The Blood Promise: A Hugo Marston Novel

by Pryor, Mark

  “Certainly. We never keep the fingerprints of witnesses on file, only those people actually convicted of a crime.”

  Tourville was unmoved. “You both talk as if there is something to investigate. A stranger didn’t come into the house that night, and no one here went into that man’s room.” He stiffened. “As I’ve already said, you may talk to whichever staff members were here, and that’s it. Type up your nonsense report and make the senator happy.” He softened his tone a fraction. “I apologize if this has been a waste of your time, Capitaine, and I suspect it has. But I never wanted to bring you down here in the first place.”

  Garcia shrugged. “It’s your house, monsieur. I’ll do those interviews and be on my way.”

  “Thank you. But for wasting your time today I insist you stay for dinner, do that for me, please. And I can have a room made up for you, no trouble at all.”

  Garcia glanced at Hugo. “Well, I’ve heard your chef is most gifted.”

  “Bien!” Tourville nodded and said, “My wine is as fine as my chef, so I’ll have a bedroom prepared. Can’t have the police drinking and driving, can we?”

  “No, I suppose we can’t,” Garcia said. His wife would be unhappy at his delayed return, work intruding on their marriage yet again. That, however, was a problem for tomorrow.

  The next morning, Hugo stood with Garcia by the policeman’s car.

  “So,” Hugo smiled, “a couple of pointless interviews and a stack of useless fingerprints.”

  “On the plus side, I won’t have to painstakingly analyze each card to eliminate members of the household.”

  “You’d have done that yourself?”

  “If we’re trying to be discreet here, I think so. Plus, I like detailed work sometimes, it has a calming effect on me.”

  “So is that it? Investigation done?” Hugo looked around in frustration. “I suppose it is, but I hope Lake will be happy with it. He needs to get on with the Guadeloupe Islands talks.”

  “One charade after another, eh?” Garcia’s eyes twinkled.

  “Maybe. Anyway, thanks for coming down, and please tell Madam Garcia that I am to blame, not you.”

  They’d talked last night, not for long but long enough for Hugo to get the gist. Raul’s mother-in-law had moved in with them six months ago, a woman neither he nor his wife particularly liked. Garcia had an advantage over his wife, however, in that he had a job that provided an escape from the endless inane chatter and demands for attention. It wasn’t just that he’d started working longer hours, though he had, rather it was that his wife resented his not being there to help, to be a buffer between two strong women who were related but so very different.

  For Garcia’s part, he wasn’t proud of abandoning his wife in this way, but then again, his suggestions to relocate the mother-in-law to her own apartment or rest home were summarily dismissed as disloyal and unloving. Exhaustion and frustration had settled over the house like a fog, and no one inside could see their way to safe harbor.

  Garcia shook Hugo’s hand and sighed. “Life does test us at times, but we will prevail. What other choice do we have?”

  “None, you’re right. You’ll let me know when there’s a report or something I can share with the senator?”

  “Bien sur. I will probably run the prints through FAED, just to be thorough. It’ll pad the report as well as make your senator feel better; I can’t imagine it will kick anything back.”

  “Good idea,” Hugo said. “But let’s hope it doesn’t. Finding a criminal’s prints in that house would open a very unpleasant can of worms.”

  Garcia opened his car door and climbed in. He looked up and Hugo and smiled. “Is there any other kind?”

  “True enough. What’s your time estimate on all this?”

  “I’m writing the report today and the forensics work will only take a few hours once I get it all scanned and uploaded. Should get the all-clear this afternoon, you can let Lake and Tourville know and they can get back to work.”

  “Assuming it’s all clear.”

  “Aren’t we?”

  Hugo watched his friend leave and was about to head inside when a black Mercedes cruised down the driveway and came to a stop in front of the chateau. Alexandra Tourville smiled as she got out of the driver’s side.

  “Bonjour,” Hugo said. “I didn’t realize you’d left.”

