Bennett Sisters Mystery, Volumes 1-2, page 26
* * *
The population of the entire village and surrounding estates clogged the tiny lane leading to the hilltop manor. Annie, driving the rental car, observed that it seemed doubtful all these people felt a strong desire to save a multinational corporation from destruction. Cars and trucks, bicycles and farmers and children of all ages, streamed along the lane, parking in ditches to keep the road clear. Somewhere a siren whined, then another. When they’d pulled off the road, Merle opened the back and handed shovels, buckets, and gloves to the Tristan and Valerie. They vanished into the crowd running toward the blaze, into the darkness.
Annie handed her a garden hose. “Allons-y, ma soeur. Hit the road.”
Merle stood for a moment, watching the chaos and excitement. She had felt uneasy leaving the house, double-checking locks on the windows, doors, and shutters. With the village abandoned, a break-in would be simple. At least Yves and Suzette next door stayed home, laissez-faire about someone else’s fire, drinking cognac on their front stoop. They agreed to keep an eye out for hooligans.
Annie and Merle joined the stream and were half a mile up when a fire truck arrived, lights, horn, and siren blasting through the vineyards, shooting scarlet on the hillside. The sisters stepped between two cars and covered their ears.
Up on the hilltop flames roared through the dry woods at the hilltop, lighting up the sky. Smoke billowed, dropping ash on the crews, farmers, young men, women, old people. Annie tried to volunteer but the orders were incomprehensible. They saw Tristan, running with buckets of water. The grounds of the chateau were burning, bushes flaring as they incinerated. A gazebo went up in a flash and a whoosh, collapsing as its roof burned. The fire hose shot a stream of water onto the rooftops and the edge of the woods.
Talk raced through the spectators. The old manor house, mansard roof dating it in the late 1800s, was used as a tasting room for the conglomerate’s winery housed in large outbuildings — like Château Gagillac but grander. The manager of the winery came back from the edge of the fire, covered with soot, his eyes stinging and red. The women next to Merle called him some unflattering names.
She felt a hand on her arm. Albert stood in his coveralls and beret, staring into the fire and smoke. “Is my niece in there?”
“They’re are keeping the kids away from the flames.”
He scuttled off to find Valerie. Later she saw him talking to a man at the far side of the singed lawn. As a bush nearby exploded in flames, his face was illuminated — it was Pascal. He was talking, gesturing, then he ran back toward the fire. She wondered again what he was, why he needed binoculars. Did Albert know his true identity? Had Albert “placed” him with her?
After two hours Annie and Merle walked back to the car to wait for Tristan and Valerie. “I’m worried about them, Annie,” Merle said, “but I’m also worried about leaving the house. And with one hand I’m not much use out here.”
“You mean, the wine?”
Even at two o’clock in the morning the village was lit up, shutters open. Down rue de Poitiers women stood outside in their robes and curlers, talking. It was a relief. With all these people about, mischief would be limited. Every other night the village was buttoned up by eleven.
“You’ll be all right?” Annie said. “Look around. I’ll wait.”
The house was just as she left it. Waving to Annie, Merle re-locked the front shutters and door. She turned on all the lights, poured herself the last of the Château L'Église-Clinet, and curled up with her novel on Tristan’s bed.
At five Annie drove up with the fire crew. Merle had dozed a little but was up, unlocking the door for them. Tristan and Pascal went into the kitchen to make hot chocolate. Valerie went home with Albert. Pascal was covered in soot, his face half-wiped clean, shirt sleeves rolled up, ash on his shoulders. On his head he wore a dirty red bandanna. He poured them cups of cocoa and they sat around the dining table, stunned with fatigue. Tristan explained his duties, wetting down the lawn, in under three sentences. He drank half his chocolate and put his head on the table.
“Some big corporation owns that winery, right?” Annie asked Pascal. “Do they use imported grapes?”
He raised his eyebrows. “There is a rumor that the fire was set by other grape-growers, les petits vignobles, who don’t like their practices.”
“Like those rabble-rousers Albert saw?”
