Poor man? Was she still attached to him? “What did you teach?”
“History and French, to children between the ages of twelve and sixteen who were always getting lost on school trips to Paris. Thanks to them, I’ve been up the Eiffel Tower three times and seen the Mona Lisa and the Sacré-Coeur four times each. The fourth time I should have been going up the Eiffel Tower I was looking for a child we’d lost at Napoléon’s tomb in the Invalides. Knowing the girl in question, I was sure she was plotting to steal the body. A little devil.”
“Maybe Jacqueline was like that when she was a child,” Bruno said.
“I think Jacqueline was rather more cunning, after what we saw this evening,” she said. “By the way, I meant to ask her if she likes horses. I’d be glad to have someone help exercise them. That new doctor, Fabiola, says she like horses.”
“Maybe you could teach me to ride someday,” said Bruno. “Properly, I mean. I’ve sat on a horse and walked a few trails, but I remember seeing you and your friend Christine in the summer galloping through the field. It was a marvelous sight and made me envious.”
“I’d love to teach you, but you’ll have to be patient.” She poked him amiably in the ribs. “It would certainly get some gossip going.”
“Well, there’s a project for the winter,” he said, a little surprised at how much he was looking forward to the idea, and not only because of the riding.
“Do you know this is one of my favorite buildings in the neighborhood?” he asked her as they turned into her driveway. “I remember when I first saw it in the sunshine, it just looked so warm and welcoming, surrounded by flowers in the courtyard and nestled into its hillside.”
“I feel the same way, Bruno. But we’ll see how welcoming the stables feel after I get you to clean them out.” He pulled up at the entrance to her courtyard, the old stone buildings glowing brightly in his headlights. He walked around the back of the van to open her door.
“Thank you, Bruno, for everything. I’ll have the coffee ready at eight,” she said as they reached her house. She turned to kiss him good night but somehow they turned their heads the wrong way, or not quite enough, and Bruno felt himself kissing her mouth and realizing that her lips were relaxing against his own. Uncertain, he moved his head and kissed her on the cheek, then started to back away.
“Goodness, that was a nice surprise,” she said, flustered. “Now, where’s my key? Silly me, of course I didn’t lock the door.” She opened it and went in, turning around to say, “Until tomorrow.” Then she closed the door.
He stood watching the door for a moment, wondering just what had taken place, and remembering the frisson of pleasure that had run through him when he realized he was kissing her lips. But remember your rule, he told himself. Not in your own backyard. Maybe he could bend the rule this once, now that Isabelle seemed out of his life after her prolonged silence. But he’d thought it was over before, and then she came back. Would she again, though? God, it was hard sometimes. He went back to his van, telling himself to think about the pile of dishes that awaited him.
As Bruno crossed the bridge and turned onto the main street of Saint-Denis, the mairie was dark. He saw Ivan placing the chairs on the tables of his Café de la Renaissance. The blue neon light of the Bar des Amateurs at the end of the street was still glowing. And by the light from the wide window of a real estate broker, he noted a quick blur of movement. When he slowed the van to take a look he saw two figures scuffling in the small alley beside the maison de la presse. He pulled in beside a darkened pharmacy and stepped out, feeling slightly ridiculous as he realized he was still wearing the old towel around his waist. He whipped it off, tossed it into the van and began to run toward the sound of a slap and a woman’s cry, and the growl of a male voice.
“Good evening,” he called loudly. The scuffling figures broke apart. “I’m a policeman. Might I be of assistance, mademoiselle?”
“It’s nothing; friends having an argument,” said Bondino in his accented French, the words slurred by alcohol.
“Hello again, Bruno,” said Jacqueline. “It’s okay. He’s just leaving.”
“I heard a slap,” Bruno said. “That didn’t sound friendly to me. Are you sure, Jacqueline?”
“Yes, yes. He just wanted to take me for a last drink, a nightcap. I can handle this, Bruno.”
