Black Diamond

the baron opened another bottle of champagne.
    “Thank you for the wine,” the baron said to J-J, nodding across to the sink where Hubert was decanting bottle after bottle. “It’s very generous. We’ll give Hercule a grand sendoff.”
    “The real send-off will be when we catch his killers,” said J-J. “But it looks as if they were professionals. It won’t be easy. While you’re all here, we’ve been going through Hercule’s phone records, and there are some numbers Bruno didn’t recognizethat you may be able to help identify. Come and take a look at these printouts.”
    “You’re assuming he knew his killers, or that they’d phoned him?” asked the mayor.
    J-J shrugged. “Who knows? At this stage we’re just looking for anything unusual. Hercule may have been doing something or making some inquiries that put his life in danger. Maybe his phone calls can lead us onto that trail.”
    A handful more numbers were identified as local friends from Ste. Alvère, Nicco winking as he explained that at least one of the unregistered cell phones was owned by a friend who was having an affair. Nervous that his wife might be keeping an eye on the bills for his usual cell phone, he kept a separate phone for his mistress. He must have confused the phones when he called Hercule.
    “And this one is Didier, who manages the truffle market,” Nicco added, putting a fat thumb beside one of the numbers on J-J’s list. “He lost his old phone recently and got a new one but probably never got around to registering the number. And these two are
renifleurs
from the market who don’t want the tax man looking into their phone records.”
    “That leaves me with just three unidentified numbers,” said J-J. “That’ll make life easier as we try to track them down. There’s one more bit of business where you might be able to help, at least those of you from Ste. Alvère. Anybody see Hercule receiving any unusual visitors in the last week or so, or any strangers in town?”
    “He had the son of an old army friend to stay for a weekend, maybe ten days ago,” said Roland. “An Italian-sounding name or maybe Corsican. It began with an
S
. He was a middle-aged guy, a fancy dresser. Sanni or Salani or something like that.”
    “Savani?” asked J-J.
    “That’s it. Savani. I’d seen him before. It wasn’t the first time he stayed at Hercule’s place.”
    “The man who sponsored Vinh’s citizenship papers,” said Bruno, exchanging glances with J-J.
    “I think it would have been the son of Capitaine Antoine Savani,” the baron interjected. “He ran the Deuxième Bureau in Saigon back when Hercule was stationed in Vietnam. He’d have been Hercule’s boss. I met the son, Pierre or Paul, a couple of times at Hercule’s place.”
    “Hercule had a lot of Vietnamese visitors as well, from being stationed there in the fifties,” Nicco said. “He had quite a social life, old Hercule. Anyway, let’s drink to him, a great friend and a good hunter.”
    After the toast, Bruno turned to the soup, and the baron lifted the lid from the pot of venison hanging over the fire and began to stir, breathing in the rich smell of the wine sauce.
    “Ah, that’s good,” he said. “You added some black pudding?”
    Bruno nodded from his place by the soup. “But now comes something else,” he said, and took from his pocket the truffle he had found in the woods, holding it up for all to see.
    “
Putain
, but they’d give you a million centimes for that one up in Paris,” said Nicco. “It’s a real black diamond, black as night.”
    “Gigi found it this evening, just before we came here. And since it’s Hercule’s dinner, that makes it Hercule’s truffle, and we’ll enjoy it for him.”
    Bruno passed it around, and each man took a slow, reverent sniff. Then Bruno began to shave the black diamond into the soup, its scent expanding with the warmth of the pot and filling the room.
    Hubert opened another bottle of champagne and refilled the glasses. The mayor washed two big lettuces that he had brought from his greenhouse, and Sergeant Jules began to make his special vinaigrette. Roland chopped garlic and parsley for the
pommes sarladaises
, and one son spooned duck fat into two giant frying pans, while the other dried off blanched potatoes. Bruno grated nutmeg into his simmering soup, tasted it and added salt before stirring in the pot of thick cream brought by Stéphane. Jo donned a thick glove to take the long spit from