The Devil's Cave

by Martin Walker

  ‘What is the parent SCI, do you know?’ Bruno asked.

  ‘Société Civile Immobilière Châteauroux-Vaillant,’ Lemontin replied. ‘That’s the Red Countess. Châteauroux is the château and Vaillant was the name of her mother.’

  ‘How are the monthly payments made, by cheque?’

  ‘No, by bank transfer on a standing order.’

  ‘Who authorized that and when did the payments start?’

  ‘I’ll find out.’

  As he drove on Bruno wondered how a woman with Alzheimer’s could have authorized such a mortgage, and if she had not, what legal standing her sister and great-nephew would have to do so.

  Fabiola opened the door to her house as he pulled into the courtyard. She told him she was just putting on her riding boots and asked him to wait. He didn’t really want company as the various questions nagged at him, but he saddled Hector, settled Balzac into the binocular case and waited until Fabiola came into the stables. She left him to lead Bess and set off briskly toward the shallow part of the river and the bridle track that led to Ste Alvère.

  They hadn’t come this way for some time and he enjoyed it, the long canter over Pamela’s fields to the ford, then trotting down the path until the long straight stretch where the horses began to gallop of their own accord. At the fork in the trail, Fabiola stopped.

  ‘Back along the ridge or down the valley and along the stream to the bridge at St Denis?’ she asked.

  ‘The ridge.’ Bruno wanted the sense of liberty he found amid the big skies and wide views.

  ‘Did you see the Countess yourself?’ she asked as the horses began to walk up the slope to the ridge.

  ‘Yes, in her hospital bed in the château, wired up to various machines. She’s apparently been out of it for years.’

  ‘Who’s her doctor, do you know?’

  ‘No idea. She has a full-time nurse. Why do you ask?’

  ‘I had lunch with the pathologist at the hospital after we finished the autopsy and one of his colleagues joined us, the main specialist in Alzheimer’s. He hadn’t heard of the Countess’s case but he’d certainly heard of her. The thing was, he said he knew all the other Alzheimer’s specialists in the area and he was surprised he’d never heard about her. He wanted to know who’d made the diagnosis, so I said I’d ask you.’

  ‘I can probably find out,’ Bruno said. ‘It may have been someone in Paris and her sister brought her down here for the quiet.’

  ‘How long has she been here?’

  ‘I don’t know that either. Nobody seemed to know she was here, not the Mayor or even people in the Party like Montsouris. They kept it very discreet.’

  ‘She must have a doctor locally,’ she said as they topped the rise and the plateau spread out beyond with the view down the valley to the old abbey at Paunat. ‘I’ll ask Gelletreau, he knows all the other toubibs from Bordeaux to Toulouse.’

  ‘Merde,’ she said as her phone jangled. ‘I’m on standby tonight.’ She listened and turned her horse, mouthing ‘Sorry’ as she held the phone to her ear. ‘I’ll be there in thirty minutes,’ she said and set off back down the slope.

  A familiar white mare was grazing in Bruno’s front garden when he pulled into his driveway. Eugénie, dressed in her black riding trousers and sweat shirt, rose from his chair beside the barbecue and greeted him with the words ‘Mama kangaroo.’ Balzac was still nestled in the binocular case under Bruno’s chin.

  ‘Say hello to the baby kangaroo,’ he replied, releasing Balzac, who trotted up to greet the visitor. Eugénie’s response to the dog was perfunctory.

  ‘I didn’t see you riding this evening so I thought I’d come back this way to say hello,’ she said. She was tapping her riding crop against her leg, a gesture Bruno had not seen before. In a woman less impassive, he’d have assumed it meant she was nervous.

  ‘I was riding with Fabiola, the doctor you met, and we took the other direction.’

  ‘Avoiding me?’ She gave a slow smile.

  ‘No, we had to cut the ride short because she was called out to a patient.’

  ‘Surprised to see me?’

  ‘A little. What can I do for you?’ His talk with Father Sentout had made him wary. Could she have come here with some thought of entrapment, ripping her own blouse and calling rape as Foucher leapt out from behind some bush with a camera? Hardly, he told himself. That sweatshirt was not the dress for such a ploy.

