food critic. A freelance critic, Monsieur Macleod, who writes for several of the more distinguished Paris publications, but also has his own online blog. An unpleasant man.”
“You knew him personally?”
“I didn’t, no. But Marc did. He and a few other Michelin-starred chefs were frequently criticised in his columns. He was, and still is, a fierce critic of the Michelin system, and likes to think that he alone should be the judge of good taste in French cuisine.” She paused, some dark thought passing like a shadow across her face, reflecting the shifting patterns of light and shade in the landscape beyond. “There was an enmity between him and Marc which dated back to the time when he was awarded his third star.”
Enzo frowned. “You told me yesterday, Madame Fraysse, that your husband did not have an enemy in the world.”
Her smile was rueful. “With the sole exception, perhaps, of Jean-Louis Graulet. But Graulet didn’t murder Marc, Monsieur Macleod. He was in Paris the day that Marc died.”
Enzo finished dipping the remains of his croissant in his coffee and poured himself a fresh cup from the fine Limoges china jug on the table. He sipped on it thoughtfully. “Did Marc have a biographer?”
“No, he didn’t. But he talked several times about writing a memoir. An autobiography.”
“A lot of people in his position would hire a professional to ghost write something like that for him.”
“Oh, not Marc. He would have wanted to do it himself.”
“And did he?”
“Not that I know of. I went through all his papers and his computer disks at the time, but there was nothing.” She paused. “Strange, though.”
“What is?”
“He had trouble sleeping in the last months. I used to wake at maybe two or three in the morning to find his side of the bed empty and cold. Then I would find him in his petit bureau, huddled over the computer on his desk, tapping away. He was always strangely evasive when I asked him about it. I always had the impression that he was, in fact, writing his memoir and for some reason didn’t want to tell me. A surprise maybe. Which is why I searched for it after his death. But I guess I was wrong.”
Enzo scratched his chin thoughtfully and realized he hadn’t shaved that morning. “What do you think he was doing on his computer, then, in the small hours of the morning.”
She shook her head. “I haven’t the faintest idea, Monsieur Macleod.”
Chapter Seven
Dominique’s office was small, but unusually well-ordered. Crime prevention posters, calendars, newspaper cuttings, official documents, all were pinned in neat groupings to the yellowing cream-painted walls. Her desk was a paragon of good organisation: in-trays, out-trays, a spotless blotter, a computer screen angled against the wall, and a mouse with mat and keyboard placed side by side in perfect alignment. An empty coffee cup sat on a cardboard coaster. The polished surface of the desk itself was unmarred by unsightly rings or watermarks.
It was, in its own way, a reflection of Dominique herself. Small, but almost perfectly formed. Only now, in the confines of her office, did Enzo realize just how small she was. At least, in comparison to his six feet, two inches. Outdoors they had both been dwarfed by the landscape.
Her chestnut brown hair was pulled over in a side ponytail and pleated, before being drawn back across her head and pinned in place. It was executed with immaculate precision, allowing for the wearing of her hat when necessary. Enzo wondered why she would have gone to such trouble when there was no man in her life. That’s what she’d told him, hadn’t she? That she was single. Or had he misunderstood? He replayed their conversation on the hill from the previous day. No. She had told him she had never known a man who would spend the kind of money on her that would buy a meal at Chez Fraysse. But still, his original impression persisted, emphasised by the lack of a ring on her left hand, and he wondered if it was just his imagination that she had made an effort to present herself more attractively today.
Unlike yesterday, she wore a little make-up. A slight rouge coloring of her lips, and a smudge of blue on the lids of her brown eyes. That touch of color somehow lifted her face out of plainness. The collar of her pale blue blouse was immaculately pressed and turned out over the neck of her darker blue jersey with its white stripe and rank epaulettes. Her black holster seemed very large, resting on slim hips, and her pants were tucked into ankle- length boots. Her eyes were filled with their usual warmth, and her cheeks flushed a little as she rounded her desk to spread out a selection of photographs for him to look at.
“These are the casts we took of the footprints in the buron. You can see how much shallower the treads are on Marc Fraysse’s running shoes. All the other prints seem to have been made by either hiking boots or gumboots.”
She cross-referenced the photographs of the casts, with pictures of the prints left in the mud.
“These are Guy’s prints. And Elisabeth Fraysse’s.” She traced their tracks with the tip of finger. “Madame Fraysse didn’t venture far inside. These are Marc’s prints. They are all over the place, and here’s where they back up against the wall when he was shot. But there doesn’t seem to have been a struggle.”
Enzo looked at the two unidentified casts. “These are both smaller than either Guy’s or Marc’s. Did the Fraysse brothers have particularly large feet?”
“No, they were both average.”
“So either or both of these unidentified sets could have been made by a woman.”
“Or a man with smaller feet. Or a boy. A teenager, maybe. They are only one size smaller.”
Enzo studied them in silence for a long time before Dominique reached for a stapled document of a dozen or more pages.
“The autopsy report,” she said. “You can keep that if you like. I made a copy for you.”
Enzo glanced up to find her big brown eyes examining him closely, and for a moment his stomach flipped over. It was extraordinary how a mutual attraction could be conveyed without a single word. Of course, it was always possible to misread the signals. He smiled. “I really appreciate that, Dominique. Thank you.” He riffled through the pages until he came to the pathologist’s description of the wound.
Dominique pressed close against him so that she could read as he did. And he felt the distant pangs of arousal that her proximity excited. He forced himself to focus.
The wound is centered 6.5 centimetres from the top of the head, and on the midline is an 8 millimetre round defect surrounded by a 3 millimeter-wide collar of abrasion. Surrounding the wound is sparse stippling in a 5 centimetre by 4 centimetre distribution.
“What causes the stippling?” Dominique glanced up at him.
“Bits of gunpowder hitting the skin and causing abrasions. The closer the gun the more dense the stippling. Any more than about two feet, or sixty centimetres, away and there wouldn’t be any.”
“So this was close.”
“Probably about thirty centimetres.” Enzo turned then to the description of the exit wound.
The exit wound was centered 7 centimetres from the top of the head, 1 centimetre to the right of the midline, and measured 1.5 centimetres with no evidence of abrasion, soot, or stippling. As this was a perforating wound, no projectile was recovered from the body. The projectile entered the head through the location described, caused an inward-beveled and comminuted defect of the frontal bone, passed through the left cerebral hemisphere, causing a wide hemorrhagic and disrupted path surrounded by contusion, and exited the occipital bone through an outward-beveled bony defect in the location described. The direction of the projectile was backward, slightly downward, slightly rightward.
“Hmmm.” Enzo re-read it thoughtfully.
“What?”
“The path of the bullet. Someone shooting you would generally raise the gun, at arm’s length, to eye-level. Theirs. For the bullet to have taken a slightly downward path would suggest somebody taller than the victim.”
“Or someone standing on higher ground.”
“As I recall, the interior of the buron was pretty flat.”
She nodded. “Yes, it is.”