“Monsieur Bondino, you’re staying in Les Eyzies, right? You’re in no condition to drive back there tonight.”
“He’s moved to the Manoir, here in town,” said Jacqueline. “Listen, it’s okay, really. I’ll see he gets back all right. He’s just drunk.”
“Did you slap him?”
“Yes, just to sober him up. It’s not a problem. I’m sorry, Bruno. When I got to the bar I didn’t realize how drunk he was.”
“I think you’d better go back to your bike and go home, Jacqueline. I’ll see that Monsieur Bondino gets back to the Manoir.”
She shrugged and turned, and began walking slowly down the street that led to the cave. Bruno scrutinized Bondino, who was slouched against the wall. “Thanks again, Bruno, for everything,” Jacqueline called, too loudly for so late at night. He waved at her, distracted.
“Come on,” he said to Bondino. “Let’s get you back to your hotel.” He took Bondino’s arm and began leading the stumbling drunk to his van. Bondino jerked out of Bruno’s grip and lurched off after Jacqueline, swinging an aimless arm as if to sweep Bruno out of the way and catching him painfully in the eye.
Bruno had dealt with violent drunks before. He grabbed the flailing arm, twisted it up behind Bondino’s back and slammed him hard against the front of the police van, bending him over the hood. Then he pulled on Bondino’s shirt collar, turned him and forced him to his knees in the gutter, stepping back as Bondino retched and a gush of vomit flooded from his mouth and nose. Bruno stood waiting until Bondino finished, and then went to the back of his van and took a bottle of water from his sports bag.
“Here,” he said, handing over the bottle. Bondino mumbled something that sounded like “Thanks” and rinsed out his mouth, retched drily and then began to drink.
Bruno hauled him to his feet and pushed him into the passenger seat of the van. It was less than two hundred yards to the Manoir, a small and expensive private hotel that was darkened, its main gate onto the street already closed at this time of night. Bruno sighed. He could ring the bell and wake everybody, or call the private number of the owners, who were doubtless asleep at this hour. And then the word would get around that the drunken young man who was probably going to be important to the future of Saint-Denis had been dragged back to his hotel by the cops. The tale would lose nothing in the telling, Bruno knew, and that would color the town’s relationship with Bondino forever.
He turned his van around and with Bondino now snoring beside him drove up the hill to his home, where Gigi still stood patiently by the cold barbecue, wondering where his portion of the meal might be.
27
Bruno awoke just as the dawn was leaking pink streaks into the sky to the east and the cockerel in his chicken coop greeted the new day. He lay quietly a moment, his eyes closed, thinking of the difference between waking with Isabelle beside him and waking alone. His thoughts drifted to Pamela. Then he snapped his eyes open and scolded himself for self-indulgence. There was work to be done, and it promised to be a busy day. He had to visit Alphonse and check the tires on his truck. And he still hadn’t found out what had happened to Cresseil’s dog.
He did his exercises, showered and dressed in his uniform. He looked for his dog to feed him. It was unusual that Gigi wasn’t already at his side. He strolled to the chicken coop, and then to the top of the lane, but no Gigi. Finally he went to the back of his house, to the large courtyard with the barn and outbuildings, and saw Gigi sitting patiently at the foot of the sagging sun bed in the barn. Bondino lay asleep, an old blanket thrown over him, where Bruno had left him. Gigi turned to look at his master and ran across to be patted, but then scampered bac
k to the stranger asleep on the sun bed.
Bruno fed his chickens, collected some eggs for Pamela and went back into the kitchen, where he put on some water to boil for coffee and listened to the news on Radio Périgord. He went back to the barn and unhooked Pamela’s battery from the charger and took it to her car, replaced the cables and tried the motor. It started right away. He left the engine running and went back into the house. The coffee was ready. From the bathroom he took a large sponge; he put it on a tray with a pot of coffee and two cups and headed for the courtyard. Opening the tap, he soaked the sponge, and then he held it over Bondino’s sleeping face and squeezed. It took a moment for the cold water to register, then Bondino sat straight upright, cleared his eyes and looked wildly about him before his gaze fixed on the silhouette of a policeman standing over him against the strengthening early morning light.
