Dead in the Dregs

by Peter Lewis

  “That what was true—that she was in San Francisco? That she is Wilson’s daughter?” He hesitated before saying, “Or that she killed him?”

  “Only that Wilson’s her father. But she didn’t deny that she’d been there.”

  “And the murder?” he said.

  “We didn’t get that far. She ran away.”

  Sackheim sat there, working through everything I’d told him. He rose, walked to a corner of the room, and hit an intercom.

  “Marcellin, venez ici,” he said.

  Corporal Marcellin entered a moment later.

  “Oui, mon colonel?” his corporal said.

  “Marcellin, I want you to locate Mademoiselle Azzine.” Sackheim turned to me. “Do you have any reason to believe that she’s in Saint-Romain, at the gîte?”

  “I doubt it. I think you should try Domaine Beauchamp. That’s where all her stuff is, where she’s been working.”

  “Bien. Domaine Beauchamp, à Pommard,” Sackheim said to Marcellin.

  “Oui, Chef,” Marcellin said and raced out of the room.

  “Thank you, Babe,” Sackheim said, and rose. “I appreciate your coming here to tell me this before you left.”

  “There’s something else,” I said.

  “And what is this?” He looked at me warily.

  “The wine,” I said.

  “What wine?”

  “The wine Pitot made from Eric Feldman.”

  “Paris has the press,” he said. “They are analyzing it in their laboratoire. If he did as you suggest, they will know.”

  “But we have to find it,” I said. “The wine, I mean.”

  “And where do you propose . . . ?”

  “Domaine Carrière,” I said. “I’ll find it, I promise,” I added, hoping this one wouldn’t be as empty as the string of broken promises I’d made my son.

  “Give me just a minute,” Sackheim said.

  We took my car and parked outside the gates. Sackheim followed me into the courtyard. No one was around. I led the way into the cuverie and walked straight to the wine press. I circled it twice.

  “Make sure the guys from Paris check this one out, too,” I said. He nodded.

  Sackheim trailed me as I entered the first cellar, passed through the second and third, and finally arrived in the fourth and smallest room. I hadn’t really noticed on the day I’d been here to question Carrière about Eric Feldman that this cave had no barrels. Metal racks held tightly stacked, unlabeled bottles. Small pieces of framed slate hung on chains and were scrawled in chalk with the provenance of each wine laid to rest in its shelves: CHAMBOLLE-MUSIGNY, CHAMBOLLE 1ER CRU, LES CHARMES, LES AMOUREUSES, BONNES-MARES, MUSIGNY.

  I examined the last few nooks and pulled a couple of bottles to see if anything was amiss. The wine looked fine. Short of opening several hundred bottles, it would be impossible to know if Jean Pitot had hidden anything in the cellars of Jean-Luc Carrière.

  “This is crazy,” I said, suddenly unsure of myself. “We’re never going to find it. Forget it.”

  I could see the chagrin on Sackheim’s face. I’d let him down again. Disappointment and failure seemed to be dogging me everywhere I turned.

  In the courtyard he told me to wait by the car. He crossed to the house and knocked on the front door. I peered through the wrought-iron fence. The door opened and Sackheim stood there, speaking to whomever had answered, a moment later gesturing for me to join him. A young woman stood at the door and led us inside.

  “Après vous,” Sackheim said. The woman disappeared through a door at the end of the hallway and emerged a minute later with an older woman. I had seen Carrière’s wife only from a distance, the day Sackheim had returned with me to ask about the incident in their cave. She was an attractive middle-aged woman with an open, inquisitive face.

  “Yes, Colonel? May I help you?” she said.

  “If you have the time, I would like to ask you a few questions,” he said.

  She led us into the kitchen. “I hope you don’t mind, I was just making coffee.” She busied herself measuring out the coffee and filling the coffeemaker with water. She switched it on, pulled four cups and saucers from a cabinet, and turned to face us.

  “Asseyez-vous, s’il vous plait.”

  We arranged ourselves around the square kitchen table. It was awkward and uncomfortable, and no one knew what to say.

