The Night Gate

Chapter Four

It was a cold, crisp, clear day when Dominique parked Enzo’s Citröen on the castine of the palisade, the sheer walls of Carennac’s sixteenth-century château rising up behind them, lingering mist from the river below evaporating in the sunlight.

Near-naked trees cast spindly shadows on white gravel littered with leaves that crunched underfoot as they stepped out of the car. Enzo clutched the Michelin guide that he had been studying on the journey up from Cahors. On the drive into the village from the main road they had passed a couple of hotels, one of which was closed up for the season, and a small store that also served coffee. But the place was deserted.

Dominique looked around. ‘Where is everyone?’

Enzo said, ‘According to the guide, the out-of-season population is little more than 400. But that probably takes in the farms and outlying houses around here as well. They get hundreds of thousands of visitors in the summer, though.’

‘Why? What’s here?’

‘Apart from the château, an eleventh-century church and cloisters, and a twelfth-century tympanum.’

‘What’s that? Some kind of drum?’

‘An architectural feature of some kind,’ Enzo said, flicking through the pages. ‘And there’s a tower down by the water where Fénelon is said to have written his famous Telemachus.’

Dominique screwed up her face. ‘Never heard of it.’

Enzo grinned. ‘No, neither have I.’

‘Can’t be that famous, then. Which way?’

‘Not sure. Let’s head to the end of the palisade.’

Dominique slipped her arm through his and pulled him close as they walked through the morning sunshine to where the road turned sharply to the left. Branching to the right it crossed a long bridge that spanned a dry riverbed leading down to the Dordogne. On the corner, an arch led to a steeply cobbled street that climbed along the side of the Eglise Saint-Pierre. A flight of wide stone steps led to an elaborately carved entrance, an assemblage of stone figures above a cluster of columns leading into the church itself. Enzo could almost feel the breath of centuries exhaling from its dark interior.

A small bistro on the opposite corner was shut, as was the tourist shop next to it. A staircase leading down to a terraced restaurant below was roped off. And Enzo felt a little of the sadness of the abandonment described in Francis Cabrel’s evocative song, ‘Hors Saison’. Out of Season.

Tall buildings with criss-crossing half timbers loomed over them as they followed a narrow street into the heart of the village. Shadows cast themselves deep across the tarmac, and the scent of woodsmoke filled the air. Evidently the diminished population of this chaotic jumble of stone houses built over centuries around the church were all indoors, huddled around hearths or wood-burning stoves.

At a curve of the street a small woman suddenly appeared, a split-cane shopping basket crooked over her arm. Grey-streaked dark hair was pulled back beneath a pale headscarf, her face deeply lined and still tanned from the long-departed summer sun.

Enzo asked if she could direct them to the park and she gave a mute flick of her head towards a street that climbed steeply away to their left, cantilevered houses pressing in close on either side to shut out the sun.

In a phone call with Magali the previous evening, Enzo had established that the Second World War remains had been found in a tiny park at the heart of the village. A recent storm had brought down a tree. Its roots, torn from the earth, had lifted a tangle of bones and leather and other remains with them.

At the top of the street the road opened out, branching up to their right and down to their left. Straight ahead stood a tiny patch of raised greenery delineated by gnarled old trees beyond iron railings and a handful of steps. A raised cross stood sentinel by the gate.

But their focus was drawn immediately away from the little park by the lights of several police vehicles, and the flashing orange of an ambulance. Uniformed gendarmes gathered on a covered landing at the top of steps leading to a house that overlooked the park. The door to the house stood open, and in the autumn silence of the village they could hear a hubbub of voices coming from within.

Dominique was instantly curious. ‘What’s going on here?’

