media, let’s play up the absurdity of it all. You might tell them that a farmer’s wife has been arrested for making bouillon,” he suggested. “ L’affaire bouillon has a certain ring to it, the kind of phrase the headline writers like.”
“It invites them to add that the gendarmes are in the soup as a result,” said the mayor, chuckling. “I think this is our chance to get Duroc transferred out of St. Denis.”
“You might want to give Radio Perigord a call. They’ll put you right on the air, and it’s crucial to get our side of the story out first,” Bruno said.
“By the way, Bruno,” the mayor added. “Happy birthday. We’ll have a drink when we see you tonight.”
The blockade of St. Denis was over by midday, as Bruno expected, when the thoughts of all good Frenchmen turned to lunch. Several of the farmers stopped for a petit apero of Ricard to celebrate their victory on the way home, and he waved away a dozen invitations to join festive groups at the bars as he headed along the rue de la Republique toward the gendarmerie. He wanted to ensure that Maurice and Sophie were released as the subprefect had insisted.
“Want a lift, Bruno?” came a voice from the road. It was Albert, the chief fireman, making room on the wide running board for Bruno to step up and join him. “Now that the road’s clear we’re off to the gendarmerie to hose the manure from the steps. Is Maurice okay, do you know?”
“That’s why I’m going to the gendarmerie, to find out. Sophie was the one who seemed most upset.”
By the time they reached the square in front of the building, Duroc’s van was already parked inside the yard of the gendarmerie. A heap of manure, not nearly as large as the mayor’s description had led Bruno to believe, was tumbled over the steps, but the armored glass entrance door to the building was only partly blocked. Bruno stepped down with a wave of thanks to Albert. A few seconds later he heard the hydraulic pump of the fire engine and the spluttering inside the hose that meant the water was on the way. Ahmed had the hose pointed directly at the steps, and Bruno saw, in a moment of appalled anticipation, the handle of the door start to turn.
Events then seemed to happen in slow motion, but unfolded in an inevitable progression as Duroc held the door open for Annette to walk through. She paused above the steps, obviously surprised to find the manure still there. Not expecting her to halt, Duroc bumped into her as he came through the door in turn. Then with one hesitant initial burst the full force of the fire hose hit the manure and sprayed it powerfully up the steps in a pungent brown flood, over Annette and Duroc and into the gendarmerie through the still open door.
15
Clothilde’s call came as Bruno was driving back to the mairie after dropping Maurice and Sophie at their farm. The presence of Stephane and the Villattes and other well-wishers, all proudly recounting their various feats of traffic disruption, had delayed him. Before escorting Maurice from the gendarmerie, Bruno had stopped to buy some shampoo and shower gel for Annette. He couldn’t see her relishing the harsh industrial soap that was on offer in the shower that served the gendarmerie’s cells. Along with the smallest pair of overalls that he could borrow from the firemen, he thought the toiletries a wise peace offering, making up a little for the laughter that had him and Albert leaning helplessly against the fire engine as Duroc and Annette stood and dripped manure. Still stunned by the shock of her foul drenching, Annette had barely recognized Bruno’s gesture, but he was glad he’d made it. Duroc could fend for himself.
“ Salut, Clothilde,” he answered when she rang, pulling onto the side of the road to take the call.
“Bruno, I’m worried about Horst. Have you seen him? He’s not at home, not at the museum and not at the dig. Nobody’s seen him since he left the dig yesterday afternoon.”
Bruno explained about the traffic jam in St. Denis, and Clothilde objected that being stuck in traffic would not stop his answering his mobile phone. Calls for him were still coming in from archaeologists around the globe. Clothilde had phoned his neighbor who did Horst’s cleaning. She hadn’t seen him, and there was no answer when she went to knock on his door. The woman used her key to let herself in and had told Clothilde the place looked as if there’d been trouble. Furniture had been knocked over.
