by Peter May
‘Then you were robbed.’
Enzo glared at him, inflamed by the knowledge that he was probably right. ‘It’s an important clue in trying to solve a man’s murder.’
‘This Jacques Gaillard thing?’
‘Yes. Only, I can’t figure out what it is.’
‘What’s to figure about a bottle of champagne?’
‘The vintage. It has to have been chosen for a reason.’
‘1990?’
‘Yes.’
Bertrand thought for a moment. ‘When, exactly, was Gaillard murdered?’
‘In 1996.’
The young man shrugged. ‘Well, there’s your connection.’
Enzo frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘The 1990 Dom Perignon wasn’t released until 1996.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Before I went to CREPS, I trained as a wine waiter for a year.’
‘And that makes you an expert?’
‘No. But I do know a bit about wine.’
Enzo’s frown deepened. ‘Next you’ll be telling me the significance of Dom Perignon.’
‘In relation to the murder of Jacques Gaillard, no.’ Bertrand was standing his ground defiantly. ‘But I do know that he was born Pierre something, sometime in the mid seventeenth century, and that he became a Benedictine monk before he was twenty. He was less than thirty when he was appointed cellar master at the Abbey of Hautvillers. I know that some people have credited him with inventing champagne, but actually sparkling wine was being produced a century earlier by monks in the south of France. I also know he was supposed to have been blind, allegedly heightening his sense of taste. But that’s another myth. The truth is, he was just a damned good winemaker. He introduced blending to the Champagne region, and was the first person to successfully contain local sparkling wine in reinforced glass bottles with Spanish corks.’
Enzo looked at him in amazement. Sophie shuffled into the hall from the bedroom, the sheet wrapped around her. ‘I didn’t know you knew all that stuff,’ she said.
‘I can show you his tomb, if you want.’
Enzo scowled. ‘How do you mean?’
‘On the internet. There’s a site where you can make a three hundred and sixty degrees tour of the church where he’s buried.’
Enzo had forgotten his anger. Through a fugg of drink and fatigue, a strange clarity was starting to emerge. ‘Okay, show me.’
The three of them trundled through to the séjour, and Bertrand seated himself at the computer. ‘I can’t remember the URL, but I’ll find it.’ He made a quick search. ‘Here we are.’ He clicked on a link and up came a site about Dom Perignon, with another link that took them to a pop-up photograph of his tomb — an engraved black slab set in a stone-flagged floor. Beneath it were arrows pointing up and down, right and left. By pointing the mouse at the arrows it was possible to make the image move. Bertrand panned up from the tomb to an altar behind a black-painted rail, and three stained-glass windows beyond that. It was possible to pan all the way up to the roof. By pointing at the left arrow, he swung them along a wood-panelled wall down the side of the church to rows of benches leading to the back. A massive, old-fashioned chandelier hung from the beams overhead. Bertrand kept the cursor over the left arrow, and they went through three hundred and sixty degrees, returning to the altar where they’d begun.
Enzo had never seen anything like it. Sunlight fell in through the stained glass and lay across the floor in geometric patterns. There was a sense of being there, of being able to look in any direction, to focus on anything you wanted. Enzo shook his head in awe. ‘That’s extraordinary. How do they do that?’
‘Six pictures taken with a very wide-angled lens, then somehow they get stitched together to give you the panorama,’ Bertrand said.
Sophie slipped her arm through her father’s, and snuggled up close to him. ‘Am I forgiven, Papa?’
But Enzo was distracted. ‘No,’ he growled. And to Bertrand, ‘What church is this?’
‘It’s the abbey at Hautvillers, just outside Épernay in the Champagne region.’
‘Hautvillers.’ When Bertrand had spoken of the abbey a few minutes earlier, it had lodged somewhere in the back of Enzo’s consciousness, ringing tiny alarm bells that he wasn’t hearing until now — the second mention of it.
‘It’s the home of Moët et Chandon,’ Bertrand added.
