Death in the Vines: A Verlaque and Bonnet Provençal Mystery

by M. L. Longworth

  “Ah, bon. Your wife is in denial, M. d’Arras?” Paulik noticed that Mme d’Arras was good at refusing things: cell phones, medical tests.

  “Yes, denial perhaps. But she had a lot on her plate too. At her last general checkup, our family practitioner noticed a lump in her throat, and she had it tested for thyroid cancer…punctured, I think they called it…at the hospital, but the results were uncertain. So, last week, we had an appointment with a specialist, who said that, since the puncture couldn’t tell us if the tumor was malignant or not, it would be necessary to have surgery. That was very upsetting news for Pauline. She hates hospitals. She’s never trusted doctors.”

  She hates hospitals too, noted Paulik silently. “It’s too early to send out a missing-persons alert, but if she hasn’t returned home by tomorrow morning, I promise you I will do so. Have you brought a recent photograph of your wife?”

  M. d’Arras pulled out a manila envelope from his briefcase. Paulik was impressed—most people forgot to bring a photograph of their loved one who had gone missing, out of sheer panic and stress. Paulik looked at the photograph and noted the unsmiling but distinguished Mme d’Arras. A lover, perhaps? She was undeniably a handsome woman—of a certain age, of course, but well preserved. She’d only been gone for the day, a few hours, really. Paulik was quite certain that M. d’Arras would receive a phone call or, unfortunately, a goodbye letter from his wife soon.

  Paulik put the photograph in a file and stood up, indicating that the interview was over. M. d’Arras looked crestfallen and was slow to get up. Paulik moved around the desk, put his hand on the old man’s shoulder, and asked, “You’ll call as soon as you hear any news regarding your wife?”

  “Of course,” M. d’Arras replied in a whisper.

  “Officer Flamant will see you out.” Paulik looked over at Flamant, who was working nearby, and signaled with his eyes and a quick jerk of the head toward M. d’Arras. Flamant jumped up and was at the old man’s side in seconds. He took the man by the arm and gently led him past the desks, toward the hallway.

  Commissioner Paulik walked past his own desk, heading for the back of the large office, where Mme Girard had a small office. “Is he in?” he asked her, gesturing toward a larger office with a closed black door.

  “Yes. I told him you wanted to speak to him,” Mme Girard replied. Paulik realized she looked like a younger version of Mme d’Arras—well coiffed, wearing discreet makeup and a designer suit with a short skirt. “Go on in,” she said, pointing to the door with her pencil.

  “Thanks.”

  Paulik knocked and opened the door. The judge was sitting at his desk, reading, and, seeing the commissioner, took off his reading glasses and stood up. They shook hands—although they had been working closely together for over a year, they did not exchange la bise. Between men, the quick peck on both cheeks was a greeting reserved for very close friends or male family members.

  “How are things?” Judge Verlaque asked. “I saw you with that old man…. I recognize him, but I can’t recall why.”

  “Ah, he lives just up the street; I vaguely recognized him too. Aix is funny that way, non? He came in to file a missing-persons report. His wife has been missing since sometime this morning.”

  Verlaque looked surprised. “This morning? She could be anywhere. She’s probably at Monoprix. Or getting her hair done.”

  “I know, but monsieur was so distraught. He’s afraid that she might have Alzheimer’s. I agree, she could be with a friend or a lover, but she may have wandered off somewhere and now can’t find her way back. My great-uncle Jean had that.”

  “What a waste of time,” mumbled Verlaque. “Is this what you wanted to see me about?” Only when these words had left the judge’s mouth did he realize he had perhaps been insensitive regarding the Uncle Jean in question.

  Paulik coughed. “No…” He hesitated before continuing. “You will, no doubt, think that this is just as much a waste of time, but right before M. d’Arras came in, I had a phone call from an untypically hysterical Hélène.”

  “Your wife? Is she all right? Your daughter, Léa?” Verlaque adored Hélène Paulik, a winemaker at a privately owned château north of Aix. Paulik’s ten-year-old daughter, Léa, sang at Aix’s music conservatory and was, from all reports, a whiz.

  “Yes, yes, they’re fine, thank you. It’s Domaine Beauclaire, where Hélène works. They’ve been robbed. I know that theft doesn’t fall under our jurisdiction, but I need to think out loud.”