But Enzo didn’t want to know. ‘None of our business.’ And he took her hand and led her up the steps to the park. To their left three benches stood among several ancient trees amidst the drifts of brittle autumn leaves brought down prematurely by the storm. To their right a small war memorial was set among a collection of boulders, and flanked by four trees. Nineteen souls had been taken from this village by the Great War. Only one by its successor. And yet, someone else had died here. Someone quite alien, a long way from home. At the far side of the park stood an old chapel, now an exhibition space closed up for the season. To the right of it, almost against the back wall of the park, lay the skeleton of the fallen tree. The area of ground which had been torn up by its roots to reveal the long hidden grave had been taped off, and a canvas cover erected over it to protect the earth from rain.

‘A lime tree,’ Enzo said. ‘Looks like it’s been dead for some time.’

He fished out his phone and took several photographs to establish the setting, before moving in to take more detailed shots of the broken ground. He crouched down to brush aside fallen leaves, and picked up a curved piece of discoloured and broken terracotta. There were several more pieces of varying sizes lying in among the disturbed earth.

Dominique crouched beside him. ‘Mean anything?’

‘Probably pieces of an old clay drainage pipe.’ He moved to the outer area of the grass torn up by the roots and crouched again. With delicate fingers he uncovered the remains of the pipe itself, leading away beyond the chapel, about two feet beneath the surface, the merest hint of a depression in the grass. ‘Yes, here it is.’ It was choked solid with earth. He glanced back along the area of disturbance to where the broken root system projected from the ground. It had brought up the bones and broken the old pipe at the same time.

Enzo stood up and took several more photographs.

Dominique slipped her arm through his again. ‘So what are you divining, Holmes?’

‘Elementary, my dear Watson,’ Enzo said. ‘The body was buried below the pipe.’

‘You mean they dug beneath it to hide the corpse?’

Enzo shook his head. ‘No. The pipe was laid after the body had been buried. My guess would be that the trench for laying the pipe had already been dug, and the killers of our unfortunate victim took advantage of it to hide the body. After all, if they’d dug a fresh grave here, it would have been apparent to everyone.’

Dominique nodded. ‘So they dug down just below the level of the existing trench and covered it over, knowing that the drainage pipe would be laid on top of it then buried beneath fresh earth. And no one would be any the wiser.’

‘The pipe was probably laid by a cantonnier, working for the mairie,’ Enzo said. ‘So in theory, all you would have to do is go back through municipal records to find a date for when the work was done, and you’d have a reasonably accurate approximation of when he was murdered. Certainly to within a day or two.’

Dominique grinned. ‘Which is not at all bad after seventy-odd years.’

‘Monsieur Macleod?’ The voice rang out in the cold air and startled them. They turned to see a gendarme hurrying across the grass in their direction. He was a young man. Mid thirties, Enzo thought. Thinning mousy-brown hair was cut to a stubble in an attempt to disguise encroaching baldness. He was very nearly as tall as Enzo, and wore a short, dark blue fleece with a distinctive white stripe across chest and arms above a black leather gun belt hung with keys. He clutched his cap in his hands, and Enzo noted the three bars on his epaulette denoting the rank of capitaine. A pale blue mask dangled from one ear.

For a moment, Enzo thought he was actually going to shake his hand, but the gendarme stopped short, as if suddenly remembering himself. He was beaming like a star-struck schoolkid. ‘Monsieur Macleod, it’s an absolute pleasure.’ He glanced towards Dominique and somehow managed to dismiss her with the briefest of acknowledgements before turning his gaze back on Enzo. ‘I recognised you from my cuttings collection. Followed every one of your cases and kept my own album. Outstanding, monsieur, just outstanding.’

Enzo shuffled uncomfortably at this sudden and effusive outpouring of admiration and flicked a look towards Dominique. He saw a tiny smile playing about her lips. ‘That’s not what the police thought at the time,’ he said.

The gendarme was oblivious. ‘I’d shake your hand, but of course I can’t. I should introduce myself. I’m Capitaine Michel Arnaud. Based at Vayrac, just across the river.’ His pale blue eyes positively shone.

To avoid further embarrassment, Enzo nodded towards the collection of police vehicles and officers at the house adjoining the park. ‘What’s going on here?’ And he avoided Dominique’s look. After all, hadn’t he just told her it was none of their business?

