Black Diamond

this, but it’s now police business, and I’d be grateful if you could keep all this to yourself. Don’t even tell your husband about it.”
    “But who would do such a thing to the Vinhs?” she asked. “They’re such a nice, quiet family, and my husband likes those
nems
they make.”
    “I like them too,” said Bruno. “And the sooner I can get to the bottom of this, the sooner we’ll have them and their
nems
back. But I’ll need you to keep quiet about all this while I’m working on this case. Will you do that for me? And I promise that when it’s all over I’ll come back here and have some moreof your coffee and those lemon biscuits and tell you all about it. How’s that?”
    “I won’t say a word,” she said. “But you’d better call before you come. The biscuits are even better when they are warm.”
    “In that case,” said Albert, “can we come too?”

18
    It was, thought Bruno, a splendidly French compromise. On one side of the coffin, the state saluted a member of the Légion d’Honneur with an honor guard of six French soldiers in parade dress who pointed their modern rifles into the air and fired a volley of blanks. As the echoes died away, civil society paid its own tribute as six members of the Chasseurs de Ste. Alvère, two with tears in their eyes and all in their hunting gear, fired their own blanks in ragged timing from an unmatched assortment of shotguns.
    The mayor in his tricolor sash and the brigadier in a uniform with a chest full of medals both made brief speeches of appreciation, and then the brigadier read out a letter of praise and condolence from the minister of the interior. Finally the priest spoke the final, ritual words, and they all lined up to scoop a handful of earth from the pile and toss it onto the lid of the coffin.
    At the mayor’s invitation, the mourners trooped off to a
vin d’honneur
at the
mairie
. Bruno drank one glass, made a swift circuit of the room and left for Hercule’s house to scour the library in search of books on—he had to look up thespelling he had written down during the call with Tran—the Binh Xuyen. The bookcase beside the big desk ran from floor to ceiling and was organized into books on Vietnam, books on Algeria and books on recent French history. The first that he found that seemed relevant was written by Capitaine Savani, who he remembered was Hercule’s boss in the Deuxième Bureau in Saigon. Titled
Visage et images du Sud Viet-Nam
, it had been published in Paris in 1955 and had been inscribed to Hercule by its author. Bruno turned eagerly to a bookmark, a folded sheet of paper on which Hercule had written: “This section taken largely from Savani’s secret DB report on Binh Xuyen.” Bruno assumed the initials stood for Deuxième Bureau, military intelligence.
    He put the book to one side and had just begun searching the shelves alongside, above and below, all devoted to Vietnam, when his mobile rang. He did not recognize the number on the screen but flipped it open and said,
“Allo.”
    “Bruno, it’s Florence from the truffle market.” Her voice was fast and excited, almost breathless. “I don’t know how I can ever thank you. I got the job. Rollo wants me to start next month when school reopens.”
    “That’s great news, Florence, congratulations. I’m really pleased it worked out. And since you’ll be working in St. Denis, you can put your children into our nursery school.”
    “It’s even better than that,” Florence replied. “Rollo said I can have one of the apartments at the college. There’s one empty, two bedrooms, and the rent’s lower than what I’m paying now for one bedroom. It’s subsidized, Rollo says.”
    “In that case, the drinks are on you next time we meet,” he said, laughing at the excitement in her voice and wondering what that rather stern face of hers would look like now that her happiness was almost spilling through the phone.
    “I’ll be delighted. In fact, I wanted to invite you to dinner to thank you properly. You’ve no idea how this changes everything.”
    “You don’t have to do that, Florence,” he said, thinking of how little money she had, but also remembering how impressed he had been at their only meeting by her intellect and her character, and how he had mused at the way she might look with different clothes, a different hairstyle.
    “But there is something you could do for me,” he said. “Well, not just for me but also for the truffle market, I