  “Of course. What was stolen? Money?”

  “Worse. Wines. But old ones, way back to 1929.”

  Verlaque whistled and leaned back in his chair, rubbing his stomach. “What a shame. Do they know how much was stolen?”

  Paulik shook his head. “They’re doing an inventory right now, Hélène and her boss, Olivier Bonnard. Hélène could barely speak, she was so upset, but she said that Olivier hinted that he suspects his teenage son. Apparently, the kid has been hanging out with some local rich kids…. Well, that makes sense, because the Bonnards are rich too…. Anyway, these teens are into excessive parties with drugs, Champagne…la jeunesse dorée. There’s a nightclub where these golden kids go that costs forty euros just to get in.”

  “La Fantaisie,” Verlaque replied.

  “Yes, that’s it. Anyway, the poor guy is pained to think that his son may have sold the family wines off just to have money to go to these parties.”

  “Tell Bonnard not to jump to conclusions. It’s no secret that his domaine is the most prestigious winery in Aix. Some thieves do specialize in stealing wines. In fact”—Verlaque paused, putting his reading glasses back on and looking at his BlackBerry—“there’s an ex–wine thief who has turned over a new leaf and is now on the police payroll in Paris. I doubt that the theft team here in Aix knows about this guy. He works with Christie’s and Sotheby’s as well. Quite a character, I understand.” He looked at the screen on his phone, scrolling down until he came to what he was looking for. “Voilà. Here’s the name of the examining magistrate at Saint-Germain. Call him—he may be able to help Olivier Bonnard and get him in touch with the wine-theft expert.” Verlaque wrote down the name and a telephone number on a piece of paper and handed it to Paulik.

  “Thanks,” Paulik replied. “I’m going to call him right now—I hope he’s still in the office.”

  “Come to think of it, I have to go up to Paris tomorrow for family business,” Verlaque said. “Get me the name and address of the wine expert and I’ll try to pay him a visit. I’ve been intrigued by this guy for a long time.”

  “Will do,” Paulik said. “Thanks a million.”

  Verlaque took off his glasses and looked up at Paulik. “So what’s your opinion of this Mme d’Arras?”

  “Judging by her photo, I’d say she could very well be at the hairdresser’s. Hélène once had her hair tinted, on a whim, and it took four bloody hours. She was livid. Mme d’Arras could still be under one of those dome things,” Paulik said, gesturing a semicircle with his hands above his head.

  “I hope so,” Verlaque replied. He resisted the temptation to smile, for when his rugby-playing commissioner had put his hands over his head and made the sweeping circular motion, he had looked vaguely like a ballet dancer.

  Chapter Four

  Confessions of a Wine Thief

  Verlaque had mixed feelings about the neighborhood. He had grown up in the first arrondissement, at number 6 Place des Petits Pères, and liked it there: all of Paris was on foot, or at least the areas that he wanted to see. But it was a neighborhood for tourists, and lovers of beauty and grand monuments, and not a residential one. Good butchers and grocers were few and far between in la première. People who lived there ate out; or had the servants run around town buying groceries, as his parents had done. He stopped in the Place Vendôme, looked across the cobbled square at the Ritz, and smiled, thinking of a fellow cigar lover—Papa Hemingway—liberating the hotel’s bar in 1944.

  He continued up the Rue de
la Paix, crossing into the second arrondissement, and rang at number 15. After some time there came a sharp “Qui?” on the intercom, and Verlaque stated his name. When the door buzzed open, he entered the frescoed lobby. The judge began walking up the wide stone staircase, pausing at each floor to read the brass plaques beside the sets of carved wooden double doors. On the third floor he found it—M. Hippolyte Thébaud, Expert des Vins. He tapped lightly on the door, and it opened almost immediately. The sight that met his eyes made Verlaque incapable of speaking; the wine expert stepped aside so that the judge could enter. Hippolyte Thébaud was not the middle-aged wine-thief-cum-expert that Verlaque had been expecting. There were no tattoos, no signs of any time spent in prison. In his early thirties, Thébaud was impeccably dressed in a blue velvet jacket and white linen pants with bright-blue leather shoes. His shirt and tie both had blue and white stripes—thick horizontal stripes on the tie and thin vertical ones on the shirt. His hair was blond and wavy and piled artfully on top of his head; his nose was long and thin; his lips were full. Tall and slim, with the wide shoulders of someone who visited the gym regularly, Hippolyte Thébaud was, in a word, beautiful.

