Her first concern with Bourdeille’s research came when she went through the local archives in Toulon, Marseille and Avignon. They listed those possessions of royalists confiscated by the revolutionaries in the summer of 1793, when much of southern France had declared for the king and welcomed the English fleet into the great naval base of Toulon. Bruno remembered reading of the Siege of Toulon in one of the biographies of Napoléon, who as a young officer had made his name by mounting the artillery batteries that destroyed the town’s defenses and forced the British fleet to evacuate the port.
Bourdeille had found a reference to a religious work by one Jean Lefrinc, along with a description that the art historian cited to identify a work that currently belonged to the descendant of a French officer who had been ennobled by Napoléon. But when trying to trace the reference in the National Archives, Claudia found no sign of it. She did find, however, that the painting had been attributed by Bourdeille to Josse Lieferinxe of Cambrai, who had worked at the papal court in Avignon. Shortly after Bourdeille’s attribution in 1962, the work was sold at auction in Paris for the equivalent of four hundred thousand dollars.
“Archives are never perfect, bureaucrats mislay documents or forget to copy them or use the back of the paper for a family shopping list,” Professor Porter had replied to Claudia’s query.
Over the next month Claudia questioned two more of Bourdeille’s attributions. The first was based on his finding a letter in the archives of a monastery that noted the gift of a painting described as “An allegory by a M. de Boijs,” which Bourdeille identified as the work of Ambroise Dubois, a court painter of the day. Again, the owner sold it for a handsome sum shortly after the attribution. And Claudia had found no evidence of the letter being received in the monastery’s letter book, in which all correspondence was customarily listed.
The second case hinged on Bourdeille finding a receipt from the customs office at La Rochelle of duty being paid on a hitherto unknown painting by Antoine Caron. It was being brought back among the possessions of a planter returning from Martinique. Again, she had found no matching record in the archives of the douanes.
This time, Porter’s response was a little longer. “The Caron attribution was endorsed by the legendary Charles Sterling, of the Louvre and the Metropolitan Museum in New York. As a Jew Sterling fled there from Nazi-occupied France. Sterling is one of the great connoisseurs of the century, and his attributions are wholly reliable. But well done on your research and on your inquisitive mind.”
It was shortly after that, from the dates on the bill from Hexagon, that Claudia had commissioned them to investigate Bourdeille and his background.
All this was unfamiliar terrain to Bruno. None of the names of the artists meant anything to him, but he could appreciate the work Claudia had done in the archives. It suggested a degree of commitment to art history that he found impressive. It also sat oddly with her drug use. The fentanyl was understandable, prescribed by her doctor. It was the other drug that struck him as unlikely to be taken by the young woman he’d known, however briefly. He knew young people experimented with drugs, often foolishly, but he couldn’t understand those yaba pills. Didn’t everyone know the dangers of amphetamines by now?
His phone rang as he pondered. The screen told him it was Amélie calling from Paris to say that she was taking two days off to come to the Périgord and negotiate in person with Mademoiselle Neyrac about her concert at Château des Milandes. She also wanted to see the large hall where she’d be singing and to check out the costumes and sound system. She’d get the train that left the Gare d’Austerlitz just before eight and would arrive in St. Denis at one-thirty, just in time for a late lunch at Ivan’s. She’d go back to Paris Sunday afternoon.
As he put down his desk phone, happy at the prospect of seeing her, his mobile vibrated. The screen told him it was Florence, and he had a sudden premonition that this call, like the one from her that had launched his week, would lead to the discovery of another death. He shook his head and told himself not to be so foolish.
“Bruno, I need a great favor. Could you possibly take care of the children for me tonight? And as soon as possible? I have to go out, but everyone else is tied up, so you’re my last hope.”
“Of course,” he said, instantly wondering what might have cropped up or why all her friends and her pupils at the collège who usually babysat were not available. He dragged his mind back to practicalities and looked at his watch. “Have the children eaten yet?”
“No, I’m afraid not. You’ll need to make their dinner, bathe them, give them a story when you put them to bed. It will be all right. They know you, and they’ll think it’s an adventure.”
“If I make them spaghetti and give them some fruit, will that be all right?”
“Perfect. I have spaghetti and bananas in the apartment. I’m sorry, but I need to leap into the shower and change, but I’ll wait for you to arrive. Soon as you can.”
“It sounds like an emergency—anything I can help you with?” he asked, consumed by curiosity.
“No, no. Just come.”
Bruno collected Balzac from the stables where he’d left his dog after the morning ride, explained to Pamela that he’d have to miss exercising Hector that evening, stopped at the supermarket for some chopped meat, onions, tomatoes and fruit juice and picked up a baguette at the bakery. Within less than thirty minutes after Florence’s call he was knocking on the door of her maisonette, one of a row of subsidized apartments the collège had erected to tempt teachers to a country school.
Florence always dressed well, but he was struck when he opened the door by how good she looked, in a fitted suit of light blue, a white silk blouse and navy-blue high heels with a matching bag. Her blonde hair was piled into a loose bun, emphasizing her slim neck. She looked attractive but somehow businesslike, as though going to an interview for a job she really wanted.