  “Forgive me, Mademoiselle,” Sackheim opened, turning to the young woman, “I don’t believe we have met. I am Colonel Émile Sackheim. And you are . . . ?”

  “Jenny Christensen,” she said. “That’s my California name. Here I am Eugénie Pitot, Jean’s sister. I just arrived from California to be with my family. For his funeral.”

  Sackheim and I exchanged looks. She was slender and pretty, dressed in woolen slacks and a bulky sweater. Her hair was like her brother’s, fluffy brown curls. She looked at us through doelike brown eyes.

  “Please accept my condolences, Madame. It is terrible, what happened,” Sackheim said. “Ah, forgive me, this is a neighbor of yours, my colleague from California, Monsieur Stern.”

  “I’m sorry about your brother,” I said, trying to smile sympathetically. She eyed me suspiciously, said nothing, and turned to my companion.

  He responded by saying, “I am pleased you are here. It will be helpful, I think. Let me start with you, then,” he began, and we all settled uneasily into our chairs. “Do you mind if we speak English? I would like my friend to follow what we say.”

  “As you wish,” she said quietly, her accent barely detectible.

  “It is all right, Madame?” he said, looking at the woman of the house. “You understand English?”

  “Yes, some. It is fine,” Madame Carrière answered him.

  “Your brother,” Sackheim started in, “did you see him often when he was in California last summer?”

  “Occasionally. He would come to visit. But he was very busy at the winery.”

  “Your husband, he is a vigneron too?”

  “Yes.”

  “You own your vineyards?” His tone suggested astonished appreciation of the good fortune of owning land in America.

  “Yes, but we lease them. Paul works at Agostino. It’s a big place. Industrial.”

  “And you met him . . . ?”

  “Here, in 1994.”

  “You were twenty?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “Love at first sight, eh?” Sackheim prompted.

  “You might say that.” The sun filtered through the kitchen window, washing Eugénie’s face with a fine grid of mottled light.

  “Your brother, did he seem disturbed when you saw him? Was he angry or troubled by anything?”

  “Oh, you know, the usual.”

  “I am afraid I do not, Madame. What do you mean, ‘the usual’?”

  “He wasn’t a very happy person. But I guess you know that.”

  “Was there something in particular that made him unhappy?”

  “He didn’t like American wine very much.”

  “Well, in this he is joined by many of his countrymen,” Sackheim said with a shrug. He wasn’t winning her over, and her features seemed frozen. “You have children?”

  “No. We’re trying, but not yet.” Her voice faded.

  “Well, you will, I’m sure. You are young,” Sackheim reassured her. “If I might ask you a few questions about your family.” She waited. “Your father . . .” he started, and she looked down at her hands, then gazed out the window. “He is an unfortunate man. I am sorry. It must have been quite painful growing up. But your uncle, Gilbert? What can you tell me about him?”

  “He is going blind, drinking himself to death,” Eugénie said, her voice stony. “It is from breathing the sulfatage. They don’t protect themselves. You can taste it, you know. I would help my grandmother sometimes. It is sharp, metallic. It stings your tongue. My uncle, he gets cramps, diarrhea. His skin is turning yellow. Not as yellow as Grandma’s, but . . . The year I left, I saw him in
the vineyard. He hid behind a row of vines so that no one would see him vomiting.”

  “He has seen a doctor?” Sackheim asked.

  It was an obvious question but one that, I guessed, masked his ignorance of what she was talking about. I wanted to interject that the vignerons used copper sulfate to prevent oidium, a fungus that appears on grape leaves, but decided to hold my tongue.

  “Yes, of course,” Eugénie went on. “But he only accused him of drinking too much, warned him that if he kept it up, he would develop cirrhosis. Well, maybe he will now. He’s so depressed. But he never drank more than a glass or two at dinner. Holidays, maybe, but no, he is not like most Frenchmen. My grandmother, though, my grandmother’s condition is worse.”

  “We saw her at your home, I think. She was watching TV.”

