The cluster of shrubs growing out of the hedgerow had pale-green five-lobed leaves and, as she explained, the persistence of berries so late in the season was the result of the longish summer and the temperatures which had been mild until recently.
The berries glistened in the sunshine like ruby-coloured pearls. She tasted one and closed her eyes in pleasure. ‘Tart, but lovely,’ she exclaimed. Luc playfully opened his mouth and she grudgingly obliged him by popping a berry between his lips.
‘Needs sugar,’ he said, and the two of them began to pick berries until a litre-sized plastic bag was full and their fingertips were stained red.
They kicked the cook out of the kitchen hut and commandeered chopping boards, utensils and his largest stewing pot. Emulating the sketchy description in the manuscript, they chopped the vines and grasses like salad greens, mashed them with a make-shift mortar and pestle – a wooden salad bowl and meat pounder – and set them on a boil with added water and crushed redcurrants. The kitchen took on a unique steamy smell of fruit and botanicals and they both stood over the pot, hands on hip, watching the concoction bubble.
‘How long do you think?’ Luc asked.
‘I don’t think we should overcook it. It should be more like making tea. That’s generally the correct ethno- botanical approach,’ Sara said. Then she laughed and added, ‘Actually, I’ve got no idea. This is so crazy, don’t you think?’
‘Too crazy to talk about it publicly, that’s for sure,’ he said. ‘This is strictly between you and me. How are we going to send it to Cambridge?’
She had a Thermos flask in her caravan, her personal one, a nice stainless steel and glass model used for real tea. After stirring the pot one more time, she turned the gas down a bit and went to retrieve it.
Before she returned, Abbot Menaud came flopping in on his sandals, a little too flushed for a cool day.
‘There you are, Luc. I was looking for you. I even rang your mobile phone.’
Luc fished it from his pocket. There were several missed calls. ‘Sorry, there wasn’t any reception where I was. How can I help you?’
The abbot was momentarily distracted by the peculiar sweet smells in the hut. ‘What is that?’ he asked, pointing at the stove.
Luc hated to be evasive with a man who had shown so much generosity but he ducked the question anyway. ‘Professor Mallory is just cooking something. I’m watching the pot.’
The abbot resisted the urge to sample whatever was simmering as he habitually did in his own kitchen. The reason for seeking out Luc came back to him. There had been a flurry of calls to the abbey, from the young head of the local gendarmerie, Lieutenant Billeter. He had left his number several times and was growing insistent.
Luc thanked him and wondered out loud if there had been some development in the investigation of Zvi’s accident. When Sara almost bumped into the abbot in the doorway they separated like pole-matching magnets. The old monk glanced at her thermos and muttered as he fled that her dish smelled lovely and that he’d like to try it one day. She held her tongue and Luc sealed the moment with a wink.
Luc returned the lieutenant’s call while Sara began straining the hot concoction into a clean bowl.
He expected to hear Zvi’s name mentioned in the first sentence, but instead the officer startled him by asking him something unexpected. ‘Do you know a man named Hugo Pineau?’
There was one steep downhill curve on the road leading from the abbey into the village of Ruac. It wasn’t considered a particularly dangerous stretch but sprinkle together a dark night, a downpour, excessive speed and perhaps some wine and one could imagine the result.
The point of impact was a good ten metres off the road, hidden to passing vehicles. It was as if the forest had parted to receive the car then closed itself up after the crash. Just after nine in the morning, a sharp-eyed motorcyclist had spotted some broken branches and found it.
Car and tree were fused into a knot of wood and metal, a broken, caved-in, twisted mass. The force of the impact was enough to lodge the tree trunk well into the passenger compartment, displacing the engine from its mounts. The front tyres were somewhere else entirely. The windshield glass was gone as if vaporised. Although there was a strong smell of petrol, there hadn’t been a fire, not that it would have mattered to the driver.
An SPV pumper was hosing the road down to wash away an oil run-off which was trickling downhill. Two gendarmes were keeping the road open to an alternating trickle of north and south-bound traffic.
Lieutenant Billeter and Luc spent a time sombrely talking inside the lieutenant’s car. Luc followed the officer to the scene with the shuffling steps of a man going to the gallows. Before he got there, Pierre pulled up in his car and Sara jumped out. After the phone call she had finished in the kitchen, frantically completing the job. Until she arrived, all she had heard was that Hugo had been in an accident.
She saw his eyes and they told the full story. ‘Luc, I’m so sorry.’
The sight of his tears set her off and both of them were sobbing when they stepped from the pavement onto the wet verge.
As an archaeologist, Luc routinely handled human remains. There was something clean, almost antiseptic about skeletons; without the unpleasantness of tissue and blood, one could be ultra-scientific and dispassionate. It took a seeker’s effort to find emotion in skeletal remains.
Yet, in the compressed span of days, Luc confronted fresh death not once but twice and he was ill prepared to deal with it, especially this time.
Hugo was badly mangled. How badly, Luc wouldn’t know for sure, because he turned his head after a second. That was long enough for him to peer into the driver’s side window and identify Hugo’s stylish olive jacket and his wiry hair, neatly trimmed and sculpted around a bloody left ear.
From the other side of the wreck, Luc suddenly saw a man looking into the passenger-side window. It was an older face with dark penetrating eyes, the neatly dressed man he had encountered weeks before in the Ruac cafe.
Luc and the man raised themselves simultaneously and stared at each other over the dented top of the car.
‘Ah, it’s Dr Pelay,’ Billeter said. ‘Do you know him, professor? He’s the doctor in Ruac. He was kind enough to come out and pronounce the victim.’
‘Death was instantaneous,’ Pelay told Luc, curtly. ‘A clean break of the neck, C1/C2. Not survivable.’
Pelay’s face and voice set Luc off. They were hard as rocks without a touch of compassion. Luc wanted Hugo to be attended by someone with a good bedside manner, even in death.
When he straightened fully and attempted to walk away, gravity overtook him. The officer and Sara simultaneously gave support and leaned him up against a gendarmerie van for balance.
‘We reached his secretary. She told us he was staying with you,’ Billeter said, searching for something neutral to say.
‘He was supposed to go home tomorrow,’ Luc said, wiping his nose on his sleeve.
‘When did you see him last?’
‘About eleven-thirty last night, at the camp site.’
‘He left the abbey then?’
Luc nodded.
‘Why?’
‘To visit a woman at Ruac.’
‘Who?’
‘Odile Bonnet. We had dinner last night, the four of us,’ he said, pointing to Sara. ‘He insisted on seeing her.’
‘Did she know he was coming?’
‘He didn’t have her number. I don’t think he even had her address. But Hugo was, you know, motivated.’
‘He didn’t make it to the village. If he left your camp at eleven-thirty, the accident must have happened no later than eleven-forty,’ the officer said flatly. ‘By the looks of it he was going pretty fast. He didn’t brake. There aren’t any skid marks. He flew into the trees until he was stopped by a large one. So tell me, Professor Simard, was he drinking last night?’
Luc looked pitiful. He didn’t care about absolving himself from the guilt he felt. But before he answered, Sara jumped in protectively. ‘All of us except Luc had some wine with dinner. Luc drove back from Domme. By the time we got back I think all of us were sober.’
