Death in the Vines: A Verlaque and Bonnet Provençal Mystery

by M. L. Longworth

  “I guess. Does someone live here?” Léa asked.

  “Not anymore,” Paulik said. “This belonged to an old man, but he just died. He had no family.” That was all that Paulik had been told.

  “G. Herblin,” Léa said. “It could be Georges, or Gilles, or Guy….”

  “That’s right,” Paulik replied. He felt his jacket pocket for the letter; it was to be read aloud on the front steps of the house. The house came into view, an old mas that had, years ago, been painted an earthy red that matched the soil.

  “Pretty!” Léa exclaimed. “Is someone here? There aren’t any cars, and the shutters are all closed. I like that they’re painted blue. Shutters should always be painted blue. Blue’s my favorite color….”

  “Léa, please,” Paulik said. “I don’t know what’s going on either. All I know is that we are to get out of the car and read a letter that I have in my pocket.”

  “Okay!” Hélène said. “Let’s go, troops!”

  They got out of the car, and Léa raced ahead to stand on the front doorstep. “You can see mountains in front of us!”

  “Mont Aurélien,” Paulik said.

  Léa ran to the back of the house and turned around to look behind her. “Mont Sainte-Victoire!”

  The Pauliks followed her and stared up at the mountain. “These vines are all AOC Sainte-Victoire,” Hélène said. “The vintners around here were just awarded their status not long ago. They’ve been trying for years.”

  “Is it that important?” Paulik asked.

  “Sure. It protects their vines, and how the wine is made around here, for one thing,” Hélène said. “So somebody can’t come in here and make a wine from Merlot grapes.”

  “Well, they can….”

  “Right,” Hélène said, “but they can’t call it AOC. The AOC status…”

  “You two!” Léa said. “Let’s go back by the front door and read the letter! That’s what we’re supposed to be doing! Hurry up!”

  Hélène and Bruno laughed. “We’re coming!”

  Dear Bruno, Hélène, and Léa,

  By the time you read this, I’ll be in Laguiole, having a multicourse dinner with Marine at Michel Bras. You must be wondering why you’re here. Léa, I’ll bet you especially have lots of questions.

  I’ll begin by apologizing for the shock. I didn’t know how else to go about telling you. It also happened much faster than I had predicted. The idea had been in my head for some time, but when word came about this place, I had to act quickly.

  What I would hate to do is insult you. Perhaps that’s why I’ve sneaked away this weekend. But I also wanted to give you time, as a family, to think about my proposition. This land, as you can see, contains ninety-five acres of AOC Sainte-Victoire grapes: Syrah, Cinsault, Mourvèdre, and Rolle. The vines are in a bit of disrepair; even I could see that. M. Herblin was ninety-six when he died at the end of August, and had no offspring save a great-nephew, who is selling the property. My good friend Jean-Marc is a lawyer in Aix and told me about the sale, and I jumped at the chance to buy the estate—beating out two foreign couples, you’ll be glad to know, Bruno, and one French company that sells soft drinks and is branching out.

  I think that by now I’ll be eating my gargouillou, and you’ll have guessed what I’m about to propose. Hélène, I’ve admired your wines for a long time, even before I moved to the south. I can still remember my first proper glass of Domaine Beauclaire’s Syrah, made by you; it was at L’Arpège in Paris, and I was dining with my grandparents. My grandfather, who was a die-hard Burgundy fan, read your name on the label and said, “This woman is someone to watch.” I’d like you to take over the winemaking operations here—I’ll leave you to think of a name for the domaine, since “G. Herblin” is somewhat lacking in pizzazz. You’ll have complete control, and I’ve made arrangements that you and Bruno will be part owners of the estate (we’ll talk about that on Monday). My only request is that I get as much wine as I want (Marine thinks that this is very unwise), and that your first bottling you call Cuvée Emmeline. The rest will be up to you.

  By the way, the house is charming outside, but the interior needs to be gutted.

  Yours affectionately,

  Antoine Verlaque

  Epilogue

  Natalie Chazeau was sure that another elderly woman, seated one row behind her in first class, had stared at her brooch and nodded and smiled. Mme Chazeau lifted her hand up to her jacket’s lapel and felt the silver brooch, embedded with two interlinked flags, one French, the other German. “The woman behind us knows my story,” she whispered to her son. “Perhaps she’s one of us. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

  Christophe Chazeau smiled and took his mother’s hand. “Perhaps, Mother. It’s also possible that she just liked the brooch.”

  Mme Chazeau shook her head back and forth. “Oh no, I don’t think so. We’re over two hundred thousand. And your generation, there are more than a million of you. Our story has been getting a lot of press, you know. Le Monde, Figaro, they’re all publishing stories on it. Even Paris Match. And there was a television documentary in July….”

  “It’s about time,” Christophe said, stretching his legs.

  “It takes time to heal.”

  Christophe looked at his mother in surprise. She had never spoken like that before. He was quite certain she had never in her whole life ever said the words “It takes time to heal.”

  Mme Chazeau took out of her jacket pocket a newspaper clipping that had been folded and refolded dozens of times, and began to read aloud to her son. “Listen, chéri, to what this journalist said of us: ‘There were so many cases that I realized I couldn’t write an article on these children; it would have to be a book.’”

  Christophe looked at his mother and saw the tears forming in the corners of her eyes. He smiled; he had never seen his mother so serene, so at peace.

  She read on: “‘They really do deserve special treatment after all they have suffered. It would be a last line drawn under the ‘century of iron and blood’ that was the 20th century.’ He’s right, isn’t he? I was the child of a French woman and a German man who loved each other. But they lived at a time of hatred, didn’t they?”

  Christophe nodded and asked the stewardess for a Bloody Mary, relieved to be able to have a drink.

