Bruno went first to Oudinot’s farm to make sure all was well there and to ask Martine if she might be free that evening. In the house he found only Odette, rolling pastry and listening to a call-in show on Périgord Bleu about gardening. He said he hoped J-J’s questions had not been a strain. Odette continued her rolling, cocked her head at the radio and said, “Idiots.”
“They’re saying it’s a good weekend to plant mâche, which shows how little they know,” she said, looking at Bruno. “You use the lunar calendar, don’t you? Have you seen what it says for today? No gardening of any kind.”
Bruno nodded; he had seen it, and it had eased his guilt a little for neglecting his garden with all the extra work involved with Sylvestre and Félix and the time he was spending with Martine.
“And have you seen the horoscope today? Read what it says about Virgo, that’s Martine’s sign. Read it out.”
Bruno picked up Sud Ouest, already turned to the horoscope page. It was something that always reminded him of that happy first summer with Isabelle; she always read out both his and hers. He read aloud: “This is not a good time for romance. Avoid any new amorous entanglements; they are doomed to fail and make you miserable. Stick with old friends and family and take lots of exercise.”
He put the paper down, and Odette looked him in the eye. “I’m not a fool, Bruno. I know Martine is seeing you, and she seems very happy about it, but it’s not going to last. She’s never going to settle down here, whatever fantasies Fernand may have about his daughter coming home to breed grandchildren. She never will. She’s a big-city girl now, able and ambitious, and that’s fine by me. If you two go on with this affair, you’ll both be unhappy. What’s more, she’s a Virgo, you’re a Libra; it can never work.”
“I think you’re reading a lot into a newspaper horoscope, Odette,” he replied, embarrassed.
“I know my daughter. Anyway, you’re coming to dinner tomorrow night, and then she’s off, back to London next week, which is for the best.”
“Isn’t she staying for the funeral? Do you know if it’s going to be here or in Alsace?”
“I don’t know. It would be a bit hypocritical of us to put on a great show of mourning. Still, family is family when all’s said and done.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow evening, and thank you for the invitation. I’ll just go and have a word with Fernand and Martine.”
“You’ll find them down with the newborn calf, but they’ll probably be talking about Sylvestre’s will and who’s going to inherit. I hope it’s not us. Fernand and I aren’t the kind of people who know what to do with money. Martine’s different.”
In the barn, the calf was being licked clean by its mother and trying to stand, rear legs first, and tottering. Martine squeezed his hand as he greeted her with the bise on both cheeks, and then he shook hands with Fernand.
“So the commissaire’s interrogation wasn’t too difficult for you?” Bruno asked.
“No, he was very polite, just wanted to know if we’d seen or heard anything and if we’d all been together in the house all night,” Fernand said. “Do you know anything about Sylvestre’s will?”
“I spoke to the police in Alsace, and they are contacting Sylvestre’s family lawyer. We should know on Monday. And the mayor of his village in Alsace may want to have the funeral there.”
“It’s quite a shock,” said Martine. “We’re all a little bit stunned by what’s happened, so I think the three of us will just have a quiet evening together here.”
Bruno understood her message: no lovemaking tonight. “Well, I’ll look forward to seeing you at dinner tomorrow.”
The calf had made it to its feet, and the mother stood and nudged it with her head to get under her belly and toward her teats. The calf licked around her udder but seemed unsure what to do next. Martine reached down and put a teat firmly into the calf’s mouth and then began stroking its throat to start the sucking and swallowing reflex. Her father watched her proudly and said, “Still a country girl at heart, our Martine.”
Bruno went back to pick up his van and drove to the supermarket. Simon was in his office, leafing through what looked like sales figures, when Bruno came in, closing the door behind him. He sat down and handed across the printout of the procureur’s draft. Bruno had used his own official notepaper, with the seal of St. Denis and the heading of the Police Municipale.
“If you want to keep your son out of jail, you and your wife need to sign this. Where is she?”
“She’s taken Tristan to our cottage near Arcachon,” Simon replied. “She thought he needed a break after the shock of the arrest and being handcuffed.”