Arnaud half glanced back towards the house. ‘A murder. Not very cold though. Happened just last night.’

‘Domestic?’ Enzo asked, although he had no real interest.

‘Oh, no. Not at all. The very opposite, actually. It’s quite puzzling, and very bloody.’ His face lit up with sudden inspiration. ‘Why don’t I walk you through it? I’d really appreciate your expert opinion.’

Enzo shook his head. ‘I don’t think so, capitaine. I’ve retired from all that sort of thing.’

‘Oh, go on, Enzo. It would do you no harm to keep your hand in.’

Enzo turned a look on Dominique that might have killed a lesser mortal.

‘What are you doing here anyway?’ Arnaud asked suddenly.

Enzo inclined his head towards the fallen tree. ‘A colleague in Paris, a forensic archaeologist, asked me to take a look at this spot where it seems they found some Second World War remains.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Arnaud said. ‘The skeleton in the roots. The tree came down in a storm about a week ago. And the bones were hopelessly tangled in the root system. I think the tree was planted sometime after the body was buried, but it had been dead for a while. Some kind of fungus. Should have been removed. Our concern was establishing how old the remains were, given the bullet hole in the skull. But it quickly became apparent that it was historical. We were instructed to collect every last piece and send it to Paris. Not the most pleasant of jobs.’

‘Indeed.’

A commotion on the steps of the house caused them to turn in time to see two men carrying a body bag on a stretcher down to the waiting ambulance.

‘That’s them removing the body now. Finally. It took an age for the pathologist to get here, and forensics are pretty much done. Let me show you the crime scene.’ He held an arm out to guide him towards the steps, but raised a hand to stop Dominique. ‘Perhaps your daughter should stay out here.’

Enzo’s face darkened. ‘My wife,’ he said.

‘Oh.’ Arnaud blushed to the roots of his vanishing hair.

‘And she won’t be fazed by a bloody crime scene, capitaine. Dominique was a gendarme herself for many years.’

Realisation bloomed suddenly in Arnaud’s recollection. ‘Dominique Chazal,’ he said. ‘You were the investigating officer in the murder of Marc Fraysse, the Michelin-starred chef.’

Dominique inclined her head in acknowledgement.

‘My sincerest apologies, madame. I had no idea.’ He fought to recover himself. ‘All the better, then, to have an additional pair of expert eyes on my crime scene.’ He pushed awkwardly past them to lead the way. ‘Come.’

Enzo glared at Dominique as they followed in his wake.

Arnaud barked a command, and the officers hanging about at the top of the steps quickly dispersed. Enzo and Dominique and the capitaine climbed up to the small covered terrace at the door, avoiding areas which had been taped off around several partial bloody footprints. A knotted old vine snaked its way up to the roof above them, shrivelled grapes still clinging to its leafless branches. The remains of autumn-withered geraniums spilled from plant pots along the top of the wall. They had a fine view from here of the uprooted tree, and Enzo paused to take another photograph. Arnaud attached his mask to his other ear, and Enzo and Dominique donned theirs. Impossible to socially distance here. Or inside the house.

‘Let me explain before we go in,’ he said.

Enzo sighed inwardly. This was not how he had envisaged his day. ‘Please do.’

Arnaud took out a notebook to consult. ‘The house belongs to a seventy-five-year-old spinster called Anny Lavigne. She was born in this house, and has lived here all her life. She inherited the property when her mother died twenty years ago, a lady then in her eighties.’ Without consulting his notes he added, ‘Anny took a degree in English at the Université de Toulouse Capitole, and taught it at the collège in Saint-Céré for much of her working life.’

‘Saint-Céré?’ Dominique asked.

