Black Diamond

Manufrance, a serviceable gun with a walnut stock that had still cost him a month’s pay. For hunting
bécasse
, the elusive game bird that could dart almost from beneath one’s feet, they carried shells of standard small-gauge bird shot. Each man had a couple of slug rounds in case they met wild boar. They’d done the tests and safety courses required by the Fédération de la Chasse to receive a hunting permit, and they carried their guns safely broken open at the breech as they followed their dogs up the trail to the hide.
    “Quiet,” said the baron, stopping. “Listen to the dogs.”
    A well-trained hunting dog is silent until his master authorizes the animal to give voice. Bruno’s Gigi and the baron’s Général were very well trained, and yet they were whining from the trail up ahead.
    Something was wrong. The baron moved on cautiously while Bruno automatically stepped out to his side. They saw their dogs backing hesitantly away, with haunches low and tails down. Bruno circled slowly, trusting the baron to take care of whatever lay ahead while Bruno peered through the trees behind them and up the slopes on both sides. He kept his gun open but gently eased two shells into the barrels. The dogs had stopped their whining, and the woods were almost silent but for the distant sound of running water. Nothing stirred except the faintest of breezes, and then Bruno caught the first scent of something on the wind. His back to the baron, he sniffed again; fresh blood.
    Too well trained to turn and look, Bruno moved his eyes first and let his head follow slowly. Their rear and both flanks were clear. But still Bruno did not turn. The baron, an Algerian War veteran who had seen combat and knew its rules as well as he knew the skills of the hunt, would warn him when he was ready.
    Bruno heard rather than saw the baron’s dog, alerted by a hand signal from his master, start ranging out to flank the clearing and come in from the other side, exactly as he would if the baron wanted a
bécasse
cleared from a thicket. His own Gigi had come quietly to his side, awaiting orders. Bruno went down on one knee to hold his gun steady against his thigh and signaled Gigi to skirt around the other flank. He waited until he heard the baron start to move forward again.
    Then he heard his friend, speaking so softly he was almost breathing the words,
“Putain. Putain de merde.”
And then more loudly as the baron closed the breech of his gun,
“Ah non, ah mon Dieu. Non.”
    Still Bruno did not move, although every nerve was quivering, for he could hear the fear and dismay in the baron’s voice.
    “Bruno,” he called, and finally Bruno turned and went through the last fringe of trees and into the clearing where the baron stood before the sight of Hercule. He seemed to be hanging in midair, his head and neck craning forward like some medieval gargoyle thrusting outward from a cathedral roof. And he had evidently been made to suffer before his death. Hercule’s dog lay dead at his feet.
    “Don’t touch anything,” Bruno said, and pulled out his phone. No signal, this deep in the woods. He could not touch Hercule without stepping in the pool of blood, too fresh to have dried. Bruno looked into the hide, where Hercule’s brokengun lay on the table. A hand ax and a small pile of kindling was beside it. Hercule’s jacket hung on the back of a chair. He had probably been chopping wood for a fire when he was surprised. Bruno walked across to the jacket and tapped the pockets. Hercule’s wallet was still there and so were the keys to his Land Rover. That would have to be searched. Bruno wrapped his hand in a handkerchief, pulled out the keys and slipped them into his pocket.
    There was something else in the pocket. He hooked a finger over the pocket’s edge, peered in and saw an object wrapped in newspaper, but the smell had already informed him. He pulled out two perfect examples of
melanosporum
, the famous black diamonds, weighing perhaps a pound between them. They could not have been fresher, so they must have been picked that morning, Hercule’s last act before starting to prepare a fire for a
casse-croûte
with his friends. Hercule wouldn’t want them to go to the ambulance men. He pulled out the truffles, showed them to the baron and put them in his pocket.
    “Stay here, keep the dogs away from the blood and I’ll go to phone,” Bruno told the baron. “Keep your eyes open and I’ll be back as soon as I can. I’ll