by Mark Hebden
Anxious to be part of the town they had made their home, they had agreed and Le Bernard could see himself in a comfortable job for some time to come. He had warned the Briddons that he would have to do what he called ‘investigative masonry’ and his stay was already costing them far more than they had expected.
He knew exactly what he was doing, of course, because he knew the tower well. He knew every inch of it because he had worked on it at various periods in his career when the owner at the time, alarmed that it was in danger of falling down, had been obliged to have it repaired. He had worked on it originally as an apprentice employed by his father, and thirty years before he had put a patch on a hole which had appeared at the top near the roof. On that occasion he had bricked up the vents which had been let into the tower to allow light inside, because the then owner had complained that the local urchins spent a large part of their spare time trying to throw bricks and cans through them.
By this time, he had opened a hole almost big enough to get through. That done, he could somehow manoeuvre a ladder through and get inside out of the wind. He didn’t fancy that particularly, though, because – according to what he had learned from the local librarian – although there had once been a ladder inside the tower, he certainly couldn’t imagine much else because it was far too narrow. God alone knew, in fact, what he might find. What he did find certainly wasn’t what he expected.
As the hole grew large enough to climb through he descended the ladder to the courtyard and called on his assistant, a boy of seventeen, his grandson also called Bernard Buffel. His father, the old man’s son and another Bernard, had been known as Bernard Buffel Bis, but, since he had run off with a woman from Goillac some years before and had never been seen since, his son had inherited the appellation and was now also known as Bernard Buffel Bis, sometimes even as Bernard Buffel Bis Bravo. He was a tall thin boy who worked none too willingly for his grandfather. He now started to climb the ladder.
‘Take the torch,’ Le Bernard said. ‘There are some stones going down inside where the old ladder was attached, so there are plenty of footholds and it’s narrow enough to brace yourself with your back against the opposite walls. I expect you’ll find all sorts of rubbish in there because when I was a boy there were vents in the wall and people used to chuck things in. Old papers. Lunch wrappings. Bottles. Used French letters. Dead cats.’
Bernard Buffel Bis eyed his grandfather sideways. ‘And then what?’ he asked. ‘When I get inside, I mean.’
‘Report on what you see. So we’ll know how to tackle it.’
‘All I’ll see in there will be darkness.’ Bernard Buffel Bis was growing too big for his boots.
The boy climbed the ladder and, disappearing from sight through the hole Le Bernard had made, began to descend like a climber descending a natural rock chimney, using his back against one side and his feet against the other. Unfortunately, he was a big boy and strong and the stones of the tower were no longer very secure in their places. A thrusting foot dislodged one of them. Le Bernard saw it move.
‘Come out!’ he screamed. ‘It’s going to fall down!’
His eyes wild, the boy’s head emerged and he started to climb through the hole just as the stone he had moved fell out. As it fell, it allowed another stone, which it had supported, to move also. As that one fell, so did another. Almost with a sigh, the side of the tower began to crumble. Le Bernard and the boy managed to scramble clear just in time, knocking Ellen Briddon, who had come to see what the shouting was about, flying as they did so. They had just got clear when one side of the tower subsided gracefully – gently almost – into the courtyard. The stones stopped rolling and the tiles stopped crashing, the last timbers of the turreted roof fell and the dust began to settle. By the grace of God nobody had been hurt but what had been a round slim tower was now only half a round slim tower. All down one side it was open to the elements and it was obvious to Le Bernard and to Ellen Briddon that what was left would need shoring up or that would fall too.
Then Bernard Buffel Bis noticed something lying under the wreckage that had fallen inside the tower. It was a boot – an old boot, dry, grey and dusty, the nails in the sole red with rust. Then he noticed the end of a trouser leg. It was faded but was still blue enough to be identified as part of a workman’s overall. And inside the leg of the overall progressing into the boot, he could see what looked like an old brown bone. But it wasn’t bone. It was ancient dried skin, dark with age.
