Bruno turned at the sound of a heavy vehicle coming down the lane, and went out to greet the firemen. Albert stepped down, followed by Ahmed, who was driving the big truck. Pamela went to calm her horse, who had been made nervous by the fire engine. Bruno led the way to the barn, pausing as Ahmed pulled out the resuscitation kit.
“I don’t think we’ll need that,” Bruno said, nodding at the gear.
“Regulations,” said Ahmed, shrugging. “And besides, you never know. I’ve seen some miracles happen with this.”
Once in the barn, Albert shook his head and sent Ahmed back.
“He’s been dead for hours,” Albert said, and took off his helmet. “I can’t say I like the look of that neck. Do you think he fell?”
“No sign of slipping on the steps, but I wouldn’t trust that ladder and I’m not half Cresseil’s age,” said Bruno. “His legs were just about gone.”
There was the beep-beep of a horn outside. The doctor had arrived. Bruno went out, to find Pamela calming her horse once more. He grinned at her sympathetically and walked across the yard to where a young woman was pulling a doctor’s case from the back of an elderly Renault 5. This must be the new doctor at the medical center, the one with the Italian first name. All he could see of her so far was an extremely shapely rump. She turned, and he kept his surprise under control. A large scar covered a good part of her right cheek, and she had made no attempt to cover it with makeup. While trying not to focus on it, Bruno wondered what might have caused the wound.
“Hello, Bruno—I know who you are. I’m Fabiola Stern, the new doctor,” she said, smiling and holding out her hand. As they shook hands she asked “Where is the body?”
“Mademoiselle le médecin,” he said. “A pleasure, despite the circumstances. This is Madame Nelson, who found the body, and the pompiers you have met. And now we go this way.”
“Madame Nelson, a pleasure to meet you. That’s a fine horse.” She turned back to Bruno as they started walking and said, “Please call me Fabiola.”
“That neck is broken,” she said after a brief examination of the body. “But from the pupils and the purple hands and the very pale face, the cause of death may have been a heart attack. Maybe he had cardiac arrest and then fell. We need an autopsy.”
Putain, thought Bruno. That would both delay and complicate matters.
“Are you sure?” he asked. “It looks like the straightforward death of a very old man.”
“Sorry,” she replied formally, “but with different possible causes of death I have to do this by the book.”
There was no appealing the doctor’s verdict, so he turned his attention to the necessary notifications, starting with Max. It was clear he’d been around recently, since who else could have picked the grapes? They must already be in the vat, which would explain why the old man had been up the stepladder in the first place. Bruno left the barn and the body and walked into the yard, pulling out his cell phone.
“Alphonse, it’s Bruno. Is Max there?”
“No, Bruno. He’s at Cresseil’s place. He was planning to pick the grapes last night and said he’d stay over. It’s his organic thing, picking the grapes in the dark when it’s cooler.”
“Well, they’re picked all right, and I saw him in town late last night, but there’s no sign of him here. I’m at the place now, with the pompiers and the doctor. Cresseil’s dead; looks like a heart attack. Max isn’t answering his phone. Can you track him down and tell him the bad news?”
Thinking about the grapes, Bruno walked back into the barn just as the pompiers were packing up to leave. Suddenly he heard the ring of a cell phone somewhere inside the barn. Like everyone else there Bruno automatically checked his own, although the ring tone was wrong. In fact, it came from the back of the barn, where a jumble of baskets and dusty bottles and old clothes were piled onto a sagging array of rough shelves. He walked across, saw the phone and answered, noticing the pair of clean blue jeans and sneakers on which it rested.
“Hello?” he said into the phone.
“Max, is that you?”
“Alphonse, it’s me, Bruno. I just answered what must be Max’s phone here in Cresseil’s barn.”
“What? It’s not like Max to leave his phone. Is there no sign of him?”
“Hold on.” Bruno picked up the jeans and felt the pockets. There was a wallet inside, some keys and some coins. Inside the wallet were Max’s library card and university ID, and tucked behind that, Bruno was not greatly surprised to find a five-euro phone card from France Télécom. He looked further. Over by the wall was a small red bundle. He pulled out a pencil and picked it up, conscious of the eyes of Fabiola and the firemen silently following his every move. It was a pair of cotton shorts, sodden with wine.
