“It was so obvious, you searched his house?”
“Not exactly.” He leaned his weight against the back of the chair and folded his arms over his chest. “But because her body was found in the cellars, I conducted a thorough search of the entire factory, including the distillery, which happens to have a small room sectioned off that serves as the cellar master’s bedroom.”
“Only from November until March, when distillation takes place around the clock and he needs to be on hand night and day.”
“Suzette?”
“Suzette.”
“Hmm.” He scratched his chin. “Well, if you know so much about the cognac process and you don’t believe my suspect is the killer, why don’t you go up there and tell me who is?”
Marie-Claude jumped down from the table. “I’ll need a cardigan.”
“What about the shop?” he called up the stairs, and look! it proved the acoustics in this house were rubbish. It sounded for all the world as though he was laughing.
“What about the shop?” she called back, reaching for her green hat with the feathers. “They’re rich, these women. They can afford to wait a while longer.”
Poor Madame Montaud could not.
The Domaine de Montaud lay on the north side of Cognac, protected by woodlands and snug inside a bend in the river. For almost two thousand years, its sun-kissed slopes had gazed over the valley of the Charente and the hills that unfolded beyond, but the acidic soil and low alcohol content played havoc with the wine’s conservation and so, in the seventeenth century, foreign merchants hit upon the idea of importing it in spirit form and diluting it on arrival. Because of the double distillation process involved, the Dutch named this spirit brandwijn - burnt wine – which had the added advantage of being cheaper to ship. But no matter how economical the costs of transport, when recession hits, luxury goods are the first to suffer. Huge stocks of brandy piled up in the cellars. Things were not looking good.
Until local producers noticed that their spirit not only improved with age, it tasted even better drunk neat…
But as cognac was born, so evolved a world of secrets and magic. In each dark saturated cellar, the cellar master became sorcerer, blending smooth with mellow, amber with gold, elegance with subtlety, to produce a unique and individual range of cognacs, from the youngest, at under five years, to prestigious reserves that had been maturing in oak casks for decades.
Marie-Claude had imagined such sorcerers to be sober, unsmiling, aloof and dull. Undertakers in different suits. If they were, Alexandre Baret broke the mould.
“Enchanté, madame.”
Any other time and the eyes behind the spectacles would be twinkling flirtatiously. The crows’ feet either side said so. But today they only viewed the inspector’s assistant with mistrust, and were clouded with something else, too. Guilt? Grief? Fear? Marie-Claude couldn’t say but, following him through the shadowy barrel-lined chambers, their walls black from evaporation, she felt prickles rise on her scalp. With its rigorously controlled temperature, light rationed to brief and rare visits, the okay tang to the air, it was like walking through a cathedral. That same air of reverence. Humility. Silence. Tranquillity. The taking of life here seemed sacrilegious.
“I have informed the workforce that this area is out of bounds until further notice,” Monsieur Baret said, studiously avoiding the outline of a body chalked on the flagstone floor. “But in any case, only a handful of employees have access, and I assure you it is quite impossible to enter without the necessary keys. Indeed,” he added dryly, “one would stand a better chance breaking into the Banque de France.”
“You don’t think this could be a robbery turned sour, then?” Marie-Claude’s voice echoed softly. “After all, there are hundreds of migrants in the vineyards right now, breaking their backs to bring in the harvest.”
Alexandre Baret watched dust motes dance in the air over the spot where every trace of his employer’s blood had been scrubbed clean. “No, madame, I do not think that.”
“You’re not exactly helping your case,” she said, and behind her heard Luc grind his teeth.
“Why?” The cellar master swung round sharply to face him. “Am I under suspicion, inspector?”
Marie-Claude was acutely conscious that her husband didn’t look at her when he replied. “Madame Montaud was found with just one emerald cluster in her left ear,” he said mildly. “An identical cluster was found in your bed next to the still.”
Monsieur Baret said nothing, but his eyes flickered, she noticed, as he opened the door from the cellars. Perhaps it was nothing more than passing from darkness into the light.
“I cannot explain that,” he said at length. “But if you are suggesting-” he indicated the cramped sleeping quarters partitioned off with nothing more than wood and glass “-I’m sorry, inspector, you are mistaken.”
Marie-Claude opened the door and peered in. There was just about enough room for the bed and a small chest of drawers. The blankets did not look very clean.
“The night watchman confirms that you have been leaving very late. Past midnight on several occasions.”
“I did not conduct an affair down here with Madame Montaud,” Baret insisted, “that’s simply too sordid to contemplate, I am a married man. And the notion that I killed her – pff! What possible motive would I have?”
Luc drew a carbon copy from his breast pocket. Reading upside down, Marie-Claude saw that the letter bore yesterday’s date, was addressed to the cellar master and had been typewritten.
“This was on top of the paperwork in Madame Montaud’s desk,” Luc said. “The desk, incidentally, that we were only able to open with the key that was found in her pocket.”
Baret took the proffered letter and, as he read, the colour drained from his face. His jaw tightened. “I-I have never seen this before.”
Marie-Claude didn’t get the chance to read every last word before it disappeared back inside Luc’s pocket, but the gist was enough. In the most civil of terms, Martine Montaud was dismissing her cellar master.
“Is it, do you think, too sordid to contemplate?” Luc asked, once they were alone in the distillery. “Tall, fifty, and with that thick thatch of dark hair, it seems perfectly reasonable to me that the earring of the widowed and lonely Martine would end up in his bed.”
“Not this bed,” Marie-Claude said, sending clouds of dust into the air as she tried to pull the curtains and found the hooks had rusted solid.
“Wouldn’t the risk of discovery have been the spice, though? Two educated, articulate, respected people fired by the danger of being caught in the act?”
“If there’s any danger, it comes from fleas, not ruined reputations,” she said, prodding the unsheeted mattress. “And anyway, who said she was lonely?”
When Madame Montaud tried on clothes in the shop, those were not sensible foundations garments she’d been wearing underneath!
“Who else has a key to the distillery and cellars?” she asked.
“No one who doesn’t have a cast iron alibi.”
“While Monsieur Baret…?”
“Claims he went for a walk, and if you believe that, you believe anything.” Luc ran his hand over the ticking on the bolster. “You know, Marie-Claude, just because they’re both polite, refined individuals, it doesn’t mean they don’t enjoy the occasional foray into degeneracy.”
She considered the new baby doll pyjamas that were all the rage at the moment. Both she and Luc agreed that these were the most depraved and decadent garments that had ever been invented, and indeed they’d considered them so depraved and decadent that they ripped them off no less than three times last Saturday night.