Death in the Vines: A Verlaque and Bonnet Provençal Mystery

by M. L. Longworth

  Olivier and Élise froze as a pair of black Converse sneakers came pounding down the cellar steps, leaving a cloud of dust in their wake. “Speak of the devil,” Olivier Bonnard muttered to himself.

  “Hey! I’ve been looking all over for you two!” Victor Bonnard said. “When’s dinner, Mom? The movie’s at eight p.m. in Aix. We have to catch the seven-ten bus.” Victor looked at his mother, who said nothing. He then looked at his father, who also remained silent. The boy’s first thought was that his parents had been arguing. He felt a lump in his throat. Perhaps they were talking about getting a divorce, like his friend Luc’s parents.

  His father turned toward the racks of wines and, with a sweeping motion of his hand, invited Victor to look at the partly empty racks.

  “What the…?” the boy yelled.

  “That’s exactly what your mother said.”

  Victor Bonnard began running back and forth along the racks, as if he were a panicked animal. Élise looked at her husband with raised eyebrows, as if to say, “You see, he’s as surprised as we are.”

  “The 1929 is missing! Putain!” Victor yelled as he continued running alongside the racks, bending down every so often to look for bottles. “Does Grandpa know yet?”

  “No, he’s having his nap. I’m dreading telling him,” Olivier replied.

  “Who would do this?” Victor asked, of no one in particular.

  “That’s what I was going to ask you,” Olivier Bonnard replied. The minute the words left his mouth, he regretted it.

  Victor was stunned. “What do you mean, Dad?” The youth’s face reddened, and he banged his fist against the damp stone wall, scraping his hand. “Thanks a lot, Dad!” he yelled, and ran back up the stairs, slamming the cellar door behind him.

  “Bravo, chéri,” Élise said to her husband, rolling her eyes; she too walked up the stairs and outside, into the late-afternoon sunshine.

  “Bon,” Olivier Bonnard said to himself, sighing. He’d go and apologize to Victor; then he would drive into Aix and see his insurance friend. It had been weeks since Olivier had been to town: he had been too busy fretting over an unusually wet late August. He and Hélène had moved their year-old wine, in barrels, to the second-year cellar to make room for the new wines. When that was done, Olivier and Cyril had been moving equipment and clearing space for the crushing and pressing of the new harvest—that is, until the tractor broke down. There was work to do in the cellars, and Bonnard had been topping up the casks, explaining to a bored Sandrine that 5 percent of the wine evaporates through the wooden sides of the barrel. It was normally a job Victor loved, but Olivier had asked Sandrine to help him, hoping that she might gain some insight into the winemaking process. He wanted Victor to concentrate on his schoolwork: they had made a pact that he would, this last year of high school, hit the books so that he could at least achieve a somewhat honorable grade on the Bac—the grueling national exams at the end of the school year. When Victor was a small boy, Olivier had taught him the term for this loss—“the angels’ share”—just as Olivier’s father, Albert, had taught him. He smiled as he remembered a six-year-old Victor peering at the barrel and walking around it, trying to catch, in his tiny cupped hands, the red wine that he imagined was leaking out.

  After Bonnard finished his business in Aix, he would walk over to Jean-Jacques Clergue’s house and invite him over—Jean-Jacques would have good advice, and Olivier wanted to drink with a friend, in the cellar, surrounded by what was left of the prized vintages. As winemakers, Bonnard and his fellow vignerons were always careful not to overindulge. But tonight he thought he might tie one on. Jean-Jacques was a bon vivant and might even bring along a couple of Cuban cigars—Olivier had smoked one with the judge from Aix the last time he had visited, and he was developing a taste for them. He’d get the silent treatment from Élise, but he didn’t care. Olivier Bonnard walked up the stairs, turned off the lights, and closed and locked the door; this time he put the key in his pocket.

