The Provence Puzzle: An Inspector Damiot Mystery(27)

He watched the old man stride across the cobbled stable yard toward the kitchen door. Must be in his late seventies, but his back was straight and he walked without a limp.

“You talked him into it,” Bardou murmured. “I’d like another look at the place myself.”

Damiot noticed Fric-Frac sniffing at the ground.

The caretaker had left a visible trail on the soft earth. Prints, from his heavy boots, that seemed to be damp.

The dog was licking at one of the footprints.

He realized that it was stained with blood.





CHAPTER 10


As they went through a mirrored gallery after inspecting the enormous ballroom, Damiot noticed that Pouchet, marching ahead of them, had changed his boots.

Bardou remained silent, walking beside him, staring at everything.

The tall double windows on opposite walls were closed but not curtained, and the mirrors between them reflected a pattern of bare tree branches tossing in the sunshine. The effect was dazzling, as though the walls were not solid.

A row of chandeliers in the ceiling held no candles.

“We’re in the west wing!” Pouchet opened another door. “Where the family used to live.”

Damiot followed him into a spacious room with paneled walls and a huge marble fireplace facing another row of tall windows.

“Not much left here…” The old man hesitated, squinting at the furniture lined against a wall. “Nobody can remove anything unless they have written permission from the lawyers.”

Damiot squinted at the high ceiling, with its carved figures surrounding paintings of nymphs and fauns. This west wing of the Chateau must be near that terrace where he had glimpsed the monster…

The old man swung the door open. “Next is the salon where Madame la Comtesse liked to sit. I came here every morning to get my orders for the day.”

They followed him into a smaller room, bright with sunshine from floor-to-ceiling double windows. The light was accentuated by white-painted woodwork, walls covered with faded yellow satin, white marble fireplace, and a recently polished parquet floor. The Louis Seize furniture was arranged as though the Comtesse might appear at any moment to take her place on the small sofa near the fireplace.

Here all the paintings were portraits. Two of the faces—men in fancy wigs and uniforms—seemed familiar.

It was the face carved on the gateposts! The de Mohrt face…

Faint wheel tracks on the parquet floor. The old man must push a small cart from room to room with his cleaning materials.

Damiot remembered being brought here one Christmas, with other children from the village. They had been lined up to sing carols in the old langue de Provence for Madame la Comtesse and, afterward, had been given cakes made with nougat and glacéed fruit…

“…same furniture when the old lady was alive,” Pouchet was saying. “People came after she died, packed everything from the other rooms into cases, and shipped ’em off to Paris.” He crossed the sunny room as he talked. “Next to this is the library.” Opening a door, into a darker room. “The old lady and her grandson, the young Comte, were always reading in here…”

Fric-Frac darted ahead of Pouchet.

Damiot followed, Bardou bringing up the end of the procession.

More tall windows in the library, but here the sunlight was absorbed by the dark woodwork. Rows of empty bookshelves reached to an elaborately carved ceiling. Black marble fireplace and another parquet floor, this one of an even darker wood than the walls. There was no furniture here.

Damiot sniffed the air. “Someone’s living in the chateau?”

Pouchet looked back, scowling. “I live here, M’sieur.”

“I smell cooking.”

“That’s a cassoulet for my dinner. Been on the stove all morning. The smell comes through the cracks in these floors.”

“Cassoulet?” It was not, he was positive, a cassoulet but something made with truffles. The distinctive odor was unmistakable. As he followed Pouchet through the library, he noticed something red on Fric-Frac’s left leg, trailing on the floor as she walked. “Here, Fric-Frac!” He reached down and removed a strand of dark red yarn caught in her black curls.

Did Pouchet have a sweater this color? Or was there a woman here?

He rolled the strand into a little ball and thrust it into his pocket.

The old man led them through a long passage, windowless and bare, toward a door at the far end.

Damiot watched Fric-Frac dart to a side door that must lead to an inner corridor. She pressed her nose against the crack at the bottom and growled. “No, Fric-Frac! Here! This way…”

She turned from the door, reluctantly, and followed him into what had been the dining room.

Was there something on the other side of that door? A cat? Or had someone been standing there, listening? Was it the monster?

Now Fric-Frac was following an invisible trail across the parquet floor, toward the nearest windows. The sunny terrace outside must be the one he had watched last night, from the hill. He followed her to the windows. “Can I get through here?”

“Mais certainement, M’sieur,” Pouchet answered. “All these windows open from inside.”

He turned the knob, raising a metal rod that released the double windows, grasped a handle, and opened the window without a sound. These hinges had been oiled recently.