Black Diamond

open his arms to embrace Bruno and then lumbered around the office of the mayor of Ste. Alvère to deliver bone-crushing handshakes to the others present. His dominance thus established, Commissaire Jean-Jacques Jalipeau, chief detective of the Police Nationale for the Département of the Dordogne, looked around for a comfortable place from which to give his briefing. He perched his ample buttocks on a windowsill and waved the mayor imperiously back to his own chair at the head of the council table.
    “What we know so far is mainly from forensics. There were at least three people involved in yesterday morning’s attack on Hercule Vendrot,” J-J began, not bothering to look at the manila file that seemed to Bruno as small as a bus ticket in his large paw. “A fourth person may have stayed in the stolen Mercedes four-by-four whose tire marks we found about six hundred feet down the dirt track. They seem to have been waiting since daybreak, as if knowing that their victim would arrive. Then they killed him in a most brutal way that would have left at least one of them covered in blood.”
    “Do we know how they took him by surprise?” Bruno asked. “Hercule was armed, and he had his dog.”
    “The dog was dying,” J-J replied. “Poisoned meat had been left at the entrance to the hide. The poor creature would have been in no shape to give much warning. Maybe they had guns pointed at the victim, we don’t know. Forensics says that Vendrot was handcuffed inside the hide and then taken outside to be murdered. They think that time of death was between seven and nine, which is not very helpful. The knife used on the victim was about eight inches long, an unusual length, and single edged with a sharp point. We haven’t found it.
    “The stolen Mercedes was found early this morning in the parking lot at Toulouse Airport.” J-J paused. “That might tell you how much effort we’re putting into this. It had been cleaned and vacuumed and was empty. Garbage cans at the airport and at rest spots on the obvious autoroutes are being searched.”
    J-J looked up from his file, and then he scanned the room, making eye contact in turn with Bruno and each of the other men present.
    “Hercule Vendrot was a prominent man, and an honored son of France,” he said. “The minister of the interior has personally instructed me to give this case top priority, and all other agencies of the state have been ordered to provide full cooperation. This includes the DGSE, whose predecessor agency our victim used to serve. We have a representative here today.” J-J nodded at an anonymous-looking middle-aged man in a dark suit and tired gray shirt sitting at the foot of the table. He nodded in acknowledgment.
    “Do you have any hypothesis so far?” asked the mayor.
    “That’s about all we do have,” J-J replied. “It might have been revenge for something from his past, or something more recent, possibly connected with the truffle market here in Ste. Alvère. That’s why you gentlemen are here, because we need your local knowledge of Hercule and his concerns, his enemies … anything that might be useful.”
    Bruno had one new fact to contribute, but he would inform J-J in private rather than share it with this bunch of local gossips. Still, he knew it was a good tactic for J-J to bring in the members of the town council and brief them. Feeding their self-importance would ensure their support, and their local knowledge might be useful. But the copies of Hercule’s will and the note he had left with his
notaire
seemed more important. Bruno had been to see him already that morning. The
notaire
was a member of Hercule’s hunting club and knew Bruno well. He’d confirmed that a formal notice of death had been filed, so Bruno had no difficulty in obtaining Hercule’s papers. He’d also provided a copy of the letter being sent that day to the legal attaché of the Vietnamese embassy in Paris, asking for assistance in tracing one Gioan Linh Nguyen-Vendrot, a possible heir. Such letters, the
notaire
had said, were quite routine.
    The terse sentence in Hercule’s will on the possible heir was written in the dry tones of an official report, and yet Bruno could almost feel the personal sadness that had gone into its drafting. When reading it in the
notaire
’s office, Bruno had wondered aloud at the self-control that had kept Hercule from ever mentioning his loss. The
notaire
had been able to fill in some of the gaps.
    When Hercule had