A Murder in Springtime

Chapter 1

Bruno Courrèges, chief of police of the Vézère Valley in the département of France officially named the Dordogne but which the locals stubbornly continue to call the Périgord, was engaged in one of his favorite pursuits. He was in the kitchen of his house on a Saturday evening in winter, cooking, with a glass of wine at his elbow. This was not unusual, since he loved to feast with his friends, but on this particular evening he was cooking for two, which was less common. And he was doing so with a touch of romance in his heart, and a sense of occasion that had ensured that the carpets had been vacuumed, the sheets and towels changed and the windows scrubbed until they sparkled.

His wine had been freshly poured from a bottle chilling on the steps outside the kitchen door, a locally grown Chardonnay from Château les Brandeaux. A bottle of Château Mondazur from the Pécharmant had been opened and awaited decanting. He had cooked a new batch of his own dog biscuits, not just for his basset hound, Balzac, but to be shared with an elegant young female of the same species who was also expected for dinner. She was named after the defiantly liberated novelist George Sand, who had shocked nineteenth-­century France by wearing trousers and smoking in public while conducting flamboyant affairs with Chopin, de Musset and Prosper Merimée, among others. It had been Bruno’s recognition of the dog’s name, and his appreciation of her looks, style and pedigree, that had alerted him to the special attractions of George Sand’s owner, Laura Segret, who was to be his guest that evening.

They had met in unhappy circumstances, connected by the suicide of Laura’s friend and business partner Monique Duhamel. Bruno had found the body, in her own car, parked near a spot of Monique’s happy childhood memories, and had brought to Laura a farewell letter addressed to her from her friend. The legal complications surrounding Monique’s death had brought Bruno and Laura repeatedly together, and mutual admiration for each other’s dogs soon turned into mutual attraction between their owners.

Cooking for a lover was special, Bruno thought, an act of love in itself. There was the planning of the setting; should lovers sit face-­to-­face? But the magic of touch would be much easier if one sat at the head of the table and the other alongside. It would also facilitate one of the special pleasures of lovers dining together, to offer choice forkfuls to the beloved. And then there was the choosing of the menu—­nothing too heavy—­and then of the wines, to be enjoyed in moderation.

Bruno had decided to present as a first course a little smoked salmon. It was to be accompanied by two thin slices of toasted whole wheat bread, generously smeared with avocado and a touch of black pepper. He had already prepared the dessert, a light syllabub of lemon juice, double cream and two wineglasses of Rosette, the sweet but light white wine that was unique to the Bergerac. Bruno had experimented with the dessert wine of the region, Monbazillac, but found it tended to dominate. These two dishes had been already prepared and were cooling in the fridge.

For the main course, he had decided on duck legs, picked up the previous day from his friends at the Lac Noir farm, which sold so many breasts to restaurants for magrets that they always had plenty of legs to spare. He swapped four legs and four of the tender aiguillettes in exchange for a truffle he and Balzac had found. He recalled cooking aiguillettes with a sauce Montmorency, of sour cherries with orange juice, sweet cherries and kirsch, but that had been back in summer when cherries were ripe, so he had decided against them. When he had a sudden mental image of himself and Laura each with a duck leg in hand, chewing happily together like some modern version of his favorite king, Henri IV, with his mistress Gabrielle d’Estrées, his choice was confirmed.

Bruno had chopped four cloves of garlic together with a handful of dried rosemary leaves and rubbed the mixture into the flesh and under the skin of four fat duck legs before laying them flat in a roasting pan, dusting them with five-­spice powder and letting them marinate for an hour while he brought in sufficient wood to keep the stove going through the night.

Then he set the oven and put the roasting pan with the duck legs in for an hour and carried on with his cleaning. When the hour had passed, he poured out the cupful of fat that had been sweated from the legs and added a quarter liter of his homemade chicken stock and a glass of red wine, returned the pan to the oven and lowered the heat for another thirty minutes.

Bruno checked his watch and saw it was almost eight—­Laura was running late. He took out his phone, but she hadn’t texted him. After another thirty minutes had passed, he checked on the duck, and there was still a little stock not yet evaporated, so he lowered the heat further and gave it another twenty minutes. By this time he was getting nervous. Given it was Saturday, Laura should have left the office hours ago.