  ‘I came because I was curious to see how you lived.’ She looked past him at the small cottage that he’d restored from ruin with the help of friends and neighbours.

  ‘Ducks and chickens, a vegetable garden, jars of preserves lined up neatly on the shelves in your barn, it’s the real country life.’ She suddenly twirled around and gestured with an elegant arm at the view over the long field and the woods that rose to the ridge. ‘And a wonderful view,’ she said, turning to face him again.

  ‘I’m happy here,’ he said quietly, wondering what really had brought her here.

  Eugénie went on as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘I also came because I want to know why you dislike us so much and why you’re so opposed to our project.’

  ‘I’m not in the least opposed to it, if it gets built as planned,’ he replied, thinking this was not the time to reveal what he knew of the unpaid bills and the faked plans for the sports hall.

  ‘But this latest demand from your Mayor, that the Count signs over his hotel as collateral, that’s your plan. Just like all these questions about Thivion, that’s also your work.’

  ‘What questions?

  ‘You’re trying to tell me you didn’t set that reporter from Sud-Ouest onto us with all those photos of that mean little place we had to build?’

  Good for Delaron, Bruno thought. Wait till they also heard from Paris-Match.

  ‘I suppose I should be flattered at your faith in my powers, but I don’t control the press. You’re being ridiculous. Do you want a drink?’ He really wanted to take a quick look inside, to see if she’d been in the house.

  ‘So you’re saying that my suspicions of you are ridiculous but that yours of me and our project are reasonable,’ she said, as if making a joke of it. ‘Could you make me a kir, please?’

  ‘Of course. There’s something you can help me with. I’d like to talk to the Countess’s doctor, ask him whether at some point she might be lucid enough to answer questions about her granddaughter.’

  ‘It’s a specialist in Paris, at the Memory Research Centre at the Laboisière hospital. The Count brings him down in the helicopter. But I can tell you that the chances of lucidity are zero.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right, but we’ll need a doctor’s opinion for my report.’ He went inside to prepare the drinks. At a quick glance nothing seemed to have been disturbed. He splashed crème de cassis into two glasses, filled them with white wine and was turning to take them when he heard her soft footstep in the hall. She must have taken off her riding boots before she came in.

  ‘Do you mind if I come in? It’s getting cool outside.’ Without waiting for his answer she went into the living room as if she knew the way, leaving a hint of an unfamiliar perfume in her wake. She sat back on his sofa and flashed him a brilliant smile. It was, he realized, the same smile she had worn in the photo with the Count in Gala magazine.

  ‘I do like a real fire,’ she said, sipping from her drink and looking at his empty grate. He nodded amiably but said nothing, wondering how she intended this meeting to develop. He found it hard to believe she would try anything so crude as an attempt to seduce him.

  ‘Tell me about Antin Investments. Are you a shareholder?’ he asked.

  ‘Haven’t we talked enough about business?’ she said. ‘Why can’t we just relax?’

  ‘You face a long ride back and the light’s going.’

  ‘It sounds like you’re trying to get rid of me.’ A pout of reproach was swiftly replaced by that same glossy-magazine smile. ‘Have you eaten? I hear you’re quite a cook.’

&nb
sp; ‘I’m not hungry, after that lunch.’

  It wasn’t true. But he was not going to be put into a position where he’d have little option but to invite her to stay for dinner. He looked at her, his face neutral. She raised her arms to her neck, slipped off the band that shaped her pony tail and shook her head to let a cascade of hair tumble over her shoulders. He was tempted to applaud.

  ‘That’s better,’ she said, tucking her feet beneath her on the sofa but leaving plenty of space for him. He remained in his separate chair, his back straight and his arms folded. ‘Don’t you agree?’

  He gave a polite smile and tried to analyse why he felt so cold towards her. She was making herself highly agreeable, yet what he felt was a mix of curiosity and suspicion.

