The Devil's Cave

by Martin Walker

  Bruno’s eye was drawn to a large crucifix that hung above the bed and another on the opposite wall, where the invalid could not but see it.

  ‘I thought your sister was a Marxist,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t that make her an atheist?’

  ‘I believe she takes comfort from familiar things and we were very religious in our childhood. When she seems up to it, we take her to attend Mass in the chapel. We have a wheelchair.’

  ‘Do you use local priests for the Mass?’

  ‘No, my confessor makes regular visits from Paris. And now perhaps we can return to the hall and get this questioning over with. You too, nurse.’

  Without another word, she turned and led the way back. Bruno took a last glance at the woman on the bed. Her eyes had opened and for a moment seemed to be staring deliberately at him. He looked again but the eyes were blank and the face immobile.

  On an impulse he took one of the photographs of the dead woman from the folder beneath his arm, stepped to the side of the bed and held it in front of the Countess’s face. ‘Do you know this woman?’ he asked. The eyes seemed to quiver and on the sheet a wizened hand stirred and gripped at the smoothly ironed cotton. Was that recognition?

  ‘Please,’ said Eugénie, coming to his side and gently pushing the photo away. ‘Shocks or surprises upset her. We try to keep everything stable.’

  Her hand was cool on his own, but then she seemed to squeeze it a little as she turned the photograph so she could see it.

  ‘No, I don’t recognize this woman either. Sorry.’

  He handed her his card. ‘Please call me to arrange a convenient time when I can interview you and Monsieur Foucher about another matter. My Mayor has asked me to look into your company’s previous development in Thivion.’

  16

  Bruno directed J-J to turn off from the main road by the river and take a small country lane that wound up the thickly wooded hillside through la Petite Forêt. They passed a small lake and then headed down into a valley dominated by the Château de Fleurac, a neo-Gothic pile that could only have been built in the nineteenth century. After passing it, Bruno pointed the way up a gravel track that led up the hillside to an old farmhouse. The shutters on the doors and windows were open and gleaming in a fresh coat of blue paint. It sat snugly in a protected hollow, facing south, with two semi-circular greenhouses behind it, made of thick translucent plastic stretched across metal frames.

  Bruno climbed out of the car as the door to the farmhouse opened and a tall, fit-looking man with long white hair in a ponytail and a neat beard emerged, drying his bare chest with a towel. A porcelaine followed him, the classic French hunting dog, creamy-white with long ears. It bounded up to greet Bruno.

  He turned to make the introductions. ‘This is Laurent, not only the best hunter in the valley but also the man who’s going to provide our lunch today.’

  ‘Un petit apéro?’ asked Laurent, shaking hands and eyeing Isabelle with appreciation.

  They sat in the sun on a wooden bench before a homemade table while Laurent went back into his house and came out with a tray bearing a large glass jug of a wine so dark it was almost black. With it came a fat sausage, a squat loaf of home-made bread, and four glasses, which Bruno recognized. They had once contained a popular brand of mustard.

  As Laurent took the knife from his belt to slice the sausage, Bruno explained that Fleurac had been until the phylloxera outbreak of the nineteenth century one of the best-known wines of France, exported to England and Holland. The De Beauroyre family, who owned the château, had been famous for their wealth but were bankrupted by the vine-killing disease. They sold out and others tried to replant the vines. Unable ever to get an appellation, the new owners cut their losses and took the subsidies in the 1960s that were available for digging up the vines.

  ‘Some of us keep a few rows of vines, just enough for ourselves and friends,’ said Laurent, pouring out the rich dark liquid. ‘It’s a strong wine, perfect after a day of hunting.’

  ‘It’s good,’ said J-J, smacking his lips. ‘Reminds me of a Cahors.’

  ‘It’s the same grape, a côt, some call it Malbec,’ said Laurent.

  ‘My grandfather always claimed it was the wine served at the wedding of Eleanor of Aquitaine to the king of England.’

  ‘No wonder she was such a formidable woman,’ said Isabelle. ‘Did you make the sausage, too?’

  ‘Me and Bruno together,’ Laurent said. ‘I shot the deer but he helped me haul it back.’

