The Body in the Castle Well

by Martin Walker

  “Your mother told me she was planning to have you and the American girl to dinner. Did you like her?”

  “Who wouldn’t, pretty girl like that?” He winked at Bruno. “A bit intellectual for me, though. All those books.”

  “What books?” Bruno remembered Claudia arriving at the station with only a rucksack. She couldn’t have carried many, but he recalled seeing a stack of art books on the table in her room.

  “I dunno, but my mum had asked if I could knock out a bookcase for her. She said she was sick of seeing all the books and papers piled around.”

  Bruno nodded. “You grew up here, I bet as a kid you and your friends used to climb into the gardens.”

  Dominic grinned. “Of course we did, used to dare each other to do it at night. It was all more overgrown then.”

  “Could you show me all the places where you could climb in? I just have to finish the report on the accident, but the procureur wants me to see if there are any signs of some stranger getting in.”

  “Why would they do that when the gate was open for the lecture?”

  “Ask the proc,” Bruno replied with a shrug. “I just follow orders.”

  “You want me to show you now?” Dominic looked at his watch. “I’ve got to get these canoes cleaned.”

  “It won’t take long. We can go up the hill in my van, and then I’ll run you back here.”

  They went past the commune school and turned left up the long hill to park outside the restaurant at the top. To the left of the garden gate was a footpath that led downhill, and Dominic showed Bruno a spot close to the entrance that looked feasible, particularly if one were ten years old and had no fear. Then he led the way back, through the square where the wall was high and forbidding, except for an angle where some of the cornerstones protruded. The garden of the hotel, Au Bon Accueil, also looked like a possible way in. Dominic pointed out gaps between the houses lower down on the rue du Port after a big stone archway where the wall could be reached, but it would take a skillful climber to scale it.

  “Then there’s this garden behind the house where my best pal lived. We used to climb up there. It was the easiest way. That’s it. Can we go back now?”

  Bruno made a note of the house, drove Dominic back to his canoes and then returned and knocked on the house door. A young woman answered, a baby in her arms and a toddler clutching at her skirt, looking at first surprised at the sight of his uniform and then worried as if she expected him to bring bad news. Bruno had learned to expect this with strangers and smiled reassuringly.

  “There’s no problem at all, madame. I’m Bruno Courrèges, chief of police for the valley, just finishing the report on the death of that young woman in the well up in the castle gardens on Sunday night. I need to check whether anyone could have climbed in. One of the locals told me he used to climb up from here when he was a kid.”

  “I’m Sylvie Postrelle, and I know who you are, I’ve seen you in the market in St. Denis. You’re welcome to take a look, but my husband repointed all the cracks in that wall when we moved in, worried that our kids might break their necks trying to scale it.”

  She led him through the house to a kitchen where he’d interrupted her washing the breakfast dishes in the sink. The back door opened onto a narrow patch of garden, maybe three meters long or a little more and backed by a wall of old stones about four or five meters high, then a narrow terrace of grass with another, higher wall behind it. The wall facing the garden had indeed been repointed, but the stones were lumpy, and a skilled alpinist could probably have managed to scale it, but not Bruno. The garden was fenced off to waist height at each side, but there was a latched gate that led to a small alley where the family kept their garbage cans, the yellow-topped one for recyclables and the black one for organic waste.

  “Is that gate kept locked?” he asked.

  “My husband checks it every night, in case little Michel here gets out. He’s at that age where he’s exploring everything, full of mischief,” she said fondly. “Can I offer you a cup of coffee?”

  “Thanks, but I just had one down at the port. You moved here recently?”

  “Yes, my husband works for Gaz de France in St. Cyprien, and we moved here just before Christmas from Nantes. It’s a lovely area. Michel is the toddler and the baby is Jeannette.”

  He thanked her, chucked the baby under the chin and suggested that in a year or two Michel might want to join one of the sports clubs for minimes.

  “We’ll be joining the tennis club when the season starts,” she said.

