Stone’s eyes flicked toward the man, and he saw him reach behind his back for something. “No!” Stone said to him, holding up a hand. Everything then switched to slow motion. The man’s hand emerged from behind him holding a semiautomatic pistol; Mirabelle turned toward him and pulled the shotgun trigger. The man’s hand and his gun parted company; the gun was thrown toward the fireplace by the centrifugal force of his swinging arm; his chest exploded and his body flew backward and landed, flat, on the wooden kitchen floor with a loud thump. Only then did Stone hear the blast of the shotgun.
“Merde!” Mirabelle spat, at no one in particular.
“Well, yes,” Stone said, recovering himself. He knew that much French. He was aware of the ridiculous appearance of two naked people, a shotgun, and what was rapidly becoming a corpse on the kitchen floor. Stone walked to her, took the shotgun from her hands, lowered the remaining cocked hammer, and set it on the kitchen table. He walked over to the man on the floor, pulled the mask from his head, and checked his pupils. Blown. He felt for a pulse at the carotid artery in the neck. None. “I think you’d better call the police,” he said. “Tell them to bring an ambulance and a medical examiner, as well as a crime-scene team.”
Mirabelle had begun to shake violently. Stone went to her and held her against him, and gradually she stopped trembling. She pulled away, then went and stood in front of the dying embers of the fire. “I can’t call the police,” she said.
Stone went and sat at the kitchen table. “You don’t really have a choice.”
“You don’t understand,” Mirabelle said. “If I call the police, my brother will be summoned as soon as they hear my name. He does not know about this cottage, and I don’t want him to.”
“The consequences of your brother’s knowing about this cottage are small compared to those of not summoning the police immediately,” Stone said. “Inevitably, your father will become involved, then someone at the police station or in his office will leak the story to someone in the press, and big headlines will be made. Very likely a criminal trial will result. Did you think we would just bury him in the Bois?”
She thought about it. “You are right,” she said finally.
“Go and look at him,” Stone said. “We have to know if you know him.”
She went and stood over the man, staring into his inert face. “No, I don’t know him.”
“Is there any reason why anyone might send an armed man to your house?”
She nodded. “For you.”
He nodded. “You have a point.” He walked out of the kitchen into the living room, checking everything. No ransacking. He found the front door open and scratches on the lock. Outside, on the doormat, was a canvas satchel. He returned to the kitchen. “Very likely he was a burglar—his tools are outside. But nothing has been disturbed. I had better make a phone call before you call the police.” He took her by the hand and led her upstairs. “Get dressed,” he said, then found his cell phone and called a number on his Favorites page.
One ring. “LaRose.”
“Rick, it’s Stone. I’m at the cottage of a woman named Mirabelle Chance.”
“The daughter of the prefect of police?”
“And the sister of his son, who is in charge of criminal investigations in Paris.”
“What’s happened?”
“She’s shot an apparent burglar, as he was preparing to shoot her. I’m a witness.”
“Where are you?”
“What is the address here?” he asked Mirabelle. She told him, and he told LaRose.