  Chapter Two

  A Final Market Day

  It was a typical Tuesday when Mme Pauline d’Arras set out to do her market shopping, the last one she would ever do. The September weather was warm, but she wore a light cotton sweater over her silk blouse. The morning sun was high, and bright; the sky blue; and the closer she got to the Palais de Justice and its square with a thrice-weekly market, the noisier it became. Her dog, Coco, tried to run ahead, excited, sensing that it was market day. Madame tugged on the leash and smiled down at Coco—the little dog loved the market, in particular the traffic policemen on motorcycles.

  Mme d’Arras zigzagged her way past the large-scale vegetable sellers and gave them an intentional scowl. Any sellers who had bananas, pineapples, and limes definitely did not grow their own food in Provence: they bought their produce wholesale in warehouses in Marseille. Her favorite seller, Martin, had a small stall at the far end of the market, and he sold organic vegetables that he grew on a farm north of Aix. She squeezed past a group of tourists taking pictures of spices and gave them a good nudge with her basket: Don’t they realize that some people actually have to shop and cook? Mme d’Arras smiled as she approached Martin’s stall, but her smile faded when she saw the queue. So…other Aixoises are catching on to Martin’s excellent produce, she thought. She’d have to wait in line, and lunch would now be at least fifteen minutes late. But if she worked quickly when she got home, and did not stop to have a tea, lunch might be on time. She took one of Martin’s plastic bowls, which was sitting on top of a small mountain of red-skinned potatoes, and began selecting vegetables for the pot-au-feu that she would make this afternoon for the evening’s dinner: turnips, carrots, potatoes, leeks, onions, and garlic. The beef she would buy at the Boucherie du Palais—Another queue, no doubt. She and Gilles would have pork chops and green beans for lunch—that was quick and easy, and Gilles loved them. “So do you, don’t you, Coco baby?” she cried, looking down at her dog.

  She looked up, startled, when she realized that someone was speaking to her.

  “Madame,” Martin said, smiling, but his eyes could not hide his worry.

  Mme d’Arras composed herself and smiled at Martin. What lovely big hands he has, she thought, but rather dirty. I wonder how long he has been calling my name? She remembered that she had been talking to Coco, but for how long? She handed Martin her bowl of vegetables. “Voilà,” she said.

  “Looks like a pot-au-feu this evening?” Martin asked.

  “Indeed,” she replied. “A delicious dinner, and economical…well, except for the beef.” She looked over at the Boucherie du Palais, hoping to get a glimpse at how long the queue was, but she could not see inside the shop. A good sign, perhaps: it meant that the line wasn’t out the door, as it was on Saturdays.

  Martin carefully weighed the vegetables: he knew that Mme d’Arras watched the scales like a hawk. He looked at her perfectly coiffed blond hair and designer eyeglasses: she was one of those Aixoises whose age was indeterminable, somewhere between sixty and seventy-five. Mme d’Arras was a tough old girl, but he liked her. She had been one of his first customers, when he was the only organic seller in the market. He had waited for years to get the okay from the town hall to have a stand, and the down payment had nearly killed him, but now the stand was paying for itself, especially on Saturdays. He usually sold out of his produce by noon.

  Madame began speaking to another woman in the queue: they were both making a pot-au-feu that evening and were comparing recipes. Whether or not the two women knew each other was beyond Martin’s knowledge; Aix was where he worked and sold the best, but compared with the hamlet he lived in, north of Manosque, this was very foreign—wealthy, privileged—territory. He never knew if Mme d’Arras was genuinely curious, and that’s why she was always turning around to chat with someone, or if she was just a busybody. He decided that her curiosity was probably self-centered, and self-serving, but he was worried about her all the same: she was able to get around and do her shopping, and could obviously re
member recipes, but she seemed more and more absentminded these past few weeks—she didn’t hear him when he spoke to her, and her eyes looked glazed over, almost yellow.

  “There you go, Mme d’Arras. That will be seven euros and thirteen centimes, please.” He put a handful of parsley into her basket as well, free of charge.

