It was clear from her first session that she was a fine horsewoman, and Bruno had no qualms in letting Claudia ride his own horse, Hector, when he was too busy. Félix, the stableboy, fell instantly in love with her, and Bruno noted how well she managed his teenage crush with a blend of kindness and courtesy. Pamela was cool with her at first, critical—in private—of someone who paid two thousand dollars for handmade Tucci riding boots from Italy. But Pamela warmed to Claudia when she saw how readily the American girl joined in with the rubbing down of the horses and helped muck out the stables.
Claudia soon struck up a friendship with Miranda, Pamela’s partner in the riding school, who invited her to one of the Monday evening dinners that had become a regular event for Bruno’s friends. Claudia volunteered to cook one evening and persuaded the local butcher to furnish her with a dozen enormous T-bone steaks, a cut little known in France. It was to be, she announced, an all-American meal, with fish chowder to begin, the steak and French fries, and chocolate brownies with ice cream for dessert. She even ordered a case of Stag’s Leap, a California wine, from Hubert at the wine cave. Florence quickly established a bond when Claudia volunteered to give a talk on art history at the collège where Florence taught.
“She’s obviously wealthy, but she certainly makes every effort to be friendly,” Pamela agreed one Monday evening when Claudia had made one of her regular trips back to Paris to see her supervisor at the Louvre. “I hope our local young men don’t misinterpret her openness.”
“Not once they’ve seen her playing tennis, they won’t,” Bruno had replied, recounting his own defeat at her hands.
Claudia seemed careful to avoid any local romantic entanglements, referring occasionally to her American boyfriend of long standing. She made a trip to see him in London, where he was working at a law firm, and there were weekends together in Paris, where she kept an apartment. Bruno knew she saw Laurent from time to time, visiting him and his hawks at Château des Milandes and at Marty’s farm. She had them rocking with laughter one Monday evening when she recounted how Laurent had tried to teach her how to milk a cow.
Bruno invited them both to join him and the mayor one afternoon at SHAP, the Périgord history and archaeological society, for a lecture on medieval falconry in the region, which he thought would interest Laurent. He and Claudia had been impressed by the SHAP building, an imposing seventeenth-century hôtel that had belonged to a noble family, and even more by the lecture. It was given by one of the society’s members, an antiquarian bookseller and amateur historian who showed a series of slides of medieval paintings and miniatures on the theme.
Bruno was fascinated to learn that falconry was introduced to Europe by the Huns after the fall of Rome and that it had spread quickly. The first slide the lecturer showed was an image from the Bayeux Tapestry showing King Harold of England hawking. The Arabs were the real masters of the sport, he explained, noting that the Koran states that meat caught by a trained hawk is considered clean for Muslims to eat. Scientific hawking began in Europe in the thirteenth century when King Frederick II of Hohenstaufen learned the sport when on Crusade and had the classic Arabic text on falconry by Moamyn translated into Latin. He then wrote his own version, De Arte Venandi cum Avibus—The Art of Hunting with Birds—which swiftly became popular in France. It was, claimed the lecturer, the first serious work of ornithology to appear in Europe since classical times, and even had the temerity to challenge some of Aristotle’s writings on nature.
Bruno had always assumed it was a sport for the aristocracy and was surprised to learn from the lecture that each social class had its own proper bird: an eagle for an emperor, a gyrfalcon for a king. Earls and bishops had the right to fly peregrine falcons, and knights and abbots had sakers. A lady would train a merlin, and a yeoman would fly a goshawk, while the humble parish priest had to make do with a sparrow hawk.
When the lecture ended, Claudia signed up on the spot to join the society and began poring over the index of its bulletins and publications. The mayor went off chatting with old friends while Bruno and Laurent joined the lecturer in the garden, where wine was being offered.