Merle set down her cup. “Is that what you’ve been doing up on the ladder and from the second floor window? Spying on the vineyards?”
Pascal’s face flattened. Annie looked at her sister. “I’m going to take a shower.” She went into the bathroom and shut the door.
Merle couldn’t keep the outrage out of her voice. “So all this was just an act? All this — ” Kindness? Affection? Biarritz-ing? “You’re not really a roofer, are you?”
“Yes. But — no.” He looked in his cup.
“You got Justine’s real name so easily. You’re a cop.”
“I wanted to tell you.”
“Well, we aren’t that close.”
He winced. “I am undercover. I can’t tell you what I do. Even if I could I wouldn’t. It would put you in danger.”
“So you are using me and protecting me?” She shook her head. “But what about the rest — about — ” She looked down at her son. His eyes were closed. It was all too trite. She wasn’t the helpless blond in this story. She was just some fool, the widow on the rebound, an easy tumble for a man with velvety eyes and a cute accent.
He said, “We can talk about it, later when we’re not so tired.”
“Why should we talk, Pascal? What is it I don’t understand?”
He stood up. “When you feel like talking, we will talk. But now, you are angry. And we have been up all night.” He looked down at Tristan. “It is not a time for it.”
* * *
The house, and village, lay in silence all morning. The rattle of a truck on the road up the hill woke Merle. She lay on the bed next to Annie, numb. She had finished grieving. But something was undone. Maybe she should just go home and figure out the rest of her life.
She closed her eyes, fell back to sleep, and dreamed about Pascal rubbing the duties out of her palm, as if remaking her lifelines. It was very annoying. She woke up sweating. Today was the day to get the cast removed. Albert had offered to go with her. But Albert was the one who had found Pascal, so he knew Pascal was a cop. He had used their friendship to get Pascal up on her roof.
She went to the doctor’s office by herself. So there had been a reason for her mistrust. Her gut was a powerful weapon. But she also believed him good, hadn’t she? She refused to believe intimacy meant nothing. But maybe for a man. What kind of man was Pascal?
She tried to put it out of her mind, flipping through ancient copies of Le Figaro and Elle Maison. What she wouldn’t give for Better Homes and Gardens right now, or good old Good House-keeping.
A woman came out of the back, holding a bandaged hand and arm. Odile Langois’s hair was falling out of its pins, stuck to her forehead and neck. Her sweater was off one shoulder, showing her bra strap. She looked bewildered and tired, her clothes dirty and stained with wine. “Odile?”
She startled. “Oui?”
“Ca va? Votre main?” Merle pointed to her hand. Odile blinked, turned on her heel, and ran out.
The doctor snipped off the cast with sharp pincher-scissors and rubbed her skin with various potions. The arm looked puckered and damp, almost moldy. The doctor told her to be careful with it for a week or two. No handstands.
“Did you just treat Odile Langois?” He said yes. “Did she get burned in the fire last night?”
“Oo la la, many burns. Docteur Angiers was up all night.”
“Was she hurt badly?”
“No, not Madame Langois. A cut. Sixteen points de suture, how do you say — stitches. She cut herself on a wine bottle. While packing them for shipment.”
Merle flexed her hand as she walked home, dismayed with the wrinkled skin and puny muscles, the tan line from the faux beach. Château Gagillac had no bottles of their own. How had Odile cut her hand? What were they up to?
She and Annie walked to a sidewalk cafe for lunch. They ordered house white with coffee on the side. Their lunches came, huge salads. Annie groaned, “I’ll fall asleep before this is done.” As they finished Annie leaned close and said, “There’s an old woman watching us. Over your left shoulder, on the sidewalk.”
“What’s she doing?”
“Talking to a shopkeeper, that woman at the grocery store. They are both looking now.”
“At us?”
“There’s nobody else out here. And they’re pointing.” The rest of the cafe was deserted. “Okay, look now, she’s about to go.”
