“Both of our properties touch yours,” Jean-Luc said to Laurent. “I am placed on the east, yes?” He positioned a chunk of bread next to Laurent’s wine glass to indicate where his house was located, and then moved the pâté below it. “And Eduard is just to the south, comme ça.”
“Neighbors,” Laurent said.
“Comme il faut,” Danielle said, then smiled at Maggie. “My English is not being too good.”
“That’s okay,” Maggie said. “My French sucks.” Danielle showed no sign of understanding the idiom. “At any rate, can you tell me about the house? Can we live in it or is it falling down?”
“Live in it?” Jean-Luc looked questioningly at Laurent. “The agent said you were interested in selling Domaine St-Buvard.”
“I totally the love name.” Maggie grinned and looked at Laurent. “I’ve got to get stationery printed up. Seriously.”
“We are interested in selling it,” Laurent said, refilling his wine glass again. “Probably. Just not immediately.”
“Ah,” Eduard said and glanced briefly at Jean-Luc. “Well, you will be anxious to see it, I’m sure. And yes, Madame―”
“Maggie,” Maggie said happily, deciding she quite liked this old gentleman winemaker and his wife. “Vous m’appelez ‘Maggie.’” She was sure she got that totally wrong but the second glass of wine made her care a lot less.
“Bon, Maggie. The house is not falling down.” Eduard said. “It is not a château, vous savez? But it is a good house. Don’t you agree, chérie?” He turned to his wife, who nodded vigorously at Maggie.
“We would love to accompany you on your visit,” he added, “bien sûr, but Danielle and I have business in Aix this afternoon. Tant pis.” He shrugged, then reached over and took the last roasted pheasant.
3
The house was a good house.
Maggie gaped at it from the front drive while Laurent and Jean-Luc toured the vineyard. A large stone terrace splayed out from the front door in three tiers to the curving gravel drive. Oleander and ivy clustered against the fieldstone walls of the farmhouse in thick tangles of dark green. A black wrought-iron railing framed a second-story balcony that jutted out over the front door. The three bedroom windows upstairs were tall and mullioned with bright blue shutters.
The house looked sturdy. Towering Italian cypress and Tatarian dogwood flanked the front door. Hollyhocks pushed out of the tangle of bushes lining the driveway. A stone lion stood guard at the edge of the terrace, his head bowed, one ear mauled.
Maggie placed her paper cup of coffee on the hood of the Citroen. Laurent had been so eager to see his vineyard, she thought with amazement, that he hadn’t even stopped to look at where we would be living. She pushed open the heavy, wooden door of the house and stepped into a large foyer flooded with light on a floor of pale, yellowing stone tiles. A large marble staircase emptied into the foyer.
She walked to the staircase and touched the steps gently.
Marble steps? Mother will flip.
The downstairs comprised only two rooms. The living room covered almost the entire ground level. It was forty feet square anchored by a massive fireplace on one wall, and French doors on the opposite wall that led to the garden. The other room downstairs was the kitchen. Not terribly modern, Maggie noted, when she found no dishwasher or disposal, but the sink didn’t appear as if it had seen any world wars and the cooking stove was large and capable-looking. Leave it to the French, she thought, to have a stove as large as a minibus but no automatic dishwasher.
Behind what Maggie initially thought was the door of a broom closet was a steep staircase that led to the basement, or cave, as Jean-Luc called it. Maggie peered down the stairs into the dark and could make out three odd-shaped pieces of machinery. They stood in the corners like hulking spaceships. Old, stained oaken barrels lined the cave’s limestone walls. Each of the three bedrooms upstairs was large, airy and, of course, had no closets. As she stood at one of the upstairs windows, Maggie watched Laurent and Jean-Luc walk through the vineyard back toward the house. As far as she could see, there were grapevines. Row upon row of grapevines.
My God, is all this Laurent’s?
She stood at the window and hugged her arms, enjoying the coolness in the air as the afternoon sun dipped behind a cloud. She watched Laurent as he walked, turned, pointed something out to Jean-Luc then shook his head. She tried to imagine what it felt like to be a visitor in your own country, to see it in all its beauty and familiarity and to know that you would leave it to go home to someone else’s country when your visit was done. She knew that Jean-Luc and the Marceaus thought of them as visitors, foreigners―Laurent, for all his native fluency, included.
She turned and scanned the horizon. It was studded with faded clumps of rusty brown that she knew were more grapevines. She wondered whose fields those were. Maggie found herself feeling that this was going to be a good home for her and Laurent. For this year, she thought resolutely to herself, Domaine St-Buvard is going to be ours. But as she watched Jean-Luc walking shoulder to shoulder with Laurent she felt a vague cloud of doubt descend upon her.
Chapter Two
1
“Vous êtes Madame Dernier, n’est-ce pas? ”
The rotund woman beamed at Maggie as she scooped up the row of flaky croissants and placed them in a paper bag. Her hair fell in old-fashioned curls around her sweet, chubby face.
