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

with daffodils. There wasno hotel name that Bruno could see, no brass plate and no porter at the entrance.
    ‘It’s quite a place, Madame,’ said Bruno. ‘You must have earned a great reputation in the hotel business to be appointed manager here. Where did you work before?’
    ‘In Paris, mainly corporate hospitality and private dining,’ she replied smoothly. ‘We expect that to be the main focus here.’
    Béatrice led them to the side of the auberge where tables under umbrellas half-filled the wide stone terrace. Part of it was shaded by a trellis of vines. Some of the tables were set for lunch, and at one Bruno saw two Arabs, who looked like military men in civilian clothes, eating fish while an elegant businessman spoke to them in French. At another table three men were speaking Russian. The table nearest a modern sculpture that was also a fountain was filled with three men enjoying their apéritifs. As they turned to look at the new arrivals, Bruno saw one tall and handsome stranger in middle age and two men he knew. The first was Foucher, the young man in the white Jaguar who had plunged into the river the previous day. The second was Bruno’s friend and tennis partner the Baron, the retired industrialist who was the main landowner of St Denis.
    ‘My dear Bruno, what a pleasure,’ said the Baron, rising and stepping forward to embrace him and then to shake Antoine’s hand. ‘I see you’ve already met the entrancing Béatrice and I gather you’ve met young Foucher here, but let me introduce my new friend César de Vexin, who unlike me is a real aristo with a name that goes far back. He’s a Countas well as being the man behind this new holiday village project, and we’re just talking a little business.’
    ‘Don’t let me interrupt,’ said Bruno, amused to see the appreciative sideways glances the Baron kept casting at Béatrice. ‘Antoine and I have been searching the river, looking for the place where that dead woman could have entered the water. You probably heard of it.’
    ‘Heard of it,’ said Vexin, raising a thick eyebrow and smoothing his rather long and glossy black hair back with a hand that wore a gold signet ring. ‘It’s all over the paper.’
    From a vacant chair he lifted a copy of
Sud-Ouest
and held up the front page. The main photo had been taken from the bridge at St Denis and showed the woman lying on her back, arms outstretched. Conscious of their family readership, the editors had put black bars over her breasts and pubis, but there was a close-up of the pentagram on her belly and the large headline read: ‘Satanism in St Denis?’

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    ‘This is monstrous. Not at all the image of St Denis that we want to present,’ said the Mayor, flinging the copy of
SudOuest
onto the council table with disdain.
    ‘I’m not sure about that,’ said Jérôme, who ran a small history theme park where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake twice a day. ‘This kind of thing makes us stand out from the crowd; it could be just the kind of publicity we need.’
    ‘We’ve had a rush of bookings this morning,’ added Philippe, who ran the Hôtel St Denis. On the council he usually acted as the spokesman for the town’s businessmen. He pointed down to the town square. ‘The bars and cafés are full already. It may not be the image you want, but it’s certainly attracting visitors.’
    ‘The devil moves in mysterious ways,’ said Father Sentout. No great friend of the Mayor, his presence at this meeting of the town’s elders testified to the Mayor’s unease.
    Bruno leafed through the paper, to a photo of Foucher in mid-air, diving towards the punt and another of Bruno and Antoine standing beside Maurice as he cast his fishing line in vain. The paper seemed to have missed the significance of the black candles and there was no reference tothe decapitated cockerel. Bruno would try to keep that to himself.
    ‘The immediate reaction was bound to include some ghoulish interest. But think about the longer term. I really don’t think we want to be known as a town of devil-worshippers,’ the Mayor said. He turned to Bruno. ‘Perhaps you could give us an interim report on the investigation. Do we yet know who this unfortunate woman was?’
    Bruno told them no. She did not appear to be on any lists of missing persons. With no obvious cause of death and no sign on the body of foul play but evidence of heavy cocaine use, the most likely explanation was a suicide.
    ‘I have some leads and