‘That’s a man,’ he whispered, awed.
Le Bernard picked himself up, stared at the dusty object lying among the wreckage, studied it for a moment or two, then directed an angry glare at his grandson.
‘Now look what you’ve done,’ he said.
Two
At just about the time Le Bernard was clambering among the wreckage of the Cat Tower for a better look at what they had unearthed, about a hundred and fifty kilometres away at the southern border of the province, a car pulled off the route Nationale 6 on to a side road that led to a stretch of woodland which the driver decided would make a good spot to have a picnic.
His name was Alexandre Méline and he was manager of a private estate well to the north, in Alsace.
He was heading south to see his mother who lived in the Auvergne and, since he hadn’t seen his family for several years, he was in high spirits. His car was a small Renault but, despite its size, he had made very good time. Méline was a happy man. He worked for a man who owned several thousand hectares of forestland which it was Méline’s job to control. The trees were cut down in two and three-hectare areas at a time and used for telegraph poles and pit props, and the ground replanted so that, by the time they had worked through the whole estate, the newly-planted trees had grown to their full height again and were once more ready for cutting.
It was a profitable business but Méline had a feeling that the man who followed him as manager would find things very different when he took over. Already in France telegraph poles were being made of reinforced concrete, which lasted better, and pit props were no longer of wood but of steel and could be jacked up so there was no need for wedges to give stability. The telegraph poles and pit props that Alexandre Méline tended were already being sold chiefly to Third World countries whose telephone systems were cruder than in Europe and whose mining techniques had not yet caught up with those of the West.
At that moment, though, Méline was untroubled by such pessimistic thoughts. By the time it began to affect French forests, he felt, he would be retired to some tidy little bungalow near his mother in the Auvergne with nothing to do but cultivate a garden and play boules and dominoes with his friends in the bronze-yellow sunshine of the evening.
On the way south he had passed several groups of hitch-hikers. With the holiday period in full swing, half France was on the road. Most of the hitch-hikers were youngsters, mostly male, of university age. Like all university students, they were always going somewhere. To Alexandre Méline it seemed to be a very restless age. Some of the hitch-hikers were girls and some of them, he noticed, were very pretty, bronzed, and attractive. Méline didn’t stop for them. He was unmarried and might have been tempted, but a friend of his had once had a bad fright when a girl he had picked up had accused him of rape. Fortunately for Méline’s friend, she was known to the police and her racket was to accuse people who picked her up and threaten blackmail unless they paid for her silence. From that day, however, Méline had kept well clear of hitch-hikers, especially as things had changed a lot since then and some of the girls these days were making it quite plain that they would not be unapproachable to suggestions. Méline knew of men who had picked up girls and had sex with them, but he preferred to keep clear of them.
Picking a little side road, he turned in among the trees and began to prepare for his picnic. Méline’s picnic didn’t consist merely of sandwiches. He had provided himself with food from the delicatessen in the village where he lived – sausage, cold meats, salads, hard-boiled eggs, pickled her
rings. He was a big man and liked solid meals. There was no wine, however. The police were strict since President Pompidou had tried to cut down on French drinking habits, and he preferred just a small bottle of beer. Wine could be dangerous stuff to drink at lunch time when you were driving, especially when you were heading south. The sun through the windscreen could be a great soporific and Méline had had a friend who had fallen asleep under its influence and hit a lorry. Méline had a lot of friends and he liked to regulate his life by their errors.
The area was heavily forested and he approved of the way it was kept. He had driven down what appeared to be a working road used by Burgundian foresters as they thinned, cut down and replanted. The road continued for two or three hundred metres, turning first one way then the other, then debouched into an open glade around fifty to eighty metres across.
The glade was covered with crisp green grass dotted with anemones and young foxgloves and around him were acacia, oaks and ash very different from the tall pines of Alsace where he worked. The early afternoon sun was streaming down and he could see the bright rays coming through the trees in golden shafts, like the light entering a cathedral.