“I’ll go and check his house and call you back,” Bruno told Clothilde. He hung up and then he tried Horst’s mobile number, but there was no reply. He set off for Horst’s home. The neighbor let him in, and at first Bruno thought she must have exaggerated when she’d told Clothilde the house was in disarray. One of the chairs at the big round table had been knocked over and some papers had been spilled on the floor.
“You might want to accompany me while I look around,” Bruno told her. “I think we’d both feel reassured.”
Horst had many years earlier bought a small and half-ruined house, one of a row of cottages just outside St. Denis on the road to Ste. Alvere, and by the time Bruno had arrived in the town he’d restored the place in a way that was both functional and lavish. The downstairs was one large room with a big round table where Horst worked and ate, a couple of armchairs and an expensive stereo system, its power light glowing red. The walls were lined with shelves for books, CDs of classical music and files and papers.
Horst’s laptop was open on the table, its power cable trailing down to a plug in the floor. The screen was dark, but it lit up when Bruno pressed the ENTER button, open at the front page of Die Welt. Bruno checked the date; it was yesterday’s. He noted with surprise that it was still connected to the Internet. Horst was paranoid about viruses and had often warned Bruno never to leave a computer connected when not in use. The commands were all in German, but he moved the cursor to the place where the HISTORY button was usually found to see what Horst had been looking at. Another surprise; he’d been looking at peta. de sites on foie gras and animal cruelty.
Upstairs looked tidy, the big double bed neatly made and the bathroom clean, towels hanging folded on their rails and toothbrushes and toothpaste in their jar. The bedroom was large, and the bathroom was the most luxurious Bruno had seen in St. Denis, with a large Jacuzzi bath and a separate shower stall with nozzles spraying water from every possible direction. With a smile, he remembered one evening over dinner when Clothilde had joked she had only started her affair with Horst so that she could use his bathroom. The kitchen seemed like an afterthought, a lean-to attached to the rear of the house but filled with expensive German appliances. The kitchen door led to Horst’s small terrace and garden and the space where he parked his car. Unable to park in front of the cottages, Bruno had driven into the alley and parked beside Horst’s familiar black BMW with the Cologne registration. He checked that the doors were locked.
It was the kitchen that worried Bruno, the chopping board with an onion half sliced, a splash of olive oil in an empty frying pan and the refrigerator door ajar. A bottle of Chateau de Tiregand 2005 was open on the counter, a half-filled wineglass beside it. Horst was careful about his wine. He’d never have left a decent bottle uncorked. Horst’s overcoat was hanging on the rack by the front door, and his leather gloves were in the pockets. The morning had been cold enough that he’d have worn them if he’d been going out.
The wooden floorboards, golden with age and layers of wax, were highly polished by the conscientious cleaner, and Bruno knelt down to see if there were any marks that might suggest a scuffle. There were some smears on the wax by the round table and more by the kitchen door. On the kitchen floor were two thin black parallel lines leading past the refrigerator to the back door. It could have been feet being dragged. On the side of the half-open refrigerator door was a reddish-brown smear that might have been a meat sauce, or it might have been blood. The back door was closed and locked, but it was a Yale so it would have locked itself.
“Don’t touch anything,” said Bruno, when he saw the woman take a cloth from her apron. “Have you done any cleaning since you looked in when Clothilde called?” She shook her head.
“When did you last see Horst?”
“Yesterday morning, quite early,” she said. “He came in to give me my week’s money and then he and Clothilde left in his car. I didn’t see it come back last night, but it’s there now.”
“You heard nothing unusual?” She shook her head again.
“Do me a favor,” he said. “Go and ask the other neighbors if they heard or saw Horst come back anytime after he left yesterday morning, if they heard anything, or if he had any visitors.”
Bruno used his handkerchief to open the back door for her, blocked it open with a stone and went to his car to get a pair of rubber gloves. A couple of plants had been half wrenched from the ground beside the terrace, and there were two more lines dragged in the thin grass that led to the pounded patch of gravel where Horst’s car was