But Enzo was remembering something else. ‘Here, let me in.’ He moved Bertrand out of the chair and sat himself in front of the computer. He pulled down the History menu and began searching back through all the sites Nicole had visited earlier, stopping only when he found the link that took him back to the page on Hugues de Champagne. All the time he kept hearing Nicole’s voice. What a lot of Hugues there were in those days. He ran his eye down the page. ‘Putain con!’
‘Papa, what’s wrong?’
‘Nothing.’ Enzo was grinning stupidly. ‘Nothing at all.’ He jumped up and clambered over piles of books to the whiteboard, and then he turned, marker pen in hand, for all the world as if he were lecturing a class at Paul Sabatier. ‘Hugues de Champagne went back to Palestine in the year 1114 in the company of eight other knights. One of them was his vassal, Hugues de Payens, who went on to become the first Grand Master of the Knights Templar. Another was Geoffrey de St. Omer. But here’s the thing….’ Sophie and Bertrand had no idea what he was talking about. ‘There was another Hugues. Hugues d’Hautvillers.’ His face was shining. ‘Don’t you see?’ But they didn’t. He turned to the board and wrote up Hautvillers and drew a circle around it, and then arrows to it from almost everywhere else. ‘Everything leads to Hautvillers. The champagne, Dom Perignon, the crucifix and St. Hugues, the lapel pin and the Knights Templar. Everything.’ He frowned. ‘Except for the dog. But I’ll work that out when I get there.’
‘Where?’ Sophie asked. ‘When you get where?’
‘Hautvillers,’ Enzo said triumphantly. ‘First thing in the morning.’
Chapter Fourteen
I
White dust rose from the wheels of a tractor like smoke. Everything was white. The dust, the soil. Even the sky was bleached white by the afternoon sun. The chalk gave the grapes their distinctive dry flavour, and turned the rivers and lakes a strange, milky green.
The rolling hills that folded one over the other looked as if they had been combed. Enzo had never seen such fastidiously pruned vines. There was something almost manic in their neatness, endless unwavering lines of green and white stretching away into a hazy distance.
Neither had he seen so many castles, as he drove through the tiny stone villages nestling in the folds and valleys of the Aube.
Épernay was surrounded by twenty thousand hectares of vineyards. It was a classic eighteenth century French provincial town in the heart of champagne country, just a few miles south of the cathedral city of Reims. It was home to many of the most famous brands of champagne, household names in wealthy homes around the world. But in Épernay, everyone drank champagne, from the street cleaner to the lord of the manor. It had been said that drinking champagne in Épernay was like listening to Mozart in Salzburg.
Enzo had booked two rooms in the Hôtel de la Cloche in the Place Mendès-France. The last two rooms available. They had told him he was lucky to have got one room anywhere in town, never mind two. Raffin had called him on his cell phone earlier in the afternoon to confirm that he would be arriving at seven forty-five that night on the train from Paris. Enzo arrived shortly after five, and passed the time with a glass of wine on the terrasse looking out over a square dominated by the municipal theatre and a host of restaurants serving it. Trees grew in a small park in the centre of the square, and fountains played in the early evening sunlight. The station stood at the end of a short boulevard on the far side of the Place. Enzo resisted the temptation to make the ten-minute drive out to the tiny village of Hautvillers. He had promised Raffin that they would go together in the morning. But the waiting was almost more than he coul
d bear. One glass of wine became three, and he watched with impatience the slow progress of his watch towards eight.
At seven-thirty, he crossed the square and walked down to the station. Le Nivolet restaurant was doing brisk business. The station concourse was filled with people waiting for the Paris train. Enzo went out on to the platform, slipping between two Asian nuns in champagne white, to stand gazing out towards the distant vine-covered hills. There did not seem to be a single square meter that was not given over to the growing of grapes.
* * *
He saw the tall figure of Raffin, a head higher than most of the other passengers streaming on to the platform from the train. The collar of his neatly pressed white shirt was open at the neck and turned up, and his jacket was, as usual, slung carelessly across his shoulder. He carried a handmade leather overnight bag. No matter how hot it was, Raffin always looked cool and unruffled, as if he had just stepped from the dressing room immediately after a shower. At his shoulder, Enzo saw a flash of dark curls, and his stomach flipped over. Charlotte slipped out from Raffin’s wake and smiled when she saw Enzo waiting, eyes flashing darkly, full of fun and mischief. She wore pale pink tennis shoes and white cotton calf-length trousers. A man-sized denim shirt hung loosely from her shoulders. She had a canvas bag slung over one of them. She and Raffin made a handsome couple.