Bruno listened, fascinated, as the two men began discussing whether the bell should be attached to the two center tail feathers, as Laurent argued, or to the leg, as the lecturer preferred. The bell, Bruno learned, was to help locate the hawk in the field and also back at the farm to alert the falconer if his hawk was nervous or unsettled. The lecturer went on to claim that a peregrine-saker hybrid was his preferred bird, while Laurent defended his own redtail. In any event the two men soon agreed to go hawking together. Their conversation quickly became too technical for Bruno to follow, so he began chatting to other members he knew until people began to leave and it was time to prize Claudia away from the library.
“I can’t tell you how pleased I am that you brought me here, Bruno,” she said as they drove back to St. Denis in the mayor’s car. She tried to invite them all to a local restaurant for dinner, but the mayor had a meeting, Laurent had to help Marty to bring in and milk the cows, and Bruno wanted to give Hector his evening ride. They all agreed to meet and dine another evening. Then she insisted that Laurent teach her how to tie a falconer’s knot as they sat in the back of the car.
A few days later, he had seen Claudia shopping with Madame Bonnet in the market in St. Denis, greeted her and asked how her research was going. She said she was pleased and would be heading back to Paris the next day to see her supervisor and then hoped to return, since Monsieur de Bourdeille was being very helpful.
“He’s taking his life in his hands and so is Madame Bonnet,” Claudia said, laughing. “They’ve accepted my offer to cook them a farewell dinner tonight, since they’ve been so hospitable to me.”
“What are you planning to cook?” Bruno asked her.
“A little smoked trout to begin, then some calf liver in sage and butter with potatoes dauphinoise, because Madame Bonnet says that’s Monsieur de Bourdeille’s favorite. And then for dessert I’m making a tarte Tatin.”
“It sounds wonderful. I wish I were coming,” he said, enjoying her enthusiasm. It was a quality so many Americans displayed, Bruno had found, a confidence that the world was essentially a welcoming place. Most French people thought of life as a challenge, only to be enjoyed with serious application.
“What about the wine?” he asked.
“Monsieur de Bourdeille says he wants to take care of that. You know he installed a private elevator so he can get down to his cellar? His doctor has told him to drink only one glass a day, so he insists he’s delighted to have my company to help him enjoy it. I just wish I knew more about wine, but everything we’ve drunk has been heavenly. He made me take note of each bottle.”
“Which was your favorite?”
“A 2005 Château Margaux from the Médoc.”
“Mon Dieu, that’s a wonderful wine, but it’s way beyond my price range. You’re very lucky.” Bruno smiled at her. “When you get back here, we’ll have to teach you about the more affordable wines from the Bergerac. That’s something else for you to look forward to. And I recommend the croissants at Fauquet’s café here, just behind the mairie, so let me invite you both to have some coffee and try one.”
Claudia gave Bruno a wide smile, revealing her perfect American teeth, and said, “I’d love to, but we have to get the shopping done.”
Madame Bonnet shook her head and gave Claudia an indulgent look. “I’m very partial to Fauquet’s croissants, but I had a good breakfast, so off you go. I’ll do the shopping and join you both at the café later.”
Once they were installed on the terrace, Claudia said Bruno should let her treat him, since he’d acted as her unpaid taxi when she arrived. Then before he could reply, she said, “Where’s that lovely dog of yours?”
“He’s in the stables with my horse, Hector. They’ve been friends since Balzac was a puppy. I suspect they as
sume each is a differently sized version of the other. I have a long drive today to see a colleague in Montignac, so I’ve left him there. Have you had a chance to see Lascaux yet or any of our other painted caves?”
“Yes, Monsieur de Bourdeille insisted that I should, and Madame Bonnet lets me use her car, so I was able to see Lascaux, Font de Gaume and Cap Blanc. It reminded me of what Picasso said, that in all these thousands of years we’ve learned nothing new about art beyond what they achieved. It’s very humbling. The real surprise was Cap Blanc. I’d read about Lascaux, so I knew about the cave paintings, but those sculptures of the animals coming out of the rock were a real surprise.”
