Fabiola had planned this, he thought.
“Fabiola’s right, Bruno,” Florence went on. “I don’t know all the details of what has passed between you, but I like you both too much to let it go on. And Fabiola feels the same way. So imagine that the two of you are meeting for the first time.”
Bruno took a deep breath and looked from Florence to Fabiola, two women he respected just as much as he liked them. He grimaced and then slowly nodded. They were probably right; this feud with Annette had gotten out of hand.
“Bonsoir, Annette, and thank you for cleaning the stables,” he said, stepping forward and holding out his hand. She was clutching a napkin in one hand and a tablespoon in the other, and she looked down at them as if unsure what to do with them. Then she put them down on the table beside her, set her small chin and came forward to take his hand and to offer her cheek to be kissed. Bruno complied, catching a pleasant scent from her fair hair.
When he stepped back, Annette handed him a glass of white wine. “It’s from the Domaine,” she said. “I thought we ought to support our local winemaker.”
“A good choice, since you’re also supporting me.” He grinned. “I’m a shareholder, and so is Fabiola and lots of other people around here. Has she told you the story of how we saved the vineyard from an American company and how it’s now a kind of communal vineyard for St. Denis?”
Annette said she hadn’t, but would like to hear it. Bruno could almost hear the ice breaking as he told the story and saw the tension in Fabiola’s face relax.
“You haven’t mentioned the crime, and my part in it,” said Fabiola. “It was my forensic work that cracked the case. And I saved Bruno’s life, when you were going to suffocate in that wine vat.”
With that, Fabiola had to start the whole story again from the beginning, with the arson and the genetically modified crops and the Canadian girl who worked in the wine store. Then Florence began her own tale of the fraud in the truffle market at Ste. Alvere where she had worked and how she had helped Bruno solve the case by getting hold of a vital logbook. By this time they had drunk the first bottle and Annette had opened a second and they were seated convivially around the table and tucking into Annette’s vegetable terrine.
“I thought somebody told me you didn’t drink,” said Bruno, after praising her terrine and taking a second helping.
“You must have been talking to people who took the magistrates’ course with me,” said Annette. “I stopped drinking for a while because I was too nervous about failing. I’d been out of university and away from studying for too long, and I found it really hard to get back into the discipline of it. But when Fabiola and Florence invited me to dinner, I thought how I’d really missed drinking wine with friends. Of course, I didn’t know until this evening that you were coming…” She put her hand to her mouth in embarrassment. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”
“So what happened between university and starting the magistrates’ training course?” he asked.
“Medecins Sans Frontieres, first in Paris, just doing office work, and then I got interested in the logistics of it and went to Madagascar to help run the office there and the depot with the food and medical supplies. I was there for three years, which is why I’d forgotten most of the law I’d learned. That’s where I took up rally driving. But I found myself getting really concerned about France and politics and migrants and the Front National and, you know-the whole mess.”
“We know,” said Fabiola. “But how did you find out what was going on from Madagascar?”
“I used to be on the Internet on this terrible phone connection for hours at a time at night, trying to keep up with the French news. And friends in the Paris office would make sure they put back copies of newsmagazines into the supplies that came out. Then I came back to Paris and worked as a legal assistant for an organization that tried to help Muslim women integrate. Mainly it meant learning to navigate the bureaucracy, which confirmed me in my plan to become a magistrate.”
Bruno nodded, impressed. Medecins Sans Frontieres was an operation he respected. And he approved of people who wanted to experience something of real life along with their studies. Running a food and medical depot in Africa must have been a challenge for a young woman who still looked barely out of her teens. He could understand her nervousness at her first posting, even understand her suspicion of a local policeman like him who must have seemed prickly and set in his ways. And he’d been a soldier in France’s postcolonial wars in an Africa that she knew from a different perspective.
But how could a young woman so obviously intelligent be taken in by the blundering Capitaine Duroc? And why had she been so vindictive against that sweet couple Maurice and Sophie? Worse still, Annette had no idea what would happen tomorrow when she was hit by the counterattack of St. Denis in the media and she discovered that the story was no longer about foie gras but about her. The mayor was a veteran politician who knew how this game was played.
Fabiola brought in her mother’s dish, a risotto made with fish stock, and coquilles St. Jacques, brushed with olive oil and grilled, on a separate platter. The rice was perfect, the short-grain Italian variety that was made for risotto. The scallops still had their roe attached. Fabiola hovered over the dishes before serving, looking both shy and proud as she presented her first dinner party in St. Denis.
“I used the crayfish shells left over from your birthday dinner, Bruno, to make the stock for the risotto. Pamela showed me how to do it.”
“It’s wonderful, Fabiola,” he said, and it was. “Truly, it’s perfection with these scallops. Annette, what do you say?”
“I seldom eat fish, but I’ll make an exception for this, Fabiola, anytime you want to cook it.”
The apple tart from Pamela’s recipe was pronounced an equal success, and as Fabiola took the plates away and started to make coffee, Bruno asked Annette if she had managed to do any more rally driving. Not enough, came the answer, with what she tactfully called the drama under way in St. Denis. But Fabiola had shown her the motor-cross course in the woods nearby that the farmer rented out for weekend races. He was happy for Annette to try it out and she was planning to use it again early the next morning.
“Want to come for a ride?” she asked him.
“Try it, Bruno, it’s fun,” said Fabiola, bringing the smell of fresh coffee with her from the kitchen. “Annette took me on a few circuits. I never thought you could go so fast on forest tracks.”
“I’d love to, but I have to ride Hector in the morning,” he said.
“I’ll be riding Victoria tomorrow while Fabiola rides Bess, so we can hit the circuit after that,” said Annette. “It won’t be long, just enough to give you the flavor.”
“In that case, sure, and thank you. But I have to get an early start tomorrow, so I can come if we take the horses out at dawn,” he said. “I’ll skip the coffee, if you don’t mind. I have to walk Gigi and then unpack.” He looked across at Fabiola. “I trust Pamela told you she asked me to stay here to look after the horses while she’s away?”
“Yes, and we’re going to have a full house. Florence is staying in the spare room overnight rather than wake the children, and Annette’s bedding down on the couch.”
“Rather than use a couch there’s a spare room in Pamela’s house. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind,” Bruno said, but as soon as he spoke he wished he hadn’t. He and Annette may have declared a truce, but inviting her to sleep in the same house was pushing it a little far.
“I don’t think my reputation in St. Denis could fall much lower than it has,” Annette said, a twinkle in her eye. “But it might damage yours. Still, so long as you think you’re safe with me I’m prepared to risk it. There’s not enough room in the kitchen for all of us, so Florence and I can do the washing up and you and Fabiola take Gigi for his walk. By the time you’re back, I’ll probably be asleep.”
The other two women agreed so fast-Fabiola already putting on her coat-that Bruno suspected this had been contrived between them. Evidently Fabiola had something to say, and by the time they reached the lane, she was just as ready to say it as Gigi was for his exploration of the paddock. It was a cloudless night with a rising moon, the stars bright and clear and the air still fresh with the new scents of spring.
“Annette is thinking of handing in her resignation, and I want you to persuade her not to,” said Fabiola, direct as ever.
“She’s pretty much burned her bridges with St. Denis,” he replied. “She’ll always be known as the woman who accused us of barbaric practices, not just here but all across the Perigord. It’s the kind of label that sticks, and she’ll have to live with the consequences.”