Arnaud seemed mildly irritated by the interruption. ‘It’s a town about twenty minutes upriver.’ He closed his notebook now. ‘She and her mother travelled a lot when they were both younger. But Anny’s been retired for over ten years now. She’s a well-known village character. Organises concerts in the church every year during the local music festival, carrying on the work of her mother who brought the Heidelberg Chamber Orchestra to the festival for many years. She had a younger half-sister who died in her forties, leaving a teenage daughter, Elodie, who married young and now has a teenage son of her own. Elodie’s an amateur opera singer and used to give impromptu concerts here at her aunt’s house. They would draw quite a crowd. Mostly wealthy Parisians who came down to stay in their maisons secondaires during the summer.’

There was a dreamy quality in his smiling eyes.

‘She sings very well,’ he said. ‘I attended a number of the concerts myself.’ And then, catching himself, he cast his gaze towards the houses crowding in around them. ‘Carennac was in a dilapidated state for many years — half-ruined, you might say. It’s only the money of wealthy inheritors that has restored it to its present condition. Largely through the good auspices of Les Amis de Carennac.’

Enzo ran his eyes over Anny Lavigne’s house. ‘It looks like there’s been money spent on this place, too.’

Arnaud nodded. ‘Over many years, I think. Originally the habitable part of the house would all have been on this level. Over time they’ve built bedrooms in the attic, and a garage in the cellar.’

‘And there’s no land with it?’ Dominique said.

‘No, madame. But there is a decent-sized terrace on the far side of the house for sitting out in the summer, though not much privacy since it gives directly on to the park. But I suppose the park itself must seem a little like a private garden. There’s hardly ever anyone in it.’

‘I take it,’ Enzo said, ‘that since you are speaking of her in the present tense, that Anny is not the victim.’

‘No, no. Only in the sense that the murder took place in her house, and she discovered the body. Until we are finished with the crime scene, Anny is staying at the only hotel still open, the Fenelon. Ironically the same hotel where both the victim and the prime suspect were staying.’

Enzo cocked an eyebrow in surprise. ‘You have a prime suspect already?’

But Arnaud seemed less than happy. ‘Unfortunately, we haven’t the first idea where he is. Nor do we have any notion of why he might have done it. Equally odd, he appears to be entirely unknown to Anny. Although the victim himself had called on her earlier in the day.’

‘And he is?’

‘An art dealer from Paris. Emile Narcisse. Well known apparently, though not to me.’

Enzo shrugged. ‘Nor me.’ He glanced at Dominique, but she shook her head. ‘And your suspect?’

‘A young German in his twenties. From Berlin. His name is Hans Bauer. You might ask what either of them was doing in Anny’s house.’ He shook his head. ‘We don’t know. Although they were both staying at the Fenelon, they were never seen there together. Narcisse was observed leaving the hotel on his own just before 7.30 last night. The only tenuous connection that we can find between them is art. Bauer is the director of a small private art gallery in the German capital. Though friends of Narcisse say he had never been to Germany. And as far as we know, this is Bauer’s first visit to France.’

Enzo said, ‘Where was Anny on the night of the murder?’

‘Dining at a friend’s house in Vayrac. A few minutes’ walk, in fact, from the gendarmerie. The friend came to pick her up, then drove her home afterwards. Which is when she discovered the body in her kitchen.’

Dominique said, ‘What makes Bauer the prime suspect?’

Arnaud scratched his head. ‘He checked out of his hotel room last night before the body was discovered, in spite of having reserved a table in the restaurant for dinner. Because no one actually saw him leave or enter the hotel during the course of the evening, it’s impossible to establish where he was at the time of the murder. But after he’d gone, the proprietor went to check on his room and found traces of blood everywhere, including the shower. The lab in Saint-Céré has already established that it was Narcisse’s blood.’

Enzo whistled softly. ‘Well, that’s fairly compelling. How was Narcisse murdered?’

‘His throat was cut, severing arteries and the windpipe.’

‘A lot of blood, then,’ Enzo said.

Arnaud nodded grimly. ‘Skid marks where it had pooled on the floor, footprints leading to the door, and bloody handprints on the door itself. And out here, as you can see. It would appear that Bauer lost his footing in the blood and fell. He must have been covered in it.’

