The Body in the Castle Well

by Martin Walker

  Pamela was in the lead, Fabiola and Gilles behind her and Félix the stableboy bringing up the rear. The baron and Jack Crimson would be back at the big house behind the riding school, opening bottles of wine while Florence and Miranda, Jack’s daughter, tried to prevent their four children from swamping Pamela’s bathroom as the kids enjoyed their communal bath time. They’d probably be trying to stand on the side of the bath to see if they could spot the return of the riders, although it was usually Balzac rather than the adults that they raced downstairs to greet. Bruno smiled at the thought and increased his pace to catch up with Félix, who seemed to have no trouble controlling the big warmblood he rode.

  “Bonjour, Bruno, terrible news about Claudia,” Félix said.

  “Really sad,” Bruno replied, nodding at the youth whose life had been transformed by working at Pamela’s stables. Son of an unemployed drunk of a father and a hardworking mother from the French islands of the Caribbean, Félix had been a truant and heading for a juvenile detention center until Bruno had realized he loved horses. At his urging, Pamela had given the boy a chance. Now Félix had caught up at school, and Florence reckoned he had a good chance of passing his baccalauréat and going on to veterinary school. For the moment, Félix insisted, he wanted to stay as a stableboy. But now that his father had a job as handyman at the riding school, Félix’s family was equally determined that he should get a proper education.

  “How’s the lycée going?” Bruno asked. Félix had now started his two years at the upper school in Périgueux. Like most of the rural pupils, he stayed in a dormitory from Monday until Friday. He could hardly wait to get back to the riding school on Friday evenings.

  “It’s tough, and even when I get back here on weekends, Florence comes to check I’m doing my homework,” Félix replied glumly. “I barely have time to do my real work, even now during school vacation.”

  “Félix, for the moment, school is your real work,” said Bruno as they rode into the stable yard. “You can’t stay a stableboy forever.”

  “You sound like my father. And my mother. And Pamela. And Florence.”

  Bruno grinned at Félix as he dismounted. “It looks to me like you’re outnumbered,” he said before embracing Pamela.

  “So young, so sad,” Pamela murmured. “Fabiola already told me about Claudia.”

  They took the horses into the stables, rubbed them down and checked their hooves before feeding them their evening bran and fresh water. It had been a long day, thought Bruno, and took off his shirt and T-shirt to rinse himself down in the stable sink. As he dried himself off, he saw Balzac playing with Félix before the basset hound trotted into Hector’s familiar stall and began making a nest for himself in the hay. It wouldn’t be long, Bruno thought, before the children came down from their bath to greet the dog who now seemed to be part of everyone’s extended family.

  Chapter 10

  “Who’s cooking tonight?” Bruno asked, and Pamela rolled her eyes as she replied, “It’s Jack’s turn. The usual stewpot special.”

  “I like it when he cooks,” said Fabiola. “It always tastes a bit different even though it looks the same.”

  Jack Crimson was officially a retired British diplomat, but with a knighthood he never used, which testified to a distinguished if discreet career in intelligence. Cooking, however, was one of the few skills he had never acquired. And since each of the members of the Monday evening dinners, except the two mothers, had to take turns in providing the meal, Jack was learning as he went.

  Now that he had understood the importance of beginning with a good stock, Jack had started by boiling down the carcass of a duck to create a good bouillon before adding smoked duck sausages to chopped-up carrots, leeks, potatoes and then a large can of peeled tomatoes and a smaller can of the petits pois that he thought essential to every dish. Then Jack always added a random collection of dried herbs and a great deal of chopped garlic to the giant stewpot that had been simmering away on his woodstove for the past two days, a half bottle of red wine being added each day. Finally, in tribute to the culinary idiosyncrasies of his homeland and despite all the hints from his daughter, Jack liked to add a few splashes of Worcestershire sauce to his concoctions.