“You look great,” he said, and as she darted her head forward to brush his cheeks in greeting he caught a whiff of scent, something she hardly ever wore. It must be a date, he thought, wondering whether she would choose to tell him about it.
“Bonjour, Bruno,” the twins chimed, darting from behind their mother’s legs to embrace Balzac before raising their arms for Bruno’s usual trick of lifting each of them once. Rather than disappoint them, he handed the bag with his shopping to Florence and raised the children, saying “Bonjour, Dora, et bonjour, Daniel” as their little arms went around his neck and Florence backed away so he could carry them into the hall, uncertain whether to take them into the kitchen or the living room.
“We have a new book for you to read us,” said Daniel. “Can you tell us a story?” asked Dora at the same time.
“Thank you so much for this,” Florence said, already halfway out of the door and waving goodbye. “I won’t be late back, by ten-thirty or so.”
“I think we’ll have to have a story and read the new book,” he said, walking with the children into the living room and lowering himself into an armchair as the children squabbled over which of them would have his képi and then squirmed down to the floor to play with Balzac.
“But first, which of you is going to teach me how to cook?” he asked.
“You cook all the time,” they cried.
“But this is magic spaghetti, and I don’t know magic. Balzac hasn’t taught me yet, but he says you two know how to cook it. Should we go in the kitchen and find out? Then we can have dinner and read a story before bath time.
“I only know the simple stuff,” said Bruno, washing his hands before peeling and chopping two onions and then cutting three tomatoes into rough chunks. “You two have to find the saucepan and the frying pan.”
The children began to forage in cupboards.
“Now I need salt and pepper,” he said, and Daniel climbed onto a stool and pointed to where they stood on the table. Bruno found duck fat i
n the fridge and began frying the onions and put a kettle on to boil. “Where does Maman keep the spaghetti?”
Dora pointed to a cupboard. “That’s where she keeps the ordinary spaghetti, but we don’t know where the magic one is.”
“Balzac will tell us,” said Bruno, tossing the meat into the softening onions, adding salt and pepper and stirring the pot. “He only eats the magic spaghetti. Now you need to break up the spaghetti sticks so the bits are each as long as your finger, otherwise Balzac won’t eat them. Now can you set the table, a plate for each of us, a fork and spoon, and a plate for Balzac. If you want apple juice, you need to set a glass by each plate.”
The water was boiling, so he poured the contents of the kettle into the saucepan, added salt and then the strands of spaghetti, now broken into child-sized pieces. He added the chunks of tomato to the mixture of meat and onions and began stirring, then he brought two stools close to the oven and stood a child on each stool so they could watch.
“Ladies first,” he said, picking up Dora and giving her a wooden spoon and holding her so she could stir the meat. Then he picked up Daniel, gave him another wooden spoon and let him stir the spaghetti.
“Now we say together after me the magic spell.” He began to chant, making up the rhyme as he spoke:
Les pâtes nous remuons
Afin que nous mangions.
La sauce deviendra magique
Sinon c’est très tragique.*
He put the children down, put a tiny portion of spaghetti with a little sauce on a plate and then put the plate in front of Balzac, who sniffed it curiously for a moment before wolfing it down. The dog ran his tongue around his teeth and looked up hopefully for more.
“It worked,” cried Dora. “It’s magic spaghetti. Balzac says so. Was it the magic spell?”
“I think so,” said Bruno. “Now let’s eat our own.”
The plates were soon emptied, the apple juice drunk, the bananas eaten and the new book read as they all cuddled together in the big armchair. They read until it was time for the children’s bath, with some extra bubbles so they could hide the yellow rubber ducks Bruno had given them the previous Christmas. Dried off, teeth brushed, pajamas donned, they knelt together beside their bed, closed their eyes and said their prayers for Mummy and Balzac and Bruno and all their friends. Then they clambered together into bed and sat up waiting for a story, which Bruno made up as he went along.
“Once upon a time there was a beautiful young princess and a brave young prince and they went for a long walk, much longer than usual, and began to worry that they might be lost. But then an enormous and friendly basset hound, bigger than Balzac, came along and said his name was Lancelot and asked if he could help. But they would have to climb up his long ears so that they could sit on his back…”
Their little eyes were drooping by the time he finished, so he kissed them good-night, tucked them in and left the door open so there would be a little light from the hall while he washed up. In the living room, he looked through Florence’s well-stocked bookshelves, pulled out a copy of Le Roy Ladurie’s Montaillou, which he’d always meant to read, and settled down in the armchair.
But he couldn’t concentrate, wondering where Florence had gone and why she hadn’t described her plans for the evening. She could have been dressed for a date, and the timing suggested she was going out to dinner. She was an adult woman, long divorced, and her life was her own, he told himself, and sternly ordered himself to drop this line of speculation and read the damn book. He managed a page or two before glancing at his watch to ponder where she might be, and with whom, before he sat up straight and returned his attention to the book.