Bruno shook his head. “You never learn, do you? Here I am trying to save that son of yours from a juvenile detention center, and you send him off for a vacation at the beach. You’re thinking of him as some kind of victim in all this when in reality he’s the perpetrator.”
“It wasn’t my idea. In fact I was against it—”
“But you never argue with your wife,” Bruno interrupted. “That’s half the trouble. She spoils him, she lies for him, perjures herself for his sake. And you put up with it, Simon. I think you’re rotten parents. You’ve certainly done a lousy job of raising your son.”
“One mistake…,” Simon began.
“More than one. Let’s not forget he also faces a charge of possessing illegal drugs in commercial quantities. I doubt it will take me more than twenty minutes to get a few affidavits from his classmates saying he’s been dealing drugs in the collège.”
“You say you can keep him out of detention?” Simon began to scan the document, frowning as he read it. “You’re going to make us responsible for his behavior?”
“It’s called being a parent.”
“And what’s this forestry business?”
“It’s part of the tough regimen the procureur requires as the price for keeping Tristan out of jail. You can guess what’s likely to become of him in there and what kind of life lies ahead of him when he gets out. This way, he has a chance of finishing his education and maybe even going on to university. It’s his last chance, and you and your wife have to sign up for it or it won’t happen.”
“He won’t like this—no phone, no computer, not to be out of our custody at any time when he’s not working. It sounds like house arrest.”
“It’s punishment; Tristan is not supposed to like it. Maybe if you’d been enough of a father to punish him earlier he wouldn’t be in this mess now.”
“They won’t be back from Arcachon until next week.”
Bruno sighed heavily. “You just don’t get it, do you, Simon? If they’re not back here tonight with that signed document on the procureur’s desk by Monday morning, the Arcachon police will go to your beach house and arrest your son. They will then hold him in a police cell until we get around to sending a prison van to take Tristan directly to the detention center to await trial.”
“Will it be enough if I sign?”
“No, I’ve told the procureur that your wife is more than half the trouble. And if she doesn’t sign, then we still have the perjury charge hanging over her.”
“Our lawyer says—”
“Bullshit. Call your lawyer if you want, and he’ll tell you that charging her with perjury is a matter for the procureur’s discretion. I just spoke to him, and he’s decided to go with my recommendation to keep Tristan out of jail even though he knows he’s going to get a lot of flak for going soft on your son. If you spurn his offer, he’ll throw the book at all of you, starting with your wife.”
“You say this plan for Tristan is your suggestion?”
“It’s a joint recommendation to the procureur from me, the head of the gendarmes and the magistrate in charge of juvenile justice. It’s been endorsed by the mayor, who personally arranged this forestry work.”
Simon signed the document in small neat handwriting and printed “Lu et approuvé” above it—“read and approved”—the legal requirement in France.
“I’ll get them back tonight and somehow I’ll get her to sign it.”
“And you will hand deliver that document first thing Monday morning to the procureur’s office in Périgueux. And you’d better get a receipt from his office because the mayor and I will need to see it.”
Bruno rose and left without another word. He headed to the mairie, still fuming at the thought of Tristan being rewarded with a trip to the beach, to report to the mayor on Sylvestre’s death. It might be a Saturday afternoon, but the mayor would be at work on his endless project of writing the history of St. Denis if there were no official duties to be performed. Bruno also wanted to check his e-mails. As he scrolled through, his phone pinged with an incoming text. It was Gilles, asking for a meeting at the maison de retraite in twenty minutes. He texted back confirmation and went back to the e-mails. One was from Tristan’s mother.
“I will never forgive you for that dirty trick you played on me nor for what you have done to my boy. I’m one of the people who pays your salary and I begrudge every penny of it. You’re a disgrace to your uniform,” he read. He sighed, and forwarded copies to the procureur and to Annette. Then he printed it out twice, added one to his file on Tristan and took the other to the mayor, who was at his desk, fountain pen in hand, his manuscript before him and several old books open around him. He looked up as Bruno entered and gave him a copy of the denunciation.
“One of your voters doesn’t like me,” he said.
“What was the dirty trick?”
