Black Diamond

deportation back to China. The Chinese prisoner had not uttered a single word while detained and had now been transferred to the custody of the magistrate in Périgueux for trial.
    “But he’s the only link we’ve got to all this. We’ve got to get him properly questioned,” Bruno said.
    “I know. And Capitaine Duroc”—Jules weighted the rank with a heavy irony—“says this fits the pattern of events on his checklist for organized crime. It must be reported to the Police Nationale. So we had your old pal J-J on the line.”
    “J-J’s now tied up in the murder investigation. I’ll call him later. Look, I’ve got to go and check out Hercule’s house, but don’t forget Vinh.”
    Bruno next called Nicco, his counterpart in Ste. Alvère, as a courtesy to explain his presence on Nicco’s turf, but if he wanted to share the guard duty at Hercule’s place he was welcome. Nicco was a member of Hercule’s hunting club and knew him well.
    “Murdered? Our Hercule? Christ, I’d better tell the mayor.”
    “You’d better tell the rest of the hunting club to stay away for a while. The murder took place at the hide. They’re both dead, Hercule and his dog.”
    “The best truffle hound in the valley?
Putain
, what sick kind of devil would want to do something like that?”
    They hung up. Bruno tucked his opened shotgun under his arm and walked up the lane past Hercule’s house. A man with a gun was commonplace in rural France in the hunting season. He continued through an old archway and an alley that led to the back of the house. The place looked undisturbed. Just in case, he took an empty paint can left by thegarden shed and placed it against the rear door. If anybody left the house in a hurry he’d hear it. He went around to the front and used Hercule’s keys to let himself in.
    The house smelled clean, with a touch of mustiness from old books and Gauloises mixed with wood smoke from the previous evening’s fire. The kitchen was tidy, a washed cup and plate and an ashtray on the drying rack. The desk and papers in the big living room looked undisturbed. Bruno went upstairs and found again the signs of a neat and well-organized man. One small bedroom was filled with boxes of files and papers, and Bruno left them for the brigadier’s people to examine. The iron-framed single bed in Hercule’s room had been made and covered with a brightly colored cotton spread. Old tribal rugs were spread on the floor, and Bruno assumed they were antiques. Hercule’s clothes were hung in a large wardrobe, and there was no indication of anyone else ever staying, no women’s clothing and only the most simple masculine toiletries in the bathroom. The walls were papered in a design from another era, pale red prints of eighteenth-century scenes against a gray background.
    The books by Hercule’s bed were works of history. Bruno put down his shotgun and picked up the first. It was on the French war in Vietnam, Jean Ferrandi’s
Les Officiers français face au Vietminh
. But most covered the Algerian War. Bruno recognized Axel Nicol’s
La Bataille de l’O.A.S
. and Claude Paillat’s
Dossier secret de l’Algérie
. There were several bookmarks inside General Massu’s memoirs,
La Vraie bataille d’Alger
, and even more inside General Paul Aussaresses’s
Services spéciaux
. Bruno remembered the scandal it had provoked when published a few years earlier. Aussaresses had confessed to the routine use of torture and claimed that François Mitterrand as minister of justice had approved the practice,twenty years before he had become president of France. Bruno looked at the marked pages, all of them referring to torture.
    He put the book down and returned downstairs. There was no sign of a safe, and the cellar contained only wine. Bruno could not help himself. He squatted down to examine some of the bottles and handled them reverently: Château Angélus from St. Emilion, Château l’Evangile and Château le Pin from Pomerol, Château Haut-Brion from Graves. He smiled to himself and envied Hercule’s heirs.
    Back in the living room, which looked as if Hercule might return any moment, there were press clippings on the desk in what he assumed to be Chinese and Vietnamese. Another book had been left open with an old-fashioned lead-weighted leather bookmark holding the pages in place. It was in English, called
SOE in France
, and written by M. R. D. Foot. The publisher was Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, which made Bruno