This time he managed five pages before he began to ask himself why he should be feeling so unsettled. The image of Florence as she had opened the door to him that evening, looking so attractive, kept coming into his mind. Florence was a sensible, mature woman, he told himself. But nonetheless, she had been hurt in her marriage, abused in the dreadful job she had when he’d first met her before he’d told her about the vacancy for a science teacher that had cropped up at the local collège. Still, a woman alone was always vulnerable, so perhaps, just for reassurance, he should try to find out precisely who it was she was seeing this evening. He owed it to the children, Bruno said to himself.
He’d managed to get through perhaps forty pages before she returned, just a few minutes after ten-thirty, looking just as lovely as when she’d left, but with more of a sparkle in her eye, as though her evening had been a great success. She checked on the children, thanked him for cleaning up in the kitchen and saw him to the door, pressing Montaillou upon him when she saw he’d been reading it.
“It was so kind of you, Bruno,” she said, giving him a maternal, or perhaps a sisterly, peck on the cheek, and with a final word of thanks waved him a cheerful good-night. An unusually pensive Bruno drove home, not even noticing that Balzac was eyeing him curiously from the passenger seat and not at all looking forward to reading more about the medieval village of Montaillou in the shadow of the Pyrenees and the coming of the Inquisition to stamp out the heresy of the Cathars. But it might, he thought, help put him to sleep.
* “We stir the pasta so that we can eat and the sauce becomes magic. If not, it’s very tragic.”
Chapter 20
Before eight the following crisp and misty April morning, Bruno was parked by the canoe-rental shack on the waterfront of Limeuil waiting for the arrival of Dominic Darrail and listening to the local news on France Bleu Périgord. The third item quoted Madame Muller in that morning’s Sud Ouest saying she didn’t understand why the police would not release the body, since she understood that her daughter had died in a tragic accident.
“Merde,” Bruno said aloud and called up that day’s paper on his phone. There was a small headline on the front page saying “Billionaire’s Daughter Death Clash” and a full-page story inside with a photo of Claudia and another of her father in white tie and tails with his second wife at a White House event. The byline was Philippe Delaron of St. Denis. At least it was datelined Trémolat, where Claudia’s mother was staying. At the end of the story was a single-column photo of J-J with the caption “Police chief says, ‘No comment.’ ”
Bruno had a good idea how Philippe had got the story. The bustling young reporter had cultivated contacts among the staff at most of the main hotels in the valley and was always happy to reward his informants. A chambermaid making ten euros an hour would be delighted to make another ten with a quick call to Philippe.
Bruno looked around impatiently for Dominic to arrive. His canoe-renting friend Antoine in St. Denis had brought out his canoes a week earlier from the garage where he stored them in winter. He’d cleaned them, checked the life jackets and waterproof containers, where clients could put their spare clothes and valuables, and spent a day paddling downstream from Montignac on his annual inspection of the river. Dominic seemed to take a more casual approach to his business, so Bruno ordered a cup of coffee at the quayside café-bar and read the rest of Sud Ouest while waiting.
It was close to eight-fifteen when Dominic arrived, red eyed and with a hint of last night’s alcohol. A swarthy, thickset man with a taste for gold neck chains and bracelets, he was in his early thirties, divorced and starting to get fat. He no longer resembled the fit young man Bruno recalled who had played for the local rugby team. But his shoulders were broad, and he was still strong enough to have tossed a woman twice Claudia’s size down the well. Eight canoes were stacked on the trailer behind his four-by-four vehicle, and it looked to Bruno as if they and the life jackets had not been cleaned before being put away for the winter.
“Bonjour, Dominic,” Bruno said, shaking hands. “I need to ask you about that lecture you attended Sunday night. We’re trying to find out if anyone saw Claudia after the event.”
Dominic shook his head firmly. “I saw her before
it when they were handing out glasses of that cat’s piss they call punch. We just said hello and that we’d talk later about her doing a river trip.”
“What about when the lecture finished?”
“I didn’t see her, and the mayor’s wife said she’d left early, not feeling well.” He gave a sour grin. “Probably that damn punch.”
“How was the lecture?”
Dominic shrugged. “Useful, I suppose. I learned a thing or two to tell the tourists. They like to hear some history about the place. That’s why they come here, some of them.”
“And after the lecture, what did you do then?”
“Went home, watched some film on TV that was already halfway over.”
“Which film, do you recall?”
“I dunno, about a black guy taking his kids skiing.”
“I heard you’d gone for a pee in the bushes after the lecture.”
Dominic shrugged again. “I was dying for one. There’s only one toilet and it was occupied. Anyway, it’s good for the plants.”
“Did you see anybody else in the garden when you were taking your leak?”
“No, not that I was looking out for anyone.”
“Do you recall who was still there as you were leaving?”
Dominic screwed up his eyes as if to remember and then began to roll himself a cigarette as he spoke. “I’m pretty sure that Mad Englishwoman who rides horses was there and the teacher from the collège. I think they were chatting with that redhead from the museum. And there was the garden girl who let us in, Félicité. She saw me zipping up when I finished.” He shrugged. “Nothing she hadn’t seen before.”
The Body in the Castle Well Page 17
