The Missing Corpse: A Brittany Mystery, page 19
part #4 of Commissaire Dupin Series
With the greatest sternness he could muster, he changed the subject.
“Nolwenn, have you ever heard of serious disputes between different druidic associations? Or within them?”
“Because of Smith?”
Nolwenn was instantly focused on the new subject.
“Yes. And because the oyster trader in Port Belon is also a druidess. Madame Premel. I’m just on my way to see her. Smith’s and Premel’s associations both belong to the Gorsedd.”
“Druids are just people, and personal disputes definitely happen now and again. Do you suspect something specific?”
“Not as yet. It’s still very vague. Perhaps just a coincidence.”
“You definitely can’t dismiss it out of hand.”
Dupin thought so too.
He had reached the picturesque stone bridge that went over the Belon. On one side the river was a wildly meandering stream. On the other side, it turned into a fjord.
“I’ll be there very soon, Nolwenn.”
He would park his car here and look for the clearing in the wood on foot.
“Speak to you later then, Monsieur le Commissaire.” Nolwenn hesitated. “I think you should take Docteur Garreg’s orders very seriously. Think about it: oysters and us humans appeared on earth at the same time, more than two million years ago—that cannot be a coincidence!”
A moment later she had hung up.
Dupin took some deep breaths.
After the bridge, he had turned onto a path with another path branching off it. This went directly into the wood, more or less parallel to the Belon.
The sun had already drifted down a long way toward the horizon; it always went quickly at the end. The sky was split in half this evening: the translucent blue had turned into an even, warm yellow in the west, and it filled its whole domain, not the slightest trace of orange. The east, on the other hand, shimmered a granite gray. The earth and everything on it was part of the yellow world of the west. The yellow seldom revealed itself, and never in the summer. The sun itself, the burning ball, looked strangely white on these yellow evenings.
Dupin entered the wood.
It was much darker than he had expected. And much wilder. Ancient oaks overgrown with pale green-and-beige moss. Broken branches, lianas, ivy, undergrowth, lichens. Junglelike. He needed to keep an eye out for the clearing.
Dupin had worked his way deeper into the wood and turned right onto a smaller path that sloped gently upward. He usually had an excellent sense of direction. He had been in the scouts as a boy, but for some reason, he realized, he was in danger of getting lost here. Wherever you looked, things looked exactly the same and thus, in a sinister way, perpetually familiar; as if you had always been here or were walking in a circle. Seeing a patch of sky was rare.
What saved him was taking a look through the undergrowth at the stream. The oak trees seemed to be even denser now, overgrown in even more eccentric shapes; proper figures, ancient tree creatures covered in mistletoe. Dupin remembered that Docteur Garreg had prescribed him a mistletoe regimen last year, also for the stomach, a mistletoe tea regimen, one large mug three times a day. At first he hadn’t been able to force the miracle regimen down, and by the end it had tasted delicious.
Suddenly it got brighter and brighter, and before he realized what was happening, the commissaire was standing in a large clearing, as abruptly as if the clearing had only just magically come into being for the first time. An idyllic meadow that stretched over a hill, the fairy-tale stream to the right with its harmonious curves. The yellow of the sky had now given way to a surreally garish orangey-pinky-red, creating an overwhelming scene.
But the real spectacle was to be seen at the other end of the meadow.
It looked like there were white robes floating there, the infinitely long shadows of the trees seeming to stretch toward them. Around a dozen phantoms were gathered in a loose circle. A little stone structure in the middle—the old enclosed spring, Dupin guessed. Large flickering candles stood on the well.
It looked archaic. From a distance it wouldn’t have been distinguishable, Dupin imagined, from an ancient scene.
He approached, hesitantly at first, but then with determined strides. He was on an investigation, druidic ceremonies or not. Besides, Madame Premel herself had said he should come by, it was just “a rehearsal,” after all.
A man wearing a gold headband with sprigs of mistletoe wound around it, and who was clearly in charge, was reciting something loudly, solemnly, in measured tones. Dupin didn’t understand a word. Breton, no doubt. And to complete the cliché, he had a long white beard. He was holding an elegant sword in both hands. There was actually a carved egg lying on the stone in front of him. A very large egg. The sacred Celtic Easter egg.
It wasn’t just the man in charge; they were all wearing the long, wide, dazzlingly white robes, and some also had fluttering head coverings made from the same material and secured with embellished headbands. A little way beyond the druid—Dupin hadn’t seen them at first—a man and woman stood in normal clothes. The man had bagpipes under his arm, the woman was holding a horn that tapered at the top. Two of the druids in the circle were holding a long, twisty wooden rod. Oak, Dupin presumed, the ritual tree. Dupin’s feelings vacillated between slight unease, extreme amusement, and genuine respect.
He could tell that approximately half the group was made up of women. However, he had no idea what Madame Premel looked like.
Everyone was absorbed in the ceremony; nobody seemed to have noticed Dupin. He was just wondering whether to clear his throat loudly, ask clearly for Madame Premel, or just wait a little longer, when the woman in normal clothes blew her horn briefly but all the more bloodcurdlingly for that. It sounded like a wild, furious animal, although Dupin couldn’t have said which animal.