“Coffee,” said Bruno, handing him a cup and then sipping at his own.
“Er, bonjour.” Bondino stared around at the barn, the dog, the courtyard. Looking at Gigi, he smiled, put out his fist to be sniffed and then stroked the dog’s head. Gigi submitted to this with pleasure and then rubbed his head against Bondino’s leg. Bruno noted this with interest. Gigi was one of the finest judges of human character he knew. If his dog liked this American, there was probably more to the young man than the disheveled sight that met the eye.
“You brought me here, yesterday night?” Bondino asked, struggling with his French.
Bruno nodded. “Drunk.”
“I’m sorry.”
Bruno shrugged. “You were fighting with Jacqueline. You should apologize to her.”
Bondino felt his forehead, groaned and took a sip of coffee.
“And you fought me,” Bruno said. “You certainly don’t want to be doing that.” Bondino closed his eyes and hunched forward. Bruno took Gigi inside and fed him, finished his coffee and went back outside. Bondino was holding a silver flask over his cup, letting the last drops fall out.
“Hair of the dog,” Bondino said in English. Bruno nodded. It was a phrase he remembered from the British troops he had known in Bosnia.
“Great dog,” he said, smiling at Gigi. It was the first genuine smile Bruno had seen on the face of this man he had instinctively disliked.
“I’ll drop you at your hotel,” Bruno said. “But first you clean that.” He handed Bondino a hose and a rag and pointed to the streaks of last night’s vomit on the side of Pamela’s car.
Once the two men were in Pamela’s car, Bruno realized that Bondino still stank like a brewery. Bruno opened all the windows, and they drove into town in complete silence. He stopped at the wrought-iron gates that guarded the entrance to the Manoir and turned to Bondino.
“No more fighting, understand? Next time, I’ll arrest you. And stop drinking so much.” Bondino got out, said “Merci” and closed the door. Bruno drove on through the town—it was still too early for many people to be stirring—parked in front of the mairie and went into Fauquet’s, where the air smelled of warm bread and coffee, and the espresso machine busily bubbled steam into a large jug of milk. He looked briefly at that morning’s Sud Ouest, checking the front page, the sports scores and the local news, and greeted Fauquet and his wife and their Hélène, who had just left school and used to be in his tennis class. He shook hands with the knot of men from the Public Works Department in their bright yellow coveralls and nodded affably to Mr. Simpson, the retired Englishman who had taken enthusiastically to the local custom of having a small glass of red wine with his breakfast. Protocol satisfied, he bought his croissants and a baguette, went back to Pamela’s car and drove out on the long road past the supermarket toward Saint-Cyprien.
Pamela was already in her courtyard watering her geraniums, wearing her riding jodhpurs and a white shirt, when Bruno parked. He took off his peaked cap and strolled toward her. Arms outstretched and smiling, he held out the bag of croissants and fresh eggs in one hand and the baguette in the other, and took such good care to kiss only her cheeks that he almost pecked at her ear.
“This is very kind of you, Bruno,” she said, leading the way into her kitchen, where two places were set at a small table, with a bowl of fresh-picked berries at each place, bowls of yogurt and cereal and a large jug of orange juice. He put the croissants and bread on the table, and then watched Pamela make tiny rearrangements to the settings to make herself look busy. These are the signals a woman sends when she does not want to suggest that she is available, Bruno thought. He wondered if she regretted the half kiss they had shared. He took his seat, deciding not to make some foolish joke about breakfasting with a woman with whom he had not spent the night.
“You’re going to be surprised when I tell you what happened after I left you,” he said, and described the scene with Jacqueline. When Bruno had finished Pamela said, “She seemed fine when she left for work not long before you arrived.”
“She was fine. Bondino was too drunk to be anything more than a nuisance. Maybe she’d flirted with him once too often. I’ll ask at the bar. I hope they didn’t serve someone as drunk as he was. But he had a flask with him; maybe he was drinking from that.