“She swore that Tristan was at home with her when he threw the stone that hit the little girl. I got her to sign a formal statement to that effect. Yveline was present when it all happened.”
“I don’t think the procureur would bring a perjury charge against a mother lying to protect her son.”
“I think he will if she tries to block the forestry job you arranged as too tough on her precious son. She’s taken him off to their weekend cottage in Arcachon so the poor boy can recover from his ordeal. She’s the problem, and her false statement is our leverage.”
The mayor put down his pen, removed his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. “What a foolish woman. Human folly never changes,” he said, sighing. “I’m just working on the saddest moment in the history of our town. Do you know that St. Denis and its convent were sacked and burned in 1577, during what we call the Wars of Religion? The troops were Protestant, but they were having a private war among themselves, between Galliot de La Tour, the lord of Limeuil, and his brother Jacques. We have a square called la place du Temple because they built a Protestant chapel after the town was burned. The chapel was itself demolished a hundred years later when Louis XIV revoked the rights given to Protestants under the Edict of Nantes.”
“I sometimes wondered why the square was so named when there was no temple.”
“Now you know. What do you want me to do with this?” he waved a copy of the e-mail from Tristan’s mother.
“Nothing really. I just wanted you to know about it. I’ve told Simon to be sure that Tristan and his mother return from the beach today. I also wanted to tell you that we have the results of one autopsy that confirms Hugon was murdered with cyanide and another that says Sylvestre was deliberately drowned in his pool.”
When Bruno left the mayor’s office, he went to the retirement home and was there to greet Gilles when he arrived in Fabiola’s old Twingo with an elderly man in the passenger seat.
“Bonjour, Bruno,” said the passenger, grinning at him. “Grégoire sends his regards.”
Bruno realized this must be Grégoire’s father, Étienne, come to visit Félix’s grandfather. He had white hair and a white mustache and was wearing dark glasses, a suit and a tie. Bruno had always been struck by the formal way so many elderly people chose to dress.
“Am I right to think you’re coming to visit an old schoolmate?” he asked, shaking the elderly hand through the open car window.
“That’s right. Gilles called the maison de retraite and got him on the phone. I’ve brought an old school photo to see if he can pick me out. I’m pretty sure I recognized him, but it’s a lifetime since we were last together.”
Gilles let Étienne out and went off to park. Bruno matched his pace to the elderly shuffle and steered Étienne to the right door, already open, with their host rising to greet them. His photo album was under his arm. It was crowded in the small room, but Bruno perched on the windowsill, and Gilles was offered the easy chair when he arrived but remained standing. The two old men sat side by side on the bed to look at the photos and reminisce.
“Can I bring you gentlemen some coffee or some tea, maybe a glass of wine?” Gilles asked.
They agreed that they would each like a petit blanc. Gesturing with his head for Bruno to follow, Gilles led the way out and across the road to pick up a bottle of chilled Bergerac Sec from the corner shop. They then borrowed some glasses from the kitchen of the maison de retraite.
“I’m sure that Étienne knows something about this junk shop, but he’s not talking,” Gilles confided as they went. “He just said he wanted to see his old friend and talk to him. He thought it might trigger some memories.”
“How much have you told him?” Bruno asked.
“Everything about the car, nothing about Sylvestre.”
“You know Sylvestre was found dead in his pool this morning.”
“Yes, Fabiola sent me a text. Naturally, I told Young. He made some joke about giving a medal to whoever did it. What was it, heart attack or something?”
“We won’t be sure until the autopsy,” Bruno said quickly. If Fabiola had not told Gilles of her suspicions, that meant Young would also not know. “I thought you and Young were going together to see Étienne in the E-type.”
“He called to ask if we could go separately. He wanted to get back to Annette, feeling guilty about neglecting her on a Saturday, one of her days off.”
They took in the wine and glasses, the two old men pausing in what had been animated conversation over the photo album. Bruno had the feeling they were up to something.
“Funny how the old photos bring it all back,” said Gilles as Bruno opened the wine and poured out four glasses.
“Maybe with young memories like yours,” said Étienne, raising his glass. “Santé.”