  Mme d’Arras carefully took out her Hermès change purse, a gift from her nephew, and slowly counted the money.

  Martin smiled and thanked her, and she carried her basket back through the crowd of buyers and sellers, stopping to admire the sunflowers that a farmer was selling. She decided not to buy any, because she was already overloaded with the vegetables—potatoes and onions were heavy—and she continued on to the Boucherie du Palais. Inside the long, narrow butcher shop there was a long queue, and she moved quickly to the back of the shop, where a small second queue had formed, reserved for “preferred” customers, or those in the know. She nodded and smiled to those customers that she recognized, and waited, trying to quiet down Coco, who was now getting impatient. A young American mother was in front of her, busy speaking to her young toddler, who was in a stroller. Mme d’Arras leaned over, pretending to look at the cuts of meat, and began to inch her way past l’Américaine, who wouldn’t notice or would be too polite to say anything about the old woman’s queue jumping. But when Mme d’Arras straightened up, her feet ran directly into the stroller, which the American had thrust in front of her, blocking the way. “Il faut attendre, madame,” the young woman said in good, if heavily accented, French.

  Mme d’Arras huffed, pretending not to understand, and began talking to Coco; she was perturbed that this young woman not only blocked her way but also knew the shop’s secret of the two-line system.

  “Mme d’Arras,” Henri, the butcher and owner, bellowed when it was finally her turn. “Don’t you look handsome today.”

  Mme d’Arras blushed and replied, “One has to make an attempt to look presentable, no matter what the day.”

  “Indeed,” the butcher replied. “And what is the beautiful madame preparing for her lucky husband?”

  Despite herself, she gushed. “A pot-au-feu.”

  “Well, let me get you one of my select cuts of beef for your pot-au-feu, and some veal as well.”

  “Veal?” Mme d’Arras stumbled. That would bring the price up considerably. The other butchers in the shop normally gave her only beef.

  “Of course…veal! But if Madame doesn’t agree…”

  “No, indeed, perhaps you are right…a little veal will add wonders to the flavor, non?” She didn’t want Henri, or especially that busybody Mme de Correz, to think that she was cheap.

  Henri, the experienced salesman, smiled and cut a chunk of tender veal and added it to her beef purchase.

  Mme d’Arras took her meat and went and stood in yet another line to pay, but she knew from experience that Henri’s daughter, who worked the till, was extremely fast and efficient. In no time Madame was walking back up the Rue Émeric David to her apartment. She carried Coco, who was now beside herself with fatigue and hunger. She stopped before she arrived at her apartment, passing by number 16, and scowled. Her neighbor, a young upstart with new money, was outside the Hôtel de Panisse-Passis, speaking to workmen who were setting up scaffolding. Philippe Léridon had bought the grand mansion a few years ago, but it had sat empty—and quiet—while he was living in Morocco, making millions, as Mme d’Arras’s husband had informed her, on a luxury hotel chain. He had bought the faded but elegant eighteenth-century mansion on a whim, when he had been in Aix on holiday, and had, earlier this year, sold his hotel chain and moved permanently to Aix. The workmen had been in and out of the mansion for weeks—noise all day long, even on Saturdays—and her apartment had developed cracks in the walls because of their jackhammering. She reminded herself to call her lawyer later that afternoon, and her stride quickened: she was glad—no, proud—that she was able to handle such affairs on her own, without the help of her husband.

  Philippe Léridon’s “Bonjour, Mme d’Arras!” broke her reverie, but she walked on to the Hôtel de Barlet, one building farther north, at number 18. Before putting her key in the door, she turned to Léridon and exclaimed, careful to show him her superior accent, “Bonjour à vous, monsieur! My lawyer will be contacting you!” She vaguely heard Léridon protesting as she quickly stepped inside her hotel’s impeccably preserved eighteenth-century entry and closed the door. Her building’s carved front doors, though not as ornate as Panisse’s, were, to her eye, all the more elegant and better for it. The Hôtel de Panisse’s doors were a riot of carved foliage, swords, crowns, and ribbons—loud—just like their new owner, with his thick Midi accent and his oversized foreign vehicle, which could barely fit down the Rue Émeric David.

