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

vagina? That’s a new one on me.’

27
    Father Sentout lived beside the church in a house that was far too large for him. It was too large even with his housekeeper and the priests who visited regularly to help him serve his ever-increasing parish as older curés died and were not replaced. Strangers were startled by the sight of children’s toys and tricycles scattered on the path to his house. Bruno wasn’t, knowing that the upper two floors were offered to families that the priest in his old-fashioned way called the deserving poor. Father Sentout was in less than welcoming mood when the housekeeper showed Bruno into his study, but Bruno was not to be put off.
    ‘I saw you looking stunned when you recognized someone in that white car this morning and I need to know who and why,’ he said. ‘I’ve just had a report from the pathologist that suggests we may be investigating a murder, so please don’t prevaricate.’
    ‘Murder? Saints preserve us, I had no idea. But I’m not sure what I can tell you, Bruno.’
    ‘You knew someone from the past. Was it the Count?’
    The priest studied him for a moment. Someone who had heard as many confessions as Father Sentout would hardlybe innocent of the ways of the world. Something he had read came into his head, that André Malraux had once asked an elderly priest what he had learned of the human race after a lifetime of hearing confessions, and the priest had replied, ‘That there are no grown-ups.’
    ‘No, it wasn’t the Count, it was Foucher,’ Father Sentout said. ‘I knew him from the seminary where I was teaching. But he had to leave, he had no true vocation.’
    ‘Why did he have to leave?’
    ‘I wasn’t really involved, not directly, but it was quite a scandal, and not long before his scheduled ordination. I believe sex was involved, but that wasn’t the most serious thing. It was bearing false witness. I was told unofficially that he tried to fabricate evidence that would have incriminated another youth and one of his teachers. It almost succeeded, except that he boasted of his success to another seminarian with whom he was in an improper relationship.’
    ‘How well did you know him?’
    ‘Hardly at all, he wasn’t in my class and I was just a visiting teacher and not resident, but I remember his expulsion. And I certainly knew of him, such a good-looking boy, but what a contrast with the person within.’
    ‘Was that when you were teaching exorcism?’
    ‘Oh no, I was teaching the history of heresies and how to recognize them. Arians to Cathars and everything in between. The students used to joke that I taught heresy from A to C.’
    ‘Do you know anything else about him? Where he came from, where he went?’ When the priest shook his head Bruno urged him to find out.
    ‘I haven’t done that list of baptisms for you yet,’ he said.
    ‘I know, I need that too. What if I bring croissants for breakfast in the morning after I’ve done my first patrol at the market, say about eight?’ The priest sighed but agreed.
    Bruno had parked by the
Mairie
. He was walking back along the Rue de Paris from the priest’s house when Montsouris slapped him on the back and said he was on his way to meet Bruno’s friend from
Paris-Match
. He brushed aside any excuse and insisted Bruno join them for a quick one.
    ‘I’ve bought every issue of that rag for thirty years and now they want to talk to me about the Red Countess,’ Montsouris said as they turned up the Rue Gambetta to Ivan’s Café de la Renaissance. ‘Think I can maybe get a free subscription out of it?’
    Gilles and Antoine were at one of Ivan’s metal tables in front of the café, a small digital recorder and glasses of Ricard and an almost empty water jug before them. The ashtray was half-filled with Antoine’s yellow Gitanes. Montsouris joined them in a Ricard and Bruno ordered a beer.
    ‘Antoine was telling me about meeting her when he was a boy and his uncle worked at the château as a gardener,’ Gilles said. ‘How about you?’ he asked Montsouris. ‘How did you know her?’
    ‘I never met her to talk to but I saw her at one of the great moments of history,’ Montsouris said proudly. ‘But what’s this about? Why the sudden interest in the Red Countess?’
    Bruno had forgotten how a lifetime in the Party had left Montsouris suspicious of the capitalist press, even of the
Paris-Match
that he read from cover to cover each week.
    ‘We’re preparing an obituary,’ Gilles