The Body in the Castle Well

by Martin Walker

  “So you think it might not have been an accident because her laptop is missing, which suggests someone might have a motive to stop or at least learn about her research,” said J-J, looking doubtful. “She might just have left it at Bourdeille’s place if she was working there.”

  “Her falling down the well and the laptop’s disappearance may not be connected,” Bruno conceded. “But it would be quite a coincidence.”

  “Who was the last person to see her alive that you know of? And when was that?”

  “Florence, the science teacher at the collège in St. Denis. She was the one who told me that Claudia was missing after leaving the lecture early, feeling ill. When Florence called her this morning, there was no sign of her, and her bed had not been slept in.”

  “The sooner you can get that list of everyone who was at the lecture, the better. This place used to be a fortress,” J-J said, looking around at the stone walls. “Could anyone have got into these gardens when the gates were locked?”

  “Probably. At a glance I’d say there are several places where an active person could climb in. I asked the staff to close the gardens to the public for the rest of today, and the four gardeners are all here. David is in charge, and they all knew Claudia. David tells me he had a pizza with her one evening.”

  “Right, I’ll talk to him first,” said J-J. “I presume he can call the builders in, since we need statements from them. If they left the well unsealed like this overnight, they’re in trouble. Then give me a number for this ex-convict. He sounds interesting. I’ll get hold of him, and you go and have a polite chat with Monsieur Bourdeille. I’m not sure how we can make much progress before we get the toxicology report.”

  “If you want this well sealed off as a possible crime scene, we’d better arrange for a gendarme to stand watch until your forensics team can look at it. Right now, it’s a public hazard. I can call Yveline at the gendarmerie to see if she can spare someone.”

  “Good idea,” said J-J. “Forensics should be here by lunchtime, maybe a bit later.”

  “I’ll also talk to the American girl’s supervisor in Paris, a Madame Massenet at the Louvre.”

  Each man turned away to dial, and Bruno heard J-J say, “Attaché judiciaire ’Odge, s’il vous plaît. This is a police matter, an American citizen found dead. I’m Commissaire Jalipeau from Périgueux, and he’s worked with me before.”

  Bruno called Yveline first, and she promised to send a gendarme, then he called the number for Claudia’s supervisor at the Louvre.

  “Massenet,” came a voice so quiet that he had to strain to hear. He explained the reason for his call and said he was notifying her as Claudia’s academic supervisor.

  “Mon Dieu, this is terrible news,” she responded, sounding stunned. “How did it happen? Poor Claudia, she was such a gifted student and I had great hopes for her. Was it an accident?”

  “We think so but can’t be sure at this stage. I understand Claudia had recently come up to Paris to consult you on an ethical question, concerning Monsieur de Bourdeille.”

  “Did she tell you that?”

  “Yes, just over a week ago, the day before she went up to Paris to see you.”

  “I told her that Monsieur de Bourdeille was held in the highest esteem here at the Louvre, and I was proud to have been one of his pupils.”

  “Did she show you a photocopy of what seemed to be commissions involving several paintings?”

  “Yes, and I told her that such honoraria were not uncommon in the art world when it comes to making an expert attribution for an important painting. A great deal of scholarship and research are usually involved.”

  “Did she seem troubled by the matter?”

  Massenet paused a long moment before replying, “No, I’d say she was curious rather than troubled. I had explained to her that Monsieur de Bourdeille had been a pioneer in his research methods. It was one of the main ways that he built his reputation.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “He delved far beyond the usual family letters and ledgers or church archives and had learned to explore regional tax records and the accounts kept by notaires of wills and bequests, as well as police records of thefts or confiscations during the Revolution.”

  “Can you give me an example?”

  “Certainly. He found a treasure trove of historic customs records in Bordeaux, where many of the wealthy French sugar planters in the eighteenth century listed the paintings and furniture they had bought to ship out to their plantations and to bring them back. He also learned to use the archives in Venice and Florence to see from artists’ taxes and guild records what French customers had bought. He opened whole new fields of research and did so despite his handicap. He’d been shot during the war while being arrested and lost the use of one leg. When I was his pupil, he had to wear a stiff brace and use crutches, but soon after that he was confined to a wheelchair.”

  “I meant a specific example, madame.”

  “I see. Well, there is the diptych of Nicolas of Ypres, and then Caron’s Surrender of Milan, some of the etchings of Jean Cousin. He wrote a famous monograph on the illustrators of Protestant Bibles that were printed in French in Geneva when they were banned in France.”

  “And this was the period Claudia was studying?”

  “Yes, her thesis was on the artists of the French Renaissance who were not painting for the royal courts. The Netherlands fashion of prosperous merchants commissioning works for their local churches and for their homes was just starting to come into France. It’s a very promising field.”

  “How much of her thesis was written? I ask because her laptop seems to have disappeared.”

  “Well, she’d just begun her research here in France, so not very much. She sent me a couple of draft chapters, an introduction on the period and the research methods she intended, focusing on French artists who went to Italy to study and French people, mostly soldiers and mercenaries, who brought artworks back as loot from the Italian wars. They were usually intended as a gift to their local church in return for masses to be said for their souls, but some artworks were kept to decorate their homes and display their wealth.”