  “Bonjour, Monsieur Marston.” She smiled, coquettish, unconcerned. “Wasn’t I allowed to?” She wore tight jeans tucked into riding boots and a white cashmere sweater. Elegantly simple and quite sexy.

  “No, it’s fine. The police are finished here anyway.”

  “The police?” She retrieved a handbag from the front seat and walked toward him. “What exactly do you think happened here?”

  “No clue, that’s why we called in the professionals.”

  “My understanding is that the police aren’t called unless something happened.”

  “The police are called all the time, for all kinds of reasons. The only thing that matters is whether they find anything.”

  “I see.” He held the front door as they entered. “Will our American guest be coming back?”

  “Now that’s beyond my expertise, you’ll have to ask the politicians. Your brother, for example.”

  “I will.” They walked together down the main hall, the smell of fresh coffee luring them all the way into the enormous kitchen. “Join me?” she asked. Hugo nodded and she poured him a cup, then they sat at the long pine table that dominated the center of the room. “I almost became one, you know.”

  “A politician?”

  “Yes. One of the many things on my resumé.” There was a moment of silence, the first awkward one because they both knew why she was no longer in politics. She smiled, the lines around her eyes and at the corners of her mouth making her look her age. “It’s OK, I know almost everyone who meets me is thinking it, if not thinking about it.”

  Hugo took a sip to avoid having to say anything.

  “You’re different, is that right?” she added.

  Hugo wasn’t sure if she was teasing him or testing him. “It’s none of my business.”

  “I’ve led an interesting life, you know. Most of it in the public eye because of my family, and some because of my own doings. Don’t you think it’s funny that a sex scandal should be my undoing?”

  Undoing was putting it politely. Alexie had been secretly taped enjoying the close attentions of two young American men and the French girlfriend of one of them. Such revelations might have been manageable in the old days but since this one made the rounds through live moving pictures, her candidacy was no longer taken seriously. Worse, the camera had captured a German shepherd roaming around in the background, generating grist for the rumor mill and provoking jokes about everything from sexual positions to Franco–American–German relations and her penchant for leashes and muzzles.

  Her camp had cried protestations of outrage at the invasion of privacy and launched a few libel lawsuits, but within weeks her coffers were empty and her camp consisted of herself, a couple of old friends, and her brother Henri, the nobleman who became even more noble for standing by his disgraced sister. Her humiliation was complete when Paris Match cited, without necessarily making relevant, the French proverb, Qui se couche avec les chiens se lève avec des puces, which the American press gleefully (and correctly) translated as, “If you lie down with dogs you get up with fleas.” Even the New York Times, in a short article in the foreign section, reported that she’d withdrawn her candidacy after being “dogged by indiscretions.”

  “I admit,” said Hugo, choosing his next words carefully, “that the demise of a politician’s career because of romantic activities does seem rather un-French.”

  Alexie gave a half smile. “I’m not sure ‘romantic’ is the right word, but you are kind. And you misunderstand what it really means to be French. If you are a man you can do as you please, no matter your position in the world. The farmer, the politician, the business
man, it doesn’t matter. If you are caught with your pants down, then the women sigh and the men wink or pat you on the back.”

  “A double standard?”

  “Yes, but not the same as the one you have, which is worse. In America, any woman seen to be enjoying sex is a slut. Here, if you are an actress, a writer, a painter, or maybe even a housewife then your sex life is your own business and a reputation for . . . sexual expertise and experimentation can be excused, understood. But try being a woman in business or politics.” She shook her head and tutted. “No, no, then you must be celibate or single and monogamous. Most certainly vanilla.” There was something in her voice that Hugo couldn’t pinpoint, a mix of wistfulness and bitterness perhaps.

  “I didn’t realize it worked like that.”

  She stared at her coffee mug, her mouth tight. “People think I withdrew through shame.” She raised her head and held Hugo’s eye. “Not so. I did it out of anger, and I knew that I could only make things worse for myself, for my family. No one likes or respects an angry woman trying to defend herself.” She laughed bitterly. “There’s another emotion men are allowed but women are not: outrage.”