  They shook hands, and Thébaud motioned Verlaque through the entryway into a salon. Coffee was offered; when Verlaque nodded and mumbled yes, the young man gracefully left the room, almost pirouetting. Verlaque heard water being poured and then the espresso machine thumping into action. As Verlaque was led into the salon, he had been vaguely aware of a riot of bright colors, but now he was able to take some time to look around. The objects that filled the stately room had obviously been bought at different times and in very different places, but their arrangement was completely harmonious. A very long carved sofa covered in a bright-red silk looked Venetian to Verlaque. Beside it was a backless green velvet sofa, also with carved wooden arms and legs, and beside that a blue easy chair whose round frame was made of thin parallel stainless-steel rods that gave the base of the chair a birdcage effect. The chair, though obviously from the 1960s and probably American, stood up proudly against the two centuries-old European sofas. The tables were mostly glass-topped, each one with a different base; some of the table legs looked oddly like bronzed bones. Small sculptures were placed on every available surface, many of them protected—or highlighted—by glass bell jars. The rugs and wall hangings were also in bright colors, save for the curtains, which were white linen with a narrow band of black running along the edge. This was, Verlaque noted, the touch of calm that the room needed.

  Hippolyte Thébaud passed Verlaque a demitasse and sat down, crossing his long, elegant legs. Verlaque thanked him for the coffee and added, “Thank you for agreeing to see me on such short notice. As I told you on the phone, Domaine Beauclaire has been robbed, and you are a noted expert on wine theft in France.” Verlaque was guessing that compliments suited the young man.

  “Wine expert, period,” Thébaud replied.

  Verlaque raised his eyebrows in obvious disbelief. “Are you not a bit young to be a wine expert?”

  “I’m a fast learner,” Thébaud replied, smiling.

  Verlaque returned the smile and said, “Yes. I read in your file that your first arrest was at age nineteen. Stealing wine from the three-star restaurant where you were a waiter.”

  “I had just turned nineteen. At first I stole them to sell, seeing the ridiculous prices that people were willing to pay for them. I was naïve and didn’t know the joy behind a great wine. That sublime feeling that when you taste a Romanée-Conti, you’re tasting history and geography and geology in a bottle. That the chalkiness of the soil has as much to do with the taste of the wine as the vintner’s hand and head. That an unhappy vintner will make a closed wine, a wine difficult on the palate; and a vintner in love will make an open wine, one that changes as it rolls around in your mouth and then gets better as it slides down your throat.” M. Thébaud uncrossed his long, thin legs and laid his left hand on the arm of the sofa, signaling that he was finished speaking.

  Verlaque was impressed, almost unable to speak. He drew a breath and asked, “Where did you come across your appreciation for wines?” He had wanted to add “poetry” but now knew that the young man needed no extra compliments.

  “Ah. That’s the amazing part of the story. I learned all of this without having tasted the grand wines. In jail.”

  Verlaque raised an eyebrow. “In the jail’s library?” He was quite sure that wine tasting was not on the rehabilitation program, whereas creative writing and tennis perfection were.

  Thébaud nodded. “I read and read and read. When I had exhausted our library, I asked for books in English, teaching myself that language through the grape. I knew everything about Hungarian Tokays and Italian Super Tuscans without ever having tasted them. I knew how they were made, who made them, and what they should taste like. It drove me to get out of prison earlier, and it gave me strength to go on, despite the filth that went on in there.” M. Thébaud made a sour face and shook his head lightly back and forth, erasing the memories of jail.

  “And now you’re clean,” Verlaque half stated and half asked.

  The wine expert laughed. “Oh yes. No need to steal wines anymore; I can afford to buy them. When I got out of jail, I knew so much about wine that I was able to buy and sell legitimately and make profits. Because my English was so good, I advised foreign buyers, and because I learned wine before having tasted it, really tasted it, I had something unique to offer that no other expert had.”

  Verlaque tilted his head. “You had no biases?”