  “And you think she’d have earned her doctorate from what you’ve already seen of her work?”

  “Oh, certainly. She worked hard and had a good eye, and she is, I mean, she was very enthusiastic about her research. She was a gifted and delightful young woman and I was convinced she would go far. I’m going to miss Claudia. Would you know her next of kin, monsieur? I feel that I should write to them with my condolences.”

  “We’re checking that with the American embassy. As soon as I know, I will e-mail you with their full names and addresses.”

  Bruno set out for Bourdeille’s chartreuse, pulling in when his phone vibrated, and he took the call from Florence. He passed on the bad news, explaining what little he knew and emphasizing the possible role of the cat.

  “Mon Dieu, this is dreadful, her poor parents—dying so young and so far from home,” Florence exclaimed. “I feel like this is my fault, Bruno. I should have seen her safely back to her room.”

  Bruno tried to reassure her, with limited success. But Florence was not a woman to take up unnecessary time. She said she was about to be late for a class, thanked him for letting her know, said they should talk later and ended the call.

  Chapter 7

  Resuming the drive to Bourdeille’s home, Bruno smiled recalling his first meeting with the old man. It had been in Périgueux the previous November at one of those public culinary events the French do so well, the kind of meeting which for Bruno embodied the concept of fraternité that has defined the grand experiment of the French Republic since the Revolution of 1789.

  Bruno recalled the way the grand master had carefully tucked the napkin into his collar over the flowing robes, raised his forearms to let the full sleeves f
all back and only then picked up the dish of pâté with both hands, brought it to his nose and sniffed deeply. He put the plate down and beamed at his fellows around the long table. Most of them were wearing the same medieval robes of green and red and the floppy green beret that distinguished them as members of the Confrérie du Pâté de Périgueux. Bruno did not have the thousand or so euros to spare that the formal robes would cost. He had borrowed a set for his inauguration the previous year, and so now wore only the pewter medal of office on its green velvet ribbon around his neck. On the medal were carved a small flock of ducks and geese and the seal of the ancient town of Périgueux, which dated back before Roman times.

  “That is what I call a real pâté de Périgueux,” said the grand master, setting down the plate.

  It carried one small cylinder of pork pâté, about six centimeters high and ten in diameter, covered with thin slices of black Périgord truffle. A similar cylinder had been carefully sliced into eight triangular portions by one of the confrères who sat opposite the grand master. These slices revealed that the pork pâté was only a thin shell that covered the luscious foie gras inside. This unique combination of pâté, black truffles and foie gras was the celebrated pâté de Périgueux, the gastronomic pride of the city and of its specialist chefs. This day’s annual concours, held in the place St. Louis in the heart of the old town, which had been stoutly defended against the English invaders in the fourteenth century, was to establish which of the pâtés to be tasted was worthy of the seal of recognition by the confrérie.

  Twenty men and three women, most of them in the formal robes of the confrérie, sat around the long table, score sheets and pencils lined up before them. Each of the pâtés to be tasted would be scored out of a hundred: thirty for appearance, fifty for taste and twenty for seasoning. Any pâté that failed to win at least an average score of fifty would not qualify for the confrérie’s approval. The winner was then privileged to proclaim his or her triumph at each point of sale for the forthcoming year.

  Each member of the confrérie had to be inducted formally at a public ceremony in the place St. Louis, in which the merits of the new candidate were extolled by an existing member. The oath of fidelity was then sworn to the confrérie, at which point the new member was tapped on each shoulder with the beak of a duck, and the mayor of Périgueux hung the medal of office around the new member’s neck and embraced him or her with a bise on both cheeks.

  Bruno knew that he owed his own induction, and his presence at that day’s table, to his investigation and exposure of a lucrative fraud involving the substitution of cheap Chinese truffles for the genuine black diamonds of the Périgord. He had been formally nominated by an elderly war hero known as the Patriarch, a former fighter pilot with the French Normandie-Niemen squadron that served on the Eastern Front with the Soviet air force during World War II. Only weeks earlier, Bruno had attended the funeral of the old man, who had died in his sleep at the age of ninety. In recognition of another case in which Bruno had saved his family from scandal, the Patriarch had bequeathed to Bruno in his will a valuable Purdey shotgun and a case each year for the rest of his life of the Patriarch’s Reserve wine from the family vineyard.

  As Bruno tasted the third of the pâtés being offered, he looked down the long table at the other members of the confrérie and smiled to himself in affection for this classically French tradition of the brotherhoods. Each of them appealed to local pride, to the distinction of French wines and cuisine and to the French love of ceremony and dressing up. They had each devised or inherited robes of varying colors and designs that were said to follow ancient tradition, and each one gathered formally once a year to honor their devotion to the particular wines or foodstuffs celebrated by their confrérie.