  She stood inside the front hall and sighed, too tired to pick up the mail that the postman had set on the entry’s marble console, and slowly walked up the stairs toward her second-floor flat. When she set Coco down, the dog yelped and ran quickly up the stairs. She unlocked the door—it always took some time, since the door had three sets of locks—then she and Coco went inside. Closing the door behind her, Mme d’Arras walked into the kitchen, Coco at her feet, to set her groceries down on the kitchen counter. Wearily she sat down at the little white kitchen table that was just big enough for her and Gilles to take breakfast. Something was bothering her, but she couldn’t think what. Was it the queues? No, they hadn’t been that bad. Perhaps it had been seeing her show-off neighbor, with his fancy car and new money? She realized that M. Léridon had interrupted her thoughts—she had been thinking of her younger sister, Clothilde, and the small Romanesque chapel where they had sung together as young girls. She could picture the chapel perfectly; its rounded apse was the first thing you saw when you drove into Rognes. Coco yelped, wanting lunch.

  “Yes, I’ll get you your food,” she cooed to the dog, and then, remembering her own lunch, she sat down again and put her head in her hands and began to cry. She had forgotten to buy the pork chops.

  Chapter Three

  A Worried Husband

  Gilles d’Arras, although he had lived less than a hundred meters from Aix’s Palais de Justice for more than forty years, had never set foot inside it. He found himself sitting across from a huge, bald-headed policeman who looked at him kindly and spoke softly. M. d’Arras looked around and saw other police officers typing, or chatting, or walking to and fro, carrying documents. It could have been his office, except that some of the men and women were in uniform. He looked back at the big policeman and realized that he was meant to continue speaking. The words, however, had difficulty leaving his mouth.

  “I got home today for lunch at the usual hour, just a little bit past noon. Pauline—that is, Mme d’Arras—usually has lunch ready by twelve-thirty. It’s been like that since the day we were married, forty-two years ago.”

  The officer wrote down the information and then looked up at M. d’Arras and asked, “Did you argue this morning, before you went to work?”

  “No,” Gilles d’Arras replied, obviously surprised by the question.

  “And that was the last time you saw your wife?”

  “Yes. I left for work at eight-forty-five. When she wasn’t home for lunch, I began calling our friends and Pauline’s older sister, Natalie, asking if she was with any of them. I think she left in a hurry, because Coco—sorry, that’s our dog—was left alone in the apartment. She wouldn’t do that normally.”

  “And she isn’t answering her cell phone, I presume?”

  M. d’Arras shook his head. “She hates them. I tried to buy one for her when they first came out, but she refused.”

  Commissioner Paulik paused and said, as gently as he could, “I agreed to meet with you, M. d’Arras, because you were so insistent. But I must tell you that you are acting prematurely. Your wife has only been gone the afternoon, and it’s now only five-thirty. She could be anywhere.”

  “That’s just it. Anywhere!” insisted d’Arras. �
�I never would have bothered you had it not been urgent. She could be anywhere…hungry, hurt, cold. We’ve eaten lunch together for over forty years. Only once were we not able to, the 20th of March in 1983—I had a meeting in Paris that day. Never, ever, has she not told me her plans for the day. Never.”

  Paulik felt a shiver on his giant forearms and said, “And you checked the hospitals, Officer Flamant tells me.” He couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten lunch with his wife, Hélène: they were both too busy. Ah, the easy life of France’s wealthy elderly, he silently mused.

  “Yes. In fact, I checked the hospitals first.”

  Commissioner Paulik look surprised.

  “You see, my wife has been, well, not herself lately. She’s become forgetful, and weepy. She has a far-off look in her eyes, like she isn’t listening to those speaking to her. It seemed to me like it could be the beginnings of Alzheimer’s, but she refused to be tested.”