LACKING VIRTUES (51 page)

The whooshing of the furnace stopped. He pressed his ear to the duct, sharing the small opening with the microphone. Haussmann was speaking. He was sniffing around the subject of the money. It wouldn’t be long now.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

The hand on Henri’s shoulder while he was preparing to fire the
crême brulée
made him jump and knock his wine glass off the table. He spun around and gave Isabelle a piece of his mind for startling him.

He immediately felt bad for his outburst. This had been a long evening for both of them, not knowing if dinner would happen and having to get it ready in record time when it did. At this late hour – and at their age!

He apologized profusely for his harsh words; she apologized for startling him. Isabelle didn’t seem upset, for which he was grateful. She dutifully cleaned up the broken glass and spilled wine, then poured him a fresh goblet. “Henri, may I say something now?” she asked.

“Yes, but quickly. The oven’s just right.”

“Monsieur would like you to bring up his father’s cognac from 1913.”

“The cognac he wasn’t going to drink before the new century? He must only wait a few months.”

“I only know what he told me, Henri.”

“Well, I can’t fetch it until I have finished preparing the dessert.”

“That’s another thing, Henri. The guests do not want dessert. Monsieur has asked us to return to our quarters for the night as soon as you have brought the cognac. And he wants it right away.”

“How can they pass up a proper
crême
brulée
after a meal like that?”

“I don’t know, Henri, but you’d best hurry. Monsieur had an impatient look on his face.”

“Very well. They were otherwise pleased with the dinner, you think?”

“Of course,
chéri
.”

“No
crême brulée
,” he grumbled as he picked up his heavy metal flashlight. He’d made a habit of taking it with him to the cellar ever since a power outage had caught him down there and thoroughly disoriented him. He’d felt like he was in a tomb. At one point he actually believed he had died. It was an experience he didn’t plan to repeat until the real angel of death came for him.

The night was cold. His breath steamed in the warm light from the kitchen windows as he circled the house. Fog still lay in the low areas, but most of the clouds had broken up and moved off to the east. The stars had even come out to join the moon. Wouldn’t be long until winter, he thought, wouldn’t be long until the rains fell as snow. It was good his grapes were protected from the elements, fermenting in their old oak casks.

He leaned down and unlocked the horizontal door, then gave it a slight tug. It came up without complaint, silently, obligingly. A good door, he thought – but for some strange reason the basement lights did not come on when he opened it.

No problem, he would turn them on manually. He located the switch he had installed near the entrance, put there to keep the lights burning in winter when he shut the door behind him. He flicked the switch up. No lights. He flicked it back down. Still no lights. 

This was very odd, to say the least. During the power outage, the electricity in the entire house was off. But tonight he could still see light from inside the manor slanting across the top of the steps.

Well, what difference did it make? It would be the circuit breaker, which he could reset in the morning. For now he had his flashlight and his orders to bring up a specific bottle of cognac whose location he knew very well. He’d best get that taken care of and call it a night, especially if Isabelle had correctly read Monsieur’s mood.

He closed the door against the cold, descended the steps and hobbled down the familiar basement passageways. Ninety feet later he came around a corner and nearly bumped into the open wine cellar door. He stopped in his tracks, extinguished his flashlight and held his breath.

This was much stranger than lights that did not work. He had been the last person down here. Delors didn’t have the keys, and Michelet had not shown up until dinner time. He always locked the door of the wine cellar when he left. It was second nature, like taking off his boots at bed time.

Still he had been pretty agitated by those wild dogs and their idiot trainers. The crate they knocked down broke several bottles of irreplaceable wine, an ugly occurrence Monsieur might blame
him
for. He wasn’t young anymore, either. There were times when his memory failed him. This was probably one of them.

He was about to turn his flashlight back on when he thought he saw something in the wine cellar, a movement in the darkness, scarcely detectable but real. He was probably seeing things, but instinct told him to cautious. What if those idiot dogs and their trainers were right? What if there had been more than just rats down here? The hair on the back of his neck stood on end. He’d better find out. It was his job as guardian of the wine.

He moved forward with small steps, trying not to scrap his boots.

Very strange, he thought. There were no lights on anywhere, but for some reason it did not seem as dark down here as it had seemed the night of the power outage.

It was not as dark! In the penumbra of the wine cellar, he could make out the carefully arranged crates and the wire mesh gate. He soon spotted the source of the light. It was a tiny dial that resembled the lighted face of a stereo, sitting on top of a stack of crates. His first thought was that it might be a timing device for a terrorist bomb.

Then he saw legs to either side of it. He looked up, feeling short of breath. On the crates stood the ghostly figure of a man. A big man. His back faced the door, and his head was resting against a heating duct. He was an eavesdropper, it didn’t take an educated man to figure that out. The thing with the glowing dial was some kind of recorder.