  The Périgord being the gastronomic heartland of France, it was host to eleven, more confréries than any other region. Bruno knew of the Consulat de la Vinée de Bergerac with red-and-gold robes; of the brotherhood of the wines of Domme and another of the golden grapes of Saussignac; of the truffles of Thiviers in northern Périgord and of the truffles of Sarlat and Ste. Alvère in Bruno’s own region of the Périgord Noir; of the brotherhood of the region’s famous strawberries; of its walnuts; of its chestnuts; of its mushrooms; of its honey and, last, of the fine hand-crafted knives of Nontron. Each of Bruno’s companions was using just such a knife to cut open and examine his slice of pâté and to smear it onto a hunk of fresh bread, still warm from the bakery.

  This being France, although it was just past nine in the morning, the table also carried several bottles of red Bergerac wine and whites from Montravel, the region of Bergerac that adjoined the vineyards of Bordeaux. One bottle of the sweet and golden wine of Monbazillac that Bruno thought went best with foie gras stood before the grand master’s place in the center and another at each end of the long table. Bruno, who sat between the formidable and cheerful woman who ran the Auberge de la Truffe at Sorge and a charcutier from Thiviers, offered a glass to his neighbors before pouring one for himself.

  “And one for me, if you please, cher confrère,” growled the voice of an elderly man three seats away from Bruno. Although he had gone along the table shaking hands with everyone present when he’d first arrived, Bruno had not noticed until now that the speaker was in a wheelchair. A heavy greatcoat had been slung over the back of the wheelchair, disguising its shape, and the speaker was decked out in a set of formal robes that looked almost as old as their owner.

  “With pleasure,” said Bruno, rising and taking the bottle across. The old man seized it and examined the label.

  “Clos l’Envège.” He grunted. “That will do. Young Julien makes a good wine, and the 2010 was a fine year.” He poured out a glass and sipped, keeping the bottle close, sighed with pleasure and then lit a cigarette in defiance of the rules against smoking in enclosed places.

  “I’m Pierre de Bourdeille and I know who you are, Bruno. Going to arrest me?” the old man asked with a sly grin.

  “It would be a bad precedent for one member of the confrérie to arrest another at our concours,” Bruno replied politely, shaking hands again. “And the man who had my job before me always said that the art of police work was knowing what and when one should avoid noticing.”

  De Bourdeille laughed, a harsh cackle. “I wish some of your predecessors had learned that aspect of the art of policing. I might not be in this thing.” He slapped the arm of the wheelchair, which did not distract Bruno from noticing that he had been addressed in the intimate form as tu, as was customary for members of a brotherhood.

  At that point Bruno knew why the name was familiar and realized that the man before him was one of the most respected figures in the region. After the war in which his father had been shot as a hostage, Bourdeille had then been named une pupille de la République. An institution for which Bruno had deep respect, the pupilles were orphans of men and women in the police and military who had been killed in the line of duty. Their care, health and education became the responsibility of the state. More recently, the status had been extended to the children of those killed by acts of terrorism. Although the system of pupillages had almost died out, successive terrorist attacks meant that there were now more than three hundred such pupilles. Bourdeille, Bruno recalled, had gone to one of the Grandes Écoles in Paris and then to the Louvre, where he had become a leading art historian and was reputed to be a wealthy man. He was now something of a recluse, and Bruno had not heard of his appearing in public before today.

  “I’m the oldest man here today and the longest-serving member of the confrérie, and you are one of the most recent,” Bourdeille went on. “What do you make of this year’s efforts at pâté de Périgueux?”

  “I’m enjoying the one we’re tasting now.”

  “What score are you giving it?”

  “Twenty-five for appearance, forty for taste, fifteen for seasoning, eighty in total,” said Bruno.

  �
��You’re a generous marker,” said the old man. “I agree it’s the best, but I’m giving it sixty-five. The first two just made fifty. But then I judge these things severely, since I can remember the magnificent ones made by le père Dubreuil, long before your time. He used to have a stall in the market near here on place du Coderc, God rest his soul. I’m sure le bon Dieu will comply, so long as Dubreuil continues to pursue his trade in heaven. I don’t know about you, Bruno, but I find it impossible to imagine an afterlife without food and wine.”

  “I agree, cher confrère, and I’m not sure if I’d enjoy an eternity without dogs and horses,” said Bruno.

  “Remember what Mark Twain said,” Bourdeille added. “ ‘Heaven for the climate, but hell for the company.’ ”

  Bruno smiled, resigning himself to the fact that the bottle of Monbazillac was not going to be shifted from the protection of Bourdeille’s arm. He returned to his seat and to the next plates of pâté de Périgueux, this time accompanied by the Montravel. It was very good, but it was not Monbazillac.

  By the time the tasting was finished, the scores added up, the winners awarded their medals by the mayor of Périgueux, and the assembled members of the confrérie began their annual parade through the old town before sitting down to the ritual lunch, Bourdeille had disappeared.

  “He never stays beyond the tasting and goes straight home,” replied the grand master when Bruno asked if Bourdeille had been taken ill. “I’m just grateful that he managed to attend at all at his age. The only other event that draws him out is the annual commemoration on June the thirteenth of the shooting of the hostages in Périgueux. His father was one of those killed. I’m sure you’ll have heard the story and the fuss when he changed his name.”