The croissants came, and Claudia pronounced them far better than anything she’d had in Paris. Then she shifted the subject. “You mentioned that Monsieur de Bourdeille was in the Resistance as a schoolboy, but he didn’t want to talk about it when I asked him, saying the memories were too painful. What did he do exactly?”
“He was arrested for painting Resistance symbols on a wall. But it’s more a matter of when than of what he did,” Bruno replied. “Bear in mind that when France fell in 1940, de Gaulle was widely seen as a madman for asking France to fight on. And don’t forget that one and a half million French soldiers were in prisoner-of-war camps in Germany, hostages for French good behavior.”
“That explains a lot about Vichy France,” Claudia replied.
“Yes and no,” said Bruno. “It’s significant that when the British pulled out at Dunkerque, they took a hundred thousand French soldiers with them, but almost all of them chose to return to occupied France. Like most French people, they were convinced that Germany would win the war. Only about three thousand stayed with de Gaulle to fight on. But by 1945, almost everyone claimed to have been in the Resistance all along, a myth de Gaulle encouraged to try and heal the rifts in French society.”
There was little resistance until June 1941, when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, and France’s Communist Party started to organize a clumsy underground. They began sabotage operations and occasional shootings of German officers, swiftly countered by the arrest and shooting of French hostages. Resistance gathered pace in 1943, when heavy German defeats at Stalingrad and in North Africa suggested they would lose the war. Fearing an Anglo-American invasion across the Mediterranean, Hitler dropped the pretense of a self-governing Vichy state and sent troops to occupy all of France. He also ordered young Frenchmen to go and work in German factories. That was when the Maquis was born, as young men fled to the countryside to avoid the STO, the obligatory work service.
“The important thing about Bourdeille was that he was arrested as a schoolboy in May of 1942, when resistance was relatively rare and most people still thought Germany would win,” Bruno went on. “There weren’t even any German troops in Périgueux at the time. He was arrested by Vichy police and it’s ironic that being in a French prison may have saved his life. Once German troops arrived here in the Périgord, newly captured résistants were sent to concentration camps, and few of them ever returned. Bourdeille was shot when he was arrested and never walked properly afterward. He used to get around on crutches, but he’s been confined to a wheelchair for years.”
Claudia nodded slowly. “So most French people just put up with the occupation and got on with their lives?”
“Yes. And the Germans looted the country as they occupied it, imposing food rationing on France to feed Germany, making our factories work for the German war effort. Many of those one and a half million French POWs had wives and children back in France, who needed ration books to get food. Vichy had a special police force, the milice, a very nasty bunch who often demanded sexual favors in return for those books. It was a grim time. There’s a village near here where the women kicked two milice men to death after the Liberation.”
Madame Bonnet came into view, heading for the café until she was stopped by a friend and paused for a chat. Claudia leaned forward and spoke in a low voice. “Before she arrives, have you heard anything of how Bourdeille made his money? Was his family rich?”
“I don’t know. Why do you ask?” Bruno replied. “I assumed he made it from dealing in paintings.”
“He did, later, once he’d become rich. It’s how he got started that interests me.”
“Maybe he had family money,” Bruno said. “Or perhaps he had a wealthy partner who invested with him.”
“In a book the Louvre published of his collected attributions of paintings that had never before been identified, I found a sheet of paper inside the back flap that listed different sums of money beside each of the numbered paintings. Some of the numbers were huge, in the millions. He called them commissions.”
“Was there a date on that sheet of paper?” Bruno asked. “We went from old francs to new francs in about 1960, and a hundred old francs were worth just one new one. But for years people spoke in old francs, and a lot of older people still do.”
“The book came out in the 1970s, but the paper wasn’t dated. I suppose the amounts could have been in old francs. But here, I took a photocopy.” She slipped a piece of paper to him beneath the table. “That’s why I think I should consult my supervisor in Paris.”
