The Patriarch: A Bruno, Chief of Police Novel (28 page)

“Indeed it could,” said the brigadier. “Which is why it is not very likely to happen. And we will step back and leave you of the Police Nationale to handle the other difficult aspect of this matter, the murder of Colonel Clamartin.”

The next morning dawned bright and warm, a touch of Indian summer that delighted Bruno as he limped out to greet the day. His hip and leg felt better, and in the shower he saw that his bruises were fading from bright blue to a yellowish violet. For the first time since the attack, he felt capable of driving and eased himself gingerly into his van and drove down to St. Denis, picked up four fresh, warm croissants and a baguette and then headed for Pamela’s place. He was in no condition to ride or even to mount his horse, but he wanted to see both Hector and Balzac, and a breakfast with Pamela and Fabiola before they took the horses out would be an extra pleasure.

When he arrived and pulled in by the stables, nobody was stirring except Balzac, who bounded out to greet Bruno at the sound of his car. He checked his watch: not quite seven-thirty. The horses would usually be saddled by now, but Hector and Victoria were in their stalls. He walked around to the main courtyard, intending to enter by the kitchen door as usual, when he saw Crimson’s stately old Jaguar parked beside Pamela’s
deux-chevaux.
Feeling embarrassed and a little ashamed of himself, Bruno scanned the upper windows but saw no signs of life. He crept forward and put his hand on the Jaguar’s hood. It was stone cold, evidently parked all night.

Well, well, he thought, and toyed with the idea of leaving the croissants on the car, or better still on the outdoor table by the kitchen window, as a none-too-subtle message of his visit. He thought better of it. Pamela was a grown woman and their affair was definitively over, ended in her characteristically kindly way. He hadn’t contacted her since. He crept back to his car, taking his croissants, and drove to town, leaving his van in the bank’s parking lot. It was market day, and the town square would be filled with stalls. He left the croissants with Stéphane, bought four coffees from Fauquet and asked him to bring them on a tray back to the little table behind Stéphane’s stall where the stallholders shared a midmorning
casse-croûte.

“To what do we owe this honor?” asked Marcel from his vegetable stall. He and Léopold, the big Senegalese who sold T-shirts and African cloth, joined Bruno and Stéphane for the impromptu breakfast.

“I’m always eating your stuff,” Bruno replied. It sounded lame, even to him.

Marcel raised an eyebrow but gave a token nod, wolfed down his croissant, gulped his coffee and returned to his stall. Léopold thanked Bruno, gave him a pat on the shoulder and did the same. Stéphane looked at him with concern and asked after Bruno’s leg before turning back to serve his customers.

Bruno gave Balzac the last of his croissant, made his usual tour of the market, feeling he could almost have done so without the cane, and was about to go to his office when his name was called. He turned and saw Yevgeny lumbering toward him, arm outstretched to shake his hand. He insisted on buying Bruno another coffee.

“I wanted to thank you,” he said, once they settled at a table on Fauquet’s terrace. “The
notaire
said you’d helped him track me down and I got the document of ownership for the painting.”

“It was yours anyway,” said Bruno. “You painted it, it was in your possession, and nobody knew it had belonged to Gilbert.”

“I knew,” said Yevgeny. “He helped me out once in Moscow when I badly needed some cash and I was very angry with Madeleine. She’d switched her affections to him so I gave him the painting and he gave me the cash. If it hadn’t been for the money I might have burned it.”

“That would have been a terrible waste,” said Bruno, remembering his instant conviction that the artist had been Madeleine’s lover.

“So you saw it?” Yevgeny asked, some pride in his tone. Bruno was convinced he’d never have burned it.

“By accident,” he replied. “I entered the wrong door when I was looking for the bathroom. I also liked your self-portrait, even though it was a bit strange having it stare at me while I peed.”

“I think I was just Madeleine’s bit of Moscow fun, a bit of local color, an affair with a real Russian artist. I was besotted with her, but I think I knew she wasn’t at all serious about me,” Yevgeny said as the coffees came. “Gilbert was the real thing, her grand passion. That’s what she said when she left me.”

“This was when, the summer of 1990? Not long before she married Victor?” Bruno asked. The grand passion hadn’t lasted long, just long enough for her to get pregnant and then make a cool calculation that the Patriarch’s son would make a more suitable husband and father than the drunken ex–fighter pilot.