Should he wait for her arrival and then serve the first course at once, or forget the first course and let her sit down and catch her breath so they could enjoy a drink together? He decided to do the latter and began peeling the potatoes, setting them to parboil before moving on to the garlic and mushrooms. At nine, there was still no word from Laura. A call to her mobile went straight to voicemail; he hoped that meant she was driving. He would only need ten or fifteen minutes to slice the half-­boiled potatoes and put them with the mushrooms, garlic and some parsley in a frying pan. He would also have to heat the remaining wine and some black-­currant jelly and blend them into a gentle simmer, stirring the mixture constantly until it was ready to pour over the duck legs for their final twenty minutes in the oven.

At nine-­fifteen he called the desk at the gendarmerie to ask if there was any trouble on the roads from Périgueux or Bergerac and was assured that all was well. Bruno now pondered his cooking options. He decided to stop everything and wait another half hour, knowing that he could then have a hot meal on the table at ten, which Laura would find welcome after an evidently busy and perhaps difficult evening.

Bruno was aware that the transition of her company after Monique’s death had not been going as planned. Laura had wanted to move the headquarters from the market town of Sarlat, whose massive tourism made movement almost impossible throughout the summer, to be closer to Bergerac and its airport. Many of their clients arrived by private plane or by flights from London, Berlin or Amsterdam. She had assumed that the remaining clientele, who had long complained of the difficulties of reaching Sarlat, would be happy with the change, too. But although she was by far the longest-­serving member of the company’s directors, she did not carry Monique’s authority.

It was an unusual business that Monique had invented and slowly built with Laura’s help, selling a package deal to clients who liked the idea of owning a small French château but couldn’t justify the expense. Monique had realized that if the château was rented out by the week year-­round, and thus constantly inhabited, the price of insurance would plummet, which, along with the rental income, would make the château easily affordable. They now had about thirty such châteaus on their books, with owners who spent July, August and Christmas in their château, which for the rest of the year were occupied by vacationers, companies holding seminars or conferences, or for fashion or commercial shoots and filmmakers. They even had a package deal with a local dental practice to offer cosmetic treatments to international clients for a fraction of the cost back home, with recuperation in a French château thrown in.

Laura had been surprised to learn that the two women who worked out of Périgueux and managed the properties in the north of the Périgord did not want to move to a common base in Bergerac, nor did two of the four based in Sarlat. The two based in Bergerac did not want to move to the farmhouse near the airport that Laura had rented, which she thought would be perfect as their new HQ. Now her colleagues were suggesting that perhaps the company should be broken up into separate parts. The whole affair had been complicated by Monique’s will, which had left Laura as the largest single shareholder in the company but stipulated that she could be outvoted by the other women. Three of them had been on board for not much more than a year, while Laura could boast a decade’s service.

Bruno had no voice in the matter, but he knew that Laura’s house and business in Sarlat were barely thirty minutes from his home outside St. Denis. The Bergerac farmhouse was an hour away, a difference in commuting time that would not be helpful for a love affair, let alone a more enduring relationship. Laura now had the worst of both worlds, based in Sarlat but commuting to Bergerac as she struggled to keep the business Monique had founded alive. On the rare occasions she spent the night with Bruno, she rose early to go to her home in Sarlat to shower and change and then drove to Bergerac for another grim day of negotiating with the colleagues she had thought were friends.

Finally, his phone rang.

“I’m so sorry, chéri, but I only just got away. In fact I walked out, because otherwise you might have been arresting me for the murder of that greedy bitch from Périgueux.”

“Sorry you’ve had such a grim time,” he replied, trying to sound understanding and supportive and dampening his own sense of frustration. “Where are you now? I’m sure you must be hungry.”

“I’m still in Bergerac, and I’m too tired and too angry to drive. I’ll crash at Sylvie’s place tonight and see you tomorrow. Will your dinner keep?”

“Yes, of course, don’t worry about it,” he said. “We don’t need to eat. But it sounds as though you need some comfort. Should I drive over and pick you up?”

“You’re so sweet, Bruno, but I’m not fit company. I’ll probably be stalking the floor in a not-­so-­quiet rage. And I’ll make sure to be on time tomorrow.”

With a heavy heart Bruno set about finishing his dinner preparations, a romantic supper pour deux now two sad meals for one. He made a plate for himself and wrapped up the second portion to reheat for a quick supper later in the week. Bruno ate without pleasure, his mind on the unique challenge of pursuing a relationship with a woman clearly dedicated to her career. He had been down a version of this road before, he thought, with Isabelle. He quickly shook his head to dislodge that notion. Laura and Isabelle were two very different women, and he couldn’t let his baggage from one affect the potential of happiness with the other.