Martin Walker - The Devil's Cave

Bruno nodded. ‘How far is the chateau?’ he asked.

‘A few hundred metres, but it’s up the slope above the flood level and behind that cliff, in a kind of fold in the hill.’ Antoine looked at his watch. ‘If you want to make some inquiries, you’d better come back another time. We’ve got a lot of river to cover.’

As they returned to the main stream and rounded the bend that led to the bridge before the Grand Roc, they saw on the far bank a handsome new dock and terrace. Steps of bright new stone and a gravel pathway led upwards to a fold in the hills, with a large terrace and restored building of the local honey-coloured stone just visible. A woman was standing on the dock, shading her eyes. Bruno raised his paddle in salute and she waved back.

‘I haven’t seen that dock before, but they were working on this place last year. It’s just down the hill from the old village of St Philippon, the one that was abandoned. You can just see the top of the chapel up on the ridge,’ said Antoine. ‘Better take a look.’

‘Welcome to the Auberge St Philippon,’ the woman said once they crossed the river to greet her and introduced themselves. She had the long-limbed look of a tennis player and beautifully cut fair hair. Bruno felt sure her hairdresser was based a long way from St Denis. She told them to call her Beatrice and that she was the manager of the newly restored inn. Bruno guessed she was in her early forties and spending time and effort to look younger. Dressed in a blue and white striped shirt-waist dress, she had a twinkle in her eye, as if to say she found life endlessly delightful. Bruno explained his mission and her face turned grave.

‘I’ve seen no dead women floating past here, but you’re welcome to come and ask the staff and guests. And perhaps you’d like a drink. That paddling must be warm work,’ she said. ‘As you can see, we’ve no boathouse yet and no boats for my new dock. You’ll be christening it for me, the first guests to arrive by water.’

The dock stood a good metre and more above the level of the river. There was as yet no ramp to haul boats ashore and not even the foundations of a boathouse. Bruno had heard of plans for the new hotel but was surprised to learn it was already open. Antoine tied the canoe to the dock and they took off their life jackets and donned their shirts, Bruno conscious of Beatrice casting an eye over his naked torso, and clambered up a wooden ladder. Once on the dock, Bruno realized that looking upward from the canoe he’d misjudged Beatrice’s height. She barely came up to his nose, but somehow her clothes made her look taller. Her watch was a Cartier Tank, a model he recognized because a previous girlfriend had brought a counterfeit back from a trip to China, and worn it even after it stopped working. Bruno felt certain Beatrice was wearing the real thing.

As the path curved uphill, a windsock on a large and flat stretch of grass signalled a helicopter pad and beyond it the auberge began to emerge. Inn seemed too modest a term for the building. He guessed it was eighteenth-century, and expensively restored. It had two main storeys of tall windows with open grey shutters, and smaller semicircular windows in a mansard roof of dark slate. Wide steps led up to a handsome pillared porch with double doors flanked by two weathered stone cupids holding vases filled with daffodils. There was no hotel name that Bruno could see, no brass plate and no porter at the entrance.

‘It’s quite a place, Madame,’ said Bruno. ‘You must have earned a great reputation in the hotel business to be appointed manager here. Where did you work before?’

‘In Paris, mainly corporate hospitality and private dining,’ she replied smoothly. ‘We expect that to be the main focus here.’

Beatrice led them to the side of the auberge where tables under umbrellas half-filled the wide stone terrace. Part of it was shaded by a trellis of vines. Some of the tables were set for lunch, and at one Bruno saw two Arabs, who looked like military men in civilian clothes, eating fish while an elegant businessman spoke to them in French. At another table three men were speaking Russian. The table nearest a modern sculpture that was also a fountain was filled with three men enjoying their aperitifs. As they turned to look at the new arrivals, Bruno saw one tall and handsome stranger in middle age and two men he knew. The first was Foucher, the young man in the white Jaguar who had plunged into the river the previous day. The second was Bruno’s friend and tennis partner the Baron, the retired industrialist who was the main landowner of St Denis.

‘My dear Bruno, what a pleasure,’ said the Baron, rising and stepping forward to embrace him and then to shake Antoine’s hand. ‘I see you’ve already met the entrancing Beatrice and I gather you’ve met young Foucher here, but let me introduce my new friend Cesar de Vexin, who unlike me is a real aristo with a name that goes far back. He’s a Count as well as being the man behind this new holiday village project, and we’re just talking a little business.’

‘Don’t let me interrupt,’ said Bruno, amused to see the appreciative sideways glances the Baron kept casting at Beatrice. ‘Antoine and I have been searching the river, looking for the place where that dead woman could have entered the water. You probably heard of it.’

‘Heard of it,’ said Vexin, raising a thick eyebrow and smoothing his rather long and glossy black hair back with a hand that wore a gold signet ring. ‘It’s all over the paper.’

From a vacant chair he lifted a copy of Sud-Ouest and held up the front page. The main photo had been taken from the bridge at St Denis and showed the woman lying on her back, arms outstretched. Conscious of their family readership, the editors had put black bars over her breasts and pubis, but there was a close-up of the pentagram on her belly and the large headline read: ‘Satanism in St Denis?’

‘This is monstrous. Not at all the image of St Denis that we want to present,’ said the Mayor, flinging the copy of SudOuest onto the council table with disdain.

‘I’m not sure about that,’ said Jerome, who ran a small history theme park where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake twice a day. ‘This kind of thing makes us stand out from the crowd; it could be just the kind of publicity we need.’

‘We’ve had a rush of bookings this morning,’ added Philippe, who ran the Hotel St Denis. On the council he usually acted as the spokesman for the town’s businessmen. He pointed down to the town square. ‘The bars and cafes are full already. It may not be the image you want, but it’s certainly attracting visitors.’

‘The devil moves in mysterious ways,’ said Father Sentout. No great friend of the Mayor, his presence at this meeting of the town’s elders testified to the Mayor’s unease.

Bruno leafed through the paper, to a photo of Foucher in mid-air, diving towards the punt and another of Bruno and Antoine standing beside Maurice as he cast his fishing line in vain. The paper seemed to have missed the significance of the black candles and there was no reference to the decapitated cockerel. Bruno would try to keep that to himself.

‘The immediate reaction was bound to include some ghoulish interest. But think about the longer term. I really don’t think we want to be known as a town of devil-worshippers,’ the Mayor said. He turned to Bruno. ‘Perhaps you could give us an interim report on the investigation. Do we yet know who this unfortunate woman was?’

Bruno told them no. She did not appear to be on any lists of missing persons. With no obvious cause of death and no sign on the body of foul play but evidence of heavy cocaine use, the most likely explanation was a suicide.