The woman was plump with gray hair pulled back from her lined face, wearing an ordinary black skirt and blue blouse ensemble, low black shoes. “I might have seen her at the market. She’s probably just related to the punks who flap their arms and caw like crows whenever they see me.” Annie looked incredulous. “Something about me they find ridiculous.”
“Did you whoop their puny French asses?”
“I’m trying to set a good example.”
That night the violence continued. Roving bands of farmers tossed empty wine bottles at trucks as they passed on the highway and dropped water-filled bottles from second-story windows in town. Pascal came by just before dark as they were eating dinner, to warn them to stay inside. The rumor was the farmers had set the fire.
Annie pulled him inside and gave him a glass of wine, Château Gagillac from the plastic jug. Tristan jumped up.
“I better go tell Valerie and Albert,” he said. “Unless you did already?”
Pascal watched the boy dash out the back. “I think he has, what do you call it, a shine? For the mademoiselle. You have it off,” he said, grabbing the jug and pouring Merle a glass. “Your arm.”
She stretched out the pale limb. “Gorgeous, isn’t it. All skinny and moldy.”
He was smiling at her when a crash of breaking glass came from outside. They ran to the windows in time to see a group of teenagers running away from a pile of green glass shards on the neighbor’s steps. Pascal said, “Come, let’s close the shutters.” Outside, they pushed the shutters of the front windows into place. Pascal was last in, closing the door shutters and locking them with a padlock from the inside.
“And how will you get out, Pascal?” Annie said, smiling. “Or maybe you could stay and protect us from roving grape mobs. Just what are they after?”
“A sort of peasant revolt. Probably they are not linked to the fire. They are using the fire, and the news coverage, to stir up things. They get into the paper, get the ear of their representative. When some persons rise up against the government, or corporations, the feelings that they are the little man, the peasant, the oppressed, all boils out.”
“Like the revolution?”
“Exactement.” As they latched shutters upstairs he said, “A short jump from water in bottles to the Molotov cocktail. Then, whoosh. Another fire.”
“Who’s behind this?” Merle asked. “Gerard Langois?”
“And others. They want the government to control imports. A little revolt is good for business. The price for grapes is very low because the imports flood the market. Many small vineyards like the Langois’s will go out of business.” Shouts, footsteps, boots running on cobbles, tinkling of broken glass punctuated the night. “It is a French tradition, I’m afraid, to strike or make a riot to get what you want from the government. The people do not like violence. They will demand an end to it.”
“I certainly hope so,” Merle said. “Is Tristan back?”
They trooped downstairs into the garden. The gate was ajar. Merle stepped out into the alley, but Pascal took her arm. “Wait. I will get them.”
Annie crossed her arms. “Pascal is very protective. Does he work for the government?”
Merle frowned. “I just found out.”
Annie put her arms around her. “Oh, honey. It’s obvious he’s crazy about you.”
“That’s why he used my — my loyalty, my trust, and my upstairs windows,” she said, pressing her face into her sister’s shoulder.
“Maybe that was just the way it had to be. He had to find a place to look at the vineyards, and you were the lucky prize in the box of Cracker Jack.”
“Like the Junior Birdman ring?”
“That’s why those punks are making bird imitations. Everyone can spot a Junior Birdman.”
Merle began to laugh, holding onto her sister, hiccuping and laughing. They didn’t notice Tristan and Valerie were back.
“Mom? You okay?”
They broke apart, wiping their eyes. “Um, yeah. Fine.” Pascal and Albert came through the gate.
“Where’s the key?” Pascal asked. Tristan handed it over and he locked the gate.
“I’ll take it back.” Merle put it back on the chain around her neck. “Did you get your shutters latched, Albert?”
“They called, my sister’s daughter, very worried about Valerie, and what can I tell them? I am just an old man. And there are hoodlums running in the streets.”
A frightened look made him look old. Annie took his arm. “You can stay here tonight. Safety in numbers.” She guided him inside toward the cognac and the music Tristan and Valerie were playing. Pascal stood half facing the gate as if ready to bolt.
Merle crossed her arms. “What do you do in your cop line of work?”
“Anti-fraud,” he said quickly. “Wine. Of course.”
