Martin Walker - The Devil's Cave

‘How did it happen?’ Bruno asked.

Raymond led him forward to the smashed window of the sitting room, the walls charred black and the furniture in smoking ruins.

‘That glass on the floor is not just from your window,’ said Raymond. ‘It’s a bottle, and you can smell the petrol as well as I can. Somebody threw a Molotov cocktail inside.’

‘Jesus,’ said the Baron. ‘What sort of sick bastard would do this?’

‘They tried the same in the kitchen but just hit the outside of the window frame,’ Raymond said.

Raymond led Bruno round to the back and pointed to the petrol cap hanging loose from the side of Bruno’s elderly Land-Rover. He then gestured at the bottle tree where Bruno stored his empty wine bottles until it was time to fill them again from the annual hogshead he shared with the Baron.

‘It looks like they used your bottles, your petrol,’ Raymond said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It wasn’t a They,’ said Bruno. ‘It was a she. And I don’t think she’s finished yet.’ He turned to the Baron. ‘How fast can you get me to Pamela’s place? I think she’ll go for my horse next.’

The Citroen DS was the car that had been fast enough, rugged enough and had the endurance to save Charles de Gaulle’s life twice from successive assassination attempts, as the Baron never tired of saying. But his car was now fifty years old and its legendary suspension groaned as the Baron hurled it down the lane from Bruno’s home. They hit the road into town with the speedometer touching eighty and still accelerating as they went past the Gendarmerie. The Baron had to slow for the roundabout but accelerated hard onto the old stone bridge across the river, the imperious klaxon blaring as other cars scattered and scurried to the side of the road.

As they entered the long lane that led to Pamela’s house. Bruno scanned the horizon for a sign of smoke but saw none so far. And when they crested the rise, still accelerating so they briefly left the ground, he saw no sign of horse nor rider in the grounds around the old farmhouse. Above all, there was no flare of flame in the stables.

He looked up towards the ridge and there was nothing. But then from the long forest ride he saw the flash of white as the mare came down through the trees at a gallop, the rider tall in the saddle, one arm held out and holding something that glinted in the sun.

‘That’s her,’ Bruno said.

‘ Putain , it’s going to be close,’ the Baron said, ignoring the steam that was coming from the long bonnet of his car and the flaring red lights on his dashboard. ‘When I tell you, hit the handbrake as hard as you can.’

Urged on by its rider, the white mare found a new burst of pace as it reached the level field that led to Pamela’s courtyard and the stables beyond. But the Baron held his speed as the DS hit the bump where the gravel drive began. He threw the car into the bend, ignoring the loud scrape that came from the wing brushing the gatepost. Understanding what his friend intended to do, Bruno released both seat belts. He tucked Balzac firmly into his shirt, buttoning him in.

The white mare was in the courtyard, suddenly slowing as the rider released the reins. She held a lighter to the petrol-soaked rag in the mouth of the bottle and was reaching back her arm to throw.

‘Now,’ shouted the Baron, stabbing at his brakes.

He threw the car into a four-wheel drift as Bruno hauled on the handbrake and the Baron hit the throttle a final time. The white mare was rearing on its hind legs. The bottle caught the light and Bruno could see the flame. With the shriek of an avenging fury Eugenie hurled it onto the car that was sliding into her path, blocking her way to her chosen target of Hector’s stable.

Bruno grabbed the Baron’s arm and opened his door. Bracing a foot against the steering-wheel column he hauled his friend bodily out of the car. They fell and rolled together onto the sharp gravel of the courtyard as the car exploded behind them and they heard the piercing scream of an animal in mortal pain. Horse or woman, they could not tell which.

It might have been both, from the great surge of fire that roared up from the stricken car to embrace and devour the mare and rider together. Erupting anew, the flames caught the white mane of the horse and the flaring darkness of Eugenie’s hair as both crumpled into the burning wreckage of the car.

Ironic, thought Bruno as the tiny bell tolled, that Athenais should be buried beside the Red Chateau’s family chapel where she’d gone through the Black Mass that had been the prelude to her death. Even more ironic that she would rest at arm’s length from her cousin, the Count, whose own grave had been dug alongside. At least Athenais had a respectable gathering of mourners. They were led by her grandmother in her wheelchair and by her teenage daughter from America, Marie-Francoise. The Red Countess looked desperately frail, but her eyes were dry and her grip on Marie-Francoise’s hand was firm. She kept her gaze fixed on Father Sentout as he spoke the Latin phrases she had requested for the funeral service.

Her sister Heloise sat hunched and muttering to one side, casting the occasional venomous glance at Bruno and J-J, each now formally absolved of fault by the Procureur ’s inquiry into the shooting. It had established that Bruno’s shot had hit the Count in the knee and J-J’s had been the fatal bullet in the chest. Marie-Francoise had testified that the Count had fired first, after Bruno’s shout of ‘Police — drop your weapons.’ It had helped when the Gendarme medic told the inquiry that Bruno had insisted on trying the underground river once it was clear that the Count would certainly die unless he reached a hospital within the hour.

It was Bruno’s second funeral in three days. There had been a smaller turnout for Louis Junot at the crematorium outside Perigueux; just his widow and Francette, and Bruno who had driven them there. At the last minute, the white Jaguar had driven up the gravel road and Beatrice stepped out to join them, stylish in black. She and Francette had exchanged a cool air kiss, and then Beatrice had stood apart and alone. She had left before Bruno could exchange a word.

With the Count, Foucher and Eugenie all dead, the interrogation of Beatrice had been of critical importance as the Procureur , J-J and Bruno all tried to unravel the events and motives that had led to their deaths and those of Junot and Athenais. Beatrice had been accompanied by an expensive and protective Parisian lawyer, who seemed to have more than a professional relationship with his client, which came as no great surprise to Bruno. She had admitted taking part in the first Black Mass in the cave, with Athenais, Francette and Eugenie. It had been just an elaborate sexual game, she insisted, of the kind she’d known in her previous life in Paris. Foucher had played the role of the priest. Abouard the Lebanese and the Count had taken part, along with a couple of the Count’s business clients.

Beatrice claimed no knowledge of the second Black Mass in the family chapel at the Red Chateau at which Athenais had died. But she knew that Athenais had been obsessed with her ancestor, the royal mistress, and equally obsessed with the Count. Bruno had asked if Beatrice could confirm that Athenais had believed she could win the Count’s affections with a love potion from the Black Mass, just as her ancestress had done.

‘Absolutely,’ Beatrice had replied. ‘She spoke about it all the time. It used to drive Eugenie crazy because as far as Eugenie was concerned, the Count was hers.’

‘Crazy enough to want to kill Athenais?’ the Procureur had asked.

Beatrice had nodded decisively. She insisted she had not been present when Athenais had died, but she knew there had been a panic at the Red Chateau. She had seen the fire in the lagoon across the water and watched it flicker and die as the boat drifted out into the main stream and down the river. But she knew better than to ask questions of Foucher or the Count. It was only when she saw the newspaper that she realized the boat had carried the body of Athenais.