Enzo said, ‘That was careless. How do you know it was Bauer who fell in the blood?’

‘They were his bloody fingerprints on the door, Monsieur Macleod.’

‘How did you establish that?’ Dominique asked.

‘Bauer has a criminal record in Germany. Assault. A fairly minor incident, apparently, when he was a teenager. But they have his fingerprints on file. We ran a check on AFIS.’

Enzo was impressed. ‘You have moved quickly.’

Arnaud allowed himself to bask in the glow of Enzo’s praise for only a moment before his face clouded again. ‘Not fast enough, though. Bauer has just vanished into thin air. He came down from Paris by train to Brive-la-Gaillarde yesterday, then took a local train to a station in a small town not far from here called Biars-sur-Cère. From there he took a taxi to Carennac. If he got away by train, how did he get to the station without calling a taxi? It would take more than two hours on foot, and there are no trains at that time of night anyway.’

‘Perhaps he stole a car,’ Dominique suggested.

‘We’ve had no reports of any stolen vehicles, madame. And we’re quite isolated here. There’s really nowhere he could get to on foot. Certainly not without being seen.’ He waved a hand towards the open door. ‘Shall we go in?’

The house was shaped like the mirror of an L, and the kitchen occupied much of the lower leg. It was dominated by a long wooden table with sufficient chairs around it to seat ten. A rack suspended from the ceiling above it was hung with pots and pans and ropes of dried garlic. Beneath windows on the left were a sink and cooker and a long work surface. Enzo noted a modern knife block standing beside the gas rings with slots to take six knives of various sizes. One of the slots was empty. There were jars of herbs and spices, a tall container for bread, a rack with half a dozen bottles of wine. Beyond the table, a door led to a short hallway, and Enzo could see the bottom step of a staircase leading up to the attic rooms. Beyond that, fragments of coloured light were sprinkled by stained-glass windows across a large salon which seemed to occupy the main leg of the L. A door stood open in the far wall, leading to the terrace outside.

The blood pool and spatters were taped off, the table pushed against the wall to create enough space to squeeze by. It was a mess. The killer had clearly slithered in the blood, losing his footing and falling in it before scrambling to reach the door. The position of the body was self-evident by the absence of blood where it had lain on the floor. Like some macabre shadow cast by death.

Blood had clearly gouted from the severed arteries, projecting spatter trails across the floorboards.

Dominique sidled past the blood and went through to the hall and the salon beyond. Arnaud glanced anxiously at Enzo. ‘What do you think?’

Enzo said, ‘The body was lying face down?’

Arnaud nodded.

‘Well, from the position of the body, and the direction of the blood spatter, it seems reasonably clear that whoever killed him approached from the front, probably extending an arm to slash him across the neck with a very sharp blade. He would have got blood on himself, for certain. But why wouldn’t he have left by the side entrance at the other side of the house, rather than try to get past the man he’d just killed and tread through the blood that was all over the floor?’

‘Panicked, probably,’ Arnaud said, ‘and he wouldn’t have been able to see the blood anyway.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because the house was in darkness. Someone had thrown the switch on the fuse box.’

Enzo nodded. ‘Well, that would explain why Narcisse never saw the blade coming.’ He crouched down stiffly and cast his gaze more closely over the blood patterns and skid marks. ‘May I take some photographs, so that I can look at these in more detail later?’

‘Of course.’ Arnaud seemed only too happy. ‘We don’t get too many murders around here, monsieur. It’s not exactly my speciality.’

Enzo took out his phone and rattled off as many as a dozen photos, then straightened up with difficulty, steadying himself on the table. He smiled ruefully. ‘The joys of getting older.’ He slipped a hand into his pocket to pull out a pair of latex gloves. ‘Always carry a pair with me these days to avoid touching things in public places.’ He snapped them on with practised ease. ‘Mind if I take a look at the knife block?’

‘Go ahead. We figure the missing knife is probably the murder weapon. But there’s no sign of it.’

