Free Stonekiller by J. Robert Janes Page A

been removed. The grass and wild flowers had been cut and raked so hard, the place all but looked like a lawn, albeit damp from several washings, and smelling like a brothel sprinkled with cheap perfume. There was no sign of the picnic under the chestnut tree by that little stream, no sign of anyone. Even the empty champagne bottles had been taken, even their corks and wires. It was as if the murder had never happened. Even the honey buzzard had buggered off.
    â€˜Sarlat… they will have taken her there,’ managed Louis. It was not far. Perhaps seven kilometres at most.
    â€˜Death caps and fly agaric.’
    â€˜Ah merde … ’
    Nightmare visions of some undernourished flic came to them, those of the family also. Seven children perhaps and the wife and both sets of grandparents.
    â€˜With the phalline poisoning of the death cap, Hermann, induced vomiting, even immediately after eating, is often of little use, since the poison, it is so readily absorbed.’
    They were moving now — thrashing their way through the underbrush. They could not travel fast enough.
    â€˜Though the symptoms are delayed from twelve to twenty-four hours,’ sang out the Sûreté anxiously, ‘they consist of violent pains and burning sensations in the stomach, fainting fits, cramps, unstoppable diarrhoea, bloody stools, vomiting, cold sweats, shivering and an enlarged liver. These things can last up to ten days. Ten! ’
    Breathlessly he finally broke free of the woods to slide down to the railway embankment. Kohler followed and they ran along the track. ‘At the end, the pulse slows, the victim turns yellow, the breathing becomes very laboured. There is collapse and then death.’
    A not-so-speedy release. End of mushrooms, end of lecture. ‘Hey, since you know the way, I’m going to let you drive,’ said Kohler. ‘Don’t hit anything. My nerves won’t take it.’
    *  *  *
    The telephone calls were made, the panic had subsided. Mathieu Vaudable, in his forty-third year as coroner of the Périgord Noir, removed his gold-rimmed pince-nez. He cleared his throat and the sound of this, caught in dank medieval cellars off the rue de Siége in one of the oldest parts of Sarlat, was harsh.
    â€˜These cellars,’ he said by way of apology. ‘Jean-Louis, I regret the apprehensions you and Herr Kohler have suffered on account of the mushrooms. I myself was shown the basket and took immediate possession of it.’
    In specimen after specimen, Amanita phalloides (death cap) and Amanita muscaria (fly agaric) lay among the stone tools Vaudable had had sent over from the local museum. He had not yet taken time out for his dinner and probably wouldn’t.
    He picked up a death cap with his tweezers. ‘The flat but round cap and dirty green shade which fades to brownish-yellow,’ he said, ‘but is sometimes pale yellow or bluish, yes? The most deadly of our mushrooms, messieurs.’
    There were white gills but on some specimens these had acquired a greenish cast. Each specimen had a swollen base, and a cup that was enclosed in a sheath. The presence of this indicated that the mushrooms had been dug out.
    â€˜The Amanita muscaria is not nearly so poisonous. The cap, though similar to its little friend, is a brilliant vermilion to orange red. The gills are white or yellowish and the stem underground is covered with white scales. These specimens have also been dug out by our victim.’
    â€˜And the stone tools?’ managed Kohler.
    â€˜Ah, yes. A mid-Acheulian handaxe, three cores which have been made into knives and scrapers but could be further worked as the need arose, and a smaller, more perfect knife with a pressure-flaked, serrated edge. All are of the black flint and bear the patina of great age.’
    â€˜The wounds …’ began Louis.
    Vaudable sadly shook his head. ‘Never have I seen such a thing. Passion, yes, but was it