  ‘Don’t you ever relax?’ She put her glass down on the low table, making enough noise that Bruno had to look and notice it was empty. He made no move to refill it.

  ‘Yes, with friends,’ he said. He looked across at her and saw a flash of something briefly unpleasant in her eyes, impatience perhaps. This woman had nothing for him and he was getting tired of the shadow play.

  ‘I must get to sleep,’ he said, rising. ‘It’s market day tomorrow so I have to be up very early. Can you find your way back?’

  She left without a word, her shoulders as stiff as a member of the Garde Républicaine on parade. As he closed the door he heard her stumbling on the path as she tried to put her riding boots back on.

  He waited until he heard the sound of her horse going down the drive and then went into his bedroom, sniffing to see if he could sense that perfume of hers. He was sure she’d been in the room. His suspicion growing, he went out to his van for a pair of evidence gloves and then began to search his barn and his home thoroughly. He started with the chicken coop and then he checked the freezer and behind the preserves on the shelves in the barn. In the bathroom he lifted the lid on the cistern, took everything from the airing cupboard and then searched the kitchen. In his bedroom he lifted the mattress, pulled the drawers from his desk and checked their undersides. He went carefully through his wardrobe and cupboards and finally checked his bookshelves before he called Sergeant Jules at home.

  ‘I need a big favour,’ he said when his best friend among the Gendarmes answered his phone. ‘Could you come up to my place? I think someone may be trying to set me up. And another thing, you know that white Jaguar that’s been tooling around town?’

  ‘We’ve got a bet on for who’s going to be first to get it for speeding,’ Jules replied.

  ‘Could you make sure the driver is breathalysed, probably a man called Lionel Foucher. The important thing is that you keep the tube when he’s done, whatever the alcohol count?’

  ‘You want the DNA of whoever’s driving?’ Jules asked.

  ‘Any male,’ Bruno replied. ‘You remember the dead woman in the punt? It’s now a suspicious homicide and she had sperm front and rear. Wouldn’t it make life simpler if we found a match?’

  ‘I’m on my way.’

  28

  The priest had been as good as his word. When Bruno arrived with the croissants still hot from Fauquet’s oven, the list of château baptisms awaited him, written in Father Sentout’s neat script. A steaming coffee pot stood beside it. He had been right about the fashion for adding all the names of godparents: some of the infants had been loaded down with a dozen names. One name appeared twice in the same year, February and March of 1945.

  ‘Who is this McPhee and how on earth do you pronounce it?’ Bruno asked. It was the one of the names of the illegitimate child of the Red Countess, and also of her sister’s child, born in the same month.

  The priest shrugged. ‘The name sounds British, perhaps Scottish, possibly American, perhaps some distant relative or friend of the family. It was the year the war ended and France was free. It might have been thought useful to have a connection with our liberators.’

  Children born in February and March of 1945 would have been conceived in the May or June of 1944, Bruno reflected, around the time of the D-Day invasion of Normandy or just before it. And the Red Countess had always refused to identify the unknown Resistance soldier who’d fathered her child.

  ‘Excuse me, Father.’ He checked the address book on his phone to dial the direct number of the curator of the Centre Jean Moulin in Bordeaux, a man he’d worked with on previous cases. Named after the man de Gaulle sent into France to try to unify the rival Resistance groups until his betrayal, torture and death, the Centre had assembled the best Resistance archives in France. Bruno knew it to be run by dedicated scholars who were usually at their desks long before the attached museum opened its doors.

  ‘Does the name McPhee mean anything to you, around May or June of 1944, here in the Périgord region?’ he asked the curator after the usual greetings. He offered to spell out the name but the curator interrupted him.

  ‘Of course,’ came the reply. ‘He was one of the Jedburghs and I wrote my thesis on them. It may have been the most famous of them all, since one of his colleagues became a president of France. Have you heard of the Jedburgh teams?’

  Bruno confessed he had not.