‘Perfect,’ he said. It was just what he wanted. Since he did it every day of his life, he was used to eating his lunch in the open air among the trees. Eating his lunch with someone else was something he wasn’t used to.
He was just settling back to enjoy himself when he realised he wasn’t alone after all. Beyond a clump of bushes he could see another car. It was a large and expensive Japanese Honda – a car that was becoming increasingly popular in France – but he couldn’t see the owner and decided that perhaps he was with a girl and had disappeared into the undergrowth with her for a short session of fun and games. Then he saw him. He was just beyond the car, lying on his back. There was no one else visible and Méline decided his guess was wrong and, instead, the driver of the other car was having his afternoon nap. Perhaps he had had a drink or two and had wisely decided to sleep it off before proceeding.
Preferring to take his lunch alone, Méline pushed his folding chair and his lunch and his bottle of beer back into his car and prepared to drive off and find somewhere else. As he turned the car, however, a bird appeared through the trees, sweeping across the open space in a long glide. He recognised it at once as a carrion crow. Noted as an egg thief, it had always been on the blacklists of gamekeepers and foresters and he distinguished it at once by its broad wings and slow wing beat.
What happened next startled him, however. To his surprise, it headed directly for the man lying on the ground. That in itself puzzled him. He knew the habits of most birds and forest animals and he knew the crow to be a timid creature. Then, again to his surprise, he saw the bird land on the prostrate man’s chest and take two or three lurching steps forward until it was staring straight into his face. The man didn’t move. To Méline’s horror, the crow started pecking and he realised it was pecking at the man’s eye.
Immediately it dawned on him that something was wrong and, taking a more careful look, he noticed that as the bird had landed a loud humming noise had started. He knew at once what it was because he had heard it before in the forests of Alsace near the decomposing bodies of dead deer. It was made by flies and it was there, like the carrion crow, because the man lying on the ground beyond the bushes was dead.
For a moment Méline considered going to see if there were anything he could do. But even as he did so another crow landed on the figure beyond the bushes and he guessed he would be wasting his energy because, judging by the crows and the number of blowflies, the man must have been dead for some time and it was his job to inform the authorities.
As Alexandre Méline was swinging his car round and shooting off to find a policeman, Chief Inspector Pel and Inspector Darcy were still considering the state of play in the continuing contest between the Brigade Criminelle of the Police Judiciaire and the criminal fraternity in their area.
Pel had been fishing the day before. His wife encouraged him to go fishing as a means of relaxation. Occasionally, she even accompanied him. He didn’t for a moment imagine she enjoyed it but it was an indication of her loyalty that she was prepared to endure the boredom, the midges and the hot sun so that Pel could have his relaxation in his little paradise by the River Orche. No French paradise was complete without a stream and fish.
‘I wish I hadn’t needed to smoke, though,’ he said to Darcy. ‘But Geneviève’s in Marseilles and it runs away with me.’
Darcy looked up. ‘Holiday?’ he asked.
‘No. An aunt dropped dead. She was playing tennis. She was seventy.’
‘She deserved to drop dead, playing tennis at that age.’
‘Geneviève’ll come into money.’
‘She always does, Patron. And very nice, too.’ There was no envy in Darcy’s words because he had a great admiration for Madame Pel.
‘It reduces the necessity of not going home smelling like an ashtray,’ Pel said gloomily. ‘When I know she’s not around, I’m tempted to light another.’ He sighed. ‘I’m easily tempted.’
‘You should take fresh air,’ Darcy suggested. ‘How about jogging?’
Pel gave him a shocked look. All he conceded in the way of exercise was a quiet afternoon’s fishing or a stiff game of boules. ‘All the same,’ he admitted, ‘I ought to do something to make me stop.’
‘You could have your lungs filled with concrete. That ought to do it. Mind you, it wouldn’t be very good for your breathing.’