“That’s it. All set for Saturday! Have a good evening, everyone!”
These words had been uttered by the white-bearded chief druid, in an altogether ordinary tone of voice, an octave higher than the one he had used before.
A few curt good-byes here and there, then the head coverings were removed and suddenly the solemn group divided into several little chattering groups.
Still nobody seemed to take any notice of Dupin.
“I’ve got to pick up Arthur, he’s at his grandparents’ house.”
“Pierre and I are going for a drink, take me as far as Riec.”
Two women had walked right past Dupin.
The contrast was crazy. Within the space of a few seconds, the druidic meeting had taken on the atmosphere of the end of a choir camp, when the choir leader wound up the rehearsal with some nice words and this special, cheerful, but completely mundane merriment instantly broke out.
“Madame Premel?” By this point, Dupin had decided he would ask a question very clearly.
“Ah, the commissaire. Where’s your car?”
Dupin flinched; the voice had come from directly behind him.
He turned around.
A slim woman wearing jeans, a sweatshirt, and rubber boots was standing in front of him, the sweatshirt a bright red, the boots apple green, nothing matched properly, and yet the look worked. She had one of the white robes tucked under her arm, long chestnut-brown hair, piercing dark green eyes, and an energetic expression on her face, determined, but interested, kind.
“We can talk on the way to the parking lot. I’ve still got to pick up a few things from our Riec branch and then go back to Port Belon. Or I could take you with me in my car and drop you off in Port Belon, we’d have more time that way. But you’ll need your car, I guess.”
She spoke at great speed. The radiant orange of the sky had disappeared by now, as if it had been theatrical lighting for the ceremony and the chief druid had simply turned it off after rehearsal.
“I’m down there, Madame Premel, toward the bridge.”
“Salut, Nolwenn.”
Dupin looked confused. The chief druid had walked past. He had his robe under his arm too and was wearing jeans with a casual dark shirt—the beard was real, but now, when you could see the precisely cropped hairs, it looked completely different, groomed, not at all druidic.
“Salut, Jean. I’ll be dropping in to the bank tomorrow, transfers and that…”
“If you’ve parked down there”—she was talking to Dupin again—“you’ve had quite a walk through our enchanted wood. There’s a little bridge over the stream up there,” she gestured with her head, “that’ll take you straight to a parking lot, just a few minutes from here.” The words came pouring out of her. “I figure you’ve come directly from my ex-husband’s burning office—from Port Belon you’ve got to turn off before the bridge, not after.” Dupin didn’t think she was even drawing breath. “I know how we’ll do it: you come with me and I’ll drive you to your car. Then we won’t waste any time.”
She had already marched off.
Dupin followed.
“And what strikes you about the fire, Madame Premel? Where were you this evening between half past six and seven?” The commissaire had no time to lose either.
His questions didn’t seem to bother her in the slightest.
“I must have just left to get to this meeting at that point. I was a little late, it actually started at seven. We live right on the river, above our business. There’s always something, you know how it is. And the fire, what strikes me about it? Luckily I haven’t had anything to do with that man for a long time. I don’t know. There must be lots of people who can’t stand him, maybe even hate him, although he always pretends to be so friendly; he has to have enemies, no doubt about it. I haven’t cared about him for a long time, but sometimes we argue nonetheless. At the association’s meetings, for example. Some people will tell you about that, of course, I’m not going to kid myself. I can live with that. But frankly: if you want to find out about any current conflicts, I’m not the right person.”
It had sounded like one long sentence—Dupin would have managed at most a quarter of the words in the same amount of time.
“That means that at the exact time the fire was set, you were near the scene. You wouldn’t have had any trouble parking a distance away from the house and getting to the annex through the little wood and the garden. The whole thing would only have taken you a few minutes.”
“That’s exactly right. But why would I have done that?”
“Surely it infuriated you to have lost out to your ex-husband in the bidding war for the oyster farm near Fouesnant bay.”
“At that price”—her tone and speed remained the same—“he’ll be up to his neck in oysters there. He probably offered a million and a half and perhaps a little something else too; it’s disgraceful. I would have done the deal if it had been a deal. For him it’s all about expansion. I’ll leave him to it.”
She seemed totally above it all now.
“You think he paid a significantly inflated price?”
“Absolutely.”
“And that … there was bribery involved?”
“I couldn’t say. But”—she paused—“I think on that occasion, he really only did it through the price. In other cases I’m not so sure.”
They had reached the bridge—a wooden footbridge—and the parking lot Madame Premel had mentioned was visible from here. Several cars were just leaving. They were the last ones left.
“Do you know a Ryan Mackenzie or a Seamus Smith? Do these names mean anything to you?”
“The ‘Body in the Hell-Bog’ and the ‘Missing Man from the Belon.’ The oyster trader. There are reports about them everywhere, it was on Bleu Breizh just on my way here. But you’ll want to know whether I knew them before. Whether I did business with them. No.” Even her walking pace was considerably fast—Dupin was struggling to follow her. “Of course you’ll say I could just be saying that now. I could be lying to you.”
She seemed to be having a serious think.
