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

both of you. I’ll come to the medical centre later to pick up a copy of the death certificate if you could leave it at the desk.’
    Antoine headed back to his bar and his accounts. Dr Gelletreau turned to his car.
    ‘By the way, Doc,’ Bruno said. ‘I thought Fabiola was on duty today.’
    ‘She said she had something to attend to. I got the impression it was some private patient.’
    ‘That’s not like her,’ Bruno said. ‘She’s always been critical of private practice. Medicine for the people, you know Fabiola.’
    ‘I know, that’s why she likes working at the clinic,’ said Gelletreau. ‘Odd, isn’t it? Maybe she needs the money. She was saying she needed a new car.’
    He stood, looking at Bruno, as if there was more to be said but he didn’t know how to say it. Bruno felt the same way but decided to take the plunge.
    ‘This funny stuff as you call it, the pentagram and black candles,’ Bruno said, still not quite sure how to voice the suspicion in his mind. ‘Does it look like she was dabbling in black magic, some kind of Satanism?’
    ‘Exactly that,’ said Gelletreau, nodding. ‘It’s been on my mind. When I get home I’ve got an old book somewhere on historic legends that refers to it. Maybe you might want to ask Father Sentout about it; Satanism has been an interest of his for years. It makes me wonder whether I ought to join Antoine in a quick Ricard and one of those disgusting cigarettes of his. In fact, as your doctor I’m tempted to prescribe a stiff drink for you as well. If this death has something to do with black magic then I suspect you’re going to need it.’

3
    Back in his office at the
Mairie
, Bruno settled down at his desk to study the handwritten letter that had arrived in his mail. All in capitals, it was one of the anonymous denunciations that regularly came to him and many other policemen in France. He’d always blamed the war years of the Vichy regime for encouraging the practice, until he read a book on the history of the French Revolution which quoted extensively from the anonymous letters sent to the Committee of Public Safety in the 1790s that had condemned thousands of people to the guillotine. Most of the ones Bruno received denounced people for sexual immorality, which he ignored, or for tax evasion or working on the black market, which he was obliged to investigate. This one at least was written in black ink, rather than the green or violet that usually recounted sins of adultery. But its tenor was disturbing, denouncing a farmer whom Bruno knew only slightly for beating his wife.
    It was a crime he detested, but one that frequently complicated his life. Most magistrates were reluctant to press charges, even when the medical evidence was clear, because the wives so often refused to testify against their husbands.The old ways were strong in St Denis, particularly on the more remote farms, and Bruno had more than once heard mutterings in the bars and cafés about a nagging wife deserving a clip around the ear. And there’d always be some old codger ready to spout the doggerel:
    ‘
A dog, a wife, a walnut tree,
    The more you beat them, the better they’ll be.
’
    Bruno’s predecessor, Joe, had a rough and ready way with domestic violence. He’d ignore the occasional slap or punch on a Saturday night after drink had been taken. But if he knew that the beating was a regular occurrence, or above all if the children were also beaten, then Joe would go to the court of public opinion, letting it be known in the bars that a situation was getting out of hand. When a consensus developed, Joe and a couple of his chums from the rugby team would go out to the farm, take the offending husband behind the barn and treat him to some of his own medicine. Bruno gave a wry smile at the recollection that Joe had called it his own version of community policing. He claimed it was very effective. Maybe it was, but it was not the kind of rough justice that policemen could apply these days, and it was not Bruno’s way.
    He turned back to the letter. The farmer, a taciturn and hard-faced man who scraped some kind of living from the poor tract of upland and hillside that he had inherited from his father, was named Louis Junot. His wife came from somewhere in the north, where Junot had met her while doing his military service. They had a daughter, Francette, whom Bruno remembered from his tennis classes. She had been apromising player, fast around the court and with a good