“Oui,” Maggie said, returning the smile. Well, close enough anyway. Her French certainly wasn’t up to explaining her living situation with Laurent. Besides, this was France. It was probably all the same to them anyway.
“Mais vous m’appellez Maggie, s’il vous plait,” Maggie said, taking the bag of rolls. Please call me Maggie. “Et vous êtes...? ”
“Madame Renoir.” The pudgy baker rubbed her flour-whitened hands together and gestured to her surroundings. “La boulangerie! ” she said with a big smile.
Maggie and Laurent had been in their farmhouse for two days, and what few contacts they had made in the village― the post office, the owners of the café, the gas station attendant―seemed to be pleasant enough.
Maggie was aware of stares from the two other customers in the bakery who were not so much waiting their turns as eavesdropping on her conversation with Madame Renoir. She smiled at them and dug in her purse for the francs for the croissants.
“Je ne parle pas bien votre langue,” she said to Madame Renoir. I don’t speak your language. “Mais je suis...working on it.” She shrugged and handed over the correct change to the plump baker.
One of the women behind her spoke up briskly in English: “You will learn.” She smiled at Maggie and then added, “If you stay.”
Maggie nodded to the woman―an elderly, rake-thin Frenchwoman with high cheekbones and an imperious tilt to her chin. Her harsh appearance seemed in conflict with her friendly manner, Maggie thought. The smile, though short, seemed genuine.
“I hope so, Madame,” Maggie said.
Indignant at being one-upped by her English-speaking countrywoman, Madame Renoir refused Maggie’s money.
“Bienvenue,” she said. “You are understanding? Welcome to St-Buvard.”
Maggie was surprised. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you very much.”
Behind the sturdy proprietress, Maggie caught a glimpse of a teenage girl with a sullen face. The baker’s daughter, she wondered? The girl, fair-haired and delicately pretty, manned her broom behind the counter as if she were being paid by the square inch swept.
The thin French woman beckoned Maggie aside, much to the annoyance of Madame Renoir who was forced to wait on the next customer. Her sharp little eyes gathered in Maggie’s sweat pants and Nikes but no disapproval showed on her face.
“I am Madame Dulcie,” she said. “The charcuterie, yes?” She pointed toward the window.
“Oh, you run the butcher shop?” Maggie clutched her bag of breakfast and wondered if Laurent had been shanghaied at the café where he was supposed to be orderi
ng two large coffees to go.
“Monsieur Dulcie et moi,” the woman said, still obviously inspecting Maggie’s attire. “You are liking St-Buvard?”
Maggie nodded vigorously. “Oh, yes. Very much. We love it. We’re staying on a vineyard nearby.”
“You are picking the fields, yes?”
“Picking the fields?”
“The grapes, Madame.” Madame Dulcie spoke slowly, as if talking to a child. “You are picking the grapes? It is time, is it not?”
“I...I really don’t know,” Maggie said. “I don’t think we’re picking it ourselves, no.”
“It is harvest time in St-Buvard, Madame.”
“Well, I’m sure...if that’s what people do...” Maggie smiled nervously at the gathering customers in the store, hoping that none of them understood English. “...we’ll do something similar. In fact,” she brightened as she edged toward the door. “I believe my husband…” It was getting easier and easier to call him that “…will probably take the advice of Monsieur Alexandre on this matter.”
“Jean-Luc?” Madame Dulcie frowned. “Where did you say you were staying?”
At this point, Madame Renoir spoke sharply to Madame Dulcie. Madame Dulcie responded just as sharply. Maggie picked out a few “stupide’s” and one “idiot” and decided the two ladies were in disagreement about something. She was afraid that “something” was her.
“Well, I really must be heading off,” Maggie said, smiling too broadly at the entire store.
Madame Dulcie quickly turned back to Maggie.
“Madame Renoir believes, stupidly, that you are guests of Monsieur Alexandre’s. Is this true?”
Maggie looked at Madame Renoir who looked, it seemed to her, hopefully back at her.
“Well, no,” she said. “We...my husband, that is, inherited some property...”
“You are not visiting?” Madame Dulcie thumped her purchases down on the counter and turned to translate Maggie’s words to the assembled crowd of women.
“Well, yes, we are visiting,” Maggie said. “We are here temporarily. Visiting. Absolutely.”
“Where are you staying, Madame?” Madame Dulcie folded her arms across her chest and looked at Maggie with tolerance and kindness.
“Well, we live at Domaine St-Buvard,” Maggie said, now thoroughly irritated with Laurent that she had to go through this alone. “So I guess we’ll harvest the grapes like they’ve always...you know...I mean, whatever’s planted...we’ll pick it.”
Maggie turned to Madame Renoir who stood staring at her with her mouth open.
“It’s red grapes, right?” Maggie said. “I don’t think we have any white grapes.”
When Maggie turned back to Madame Dulcie and the crowd of women, the store was empty.
