Mayhem in Margaux (7 page)

14

Benjamin ordered a tomato and mozzarella salad and melon with Serrano ham, along with a bottle of mineral water in an ice bucket. His dining companion was wavering between pan-fried calf’s liver and veal sweetbreads in ravigote sauce. Benjamin wondered how anyone could have an appetite in such hot weather. He watched as Inspector Barbaroux weighed yet another decision: a 1999 Léoville Poyferré or a 1996 Léoville Las Cases?

“Well, I’ll have a Pauillac… A Pontet-Canet… You only have a 1998? Okay, that will do. What do you think, Mr. Cooker?”

“I think very little in this heat. I feel like my brains are
fromage blanc
.”

“Oh, that’s funny. You have such an English sense of humor.”

“No, actually, it’s something that my assistant said this morning when we were in the vineyards.”

“That young man seems very nice. He has a thoughtful look about him, and he’s charming, too, which doesn’t hurt. He exudes a certain joie de vivre.”

“You’re not the only one who thinks that,” Benjamin muttered.

The inspector had called Benjamin earlier in the day. The man was typically blunt and too the point. He had always been full of convoluted sentences and pointless questions. The winemaker thought it wise to invite him to lunch at Noailles. It would give them the opportunity to update each other on their respective investigations.

“So, what’s going on with your colleagues in Nice?”

“No news. I’m still waiting. Their investigators are probably rummaging through garbage cans and searching desks for hidden compartments. Those boys love to wallow in dirty little secrets.”

“I suppose the discovery of the Moroccan workers has given your investigation a boost.”

“Thanks again for tipping us off. It wasn’t hard to find those men. They were slaving away on a parcel near the secondary road: five guys breaking their backs for twenty euros a day. As far as the sheepfold goes, our people searched everything, and it was vile. But I don’t need to tell you that. You saw it yourself. The guy they took to the hospital is improving, according to the doctors. Fortunately, he didn’t have anything contagious, but he was in a bad way, completely dehydrated and malnourished—getting bedsores, too. I’ll spare you the details. I don’t want to ruin your appetite.”

“I can’t understand how anyone could treat people that way,” Benjamin sighed. “Man’s disregard for human life frightens me, and I always…”

“But you weren’t born yesterday,” Barbaroux interrupted. There was a note of cynicism in his tone. “You know as well as I do that people can do horrendous things, commit despicable acts of cruelty. Or are you’re pretending to be above all that?”

“No, I’ll just never get used to it.”

Benjamin drank some water to loosen his throat and calm himself. He was feeling both angry and disgusted.

“There’s a question that’s been bugging me,” the inspector continued, sniffing his glass of Pontet-Canet. “How did you happen to find yourself in that barn? I don’t believe you had any reason to be on the estate.”

“I’ve been waiting for you to ask that question.”

From the inside pocket of his jacket, he took out the little blue envelope containing the anonymous letter. Barbaroux reached for it and read the text.

“The entire execution is crude. The letters are from
Sud-Ouest
clippings, without a doubt. It looks like a bad poison-pen letter. Maybe the person who sent this is a fan of police shows on TV. In any case, the author isn’t necessarily uneducated or ignorant, but the spelling suggests that he or she could have dyslexia or some other problem with comprehension. I’ve known a couple of people like this who managed to get through school but always had issues with reading and spelling. It really made learning difficult. I’m going to send the letter to the lab for fingerprints. You never know.”

“You will definitely find my fingerprints and Jacqueline’s. She’s my secretary.”

“We know how to do our job, Mr. Cooker. No worries.”

The waiter brought the calf’s liver with house-made fries. Barbaroux licked his chops and tucked his napkin under his chin like a country boy. Benjamin was surprised—almost shocked. He delicately cut his slice of melon and waited until the inspector had swallowed his first bite before continuing.

“I have no idea who could have sent me such a note.”

“In that case, you have to ask yourself four questions. First: who mailed the letter? Second: why? Third: why to you? And finally: what were the sender’s intentions?”

“You make it sound entirely cut-and-dried.”