“You’re no fool, Bruno. I can see you’ve worked it out.”

“Did Victor ever learn he wasn’t the father?”

“No, not Victor. He always thinks the best of everyone. I worked it out, and Raquelle had her own suspicions.”

“And your father?”

Yevgeny shrugged. “You never know what Marco’s thinking. He’s always enjoyed secrets, little mysteries.”

“Talking of mysteries, did your mother ever mention a man called Ivan Tomasovitch, one of your father’s mechanics during the war?” Bruno asked. “Apparently he was arrested in the summer of forty-four, spent a few years in the Gulag. She may have met him.”

Yevgeny shook his head. “Not that I remember. But there’s something I wanted to say. Raquelle called me early this morning to say she left a message on your office phone, but you never called back. It’s her birthday today, and she’s having a small party at Le Thot, a picnic lunch. The museum is closed to the public today, and she wants you to come. I said I’d be seeing you at the market and let you know.”

When Yevgeny left, Bruno called J-J to see if anything more had been learned from the various cell-phone photos that had been collected. They were still checking, he was told, but J-J asked if Bruno recalled another young girl who had been at the Patriarch’s birthday, wearing a blue dress that looked like silk.

Yes, he replied, and said it sounded like Marie-Françoise, the countess’s great-granddaughter, the girl whom he had helped rescue from the cave. J-J should have recognized her.

“How am I supposed to recognize someone who was in shock? We’d just pulled her out of the water, and she’d had her face bashed in,” J-J said. “And then we took her wet clothes off to rub her dry.”

J-J e-mailed the photo to Bruno’s phone, and he confirmed it was Marie-Françoise, caught in the background of a shot of a smiling couple as she spooned ice cubes into a tall glass of orange juice. With the couple blocking the rest of the scene, Bruno could not see whose glass it was. He called Marie-Françoise’s cell phone as she was heading into a class. Did she recall serving ice cubes to anyone at the Patriarch’s party?

“Yes, to Chantal’s godfather, the one who died,” she said. “Chantal was going to do it, but her brother called her away, and she gave me the bowl and asked me to take care of it. Gilbert always wanted ice in his drinks.”

“Where is Chantal now?” he asked.

“She went home with Marc for some family thing she had to attend, a birthday party or something.”

Bruno hung up, called J-J back to relay the news. Then he asked if anybody had yet talked to Chantal’s chemistry professor.

Yes, he was told. Chloral hydrate was not difficult to make, the professor had said. It was a relatively straightforward mixture of chlorine and ethanol in an acid solution. It was used quite often in wine labs in something called Hoyer’s mounting medium to prepare specimens for microscope slides. The professor couldn’t recall Chantal ever making the stuff in his lab, but in principle she could have done so.

“So Chantal is our suspect,” said J-J, “with two million motives.”

“Let’s talk to her first,” said Bruno. “It might be more complex than that. You might want to call the wine labs in Bergerac and see if they know what Madeleine was up to.”

J-J snorted. “
Putain,
what a family.”

Bruno explained he was heading to Le Thot where he’d see Chantal and probably Madeleine as well.

“The
procureur
just had a meeting with the
juge d’instruction,
” said J-J. “We’re authorized to call them both in for questioning—Chantal with regard to Gilbert’s death and Madeleine for her part in the attack on you. We can pick them up at Le Thot and bring them back to Périgueux. What time will you get there?”

“About noon. Maybe a little earlier if I can reach Chantal first to talk to her.”

“Take care, I’ll call before we burst in.” J-J hung up.

Bruno called the hospital to ask after Imogène. She’d passed a quiet night and wanted to go home, but after Peyrefitte’s complaint there was to be a psychological review. Bruno called Fabiola, who said the review could be held at any time, and there was no reason to detain her. Imogène was employed, had a home and friends and no history of violence, so Fabiola expected her to be released shortly.

“I heard a car this morning,” Fabiola went on. “Was that you?”

“Yes, with croissants. When I saw Crimson’s Jaguar I thought it better to leave.”

“You assumed he was spending the night with Pamela?”

“Wasn’t he?”

“No, he spent the night in our spare room, and his daughter stayed at Pamela’s. They just had too much to drink at dinner last night to drive back. We all did.”

Bruno didn’t know what to say. After a moment he said, “Sorry I missed it, sounds like it must have been fun.”

