Peter May: Cast Iron

He smiled at Enzo’s surprise. ‘My ancestors were Italian and English. There’s very little about me that’s French.’ He grinned. ‘Except, of course, for my entire cultural upbringing. And my name.’ He paused. ‘Guillaume Martin. And you’re Enzo Macleod, I presume.’ He looked Enzo up and down. ‘A Scotsman.’ It sounded more like a statement than a question.

‘The last time I looked.’

‘And how is your French?’

‘I’ve lived here for twenty-five years, monsieur,’ Enzo said in French. ‘I have taught science to university students and raised a daughter who is as French as frogs’ legs.’

Martin tipped his head in acknowledgement. ‘Then let us speak French. I am always more at home in my native tongue.’

They walked up to the main house. Martin said, ‘There used to be a Roman road running along here, between the watermill at the foot of the hill and the windmill at the top.’ He waved his hand across half an acre of neatly trimmed lawn towards an infinity pool built into the hill and looking out over the view. ‘That’s where my Italian ancestor, Gandolfo, built a massive greenhouse for the Duke of Duras to house his exotic plants. In return for the duke gifting him the château and the estate.’

‘Why would the duke do that?’

‘Oh, it was all part of an attempt to repopulate the area and reinvigorate the economy. Gandolfo was a renowned wine grower in Italy, and he brought his enormous family with him.’ They stopped outside the main door of the house. ‘Plague and the Hundred Years’ War had laid waste to this whole area, Monsieur Macleod. There wasn’t a living soul for miles around. The Desert Lands, they called it. And, for the next two hundred years, they brought in foreigners and folk from other parts of France to breathe life back into it.’ He turned to look up at the house. ‘Gandolfo put a second floor on this part and a new front on it, making it pretty much as you see it now. And when there was no further use for the greenhouse, they knocked it down and used the materials to build the chais — or wine cellar, I suppose you’d call it — and the barn. Come in and meet Madame.’

Madame was a mouse of a woman, tiny and fragile, and Enzo was afraid to shake her hand too firmly when she offered it, in case he broke bones. Her hair was fine, spun silver, and she had skin as smooth and unlined as a twenty-year-old. Her smile spread across a face still handsome in spite of the years, and soft brown eyes met his with candour and warmth.

‘What peculiar eyes you have,’ she said.

Enzo smiled. ‘One brown, one blue.’ He ran a hand back over the crown of his head. ‘And a white streak in my hair — slowly disappearing, now, as it greys. They used to call me Magpie.’

She frowned. ‘Is there a connection?’

‘Between the eyes and the hair? Yes. Both symptomatic of a genetic condition called Waardenburg syndrome. But don’t worry, I’ve had it all my life and I haven’t died of it yet.’

She laughed. ‘Would you like tea, Monsieur Macleod? I would have offered coffee, but I know you English like your tea.’

‘He’s Scottish, Mireille,’ Martin said. ‘You’ll offend him if you call him English.’

Enzo grinned. ‘Not at all. But coffee would be fine.’

They sat around an enormous wooden table in the centre of a vast kitchen that had clearly been designed to cater for a very large family, and probably servants and farm workers, too. An old Belfast sink stood beneath the window and piles of old tea boxes were stacked up against the far wall, beside one of two cookers. The second, a wood-burning range, was set into the long wall where an arched fireplace must once have stood. Worktops and cupboards ran along either side of it, and the place was filled with warm cooking smells and soft light.

While Madame Martin busied herself with the coffee, her husband lit up a small cheroot. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’

Enzo didn’t see how he could.

‘Damned smoking laws,’ Martin said. ‘They’ll be banning it in the privacy of our own homes next.’ He tilted his head back and breathed blue smoke at the ceiling. ‘So, Monsieur Macleod. You have amassed yourself quite a reputation. Are you going to find who killed our Lucie for us?’

‘I certainly intend to try, Monsieur... I’m not quite sure how to address you. Is it Monsieur le Président, or Monsieur le Juge?’

Martin’s eyes crinkled in amusement. ‘I am long retired, Monsieur Macleod, and was never one to stand on ceremony outside of the courtroom, anyway. “Monsieur” will suffice. And “Guillaume”, if I decide I like you.’

‘Well, I have already decided that I do,’ said Madame Martin as she brought coffee pot and cups to the table on a tray. ‘You have an honest face, Monsieur Macleod.’

Enzo smiled. ‘Thank you, Madame.’

‘Oh, “Mireille” will suffice.’ And she flashed twinkling eyes at her husband. But just as quickly the twinkle faded and a shadow crossed her face. After a moment she looked at Enzo again. ‘Sometimes I forget for ten or fifteen minutes. Even an hour or two on occasion. Once or twice, even for a whole day. And then I feel terribly guilty. Someone killed our lovely Lucie, monsieur. She would have been in her forties now, and with luck might have given us grandchildren. She had a whole life to live and someone took it from her. I have never felt I deserved the right to laugh or take pleasure in simple things since the day she went missing.’ She could no longer meet his eye and occupied herself with pouring the coffee.

Enzo glanced at her husband and saw his glazed expression as he stared, unseeing, at the floor. Some memory filled his thoughts and his eyes, his lips pressed together in a grim line. And, as so often happened, Enzo was reminded that this was not just some mystery to be unravelled, a puzzle to be solved. These were real people, with real lives and real sorrow. ‘Tell me about the day she went missing,’ he said.

Martin pulled the door shut behind them as they stepped outside. He had avoided discussing Lucie in front of his wife while they drank their coffee, telling Enzo that he would go through it all with him on the walk down to the lake where she was found. He turned to Enzo now. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘She still gets very upset.’

‘Of course.’

He quickly changed the subject himself, waving a hand towards a collection of crumbling outbuildings. ‘Those were originally part of the house,’ he said. ‘An oven for drying prunes and meat, and a bread oven. They date back to the sixth century and still function, although the earliest date we could find for the house itself was on an old quoinstone: 1456. Come and see the chais .’

They walked around the house to the old, stone wine cellar, and Martin pushed open one of the huge, arched double doors. The wood was grey with age, deeply lined and knotted, and protested noisily. Inside, it was dark and fusty, and it took several moments for Enzo’s eyes to adjust. It was a big empty space with rafters high overhead, cobwebs hanging in great loops as if freshly fired from a designer’s web-gun to dress the set of a horror movie. The effect was emphasised by Martin turning and pointing to the wall above the lintel, where there was a pattern of what looked suspiciously like human bones set into the stonework.

‘Back when Lucie was still just a child, we started digging out the floor of the chais with a view to laying concrete and converting the building into guest rooms. We had only gone down about twelve inches when we came across bones. Human remains. An old grave, I thought, and as a kind of memorial I set them into the wall above the door there. But as we kept digging there were just more and more of them, and, in the end, I gave up the idea altogether.’