“So were you two in the same class?”
“Same school, different class. Étienne’s older, but we were on the same soccer team. And his big brother is in the photo with Henri.” Félix’s grandfather pointed to another of the young men with an armband and Sten gun. “They’d been at school together, too, chased the same girls.”
“So what happened to the scrap merchant Bérégevoy?” Bruno asked.
“He died sometime in the early seventies, but he’d run down his stock by then,” Étienne replied. “He had a place near the viaduct in Sarlat, and when they started cleaning the town up they changed the zoning and he was told to move. I don’t remember where he went, if I ever knew. He had a daughter, but she moved away when she got married.”
“Her name was Célestine,” said Gilles. “I checked her out in Sarlat, where she worked at the mairie before getting married in 1961. I’m trying to trace her now. She might know what happened to the remaining stock.”
“Sounds like a dead end to me,” said Étienne, with a quick, sideways glance at his old schoolmate.
Bruno’s phone vibrated, and he saw it was Thomas calling from Alsace. He went outside to answer it, to learn that Thomas had tracked down Sylvestre’s lawyer, passed on the news of his death and asked about a will.
“He hadn’t drawn one up, although the lawyer had advised Sylvestre to do so,” Thomas went on. “He said he might have used another lawyer, maybe in Paris because of the scale of the family holdings, but he’d check in the registry of wills and get back to me on Monday. Any more news?”
“The autopsy has been done, and it was murder, but we’re not releasing that news yet. Somebody held his head underwater, but he was very drunk and also stoned.”
“Putain, that’s going to cause a stir. Any suspects?”
“That Indian partner of his took the first early morning flight from Bordeaux and cleared out Sylvestre’s bank accounts. He’s the obvious suspect and Europol is trying to track his movements after he landed in Amsterdam. If they lose his trail, the procureur will announce that it’s a murder inquiry, but that probably won’t be until Monday morning. I’ll let you know. Keep this to yourself, or it’s bound to leak.”
They hung up, and Bruno turned on the record function on his phone, held it up to his ear as if still talking and went back to join the others. He said some words of farewell as if to end a conversation and then asked if anyone wanted more wine. Étienne held up his glass, so Bruno poured out some more, in the process leaving his phone discreetly behind a potted plant on the windowsill.
“We’ll leave the wine with you. Gilles and I have a couple of errands to take care of,” he said and turned to Gilles. “Will you drive Étienne back?”
Gilles nodded, saying he’d be back in an hour or so. Bruno and Gilles left the two old men together. Once outside, Bruno asked his friend to collect the phone when he picked up Étienne, saying Bruno had forgotten it.
“My phone is recording because, now that they’re alone, I think we might learn something,” he said. “What are your plans for this evening?”
“Nothing particular. Fabiola wants to exercise Victoria, which reminds me: you know Pamela and Fabiola are going fifty-fifty on the Andalusian horse? They also want to move all the horses, your Hector included, to the riding school. Pamela reckons that Victoria will be placid enough for the children when they move on from ponies. That would mean leaving Hector alone in our stables, which doesn’t seem like a good idea. And having Hector there would mean an extra adult horse for her customers.”
Bruno raised his eyebrows. He had once thought of stabling Hector on his own property, but he didn’t like the thought of leaving him alone. And police work meant he could not always be back in time to exercise the horse. Until now, he could count on Fabiola to take Hector out behind her on a long rein. It made sense to leave all the horses at Pamela’s stables, but would it change his relationship with his horse if others were to ride Hector from time to time? He wouldn’t even have owned a horse if Pamela had not organized all his friends to band together and buy Hector for his birthday. He owed her too much to refuse.
“It makes sense,” Bruno said. “Fabiola and I could ride Victoria and Hector over to Pamela’s place this evening while you drive Étienne back.”
“Pamela is coming back here for dinner afterward,” Gilles added. “Why not join us? I bought oysters in the market this morning, and Fabiola is making her fondue. We all know how much you like it.”
“That sounds good, and I’ll bring some wine,” said Bruno. “Just don’t forget to pick up my phone when you collect Étienne.”