  “It’s already open. We have a covered court. I give weekly classes for the children, and you’re more than welcome. You know where it is?”

  “Yes, we’ve driven around a bit, and thank you, I’d like to get some more exercise. By the way, did you find anywhere else someone might have climbed in, because my husband was a bit worried about a burglar getting up onto the terrace, and there’s a place farther down where it looks easier.”

  “Could you show me, please?”

  From her doorway she pointed him to an angle in the wall a few houses down the street, and he saw that it went back about five meters, turned at a right angle and then another right angle to come back to the original line of wall, leaving a house-shaped space. Looking at the right angles, Bruno thought he’d have little trouble getting up onto the terrace if he stood on another garbage can. He strolled on and saw a narrow lane, the entrance to the new château, guarded only by an ancient iron gate. The château was still sealed and all the shutters closed until the owners returned in the summer. He climbed up to look over it and saw that once over the gate it would be easy to get up to the terrace that way. He could have climbed over the gate but thought that would not be wise while wearing his uniform

  He went back to the house-shaped gap in the wall, clambered up without tearing his uniform trousers and then strolled along the terrace, waving at Sylvie as she stood watching from her back door. The stones in the wall here were more carefully dressed, and he saw no easy way up, so he retraced his steps, and a few meters beyond the spot where he’d climbed up Bruno saw a fissure in the wall. Moments later he was on the second terrace with just one more wall to climb to get into the gardens. He walked along toward the hotel and when past it saw a triangular-shaped archway in the wall that gave him an easy scramble into the gardens. It had probably been a sally port, a way for the defenders to launch a sudden attack on any besieging force that had reached this point. He clambered up once more and found himself face-to-face with a bewildered David.

  “What are you doing here, Bruno? How did you get in?”

  “I wanted to see if it would be possible for someone to climb in even when the place was supposed to be locked up. There are some cracks in the wall that need repairing. By the way, have those builders of yours capped the well yet?”

  “Yes, and it’s padlocked. Come and see.”

  “Better late than never,” said Bruno, wondering why Dominic had not shown him the spot that was easiest to climb.

  “Did you arrange to meet the doctor here?” David asked. “She wants me to take the lid off the well again, just for a few moments. Would that be okay?”

  “That’s fine with me so long as you seal it again. Did she say why?”

  “No, but she asked if Claudia had ever done any rock climbing.”

  “Knowing Fabiola, she’ll have her reasons.”

  Chapter 21

  When they reached her, Fabiola was examining the stone rim of the well with a magnifying glass and then looking back at the screen of her phone.

  “Bonjour, Bruno,” she said, standing up and putting forward her cheek to be kissed. “Do you know if Claudia did any climbing?”

  “I can find out. Why?”

  She turned to David and asked him politely to remove the lid of the well. It was a heavy circle made of thick wooden beams, held
down by a chain secured into brackets in the stone wall and then padlocked. Bruno nodded, and David opened the padlock. Bruno helped him remove the chain and then with difficulty lift off the heavy lid. Fabiola asked David to move away, out of earshot and out of sight, saying she needed to speak to Bruno in private. Bruno grinned, thinking of the gossip that the young man could get from this.

  “Something was nagging at me,” Fabiola said when David had gone. “And when I looked again at the photos I’d taken of the scrapes and bruises on her limbs, there were none on her knees. Could you just climb up onto the lip of the well, please, but from the other side, not here where I’ve been looking. And don’t use the scaffolding.”

  Bruno walked around to the other side, put one foot on a small ledge formed by a bulge in a large stone, placed his hands on the lip, levered himself up until he could place one knee on the flat rim and used it to lever himself up.

  “Now see me do it,” she said, picking the same spot and performing the same actions except that, instead of placing her knee on the rim, she stretched her leg straight and put her foot on the rim to get her leverage.

