It was shortly after dawn on a day in late spring that carried all the promise of summer to come. The fresh green leaves were so bright they startled the eye, dew was already disappearing from the grass under the first rays of the sun, and the woods around the cottage were clamorous with birdsong. Benoît Courrèges, chef de police in the small French town of St. Denis and known to everyone as Bruno, could identify the different notes of warblers and hoopoes, woodlarks and woodpeckers, just a fraction of the birdlife of the beautiful valley of the River Vézère where he made his home.
Bruno wore his old army tracksuit in which he had just taken his morning run through the woods. His eyes were fixed on Napoléon and Joséphine, his two geese. These monarchs of his chicken run paced forward with slow dignity to study the quivering puppy held firmly in Bruno’s grip. Behind the geese, twitching his head from side to side, came Blanco the cockerel, named after a French rugby hero. Blanco was followed by his hens and the two pheasants Bruno had added to his flock because he liked their smaller eggs and the careful way the hen pheasant would hide them in the undergrowth.
Raising a basset hound to be a hunting dog is slow work, but Bruno was becoming convinced that Balzac was the most intelligent dog he had ever known. Already housebroken, Balzac would even abandon an alluring new scent to obey his master’s summons. Now he was being taught that the birds in Bruno’s chicken run were to be treated with courtesy as members of the extended family and to be protected against all comers. Balzac was eager to bounce forward to play and send the chickens squawking and jumping into the air. So Bruno held him down with one hand and stroked him with the other, speaking in a low and reassuring voice as the two geese advanced to see what new creature Bruno had brought onto their territory this time.
Bruno had already familiarized Balzac with the deep and sensual scent of truffles and shown him the white oaks in the woods where they were usually to be found. He took the dog on his dawn and dusk checks of the security of the chicken coop and thought the time was approaching when Balzac would be able to run alongside when he exercised the horses. Bruno suspected he’d miss the now-familiar feel of the large binoculars case strapped to his chest, where the puppy was currently stowed when his master went riding.
Napoléon and Joséphine, who had grown familiar with Bruno’s previous basset hound, Gigi, came closer. Blanco flapped his wings and squawked out his morning cocorico, as if to assert that however large the two geese, he was really in charge here. The puppy, accustomed to sleeping in the stable beside Bruno’s horse, Hector, was not in the least awed by the size of the geese. He cocked his head to one side to gaze up at them and made an amiable squeak of greeting. The geese cruised on past Bruno and his dog, leaving Blanco to stand on tiptoe and fluff out his feathers to enlarge his size and grandeur. Balzac looked suitably impressed.
Watching his birds and stroking his hound, Bruno could not imagine a life without animals and birdsong and his garden. He delighted in eating apples plucked from his trees, tomatoes still warm from the sun and salads that had still been growing moments before he dressed them with oil and vinegar. At the back of his mind lurked the question of whether there would one day be a wife and children to share this idyll and enjoy the stately progress of the seasons.
He turned his head to glance at his cottage, restored from ruin by his own hands and the help of his friends and neighbors in St. Denis. Repaired now from the fire damage inflicted by a vengeful criminal, the house had grown. Bruno had used the insurance money and much of his savings to install windows in the roof, lay floorboards and create two new bedrooms in the loft. The plan had long been in his mind, but the decision to carry it out felt like making a bet on his own future, that in time there would be a family to fill the space.
On the desk in his study lay the estimate for installing solar panels on the roof, along with the paperwork explaining tax rebates he would receive and the terms of the bank loan he had been promised. Bruno had done the math and knew it would take him almost ten years to earn back his investment, but he supposed it was a gesture to the environment that he ought to make. Now, gazing at the honey-colored stone of his house topped with the traditional red tiles of the Périgord, he worried what the panels might do to the look of the place.
His reverie was interrupted by the vibration of the phone in his pocket. As he extracted it, Balzac squirmed free and began creeping toward the grazing chickens. Bruno reached out to haul him back, missed, dropped his phone, and a furious squawking erupted as the puppy bounded forward and the hens half flew and half scurried back to the protection of their hut.
“Sorry, Father,” Bruno said as he recovered the phone, having seen that his caller was the local priest, Father Sentout. He picked up Balzac with one hand and headed back to the house.
“Sorry to disturb you so early, Bruno, but there’s been a death. Old Murcoing passed away, and there’s something here that I think you ought to see. I’m at his place now, waiting for his daughter to get here.”
“I’ll take a shower and come straight there,” Bruno said. “How did you learn of his death?”
“I called in to see him yesterday evening and he was fading then, so I sat with him through the night. He died just as the dawn broke.”
Bruno thanked the priest, filled Balzac’s food and water bowls and headed for the shower, wondering how many towns were fortunate enough to have a priest who took his parochial duties so seriously that he’d sit up all night with a dying man. Murcoing had been one of the group of four or five old cronies who would gather at the cheaper of the town’s cafés. It had a TV for the horse races and off-track betting on the pari-mutuel. The old men would nurse a petit blanc all morning and tell one another that France and St. Denis were going to the dogs. Without knowing the details, Bruno recalled that Murcoing was one of the town’s few remaining Resistance veterans, which could mean a special funeral. If so, he’d be busy. The decision about the solar panels would have to wait.