Raffin shook his hand warmly. ‘You’ve been busy.’
‘I have,’ Enzo acknowledged with a grin.
‘Hi,’ Charlotte said, and she reached up to kiss him on both cheeks.
He breathed in the familiar scent of her perfume and felt the first hint of desire stir in his loins. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘There was no keeping her away,’ Raffin said. ‘When I told her where I was going she cancelled all her appointments for today and tomorrow.’
She smiled up at Enzo. ‘I’m hooked. I want to know how the story ends.’
Enzo laughed. ‘So do I. But there may be a problem.’
‘What’s that?’
‘There are no hotel rooms left in town, and I’ve only booked two.’
Raffin said, ‘She can always share with me.’
And Enzo felt a sudden, unpleasant jolt of jealousy. They had been an item until recently. It was not an unreasonable suggestion. But he was relieved when Charlotte said, with a slight tone, ‘I doubt if there’ll be any need for that, Roger. There’s almost always a bed available somewhere, if you ask nicely.’
They ate on the terrasse at La Cloche, clouds of swallows dipping and diving across the square in the dying light, their chattering chorus taking over from the roar of traffic as the roads emptied and the restaurants filled. Charlotte pulled up a chair and joined them as the entrées were being served. She looked pleased with herself. ‘They gave me a single room up in the attic. It’s kept for staff who have to stay over. I told you there’s always a bed somewhere.’
Raffin seemed disappointed. He turned to Enzo. ‘So tell us why we’re here.’
Over the meal, Enzo took them step by step through his deconstruction of the clues found with Gaillard’s arms. ‘Everything leads to Hautvillers.’
‘Except for the dog clues,’ Charlotte corrected him.
‘I have to figure that’s something that’s going to become apparent. Like the scallop shell in the garden in Toulouse. I had no idea what we were looking for until we got there.’
They drank pink champagne with their meal and sat on the terrasse until almost midnight drinking Armagnac. At a quarter to, Charlotte stood up suddenly and announced that she was going to bed. Enzo and Raffin stayed on for one more drink. Raffin seemed pensive, almost distant. Finally, he turned to Enzo and asked, ‘Is there something going on between you and Charlotte?’
Enzo was surprised by his directness and by the hint of jealousy that was apparent in his tone. He had thought the relationship was over. ‘I wish. She’s a very attractive woman.’
‘She is,’ Raffin agreed. ‘But she’s been on her own too long. Do you know what I mean? She’s not easy to live with.’ And Enzo had the impression that without actually warning him off, Raffin was doing his best to put him off.
‘I’ve been on my own for twenty years.’ Enzo grinned. ‘I’d probably be impossible to live with.’
They climbed the stairs together and shook hands outside Raffin’s door, and Enzo carried on along the hall to his own room. Light from the floodlit Église Saint Pierre-Saint Paul, on the other side of the street, fell unevenly across the room, following the ruffled contours of the bed. As he closed the door, he became aware of her perfume hanging in the still, warm air, and as his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw her dark curls fanned out across the pillow. His mouth was so dry he could hardly speak. He said, in a whisper, ‘I thought you had a room in the attic.’
‘I lied.’ He could hear her grin.
‘How did you get into my room?’
‘I told them I was with you and they gave me the key to bring my bag up. I left the door on the latch when I took the key back.’
So she had been planning this from early evening. ‘That’s pretty devious of you.’
She sighed. ‘Are you coming to bed or not?’
