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Authors: Alexander Campion

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BOOK: Crime Fraiche
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CHAPTER 13
“Y
ou want me to pedal a bicycle all day long? In this freezing weather?
Quelle idée!
Have you completely taken leave of your senses?” Alexandre asked, outraged. “Capucine, this country living has definitely addled your brain.” It was the first time in their relationship Capucine had seen Alexandre genuinely flabbergasted.
“You have to come,” Capucine said with almost schoolgirlish enthusiasm. “Jacques and I used to do it all the time when we were kids.” She took a deep breath, realizing this was precisely the wrong thing to have said. “It’ll be great fun. We follow the
chasse à courre
on bicycles and have one of Odile’s marvelous picnic lunches. We’ll get lots of exercise and fresh air. Just what you need after all your excesses of the past few days.” She poked him playfully in the stomach. Alexandre’s eyes darkened.
Alexandre had been out of sorts since he had arrived the day before. He had driven down with Jacques, who, it appeared, had regaled him for the hour-and-a-half ride with stories of his and Capucine’s youth at the château. Capucine could easily imagine Jacques lacing the tales of rainy afternoons spent playing hide-and-go-seek in the labyrinthine commons with sexual innuendo and then delighting in Alexandre’s struggle to control his jealousy.
Of course, Alexandre’s mood had improved conspicuously when Jacques had insisted on taking them and his father to dinner at a nearby two-star restaurant. Later, as they prepared for bed, Alexandre had gone into paeans of delight over the country version of haute cuisine. The marinated boar with chestnuts he had eaten was apparently in a class apart from what could be found in Paris. Capucine could at least attest to the boar’s aphrodisiac qualities.
But now his mood had fallen back to its nadir. Alexandre, as was his wont, had come down to breakfast rather late, only to discover the plan of following the hunt had been elevated to canonic status by Capucine’s insatiable desire to relive her childhood pursuits. He clung grimly to his opposition until Capucine flicked her trump card on the table: it would be of inestimable value to her investigation since she would pick up all sorts of invaluable gossip from the villagers. A principal bylaw of their marriage was that matters relating to Capucine’s vocation were inviolate. Oncle Aymerie, who had only been half listening, seized on the word investigation and, with the enthusiasm of those who do not have to participate, expounded a series of well-worn chestnuts of the sort that involve wild oats, teams of horses, and ten years of regained youth. Capucine was almost sad to see the light of obstinacy fade in her husband’s eyes.
In the garage they unearthed three ancient bicycles that would have been all the rage in Saint-Germain if pedaled by pretty young
minettes
in stiletto heels but in their native habitat were just cumbersome and squeaky. In the cloakroom they found well-worn Barbours, faded knitted scarves, and ancient rubber Wellingtons and proceeded to waver off down a tree-lined lane, picturesque enough to serve as a screen saver, to the hunt’s “rendezvous.”
Either the rendezvous had become a much more elaborate affair than it had been in her youth or her childhood memories had been filtered by the years. Well over a hundred people from all walks of life milled enthusiastically. Some were holding bicycles, many had come by car, but all were in some form of olive drab hunting garb. They circulated, shook hands, air-kissed, pounded backs, and wished each other well with the forced gaiety of an office Christmas party. The crowning emotion was an almost palpable sense of anticipation that something of major import was about to happen. At the epicenter, the two dozen members of the hunt in their bright emerald green coats fretted nervously with their grooms over bored-looking horses decked out in elegant blankets with crested monograms.
Despite the chill, Jacques had opened his Barbour to reveal ostentatiously a magnificent crushed red velvet waistcoat with gold piping and elaborate filigree buttons identifying him as a junior member of the hunt. Capucine told herself she should have known Jacques could not have contented himself with anonymous olive drab for an entire day.
“Has your dear husband become an adept of the
chasse à courre,
or is it just his hound’s nose for food and booze?” Jacques asked, indicating a distant Alexandre with his chin. Alexandre had wandered off with his newfound painter friend and was deep in animated conversation with a small group of people.
