clean out the passages, and waited for Argyll to return.
When he eventually puffed and
blew his way back up the hill, he said he’d phoned Janet first and he, sweet old soul that he was, had said he would inform Bottando. He had also suggested Flavia might tell the locals that he had given her permission to talk to Bralle. Otherwise they might get stroppy and petulant about her presence. She was to phone him later and he would come down if necessary. The local police, meanwhile, were on the way.
They were, and made the next few hours miserable. While awfully excited about the prospect of a real murder at last on their turf, they were less enthusiastic when they viewed the physical evidence for themselves. One officer had the same initial reaction as Argyll, but apart from that, they did little to win the sympathy of their visitors, especially when they said they could find no evidence of the old man’s death being anything other than natural causes. It was only when Flavia threw a fit and threatened to phone Janet once more that they grudgingly consented to order a post-mortem. In revenge, they were distinctly unfriendly about the Italian’s presence in France.
Doctors came and went, the body was carted away in an ambulance, photographers and all the other officialdom of death bustled about, keeping their opinions firmly to themselves. Apart from having to give their own fingerprints, Argyll and Flavia were ignored and eventually it was made clear that their presence was not at all welcome.
Flavia, who hadn’t really expected anything better, accepted the situation with patience and took her revenge by telling them as little as she could about her own case. They weren’t going to help her, she wasn’t going to help them.
‘How nice it is,’ Argyll observed as they trudged back down the hill after their dismissal, ‘to see international co-operation working so smoothly.’
Flavia snorted. ‘Get me back to Venice,’ she said.
12
By the time they arrived, horribly early, on Sunday morning, Bottando was back from Rome. He was not happy. This emotional state he manifested through a series of elliptical references to the need for discipline in policework and disapproving comments on people who went off on holidays with their boyfriends in the middle of a case. Flavia apologised humbly for having omitted to inform him of their little diversion via the South of France, and did point out that at least they had discovered another death. Besides, she added, Argyll was not her boyfriend.