  “But you like what you’re doing now?”

  “I like it well enough, it’s not all digging in libraries and government records. With the Internet and advances in DNA, you’d be amazed how far back you can go.”

  “And people pay well for that kind of research?”

  “No, they pay as little as possible. For now I’m still dependent on my brother,” a small smile, “at least if I want to maintain this lifestyle. A teaching job here and there, some freelance work on genealogical projects, I don’t have it all figured out just yet. I can tell you that some American clients pay very well.”

  “I’m glad to hear that, for your sake.” Hugo was pleased to be on safer ground. His view on sex and privacy were in line with Alexie Tourville’s, but his comfort level when it came to discussing those topics was more old-fashioned.

  Alexie stood and picked up her coffee cup. “Alors, nice to chat with you, Monsieur Marston, but all this talk reminds me I have work to do.”

  Hugo stood, too, then went to the cavernous sink to put down his empty cup. He looked out of the window for a check of the weather and was secretly pleased to see dark clouds gathering above the waving branches of the estates trees, almost bare from the season and the blustering wind which promised rain—if not now, then very soon. Impending rain meant he could refill his coffee cup and take refuge in the library for a few hours.

  At eight that evening, Hugo trotted down the stairs on his way to dinner, luxuriant aromas of meat and garlic greeting him in the main hallway. He felt his phone vibrate in his pocket and, when he pulled it out, saw Garcia’s name on the display.

  “Raul, what news?”

  “Salut, Hugo.” There was a pause, then Garcia’s voice, hesitant but clear. “My friend, I am afraid I have some bad news.”

  Hugo stopped in his tracks. “Bad news? Explain that.”

  “Of course. First, I did everything I said, ran the prints through FAED. It checked criminal records all across Europe.”

  “Don’t tell me you got a hit. Everyone in this house is clean, Tourville assured us of that.”

  “No, I’m afraid it’s worse. Quite a lot worse.”

  “Worse than someone here having a criminal record?”

  “Yes.” Garcia cleared his throat. “Believe it or not, it seems possible that someone there committed murder.”

  Hugo kept going through the main hallway and out of the front doors. He needed to be alone for this conversation.

  “Murder? What do you mean?”

  He heard Garcia take a breath. “Bien, so once the FAED results came back with nothing it struck me there was one more thing I could do. You know, to be thorough.”

  He explained that he’d used the French version of ViCAP, the FBI’s data information system that collects and analyzes information about homicides, sexual assaults, missing persons, and unidentified human remains. Users could input case information hoping to identify related incidents, where new leads might be lurking. “Hugo, one of the prints connected to an unsolved murder east of Paris, not far from Troyes. I pulled the report of the crime, and it looks like a burglary gone wrong at an old country home. Some jewelry stolen, but not much else.”

  Hugo sat on the lowest of the front steps, trying to absorb this information. “This changes things, Raul, you know that, right?”

  “Yes, of course. I haven’t told the police handling the murder yet, figured we should work it from this end first to know what we have.”

  “Which isn’t much, because we have no idea whose print it is,” Hugo said. “You want me to talk to Tourville?”

  “I don’t know, Hugo. I’ve thought about it and I’m torn, because at this point we have to treat everyone in that house as a suspect.”

  “Including Tourville himself? I understand the theory, Raul, but that’s a stretch. The guy has more blue blood than the Queen of England and is hardly in need of other people’s trinkets.”

  “True enough, but I’m not really in the business of doing French aristocrats favors.”

  “I appreciate that, I do. But it’s not so much a favor as being realistic. Not only is he extremely unlikely to be a murderer, but if we alienate him now it could hamper the investigation.”

  “My investigation,” Garcia said, “which means that if you’re wrong it’s my head that rolls.”

  Hugo chuckled. “A fine French tradition, head-rolling. I think you’ll be OK, though, I’ll make sure you get political asylum in the States if I see them polishing the guillotine.”

