‘It’s difficult to restrain children so not before three weeks. I’ll be keeping them here for another month after that until they’re weaned,’ she replied. ‘Grown-ups can come and take a look at the puppies after about a week or so.’
‘I liked the curious one who kept moving around,’ Bruno said once they were back outside in the open air. ‘And the little brown and white one who was nuzzling at its mother’s nose. The others all seemed glued to their milk.’
‘The first one is the pick of the litter, so he’s yours by right,’ Claire said. ‘The little one is the runt, and she’s also yours since there are nine. If you want a third pup you’d have to buy it, and don’t forget the vet fees, the vaccinations, the pedigree registrations and so on. When you add it all up that usually costs between three and four hundred euros for each puppy.’
Bruno nodded, saying he understood. He’d never thought of a third puppy being part of the deal.
‘I have five of the litter sold already from pre-orders, at fifteen hundred each, and I’ll have no trouble selling the other two,’ Claire went on. ‘Bear in mind that I’d like to book Balzac in for servicing my other bitches, say two or three times a year. All the pups are perfect. Balzac gets a large litter and his own pedigree is very grand, so you can expect lots more pups to give away or sell in future.’
‘Mon Dieu, I could almost make a living out of this,’ Bruno exclaimed, surprised that his dog was so commercially valuable. ‘I had no idea.’
‘I’ve already had two enquiries from other kennels whether Balzac would be available to service their dams,’ Claire went on. ‘You could let him out for service every month or two, for which you can charge three hundred euros a time. Or you could take a pup or two pups from each litter to sell. You see how the money soon mounts up, if that’s what you want. Your Balzac is a little gold mine. Bassets are starting to become very fashionable since they’re so good with children and they look so special.’
‘I’d have to consider that,’ said Bruno. ‘I’d want to know something about the homes the pups would be going to. I mean, Balzac is my friend as well as my dog. I don’t like to think of him as some sort of rent-a-sperm, fertilizing all-comers for cash.’
‘They wouldn’t be all-comers,’ Claire laughed. ‘Pedigree ladies only, preferably named after royal mistresses. I don’t think you realize just how special Balzac’s pedigree really is. I believe you were told when you first got him that Balzac comes from the old royal pack at Cheverny. That means we can trace his ancestry back for more than three centuries. In human terms, he’s a duke or a count or something, maybe even a pretender to the throne.’
Her eyes twinkled as she said this and they both laughed at the absurdity of it.
‘That’s what breeding is all about,’ she said. ‘So it’s like a fairy tale, you’re the commoner, the poor but honest woodsman, secretly raising and nurturing the heir to the throne. Meanwhile, wicked and jealous aristocrats seek to hunt him down. You could even write an opera about it.’
‘The mind reels,’ said Bruno. ‘Maybe he has an evil stepmother with two ugly daughters, each determined to catch him.’
‘That’s Cinderella,’ she replied, grinning in return. ‘Or maybe it’s the tale of the prince who is raised among the common people and learns to love them while moving secretly among them, avoiding the greedy nobles. And then he seizes the moment to mount the throne and chooses to marry the poor but honest country girl who helped protect him through many dangers.’
‘And they all lived happily ever after,’ said Bruno, smiling a little wistfully. ‘Do children today still get told those old stories? Tales in which goodness and loyalty are eventually rewarded and wickedness punished? I fear they don’t hear them when they’re little and I wish they still did.’
‘Were you told them?’ she asked, quietly.
‘Yes, I was, by the nuns in our orphanage,’ he said, enthused by the memory. ‘There was always a Bible story but then a fairy tale, all of us children in our little cots, our eyes wide, rapt with attention, while a nun read to us all aloud. I haven’t thought of that for years.’
He felt a prickling in his eyes, as though he was about to shed a tear. So he took a deep breath, then blew his nose and looked away at the bassets and Malinois romping in the pasture.
‘You’re an unusual man, Bruno,’ she said. ‘Sometimes it’s hard to think of you as a policeman. Isabelle is a lucky woman.’
If only she saw it like that, he thought ruefully.
On the return journey, J-J called. Bruno pulled in to answer and was struck by the excitement in J-J’s voice.
‘We’ve had a breakthrough. That special forces guy who was killed in Mali, Louis Castignac – Oscar’s Son. We’ve traced the next of kin he listed through army records. It’s his younger sister, named Sabine. And would you believe she’s a cop, so her DNA is also on file. She’s a gendarme based in Metz, near the German border, born just over a year after Louis. And from Louis’s birth date, we know Oscar was still alive as late as July, 1989.’
‘So Sabine would have to be Louis’s half-sister, with the same mother but a different father,’ Bruno said.
‘Right, but so what?’ asked J-J. ‘She’s still the official next of kin.’
‘J-J, wait a second. Does this Sabine know he was only her half-brother? I mean, she’s already mourning his death. This news
