The Day of the Jackal

Inside the café it was dark and cool. He heard rather than saw the customers shift at their tables to examine the newcomer, and there was a clacking of clogs on tiles as an old peasant woman in a black dress left one group of farm workers and went behind the bar.

‘Monsieur?’ she croaked.

He put down the luggage and leaned on the bar. The locals, he noticed, were drinking red wine.

‘Un gros rouge, s’il vous plaît, madame.’

‘How far is the château, madame,’ he asked when the wine was poured. She eyed him keenly from wily black marbles.

‘Two kilometres, monsieur.’

He sighed wearily. ‘That fool of a driver tried to tell me there was no château here. So he dropped me in the square.’

‘He was from Egletons?’ she asked. The Jackal nodded.

‘They are fools at Egletons,’ she said.

‘I have to get to the château,’ he said.

The ring of peasants watching from their tables made no move. No one suggested how he might get there. He pulled out a new hundred-franc note.

‘How much is the wine, madame?’

She eyed the note sharply. There was a shifting among the blue cotton blouses and trousers behind him.

‘I haven’t got change for that,’ said the old woman.

He sighed.

‘If only there were someone with a van, he might have change,’ he said.

Someone got up and approached from behind.

‘There is a van in the village, monsieur,’ growled a voice.

The Jackal turned with mock surprise.

‘It belongs to you, mon ami?’

‘No, monsieur, but I know the man who owns it. He might run you up there.’

The Jackal nodded as if considering the merits of the idea.

‘In the meantime, what will you take?’

The peasant nodded at the crone, who poured another large glass of rough red wine.

‘And your friends? It’s a hot day. A thirsty day.’

The stubbled face split into a smile. The peasant nodded again to the woman who took two full bottles over to the group round the big table. ‘Benoit, go and get the van,’ ordered the peasant, and one of the men, gulping down his wine in one swallow, went outside.

The advantage of the peasantry of the Auvergne, it would seem, mused the Jackal, as he rattled and bumped the last two kilometres up to the château, is that they are so surly they keep their damn mouths shut—at least to outsiders.

Colette de la Chalonnière sat up in bed, sipped her coffee and read the letter again. The anger that had possessed her on the first reading had dissipated, to be replaced by a kind of weary disgust.

She wondered what on earth she could do with the rest of her life. She had been welcomed home the previous afternoon after a leisurely drive from Gap by old Ernestine, the maid who had been in service at the château since Alfred’s father’s day, and the gardener, Louison, a former peasant boy who had married Ernestine when she was still an under housemaid.

The pair were now virtually the curators of the château of which two-thirds of the rooms were shut off and blanketed in dust covers.