Cast Iron

Chapter forty-seven

The light was fading by the time Enzo’s 2CV toiled up the hill to the Château Gandolfo. The ground was still sodden from the recent rain, and so there was no plume of chalk dust rising in his wake this time. But the sky had cleared, and only a few dark clouds bubbled up on the distant horizon as stars appeared faintly in the darkest blue, presaging the coming night.

Lights burned in windows below the red-tiled roman roof, and the twin pigeonniers stood in stark silhouette against the sky.

Enzo parked in front of the wing that housed old Guillaume Martin’s study. He peered in the window and saw a light burning at the former judge’s desk, but there was no one there. He turned and walked instead around the back of the house, past the old bread and prune ovens, to where squares of light fell from the kitchen door and windows. He knocked on the door and through the glass could see Madame Martin busy at the stove. She turned at the sound of his knocking, and wiping her hands on her apron hurried to see who was at the door.

Her face lit up in pleasant surprise when she saw Enzo. ‘Monsieur Macleod. Come in, come in,’ she said. And he stepped into the warmth of the kitchen. Until now, he had not been aware of just how cold it was outside.

‘I’m looking for your husband,’ he said. ‘Is he at home?’

‘Oh, yes, Guillaume’s out in the chais, the old wine shed. He spends a lot of time out there. I think perhaps he’s still hankering after the idea of converting it into guest rooms.’ She laughed. ‘As if we needed any more.’

One of the old wooden double doors stood ajar, a dull flickering yellow light from inside stretching long across the path as Enzo went around the side of the house to the chais. The door creaked loudly as he pulled it open to step inside, and Guillaume Martin turned, startled, at the sound of it.

‘Monsieur Macleod?’ His face was half lit by an old oil lamp hanging on a wire from one of the rafters. The surprise that initially registered on his features changed as sharp eyes searched Enzo’s face. And something like resignation settled on him.

Enzo said, ‘What did you do with the rest of Blanc’s letters to Lucie?’

The old man turned away, unable to face his accuser, and he pushed his hands deep into his pockets. ‘Destroyed them, of course. I can’t begin to tell you how every word made my skin crawl.’ He breathed deeply. ‘I had to keep one, of course. The one that would best point to Blanc’s singular obsession with my daughter. An obsession not shared by Lucie.’

‘Except that it was,’ Enzo said. ‘I have her letters to him. It was no singular obsession, Monsieur le Juge.’

Martin’s head came around, eyes blazing with defiance and denial. But he could find no words of rebuttal. If Enzo had her letters what point would there be?

Enzo said, ‘There’s no accounting for love, monsieur. And I don’t pretend to understand it. But your daughter loved that man.’ He hesitated. ‘In her letters she tells Blanc about the day you found his letters to her. Your absolute fury at the disgrace she would bring on her family. Her defiance, and the dreadful rows that followed. How she threatened to leave home for good and tell the world about her love for Régis.’

Martin pulled his hands from his pockets and clenched his fists as his sides. ‘I did not mean to kill her.’ He gave each of the words its own emphasis, as if underlining them. As if lack of intention would make the act of murder somehow acceptable. ‘The last thing in the world I would have wanted to do was hurt her.’

‘Then why did you?’ Enzo was unable to find even an ounce of sympathy for the man, and that must have conveyed itself to Martin, because he spun around, voice raised.

‘Because she was going to do it. She was going to leave.’ His breath was coming in short, rapid bursts along with a memory he had probably spent more than two decades trying to bury. ‘She came looking for me out here that Saturday afternoon, when her mother had gone, and she told me she had made up her mind. She was going to pack her things and, when she returned to Bordeaux on the Monday, she wouldn’t be back. We had the most horrible row. I’d never seen her like that. Shouting and scornful, almost goading me into trying to stop her. That man had contaminated her somehow. Sullied her.’

He fixed Enzo with pained eyes, as if pleading for understanding.

‘This was my little girl. My lovely little girl, with her golden locks and pigtails, who used to sit on my knee and tell me she loved me. My little Lucie.’ Silent tears poured down his cheeks. ‘And there she was, standing there, shouting in my face. Telling me that I knew nothing about love, knew nothing about her, knew nothing about a man who pimped prostitutes for a living.’ A sob caught his throat. ‘I couldn’t stand it. I just couldn’t stand it. It had to stop, monsieur. I had to make it stop.’

‘So you killed her.’

‘I didn’t mean to. I didn’t. There was an old wooden haft of a pickaxe leaning against the door, and suddenly it was in my hand and I was lashing out.’ His eyes were wide, staring, reliving the horror of the moment. ‘When I realised what I had done, I wept over her body for what felt like hours. On my knees, holding her hand. I would have given anything to take back the moment. Anything.’

His own words drew him back to the here and the now, in the dark of this dimly lit old wine cellar, and he looked at Enzo. ‘And then I knew there was no way I could tell Mireille that I had killed our baby. I panicked. I hid her body and cleaned away all traces of her blood. But I had no idea what to do next. When Mireille got home, I told her Lucie had gone for a walk and hadn’t come back. It was all I could do to persuade her not to call the police right there and then. When she still hadn’t returned, hours later, I suggested we search her room.’

‘And found the letter that you’d left there from Blanc.’

He nodded. ‘It was never going to be enough, and when they started searching for her, they were sure to find the body.’ His eyes wandered involuntarily towards a dark corner at the back of the chais, and Enzo wondered if that was where he had put her. ‘Then it was as if God had stepped in and offered me a way out. Blanc was arrested on the Monday for the murder of those three prostitutes, and I knew what I had to do.’

Enzo said, ‘You came down here in the dark that night and strangled your own daughter, post-mortem, so it would seem like Blanc might have done it, if ever she was found. Then you carried her down to the lake, weighted her body, and dropped her into the deepest part of it.’ Enzo paused, biting his lip to contain his anger. What this old man had done was simply unforgivable. ‘Your own daughter!’

The old man lifted eyes filled with shame. ‘What happens now?’

‘You should know,’ Enzo said. ‘You must have sat in judgement of people just like you many times.’ He controlled his breathing. ‘You should get a coat and we’ll go together to the gendarmerie in Duras. You can make your statement there.’

Madame Martin knew that something was wrong, but the old judge did not have the courage to tell her. ‘I’m just going to get my coat and hat,’ he said, ‘and Monsieur Macleod and I are going for a short drive. We won’t be too long.’

He headed out to the old Roman path that led down to his study.

The old lady looked at Enzo with fear in sad eyes, and he wondered if, somewhere behind them, perhaps she knew what it was that was wrong. ‘Where are you going?’

Enzo was acutely embarrassed. Here was maybe the only innocent in this whole sordid story. A woman who, inexplicably, had lost a daughter, and was soon to discover that the man she loved had killed her. For Mireille Martin it was the worst of all possible outcomes. He said, ‘We’re just going into Duras.’

‘Why?’

She was spared his answer by the muffled sound of a distant gunshot. Frightened eyes immediately sought Enzo’s for clarification. For his part, he knew exactly what had happened. He hurried through the house and out on to the Roman road, old Madame Martin trailing along behind him. The door to Martin’s study stood open. Martin himself was spreadeagled in his captain’s chair, most of the top of his head missing where he had shot himself through the roof of his mouth.

The sound of the scream that tore itself from Madame Martin’s throat was one, Enzo knew, that would stay with him for the rest of his life.