The Body in the Castle Well

by Martin Walker

  Time passed. A low wind rustled the young leaves. The occasional young bee, flying as if drunk and still learning its geography, blundered past him. Bruno had been there long enough and stood so still that the wildlife would be growing accustomed to his presence. As soon as Bruno formulated the thought, something very small rustled near his feet: a vole, perhaps, or a field mouse. Laurent’s hawk would have good hunting here.

  If Bruno’s quarry came as expected, he asked himself, what would they use, bleach or gasoline? On a Sunday morning gasoline might be easier to obtain, but fire would raise an alarm and make it harder to slip away unobserved. The big supermarkets were open until midday, and they sold bleach in ten-liter bidons, the kind the cleaners used at the mairie. That would not be easy to carry if his suspect planned to climb the wall, so he should expect someone wearing a rucksack, which would mean reduced mobility. It would also make it harder to climb the wall unobserved, which probably meant using the same access point that Bruno had scaled. However, if a key had been obtained to the outer gate, which was what Bruno anticipated if his theory was correct, he should hear footsteps coming up the gravel path. But he must not spring the trap too soon. He needed real proof of guilt.

  Stop fretting, Bruno, he told himself. You have waited in more dangerous moments, more dangerous places, than this, stood in the shadows with the lives of other men under your orders and depending on your judgment. If you’re wrong and nobody comes, the only price you pay this time will be a little humiliation. It might even be good for you.

  He felt his phone vibrate in the pouch at his waist, coming in short bursts, which meant a text message rather than a call, and the green light was on so it had come from somebody on the brigadier’s network. He slid it from the pouch and read what he realized were almost the final pieces in the jigsaw:

  “Cagnac—one dependent listed, a daughter, Véronique Cassini, born 30 March 1959.”

  Interesting, thought Bruno, a daughter but nothing about a wife. And Véronique’s birth date came just nine months after the army coup in Algiers of May 1958, which had toppled the Fourth Republic, brought de Gaulle to power and launched frenzied celebrations among the French army and the pieds-noirs who believed this was their guarantee that Algeria would remain French. Véronique’s mother would not have been the only pied-noir to welcome a légionnaire with open arms in those heady days. How wrong they had been, he thought. And how subtly de Gaulle had played his game, saving a democracy in France by becoming a kind of dictator. And then he had stepped down of his own accord.

  The history of France, he thought, we can never escape it. And here am I, standing in the precincts of a Stone Age settlement that became a fortress of the Gauls, and then of the Romans, of the Franks and the English. And in living memory German troops had shot French partisans against the wall at the bottom of this hill while Charles de Gaulle was rallying France from England and grumbling at his dependence on Anglo-American support.

  Bruno heard voices before he heard footsteps and then the clang of the iron gate being closed. Of course, they used the key issued to the workmen. He heard voices of two men, speaking in grunts and panting as they climbed the path, as if burdened. As they came into view, he felt a small glow of satisfaction. Dominic and Luc, just as he had thought, loaded down under rucksacks, two descendants of Michel Cagnac, a Frenchman who hunted down other Frenchmen, fought for Hitler and then fought Vietnamese and Algerians in the name of France. Two descendants, one from his affair in Algiers and the other from his rape of Rebekkah in 1942, each one prepared to commit murder to protect their fabled inheritance.

  They eased the rucksacks from their shoulders, opened them and pulled out two bidons labeled EAU DE JAVEL, named for the district of Paris where commercial bleach was first made. Bruno waited until each man had opened a bidon and had his hands full before he stepped out from the bushes, his gun still in his holster and his arms spread wide.

  “Luc Bonnet, Dominic Darrail, you are under arrest on suspicion of conspiracy to murder,” he declared.

  Before he finished speaking, a fat bidon was being slung at him by Luc, bleach spilling as it spun through the air, and Luc was charging after it toward Bruno.

  Bruno had expected this. He waited until Luc was almost on him and then sidestepped before pivoting to slam the side of his boot into Luc’s knee. As the man went down, Bruno caught one flailing arm and twisted it hard and high behind Luc’s back as the man landed on the ground, bleach bubbling from the bidon beside him.

