Bruno smiled to himself, thinking their alibis were now in place.
The three of them dashed off to the movies while Bruno and Pamela grinned at each other. They rubbed down and bedded the horses, refreshed their feed and water and put away the saddles and bridles.
“I’m off to shower and change and I’ll see you in half an hour or so,” she said, opening her arms wide. “But come here a moment and hug me. I love the horsey smell of a man who’s just been riding fast.”
She had always been a wonderful woman to kiss, thought Bruno, taking her in his arms, her lips full and soft, lovely purring sounds in her throat. And she was right about that smell of horses.
“That’s enough,” she said, pulling away. “Otherwise we might end up making love here in the stables, and I really don’t want a rump full of straw. I’ll see you soon.”
Bruno raced home with Balzac, pausing only to buy bread and feed his ducks and chickens, collect his fresh eggs and pick some herbs. He quickly showered and shaved and changed his sheets. He brought in wood and lit the fire, decanted a bottle of red from Château Lestevenie and set the table for two.
Am I keeping so busy, he asked himself, because I’m uncertain whether I really want to resume this affair with Pamela? He remembered the faint sense of relief he had felt when Pamela had ended their liaison the previous year. She had kept it so light, so casual, while it lasted, but expected him to be available at her whim. Did he want to fall into that pattern again? Or was it because he didn’t know how it might progress, how it might end? But love affairs are always like that, he told himself, voyages to unknown and unknowable destinations. Aware of his own rising excitement and expectation as he heard the familiar sound of Pamela’s car turning into his driveway, he knew whatever the spirit might say, in his case the flesh was weak.
“You look wonderful,” he said, taking her hands and standing back to admire her. Beneath the open trench coat, she was wearing a new, slinky black dress that he hadn’t seen before, clinging to the curves of a body made taut by her endless riding. It fell to just below her knees, and beneath she was wearing light gray stockings that matched her shoulder bag. Her auburn hair was piled atop her head to reveal that long, white neck he loved to kiss. She wore just the merest trace of lipstick, and he caught that scent he remembered, Guerlain’s Vol de Nuit.
“How do you do it?” he asked, smiling with deep affection. He lifted their joined hands so he could twirl her around. “Just moments ago you were a passionate stable girl, and now you arrive like a model in an exclusive nightclub.”
She came into his arms.
“This welcome is very flattering,” she said after a long and delightful moment. “But do you think I might slip off my raincoat and put my bag down?” She gave him a final peck on the lips. “I have another bag in the car with jeans and a sweater, since I don’t think anyone would believe tomorrow morning that I’d just slipped out to buy some croissants dressed like this.”
“Why the secrecy?” he asked. “All our friends know we were lovers.”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’m a little shy, or perhaps I just want to keep this to ourselves. I’m not sure. Maybe the secrecy adds a little whiff of spice to our encounter. But I’m very glad to be here, and to see the fire lit, the wine decanted. This may not sound very romantic, Bruno, but I could eat a horse. Well, not exactly, but you know what I mean. Oh, and I brought some cheese. It’s in the bag in the car.”
“I’ll get that,” he said. “You hang up your coat, make yourself comfortable by the fire, decide what you want to drink, put on some music if you like, and I’ll be right back.”
He returned to hear the sound of a CD he did not own. She must have brought it specially. They were the original versions of songs of Jean Sablon in the late thirties and forties, some of which he knew almost by heart, since he’d heard them sung so often by other artists.
“Sablon’s were the first French words I ever heard,” she said, standing by his CD player and swaying in time to the music. “He was singing ‘C’est Si Bon’ on the radio when I was very young, so young I couldn’t quite understand why anybody would want to speak a different language.”
He came up behind her and ran his fingers down her arms, to her waist, her hips, her thighs, and suddenly felt the tiny button that meant she was wearing a garter belt, an item of lingerie he’d always found powerfully erotic. She turned into his arms.
