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

the bed. She had tubes up her nostrils and an intravenous drip in her arm. ‘I don’t think you’ll get much out of her. She’s had Alzheimer’s for years.’
    Beyond the bed stood a figure silhouetted against the sunlight streaming in from the conservatory windows. All Bruno could see was a woman dressed in white, her hair tucked into a nurse’s cap.
    ‘Isn’t that right, nurse?’ the old lady asked.
    ‘Indeed, Madame. She’s resting now.’
    Bruno was sure he knew the voice. As his eyes adjusted from the gloom of the hall to the brightness of this hospital room, he recognized his occasional riding companion, Eugénie.
    ‘
Bonjour
, Monsieur,’ she said, giving no sign that she had met him before.
    He replied automatically, glancing around the room. There was a handsome desk and chair and a large sofa with a rotating bookcase beside it. An open laptop sat on the desk. A small TV on a stand stood opposite the sofa.
    ‘You spend most of your time in this room, Madame?’ he asked.
    ‘I’m the resident nurse, and always on call. Other staff watch her when I’m away, but I spend a lot of my time here. Of course, I walk or ride horses when I can, for the exercise.’
    ‘Does your patient have lucid intervals?’
    ‘Not as long as I’ve known her, which is some weeks now.’
    ‘My sister hasn’t had a rational thought or spoken a comprehensible sentence for years,’ said Héloïse.
    Bruno’s eye was drawn to a large crucifix that hung above the bed and another on the opposite wall, where the invalid could not but see it.
    ‘I thought your sister was a Marxist,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t that make her an atheist?’
    ‘I believe she takes comfort from familiar things and we were very religious in our childhood. When she seems up to it, we take her to attend Mass in the chapel. We have a wheelchair.’
    ‘Do you use local priests for the Mass?’
    ‘No, my confessor makes regular visits from Paris. And now perhaps we can return to the hall and get this questioning over with. You too, nurse.’
    Without another word, she turned and led the way back. Bruno took a last glance at the woman on the bed. Her eyes had opened and for a moment seemed to be staring deliberately at him. He looked again but the eyes were blank and the face immobile.
    On an impulse he took one of the photographs of the dead woman from the folder beneath his arm, stepped to the side of the bed and held it in front of the Countess’s face. ‘Do you know this woman?’ he asked. The eyes seemed to quiver and on the sheet a wizened hand stirred and gripped at the smoothly ironed cotton. Was that recognition?
    ‘Please,’ said Eugénie, coming to his side and gently pushing the photo away. ‘Shocks or surprises upset her. We try to keep everything stable.’
    Her hand was cool on his own, but then she seemed to squeeze it a little as she turned the photograph so she could see it.
    ‘No, I don’t recognize this woman either. Sorry.’
    He handed her his card. ‘Please call me to arrange a convenient time when I can interview you and Monsieur Foucher about another matter. My Mayor has asked me to look into your company’s previous development in Thivion.’

16
    Bruno directed J-J to turn off from the main road by the river and take a small country lane that wound up the thickly wooded hillside through
la Petite Forêt
. They passed a small lake and then headed down into a valley dominated by the Château de Fleurac, a neo-Gothic pile that could only have been built in the nineteenth century. After passing it, Bruno pointed the way up a gravel track that led up the hillside to an old farmhouse. The shutters on the doors and windows were open and gleaming in a fresh coat of blue paint. It sat snugly in a protected hollow, facing south, with two semi-circular greenhouses behind it, made of thick translucent plastic stretched across metal frames.
    Bruno climbed out of the car as the door to the farmhouse opened and a tall, fit-looking man with long white hair in a ponytail and a neat beard emerged, drying his bare chest with a towel. A
porcelaine
followed him, the classic French hunting dog, creamy-white with long ears. It bounded up to greet Bruno.
    He turned to make the introductions. ‘This is Laurent, not only the best hunter in the valley but also the man who’s going to provide our lunch today.’
    ‘
Un petit apéro?
’ asked Laurent, shaking hands and eyeing Isabelle with appreciation.
    They sat in the sun on a