  ‘Where’s Amélie?’ asked Bruno. ‘Laurent’s wife is the real sausage maker. Laurent and I just provide the unskilled labour.’

  ‘She’s down at the market in Le Buisson, selling chickens. I’ll be heading down there soon to help her pack up. But I’ve got what you wanted, the first of the crop.’

  Laurent led the way to the side of the house and into the first of the plastic-covered tunnels. It was steamy inside, with a smell of jungle overlaid with sweetness. The floor was carpeted with strawberries, still mainly green but some just turning pink. He bent down and looked under a leaf to find a solitary red one, plucked it and handed it to Isabelle.

  ‘Mon Dieu,’ she said. ‘It tastes like perfume.’

  ‘Marée de bois, our local speciality,’ he said. ‘Most people grow Georgettes but we think they’re only fit to make jam. Come back in two weeks and you can eat your fill.’

  The next greenhouse looked at first as though there were no plants there at all, just rows of small humped cones of soil, with white buds peeking from each top. From a bench at the side of the greenhouse Laurent took a parcel wrapped in newspaper, put it in a plastic bag and handed it to Bruno. As Laurent added an unlabelled bottle of his wine to the bag, Isabelle could restrain her curiosity no longer.

  ‘Show me, Bruno.’

  He opened the bag and unwrapped a corner of the newspaper.

  ‘Asparagus, already? I love it and we don’t get them in Paris until May.’

  ‘That’s what we’re having for lunch,’ said Bruno, as they made their thanks and farewells to dog and master. ‘There’s a micro-climate in this hollow, everything comes just that much earlier than elsewhere.’

  As they drove, J-J grumbled that nothing had come from questioning the staff at the château. Bruno told them of his concern about the new holiday village, the involvement of Foucher and Eugénie and Lemontin’s findings at Thivion, hoping to spark J-J’s interest. But before J-J even looked like rising to the bait, Isabelle asked about Eugénie.

  ‘So you met her before she turned up in nurse’s uniform?’

  Bruno described meeting her while riding, although he made it sound like a single encounter.

  ‘It sounds odd, making a nurse into a business partner,’ Isabelle said. ‘You’re sure she said she had shares in this investment company? And what’s the link to this Count?’

  ‘He’s a director of this Luxembourg investment company,’ he explained. ‘I think he’s also involved in this new hotel that’s just opened. I’ve got all the details in a file at home. It’s mostly what Lemontin put together, but I’m going to have to do some further interviews to give a decent report to our Mayor.’

  ‘This Count Vexin, the name rings a bell,’ she said. ‘Do you know anything more about him?’

  ‘Travels by helicopter, good-looking and obviously wealthy. That’s all I know so far.’

  ‘Sounds just my type,’ Isabelle said. ‘How about you, J-J? Any of this sparking your interest?’

  ‘It sounds like a civil matter and I’ve got enough on my plate with real crimes,’ he said curtly. ‘We’re almost back at St Denis. Where do you want me to go from here?’

  They stopped at Pamela’s house to greet Hector and to pick up Balzac from where he’d been sleeping in the horse’s stall. The puppy seemed delighted at the reunion with Isabelle and nestled on her lap as they drove the back way past the cemetery to Bruno’s house.

  He left J-J and Isabelle sitting at the table on the terrace in the sunshine, w
atching Balzac explore his new home. Bruno took from his kitchen a small knife and bowl and went looking for lunch. He could never understand Pamela’s obsession with eradicating dandelions from her lawns; he presumed it was some odd British idiosyncrasy like its royal family and its warm beer. Everyone in France understood the pleasure of fresh young dandelion leaves in a salad, but Bruno went further. He looked for the tiny green buds of the future flowers, snipped them off until he had a couple of dozen and then added some leaves of fresh parsley. He went back into the kitchen to peel a few cloves of garlic and wash the white asparagus. Humming to himself with pleasure at entertaining his friends, he cut some slices from the big smoked ham that hung from the main roof beam. He put water on to boil for the asparagus and the tiny new potatoes, cracked a dozen of his own eggs into a bowl and took plates, glasses and cutlery out to the table where Isabelle and J-J were chatting about politics.