“You think his attributions of these paintings are suspect?” Bruno asked, putting the photocopy away.
“I don’t know, but in the United States these days there’s a mandatory course on ethics for art historians. Identifying or attributing paintings can involve big money, and there are still huge controversies over artworks that were confiscated in World War Two, not just from museums in occupied countries but from private collectors, particularly Jewish ones. And Bourdeille has been one of the most important experts on attribution in postwar France.”
“Have you raised this with him?”
“He says he’s so old he can’t remember and I have to go by what’s in the archives, but he won’t let me see his private papers.”
“Did he say why?”
“He gave different reasons at different times: that they are personal, that they’ve never been properly filed and organized, that there are tax issues.” She paused. “I thought he was being evasive.”
“Are you staying at his house?”
“No. They found me a room at a guesthouse in Limeuil. But Madame Bonnet gives me lunch every day, and at five in the evening I’m invited to join Monsieur Bourdeille for a glass of wine before I leave.”
“He’s certainly treating you to excellent wine. I’m envious,” Bruno said as Madame Bonnet ended her conversation in the market square and began heading their way. “Let’s talk again after you get back from seeing your supervisor in Paris. Who is he, by the way?”
“It’s a she, Mademoiselle Massenet, a real scholar. She even learned to be a restorer in her spare time so she would have a better sense of the way individual artists prepared their canvases, the paints they used and the way they applied their brushstrokes. I’ve learned so much from her, but she can be kind of intimidating.”
Madame Bonnet sat down at their table, put a full shopping bag onto the wooden floor of the terrace and asked Claudia, “How were the croissants?”
“Wonderful, I don’t know how you could resist one. And the coffee was just as good. You’re lucky to have a place like this in St. Denis.”
“I think we all know that,” Madame Bonnet said. “On Sunday mornings, I drive down here to get a croissant for monsieur’s breakfast and one of their cakes for his dessert. One week, he’ll want a tarte au citron, the next a black chocolate cake with Armagnac, and in summer he’ll have a strawberry tart.”
“Can I get you a coffee, madame?” Bruno asked. “Perhaps some cake or a galette?”
“No, thank you, just coffee. I need to watch my weight. What have you two been talking about all this time?”
“The Resistance and Vichy,” said Bruno, signaling to the waitress with a mime of drinking from a cup, an
d he held up three fingers.
Madame Bonnet grimaced. “Thank heavens I was born after the war.”
Chapter 5
Bruno reflected mournfully on his encounters with the young American woman as the pompiers hauled up the flimsy platform on which he’d crouched in the well. What a waste of a promising young life it would be if her days had ended down there. He watched as they attached a special cradle to the steel hawser on the winch of their vehicle. It was like a cage, a circular metal platform with three metal poles forming a man-sized space before they curved in to meet above where the man’s head would be. Two of the vertical poles were joined by a horizontal bar at waist height, and the remaining gap could be sealed by a strap and metal catch that looked as if it had been adapted from a car’s safety belt.
Now they were fixing the steel hawser and a heavy-duty pulley to the scaffolding. Bruno helped Ahmed carry the cage to the well, where Ahmed attached the hawser, signaled to the winchman and tested that it rose and fell easily. Ahmed then put on a hard hat, strapped something that looked like a boat hook onto one of the bars of the cage and a heavy-duty flashlight onto the other and draped a coil of rope around his neck. He fashioned the end of the rope into a noose with a slipknot, climbed inside the cage and closed the safety belt. He then tested that the walkie-talkie around his neck was working.
“Have you ever done this before?” Bruno asked him.
“No, but I’ve practiced it a few times.”
“You won’t have much room to work. Your cage is nearly as wide as the well. It narrows as it gets deeper,” Bruno said.
“We’ll try it this way first. If it doesn’t work, I’ll rig a sling for myself below the cage and do it that way.”
The Body in the Castle Well Page 4
