with a sinking heart heard the deep intake of breath that preceded the question she could contain no longer. “Did you enjoy your meal?”
He looked up, surprised. “My meal?”
“At the Auberge du Pecheur. I heard that you dined there last night with Madame Killian.”
“Did you?”
“They do the most wonderful seafood’
“They do.”
“During the season you always have to reserve.”
“I’m sure you do.” After a moment, Enzo decided to exploit her eagerness to talk. “When did Doctor Servat senior retire?”
“Oh, I’m not sure, exactly. It was before my time. Seventeen, eighteen years, perhaps.”
“And his son took over then?”
“Oh, no, Doctor Servat junior was already established in the practice by then. A lovely man. Never heard him utter an angry word in my life. His wife was a nurse here at one time. They have such beautiful girls, too. The son’s a little older. I don’t really know him. He’s away at university, you know. But they’re one of the nicest families on the island.”
Enzo was beginning to wish he hadn’t asked, but was rescued from rudeness by the opening of the door to Doctor Servat’s surgery. An elderly lady with a hat, a long coat, and a stout stick, was shown out into the hall by a man in his middle forties who held her elbow as she steadied herself to leave. He shook her hand.
“Thank you so much, doctor.”
“Just take it easy, Madame Pouard. No horse riding or mountain climbing for the next few weeks.”
Madame Pouard laughed. “Chance would be a fine thing, doctor.”
Doctor Servat looked toward Enzo as the big Scot got to his feet, and he came forward. His handshake was warm and dry and firm. “Monsieur Macleod. Please come in.”
He ushered Enzo into his surgery. “Take a seat, take seat.” Enzo sat on the business side of the doctor’s desk and looked at the rows of medical books on the shelves behind it. The room was L-shaped, and the longer leg of the L contained an examination table, a sink and draining board, and a tall glass-doored cabinet full of bottles and boxes. Servat sat down opposite Enzo and folded his hands on the desk in front of him. He regarded the Scotsman with warm, brown eyes that crinkled slightly in a look of mild amusement. He was a man of medium height, inclining now to portliness, with a thatch of thick, sandy hair, greying just very slightly at the temples. “So… you’re here to find out who killed Adam Killian.” It wasn’t a question.
Enzo said, “I think if you were to conduct a straw poll in the street, nine out of ten people would probably tell you I was.”
The doctor laughed. “Oh, I think you’re wrong, Monsieur Macleod. I doubt if there’s anyone on the island who wouldn’t tell me that.”
It was Enzo’s turn to laugh. “Not an easy place to keep a secret.”
“Almost impossible.”
“All the more extraordinary, then, that a man’s murder should go unsolved all these years.”
The doctor inhaled deeply. “Well, if you were to conduct that same straw poll of yours, Monsieur Macleod, I think that nine out of ten people would tell you that Thibaud Kerjean did it.”
“And did he?”
“I have absolutely no idea. But according to the courts he didn’t. So who am I to argue with the considered opinion of the French justice system?”
“Of course, sometimes guilty men go free simply because the prosecution can’t prove it.”
“That’s true, monsieur.”
“In Scotland we have a third verdict. Guilty, not guilty, and not proven.”
The doctor sat back in his seat and nodded thoughtful approval. “Ah. Interesting idea. Perhaps that would have been the verdict in this case, had it been tried in a Scottish court.”
“Perhaps it would.” Enzo smiled. “I believe your father was Adam Killian’s physician at the time of his death.”
“Yes, he was. And retired not long afterwards. He was a good age, even then. He and a couple of other island practitioners were involved in setting up the Maison Medicale in the seventies. Prior to that he had his own cabinet in the family home in Le Bourg, where I live now with my own family.”
“And I don’t suppose you could cast any light on his medical dealings with Killian?”
“I’m afraid not. I had only been in the practice a short time then, and I never had any contact with Killian myself. My father’s really the only one who could have told you. But there wouldn’t be much point in asking him now. He’s over ninety.”
“He’s still alive?” Enzo couldn’t conceal his surprise.
“Oh, yes. Very much so. And still lives with us at home.”
“Do you think I might be able to talk to him anyway?”
“Well, yes, of course you could.” A momentary sadness seemed to flit across his face, so fleeting that Enzo almost missed it. “But I’m afraid it won’t do you any good.” He glanced at his watch. “Look, it’s almost midi. I won’t have any more patients now before lunch. Why don’t you come back with me to the house?” He lifted his cellphone and hit the speed dial. “I’ll just call my wife and let her know to set another place at the table.”
The Servat family lived in a big rambling house on the corner of the Place du Leurhe opposite Le Triskell, a pub that offered coffee and rooms. This was a small square behind the church, at the centre of a maze of tiny streets that fanned out from it like the spokes of a buckled bicycle wheel. The tiny terrasse in front of Le Triskell was deserted, parasols tied up for the winter, the sun melting frost on plastic tables and chairs.
Opposite a peach-painted cottage with green shutters that housed the Credit Agricole bank stood the building that characterised and dominated the square. It was a crumbling, white two-story house with a square tower punctuated on three sides by rows of holes the size of cantaloupes. At first, Enzo thought it might be some elaborate sort of pigeonnier, but Alain Servat caught his curious glance in its direction and laughed. “A hard one to guess, isn’t it? It used to be the town’s fire station. They hung the hoses up in the tower after use. The holes were to ventilate it so they would dry quickly.”
He led Enzo through a gate into a narrow path between extravagantly towering shrubs that almost completely obscured the pale lemon and blue of the house: giant hydrangeas with pink and blue flowers fading now in the late autumn; tall, corn-coloured fronds, sprouting through a profusion of yellowing leaves; spiky green grasses that grew taller than a man.
The front door opened into a long, narrow hallway that stretched all the way to the back of the house, where a glass door spilled dazzling sunlight on to polished wooden floors.
“We’re home, ch e rie,” the doctor called, and steered Enzo off to their left, into a large, square dining room with a door leading through to a farmhouse-style kitchen. A slim woman with long chestnut curls appeared in the kitchen doorway. She wore a maroon apron over jeans and a white blouse, sleeves rolled up to her elbows.
“Hi, darling,” she said. “Lunch won’t be long.”
“Elisabeth, this is Monsieur Enzo Macleod. He’s a private police scientifique, come to reopen the investigation into the Killian murder.”
“Oh.” Elisabeth Servat wiped her hands on her apron and stepped into the room to shake Enzo’s hand. “I’m pleased to meet you, Monsieur.” She smiled. “I’m never very sure whether it would be better to solve the Killian case or to bury it. It’s a little like Killian himself. Dead, but keeps coming back to haunt us.”
Enzo became aware that she was still holding his hand. Longer than he might have expected. But she was in no way self-conscious about it, and so he did not feel ill at ease. “Well, I hope I won’t be stirring up too many ghosts.”
She laughed and released his hand, a handsome woman with wide, cupid-bow lips and lively dark eyes. “You never know, Monsieur Macleod, with Halloween just around the corner.” She glanced at her husband. “Why don’t you two sit in at the table. The girls will be back any minute.”
The table looked as if it might have been in the family for generations, its dense wooden surface scarred and burned and stained by countless meals. Who knew how many souls had sat around it, eating and drinking across the years, how many dramas and conversations it had witnessed. Enzo remembered his father telling him how he
