The Devil's Cave: A Bruno Courrèges Investigation (Bruno Chief of Police 5)

mistress.’
    The women, Bruno noted, seemed to have stayed true to the genes of their ancestress, the royal mistress. The Red Countess had never bothered to marry and nor had her daughter, the one who had spoken alongside her at the Renault plant in 1968 when the young Montsouris had thought the revolution was at hand. She had been newly pregnant at the time, since Father Sentout’s list gave the date of baptism for Athénaïs as January 1969. Had it not been for a change in French law in 1972 that allowed illegitimate children to inherit, neither Athénaïs nor her mother could have assumed the Red Countess’s title and property, and Count Vexin would have been the sole legitimate heir. That triggered another thought.
    ‘If we assume that this McPhee impregnated both sisters, who themselves shared a father, what would be the relationship between the two grandchildren, Athénaïs and the Count?’
    ‘Through their mothers, they shared a paternal grandfather, which made them half-cousins, But if McPhee was their common grandfather they would also have been full cousins.’ The priest frowned. ‘It’s an unusual case and rather complicated but I think the family relationship might have been too close for the church to sanction a marriage between them. I’d have to look it up.’
    Bruno pondered this. And suddenly an image crossed his mind of the two infant grandchildren, Athénaïs born illegitimate in 1969 and her double cousin, the Count, born thefollowing year as the heir to everything. And then in 1972 the law changed, allowing illegitimate children to inherit, and the Count’s claim on the family wealth and titles was suddenly overtaken by Athénaïs. The infant Count would have been too young to care, but his mother Héloïse would have been stunned by the reversal. And from what he had seen of her, Héloïse would have nursed the grudge. Might she have brought up her son to resent his brusque disinheritance? Could that have been a motive for murder?
    ‘How wealthy would the Red Countess be, Father? Would you know?’
    ‘In money, probably not well-off at all. In land and property, extremely rich, but much of the income is doubtless devoured by the cost of maintaining the old buildings. Why, do you think there is an issue of inheritance here? You said the dead woman in the boat was her granddaughter. Who inherits next?’
    ‘She has a daughter of her own in America. Presumably she’s the heir, that’s why I can’t see it as a motive.’
    ‘Make sure she’s kept safe. Do you remember your Balzac? I find I read him more and more.’
    ‘Not for years, but I remember what he wrote about every great fortune being founded on a great crime.’
    ‘No, not that, I was thinking of something he wrote in
Le Cousin Pons
, that “to kill a relative of whom you are tired is something. But to inherit his property afterwards, that is genuine pleasure.” When I think of the confessions I hear of hatred and malice towards relatives over inheritance, I come close to despair.’
    Bruno took his leave and was threading his way through scattered children’s toys in the priest’s garden when his phone vibrated. It was Fabiola, announcing that she had spent the last forty minutes talking to various doctors at the Memory Research Centre in Paris. They had no record of the Countess being registered as a patient and they had scoffed at the claim that one of them was taken down to the Périgord by helicopter. Nor was she registered on the Alzheimer’s support network. Moreover, her colleague Dr Gelletreau could find no other doctor in the region who was treating her.
    ‘What’s the law on this?’ she asked. ‘This is an obviously ill woman with no doctor and those looking after her are lying about her care. We’re the medical centre for the region, do we have a legal right to intervene?’
    ‘I have no idea,’ he replied. ‘It’s out of my usual field, but she does have a full-time nurse. Can you call Annette? She’s a magistrate and if she doesn’t know the relevant laws she can find out. I’ll try the
Procureur
but it’s an obscure part of the law. And with someone as prominent as the Red Countess, it may get complicated.’
    He was trying to phone the duty clerk when he was called to resolve a dispute between two stallholders over the amount of pavement space one was taking, and then another claimed access to her stall was being blocked by the crowd watching the next stallholder demonstrate a new