Black Diamond

strain on that rope,” he shouted. “I’m about to put my weight on it.”
    “There’s three of us on it,” Bill called.
    They hauled him out, black and reeking up to his waist, manure smeared all across his face, neck and hair. Mathieu was being bundled off toward the restaurant by Juliette. Bruno looked down to see his greatcoat floating on the black pool. Someone patted him on the back, despite the manure. He looked around and saw Pamela. As he smiled at her, a camera flashed twice in a row. Philippe Delaron was taking pictures for
Sud Ouest
. He had come to take photos of the schoolchildren at the Green Fair, but now he had a real news story, to be accompanied by another unflattering picture of the chief of police of St. Denis. Bruno grimaced and gestured into the pit.
    “I’ll need a hook to get my coat out. There are things in the pockets that I want to save,” he said to Bill. “Then I’ll need to go into your house for a shower, and I would be grateful for some spare clothes.”
    “Well done, Bruno,” said Bill. “But not the house. There’sno hot water there today. We’ll use the bathroom in the restaurant. There’s a shower, and I’ll bring some spare clothes and put yours in the wash.”
    “Oh Bruno,” said Pamela. “You’re a sight. But consider yourself kissed.”
    Looking down at himself, Bruno could not help but laugh. Half of it was relief that Mathieu was safe, but he had to admit she was right. He was a sight, and a stink. And he was cold. Then he started to become angry. To invite children onto the property and not take some elementary safety precautions infuriated him.
    “You and I will be having a serious talk about safety procedures when you invite children onto your property,” he said to Bill. “This very nearly ended in tragedy. I’ll need to see your license for this large pool of manure and a statement of approval for its construction from the water authorities.”
    “It was just an accident, Bruno,” Pamela said. “All’s well that ends well.”
    “Yes, we were lucky this time,” Bruno said, wondering why she was letting Pons off so lightly. “Now we have to make sure that all legal precautions are taken so we don’t have to be lucky in the future.”
    He turned to Bill. “And we also have to talk about getting your chef’s nieces into school. But first perhaps you could show me your shower.”

16
    As Bruno had expected, the archives of the
mairie
of Ste. Alvère were stuffed into a dark and chilly basement room next door to the wine cellar. It took him and the mayor’s secretary twenty dust-filled minutes to locate the cardboard box that contained the records from the truffle market. She showed him to a vacant underground conference room lit by a single fluorescent light, brought him a weak coffee and left him to it.
    He started on the logbook of weekly sales, looking for the two consignments that had triggered the complaints as a way to familiarize himself with the recording system. It was as Didier had explained. The date, weight, price and batch number were each recorded in the logbook, and they matched the identifying numbers on the labels that had been cited in the complaints. But something was odd. The batch numbers seemed out of sequence with the other sales recorded that day.
    Bruno checked again, and indeed each of the suspect items seemed to have been packed and sealed at the end of the day, even after the items listed as having been sold in the special auction. And neither one carried the extra tick in the columnmarked “Chemist,” which meant they had not been tested by Florence.
    He began to look through the other sales lists and found that there were always some batches out of sequence at the end of the day. Perhaps there was an innocent explanation. But he could find no logbook of the sales in what Didier had called the special auctions of unsold stocks at the end of each market day. Bruno pulled everything out of the cardboard box and checked each file and item thoroughly. There was no such logbook, so he began going through the various file folders.
    Mainly they contained bills for electricity and water, all of which seemed in order. Then there was a maintenance log for the monthly service of the photocopier and another for the vacuum-pack machine, with each visit signed for by the service technician. There was no payment sum listed, but Bruno found a note on the bottom of each bill that matched an annual service payment from the