“Oh, don’t misunderstand. Investigating isn’t an exact science. Sure, we have labs full of equipment and computer search engines at our fingertips. Our forensic capabilities make taxpayers feel like their money’s well spent. But in the end, nothing’s as good as the sixth sense and intuition. You follow your nose and keep your eyes open. I imagine it’s kind of the same thing in your work.”

“In some ways.”

The inspector was chewing loudly and talking with his mouth open. He methodically took a big gulp of Pauillac with every two bites of meat. He was sweating profusely and used his cloth napkin to wipe his face.

“In my opinion, we don’t have to search very far,” Barbaroux continued, bringing a forkful of fries to his mouth. “The person who sent this note is someone who works on the estate and didn’t like what was going on. Maybe this person wanted to get rid of the illegals. After all, they were taking bread out of the mouths of Médoc workers. Maybe the sender thought you would have the most clout. He or she wanted to implicate the château management, perhaps the steward and certainly the insurance company that owns the place and puts itself above the law.”

“That’s one possible explanation, among others,” Benjamin said, shrugging.

“Why? Do you have another theory?”

“I’m thinking along similar lines. But I’m also wondering if the Moroccans and the anonymous letter are connected to the sabotage of the Porsche.”

“You’d make a good cop, Mr. Cooker. We must answer that question. Maybe the person who sent the letter was also the one who sabotaged the Porsche. But the author of the note could have sent it long ago and gotten the same result without feeling any need to tamper with Rinetti’s car.”

“That’s very true, but Antoine Rinetti might have been the victim of someone who wanted to make him pay for his actions, especially hiring illegals.”

Using his last fries, the inspector wiped his plate clean. Every spot of sauce was gone. The methodical gesture bothered Benjamin, who took it as an attempt to end the discussion.

“What are your thoughts?” the winemaker asked sharply, unable to conceal his annoyance.

“I think you’re an honest guy.”

“You’ve known that for some time, Inspector Barbaroux.”

“I know, but that’s never enough for me. I need to be reassured.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“What did the steward tell you this morning?”

“How did you find out that I was at Gayraud-Valrose? Of course I’ve made no secret of it, but I’d like to know who informed you. If you go on like that, I’ll get the impression that you have someone following me.”

“I have my sources. Let’s just say that I’m getting regular reports on traffic in and out of that château. It’s my job. You’re not going to hold that against me, are you?”

Benjamin nodded and summarized his meeting with Philippe Cazevielle without omitting any of his personal impressions.

“That jibes with the interrogation we put him through. He’s a complicated dude who made the mistake of turning a blind eye. Now he’s implicated in our criminal investigation, and after the funeral we will definitely get a request from the prosecutor to arrest him for labor-law violations.”

“Will he face a heavy sentence if he’s found guilty?”

“At the least he’ll be charged with complicity, and that is pretty serious.”

“Do you think he could have sabotaged the car to get rid of Rinetti? They had come to blows and hadn’t been on speaking terms for quite a while.”

“I don’t think so. He wouldn’t have had the means.”

“What means?”

“I mean the ability.”

“Be clearer. You usually say too much, but now you’re not saying enough. Please get to the point.”

“Shit, I might as well tell you. We have new information that leads me to believe that Cazevielle didn’t sabotage the car. You have to promise that you’ll keep this to yourself. Besides me and my close colleagues, you’ll be the only one to know.”

“You do me great honor, Inspector,” the winemaker muttered, forcing himself to sound polite.

“Spare me your sarcasm, Mr. Cooker. I got a phone call from our forensics team last night. They wanted to talk with me in person. I went to the garage, and they were standing around the Porsche, waiting for me. With the evidence charred, the chassis twisted, and the parts blackened, finding clues had been hard. But finally one of them noticed something abnormal about the steering. A connection from the pump to the rotary valve was loose.”

“You mean someone also tried to sabotage the power steering?”

“Forensics is sure of it. It couldn’t have come loose in the accident. You need the right tool and a good strong turn for that to happen.”

“Rinetti didn’t stand a chance,” Benjamin said.

“And your daughter escaped all the more miraculously. Rinetti had absolutely no control of the car.”

“But why are you so sure the steward didn’t sabotage the car?”