  “Hnh!” she snorted dismissively, a little explosion of air through her nose. “She always mixed the sulfate de cuivre. In the kitchen, like she was baking. At first she thought it was conjunctivitis. Her eyes would get irritated, the lids all swollen by harvest. By the time she was sixty, the tissue in her cornea was so ulcerous, it started to break down, like rotting grape skin. Now she sits there all day on the sofa staring at the television set. Did you see her eyes? No, of course not. They’re like . . . they’re like clouds. She sees nothing.”

  Neither Sackheim nor I said anything.

  “My mother has anemia,” Eugénie continued. “She took over when my grandmother couldn’t see. She’s wasting away. She eats like a sparrow. For a long time I thought it was from despair: a bad marriage, no grandchildren, no money. But I think it’s probably from the sulfatage, too.”

  The coffeemaker made a gurgling sound as it sucked the last of the water.

  “Mon Dieu, it’s a calamity.” Sackheim looked at me, raising an eyebrow.

  “Yes, my father is miserable, he’s crazy. He suffers from delusions. You know, he used to threaten to kill these wine critics. No, really, he did. His life was a mess. He had no one to blame but himself, but, of course, he couldn’t accept it. So he blamed the American wine writers. He would sit at the dinner table like a madman. ‘They infect each other, these Americans! They are like a blight, a scab on my feuilles de vigne, mon bon fruit!’ He saw what was happening to his mother and his brother, and he wanted to take revenge, but it was all in his mind. He was never capable of doing anything about it. He would talk about inviting one of them to the house to taste wine. As if anybody would ever come to Domaine Pitot! What a joke. He said he’d fix something with a strong flavor—a terrine de foies de volailles or pâté de campagne—that would hide the taste of copper sulfate. And then he’d offer the man a plate, une petite tranche, that the unsuspecting idiot would welcome after a long day of tasting, and . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  I saw again, in my mind’s eye, Françoise Pitot appearing at Domaine Gauffroy with her terrine. Goldoni had spat it out. Had she wanted to poison him? Had she wanted to poison me?

  “Ah. I am sorry to bring these memories back. Please forgive me,” Sackheim said. Eugénie placed her chin on her hand and seemed to carry the whole weight of the world there. “And you wished to escape this,” he said. “Is that why you left? Why you married an American?”

  “Would you have stayed?” Eugénie asked. “To listen to my father, drunk, complaining, blaming everybody but himself? To hear my mother screaming at him, angry that he had lost everything? Do you know what it was like? Night after night?” She was trembling.

  “No, my dear, I do not censure you. You have no fault. I understand completely.” His tone was patient. “And you met your husband?” he asked, to change the subject.

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “I was working at the public tasting in Beaune, pouring wine. He came to the table. And then he came back. And then . . .”

  “Vraiment. La famille en France, it is impossible to escape.”

  “Everyone knows everything about you. My father, my uncle, my grandfather.” She and Madame Carrière looked at each other, then she turned back to Sackheim. “Who was going to marry me in France? What kind of future do you think I had?”

  “No, you are right. You were right to leave. In America, anything is possible. And, of course, the taxes are less punishing,” he smiled, attempting a note of levity, but no one laughed. “I have one more question. I know this is difficult, but I am trying to understand. I want to understand your brother. May I continue?” She nodded, but her face was haggard, and suddenly I could see her mother in her exhausted features. “I am trying to understand Jean’s relationship with your husband, Madame,” he said, acknowledging Carrière’s wife, who stiffened visibly.

  Eugénie now seemed to take on her mother’s expression the day we had come to her door, suspicion and hostility twisting her eyes and mouth. I could see her tense in anticipation of Sackheim’s next barrage of questions.

  “I do not understand why Jean would choose to work here, rather than for his own father,” Sackheim said, looking from one woman to the other.

  “My father wouldn’t give him anything,” Eugénie said. “He made him pay. Rent. For everything! Vouz comprenez? He wanted him to pay for the barrels, for the vineyard, for his parking. To rent his own inheritance. He incorporated the domaine. Maybe, maybe by the time Jean died, he would have paid off the mortgage.” She stopped. “If he wasn’t already dead,” she added, her voice breaking.

  “It is insupportable, for a father,” Sackheim said, shaking his head. He looked at her, his gaze unwavering, and she returned the look, her eyes seething.

  Madame Carrière sighed, then stood up.