  ‘They were teams of three, one Free French officer, one American and one British,’ the curator said. The teams had gone through commando training together, all spoke good French and were parachuted into France in the weeks before D-Day to help train and organize the Resistance and coordinate arms drops. McPhee was an American Captain in the Rangers, an elite unit, and came from an old military family. He had an unusual middle name, Tecumseh, the name of some Indian chief who had fought one of the McPhee ancestors. He’d been dropped into the Périgord region early in 1944 and was reported killed in June, although his body was never found. Major Manners, the British officer on the team, had filed a report that McPhee was seen to be killed in the fighting at Terrasson and his body was probably consumed when the town burned.

  ‘He was well remembered by the young résistants he trained,’ the curator added. ‘They called him their own Red Indian because he shaved his head in an odd way, leaving a strip of hair down the middle of his scalp.’

  ‘Could he have been in touch with the Red Countess?’ Bruno asked.

  ‘Very much so,’ came the reply. ‘She was a courier with the FTP group he worked with and we have a lot of oral interviews on tape, including hers, which recount how McPhee’s group got food and sometimes shelter at the Red Château.’

  Bruno knew that the FTP, the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans, were the Communist wing of the Resistance.

  ‘Do you recall her mentioning McPhee in particular in her interview?’

  ‘Oh, yes, she described him as the bravest man she ever knew, and added he had very progressive views for an American. I think she may have had a bit of a crush on him. She was very young at the time, seventeen or eighteen, I think. What’s this about, Bruno?’

  ‘I’m wondering if McPhee could have been the unknown soldier who fathered her child.’

  There was a silence on the other end of the line before the curator gave a nervous laugh. ‘We’d always rather assumed it was a Frenchman, but I suppose it’s possible. Let me know if you get anywhere with this.’

  ‘One more thing,’ Bruno said. ‘The Countess had a younger sister. Do you have anything about her?’

  ‘She was a half-sister, born after the Countess’s father was widowed and then remarried. The Countess was very insistent that they were only half-sisters and that she deliberately tried to keep her away from Resistance activities, saying she was too young. I don’t think there was any love lost between the two.’

  Bruno closed his phone to see Father Sentout dipping the last of his croissant into his coffee and smiling broadly. ‘An American cuckoo in the nest of one of the oldest families in France.’ He chuckled. ‘War makes for strange bedfellows.’

  ‘So the sister’s son Louis was also illegitimate, conceived at the same time, and also given the name of McPhee,’ Bruno mused, studying the list of baptisms.
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  ‘That was something that never came up in any of the anodyne confessions I was occasionally permitted to hear,’ said the priest. But the child was not illegitimate, Father Sentout insisted, since he was later legitimized by her husband, de la Gorce.

  ‘I can imagine the family rows that must have happened when the old Count came home after being released from prisoner-of-war camp to find both his daughters with babies and no husband in sight,’ the priest said.

  ‘And now there are grandchildren,’ said Bruno, ‘including the man we now call the Count. Is that an honorary title?’

  ‘They all are these days, officially. But there are enough titles knocking around that family to equip them all. They are descended from Louis XIV, after all, even though it was through a mistress.’

  The women, Bruno noted, seemed to have stayed true to the genes of their ancestress, the royal mistress. The Red Countess had never bothered to marry and nor had her daughter, the one who had spoken alongside her at the Renault plant in 1968 when the young Montsouris had thought the revolution was at hand. She had been newly pregnant at the time, since Father Sentout’s list gave the date of baptism for Athénaïs as January 1969. Had it not been for a change in French law in 1972 that allowed illegitimate children to inherit, neither Athénaïs nor her mother could have assumed the Red Countess’s title and property, and Count Vexin would have been the sole legitimate heir. That triggered another thought.

  ‘If we assume that this McPhee impregnated both sisters, who themselves shared a father, what would be the relationship between the two grandchildren, Athénaïs and the Count?’

  ‘Through their mothers, they shared a paternal grandfather, which made them half-cousins, But if McPhee was their common grandfather they would also have been full cousins.’ The priest frowned. ‘It’s an unusual case and rather complicated but I think the family relationship might have been too close for the church to sanction a marriage between them. I’d have to look it up.’