  Bruno looked up to see Dominic standing aghast and immobile, his bidon still in one hand, the cap in the other, uncertain what to do.

  “Be careful, Dominic,” said Bruno, pulling out his weapon. “I’m armed.”

  Slowly Dominic bent to put down the bleach and then stood with his hands in the air. Behind him, J-J and Josette and four armed gendarmes led by Yveline were spilling out of the main door to the Moorish castle and carrying handcuffs.

  “Bring some water to wash the bleach off this man,” Bruno shouted, putting the bidon upright and rolling a whimpering Luc away from the spreading pool of bleach. Josette darted back into the castle. Gendarmes handcuffed the two men.

  “Take your trousers off,” Yveline told Bruno. “You’ve got bleach all over them and it will burn through to your legs.”

  “Him first,” said Bruno, pointing at Luc as Josette reappeared with a bucket of water. “He’s got bleach soaked all down his side.”

  Bruno took his boots off and then his trousers, took them into the toilets inside the castle, doused them in cold water at a sink and then rinsed his legs.

  “Nice operation,” said J-J, coming in and leaning against the door.

  “Those yaba pills—Dominic and Luc took a package tour to Thailand in November,” Bruno said. “Do you need me for the interrogation?”

  “Not really. Thanks to Annette’s warrant we’ve got the phone texts between Dominic in the lecture hall and Luc waiting outside. It makes it clear how they planned to kill Claudia. Josette will take charge of searching their homes, and I’m prepared to bet we’ll find more of those yaba pills they fed her in the herb tea. Yveline’s next job is to arrest Dominic’s mother. We’ve got her phone records, and then we’ll pick up Madame Bonnet.”

  “Would you like to leave that to me?” Bruno asked. “Or will you join me? You don’t need to start the interrogation right away. I remember you telling me it usually helped to let suspects sweat a little in their cell before starting to question them. In fact, it might be helpful if you came along, because I don’t think this is over yet.”

  Chapter 35

  Bruno donned a pair of tracksuit pants from the back of his Land Rover and with J-J beside him drove to the Vieux Logis at Trémolat. J-J was reporting success back to Prunier in Périgueux, and Bruno stopped to make two phone calls of his own before thinking through his theory and his plan on the way. He hoped he was right.

  “We have to pick someone up here,” said Bruno once they arrived at the hotel. “He should be getting back anytime now.”

  “Do you mean Hodge?” J-J asked.

  “No, Claudia’s American professor, his name is Porter. I spoke to him earlier this morning, and I want to stop him before he goes into the hotel. That could upset everything.”

  J-J glanced at him, mystified. Then J-J’s phone rang. It was Josette, reporting that a stash of yaba pills had been found at Luc’s home, inside a suitcase underneath his unmade bed.

  “Well, that’s good news,” said J-J, closing his phone. “Now what? Do we sit here and twiddle our thumbs?”

  “No, we sit here and you try to pick holes in my plan.”

  “What holes? We have the two killers, the proof of their premeditated murder in their phone texts, their motive and opportunity. And we caught them in the act of trying to wash away that supposed DNA you fooled them into believing was still there. Now we have the pill
s. And I want to arrest Madame Bonnet, who tipped them off when you set your trap this morning.”

  “It might be a little more complicated than that,” said Bruno, stepping out of his vehicle to wave down a car that had just pulled alongside the hotel.

  Porter was at the wheel, and J-J waited as the two men spoke, nodded agreement and then Porter drove down to leave his rental car in the parking area and climbed into the back of Bruno’s Land Rover. Bruno made the introductions and drove to the bottom of the hill below Limeuil and turned into the rough lane beside the Chapelle St. Martin and parked. J-J and Porter paused to read the small plaque erected for tourists.

  “I always wondered about this place,” said J-J while Porter strolled into the graveyard to admire the church. “So it’s twelfth century. A handsome structure, Bruno. What do you know about it?”