Pel scowled, his fragile good temper gone with the wind. There was only one person allowed to use sarcasm in his department, only one wit, and that was Pel. Seeing he wasn’t going to get much sympathy, he hurriedly changed the subject and decided to go through the members of his department to make sure they were all toeing the line, keeping their noses to the grindstone and their eyes on the ball.
‘What have we on the books?’ he asked.
‘Sheep stealing. Up on the hills in the north. The farmers are getting worried.’
‘Put Brochard on to it.’
‘He’s on holiday.’
‘He’ll come back. He’s a farmer’s son. He ought to know what to do.’
‘He’ll certainly be better than Misset,’ Darcy said. ‘Misset wouldn’t know the difference between a sheep and an orang-utan.’
Misset was the problem in Pel’s team. Blessed with fading good looks and eyes that didn’t see as well as they had, he tried to hide his dwindling attraction with dark spectacles so that he could look like a danger to crooks and a threat to women.
‘Anything else?’
‘A break-in at the supermarket at Talant.’
‘There are always break-ins at the supermarket at Talant,’ Pel complained. ‘We ought to have it sealed with plastic. Don’t they do it with ships? Moth-balling, they call it, don’t they?’
‘It would reduce business a bit,’ Darcy grinned. ‘I’ve given it to Lecocq. There was also a break-in at the warehouse of the Wine Co-operative at Vauors. Bardolle got the guy who did it.’
‘Escaping?’
‘No, drunk. He’s been up before the beaks before.’
‘That the lot?’
‘Nosjean’s working on another suspected art fraud. He thinks this time the picture’s genuine. He’s becoming quite an expert. It’s that girl, Mijo Lehmann, he’s living with. She works at the Galeries Lafayette. She’s a useful ex-officio member of the department.’
‘That the lot?’
Darcy paused. ‘Not quite,’ he said. ‘Cadet Darras.’
Pel looked up. Cadet Darras was one of his personal recruits. Like the British admiral in the last century who had gone round with his pockets full of acorns to plant for oak trees for the future wooden walls of the Navy, Pel worked assiduously for the police force. Didier Darras was the nephew of Madame Routy, Pel’s housekeeper. With his grandfather failing in health, his mother had been permanently occupied and Didier Darras had often found himself calling on his au
nt for meals. Being a bit on the mean side, Pel might have been indignant at feeding waifs and strays but, as it happened, he got on well with small boys and Didier Darras, like Pel, enjoyed boules and fishing and had been a good ally for Pel in his constant warfare with Madame Routy.
It had been Pel who had recruited him for the police and he now worked as a cadet in the Hôtel de Police, running the errands and fetching the beer and sandwiches.
‘What about Didier Darras?’ he asked.
‘He’s got something on his mind.’
‘Well, I know his mother often had to leave him on his own resources. But his grandfather died recently, so life’s surely a bit easier. He used to visit us occasionally, as you know. He seemed to like to talk to me.’ Pel looked puzzled, as if he couldn’t understand why anyone would want to talk to him. ‘But he’s not been round lately. It must be Madame Routy’s cooking that puts him off.’
‘It’s not that,’ Darcy said.
‘What then?’
‘It’s his love life.’
Pel sniffed. He didn’t think much of love lives. Though everything was now happily in order, up to his marriage his own love life had been very simple. There hadn’t been one. As a young man he had begun to think he would grow old with stringy buttocks before he experienced the pleasures of the flesh. It was his name, he felt. Individually, Evariste was all right. Clovis was acceptable. Désiré was just about bearable. Together, however, they were enough to make a man worry rats. His wife had solved the problem by addressing him simply as ‘Pel’.
He looked at Darcy. ‘What’s the trouble?’ he asked.
‘Officer Martin,’ Darcy said with a grin. ‘The cadet whose place he took. He’s on the street now. He’s a good-looking type too. I gather he’s just got engaged to that girl, Louise Bray, Didier went around with.’