“Ouais, well, something like that,” she agreed with a shrug.
“But you’re going back to the bright lights soon. Paris in two days, isn’t it?”
“Of course, you heard that,” said Jeanne, momentarily disconcerted. She recovered quickly. “I mean, Henri is wonderful, but he acts different down here. In Paris he’s amusing, but around this place he creeps about as if he was a lackey or something. I know the family have been good to him, but—”
“They make him feel inferior? I’m sure they don’t mean to.”
“You would not know how to feel like that, would you?”
“I’m too stupid,” said the Saint disarmingly, “to be sensitive. But don’t you agree that it makes life more comfortable?”
Jeanne looked uncertain whether she was the butt of some subtle joke, but she did not let it bother her for long.
“I heard you were on your way to Paris when you got stuck here. If you ever make it, you must look me up. We could have some fun,” she added transparently.
Simon gave the idea a few seconds’ serious consideration.
“You know,” he said judiciously, “I do believe we could.”
He had been watching Henri out of the corner of his eye. The young lawyer had not taken his eyes off them. Finally unable to endure the scene any longer, he came over. He ignored the Saint and addressed his fiancée.
“I think we’d better circulate,” he said brusquely.
Jeanne contemplated him with distaste.
“Circulate? What do you think I am — some sort of blood corpuscle?” she jeered, and Henri’s cheeks turned a rich shade of crimson.
Without a word he turned and strode away towards the château. Jeanne smiled as she rested a hand on the Saint’s shoulder and moved closer.
“This is boring,” she said silkily. “Why don’t we go pick some grapes on our own?”
Simon felt a very natural temptation to do just that. Whether or not he would have succumbed to it was never to be known, for at that moment one of the workmen rushed from the building behind the Saint and almost bowled him over as he half ran, half staggered across the cobbles shouting for Yves.
“Excuse me,” said the Saint abruptly and went after him.
The man was in a state of shock. His words spilled out in an incoherent babble. He stood with one shaking arm pointing towards the building he had come from.
“Routine check... lifted lid... lying there... Gaston...”
Yves Florian was trying bewilderedly to make sense of the words but the Saint preferred action. He spun round and sprinted into the building, more than half dreading what he was going to see.
It was the place used for the first fermentation of the newly pressed wine. Inside were a dozen huge vats, each taller than a man and linked by a narrow catwalk reached by a flight of steps. The heavy lid had been dragged from one of the vats and stood propped against the side. The Saint raced up to the catwalk and made for the open tank. He peered over the rim and looked down into the thick red pulpy liquid. The sightless eyes of Gaston Pichot returned his stare.
4
The Saint turned, to find Philippe the first to arrive beside him, followed by three or four of the château workers, while the rest of the harvest party were crowding in on the floor below. Simon spoke to them all.
“C’est vrai,” he said. “Gaston est mort.”
At first, a numbness of shocked disbelief seemed to make them refuse to accept that such a thing could happen there. The silence was stifling in its intensity as the assemblage stood staring, unable to drive their minds past the news they had been given.
Simon looked down again at the limp figure that was half submerged in the blood-coloured wine. He had developed a genuine affection and respect for the old man, but there would be a time for sadness later, just as there would be a time for retribution. It was the unemotional practicalities that had to be dealt with now, and Philippe set the process in motion while Yves was still climbing up to the catwalk.
“Mimette, go with Jeanne to the château and telephone the gendarmerie. Someone give me a hand to get Gaston out.”
The sharp authority of his voice re-awakened the others as suddenly as if a switch had been thrown.
The two women hurried out together, relieved that they would not have to watch the grisly scene of the body being moved. Without bothering to remove his jacket, Philippe himself leaned into the vat and grabbed Gaston by the lapels of his coat. Simon gripped his ankles, and together they lifted him out and carried Mm down to the floor, where someone had spread a tarpaulin.
Philippe allowed no flicker of emotion to show on his face and betray his feelings. He gave the impression of knowing what had to be done and getting on with it however distasteful it might be. After putting Gaston down, he simply turned away in search of a rag to dry his hands.
The Saint was well aware of the dictum that nothing should be touched until the police have inspected the scene of the crime, but it was not for him to argue with Philippe’s orders. He was also aware that the local gendarme would be unlikely to have much experience in examining murder victims. Since the body had been moved anyway, he took the further liberty of feeling around its head and testing the stiffness of the joints, and understood what his fingers told him. He looked at the soles of the old man’s boots and at the dirt under his fingernails. At last he folded the ends of the tarpaulin over the body and straightened up.
“Pauvre Gaston!” Yves was muttering, literally wringing his hands. “How could it have happened? If he slipped and fell in—”
“He wouldn’t have drowned so peacefully,” said the Saint.
“Perhaps a heart attack?”
“Caused by a clout on the head,” Simon said grimly. “There’s a dent in his skull you could stick your thumb into.”
Yves’s face was white and his lips trembled as he gazed at the makeshift shroud.
“But who would do that?” he asked brokenly.
“We’ll find out,” said the Saint, injecting his voice with an assurance that made it a promise. “But there’s nothing more I can do here for the moment. Will you excuse me for a few minutes?”
Without waiting for formal permission, he eased his way out of the building through the throng of employees, who had now split into small groups and were chattering excitedly in hushed tones.
Heading back towards the château, he met Mimette returning towards the chai.
“Jeanne is waiting to meet the police,” she told him before he had time to ask.
“Good. I was scheming to get you away. Come with me.”
“Where to?”
“Gaston’s house.”
They took Mimette’s Renault. The Saint drove, throwing the car down the rutted track towards the foreman’s cottage as if he begrudged every second’s delay.
“Why Gaston’s?” shouted Mimette, trying to make her voice heard above the roar of the engine as she clung to the edge of the door to save being hurled clear as they bounced over the washboard road.
“Because that was where Gaston was probably murdered,” Simon answered.
“But it was some accident,” Mimette protested uncertainly.
The Saint shook his head. He pulled the car to a skidding stop outside the cottage and jumped out.
“He was dead long before he was dumped into the vat,” he said brutally. “Someone hit him very hard on the back of the head with what the police like to call a blunt instrument. It was meant to look like an accident, but very crudely done. I hate amateur murderers — they are an insult to the craft.”
The door was unlocked, and the Saint pushed it wide with his foot while holding Mimette back.