“Because you have to know how to work on a car, and we checked, the steward is hardly a mechanic. The person who did this had to be an expert, and he had to act quickly. The car was parked in an outbuilding very close to the château. People were in and out of that building all the time. He had to lift the car with a jack, put a wedge under a tire to keep it from moving, and then slide under the chassis to carry out his dirty work before doing it all over again in reverse: lower the car, take the jack out, and remove the wedge. And he had to get out of that building without being seen. I haven’t even mentioned the clippers he used to cut the brake-fluid hose.”

“Clippers?”

“Yes, we found a pair with the Bahco insignia on the blade. Evidently, it’s not a harvesting pruner, but rather a big pair of shears used for cutting the vines. There’s no doubt about that, either.”

“But I’m still not entirely convinced that Cazevielle’s in the clear.”

“As I said, the man’s clueless when it comes to mechanics. We went through his car’s service record with a fine-tooth comb and talked to his mechanic. Cazevielle wouldn’t be able to find his dipstick if a gun were pressed to his head, believe me. What’s more, he has an elbow problem, a tennis elbow that gives him chronic pain. He has trouble loosening an ordinary screw.”

Benjamin said nothing. He had too many questions. Barbaroux’s inside information only muddled things.

“I don’t think this wine is all that great,” the inspector said, polishing off the glass.

“You haven’t had any trouble getting it down, though. What’s wrong with it?”

Benjamin emptied his glass of mineral water in one swallow and poured himself a mouthful of Pauillac. He took a sip, rolled the wine under his tongue and spit it into the glass.

“It’s a bit corked. Not all that much, but still…”

“Oh, okay, that’s why. That slight taste of dirty cassock. I thought it smelled like an old priest.”

Benjamin couldn’t help laughing. He called the waiter to explain that the bottle was defective. Looking profoundly embarrassed, the waiter hurried away and promptly returned with another bottle.

“And since we’re talking shop, what do you think of those screw tops we’re seeing on more bottles these days? Do you think corks are on the way out?”

“I always try not to have an opinion, only doubts.”

“A doubt is an opinion of sorts,” the inspector said. He sounded a bit sly.

The winemaker considered Barbaroux’s comment a moment and then said, “According to studies, two to three percent of the nearly eight hundred million bottles produced in Bordeaux each year have cork taint. That’s a chemical compound created when natural fungi in the cork came in contact with chlorides and other substances found in a winery’s sterilization products. The percentage seems insignificant, but it translates to some eighteen million bottles that can’t be drunk because they smell and taste soggy and rotten.”

“So is that an argument for screw tops, Mr. Cooker?”

“Some French vintners are following the lead of vineyards in Australia, New Zealand, and Chili, and have adopted an aluminum cap with a gas-tight seal. It does solve the problem of cork taint, my good man, but still, that is no way to store wine. Nothing could ever replace the cork, with its flexibility and ability to breathe and enhance aging.”

“Well, how then do you get rid of cork taint?”

“I don’t think it could be entirely eradicated, but insisting on quality corks would go a long way toward minimizing the problem. Wine is a living thing,” he concluded with conviction. “We’ll be lost if we forget that!”

“That may be true,” Barbaroux said. “But to claim, as some do, that wine has a soul—that’s going too far!”

“Of course wine has a soul!” Benjamin said, raising his voice. He could feel his cheeks getting red. “You need to read Baudelaire.” He cleared his throat.

“One eve in the bottle sang the soul of wine:

‘Man, unto thee, dear disinherited,

I sing a song of love and light divine—

Prisoned in glass beneath my seals of red.’”

“I’m not one for poetry, Mr. Cooker.”

“Wine has both a life and a soul. Without a cork, the angels cannot take their share. And where you exclude the angels, you exclude God and His miracles. What fools would commit such sacrilege?”

“I’m not really following you.”

“Those who would try to force perfection—by using an aluminum cap, for example—are bound to fail. You see, perfection is an illusion. It’s never attainable. Miracles, on the other hand, happen all the time. And they often masquerade as mistakes. Take Sauterne. It’s an accumulation of coincidences, approximations, trial and error. It’s the most beautiful mistake there ever was!”