  “I’ll just have sparkling water, dearie,” his mother told the stewardess. Christophe tried not to cringe; he hoped that his mother wouldn’t become Evangelical, or run off and become a missionary. He preferred his tough-as-nails mother.

  “You’ll be sure to thank those lawyer friends of yours for their help in finding my half-siblings,” she said. “I sent Maître Sauvat a bottle of Champagne, and the judge too.”

  “Jean-Marc and Antoine will be touched,” Christophe said. “They were only too happy to help.”

  “Do you think we’ll recognize each other right away?” Mme Chazeau asked her son.

  “I would think so,” he answered, realizing she was now talking about her newfound German siblings. “You’ve seen photographs of them, haven’t you?”

  “Yes. They both are tall, with black hair, just like me, although Franz’s is mostly white now.” Natalie Chazeau smiled as she sat back and closed her eyes, trying to imagine what their reunion would be like. “Chéri,” she said, leaning toward her son.

  “Oui, Maman?”

  “Do you think we’ll visit our father’s grave?”

  “Perhaps,” he said. “It’s in Bamberg, isn’t it?”

  “Oui. To think that he was shot just days before Germany surrendered, in May 1945.”

  Christophe said nothing. At any rate, even if he had survived the war, his mother never would have heard from her father during her childhood. Wolfgang Schmidt had led a double life: in peacetime he was an accountant and amateur bass player with a wife and two children, Franz and Ellen, in Bamberg; in wartime, a colonel in the German army with a lover—Francine Lignon, a history student at the Sorbonne.

  “My mothe
r wasn’t a collaborator,” Mme Chazeau went on. “That’s what they called them before they shaved their heads and paraded them through town: les collaboratrices horlizantales….”

  “Maman, please…” Christophe whispered, worried that passengers could overhear.

  “I’ll no longer be quiet!” she hissed, with the force in her voice that Christophe was used to.

  “At least Francine…Grandma…wasn’t paraded through the streets of Rognes,” Christophe whispered. “When she came back from Paris…”

  Mme Chazeau made the sign of the cross. “Yes, thank God for that. Her father had it quickly hushed up; he was a powerful man. It was only years later that it got around the village; we never knew how.” Christophe silently thanked his grandfather Frédéric Aubanel, the man who in 1943 quickly married Francine, for he had always loved her, and raised Natalie as his own.

  “Do you know, at school, in the playground, they used to call me sale boche?” his mother went on. “The funny thing was, I didn’t know what it meant. I thought it just meant ‘idiot’ or something, since I was always at the bottom of the class in math.” Christophe smiled, proud of his mother, the bottom of the class in math, she who had single-handedly created Aix’s largest and most prosperous real-estate agency. “But I knew I was an outcast,” she continued. “And Pauline made sure to make me feel that way….”

  “Maman, put it to rest,” Christophe pleaded. Besides, he was hoping to have a glance at a new car-magazine he had just purchased. “At least until the plane lands.”

  The drive from the Munich airport to Bamberg was easy and took only two hours. They drove past Nuremberg, and neither Chazeau said anything until Natalie whispered, “Nuremberg, where the trials were. That’s my history now.”

  Mme Chazeau helped navigate their rental car into Bamberg. She was good at it and prided herself on her navigational skill; since her husband’s early death, her son had always done the driving. “There’s an upper town and a lower one,” she said, looking at the map. “Separated by the River Regnitz.” She looked over at Christophe and smiled, secretly wishing that he’d find a wife, soon. “Slow down, here are some hotel signs.” She pointed to a brown street sign. “I see it! Turn right for the Hotel Messerschmitt. Lange Strasse.” They parked in a small lot reserved for guests and checked in. Before their meeting with Franz and Ellen, they had time to shower. When Christophe came out of his room, he found his mother anxiously standing by the front door, one foot already outside. “Can you see my pin?” she asked.

  “Yes, Maman. They’ll see it, and you, right away.” He held his arm out for his mother to take, and together they walked down the street and across an impossibly charming bridge that led to the upper town. They passed university students, locals of all ages on bicycles, and tourists pausing to read dinner menus.

  “It reminds me of Aix,” Christophe said.

  “Yes,” Natalie Chazeau said. “It looks to be a real town, with real services and businesses, not a Disneyfied one. Let’s hope Aix stays that way too.”

  “There’s a sign for the Domplatz,” Christophe said. “We’re meeting them where, exactly? The history museum?”

  “Yes,” Mme Chazeau replied, quickening her step. “The Ratsstube, it’s called. Franz referred to it as a Renaissance gem in his letter. He taught history at the university here in Bamberg.”

  Christophe patted his mother’s hand. “Yes, you told me.” More than once. “And he speaks French, right?”

  “Yes, perfectly, but Ellen only speaks German. What will I do?”

  “You’ll figure something out.”

  “And you won’t be bored this evening if we go off somewhere, to…talk…?”

  “No, don’t worry about me,” Christophe answered. “I’m going to go in search of that smoky beer they brew here. Rauchbier, I think it’s called.”

  They arrived at the Domplatz, a big sloping square that was lined with a striking variety of well-preserved buildings. It unfolded before them like a great pop-up book on European Renaissance architecture. The Ratsstube was on the southeast corner, easily spotted by its elegantly tapering gables and ornate bay windows that jutted out over the square. A tall, elderly man and an equally tall woman stood under the museum’s sign, their shoulders slightly touching. The man squinted in the late-afternoon sun. Ellen Hoffmann, née Schmidt, pointed to the Chazeau mother and son and said something to her brother. Eighty-year-old Franz Schmidt, still in shape thanks to a daily uphill bicycle ride, took off his hat and began to run across the square.