  “It was built by England’s King Henry the Second on the instructions of the pope as penance for the murder of Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury,” Bruno said. “Henry was the local duke at the time, having married Eleanor of Aquitaine, which led to some three centuries of war between England and France. The chapel has some fading medieval frescoes inside and wonderful acoustics. We sometimes have chamber-music concerts here in summer.”

  J-J followed Porter into the churchyard, picked his way through the tombs and into the deserted church, down some shallow steps and into the nave. Above them was a barrel roof and a hole through which a long rope dangled. Bruno explained that it was used to ring the bells during the occasional burial in one of the family tombs outside.

  “Why are we here?” J-J asked.

  “We’re waiting for Madame de Breille.”

  “I can’t stand the woman, but I suppose she, or rather Claudia’s father, is entitled to be brought into the picture,” said Porter. He advanced to look at the frescoes and let out a low whistle. “Wow, these are wonderful—thirteenth century, I presume?”

  “I believe so,” said Bruno. “The church was consecrated in 1194, but it’s built on the foundations of a Roman temple.”

  J-J ignored him. “I want to know why Bourdeille wanted to keep Madame Bonnet from inheriting if she’s his heir? And what has St. Denis ever done for him that he makes this generous bequest to your town?”

  “That is the question,” Bruno replied. “Or at least one of them.”

  “I remember you telling me that Claudia was trying to buy Bourdeille’s paintings,” J-J went on. “I hope they’re in better shape than these frescoes. The damp has got to them.”

  “I’m sure he’d be happy to show you his collection,” said Bruno. “It’s supposed to be worth four or five million.”

  Porter was peering at the frescoes. “I see an entry into Jerusalem, and that’s either an Annunciation or the nativity, I can’t be sure because of the fading. Then there’s a crucifixion and a descent from the cross. They’re wonderful. And who are these two?” he asked, turning to the frescoes of two men standing together on a side wall.

  “Some say they depict King Henry and Thomas Becket when they were still friends,” Bruno said, turning at the sound of high heels on the gravel outside. He went to the door to greet Madame de Breille, wearing yet another elegant suit, but this time flaunting a large bright red silk scarf at her neck that matched her lipstick.

  “You might want to let your client Monsieur Muller know that this morning we arrested the two men who murdered his daughter. They are local men but with an interesting heritage,” Bruno said. “Excuse me, I’m forgetting my manners, you know Professor Porter and you have heard of J-J, Commissaire Jalipeau.”

  “Messieurs,” she said coldly, acknowledging their existence but nothing more. “That is interesting news, but who are the murderers and why are we meeting here?”

  “Each of the men we arrested is a descendant of Michel Cagnac, the milice cop whom your private detective Pellier was researching in Bordeaux last week,” Bruno said. “One of them, Luc, is the son of Madame Bonnet, who is Bourdeille’s official heir. The other is the grandson of Cagnac, the result of a romantic liaison Cagnac enjoyed in Algeria. The two men are friends as well as cousins, and I think they and their mothers have worked out an agreement to share Bourdeille’s inheritance. Cagnac’s daughter from Algeria, who is Dominic’s mother, slipped Claudia the yaba pill inside a strongly flavored herb tea. She has also been arrested.”

  “So it’s all wrapped up? Congratulations,” she said dryly. “You could have told me that over the phone.”

  “I thought you might want to join us for the next phase of our operation. I invited you here because I believe Monsieur Muller needs to know about this. Excuse me while I make a call.”

  Bruno tapped in Pamela’s number, learned that everyone had just finished lunch and that Bourdeille was being taken home in the special cab. Then he called the mayor and said simply. “It’s time. We’re heading there now.”

  “Right, now we can go,” Bruno said, closing his phone. “We’re going to Bourdeille’s place so that J-J can arrest Madame Bonnet, and the rest of us can join Monsieur Bourdeille in listening to Professor Porter’s findings and then see how justice might be done.”

  Bourdeille was already in his study when Bruno entered. Porter, the mayor and Madame de Breille followed behind him.