  “I’m a trained rock climber and we almost never use our knees. It’s feet and hands because you have more control and more balance. Knees are clumsy things, just joints. If she was a serious climber I could understand there being no marks on her knees. But if she wasn’t, it’s odd. In fact, it’s more than odd; it could be very significant. Now please roll up your trouser leg and show me your knee.”

  Bruno complied, glad that David was not seeing this latest development. Fabiola peered and pointed.

  “You see that red mark where you rested your weight and pivoted on it, that’s very mild bruising, even through your heavy uniform trousers. Claudia was wearing a skirt, so her knees would have been bare. She had scrapes, but there were no signs of even the faintest bruising when I first saw her body. Immersion in cold water inhibits bruising, at least at first, but the Americans have done some work on this at their National Center for Biotech Information and found that bruising inflicted before death can appear later, even after prolonged immersion. In this later photo from the autopsy there’s no sign of bruising on her knee but look at her lower legs, just above the ankles. That’s the kind of bruising consistent with someone holding her firmly by the legs, possibly so he could lift her, but using a cloth or mittens because there are no finger marks.”

  “You’re saying she didn’t climb up herself, but someone hoisted her up.”

  “Yes, almost certainly a male because of the strength required. Try it on me while I stand with my hands on the rim. Use a handkerchief on one hand but not on the other.”

  Bruno took out his handkerchief, relieved that it was clean, bent down from his knees and not from his waist and took a firm grip just above each slender ankle.

  “Now lift me, not all the way.”

  He straightened his legs but did not raise his arms, realizing that doing so could catapult Fabiola into the well. He let her gently down again.

  “Now look at my ankles. Your finger marks are on one but not the other, a general redness like the one in my photo. I don’t know about you, but I’m now convinced she wasn’t alone here, and it’s possible, even likely, that she was deliberately thrown into the well by a reasonably strong man.”

  “You’ve convinced me somebody could have lifted her,” he said, “but whether that was to help her onto the rim or to throw her in is another question. I can see someone lifting her so she could get to the kitten, and then she lost her balance and fell in and the guy panicked and bolted.”

  “I agree, that’s another possible scenario.”

  “Let’s call David back to help me replace the lid on the well, and then I’ll find out if Claudia was a climber.”

  Rather than call Madame Muller on her American number, Bruno dialed Hodge and found him having coffee with Claudia’s mother at her hotel. Hodge passed the phone to her, and Bruno asked her about Claudia’s climbing experience.

  “She’s a New Yorker, brought up thinking that height was something you take an elevator for. The only mountains she ever visited were those with ski lifts. Why do you ask?”

  “The pathologist is investigating the bruises on Claudia’s legs.”

  “And this helps?”

  “I’m not a pathologist; I’m just passing on the question.”

  “I wanted to thank you anyway for putting Jacqueline in touch with me, that friend of your mayor. We had a very fine dinner here at the hotel together last night, and it turned out we had some friends in common in New York and Washington and even in Paris. Then I remembered seeing a good review of her book in the New York Times, so we had a pleasant evening. It was just what I needed, taking my mind off Claudia for an hour or so.”

  “I know she enjoyed meeting you,” he replied, thinking of the way he’d seen at funerals how the social courtesies seemed to provide a respite from grief.

  “Are you any closer to releasing her body?” she asked.

  “That’s for the procureur to decide, but I hope it won’t be long now. Have you run into Professor Porter? He’s also staying at your hotel, along with a Madame de Breille. She works for an investigation agency that’s been hired by your ex-husband.”

  “No, I’ll ask Mr. Hodge.”

  Hodge came back on the line to tell Bruno he’d had a call from Porter, and they had arranged to meet that morning at the Vieux Logis.

  “Did the professor say what he wanted?” Bruno asked.

  “No, only that he wanted a briefing and he’d be happy to tell me anything that might help.”

  Bruno described his own meeting the previous day with the professor and Madame de Breille and what had seemed like a rupture between them and added that he had the e-mails between Claudia and Porter if Hodge needed them.

  “I’m seeing him at ten—that’s in twenty minutes—and I’ll let you know after that. Do you have other plans today?”