  For a final touch, shortly before serving, Jack fried a generous handful of lardons of pork with chopped onions and mushrooms and added them to his stew. Bruno and the baron had privately agreed that Jack’s dishes reminded them of meals they had been fed in the army. Since Jack invariably brought some excellent wines and cheeses to accompany and follow his dinners, along with apple pies from Fauquet and a giant container of vanilla ice cream, none of the adults complained.

  Jack’s daughter, Miranda, rolled her eyes at the sight of the stewpot and took only a token portion of her father’s food. But since her children and Florence’s always anticipated Jack’s turn to cook with great excitement and devoured second helpings, even Miranda smiled indulgently at the chorus of praise that followed Jack’s latest offering. As Fabiola had said, it tasted a little different every time, even though it always looked the same, a brown and glutinous mass embellished with the odd flash of red tomato, a glint of orange carrot and the occasional green pea.

  “Chicken,” said Gilles as they all sat around the huge table in Pamela’s kitchen and dug in. “You’ve added some chicken breasts. That’s new.”

  “One each, the children like them,” said Jack. “And I sautéed them in duck fat, in Périgord style.”

  “The aroma goes very well with the delightful bath-time scents of the children,” suggested Fabiola, straight-faced. “But should we take red wine for the duck or white wine for the chicken?”

  “I’m having a glass of each,” replied Jack, cheerfully. “The white is a Verdot from David Fourtout, and the red is something a bit special from Château Tour des Gendres. There’s a corner of their vineyard with old vines of Cabernet Franc, which is new to me. They call this one Les Anciens Francs, and I think it’s excellent.”

  It was a pleasure, Bruno and the baron had told each other, to share in Jack’s self-taught education in the wines of Bergerac. Guided only by a map of the vineyards from the tourist office, he went on weekly forays, half pilgrimage and half exploration, among the eleven hundred winemakers of the region. Bruno had to admit that Jack was introducing him to good wines he had never known before.

  “What I like is that I never know what my fourchette will pick up next,” said Félix, examining the almost black lump on his fork with interest.

  “That’s smoked duck sausage,” Jack explained. “It’s the only sausage I know that doesn’t fall apart in cooking. If you find something white, that’s the chicken.”

  Bruno and the baron exchanged glances, and then each filled his glass with the Verdot. In fact, this particular stew was a success, thought Bruno. The textures were varied, although the tastes had merged together, but the duck sausage remained true to its origins, and the chicken had been added late enough to retain its flavor. The sauce itself was rich and nourishing, the potatoes so overcooked that they fell apart under his fork to soak up the juices. The children, he noticed, had already finished their second helpings and were clamoring for their ice cream and apple pie.

  “Any developments on Claudia?” Fabiola asked, once the meal was over, the coffee served and the children put to bed.

  “Not really, because we’re still waiting for the toxicology report on that painkiller she was taking.”

  “Fentanyl is more than a painkiller, Bruno,” she said. “It’s an opioid, dangerous as hell and addictive. We’ve had our own problems in France with it, but in the United States it’s almost out of control. Oxycodone, fentanyl, doctors are giving out over two hundred million prescriptions a year, and then there’s the black market.”

  “Why aren’t they banned?” the baron asked.

  “Its skin-patch delivery system is on the World Health Organization�
�s list of essential medicines because properly used it’s a terrific anesthetic. It’s also lucrative. The commercial name is OxyContin, and the company that produces it has made over thirty billion dollars from it. People in pain want painkillers, instant relief, but it comes at a high price,” Fabiola replied. “We tried using it in France during the AIDS epidemic to stop heroin addicts from infecting themselves with dirty needles, but then we found we had a whole new problem on our hands.”

  “How did it start?” Florence asked.

  “German scientists developed it during the First World War, thinking it would be less dangerous than heroin. They were wrong, but it was certainly an effective painkiller. Adolf Hitler used to get injections of it.”

  “And Claudia was taking it?” Pamela asked.

  “She’d been prescribed it for menstrual pains by an American doctor,” Fabiola said and tossed up her hands in despair. “She even asked me for a new prescription.”

