“So you’re saying Alexandre met with Martine last night, as usual. They came down here, as usual, made love in his seedy little camp bed, as usual, where she lost an earring in the heat of their passion… then fired him?”
“No,” he said, leaning his hip against the chest of drawers. “That’s what the evidence is saying. Not me.”
Marie-Claude threw her hands in the air. “Luc Brosset, you are the most impossible man on God’s earth! If you suspected all along that this was a set-up, for heaven’s sake why didn’t you just come straight out with it and tell me you wanted my help?”
“That’s funny,” he said. “I thought that was exactly what I had done.”
Centuries had come and gone, but the method of distilling cognac hadn’t changed. The still itself, the alambic, was made of gleaming red copper and, with its swan neck, long pipes and balloon shape resembled more a giant oriental hookah than a boiler. For nearly four months of the year, once the grapes had been pressed and their precious juice extracted, these three pieces of apparatus would be working night and day to produce the first distillation, the brouillis, before undergoing its distinctive second boiling. Only after that could the “heads” and “tails” be separated from the clear “heart” of the spirit that would eventually mature into cognac.
During these four months, though, the cellar master would virtually live next to his alambic while, outside, the town would grow warm from so many boilers pumping round the clock, the air would become impregnated with the sweet smell of brandy, and the characteristic black on the buildings would deepen, a symbol of status and pride. Incredibly, a tenth of the cognac was lost to evaporation, a contribution known as the angels’ share. Marie-Claude wondered whether Madame Montaud would be able to distinguish her own cognac from where she sat on her cloud. And how silly to get misty-eyed over someone she hardly knew!
“The way she was killed,” Luc said, “hit on the back of the head with a marble bust of the founder that took pride of place next to the alambic, that suggests the crime wasn’t premeditated.”
Marie-Claude thought about the key in her pocket. The fact that Alexandre’s were the only fingerprints. The way nobody else here had access.
“It suggests an earring coming off when she fell,” he continued, “and the killer taking the opportunity to implicate someone else.”
She wondered what the gem-smith who made Madame Montaud’s jewellery would have to say about such odds.
“Or,” she said, “it’s a double-bluff designed to look that way.”
Luc spiked his hands through his hair. “You mean Baret planned it from the outset, then left clumsy clues that pointed directly to him, leading us to think they had been planted?”
“If it was a spur-of-the-moment act, why didn’t he plead crime passionel straight away? Cellar masters are respected all over France, Luc, and think about it. Sex, rejection, dismissal? Any one of these things are enough to make a man feel emasculated and strike out in the heat of anger, yet here we have three stacked on top of each other. Alexandre Baret could have thrown up his hands and admitted his crime, and even the worst advocate in the country would have had him walking away a free man.”
She stared up at the shining copper works and saw Madame Montaud holding up two evening dresses, the navy blue and the green. What discount will you give me, Madame Garreau, if I take both? I see. Well, thank you for your time, but I think I’ll drive into Angoulême and see – Why, yes, Madame Garreau. Ten percent would be perfectly acceptable. But shall we say twelve?
“Madame Montaud was elegant, successful, she drove a hard bargain, but by all accounts she was fair. While a man who blends cognac that not only his successor won’t see sold but his successor either, is a man who is patient, clever and selfless.”
Luc scratched his head. “Are you saying he did or he didn’t?”
Marie-Claude straightened her hat in the boiler’s reflection. “It’s late,” she said. “I have to get back to the shop.”
“Some joint,” she murmured as they snubbed the workforce’s entrance in favour of the broad sweep of the drive.
“Twelve bedrooms, five wings and ceilings so high you can house a giraffe in each room, should you so desire,” Luc said. “And to prove how handsomely this business pays, the house is surrounded by seventeen hectares of beautiful but totally unproductive parkland.”
“If you think I’d live there, you’re mistaken,” Marie-Claude said. “Look at the number of windows for a start. And the height of them! I’d spend all my day washing them.”
“You’d have people to do that for you.”
“I would not,” she protested.
What? Strangers trooping all over her house, snooping all over her business?
“Some people might envy the rich for their lifestyle,” she said firmly. “Not me. Madame Montaud may have been successful, but the poor woman was a martyr to the business, she barely took a day off, and look at that sister of hers. Dresses like Grace Kelly, but never gets a chance to breathe, much less be her own person. No privacy, not even a house to call her own, and when her husband leaves the shop, it stinks of stale wine and cigars for simply hours.”
“Oh? And what do I stink of?”
“Nutmeg and citron and cool, mountain forests,” she said, and his eyes weren’t just green, they crinkled at the corners and were flecked with red, grey and brown, and his mouth twisted sideways when he smiled. With his thick mop of dark hair and square practical hands, she was glad Luc would have no trouble finding a new wife once she’d gone.
“Hmm.”
He stuffed his square practical hands in his pockets and whistled Mambo Italiano under his breath as they sauntered past the bustling vineyards down the hill towards the river. Since the Domaine was only a fifteen-minute walk from the house, they hadn’t bothered with the car, and Marie-Claude was wrong about the cardigan. She hadn’t needed it at all.
“I don’t suppose this sudden obligation to duty has anything to do with the sister?” he asked after working his way through Three Coins in the Fountain, Smile and Hernando’s Hideaway.
“Madame Montaud wasn’t having an affair with her cellar master,” Marie-Claude said, wondering at what point her arm had become linked with his. “She ordered far too many evening gowns for an illicit liaison.”
More likely she was being courted discreetly, preferring to wait and see how things developed before going public with the relationship.
“Loose women aren’t taken seriously in business,” she pronounced. “But the sister, Madame Delaville, now that’s a different story.”
Husband reeking of stale booze and smoke, choosing all her clothes? She’d lost count of the number of times she’d seen him sitting in Madame Garreau’s plush armchair, squat and potbellied like a cocky little toad, while his wife paraded in unflattering suits with slow and mechanical precision.
“Natalie Delaville is a woman of loose moral standards?”
“Exactly the opposite,” Marie-Claude said, turning the key in the shop. “Her husband has the word bully all but etched on his forehead, but the more I think about it, the more I remember that her chin hasn’t drooped quite so much lately, there’s been colour in her pale cheeks, and miracle of miracles, Madame Delaville actually called in half a dozen times on her own over the past month. I want to look up what she – voilà!”
“Well?” Luc held out his hands in exasperation. “Are you going to tell me what the little mouse bought?”
“Certainly not.” Such matters were private! “But I can tell you that the dresses were feminine and flattering, and I can tell you whose account they were charged to, as well.” She shot her husband a sideways glance. “Alexandre Baret.”