Putain, he swore to himself. I never looked in the vat.
“Alphonse, I’ll call you back.” He put the phone back on the jeans and turned to the stepladder. “Ahmed, come and hold this thing steady for me. Albert, don’t pack that resuscitation gear just yet.”
He climbed up, and by the fourth step he was high enough to see in. He went another step to be sure.
“Hold tight, Ahmed,” he called, and leaned into the vat, perilously far, the stepladder rocking as he plunged his hand down to the thick cap of fermenting grape juice to pluck at the head of blond hair that floated facedown in the vat. It was no good; he couldn’t keep a grip. He tried to grab at the shoulder, but his hand slipped in the thick must of grapes. So Bruno took a grip on the rim and vaulted in, fully dressed, splashing hard through the thick must while still holding the rim. He kept his feet, bent down and with a great heave hauled Max’s naked body out of the dense liquid and braced him against the wooden side.
“Albert, Ahmed, get another ladder and help me here. Fabiola, can you come up the stepladder?”
With one hand, he reached into Max’s mouth and pulled out a froth of must and broken grapes, took a deep breath and leaned forward to plant his mouth firmly on the sagging lips of the boy. He blew with all his might, trying to force air into Max’s lungs, but there was resistance. He let go of the vat’s rim, put both arms around Max’s chest and squeezed hard. A rush of juice and must fountained from Max’s throat. Bruno took another breath and blew again hard into Max’s mouth.
“That’s right. You’re doing the right thing,” said Fabiola, her eyes barely above the rim. “Do that again. Keep blowing. Can I help hold him?” She reached in to help hold Max up.
With a clatter, Albert and Ahmed appeared with proper ladders and began clambering up to help. Bruno heard Pamela’s voice; she obviously had called the emergency number and was asking for more help.
“Pull him out; bring him down here,” called Fabiola. “Keep blowing, Bruno, hard as you can.”
Bruno pushing, Albert and Ahmed pulling, they got Max over the rim, and then the two firemen took the weight and laid him on the ground, where Fabiola took over the kiss of life. Ahmed dried off Max’s chest and applied the two paddles of the resuscitator to his chest, then tapped Fabiola to let go, and the body jolted as he applied the electricity. Fabiola bent back to her work.
Breathing heavily, and suddenly conscious of a sharp headache, Bruno began feeling around the vat to see if anything else was in there, but his legs were rubbery and he felt himself begin to slide. He called out something and flailed with his hand for the side of the vat. The noise attracted Fabiola’s attention.
“Albert, get Bruno out of there now,” Fabiola shouted, before turning back to the boy. “The fumes can kill him.”
Bruno felt a sharp pain as his fingernail tore on the wooden side of the vat, and it jolted him enough to get one knee under him. By then Albert had grabbed the collar of his shirt and was hauling him up. As soon as his head was over the side, Bruno took a deep breath and felt his vision start to clear. Albert kept hauling, and then Pamela was below him and pulling at his flailing arm. Albert shifted his grip to Bruno’s belt and tumbled him over the rim to collapse on the ground in the arms of
Pamela.
“Get him out into the open air,” shouted Fabiola, “and then come back for the boy.”
Bruno was prone and retching, a grape-sodden Pamela rinsing him with a bucket of cold water, when Captain Duroc appeared. Fabiola was still giving the kiss of hoped-for life to Max, and Ahmed was shaking his head sorrowfully at Albert, who was bent double, taking deep breaths of fresh air. Every one of them was purple with grape juice, thick gobbets of grape must in their hair and eyebrows and stuck to their arms.
“It’s no good,” said Fabiola, leaning back, pressing her hands into the small of her back and wincing. “The boy’s been dead too long. We’re lucky we didn’t lose Bruno.”
“What the devil has happened here?” asked Duroc, plainly shocked.