“Oh, very definitely the latter,” Capucine said as Alexandre and his crony cheerfully set out on a broad lap among the hunt followers.
Fifteen minutes later a distinguished gray-haired man, who could easily have been employed as an actor in German luxury car advertisements, separated himself from his horses and called for order. With perfect timing Alexandre sidled up, looking particularly pleased with himself, and insinuated himself between Jacques and Capucine.
“Ah, the dictum from on high,” Jacques—who had appointed himself Alexandre’s Virgil for the day—whispered in Alexandre’s ear. “The master in all his glory. He’s going to bore us comatose before he gets around to telling us where we’re going.”
The augury proved painfully accurate. It was only after an eternal and seemingly pointless preamble about wind speed and direction, a snap freeze in the night that had been intense enough to ice the lake, and an endless enumeration of the name, gender, and age of each hound who would be running, that the master announced that at six that morning they had seen the tracks of a good-sized stag accompanied by a herd of at least ten other deer leading into a thicket. In the hopes the deer were still there, that was where the hunt would start.
At long last, the horsemen took off down a lane, leading a pack of forty or so exuberant hounds, followed at a respectful distance by the crowd on bicycles. A far larger group in cars took to the paved road they hoped would keep them close to the hunt.
Ten minutes later everyone stopped; the hounds were checked by riders cracking their long, snakelike whips; and a lone horseman disappeared into the wood with a single hound. Nothing happened for several minutes. Capucine could see Alexandre getting bored.
Several antlerless deer crashed out of the wood and ran down the lane. The pack of hounds bayed excitedly but were held in check by more whip cracking and the judicious use of menacing expletives.
Jacques leaned toward Alexandre with a smirk. “That’s the poor stag’s harem driven out into the cold.”
Four larger deer with small antlers followed the does. “Now the squires. The stag collects them to amuse the harem while he plays the voyeur and broods, smoking Gauloises
bruns
and thinking dark existential thoughts. When they’re exhausted, it’s his turn. Curiously, it’s the last time around that puts the bun in the oven. Mr. Big is like a Mexican
jefe.
All the kids in the village have to look like him.”
“The perfect phallocrat, eh?” Capucine said. “Too bad Simone de Beauvoir never wrote about it.”
Finally, there was a tremendous crashing and an enormous stag with the sort of antlers usually seen on whiskey bottles erupted from the wood and tore off with the hounds in close pursuit, baying hysterically, followed by galloping horsemen blaring equally hysterically on their horns.
“
Le débuché!
Off we go,” said Jacques, hopping on his bicycle. Jacques and Capucine pedaled away energetically enough but were bridled by Alexandre, whose initially sluggish pace quickly slowed to a squeaky meander. Within a few minutes the hunt was as gone as if it had never existed and the forest filled again with its delicate sounds. Alexandre exhaled an audible sigh of relief.
After ten more minutes of labored pedaling, he stopped with the air of a man who has accomplished something worthwhile and looked ostentatiously at his watch. “Past noon,” he said. “Wouldn’t this be a good time to have an
apéro
and then start thinking about lunch?”
To Capucine’s intense irritation, Jacques agreed enthusiastically. They found a small clearing covered with drooping ferns, spread a blanket in a ray of sunshine, and ceremoniously laid down Odile’s picnic basket. Alexandre raised his hand. “I came prepared.” He reached into the pocket of his Barbour and produced an ancient and well-dented silver flask of substantial proportions. “It’s a nineteen-eighty-eight Yoichi single malt,” he said, pouring a measure into the cap and handing it to Jacques, who raised it in a toast to his cousin-in-law with an appreciative smile. Capucine shook her head in dismay.
A good hour and a half later they were well satiated with Odile’s hams and cheeses and bubbling over with the effects of her cider. But despite the steaming espresso from thermoses and the rest of the Yoichi from Alexandre’s flask, they felt the autumn chill.
“Well,” said Alexandre with the sort of smile Capucine supposed Napoleon had worn at Austerlitz, “I guess there’s nothing else to do but pedal back to the château. You were quite right, my dear. All this exercise has done me a world of good.”