  “You better.”

  “So let me talk to Tourville, maybe we can start by taking prints from his staff if he’s not willing to do more, I can’t imagine he’d mind that. If we don’t get anything from them, we can look to the family and guests.”

  “Bien, let’s go with that. And tell him I’ll come back there and print his people myself, try to keep this discreet for as long as possible.”

  “Tonight?”

  It was Garcia’s turn to laugh. “No, not a chance. Americans are workaholics, not Frenchmen. I’ll be down in the morning. Mid-morning; you know I like my breakfast.”

  When they hung up, Hugo started to head back inside but stopped at the top of the stairs. He put a quick call into the ambassador, passing on Garcia’s new information.

  “Jeez, Hugo, this isn’t what we need, not right now,” Taylor said. “If Lake finds out he’s been sleeping in the shadow of a murderer he’ll go ballistic.”

  “Sounds like a board game, doesn’t it? The murder of a senator in the library with the candlestick.”

  “Not funny, Hugo.”

  “No?” Hugo’s tone was light. “Of course, it’s always possible the fingerprint in question is the senator’s, which makes him the murderer not the murdered.”

  “Still not funny.”

  “Well then, keep the info to yourself for now. I’ll call tomorrow with an update.”

  “Thanks. And Hugo? Call me with good news one of these days. Would you try that sometime?”

  Hugo headed into the chateau, pausing when he saw Henri Tourville having a drink in the sitting room with Felix Vibert. The two men stood with their backs to an oversized painting of a peasant girl in a garden looking wistfully upward with one arm extended. It was oddly familiar to Hugo, though he couldn’t begin to place why.

  “Monsieur Tourville,” he said, “I’m sorry to interrupt, but can I have a word?”

  “Certainly, you can speak freely in front of Felix.”

  Hugo tilted his head, an apology. “Actually, on this matter I’m afraid I can’t.”

  “Pas de problem,” Vibert said. “I will leave you gentlemen to it, but please don’t keep us waiting for long, dinner smells wonderful.”

  They watched him leave the room and Hugo indicated the painting behind them. “Why do I recognize that?”

&nb
sp; “Ah, it’s something of a knock-off. The version you may recollect is in a New York museum, and the young lady is Joan of Arc at the moment she is spoken to by God. Getting her marching orders, you might say. The famous one is by Jules Bastien-Lepage, but about the time that one was painted a lot more were produced of her, sculptures too. I’m told this one was also by Jules Bastien-Lepage, but it’s not signed and an art dealer told me it might not even be finished.” Tourville shrugged. “Like most of the stuff in here, I’ve no idea where it came from, what it’s worth, if anything, and it’s been in the family longer than anyone can remember, so there it hangs.”

  “Not a bad problem to have.” Hugo turned back to Tourville. “Let’s sit for a minute.”

  Tourville raised an eyebrow but acquiesced, moving to a pair of plump, faded-red armchairs. As they sat, Tourville said, “Things not going as planned?”

  “Not exactly. And please, let me finish talking before you say anything.”

  Tourville nodded. “D’accord.”

  “Merci. First, I won’t have answers to some of the questions you will ask because I have only a preliminary report from Garcia. He’s coming down tomorrow and should have more for us, but I wanted to come to you as soon as possible. Like you, I want to get these talks back on track and you’ve been very gracious with your hospitality and this unusual situation.”

  Tourville nodded again, the corners of his mouth turned down in anticipation of whatever bad news was coming.

  “Unfortunately, this situation just got a whole lot more unusual. One print from the senator’s room matches a print found at a crime scene at a country home on the east side of Paris.”

  Tourville blinked. “How is that possible? What kind of crime scene?”

  “To the first question, that’s what we’d like to find out. To the second,” Hugo hesitated, but guessed that he’d get more with honesty than obfuscation. “A robbery–murder scene.”

  “How can that be?” Tourville repeated, his voice a whisper.

  “I haven’t seen the file on that case yet, this really is early stages.”