“You found it,” she said, kissing him on the chin and putting her arms around his neck to fondle his hair. She was suddenly shorter, having kicked off her shoes, and she was swaying in time to the music. He picked up the hint and began to sway with her and very slowly to dance.
“I was hoping to surprise you,” she murmured.
“Mon Dieu, you already have.”
One of her hands had trailed to the back of his neck, under his collar, and he felt a fingertip tracing a lazy circle at the top of his spine. Her other hand was unbuttoning his shirt and sliding in to caress his chest. He heard himself groan aloud.
“And you’ve shaved for me,” she said, brushing her lips along the side of his jaw.
Her eyes were closed and he kissed her eyelids. He wanted to pull her to him, to press himself against the length of her, but told himself to let Pamela set the pace. In the back of his mind a thought came that she had planned this lovemaking step-by-step, caress by caress. He could almost imagine her thinking of it, considering each move, his reaction, her response. But that could hardly be right, for there was nothing cool or clinical about this. From the purring sounds in Pamela’s throat she was enjoying this as much as he was.
“I was wrong. I really don’t want any food yet, not for quite a while,” she said softly, almost into his ear. Then she let her lips drift back to his, and he felt the tip of her tongue tease gently at his lips.
“I think I’ll do this for hours,” she said. “How does that sound?”
“It’s wonderful, but I’m not sure I can stand it.” His hands were clasping her just above the waist. He could feel her heart beating through her ribs.
“Oh, I think you can. I think you’ll have to. I’m enjoying this.” Her tongue teased his lips again, and she began to remove his shirt.
“And so am I, but surprised.”
“Why? Because I wasn’t always so…forward?” She began to roll the nipple above his heart between two soft fingers.
“Ma belle, you were always forward but also eager.” Bruno was breathing hard. “You’ve developed a most delicious patience.”
“I had many months to think about this.” Her other hand crept around his back, and she raked one fingernail gently down his spine. He gasped, feeling the soft sensation of her breath in his mouth.
“But we made love the other night.”
“That was eagerness,” she said, a gentle chuckle in her throat. “This is still desire, but also something else.”
She dropped her hand to the waistband of his trousers, turned and pulled him along behind her to his bedroom.
Some time later, the candle burning low, Pamela was lying on top of him propped up on her elbows. She was gazing down at him with a smile that he’d never seen before. It seemed to be full of secrets. Somehow her hair, earlier coiled atop her head, was hanging loose and tickling his shoulders. Her lipstick had all been kissed away.
He raised his head to kiss her again and asked, “Are you hungry?”
“Now that you mention it, I could eat two horses.”
“Do you want to eat here in bed, in front of the fire or at table?”
“The fire.”
“This is for you,” he said, rising to take a large terry-cloth bathrobe from the cupboard and draping it over the end of the bed. He went into the bathroom and then rummaged in the kitchen. He came back in a light cotton bathrobe bearing a glass of wine that he put on the bedside table beside a pile of
books.
“Five minutes,” he said and returned to the kitchen, where he began to sauté gently in duck fat the small green buds from the pissenlit plants he’d picked earlier. In the sitting room he added some kindling and a well-seasoned log to the fire and brought in plates, cutlery and the decanter from the dining table. Back in the kitchen, he opened a can of the venison pâté he had made that winter, put it on a plate along with a small bowl of gherkins and the cheese she’d brought. Then he began cracking eggs, whipping them lightly, adding salt and pepper and a splash of cream and putting a small slice of butter into his omelette pan along with more duck fat. He cut some generous slices of bread from the round tourte, saw the fat was just on the point of browning and added the eggs, moving them around with a fork for even cooking and tipping the pan this way and that. Just before he folded the omelette, he added the boutons of pissenlit, savoring the nutty scent they gave off.
“Dinner is served,” he called, and she emerged from the bathroom with her hair brushed and wineglass in hand, her face shining and a tantalizingly faint hint of scent around her. She pulled a couple of cushions from his sofa, tucked her feet beneath her, put the plate on her lap and began using a hunk of bread to push bite-sized portions of omelette onto her fork.