“How’s the leg?”

“A lot better. I can drive.”

“You’d better come in so I can change the dressing and take a look at the stitches. Are you nearby?”

“I’m in the market, so I’ll hobble across now.”

His dressing changed and his bruises admired, Bruno’s stitches were pronounced healthy. With the prospect of getting back on horseback within the week, Bruno drove to Le Thot. Balzac sat on the rear seat, gazing inquisitively ahead. Bruno was wearing a light blazer over his usual blue shirt and trousers, with his uniform jacket on a hook in the back and his spare képi perched on his sports bag. But he was a worried man.

He suspected J-J and the
procureur
were barking up the wrong tree. He thought Chantal was a most unlikely murderess, even if she had persuaded Marie-Françoise to give Gilbert the fatal ice cubes. She did not know he was her father, had been stunned by the news of the inheritance and even more surprised by the amount of money coming to her.

The Patriarch had to be a suspect. Gilbert had a secret that could destroy the old man’s reputation. But Bruno could not begin to explain why that threat had become dangerous now when it had lain dormant and harmless for two decades. Then there was Victor, cuckolded by his best friend, raising in ignorance another man’s child as his own. Had he found out the truth and sought his own revenge?

It was possible, Bruno thought, but the more he tried to work out these complex threads of family connections and motives the more sure he felt that Madeleine was at the heart of it all. Gilbert could destroy her reputation and quite possibly her marriage and upset her political ambitions just when they were about to be realized. An angry divorce would be damaging, the loss of the Patriarch’s support even more so.

Bruno knew her to be ruthless, capable of making love with him before sending him off to be attacked and quite possibly killed by Fabrice. But that was the very reason he felt unable for once to trust his own hunches. He was too involved, too emotionally caught up in her to have much confidence in his own judgment. He had been enthralled by her, infatuated, seduced and sexually entranced. Even now he remembered as if in a dream the intensity of that evening they had spent together, his complete surrender of any critical faculty, his complete immersion in the delights she seemed so generously, so genuinely, to give.

It had been, he thought now, like making love to a dream woman rather than to a real one, to some fantasy of his own that had been conjured by her beauty and her sensual skills. But it had been so convincing and he had been so certain of her. And that was an error of judgment that left him now not just ashamed of himself but also doubting his ability to think about her clearly. Piled atop all that was his anger at being fooled, at being toyed with, used and then tossed aside. He’d been beguiled into behaving like a lovesick adolescent, even as she coldly passed on the information to a man lurking in the darkness to attack him.

She might be a wicked and calculating woman, but that did not necessarily make her a murderess. The secret of Chantal’s birth had been kept for two decades; why might she fear it was to be revealed now? Or was it simply the flowering of her political hopes that might have driven her to act?

Château de Losse came into view on his right, which meant he’d almost reached the turnoff to Le Thot. Mentally, he gave a salute to the château’s most famous owner, Jean de Losse, a soldier who had been page to one king, tutor to another, and fought for his kings against the English, the Dutch, the Austrians, the Italians and the Spaniards. He had carved into one of the lintels of his château the phrase:
MAN DOES WHAT HE CAN, CHANCE DOES WHAT IT WILL.

That seemed to sum it up, thought Bruno, wondering whether this picnic lunch of Raquelle’s would bring any more answers before J-J arrived to haul away two of the guests for questioning. As he climbed out of the Land Rover and let Balzac out, he wondered whether he should leave his cane behind. He decided to take it. Balzac would doubtless want to romp in the wide parkland where the ground was uneven.

Bruno was not the first to arrive. Yevgeny was standing with Raquelle and Victor on the rear terrace, beside a long table loaded with food, plates and glasses. Bruno saw a whole salmon, a ham, salads, cheeses and a bowl heaped high with lobster tails and claws.

“You could feed an army. How many are you expecting?” he asked Raquelle, kissing her and wishing her a happy birthday and giving her the cookbook he’d bought in St. Denis and had wrapped as a gift.

“It’s just the family and some colleagues from here and from Lascaux and Les Eyzies,” she said. “You’ll know most of them, and they’ll be delighted to see your dog. He’s a charmer.” She bent down to pat Balzac and fondle his ears and then looked up at Bruno. “I wanted to thank you for everything you’ve done for Imogène. I just heard from her; she’s expecting to go home this afternoon.”

