‘The more there are to hunt, the richer the harvest.’
‘The better the omelette, eh?’
‘They won’t leave Paris, Hermann, because they can’t.’
‘If I were you, I’d not be so sure of myself.’
The Citroen dwindled from sight, but just before it turned down into the gorge, Hermann stopped and got out to look back at him. Mist trailed across the road. The forest, naked of its leaves, seemed to frown as they walked towards each other, two lonely men with their cross.
‘It’s merely a matter of deduction, Hermann. Antoine Audit holds answers his brother Charles and Rejean Tourmel want desperately to keep hidden as does he himself. Why else the girl in that room at the Hotel of the Silent Life, why else this butterfly or these gold and emerald earrings she could not possibly have worn?’
‘Why else the coins that were forged, eh, Louis? Why else the carousel? Do as you’re told, my fine Frog friend. Watch your back because I won’t be around to watch it for you.’
‘Then you do the same for yourself.’
The man they had come so far to see was not easy to find. Though barren of its leaves, the forest all too often hid things. Always the smell of damp, rotting leaves was present, warmer now perhaps because the day had grown and the mist had begun to clear.
Since leaving the road, St-Cyr had climbed to the heights, for the Perigord was an old and much dissected plateau where the elements of karst topography had been played in collapsed sinkholes, scarps, abandoned river gorges and flat-lying uplands. Not always were there oaks. Spasms of misguided plantation fever had seeded pines for lumber but they’d not had a decent time of it. Too much lime in the soil probably. The chestnut trees had fared better, the poplars, of course, much better still, and some of these had retained a few recalcitrant leaves on branches that had been broken during an early ice storm or by the winds.
Those leaves tended to stir, and long before he would come upon the poplars, he would know where they were. But, ah Mon Dieu, where was Audit? To come so far, to leave loved ones behind in grave danger, twenty-nine hostages also, was unforgivable.
Just when he realized he was being stalked was not quite clear. There’d been a shallow dip in the crown of a hill, a grove of magnificent walnut trees, quite unexpected, for he’d been amongst them before he’d noticed a few stray nuts and had stopped to gather them.
The undergrowth had been sparse. Had he heard something? The distant barking of dogs, the flight of a partridge? A step perhaps?
Never the grunting of a sow upon which he had, at first, depended as much as on the flatness of the land.
Going from tree to tree, he’d suddenly stopped. Yes … yes, there’d been a half-step.
This one was of the forest.
Now a flat-floored, empty gorge opened into a former plunge pool where once there had been a waterfall. Oaks grew in profusion among the blocky boulders. The scree was thick and of that yellowish, buff tint, invariably stained by oxides of iron like the walls of the gorge that rose perhaps to a height of 20 metres and just above the crowns of the trees.
He knew he had walked right into it – he’d been making circles, trying to come up behind his starting point, only to find the circles had become spirals that had taken him farther and farther from their start.
When he turned, a single-barrelled 10-gauge shotgun was levelled at him. An old gun, much used and therefore reliable.
‘Antoine Audit, I presume,’ he said. ‘Jean-Louis St-Cyr of the Surete Nationale.’
Audit would have fitted well into any of the local farm markets. This was not the successful businessman who would dally with a young mistress, this was the truffle-hunter.
The high leather boots were tightly laced about rough brown corduroy trousers that bagged at the knees and sagged at the crotch. The jacket, of the same, had leather patches at the elbows. The sweater, of a coarse brown homespun, made the chubby girth of the businessman, the barrel chest of the goatherd.
Only in the carefully brushed moustache was there vanity.
‘Monsieur, the gun is not necessary. I’m here merely to ask you a few questions in the matter of Christabelle Audit’s death.’
The dark-brown eyes in that large round face were watchful, the flecked tweed cap hid all but a slice of the brow. The thick, bushy eyebrows were greying.
Though the barrel of the gun never wavered, some of the suspicion seemed to ebb from Audit. ‘I tried to warn her. I knew there was trouble, but why her? Was she to be an example too?’
A boy of twelve now came into view. Two black-and-white sows, healthy bacon and ham but worth far more, roamed about on tethers of rope. Wicker baskets were crooked in each of the boy’s arms. Mattocks were gripped.
The boy was every bit as watchful as his father.
‘It’s all right, Armand. Leave me my basket and mattock. Take Benedictine and Mathile up to the wash, eh? Work the hollows. I’ll join you in a few moments.’
‘Please permit me the experience, eh?’ interjected St-Cyr. ‘The secret is safe. Let us simply pass a little time more profitably. A detective’s life is seldom offered such reward.’
Audit took in the well-worn hiking boots with their sturdy tread soles. The boots were in complete contrast with the rest.
The Surete brushed the thought aside. ‘The suit, overcoat and hat are, I’m afraid, quite new and not my usual.’
‘But the boots are?’ How much did this one know?
‘Boots are second only to the wearer of them, monsieur.’
‘Armand, this one tells me he’s of the salt of the earth. So, we will allow you to join us, monsieur, and we will see if you really are what you say.’
The boy and the pigs led the way out of the plunge pool and up to the plateau above it. There was a ‘wash’, the bed of an ancient tributary now long since gone and forested over. The oaks were old, the humus deep.
Antoine Audit’s eyes remained swift and narrow as he searched among the trees for evidence of poaching. The pigs went to work, rooting in the rich dark earth that lay beneath the autumn thickness of leaves. The ropes that tethered them were liberal and the boy quite capable – indeed so much so St-Cyr had the idea, and the admiration for it too, that Antoine Audit had started the boy off at a very early age and would impart all he knew to him.
‘Armand is a natural, Inspector. To be successful with the truffle, one has to know intuitively where to look. The female pig has an insatiable appetite for the vraie truffe. Every once in a while we give them a taste.’
When a truffle was located, the pig would be pulled away and tethered to a tree or led elsewhere while the father or the son used the mattock. First the topsoil was cut away – two or three quick chops – but then great care was taken to remove the earth down to the roots. Like black walnuts without their husks but still in their shells, the truffles clung to the roots upon which the fungus had fed. Most were of the size of a single walnut, occasionally two or even three.
Audit and son would carefully break off only the largest. Always some were left to produce spores for next year’s crop. Each hole was carefully covered and disguised with leaves, even to removing traces of their footprints.
‘To understand the truffle, monsieur, one has to comprehend that the land has changed. Here there was a streambed. Underneath the soil, the capability of carrying moisture is still retained. The best truffles are always found in the moistest soil and often on the shady side of the tree, so one has to think of the angle of the sun as well.’
They’d been going deeper and deeper into the forest. No hope of finding his directions, eh? Already their baskets were half full. When brushed of its humus and soil, the surface of the truffle had a coal-black, finely ribbed appearance.
Audit scraped a bit of one away to show him the net of white veins that marbled the black flesh. ‘If these are grey, the thing has lost its essence, its odour and taste, monsieur, and is of no use.’