The Patriarch: A Bruno, Chief of Police Novel by Martin Walker Page A

pinch of them to top off each hole. Then he poured some of the Monbazillac over the lamb, enough to moisten the surface. He’d already mixed together sea salt and red cayenne pepper, and he patted the mixture onto the surface of the lamb.
    He glanced across to watch Pamela make the pastry, wondering at that inexplicable gift some people have of making perfect pastry every time. His pies usually turned out well enough, but never with the lovely, light touch that made Pamela such a peerless pastry cook. She put the pastry into the fridge to chill and began peeling the big green apples from her garden.
    Bruno put two generous tablespoons of duck fat into the roasting pan, lit one of the burners on top of the oven to melt it and then browned the lamb on all sides and removed it. He laid down half-a-dozen sprigs of rosemary and put the lamb back in place, surrounded with heads of garlic before adding half of the Monbazillac. He was about to put the roasting pan into the oven when Pamela put a hand on his arm and said, “Trust me. I want to do something I know will work. I remember my mother doing this when she cooked lamb with a Sauterne.”
    He watched, intrigued, as she took a bottle of Worcestershire sauce, filled a tablespoon with the rich, dark juice and drizzled it over the meat. Bruno raised his eyebrows, but Pamela’s cooking instincts were good, and he was always game for an experiment, so he cheerfully put the pan in the oven and checked his watch. He’d baste the lamb every fifteen minutes or so, and it would be done by eight. That would allow the meat to rest a bit while they ate the smoked fish. He was looking forward to that; Pamela’s blend of cream and horseradish went perfectly with the trout.
    Now he began to peel potatoes while relating the events of the day. He’d expected Pamela to be more interested in Imogène and her deer than in the way the Patriarch’s party had ended with the death of Gilbert. So he was surprised when she looked startled and said, “But that was the man I met, very good-looking in a raffish, ravaged kind of way. He’s an old friend of Jack Crimson’s. Apparently they were at their respective embassies in Moscow in Gorbachev’s time when the Cold War was ending. He came up, embraced Jack and chatted with us both awhile and then led Jack aside for a moment to talk privately. Then I saw him being led stumbling away, and I thought he must have suddenly hit the booze rather hard because he seemed pretty sober when talking to us.”
    “Are you sure? I’m told the man was an alcoholic. Maybe he could disguise it for a while.”
    “No, he was switching back and forth between French and English, talking to me and Jack and then to that minister from Paris. And then when the Russian ambassador joined us, he and Jack began talking with him in very fluent Russian. I was most impressed. Juggling three languages fluently, and being coherent enough to talk to a foreign minister and an ambassador, make me think that he can’t have been that drunk.”
    “He had a flask with him, full of superproof vodka,” Bruno said thoughtfully. “Maybe that was what put him over the top.”
    “I didn’t see him use it, and it wasn’t that long after he’d left us that I saw him led away. But tell me about this woman with the deer. Why can’t the court just order her to accept a cull to control the numbers?”
    “Politics. Neither the prefect nor the judges want to become targets for the animal rights brigade, so that would be a last resort. By ordering her to build a fence, they’re trying to force Imogène to agree to a cull.”
    “And then we’d all be eating venison for weeks.”
    “There are worse fates,” he replied, putting the potatoes into a pan of water and the peelings into a plastic bag, planning to take them home for his chickens. “How did Fabiola sound?”
    “Very happy. I think it’s all worked out for them.”
    “Let’s hope so.” Fabiola Stern, the young doctor who had