A ride into the woods at Cirey-sur-Blaise

Victor Constant is guided to a crime scene by the very man who may have committed the murder--Voltaire ...

Here is an excerpt from Murder at Cirey.

Voltaire swung into his hunter's saddle and headed down the grassy slope behind the carriage house, leaving Cavalier Constant to follow on the big bay stallion. At the bottom, Voltaire rode into the woods, taking a ride that soon forked, one narrower trail leading uphill again and the other snaking down towards the river Blaise, which gleamed through trees on his left. This was the way he always came when walking alone or when Poirier the gamekeeper accompanied him into the forest to beat up wildfowl. It was the way he had come yesterday. He felt no need to explain this to the cavalier.

On campaign with the army, Victor had always preferred bivouacking under trees rather than on moors or farms, and the lush forest of Cirey gave him a feeling of coolness and shelter. Having interrogated the farm lads and questioned the gamekeeper again, he knew it covered almost all the Cirey land, which was shaped like a long lozenge. It was divided by low ridges with valleys between that were named for their stretches of water or the game that the marquis and his friends went after when he came back from the front. One of the far reaches was called Vallée des Chevreuils where they hunted deer, and another not so far off was Vallée des Bécassines, where the body had been found.

Victor noted cynically that Arouet de Voltaire on his hunter was trampling over the traces of foot and cart tracks from the day before and wondered whether the gentleman intended to scramble the clues in the same way at the murder site.

It was as though there were no reactions behind Voltaire’s eagle eyes and his appearance was so faultless it was somehow neutral. The clothing was of the first quality, impeccably worn and without ostentation. His silence was a blank, as though the man riding in his wake did not exist. Victor felt the force of it go through him like wind through a bare tree in winter. It suddenly occurred to him that Voltaire, the richest man in France, the most audacious thinker in Europe, might be very dangerous.

Victor tried, in turn, to ignore the other man and take a good look at the woodland. It was not well managed: no coppices and no landscaping. It was a wilderness, except that Victor noticed there was very little dead wood around. The Cirey staff or the farmhands must gather it for firewood. To his left, seen through trees, was the Blaise with green marshland beyond, where there would be fine shooting after waterfowl. To his right, waves of beech branches flowed above the path. Ahead was a grove of ancient willows, their branches trailing in a backwater. It was beautiful country.

They had ridden past the willows when the hunter stepped away from the path onto a patch of grass and Voltaire looked over his shoulder as it came to a halt. ‘Dismount.’ Voltaire slipped neatly from the saddle and tied the reins of his hunter to a branch low enough for the horse to crop the grass.

Victor went on a few paces, then swung wide and tethered his horse on the other side of the tree. Voltaire by now was walking away along the shoulder of the path. In the areas where it was sandy, the ruts made by the cart showed up well. Likewise the hoof marks of the farm horse that had drawn it, which by their size and breadth suggested a stout cob.

It did not take Voltaire long to find what he was looking for.

‘Observe, Cavalier. Here is Maurice from the Cirey farm, in clogs. Poirier the gamekeeper, in a good pair of boots — and I should know. As you see, Poirier’s first set of prints do not come back this way. Here are mine, going and coming. I wore the same boots as today.’

‘Without the spurs, monsieur.’

‘And here,’ Voltaire said, spinning to his left, ‘is the body.’

Victor jolted to a stop.