The road home was Capucine’s favorite part of the forest. Half a mile before the village, the road narrowed into a lane which fed into a wooden trestle bridge over a long and narrow lake. The seventeenth-century architects who had dug the lake had shortened the bridge by building long embankments jutting out from either bank and preserved them from erosion by planting rows of beeches. Over the years the branches had reached across the track to intertwine in a dense canopy, effectively blotting out all the light, save for the occasional dramatic primrose shaft. For Capucine the moment when the cavernous track suddenly debouched onto the brilliance of the lake had always been magical.
But that afternoon the narrow lane was jammed with cars and thronged with olive-clad followers rushing back and forth with the purposefulness of ants or witnesses at a road crash. But this was no accident. The entire hunt in its green-coated glory had taken up position on the pencil-thin bridge.
Capucine, Alexandre, and Jacques pushed their bicycles through the crowd out to the center of the bridge, where a small van with a dinghy strapped to its top seemed to mark the command post. The master grandly sat on his horse next to the van and surveyed the lake, which was covered with dark, dangerous-looking, thin black ice sloshing with puddles of icy water. The center of attention was the stag, which made pained progress across the ice, slipping constantly, falling to its knees every now and then, only to get up and continue on, playing out its last few cards. It was a wrenching sight even for the hardest of hearts.
“
Bon,
” said the master decisively to the rider next to him, the senior hunt servant, mysteriously called a
piqueux
since medieval times. “
A toi
—it’s your move.”
The piqueux dismounted and unsheathed a rifle from under his saddle flap, a lever-action .30-30 Winchester, the rifle that Hollywood Westerns made famous.
“Not exactly the weapon I’d choose for a long shot like that,” Jacques said to Capucine in the tone one professional uses to another. Their intimacy was not lost on Alexandre.
As the piqueux went down on one knee and used the bridge’s railing as a rest for the rifle’s barrel, two paysans began to remove the boat from the roof of the van and prepared to put it on the ice. Their plan was obvious—push the boat across the ice to the deer and use it as a life raft in case the ice gave way.
Jacques resumed his Virgil’s mantle and commented on the scene to Alexandre. “The master’s made a complete balls-up. These big stags love to swim out on the lake to get away from the hounds, but this one must have been addled by all the yummy sex he had last night and made a bad tactical error by going out on thin ice. If they don’t shoot him, he’ll break through, drown, and sink to the bottom. Some left-wing journalist is sure to be lurking and will make coinage of an atrocity of that order.” Jacques indicated the far bank with a nod of his head. A large crowd from the village had collected on the far side.
“Nothing excites the lumpenproletariat more than a cruel death. The part that’s meant to entertain the gentry is the brave chaps in the little boat. They pray the ice won’t break and they can push it out there fast enough to get to the deer before it goes under. You’ll see. It’s going to be a sporting event. I’ll bet you twenty-five euros they get the deer just in the nick of time.”
The piqueux fired his first shot. The sharp crack rolled out across the ice and echoed back from the far bank. The deer took no notice and continued its desperate struggle. The piqueux drew a deep breath, worked the rifle’s lever, and fired another shot. The deer jerked slightly and scrabbled wildly in the icy slush until its forelegs plunged through a breach, imprisoning its body.
“What a buffoon,” Jacques said to Alexandre. “He hit him in the abdomen. That’s not going to do anyone any good.”
The piqueux fired a third shot, another clear miss. Jacques snorted, loud enough to turn some heads.
The men with the boat made good progress, scuttling along on their knees, one hand on the gunwale of the boat, the other on the ice. The ice crackled under their weight but held.
At the fourth shot the deer collapsed and fell over at a forty-five-degree angle, supported by his legs trapped in the hole. Capucine fervently hoped he was dead and not just stunned. At the same moment the ice around the boat gave way and the two men jumped in, soaking wet. A pair of oars appeared and one man began rowing. The ice was so thin that it broke easily at each stroke of the oars. The second paysan sat primly in the stern, his weight raising the bow out of the water, creating a perfect icebreaker.
BOOK: Crime Fraiche
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