Enzo picked his way carefully to the worktop. ‘In my experience, French kitchen knives are notoriously blunt.’ He slipped one of the knives out of its block, feeling a certain resistance as he did so. He breathed his surprise. ‘But not these ones. This is a self-sharpening block. A knife gets sharpened every time it is put in or taken out.’ He examined the blade. ‘Lethal. Wouldn’t have taken much effort at all to cut open a throat with a knife this sharp.’

Dominique’s voice called through from the far end of the house. ‘If you’re finished in there, you should come through and see this.’

Enzo raised eyebrows in Arnaud’s direction, seeking permission, and the capitaine nodded. He peeled off his gloves as he walked through the hall and into Anny’s salon. It was vast, its size somehow emphasised by the insignificance of a grand piano in the far corner. Windows on three sides were glazed by stained glass in dazzling patterns that filled the room with a kaleidoscope of multicoloured light. Alcoves with concealed lighting displayed exotic artefacts: a carved African doll, pieces of antique pottery, a shield, wooden figurines fashioned after the thirteenth-century Lewis chessmen. Stone walls were hung with original art, exotic Moroccan and Chinese rugs strewn across ancient flags. The room was divided in several ways by arrangements of chairs and tables and metal-studded wooden trunks. Colourfully embroidered cushions littered the floor in front of a huge, blackened cheminée.

Arnaud smiled at Enzo’s reaction. ‘It’s kind of like a living museum,’ he said, ‘a room to display all the artefacts and mementos that Anny and her mother brought back from their travels. This is where her niece used to entertain the Parisians in the summer.’

Enzo glanced at him curiously. He had that far-off look again. The Scotsman’s eyes flickered towards the gendarme’s left hand and he saw that there was no ring on the wedding finger. So he was quite possibly single. Never married, perhaps, or divorced. ‘You were a regular attendee, then?’

Arnaud’s eyes smiled behind his mask. ‘Oh, yes. Anny and my mother were friends from way back, we were always invited.’ His smile was replaced by a sudden look of frowned concentration. ‘Monsieur Macleod, I’ve just had a thought.’

Enzo had a bad feeling already about Michel Arnaud’s sudden thought.

‘Would you, perhaps, consider consulting on this murder for us?’ He saw the refusal rising in Enzo’s chest and raised a hand to pre-empt it. ‘We really do have very little experience in this kind of thing, and it would be an absolute privilege, monsieur — an honour — to benefit from your insight.’

The refusal hovered now on Enzo’s lips, but this time it was Dominique who forestalled it. ‘You should, Enzo. You’ve been complaining about having nothing to do these days.’

He protested. ‘I have not!’

She ignored him. ‘And it would get you out from under my feet. Particularly with Laurent at home all the time just now.’ She grinned, stretching her mask wide. ‘Go on, you know you want to.’

It seemed to Enzo that further denial would be futile. He sighed deeply and cast reluctant eyes in Arnaud’s direction. In spite of everything, his interest was aroused, although he wouldn’t want to admit it. ‘I suppose I could take a look at it. Just a look, mind. Nothing more.’

As they walked together down the street towards the post office, Enzo glowered at Dominique. ‘Thank you,’ he growled under his breath.

She beamed. ‘My pleasure.’

They arrived at the foot of the hill and turned left towards the palisade, completing a small circuit of the lower half of the village, which seemed now much bigger than they had initially imagined.

Enzo said, ‘Arnaud and Anny’s niece...’ He searched for her name.

Dominique provided it. ‘Elodie.’

‘Yes, Elodie. They must be around the same age. He said she had a teenage son.’

‘So she’s married and he’s not. If the lack of a ring is anything to go by.’

He glanced at her, surprised. ‘You noticed.’

‘He clearly has a thing for her.’

‘Unrequited love.’

‘Or not.’

This time he raised one eyebrow. ‘Hadn’t thought of that.’

She slipped her arm through his. ‘That’s because you’re not a woman, Enzo.’

‘Thank God!’