  “Exactly, my dear judge. You’re one of the few people ever to have understood that. I didn’t have a great love for one region over another. For me it was a numbers game, and one I was good at. Since then I’ve changed, naturally, and now have preferences. But back then I didn’t.”

  “Fascinating,” Verlaque said with complete sincerity. He loved stories like this one—where against all odds someone makes something out of his or her life—a story that he thought very un-French, given the French preferences for the right schools, the right accent, the good families. Hippolyte Thébaud was a wine expert who didn’t grow up in a Bordeaux wine family, didn’t attend the right schools, and certainly had no connections, having begun his career as a waiter. “You could write your memoirs,” Verlaque said.

  “Oh, but I have already!” Thébaud mused. “We’re just hunting around for a good title.”

  Verlaque wasted no time in answering: “Confessions of a Wine Thief.”

  Thébaud beamed. “Wonderful! That’s exactly why, when you walked through the door, I knew I had to tell you my story,” he said, drawing his legs up under him.

  Verlaque paused, unsure how to respond to the exaggerated compliment. Thébaud was a salesman, first and foremost, and wine expert and consultant to the police second. He decided to say nothing, and instead he plunged straight into Olivier Bonnard’s wine theft. He gave Thébaud the details and ended the story by saying, “We believe that the thief is someone who knows the family and the winery.”

  Thébaud sat back and put his hands behind his head. “Why so?”

  “Because the lock hadn’t been tampered with, and the key was found in its usual spot, beside the kitchen door.”

  “Classic!” Hippolyte Thébaud cried out. “Vintners are so imaginative! They hide the keys to their cellars—whether in Argentina, Alsace, or Adelaide—all in the same idiotic place. Any fool could have slipped in and made a copy. I’ve done it before, while pretending to check the electricity meter. Next!”

  “Okay. The thief didn’t take all of the premier crus; he or she took different wines, here and there, regardless of their age or quality.”

  Thébaud threw his hands in the air. “They’re stealing my moves! I did that once or twice, to make it look like an in-house job. The second time, I went back for more while the Bordeaux police were on the premises, busy interviewing family and staff. Ha!” He had such a look of divine pleasure on his face that Verlaque thought, very briefly,
that the handsome young man might be stealing again. Seeing the judge’s look, Thébaud said, “Don’t worry. I was telling the truth when I said that I don’t need to steal anymore.”

  “So what’s your opinion?” Verlaque asked.

  “They’ll be back for more,” Thébaud answered. “Would you like another coffee?”

  Verlaque, uncharacteristically, had decided to take the metro to the train station, knowing that over the lunch hour taxis would be few and far between. After sitting on a bench in the Tuileries for a few minutes, admiring the top-heavy, rounded women sculpted by Maillol, he got on the number-1 metro line. At the next stop, Musée du Louvre, the train sat in the station for four minutes before the doors finally closed and the train lurched forward. Verlaque breathed a sigh of relief, glancing at his watch, realizing that he had underestimated the time it took the number 1 to snake along downtown Paris, parallel to the Seine. At the next stop the train had been in the station for more than seven minutes when, finally, an announcement came over the PA that a passenger had met with “an accident” farther up the line and it would be some time before the train could leave. Passengers began mumbling about a suicide and then, slowly, began filing out of the carriage. Verlaque followed the crowd out of the station and up to the Rue de Rivoli, where he battled with others for a taxi, all of which were already occupied. Lunchtime in Paris…Verlaque cursed under his breath. He walked up to the next street—Rue Saint-Honoré—where traffic flowed in the direction of the Gare de Lyon, moving as quickly as he could, at the same time checking over his shoulder for a vacant cab. All were full. By the time he got to the next metro entrance, at the busy Châtelet, he looked at his watch, seeing that he had missed the twelve-forty-nine to Aix. He could risk taking the line 14 from Châtelet, which was automated, or keep walking. He kept walking, trying to admire Paris and be philosophical about the missed train. It had been a profitable day. He had gone over the family’s finances with his parents—a twice-yearly obligation—and obtained good information from Hippolyte Thébaud. Thébaud was the quintessential dandy—a word that had no translation into French, so the French had taken it on as one of their own. Verlaque couldn’t wait to tell Marine about the wine thief.