“You’re the one who took her in and gave her shelter,” he said. “How is your robot bull?”

“Take a look,” she said. “He’s out beside the fence that keeps in the real bulls. I’m hoping it gets them accustomed to him.”

“Is it working?”

“It’s too soon to tell. They came up one by one to look at him, sniff him, and then they each backed away looking very confused when he started to move. We’re trying to program him to walk around the fence, but it looks like he’s frozen in place again. I’ll have to go to the control room and see what’s wrong. We nearly lost him yesterday in that pit by the woolly mammoth. He knocked down most of the fence we put up.”

Raquelle hurried off, and Bruno turned to greet Yevgeny and then Victor, who looked mystified by Bruno’s presence but shook his hand politely.

“Have I arrived too soon?” Bruno asked. “Where are the other guests?”

“Marc and Chantal are on their way. Clothilde is picking them up from the station at Les Eyzies, and Papa is downstairs looking at the new exhibit,” said Yevgeny. “Madeleine is patrolling the grounds, doing what she calls her housekeeping, by which she means keeping down the rabbits. You probably heard the shooting.”

Bruno had not registered any gunshots, though at this time of the year they were commonplace in the area. He was offered a glass of champagne, and then Yevgeny steered him away from the terrace toward some low tables, cushions and beach chairs that had been grouped together on the grassy bank that overlooked the enclosure where the cattle grazed. Balzac crept slowly toward them as if stalking, his body low, almost touching the ground, his tail down and his long ears trailing.

“This is where Raquelle wants us to eat, down here in the open air,” he said, lighting a Gitane, Bruno noted, rather than the Russian cigarettes Gilbert had smoked. “I think it’s because we can’t smoke up by the building. But I wanted to ask you something. Have you seen Marc and Chantal together?”

“Yes. They’re obviously very close,” said Bruno, smiling as he recalled them dunking each other like children in the swimming pool at the Red Château.

“They think they’re brother and sister, or at least half brother and sister, but they’re not,” Yevgeny said. “They share no blood. They have different mothers and different fathers. Gilbert was worried about it.”

“How do you mean?” Bruno asked, uncertain what point Yevgeny was trying to make.

“I’ve been thinking, and I know Gilbert watched over Chantal closely. He’d spent a lot of time with her when she was younger. And the closeness between Marc and Chantal is a family joke. We all say they’re made for each other, and if it weren’t for being related they’d be the perfect couple. When she was a little girl, Chantal always said she’d marry Marc when she grew up.”

“Why did that worry Gilbert? Children say that sort of thing all the time.”

“Because Gilbert believed it. They would be the perfect couple. And he knew they weren’t related, there was nothing to stop them from marrying. What really worried him was Papa’s latest little scheme with the countess.”

“Aah,” said Bruno, suddenly understanding what Yevgeny was driving at. “You mean the plan to marry Marc to Marie-Françoise. You know it was as much the idea of the countess as of your father.”

“Yes, and Papa could never refuse anything to his dear Parizhanka.”

“So you think that Gilbert wanted to prevent it by telling Chantal the truth, that she was free to marry Marc if she wished. And Gilbert was then killed to prevent that.”

“Exactly, Monsieur Detective. And who would want to keep that secret at any price, if not my dear sister-in-law?”

“That’s the question,” said Bruno, thinking Yevgeny had never gotten over Madeleine. He wondered if he would. But, Bruno told himself, at least he wasn’t scratching the scab by going to sleep and waking up with her nude portrait every day.

“Speak of the devil,” said Yevgeny. Bruno turned and saw Madeleine emerging from the trees, a shotgun over one shoulder and two rabbits hanging by their ears from her other hand. The gun was broken open at the breech, the stock in her hand and the two barrels pointing down over her shoulder. Bruno approved. That was the safe way to carry the weapon.

Madeleine raised the arm holding the rabbits in a kind of greeting. He waved back. Yevgeny ignored her, looking instead at the robot bull, which was now moving again but not proceeding as planned to make a circuit of the fence. Instead it was moving a few paces back and then forward again.

“It looks like Raquelle is going to be stuck in the control room awhile,” Yevgeny said. “I’d better go and get Papa. The others will be here any minute.”