“Wine fraud? Like what?”
He stuck his hands in his pockets and looked at the purple sky. “Misrepresentation. Labeling fraud. Wine is big business in France.”
“Like somebody says it’s a ’79 when it’s really a ’99?”
“Or one of the big Burgundy producers uses grapes from Chile in his bottles. A big scandal.” He looked at her seriously from under his eyebrows. “I have been watching the Langois vineyard.”
“And what do you see?”
“Some things. Trucks.”
“Odile Langois was at the clinic today with a cut on her hand from a wine bottle. Broken while shipping, she told the doctor. They must have shipped those bottles on the same night as the big fire. Is that helpful?”
He swallowed. “Merle, I—“
“I understand. It was convenient. My house, my roof, my view. It’s all right.”
“You hate me.”
She walked to him, feeling the air warm. “I don’t hate you, Pascal,” she whispered.
He softened into her, his big hands around her waist. He kissed her hard then took her face in his hands. “I tried not to like you, to just do the job. I tried, I struggled. But I failed.”
“I will have to serve you more Château Pétrus for fooling me.”
“More? I like you even better.”
He pushed her behind the pissoir, out of the light from the house, up against the wall. She bumped her head on the stone. “Sorry, sorry.” He unbuttoned her blouse, kissed her breasts in a rush, ran his hands down her hips then came back to her mouth. He pressed himself against her, wedging her leg between his. They were in that position, her pinned to the wall willingly when the quiet was broken. Screeching of tires, crashing of glass then shouts: “Arretez!” Women, screaming.
“Mon Dieu.” He rested his forehead on her shoulder. “I have to go.”
“Is there fraud on the streets tonight?”
He let his hands take a last ride down her body. “Tomorrow, chèrie.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Next door Yves was sweeping up glass from the street when Merle and Annie came outside. It was early, before seven, but they had a long day ahead. Merle had sent Tristan with a note to the Inspector that she was seeing her lawyer today in Bordeaux. Yves stooped to scoop up shards into a dust pan.
“Is everything all right at your house?” Merle asked.
“No damage. But Suzette is frightened. She wants to return to Paris.” He dumped the glass in a garbage can.
“Look at the flower pots,” Annie said, pointing to geraniums wilting on the cobblestones, pottery smashed.
“Un policier from the Police Nationale just came by here, in riot clothes, the vest and helmet and stick, like in Paris.” Yves seemed more excited than upset. “I asked him who is doing this. And he says it is farmers, can you believe it? And they caught the one who set the fire. He owns a winery near here with his sister. They were both arrested in the night. They found empty gasoline cans hidden in their chai.”
Château Gagillac? Where else were sister and brother in business together? Merle hated to think of Odile in jail. They walked the three blocks to the lot where Annie had parked her rental car. Tristan met them ten minutes later. Broken glass littered the streets but there was very little other damage. It would probably be over when they got back, especially now that the national police had arrived.
Tristan wedged into the backseat with a picnic basket. He curled up and went back to sleep as they climbed the hills and dropped into the valley of the Dordogne River. Merle drove, letting her sister read her guidebooks and look at the vineyards along the river bottoms and the beautiful bridges.
Bordeaux loomed ahead, with all the joys of civilization, graffiti, traffic, and parking. It took an hour to find the building after buying a map as big as the Peugeot. They split up at the door to the lawyer’s building. “Go do some shopping,” Merle said. “I’ll be back at the car in an hour.”
The office was simple, with scratched wood floors and worn furniture. The girl behind the counter looked sixteen and wore thick black eye makeup on her pale face. Merle had to repeat herself to be understood. In a few minutes Monsieur Lalouche came into the reception and shook her hand.
He was short, dark-haired, and younger than she expected, thirty or thirty-five. He dressed well, in a black shirt and tie, gray slacks. “You prefer English?”
“Thank you. Yes.” She sat in his office, another worn chair in ancient leather. He sat on the edge of his desk and put on trendy eyeglasses. “Have you talked to the Inspector in charge of the case, Captain Montrose?” she asked.