  “So it’s an open-and-shut case,” said Jack. “Why are you still working on it?”

  “Her computer and her purse are missing, so that raises questions, and the American ambassador is getting involved,” Bruno replied. “It seems he’s a friend of her father, so J-J has ordered the autopsy for tomorrow morning to speed things up. But I need to ask those of you who were at the lecture in Limeuil to check whether my list of attendees is complete, and whether you saw anyone leave the event early or arrive late.”

  “The only person I saw leaving was you, Florence, with Claudia, but then after a minute or two you came back,” said Pamela, turning toward her friend.

  “When I came back inside the lecture hall, I took a seat near the door rather than disturb people. I’d certainly have seen if anyone else left, but nobody did,” Florence said firmly. “Do you have a final list of those who were there, Bruno?”

  Bruno took out the list he had printed in his office and passed it around.

  “There was a young man who ran the slide machine,” said the baron, looking at Bruno over his spectacles. “Have you included him?”

  “He was one of those who came from Montignac with the speaker.”

  “Then your list may be complete,” the baron replied. “Do you know how many chairs were put out before the lecture?”

  “Yes, twenty-eight, which is all the chairs they had.”

  “There were four vacant seats; I remember counting them because for a moment I thought we might run out of chairs, and I’d spotted a window ledge that I could sit on if necessary. And you have twenty-four people on this list, so I’d say it’s complete.”

  Bruno nodded before speaking. “Yes, but wouldn’t that depend on when you did your count, after or before Claudia left with Florence?”

  “It was before, when we’d all taken our seats and the mayor’s wife was introducing the speaker,” the baron replied. “I was wondering if there might be any late arrivals.”

  “And the young man in charge of the slides? Was he sitting in the audience or standing by the slide projector?”

  “Standing,” interrupted Pamela before the baron could reply. “I remember because he dropped some slides, and I turned around to see what the noise was.”

  “That means your list can’t be right, Bruno,” said Florence. “Twenty-eight seats, four of them vacant, and one man standing at the slide projector. That means twenty-five people were there. And I remember there were only two chairs behind the table at the front, one for the speaker and one for the mayor’s wife.”

  “That’s right,” said Gilles, looking up from his notebook where he’d been scribbling down figures. “Your list has one person missing.”

  “What about the girl from the garden staff who was serving the fruit punch, Félicité?” Bruno asked. “Could it be her?”

  “No, when I came back into the room I sat near the door and she was beside me,” said Florence. “I remember that because I was wondering whether there might have been something in the punch that made Claudia feel odd. I asked Félicité later, and she said it was just white wine, fruit juice and sparkling water.”

  Gilles started sketching a diagram in his notebook. “Here is the lecture hall, here at the front is the table with the speaker and the mayor’s wife, the slide projector man at the back and three rows of chairs. I’ll make the rows A, B and C, and then I’ll number each chair. Where were you, Pamela?”

  “I was here, in the second row with Jack and the baron,” said Pamela, reaching across to put her finger on Gilles’s notebook. “That’s B-two, -three and -four, and that English couple from the tennis club was in B-five and -six. When the lecture started, Claudia was in our row, in B-one.”

  “I started in the front row with my students, and I was at the side, so that’s row A, one to four,” said Florence. “Joe and his wife were next, in A-five and -six, and then some friends of the speaker in seven and eight.”

  “There were three Périgord people sitting just behind me in row C,” said the baron. “The accents were unmistakable, a couple in their sixties and a younger man of solid build. And Horst and Clothilde were also behind us.”

  Bruno nodded, thinking of Laurent and his friends. “I have a good idea who the Périgord people must be.”

  “When I came back, I sat in the first seat in row C, and Félicité was beside me in C-two,” said Florence.

  “So if there were eight chairs in each of the three rows, that makes twenty-four. There were two chairs at the front table, twenty-six, and twenty-eight chairs in total,” said Gilles. “Where were the other two chairs? Was one of the rows longer than the others?”