He was probably a journalist, thought Henri. Or someone hired by political opponents to listen in on Monsieur’s secrets. No one dangerous, not like a wine thief. Still, he owed Monsieur this man’s head on a platter, recorder and all.

Henri tightened his grip on the heavy flashlight. He could deal the intruder a powerful blow, but not while he was up so high. Should he grab one of his legs and try to pull him off the crates?

No, he would have to think of something better than that. The man looked strong. If they got into a free for all, he would probably escape. Besides, he was perched on top of the Lafite from the late fifties. Monsieur might prefer having his political discussions recorded to losing a bottle of that nectar.

Then a good thing happened. The man climbed carefully down from the crates and got himself into a kneeling position on the floor where he could be knocked silly. Henri knew the man wasn’t going anywhere soon; he had left the recording machine where it was. No, he was fishing around in his backpack for something. He pulled out what looked like a pack of batteries and started to open it . . .

Henri approached silently, raised his flashlight and delivered a crushing blow to the man’s head. The man flopped on his stomach and lay motionless. Henri raised his flashlight again but decided he’d better stop. He’d read in the newspaper about some guy who thought he had a right to kill an intruder and had ended up in jail for doing it.

He turned on his flashlight to get a look at the man’s wounds. Nothing. He had wrecked the bulb. What did he expect? The thing wasn’t meant to be a club.

He made his way over to the wall and turned on the wine cellar light. It remained dark but the furnace came on. He felt its hot breath blowing through holes the intruder had evidently cut in the ducts.

Henri checked on his victim. The man was breathing evenly. This was good. He wasn’t dead, just out cold.

He took the recording machine down from the crates, pulling on a wire until a miniature microphone jumped out of one of the ducts. The dial still glowed. He held it to the unconscious man’s face – and felt as if he was going to have a stroke.

Jesus, Holy Madonna, in the name of the Father, why was the world so complicated? This man was Nicole’s boyfriend, soon to be her fiancé, soon to be family! Had she already told her father about him? Had Monsieur accepted this man and entrusted him with the task of recording tonight’s conversations?

Or was this young man a scoundrel deceiving the whole Michelet clan?

What was he going to do? What he always did, he supposed: ask for Isabelle’s advice.

The man Nicole called Steven groaned and stirred. Time to go, Henri thought. Yes, it was definitely time to go. He put the recording machine under his arm and hobbled down the dark passageways to the exit.

Isabelle was waiting for him at the entrance to the kitchen. Her concern turned to curiosity when she saw the strange looking apparatus he was carrying and the blood on his flashlight.

***

“So you just up and ran away?” Sophie asked.

“I had some help,” Nicole said. “I have a teenage cousin who can be a nuisance. But he was great tonight. He got me to the station on time and he’s now wearing my nightgown and sleeping in my bed, just in case anyone checks on me. By the time they figure out I’m gone, Steven and I should be out of France.”

“You really love him, don’t you?”

Nicole averted her eyes and blushed. “Yes, I do. I hope he loves me as much.”

“He does. I can promise you that.”

“Does he talk about me a lot?”

Sophie nodded. She felt restless. She knew she had to begin her monologue at some point if she was going to say what she wanted to say before Steven returned. But it wasn’t easy. They had been chatting amiably for almost a half hour. Nicole had warmed up to her a little, but they were still basically strangers.

The right moment to broach topics so personal and painful did not seem as if it would come of its own accord. Sophie decided she’d better dive in and trust that Nicole could handle it.

“He talks about you incessantly, dear,” she said. “He loves you more than you can imagine. But there is something about Steven you should know. I have entrusted myself with the task of telling you.”

Nicole sat up straight, her beautiful face drawn with tension. “What is it?”

“This is very difficult for me. What I’m going to say doesn’t just involve Steven. It involves your father, it involves me. I want you to try to keep one thing firmly in mind as I make these revelations. Steven loves you with all his heart. You must not doubt his loyalty. He is totally committed to you. If you’re going to be angry with anyone, that person should not be him. It should be me. Or your father.”

“What in the world are you talking about?”

Sophie poured them both a snifter of Armagnac. Nicole watched her intently, too curious, or too worried, to drink.

“First, Nicole, you owe your original meeting with Steven to me and my machinations. My name did not seem to ring a bell when I mentioned it earlier. You’ve got a lot on your mind, but you’re an informed and well-read person. I suspect you’ve heard that same name on many occasions.”

“Sophie Marx, the journalist?” Nicole said.

“That’s the dirty word. Journalist.”

“You’re her?”

“Yes. Nicole, I think you’d better drink your Armagnac. You see, I hired Steven to befriend you. I was trying to gain information about your father.”