  “I’m meeting a friend at the station and then having a late lunch at Ivan’s. I don’t know if I told you about Amélie. She’s from Guadeloupe, a jazz-singing magistrate who’s coming down to perform at our summer concert. She’s also doing a Josephine Baker memorial concert at Baker’s old place, Château des Milandes.”

  “I’m a big fan of Baker. Along with Jackie Kennedy she’s probably the most popular American woman we’ve ever sent to France,” Hodge replied, adding that he’d like to come for the event. “And does the cultural attaché at the American embassy know about it?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s going to be televised.”

  “Let me call our culture office at the embassy, and maybe I could drop by at Ivan’s to say hello.” Hodge paused, and Bruno heard faint voices before Hodge resumed. “Madame Muller has just nudged me to say she’s also a Baker fan, and maybe she can come with me. Is that okay?”

  “That might work. We should be there around one-thirty, but she may have to leave early for some contract negotiations,” Bruno said. “I’ll let you know, but if necessary we’ll certainly find another opportunity. You’ll like Amélie; she’s bouncy, very smart, full of energy and a rising star in politics. She might even be a minister in a future left government. She was working for the justice ministry when she came down here, doing a time-and-motion study on me as a typical countryside cop.”

  “I’ve often wondered,” Hodge replied, laughing. “Is that what led to your latest promotion?”

  “Probably.”

  “I’ll look forward to meeting her. Give my regards to Ivan.”

  Then Bruno called his friend Annette, the young magistrate in the Sarlat office of the procureur who was dealing with the building-code violation, to ask if a decision had been made on how to proceed. The dossier remained open, she told him, until J-J as chief detective had formally signed off on an accidental death, which looked to be the most likely ou
tcome. The builders would then face a far more serious charge.

  “Your dossier could stay open for a while,” Bruno said. “Fabiola is filing an addendum to the pathologist’s report arguing that the bruises on the legs suggest the dead girl may have been deliberately lifted up and possibly tossed into the well.”

  “Mon Dieu, if Fabiola says that, we’d better take it seriously. Does J-J know yet? The last I heard he was close to wrapping it all up.”

  “I’d better call him now. I’ll ask Fabiola to e-mail you a copy of her addendum.”

  J-J was not happy for a case he had thought almost concluded to remain open, but he knew Fabiola from previous cases and respected her work.

  “Putain, tu me casses les couilles, Bruno,” J-J said when Bruno explained. “The press is hounding me enough already. And the chief pathologist won’t be happy to be second-guessed.”

  “You can tell him it’s something only a skilled climber would have known,” Bruno replied. “And it may not be murder. Someone may just have lifted her up to reach the kitten, she fell in, and then he ran away.”

  “We don’t have any suspects,” J-J said, sighing deeply. “There was no sign of sexual activity, so that wasn’t the motive. And we heard back from Scotland Yard today about the boyfriend, Morgan. Witnesses and credit card records placed him in London all weekend, including Sunday evening. Not only does he have no record of drug use, he’s an athlete, in some tennis competition where they’re required to take drug tests. He’s got two years of clean records and even invited the police to search his apartment. When Scotland Yard checked with his friends, they laughed at the idea that he was a user. I think we can rule him out.”

  “That suggests that Claudia might not have got the drugs when she was in Thailand with him,” said Bruno. “So how did she get hold of them? I’d never heard of them before, have you?”

  “Our drug squad had never heard of yaba pills. They checked and came back to tell me there’s a little of the stuff around in Paris, mainly in the treizième, the Chinese and Asian quarter around Porte de Choisy, but there’s hardly any market for it in Europe. I sent a message with her photo to the Paris narcotics guys asking if any of them recognized Claudia. No reply so far. But what about this art fraud business you were telling me about? The old art historian may not have been able to do it himself, but he could have paid someone to do it. Yves said he sent you the e-mails she exchanged with her professor—was there anything substantive in them about the fraud?”