“Just what I needed,” she said when her plate was empty, the pâté finished and just a glass each left in the carafe.
“Coffee?” he asked.
Pamela shook her head, put her plate aside, slid off the cushions and came to lie against him, her back to his chest, and said, “I do like watching a good fire, and resting against you like this means my back doesn’t get cold. My mother used to tell me when I was young that you could see faces in the fire, and girls at school said you could see the face of your future husband. Did you have legends like that?”
“I remember one about staring into a well on the first full moon after Easter to see in the still water the face of your own true love.”
“We had something about the still water of wells, but I forget, and it’s made me think of Limeuil. Have you found out yet what happened with Claudia?”
“I may be getting close. That reminds me, would you like to come see Bourdeille’s art collection before lunch tomorrow? He’s asked me to bring Claudia’s mother and also Amélie before she goes back to Paris.”
“I’d like that, Bruno, but that’s tomorrow. Now what I’d really like is for you to take me back to bed.”
Chapter 34
Bourdeille could not have been more gracious, welcoming Claudia’s mother on his doorstep, holding her hand and telling her that Claudia had been the most interesting and promising student he’d ever had and that he deeply mourned her passing. He was warm to Amélie, complimenting her singing at Château des Milandes and saying that he hoped he’d be able to attend her Josephine Baker concert. He had caught something in the tone of Bruno’s introduction of Pamela to realize that she was more than just a friend. He kissed her hand and asked if she was the horsewoman that Madame Bonnet still referred to as “the Mad Englishwoman,” the nickname the locals had coined before getting to know her.
Bruno had been busy already that morning, seeing with satisfaction that Sud Ouest had a story saying the police feared that their chief suspect, Laurent, might try to leave the area. Philippe would have some explaining to do. Bruno’s suspicions were hardening after calls from Juliette and the baron about the Cassini family and their continued devotion to the lost cause of Algérie Française. And a call from Professor Porter had been even more useful. Bruno had accordingly made several phone calls to prepare the ground for the operation he’d planned for later in the day. J-J, hoping to spend the morning on the golf course, had wanted to know whether Bruno was sure of his theory. Sure enough, Bruno had replied, on the basis of what he’d learned from Annette’s warrant.
But Bruno was still feeling nervous as Bourdeille wheeled himself from room to room of his art collection. The old man wore his scholarship lightly and was making an effort to be entertaining as he explained the history of each painting and how he’d acquired it. In the last room, Bourdeille recounted something of the life of his illustrious ancestor in the sixteenth century and then of the friendship he had shared with Paul Juin. Once the tour was complete he invited his guests up to his study, where they found two bottles of Château Haut-Brion 2009 already standing open.
As he filled their glasses, Madame Bonnet arrived with a tray of canapés: small squares of toast covered in foie gras; others topped with smoked breast of duck or halves of deviled eggs; a plate of charcuterie and small cubes of cheese and fruit impaled with cocktail sticks.
“I’d like to offer a toast to Claudia’s memory and record my own deep grief at the premature ending of such a promising and vibrant young life,” Bourdeille said. “You too, Madame Bonnet, you knew and liked this young American woman.” Over her protest, Bourdeille half filled a glass for her and then raised his own.
“To the lovely, intelligent and much missed Claudia, may she rest in peace,” he declared, raising his glass and then sipping as everyone in the room echoed his toast and followed his example.
“And now, Madame Muller, might I presume to ask you to say a few words about your wonderful daughter?” Bourdeille added.
Jennifer took a long sip at her wine, took a deep breath and then looked at each of them in turn before speaking.
“I know from what she wrote to me that Claudia was happy here among you all. And I know that my daughter was interested, intrigued, fulfilled by her work here and that she made friends who will remember her and the brightness she brought into our lives. Thank you for welcoming her into your homes and making her last weeks of life a happy time. And thank you all for being here with me today, sharing the hospitality of Monsieur de Bourdeille among these works of art of his that she loved so much. I shall never forget the welcome you all showed her here in the Périgord.”