He released his hair to tumble over his shoulders, and undressed in the light of the church. Butterflies hatched out and flew around inside him, before he slipped under the sheet and felt the warmth of her skin next to his. He turned his head and looked into her eyes, and her smile made him almost giddy. He could not remember wanting anyone so much in a very long time. She moved towards him and kissed him gently, and he felt her breath soft on his face and the sweet taste of champagne on her lips. This was nectar. He let himself go, drawn into all the folds and softnesses of her mouth and her body, his hardness pressing into her belly as she climbed on top of him and slid slowly down his chest and stomach with her lips and her tongue, until finally she found and swallowed him whole. He drew a sharp intake of breath and held on to each side of the headboard, hips lifting as she worked him into a state of complete helplessness. She was relentless and unforgiving, taking complete control and leaving him with none. Until years of frustration exploded inside, and she sucked him dry, leaving him limp and spent and regretting his selfishness.
‘What about…?’
‘Shhhhh.’ She put a finger over his lips, and slid up to pepper his chest with kisses. ‘It’s my gift to you.’
But he didn’t want it to be just about him. He wanted it to be about her, too. About them. He slipped out from beneath her and turned her over so that she was face up. She seemed so slight and fragile in his hands. He found her neck with his mouth and felt her shiver as he kissed her and dropped down to the rise of her full breasts. He heard her moan as he grazed her nipples with his lips and moved down again, across the soft swell of her belly. A fine fuzz of hair led down to a soft triangle of dark, damp growth, and he breathed in the musky smell of her sex. She gasped aloud as he found her with his tongue and worked it as relentlessly as she had hers with him. She arched and arched against him, until finally she shuddered and called out, and he felt both of her hands clutching his hair and holding him there between her legs.
Her pleasure had aroused him again, and before she had time to recover, he moved up to find her mouth with his and force her legs apart with his knees. Her fingers dug into his back, and then found his hair and pulled on it hard as he slipped inside her. Again she arched herself to meet his thrusting, frantic and fighting and pushing until they both arrived at a shuddering climax and collapsed, exhausted, and perspiring, and wrapped around each other in a tangle of sheets and pillow.
They lay for a long time, breathing hard, exchanging tiny kisses. There was nothing they could say that wouldn’t be an anticlimax. And as he slipped away into a languid, dreamy sleep, Enzo briefly and belatedly wondered if Raffin might have heard them through the wall.
II
Hautvillers nestled in a cleft of the hillside, surrounded by trees and looking out across endless miles of vineyar
ds. They passed the Moët et Chandon factory at the foot of the hill as they turned off the main road and drove through the early morning sunshine up towards the village.
Charlotte had been gone when Enzo wakened, leaving only her scent, and the impression in the pillow where her head had lain. He found evidence in the bathroom that she had taken a shower before she left. He could not believe that he had slept through it. When he got downstairs, he found Raffin and Charlotte having breakfast. She greeted him with a subdued bonjour and a perfunctory kiss on each cheek. There was not the slightest hint of acknowledgement in her eyes of what had passed between them the previous night. Raffin offered him a cursory handshake, and was reserved all through coffee and croissants. The three of them drove out to Hautvillers in silence.
The village was already filling with tourists, who were arriving by the coach load. Enzo found a parking place just off the Place de la République, and he and Raffin waited while Charlotte went into the tourist office. She emerged with a map and a handful of leaflets. Raffin took the map and led them along the Rue Henri Martin in the direction of the abbey. As they walked, Charlotte flicked through her leaflets. ‘You know, this place is pretty old. The village was founded in the year 658. It’s supposed to be the birthplace of champagne. It says here that the méthode champenoise was invented at the abbey of Hautvillers more than three hundred years ago by the Benedictine monk Dom Perignon.’
‘Actually,’ Enzo said, ‘they’d been making sparkling wine in the south of France for a hundred years before that.’
Raffin glanced at him curiously. ‘How do you know that?’
Enzo raised his shoulders casually. ‘I have a friend who knows these things,’ he said, and felt a twinge of shame. The thought that he had been premature in his judgment of Bertrand had haunted him through all the long drive north.
‘My God….’ Charlotte still had her nose buried in the leaflets. ‘Did you know that all the major champagne houses have their caves down in Épernay? Well, actually, down below Épernay. According to this, over the last three hundred years, they’ve dug a hundred and twenty kilometers of tunnels out of the chalk under the town, and there’s more than two hundred million bottles of champagne stored down there.’ She looked up, her eyes shining. ‘Two hundred million bottles!’