  “You missed an excellent lunch, Bruno,” said the old man. “Bonjour, Monsieur le Maire, an unexpected pleasure. And who is this charming woman and the gentleman with you?”

  “Madame de Breille represents Claudia’s father, and Professor Porter of Yale was Claudia’s thesis adviser. He wants to say a few words.”

  Porter glanced nervously at Bruno as if uncertain of his role. Bruno smiled reassuringly and Porter ran his fingers through his hair, turned to Bourdeille and began.

  “I believe you know that Claudia was a very gifted young scholar, and despite your reputation, Monsieur de Bourdeille, I thought I should take seriously her concerns about some of your attributions. I spent the last couple of days in the lab at the museum in Bordeaux. At the same time your former colleagues at the Louvre, including your former pupil Mademoiselle Massenet, have also been busy with their own research. To be blunt, monsieur, we are now convinced that the two questionable attributions we have examined so far are based upon forgeries of eighteenth-century documents. Claudia was right all along.”

  “You are correct, Monsieur le Professeur,” Bourdeille said politely, “Claudia was indeed a very gifted scholar. I am desolate at her loss, and at the news of these forgeries. But I trust there is no suggestion that I might have had access to modern forensic tools at the time I made my attribution. Science has advanced far and fast since those days. Naturally I would be glad, in the light of new knowledge, to correct any error that I may have made in the past.”

  “Indeed the science has advanced, monsieur,” Porter replied, sounding more confident. “Gas chromatography and mass spectroscopy combined are wonderful things. The documents we have examined, from different countries and different centuries, turn out to have used the same ink. And what is even more remarkable, the same ink was used by your friend Paul Juin when he signed the affidavit of his oral interview at the Centre Jean Moulin, the Resistance museum in Bordeaux. You’ll recall that you also gave an oral interview that day, and you signed yours in the same ink.”

  Bourdeille stared at him without speaking for a good ten seconds until the silence in the room became almost deafening. Bruno was holding his breath. Finally, Bourdeille said, “I seem to recall that I may have borrowed Paul’s pen.”

  “That is a pathetic excuse and you know it,” snapped Porter. “You’re a fraud, monsieur.”

  “I think we can go further than that,” said Bruno. “I’m trying to decide whether you’ll be charged as an accessory to Claudia’s murder or as a coconspirator.

  “You knew she was onto you, that she was the kind of scholar who would not let it go,
” Bruno went on. “You had a motive to have Claudia silenced but in a way that would never point to you. And you knew perfectly well that all the microphones upstairs here had been fixed so they were permanently on, so that if you fell or had a seizure, Madame Bonnet would come to your aid. You deliberately schemed to exclude her from her inheritance, but you also used those microphones to warn Madame Bonnet that the real threat to her and her son’s legacy was Claudia. And we know the rest.”

  “Are you mad, Bruno?” Bourdeille asked. “Prove it.”

  “I’m not sure I need to,” said Bruno. “We’ll see what Madame Bonnet has to say. She’s just been arrested downstairs, and her son and Véronique Darrail and her son Dominic were arrested this morning in Limeuil. I’m sure they’ll be interested to learn of your backup plan to exclude them from the inheritance by donating your estate to St. Denis. Or is that another of your frauds?”

  “St. Denis won’t get a penny out of me,” Bourdeille said, sneering at Bruno and then at Porter. “And what’s this damn woman doing here?”

  “I’m the one who will be advising Monsieur Muller to bring a private prosecution against you, even if the police can’t make their case stick,” Madame de Breille said coldly. “He’ll ruin your reputation and he’ll sue you and your estate for every last centime you have.”

  The door opened and Madame Bonnet entered, J-J behind her.

  “Of course he knew the microphones were always on,” she said, fixing Bourdeille with a fierce glare. “We have the electrician’s contract on file downstairs and it specified they should always be on. You said it was for your own security that I should be able to hear everything, and you had extra microphones installed in every room in my own house so I could always be at your beck and call. You got my son and Dominic into this mess, you pompous old cripple. No wonder my grandmother threw herself under a train rather than be married to you. I spit on you.”