  “The front and second rows were longer,” the baron said. “I remember from when we helped clear them away at the end.”

  “That means we have A-nine, B-seven, -eight and -nine and C-eight to account for, plus one that Florence vacated,” said Gilles. “That makes six empty seats.”

  Bruno pulled out his phone and called Clothilde, explaining that he was trying to account for everyone at the lecture. She said she and Horst had come alone, but they had sat beside a middle-aged woman from Limeuil named Marie-Claire, who had come with the mayor’s wife. Bruno nodded, having called at Marie-Claire’s house earlier in the day. He thanked Clothilde and hung up. Jack Crimson was on his own phone, speaking English and thanking someone before he ended the call.

  “That was the Sharps, the couple from the tennis club,” Jack said. “There was one young man they’d never seen before beside them and then two empty seats. They didn’t speak to the young man and couldn’t say if he was French or English.”

  “We have a mystery man,” said Gilles, his eyes lighting up. “This is turning into a good story.”

  Bruno’s heart sank. Gilles might now make his living writing books, but the news instincts honed by his years in journalism with Libération and Paris Match remained strong. “Please don’t use what I said about the American ambassador,” Bruno told him. “I’d be in real trouble.”

  Once the dishwasher was filled and people began to take their leave, Bruno was startled when Pamela murmured to him, “Don’t go just yet.” She then discreetly stroked the palm of his hand with a finger, which surprised him even more. This had always been her private signal that she would welcome Bruno to her bed that night. Pamela had ended their affair several months ago, so Bruno was intrigued and more than a little excited. He bent down to rearrange some of the dishes that had been clumsily stacked on the shelves beneath the kitchen counter as Gilles and Fabiola left, and he and Pamela were alone.

  He rose to his feet, feeling uncertain both about his own feelings and about Pamela’s motives. Did she want to relaunch their affair or simply have Bruno spend the night? Despite the familiar tingle of anticipation he felt at the prospect, did he really want to resume a relationship that was delightful but that seemed to exist always in the present tense, without a future?

  In
tensely aware of the tension between his conscious thoughts and the urgings of his body, Bruno gazed at her standing at the sink with her back to him, the slim waist and the flare of her hips reminding him of the lithe horsewoman’s body beneath the jeans and sweater. Pamela emptied the carafe, pouring each of them a last half glass of red wine, and then carefully rinsed the heavy crystal decanter at the sink and turned to look at him with that curious half smile and dancing eyes that he knew so well.

  “Surprised?” she asked, her tone playful.

  He nodded, smiling at her. “And intrigued. I remember that speech of yours on horseback when you said our affair should come to an end.”

  “Do you recall what I said about how I’d reached that decision?”

  “Very clearly. You said while I was involved with you, I would not be free to find the woman I should marry to have a family and raise children.”

  “And you haven’t done that, even though you always said that’s what you wanted to do,” she said. “I’m not suggesting that it’s for want of trying, but that’s the way it is. And I miss you and there’s no other man I want in my bed.” She paused and took a sip of wine, her eyes on his before she spoke quickly. “And sometimes when I’m there alone I find myself wanting you very much.”

  “And I you,” he said, taking her glass from her, putting it on the counter and taking her in his arms.

  Chapter 11

  This was Bruno’s second visit to the Château des Milandes in a week. The first had been six days before, when he’d been completing his plans for the free concerts that St. Denis would stage in July and August, the peak tourist season. His promotion to chief of police not only for St. Denis but of its neighboring communes along the River Vézère had not precluded Bruno’s other role as the impresario of local entertainments. He relished the annual haggling with the fireworks company for the cost of the feu de joie each year on Bastille Day and on the Feast of Saint Louis. He enjoyed arranging the annual vintage-car parade, the anglers’ competition, the literary day with local authors, the tennis tournament and all the other events that delighted the tourists and animated the town’s calendar. But most of all Bruno enjoyed arranging the free concerts that took place on summer evenings along the riverbank of St. Denis.