  “So he chose to work here, for his uncle,” she said, her hands gripping the back of the chair.

  Sackheim glanced at me with a look of suppressed confusion, as if I could answer the riddle.

  “I do not understand. Monsieur Carrière is your mother’s brother?” he said to Eugénie.

  “Her beau-frère,” she corrected him.

  “Françoise is my sister,” Madame Carrière said, placing the coffee pot and a tray of cups on the table.

  Sackheim sat there in silence, his eyes closed. I could see him trying to reconstruct Ponsard’s diagram in his mind, but his lieutenant had described only one-half of the family.

  “I apologize, Madame,” Sackheim said to Madame Carrière. “I am quite confused. Votre nom de jeune fille?”

  “Ginestet. Sylvie Ginestet.”

  She was standing at the kitchen counter, her back turned to us.

  “You think you understand now,” she said in a whisper. “But you understand nothing. Nothing at all.”

  She put a creamer and a bowl of sugar in the center of the table and poured us each a cup of coffee. “Comme vous voulez,” she said, sitting down. She added a cube of sugar and a little milk to her coffee and stirred, her teaspoon tinkling against the porcelain.

  “It was hard after the war,” she began. “No one had any money. You had to sell your wine to the négoce. My father was unhappy. No matter what he did, it was never enough. Once he even tried to get an American wine writer to come to our house to taste his wine. He was here for Les Trois Glorieuses. It was a long time ago—I don’t remember the year. But of course the man never came.” She paused and took a sip of coffee. “My father made good wine, nothing special. And the house was simple, not un grand domaine. Papa continued to make wine, but he never recovered. He would tell the story over and over again. He drove my mother, my sister, and me mad with his talk. Every night the same thing. He would complain, Maman would cry, we would run to our room.” She stared down at the table.

  “And then?” Sackheim asked.

  “Nothing. He drank himself to death,” Sylvie Carrière said. “Maman did not weep. In fact, it was almost a relief. She sold one small parcel to pay off the estate taxes. It was not much—we were not a wealthy family—and she took what was left and swore on his grave that neither of her daughters would marry a vigneron. But of course, what the parent wants,
the child refuses. I married Jean-Luc. He was handsome, and he was a hard worker. At least my mother told herself that he might succeed where her own husband had failed. Jean-Luc builds up our domaine slowly, buys more vineyards, each time elevating the property. He bought this house. But he is a cold man, and I was very unhappy.” For a moment she seemed overwhelmed by the memories, then went on. “Françoise married Henri. You know this. What you do not know is that my sister and I competed with each other,” she said, looking at her niece. “She envied me. I had the better property, the richer husband. There was only one problem.” She paused. “I could not have children. I was, how do you say, stérile.”

  Eugénie was staring at her, her eyes beginning to well up. “You do not have to . . .” she said.

  “No, I do, ma chérie. I have lived with this, this shame, long enough. I cannot hold it inside anymore. It is killing me.”

  A tense silence enveloped the kitchen. Eugénie looked out the window, the tears now streaming down her cheeks. “Don’t, please,” she whispered.

  “Françoise hated me and her husband. I do not know whom she hated more, me or him. She wanted her revenge.” Sylvie Carrière paused. “So she seduced my husband.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Eugénie protested. “Why are you telling them?”

  Sackheim folded his hands on the table. “Tell me,” he said. “I need to know. I want to know.” His tone was even, insistent.

  Sylvie Carrière sat mutely, staring into her coffee.

  “Yes,” Eugénie said dully. “Jean-Luc is Jean’s father. He fucked my mother.” She seemed to spit the words out. “Or she fucked him. She hated my father, she despised him. He disgusted her. So she fucked her brother-in-law and tortured my father. They fought. All the time. And she would scream at him, ‘What kind of a man are you? You can’t even give yourself a son! It took my brother-in-law to give you an heir!’”

  Eugénie buried her head in her arms, sobbing. Her aunt stared across the table, looking at nothing, her eyes blank, her expression lifeless. I turned to look out the window, embarrassed by what Sackheim had unknowingly brought me to witness. I could see nothing but the shadow of the house cast against the cliff face.