The Patriarch: A Bruno, Chief of Police Novel Read Online Free PDF

our best, but the law isn’t exactly fast on these matters,” Bruno replied. “She still has a few weeks to put up that fence the court ordered, and then she might try an appeal.”
    “One of these days those deer will kill someone, mark my words,” said Valentin, picking up a cleaver.
    Valentin was right, Bruno reflected as he drove up the hill to the home of Imogène Ducaillou. A pleasant but eccentric widow, she worked as a cashier and caretaker in one of the smaller prehistoric caves that dotted the region. She was a mainstay of the town’s literary club, with an inexhaustible appetite for romantic novels and books about animals. She owned and lived on a large tract of mostly forested land that abutted one of the main roads leading to St. Denis. A passionate Green and strict vegetarian, she loved all animals and hated hunting. She had posted
chasse interdite
notices all around her land, which was surrounded by hunting preserves that were used by the town’s hunting clubs. Deer aren’t foolish. Given a choice between land stalked by hunters and territory where they were banned, as soon as the hunting season opened the deer made a refuge of Imogène’s property, just as she had wished.
    At first, all was well, although the hunters were unhappy at the scarcity of game in their traditional preserves. But soon the concentration of deer on Imogène’s land had become a different kind of problem as their population exploded and destroyed much of her vegetation. As a result, the deer were all painfully thin and becoming desperate enough to risk the hunters’ guns in their search for food. Today’s accident was the third in the past year to have been caused by deer leaving her land, despite warning signs and speed limits placed by Bruno on that stretch of road. Imogène had repeatedly rejected pleas by Bruno and the mayor to allow the deer on her land to be culled. As a last resort the prefect had secured a court order instructing that Imogène must fence her land within six months to protect those driving on the road nearby. Five months had passed, and she had still not done so. It would be expensive, probably too much for her to afford.
    Deer were everywhere as Bruno drove up the winding, gravel lane that led to Imogène’s house, stretching up to nibble the remaining bark on trees, nosing into the earth to see if any shoots remained. There was no undergrowth, just earth and dead trees, and Bruno could see the wooden watchtowers, standing ominously at the edges of Imogène’s property, where the hunters waited for the deer to risk leaving her land in the search for food. The sight gave him an eerie feeling, evoking memories of newsreels of prison camps guarded by similar towers manned by sharpshooters.
    Bruno stopped and climbed out of his vehicle, struck by the sense of standing at a frontier. Over a belt of some thirty or forty meters the woodland thickened from barren earth and bare trees on Imogène’s property to the usual fertile jumble of shrubs and ferns. Gazing at this strange contrast, his eyes sensed a sudden movement, and he realized that one of the watchtowers was manned. He leaned through his car window and sounded the horn until he saw an answering wave from the distant blind. He walked toward it, moving through the steadily thickening vegetation and into a clearing. The hide stood on its far side, mounted on four sturdy poles. Two men in camouflage jackets, one big and burly and the other shorter and slim, looked down at Bruno curiously.
    “Come to check our hunting permits?” asked the bigger man. He looked familiar, as though Bruno had seen him in another context. His flat tweed cap triggered Bruno’s memory. This was the gamekeeper at the Patriarch’s château, the man who had carried Gilbert from the party. The smaller man was hanging back a little, almost as though trying to keep out of Bruno’s view.
    “I can if you want,” Bruno replied affably. “But I was going to ask if you knew