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

Lemontin and pulled over to take the call.
    ‘I managed to dig up something on Antin Investments,’ the banker began. He explained that his new bank branch had a very full file because Antin had taken out a mortgage with the Sarlat office to buy and restore the hotel. Antin wasowned by an SCI, a property company, which owned a lot of other property in the region. The mortgage application had been signed by two directors of Antin Investments, César and Héloïse de la Gorce, and the monthly payments were up to date.
    ‘It’s all a bit complex,’ Lemontin said. ‘The monthly payments for the Antin mortgage are coming from the parent SCI, in which Héloïse de la Gorce is a very minor shareholder and César is no shareholder at all.’
    ‘What is the parent SCI, do you know?’ Bruno asked.
    ‘
Société Civile Immobilière Châteauroux-Vaillant
,’ Lemontin replied. ‘That’s the Red Countess. Châteauroux is the château and Vaillant was the name of her mother.’
    ‘How are the monthly payments made, by cheque?’
    ‘No, by bank transfer on a standing order.’
    ‘Who authorized that and when did the payments start?’
    ‘I’ll find out.’
    As he drove on Bruno wondered how a woman with Alzheimer’s could have authorized such a mortgage, and if she had not, what legal standing her sister and great-nephew would have to do so.
    Fabiola opened the door to her house as he pulled into the courtyard. She told him she was just putting on her riding boots and asked him to wait. He didn’t really want company as the various questions nagged at him, but he saddled Hector, settled Balzac into the binocular case and waited until Fabiola came into the stables. She left him to lead Bess and set off briskly toward the shallow part of the river and the bridle track that led to Ste Alvère.
    They hadn’t come this way for some time and he enjoyed it, the long canter over Pamela’s fields to the ford, then trotting down the path until the long straight stretch where the horses began to gallop of their own accord. At the fork in the trail, Fabiola stopped.
    ‘Back along the ridge or down the valley and along the stream to the bridge at St Denis?’ she asked.
    ‘The ridge.’ Bruno wanted the sense of liberty he found amid the big skies and wide views.
    ‘Did you see the Countess yourself?’ she asked as the horses began to walk up the slope to the ridge.
    ‘Yes, in her hospital bed in the château, wired up to various machines. She’s apparently been out of it for years.’
    ‘Who’s her doctor, do you know?’
    ‘No idea. She has a full-time nurse. Why do you ask?’
    ‘I had lunch with the pathologist at the hospital after we finished the autopsy and one of his colleagues joined us, the main specialist in Alzheimer’s. He hadn’t heard of the Countess’s case but he’d certainly heard of her. The thing was, he said he knew all the other Alzheimer’s specialists in the area and he was surprised he’d never heard about her. He wanted to know who’d made the diagnosis, so I said I’d ask you.’
    ‘I can probably find out,’ Bruno said. ‘It may have been someone in Paris and her sister brought her down here for the quiet.’
    ‘How long has she been here?’
    ‘I don’t know that either. Nobody seemed to know she was here, not the Mayor or even people in the Party like Montsouris. They kept it very discreet.’
    ‘She must have a doctor locally,’ she said as they topped the rise and the plateau spread out beyond with the view down the valley to the old abbey at Paunat. ‘I’ll ask Gelletreau, he knows all the other
toubibs
from Bordeaux to Toulouse.’
    ‘
Merde
,’ she said as her phone jangled. ‘I’m on standby tonight.’ She listened and turned her horse, mouthing ‘Sorry’ as she held the phone to her ear. ‘I’ll be there in thirty minutes,’ she said and set off back down the slope.
    A familiar white mare was grazing in Bruno’s front garden when he pulled into his driveway. Eugénie, dressed in her black riding trousers and sweat shirt, rose from his chair beside the barbecue and greeted him with the words ‘Mama kangaroo.’ Balzac was still nestled in the binocular case under Bruno’s chin.
    ‘Say hello to the baby kangaroo,’ he replied, releasing Balzac, who trotted up to greet the visitor. Eugénie’s response to the dog was perfunctory.
    ‘I didn’t see you riding this evening so I thought I’d come back this way to say hello,’ she said. She was