Flykiller

‘Very well. Both of them are fond of the Marechal. Monsieur Hebert is Albert’s grand-uncle, so always Albert is asked for news. How is the Marechal’s health, does he still take his daily stroll in the Parc des Sources, or have the affairs of state so saddened him he no longer listens to his operetta recordings? And of course, now that he is having a wax sculpture made, is the sculptress doing a good job?’

‘Wait a minute. How did you hear about that? Is Albert here now?’

‘Ach! I thought you knew. He’ll be in the stables or cellars, or out where the birds are kept.’

‘And Blanche Varollier?’

‘Is in the kitchens with the sculptress, I think Both will be patiently waiting for him to finish so they can go back to town. Or maybe they’re out with the birds? Ja, the sculptress did say she wanted to gather some feathers to take back to Paris for Madame Dupuis’s little girl.’

8

Snail shells, along with oyster shells and fishbones, were being smashed to give the birds their necessary minerals. Dried apples, pears and apricots were being finely chopped with walnuts, chestnuts and acorns, carrots, beets, potatoes, brussels sprouts and the green tops of still-frozen leeks. Cheese was being crumbled, hard-boiled eggs, too. Dried redcurrants, seeds, buckwheat, barley and lentils by the handful were tossed in to be blended with the rest.

A truly domestic scene, given the shortages, thought St-Cyr wryly. Not a word was being spoken between Blanche Varollier, Ines Charpentier, Albert Grenier and the former owner of the chateau who’d put them to work and to silence, no doubt, at the present intrusion.

Alone on the squared lava-stone floor, the white rabbit named Michel stood on hind legs looking for more of the dried grapes it had found so sweet.

‘I gave the rabbit to Celine, Inspector,’ said Hebert, the loose, dark blue smock, the biaude they called it here in the Auvergne, the sarrau elsewhere, ending well below his knees to reveal the coarse black trousers and hobnailed boots of the peasant he’d never been. A man of sixty-five perhaps and of medium height and build, with rapidly thinning, greying dark brown hair that was worn straight back to expose an almost bald pate, the side whiskers iron-grey, the eyebrows bushy, the look in the faded blue eyes not straightforward but evasive. ‘One breeds them for the table, of course,’ he said, ‘but I knew she could never have brought herself to kill it. Blanche felt it best to return it to me since her brother did not wish her to keep it in their flat.’

In Vichy one room becomes a ‘flat’? snorted Kohler inwardly. Sandrine Richard, tense and silent, had remained behind them, in the arched doorway to a kitchen that couldn’t have had much, if anything, done to it since the sixteenth century. There was a roaring fire in the blackened hearth beneath a mantelpiece that would have taken a small army to move. All along a side there were lava-brick stoves with black, sheet-iron tops above their fireboxes. No need for an overcoat in here, none either for a woollen pullover. Bunches of herbs hung from medieval spikes in the ceiling timbers. Rope after rope of garlic, onions, dried peppers, winter beans and dried mushrooms were there, too, with coils of sausage and hams that alone could bring a fortune in Paris and probably did, since why return empty vans?

Crocks of goose fat, lard and buttermilk stood alongside wicker-clad bottles of oil, wine and vinegar. Just who the hell was eating rats with all of this available?

The aromas of soup, spices, tobacco and wood-smoke mingled with those of the cheese and other foods.

‘Monsieur,’ hazarded Louis in that deferential way of his that often hid so much, the rabbit hopping across the floor to examine detective shoes whose repeatedly broken and knotted laces caused it to gaze questioningly up at him, as if thawed soles needing better glue and nails had best be overlooked. ‘Monsieur, the birds in that room …’

Hebert let his hands rest on the chopping block. ‘One learns by experience, Inspector, but the taxidermy is not mine. What few attempts I made as a boy I gave to Blanche.’

Who had lied about them by saying they’d been attempts of her own, thought Kohler. A dove, a rook, a starling and a seagull! Blanche silently defied him to admonish her. Hands still gripping a pestle and mortar that were as old as the hills, she stood with shoulders squared, and only when he didn’t say a thing, not even asking, Why did you want us not to know of this place? did that lovely slender throat of hers constrict.

Again, as before, her dark auburn hair was pinned up, but several wisps had come loose to spoil perfection and indicate nervousness.

The dark blue eyes were watchful. A breath was held.

Ines Charpentier, her mouth full of deftly palmed almonds but jaws stilled, had plunged her hands into one of the mixing bowls, not missing the exchange; Albert neither. Albert with a butcher’s knife that bled beet juice on to the floor at the sculptress’s feet.