  He tossed a knob of butter into a large frying pan and turned on the gas, opened a bottle of Bergerac Sec and took it with a baguette of fresh bread and a bottle of Badoit, his favourite mineral water, out to the table. Back in the kitchen, the butter was starting to bubble and he added some crushed garlic and the little boutons de pissenlit, the dandelion buds, and began stirring the eggs with a large fork. He seasoned the eggs with salt and pepper and turned back to the boutons. When he felt the little buds begin to soften under his spatula, he added the eggs and began to swirl them around the pan. He broke off briefly to stand the fresh asparagus in their special tall cylindrical pan that he’d found in a brocante; now they were ready for the boiling water.

  ‘Can I help?’ Isabelle asked, coming into the kitchen, Balzac at her heels, raising his nose to sniff the tantalizing new scents of a kitchen. ‘It’s so good to be back here, watching you cook. It’s even better with the sunshine and a dog at our feet. It feels like last summer.’

  Bruno threw her a smiling glance before starting to fold the omelette. Last summer had been that first, glorious rapture of their love affair before she had decided to pursue her career in Paris. He could never decide whether he wanted a clean and surgical end to it, or to go on with their thrilling but frustrating reunions on snatched weekends. Just to look at her was to know he could not give her up, although in the back of his mind he knew that her inevitable departure would leave him miserable and guilty at the sense of betraying the distant Pamela.

  ‘You can take this out to the table,’ he said, sliding the folded omelette into a large oval dish, and then tearing up the parsley leaves to sprinkle on top. Before she picked up the plates, Isabelle took his arm and turned him to her to kiss him gently on the lips. He felt her tongue tease him briefly before she broke off and picked up the dish.

  Bruno watched her go, still limping slightly, and turned back smiling to pour boiling water first into a saucepan for the potatoes and then into the asparagus pan. Congratulating himself that he’d put fresh sheets on the bed, he went out to enjoy his omelette.

  ‘I smell truffles, but I don’t see any,’ said J-J, fork in one hand and bread in the other. His wine glass was already empty. Bruno refilled it.

  ‘I left a small one in the egg box,’ Bruno replied. ‘Egg shells are porous so they absorb some of the flavour, not enough to overwhelm the pissenlit.’

  ‘It’s wonderful. The boutons make it taste like springtime,’ said Isabelle, and sipped at her wine.

  They finished the course in silence, Bruno delighted to see Isabelle follow J-J’s example and clean her plate with bread. J-J had been right: she needed feeding up. He went back to the kitchen and sliced butter into the frying pan to melt before he drained the potatoes and asparagus. He put them into new dishes, poured on the melted butter, sprinkled more parsley on the potatoes and rejoined the others. By the time he returned, Balzac was sitting happily on Isabelle’s lap and sniffing at her empty plate.

  ‘The asparagus was perfect,’ she said. ‘But I’ve always had them with Hollandaise sauce before.’

  ‘You had your eggs in the omelette,’ J-J said. ‘Bruno’s thinking about my diet. I’m supposed to lose ten kilos this year.’

  Isabelle glanced at Bruno and raised a quizzical eyebrow as J-J forked a piece of ham and a new potato, dripping with butter, into his mouth.

  ‘Time we got to business,’ J-J said. ‘Do you think the old woman was lying about not seeing your dead blonde before? That maid who let us in looked very nervous when she saw the photo.’

  ‘I can’t say the sister convinced me,’ Bruno said. ‘I’m pretty sure the punt came from their boathouse, but that doesn’t mean she knew about it. The boathouse is a long way from the château. And I’ve met that nurse while out riding. That’s why I asked you to go round to the back of the building when we left. I wanted to see their stables, and there were at least three horses there, yet that nurse claimed not to know where to find a farrier to put a new shoe on her horse.’

  ‘The sister said her name was de la Gorce,’ said J-J, looking at his notebook. ‘Probably a married name. Ring any bells?’

  ‘I can look it up in the Almanach,’ said Isabelle. ‘From what you say of the Red Countess, Renseignements Généraux will have a huge file on her, going all the way back to the 1940s. Watching Communists was their top priority in those days. Still, that château didn’t look like the kind of place for a coke-fuelled orgy. But maybe I’ve led a sheltered life.’