“Two dead,” said Fabiola. “Nearly three. Carbon dioxide from the fermentation of the grapes. I’ve heard of it, though I’ve never seen it. I remember learning that the volume of carbon dioxide produced during fermentation is forty times that of the volume of the juice.”
“But it’s not poisonous,” Duroc protested.
“No, but it displaces the oxygen. That’s how it kills. Asphyxiation.”
Bruno looked up. His head felt clearer, and the retching had stopped. He glanced at Pamela, who looked at him reassuringly and squeezed his hand. She was such a sight he almost grinned.
“People die of it every year when they forget the need for ventilation,” Fabiola went on. “Bruno was taking deep breaths inside the vat, trying to force air into this poor boy’s lungs. He was suffocating himself.”
She looked down at the must-smeared body of a well-muscled young man, tanned brown except for the pale band of white where his shorts had been. She went inside and came back with an old blanket. Just before she laid it over the body, she bent and wiped Max’s face clean, then she closed his eyes and laid a gentle hand on his cheek.
“A fine-looking man,” she said. “Such a waste.”
“A double tragedy,” Bruno said, standing up and addressing Duroc. “Cresseil, possibly a heart attack, possibly a broken neck when he fell off the ladder. There will be an autopsy. And Max, Cresseil’s adopted son, dead of asphyxiation in a wine vat. It looks to me like natural causes or a fall for the first one, and a tragic accident for the second.” He turned to Fabiola. “Do we need an autopsy for Max?”
She shook her head, and then rubbed her eyes. “My first week on the job, and two dead,” she said.
“You did all you could,” said Pamela.
“If it wasn’t for you, we might have lost Bruno,” said Albert. “I’d never heard of death by fermenting wine.”
“I never heard of anybody treading grapes naked,” mused Bruno. “I wonder why he took off his shorts. My guess is he took them off for some reason when he was in the vat, and then tossed them over the side.”
“Putain de merde,” said Albert, looking at Ahmed and then down at himself. “What a mess.”
“I’m going to clean up in the bathroom here,” said Fabiola. “I’m sure the late owner won’t mind.” She began to walk toward the house but suddenly stopped to watch Bruno, who was poking about at the side of barn. “What are you looking for?”
“Cresseil’s dog,” he replied, heading around the back. “He’s nearly as old as Cresseil was. Give me a shout when you’re done and I’ll use the bathroom myself. First, I’d better tell Alphonse about Max.”
Bruno braced himself for a difficult conversation. And he’d also have to tell Jacqueline about Max’s death. That would not be pleasant either, however much she’d been dallying with Bondino. He was curious to see how she’d react. He pulled his phone from its sodden leather pouch at his side. A clump of grape must obscured the buttons. He wiped them off, but the phone was useless.
“Merde,” he muttered, and stomped back into the barn to use Max’s phone.
23
“The important question will be who died first,” said the mayor. Bruno, now washed and changed into his spare uniform and back at the mairie, accepted a restorative glass of Armagnac. “If old Cresseil died first, then Max’s heir would inherit. But we don’t know that he has one. He still has Alphonse formally listed as next of kin, but I’m not sure how much weight that has. And if Max died first, then Cresseil’s distant cousins would inherit, and that could be important for our project with Bondino. He tells me he still wants to go ahead, thanks to the way you fixed the problem at the research station,” the mayor went on. “So how do we establish who died first?”
“That depends on the autopsy on Cresseil being done by that new young doctor, Fabiola Stern,” Bruno replied, feeling relieved that this at least was entirely beyond his control. “But there’s no autopsy planned on Max. It could be very hard to tell when he died. Time of death is never easy to establish with certainty.”
“Logic might suggest that Cresseil wondered what had happened to Max, went up the ladder and saw the boy lying there already dead, and the shock brought on the heart attack that killed him, or sent him reeling off the ladder so he broke his neck,” said Bruno. “That would mean Max died first.”