“Thank you, madame. We were honored to have her here among us,” Bourdeille said and then looked around the room.
“Mademoiselle Amélie, I hesitate to ask, but I do love your voice. Might you sing something for us to commemorate Claudia’s passing?”
“Happily,” Amélie said, and paused a moment, her hands clasped loosely at her waist, and then she started to tap her foot slowly, raised her head and began that lovely gospel song from the cotton plantations of the Deep South that had for centuries given the comfort of faith to the living and solace at the time of death.
I looked over Jordan and what did I see,
Comin’ for to carry me home?
A band of angels comin’ after me,
Comin’ for to carry me home.
Swing low, sweet chariot,
Comin’ for to carry me home.
When she finished, Jennifer came forward with tears in her eyes to hug Amélie before leaning down to plant a kiss on Bourdeille’s forehead. Bruno noted that Madame Bonnet took advantage of the moment to take the tray away and slip out of the room. Jennifer stood up, and there was a short silence before Bourdeille spoke.
“How close are you to resolving this mystery, Bruno?” Bourdeille asked, his eyes darting quickly to the microphone on the desk beside him.
“Close,” said Bruno, picking his words with care. “Just before I came here, I heard that our forensic experts have been working on the samples they took from the well and from the stone walls where they think someone may have climbed in. They have isolated some new DNA traces of Claudia and whoever was with her at the well. What the scientists can do these days is amazing. But they say they don’t have enough, so they’re on their way back to the well to gather more. They think they’ll be able to identify who was with her, and as soon as I leave here I’m going to Limeuil to stand guard until reinforcements come from Périgueux this afternoon.”
“Why do you need to stand guard?” Bourdeille asked. “Wouldn’t the
DNA evidence remain?”
“Not if the suspects were able to drench the key areas with bleach or gasoline,” Bruno said. “A lot of criminals know about that these days. In fact, I’d better go. Thank you for this very moving moment, Jennifer, Amélie, Monsieur de Bourdeille.”
“Oh dear,” said Jennifer. “I was hoping to invite you all to lunch at my hotel, but of course I understand, Bruno. Perhaps the others will join me? I reserved a table and the special taxi for your wheelchair, monsieur.”
Bruno ran down the stairs and out to his Land Rover and drove like the wind to the Limeuil hilltop, parking beneath the outer wall. The place looked deserted, but he could hear the Sunday sound of hymns being sung in the hilltop church. Quietly, he opened the rear door of his vehicle to take out the rope and spike he’d borrowed earlier that morning from the public works depot. He removed his SIG Sauer handgun from its holster to check the action and the magazine. The restaurant beside the entrance was closed and silent, and the entrance to the gardens was locked as he had requested, a hand-lettered sign on the barred gate saying CLOSED FOR REPAIRS.
Bruno went down the pathway to the left of the gate, threw the spike over the wall and scrambled up the rope. He took the rope and spike with him and trotted up the path, past the medieval garden and the giant sequoia and past the beehives to position himself on the high ground, screened by bushes.
To one side he could see the well, now sealed, and to the other he could watch the section of the wall that he had climbed earlier in the week. Looking directly ahead, he knew why this was called the panoramic gardens. The view was spectacular over the two rivers and their valleys and then over the wide water meadow to the west, which the swollen River Dordogne used to flood each winter.
He turned his phone to Vibrate and settled down to wait. He checked the screen. There were two text messages, one from J-J saying he was in place. The other was from Hodge. It read: “Facebook shows your suspects took package tour, Phuket, Thailand, November 15–29 last year.” Bruno smiled to himself, thinking another link in the chain of evidence was now in place. He checked his weapon and wondered whether his suspects would show up. He would look like a fool if they didn’t.
The Body in the Castle Well Page 29