Before eight the following crisp and misty April morning, Bruno was parked by the canoe-rental shack on the waterfront of Limeuil waiting for the arrival of Dominic Darrail and listening to the local news on France Bleu Périgord. The third item quoted Madame Muller in that morning’s Sud Ouest saying she didn’t understand why the police would not release the body, since she understood that her daughter had died in a tragic accident.
“Merde,” Bruno said aloud and called up that day’s paper on his phone. There was a small headline on the front page saying “Billionaire’s Daughter Death Clash” and a full-page story inside with a photo of Claudia and another of her father in white tie and tails with his second wife at a White House event. The byline was Philippe Delaron of St. Denis. At least it was datelined Trémolat, where Claudia’s mother was staying. At the end of the story was a single-column photo of J-J with the caption “Police chief says, ‘No comment.’ ”
Bruno had a good idea how Philippe had got the story. The bustling young reporter had cultivated contacts among the staff at most of the main hotels in the valley and was always happy to reward his informants. A chambermaid making ten euros an hour would be delighted to make another ten with a quick call to Philippe.
Bruno looked around impatiently for Dominic to arrive. His canoe-renting friend Antoine in St. Denis had brought out his canoes a week earlier from the garage where he stored them in winter. He’d cleaned them, checked the life jackets and waterproof containers, where clients could put their spare clothes and valuables, and spent a day paddling downstream from Montignac on his annual inspection of the river. Dominic seemed to take a more casual approach to his business, so Bruno ordered a cup of coffee at the quayside café-bar and read the rest of Sud Ouest while waiting.
It was close to eight-fifteen when Dominic arrived, red eyed and with a hint of last night’s alcohol. A swarthy, thickset man with a taste for gold neck chains and bracelets, he was in his early thirties, divorced and starting to get fat. He no longer resembled the fit young man Bruno recalled who had played for the local rugby team. But his shoulders were broad, and he was still strong enough to have tossed a woman twice Claudia’s size down the well. Eight canoes were stacked on the trailer behind his four-by-four vehicle, and it looked to Bruno as if they and the life jackets had not been cleaned before being put away for the winter.
“Bonjour, Dominic,” Bruno said, shaking hands. “I need to ask you about that lecture you attended Sunday night. We’re trying to find out if anyone saw Claudia after the event.”
Dominic shook his head firmly. “I saw her before it when they were handing out glasses of that cat’s piss they call punch. We just said hello and that we’d talk later about her doing a river trip.”
“What about when the lecture finished?”
“I didn’t see her, and the mayor’s wife said she’d left early, not feeling well.” He gave a sour grin. “Probably that damn punch.”
“How was the lecture?”
Dominic shrugged. “Useful, I suppose. I learned a thing or two to tell the tourists. They like to hear some history about the place. That’s why they come here, some of them.”
“And after the lecture, what did you do then?”
“Went home, watched some film on TV that was already halfway over.”
“Which film, do you recall?”
“I dunno, about a black guy taking his kids skiing.”
“I heard you’d gone for a pee in the bushes after the lecture.”
Dominic shrugged again. “I was dying for one. There’s only one toilet and it was occupied. Anyway, it’s good for the plants.”
“Did you see anybody else in the garden when you were taking your leak?”
“No, not that I was looking out for anyone.”
“Do you recall who was still there as you were leaving?”
Dominic screwed up his eyes as if to remember and then began to roll himself a cigarette as he spoke. “I’m pretty sure that Mad Englishwoman who rides horses was there and the teacher from the collège. I think they were chatting with that redhead from the museum. And there was the garden girl who let us in, Félicité. She saw me zipping up when I finished.” He shrugged. “Nothing she hadn’t seen before.”
“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.”