“The good news,” Bruno concluded as he dug his spoon into the bowl of berries, “is that your battery’s fixed and your car started right away.” He paused. “There’s something else,” he said. “Do you remember the conversation last night over dinner about the value of the land and the houses? I need to understand the economics of this. Say you buy an old house with a barn and a few hectares for a hundred thousand, and you spend another forty thousand to fix it up, install water and electricity. What can you make out of that, as a gîte?”
“Add another ten thousand to furnish it and twenty thousand for a swimming pool. That’s a necessity. Say you have three bedrooms in the house and put two more in the barn. Five bedrooms at around sixty euros per night each, say two thousand euros a week for the twelve weeks of the season, a bit less in May and September. You should get thirty thousand a year, less the cleaning costs and linens, replacement of furniture, repairs and taxes. Maybe twenty thousand a year, total.”
“More than enough to pay off a loan from the bank, I think,” Bruno said, scribbling in his notebook.
“That’s if you get full occupancy, which means you have to do some marketing,” she said. “And the owner has to do all the administrative work, the bookings and tax forms and accounting. If I had to pay someone else to do that, it would take half the profit. Why the questions? Are you thinking of going into business?”
“No. But knowing these figures could be useful for a proposal that’s before the council.” Bruno checked his watch. “Great breakfast, Pamela, thank you. We’d better get going. I’ve got a meeting at the mairie.”
“Is this to do with that scheme Hubert was talking about last night over dinner?” she asked as they drove into Saint-Denis.
“In a way.”
“You realize that you don’t have to rent out the buildings as gîtes. You can always just restore them and sell them, each with a small garden, which is all that’s wanted by most of the people who buy second homes. So you take your profit and still keep the rest of the land. I assume that’s Hubert’s plan, to use the land to grow vines and to rent or sell the buildings.”
“You make it sound like an easy profit.”
“As long as people from England and northern Europe want to come down here to retire or just to vacation, it works fine. But if there’s a recession, or if those people fear that the value of their property might stop going up, it could all come to a screeching halt. That’s why I daren’t speculate in property. I’m no businesswoman, and besides, I like having my land. I couldn’t keep my horses without it.”
No word from Isabelle, thought Bruno as he scanned his e-mails. Did that mean it was really over? The ringing phone broke into his thoughts.
“Monsieur le Chef de Police?” said the calm voice on the other end. “Dupuy here. Fernando Bondino asked me to call and express his person
al thanks to you for last night, along with his deep regrets. Apparently you took him to your home and looked after him when he was somewhat the worse for drink. He said that your behavior was above and beyond the call of duty. He wanted to thank you personally, but it seems you were in a hurry when you dropped him off. And of course I would like to add my own thanks for your kindness and forbearance.”
“First he’s in a nasty bar fight where some windows got broken. Then he harasses a woman in the street late at night. That kind of behavior can’t go on. I hope he understands that.”
“Most certainly. He doesn’t usually behave like that. It won’t happen again.”
“If it does, he’ll spend the night in jail, whatever that may mean for Saint-Denis. Please make sure he knows that.”
“I don’t think that’ll be necessary, and please remember that this project is not committed to Saint-Denis, not by any means.”
“I hope that’s not a threat, Monsieur Dupuy. I still haven’t talked to the young lady whom Monsieur Bondino attacked last night about filing charges. If she does, the law would take its course.”
“I know you’ll handle these matters in the best interest of Saint-Denis. But again, please accept Monsieur Bondino’s thanks and my own. I should add that he has written a formal letter of apology in which he expresses his heartfelt thanks to you, with a copy to your mayor. Au revoir, monsieur.”
As soon as Bruno hung up, his phone rang again. “Bruno, it’s Brigadier Lannes. I need you at the gendarmerie right now. There’s a break in the arson case. Duroc’s made an arrest. A friend of yours, I gather.”
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