“A different logic might say that Max got into difficulties, Cresseil tried to clamber up to help, had the heart attack and died, and then in the absence of help, young Max tragically drowned. So the old man died first,” replied the mayor, so casually that Bruno knew he was up to something. “If somebody makes the case that the boy lived long enough to inherit, we’ll have a lawsuit brought by Cresseil’s family. It won’t get settled for years, and Bondino may give up in disgust. So, Bruno, how well do you know the young doctor?”
“Hardly at all. She seems pleasant and very capable. In fact, she may have saved my life,” said Bruno, focused once again on how much the mayor wanted the Bondino project to move forward. He was not going to start his relationship with the new doctor by hinting that she might bend her professional verdict to suit the mayor’s scheme. “She struck me as a person of integrity. I’m sure she’ll give us an honest opinion.”
“Could you perhaps suggest the importance of this matter to her? Its importance to the future of Saint-Denis, that is.”
“There’s a further complication,” said Bruno, avoiding a direct answer. “Earlier this week, Bondino started a fight with Max in the Bar des Amateurs, breaking a plate-glass window and assaulting a young woman. I could have arrested him, and I’m really having second thoughts about linking the future of Saint-Denis with that guy.”
“Well, we were all young once. He’ll grow out of it.” The mayor paused. “You’ve never liked this project, have you?”
“I like the idea a lot, in principle. But Bondino’s behavior hardly inspires confidence.”
The mayor rose from his chair and walked to the window. “Merde, Bruno. You’re right, of course. But what else can we do? I have to fight tooth and nail to keep the sawmill alive. The supermarkets are killing small businesses. This Bondino project is the best chance we have to secure our future, and I’m not going to lose it. Go and look at Saint-Fénelon or at any other of those hollowed-out tourist towns around here, with only a couple of bistros and a real estate agent. They’re dead from September to June every year,” the mayor went on, flourishing his hand at the window as if pointing to the ghost towns he evoked. “No families, no schools, no jobs, no shops, and most of the houses empty until the tourists come back to rent them. That’s what’s at stake, Bruno. We have to have those jobs for Saint-Denis.”
The mayor thrust out his jaw and advanced on Bruno. “So I don’t much care if Bondino is a drunken young fool, so long as he commits that investment. You’ll just have to manage him.”
“Whoa!” Bruno held up his hands and grinned. “I’m not the council, and I’m not a voter at a public meeting. Practice your speeches on me all you like, but you don’t need to convince me. I like the project. But if it makes commercial sense with Bondino, it might also make commercial sense with somebody else. That’s my point, and we haven’t even looked at that possibility.”
“But now that one is doing so, that’s valuable information. Maybe there are other big companies, British or Italian, that see the same potential Bondino does. Maybe there are French investors who could be interested. If you do get the appellation, we can make our own deal.”
Hubert’s wine shop was busy when Bruno arrived, bracing himself for the task of telling Jacqueline the bad news. Hubert was talking in English with a couple standing by the racks of vintage Armagnacs. Nathalie turned from the cash desk, where she was serving a line of customers, and greeted Bruno sadly.
“We know about it,” she said. “The Mad Englishwoman came by, covered in grape juice, to tell Jacqueline. The girl was shattered, in floods of tears, so Hubert gave her the day off. The Englishwoman took her home with her. We’re up to our eyeballs here, shorthanded without Jacqueline and Max, but is there anything we can do? She told us you were hurt, too.”
“I’m fine. So Jacqueline will still be up at Pamela’s place?”
“Yes, she moved in a few days ago. Didn’t you know? She said you helped arrange it.”
A tourist buying a case of Hubert’s wine looked baffled at the presence of a policeman but started tapping his credit card on the counter in impatience. Nathalie turned back to him with a tired smile, and Bruno took his leave. “We’ll miss that lovely boy,” she called after him.
As Bruno opened his van door, Hubert dashed out of his cave and waved urgently as he trotted across the parking lot.
“Terrible news. A tragedy,” he said. “But how are you? The Englishwoman told us you almost died as well.”
“I’m fine. All I needed was a shower and a change of clothes,” Bruno said, shaking hands. “It was that new woman doctor who saved me, once she realized what was happening. I never knew wine could be that dangerous.”
Bruno 02 - The Dark Vineyard Page 14