  Bruno smiled at her, and turned to J-J. ‘The question is whether we’ve got enough to open a proper investigation.’

  ‘You know the procedure,’ said J-J. ‘I can draft a report for the Procureur de la République but since the pathologist’s report suggests suicide, he’ll need a lot of convincing to turn this into a full-scale inquiry. Our budget’s in enough trouble.’

  ‘All the publicity around this Satanism stuff may help,’ said Isabelle. ‘But in my experience, he’s going to want you to come up with an identity for the corpse before he takes a decision.’

  J-J nodded. ‘You’ve checked the missing persons’ index and I’ve sent off a request for a fingerprint search. We haven’t gone through the known prostitutes list yet, not even for this Département. I doubt that anything will come of it but I’ll see that gets done over the weekend. She died Monday evening and it’s now Friday. We’ll get a new batch of missing persons posted on Monday, but if nothing else comes up, we’re stuck.’

  Bruno sighed, began gathering the empty plates and asked who wanted coffee.

  ‘No dessert?’ asked J-J. ‘I don’t want you taking my diet too seriously. I get enough of that at home.’

  ‘No dessert,’ Bruno said firmly. ‘There is another thing that concerns me, based on the story in the paper today about the break-in at the cave.’

  He explained about Delaron paying the boys to stage the break-in, but that somebody had been there before them.

  ‘I told them at the cave not to disturb that chapel until I could see whether you’d be prepared to send in a forensic team,’ Bruno said.

  J-J shook his head. ‘Not on what we’ve got so far.’

  ‘Bruno, perhaps you and I could take another look at the cave?’ Isabelle said. ‘I’d like to see it anyway and I don’t have to be back in Paris until Sunday evening.’ She paused, and gave Bruno a roguish glance that reminded him that it was in another cave that he’d first kissed her. ‘I have a soft spot for caves, even without prehistoric paintings.’

  ‘Just so long as you also have a soft spot for goat’s heads, too,’ he said, laughing.

  He rose and collected the plates. Balzac teetered on the edge of Isabelle’s lap, intent on following. She let him down to the ground and he trotted after Bruno, who put the plates in the sink and then gave the puppy the trimmings from the ham. As he made the coffee, Bruno pondered how critical he should be of Marcel, when he saw him at the cave. Since his son was involved, Marcel must have been in on Delaron’s hoax. As for Delaron, Bruno suddenly realized he had a perfect opportunity to get the newspaper to investigate the links b
etween the holiday village project and Lemontin’s file on Thivion. In the circumstances, Delaron could hardly say no.

  Bruno smiled as he poured the boiling water into the cafetière; he liked solutions where everyone seemed to win. He put cups and sugar onto a small tray and carried them outside.

  ‘… will be retiring at the end of the year and then I’ll want a new chief inspector,’ J-J was saying when Bruno put the tray down on the table.

  It sounded as if J-J was trying yet again to lure Isabelle back to the Département. J-J had already confided to Bruno that she’d be a strong candidate to take over his job when he retired as chief of detectives. Bruno thought the chances of her returning to the Périgord were very slim. Isabelle had the taste of Paris now, with a powerful job on the Minister’s staff, international experience after liaising with Scotland Yard and the kudos of having been wounded while leading a successful operation. She could go very far indeed, and she knew it, which was why Bruno cherished what time they had together.

  J-J finished his coffee and left, and as his Citroën lurched down the lane Isabelle leant back in her chair, turned her face up to the sun with her eyes closed and said, ‘Our puppy has just peed on my lap, so I need a quick shower. But first, why not come here and kiss me?’

  17

  When he awoke to find Isabelle’s head tucked into the hollow between his chest and his shoulder, one of the first things Bruno remembered was that she had called Balzac ‘our puppy’. He tried to identify the noise that had woken him, and turned to look down and see a small basset hound worrying at one of the rubber thong sandals he used as slippers. As he shifted, Isabelle woke up and tightened her arm around him.

  ‘What’s that noise?’

  ‘Balzac,’ he replied, leaned over the side of the bed and picked up puppy and thong together and placed them on his chest. Balzac abandoned the thong and began sniffing his way from Bruno’s chest to his neck and then to Isabelle’s shoulder.

  ‘What time does the cave close?’ she asked.