Bruno was about to head back with Yevgeny to the terrace when he saw Madeleine waving again more urgently and then beckoning him to join her. Balzac had seen him move and was trotting to join him. Bruno walked down the gentle slope, the cattle enclosure on his left, where Raquelle’s robot bull was now edging sideways and forward as if in some weird bovine dance. Balzac stopped to watch this strange sight, darting forward and then back, baffled by this thing that moved like an animal but smelled altogether different. Bruno smiled and went on, glad he’d brought his cane, heading for the beginning of the woodland where Madeleine stood. Another enclosure for the goats was on his right, then the huge, life-size model of the woolly mammoth. He recalled the pit that had been dug near here; he must remember to ask Raquelle why. Behind Madeleine the woods stretched back and across the hillside and over the far ridge.

“I wanted to apologize,” Madeleine said, smiling at him, and he felt a physical jolt as he drank in her beauty. Or was it his sense of dismay at such beauty concealing such vicious ruthlessness within?

She was looking magnificent, hair pulled back into a loose ponytail, eyes shining and cheeks slightly flushed. She was wearing tight jeans of olive green tucked into knee-high boots and the sleeves of a khaki bush shirt rolled up to her elbows. Around her trim waist was a broad leather belt from which hung a hunting knife and an ammunition pouch. With the gun over her shoulder she looked like an advertisement for hunting chic. He thought a photo of her looking like this on the cover of
Le Chasseur Français,
one of the few magazines that Bruno bought, would double its circulation overnight.

On an impulse, he pulled out his phone and took a photograph of her standing like that, gun and rabbits, woodlands and woman.

“Send me a copy,” she said, laughing. “That should get me the hunters’ vote.”

“Apologize for what?” he asked, half expecting some words of regret for the attack on him by the gamekeeper she’d hired. She had to know of Fabrice’s fate; who else would have hired him an expensive lawyer?

“It was most discourteous, my falling asleep like that, and it was very disappointing waking up alone the next morning,” she said. “Still, thanks to you it was a marvelous night’s sleep.”

Bruno smiled politely as he tried to work out what she was up to. If she had indeed been asleep when he left her bed, she was awake soon enough to phone Fabrice to tell him Bruno was on his way home. Was she so confident of her hold over him that she thought he’d succumb to her smile?

“And I’m sorry I couldn’t greet you properly at that supper with the wild boar, but Papa was making a bit of a fool of himself.” She smiled again, held out the rabbits to him and said, “Could you take them, please?”

He moved forward and she stepped back down the path through the woodland, beckoning him after her, her eyes dancing as she gave a teasing laugh. She gave him the rabbits, threw a swift glance over his shoulder to be sure the fringe of trees gave them cover and then moved close and kissed him on the mouth, the hand that had held the rabbits caressing the back of his neck. When he failed to respond she teased his lips with her tongue and ran her fingers through the curls of his hair.

“You weren’t so shy in Bordeaux,” she murmured. “I understand, you’re worried about the others up there on the terrace.”

“No,” he said, stepping back from her. “I’m thinking of Gilbert and when it was that he informed you he was going to tell Chantal that he was her father.”

“What do you mean, Gilbert was her father?” She almost spat the name, and her eyes were blazing. Was it his question or her anger at his rejection? “That’s nonsense.”

“We checked the DNA, his and Chantal’s.”

“Gilbert’s DNA?” She laughed, mockingly. “How? From his ashes? Gilbert was cremated.”

“I took samples from his hairbrushes in his cottage when you and Victor were sorting through his papers, looking for the will you didn’t find. But I found it, and Chantal inherits almost everything.”

“You can’t prove it’s his DNA,” she said coldly. “We had to wash and clean up after sorting though his empty bottles. Victor used his hairbrush.”

“Nice try, Madeleine. But we got the same DNA from his flask and from those Russian cigarettes he smoked.”

“So she’s his daughter. So what?”

“We also know about the chloral hydrate in the orange juice, and we know about your unregistered cell phone, the one you used to get in touch with Fabrice the night he tried to kill me. It’s over, Madeleine. The chief detective for the Police Nationale is on his way here to arrest you with a warrant signed by the
procureur de la République.
”

He turned, dropped the rabbits and was walking the few steps to the edge of the woods when he heard the familiar double click of cartridges being loaded and then the sound of the breech closing, and her voice saying, “Wait.”