“Check my business records. Although obviously they could be incomplete or doctored too.”
If it went on like this, she could do the investigative interview with herself, Dupin thought.
“Do you do business with Scotland, Madame Premel?”
“No.”
“What farms do you get your oysters from?”
“Mainly from the two châteaux in Port Belon. And from farmers in Riec, but only smaller quantities. Are you trying to retrace a web of relationships? That’ll be a lot of work.”
They had reached the parking lot. Madame Premel walked over to a white Renault van with dents and scratches on every side.
“Does anything come to mind when you think about the events—about the ‘Missing Man from the Belon’?”
“There must have been some kind of fight. Someone in the oyster world knows them both, or one of them. There are endless possibilities, but it could also be purely personal. If so, it’ll be extremely difficult to find it.”
She had opened the car and got in as quick as a flash. She was waiting for Dupin, who had almost reached the door.
“So you don’t have something specific in the … oyster world … in mind?”
“No.”
Dupin got in too. The engine started at the same time.
“And in the druidic world?” Dupin left it deliberately vague.
“In the druidic world? You’re interested in that?”
“The man who was the ‘Body in the Hell-Bog’ belonged to the Scottish Gorsedd.”
“I’m glad. The Breton and Scottish associations are close. Maybe we even met at an Interceltic meeting sometime. Who knows? I don’t always make it to them. The business, family … Maybe that was why the Scotsmen came to Brittany. We do have the traditional preparatory meeting for the big Festival Interceltique in Lorient now, in the run-up to Easter. The preparatory meeting takes place in Riec. There will be some Scottish people there. Especially since Scotland is the host nation this year.”
Neither the stones flying up on all sides nor the deep potholes made Premel brake.
“Right now? Here in Riec?”
“One of these days now, yes, in Riec. Brittany’s first Interceltic festival took place here in 1927; the festival in Lorient wasn’t founded until the seventies. As early as 1927, a hundred and fifty delegates came here from the other Celtic nations, and from Scotland too. Including bagpipe bands and druids.”
“And Scotland is the host nation?”
“That’s been agreed for a year, everyone wrote about it!”
Although it could probably be ruled out that Mackenzie and Smith came as “delegates” to prepare the big festival, it was interesting nonetheless. In any case, this established a direct link between Scotland and the Belon. In these exact weeks. It didn’t need to be about the festival itself, it could simply have been the outward reason for something else.
“So Riec is a kind of center for Intercelticism?”
“Absolutely. There are countless Celtic and Interceltic activities here. They love Intercelticism on the Belon! Even my ex-husband.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“When he was younger, he belonged to a Celtic sports team. His specialty was ‘Stone of Manhood’ where you have to lift heavy boulders onto a pedestal. And he’s one of the members of the preparatory meeting for the festival in Riec; he sponsors it too. The festival in Lorient, I mean.”
“Your ex-husband is a festival sponsor?”
The festival was the biggest of its kind. Ten days, almost a million visitors from every Celtic corner of Europe. A grand festival. With live concerts. But also theater, readings, and talks.
“Yes, Matthieu likes to act generous, to the outside world. His partner, that building contractor, is involved too. They exploit the festival as an advertising space and networking forum.”
“Pierre Delsard?”
His name was coming up more and more often.
“Yes.”
“Did he go into business with your ex-husband? Do the two of them have a deal going?”
“I’m the last person who would know about that one too. But my ex really always wants to be the greatest all by himself.”
“Does your group have direct links to Scotland? The group itself, I mean, not the umbrella organization?”
“Oh yes. A few. Links to several groups. Also to one on the west coast where the two dead Scotsmen apparently come from. The Ring of Dawn. In Tarbert. The other groups come from the north and the Highlands.”
They turned onto the main road at quite a speed. The bridge was to the right, and the turnoff Dupin had taken was beyond it. They would be at his car in a minute.
“And were there or are there any tensions or disputes between your group and the one from Tarbert? Has anything happened there?”
“No. They’re meetings of friendship. Of course I don’t know what personal matters there might be. They are also meetings of love, of course,” she said with complete sincerity. “Now you’ll definitely want to know whether I am personally in touch with someone in this group? No. I wasn’t on the trip over there. Or on any of the trips to Scotland. And the members of the Ring of Dawn haven’t come here yet. That’s as much as I have to tell you. Does that help?”
The question was meant to show in a friendly but unmistakable way that the conversation, from Madame Premel’s point of view, would soon be over. Dupin was sure it had been the swiftest investigative interview of his whole career.
“How long have you been doing this?”
“How long have I been a member of this group? Five or six years. Not that long.”
Smith was not an active druid by then. Madame Premel carried right on: “I presume that people aren’t familiar with things like this in Paris. You probably harbor lots of prejudices.”
Dupin ignored her little dig. “And the oyster farm?”
“I took over the business from my father, twenty years ago now. I’ve helped out ever since I was little, forever.”
“Why did your marriage break down, Madame Premel?”
“I ended it.” Premel didn’t seem to have any issue with this question. “There came a point when I realized that Matthieu didn’t want me, he wanted my father’s business. It was that simple.”