Gathering her bag of croissants, Maggie hurried out the door, and to the car parked down the street. Laurent lounged inside reading Le Provençal. She tossed the croissants onto his lap and climbed in the car.
“Why didn’t you find me in the boulangerie?” she demanded. “I was trapped by women wanting to know when we’re picking our damn grapes.” Maggie reached again for the nonexistent seat belt before remembering there wasn’t one. “They wanted to know if we were going to pick them ourselves. Can you imagine? And then they all just left. The French are so weird. No offense.”
Laurent didn’t respond but folded up his newspaper. He handed Maggie a large cup of coffee from the dashboard and started the car.
“We are going to have to do something,” he said as he pulled out onto the main street. “The grapes are ready now, Jean-Luc says.”
“Does Jean-Luc say how we are to get the grapes from where they are now―hundreds of zillions of teensy little grapes spread over forty hectares―into nice shiny bottles sitting in a French version of the A&P? Laurent, I am not picking the grapes.”
“Pshtt!” Laurent rolled his eyes.
“Is that ‘pshtt’ as in ‘of course not’, or ‘pshtt’ as in ‘you are so lazy, Maggeee?’“
Laurent cocked his head at her and gave her a dry look but a smile tugged at his lips.
“Eyes on the road, please,” she said, relieved that he didn’t seem to be asking her to tie a bandanna around her head and strap a basket to her back.
“I spoke with some men in the café.” Laurent accelerated once they were out of the village. “They will spread word that Domaine St-Buvard needs pickers.”
“Are you making friends as easily as I seem to be?”
“The French are not like you Americans,” he said.
“Yeah, yeah, I know. The French are different.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “Will these pickers be expensive?”
“Maggie, the grapes cannot stay on the vine!”
“That means yes.”
He banged his hands against the steering wheel. “It must mean what it means,” he said.
She took a sip of coffee. It was rich and sweet, too strong, as always, but it tasted just right this morning. The expense didn’t matter, she told herself. The money they got for the wine would pay off the peasants―or who ever it was that came out and picked the grapes―and there would still be enough left over for them to live on for the year. And if not, they had a little sum they’d brought with them. Plus, there was no rent to pay and, with the exception of food (which, admittedly, could run to gastronomical expenses) there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of things upon which to spend money in St-Buvard.
As they approached their property, Maggie watched as a murder of crows flew in lazy arcs in the air over the fields and dive-bombed the grapes.
2
Connor MacKenzie turned over in the large feather bed and pulled the less-than-clean sheet across his thighs. He glanced at the woman asleep beside him and felt a vague sadness descend upon him. He shook his head―like one of his father’s retrievers emerging from the lake back home―to send the feeling scurrying.
Morning had been and gone, he realized, as he climbed out of bed and pulled on his jeans. When was the last time these were washed? He looked in the chipped mirror of the hotel room and cupped a palm to his unshaven face. Whatever look he was trying to achieve, this wasn’t it, he thought with a rueful grin. But shaving probably wouldn’t make it any better.
“Connor? Où vas tu, chéri?” The girl in bed moved, then sat up, a disheveled, lovely apparition of curly brown hair and big, pouty lips.
“Nowhere, ma petite,” he said, still staring at his own reflection. “I have an idea for dinner tonight, though.” He turned from the mirror and pulled on a navy blue cotton Polo shirt. “Those people we met a few nights ago in Aix?Remember? When you did your graceful splat-fall at Les Deux Garçons?”
“We didn’t go to Les Deux that night.”
“Well, wherever it―”
“Le Mien.” The girl yawned dramatically and rubbed her eyes. “We ate at Le Mien. That’s where―”
“Right, anyway,” Connor scooped up his sneakers and his car keys and stood next to the bed. “I thought we’d hook up with them again.”
The girl was wide awake now. “Why?” she asked.
“Why? They’re American, that’s why.” He pulled on his shoes and then stood. “And I’m homesick.”
“C’est une connerie,” she said, not moving out of bed.
“Such lovely language so early in the morning.” He poised at the door, his hand on the handle. “At any rate, I’m going to ask them. Maybe Grace and Windsor too. Haven’t seen them in weeks now. Do you want to come or not?”
“I am busy.”
“I’d like it if you came, Lydie,” he said.
“No, thank you.” The girl turned and threw herself back into her pillow.
Connor sighed and rubbed his head. God, his father would shit if he could see him now. In this broken-down hovel of a hotel―pinball machines and a blaring TV set into the lobby―and this saucy, stupid piece in his bed. Connor smiled to himself. But, then again, he thought, that’s probably the point, isn’t it?
“Lydie,” he said. “Please come, chérie. It’ll be fun. I promise.” He leaned over the bed and kissed her gently on the back of the neck. She turned slowly and looked up at him. Without smiling, she snaked a slim white arm around his neck and pulled him down to her.
“Too many people,” she said petulantly. “There are always too many people around you.”
He kissed her and laughed.
3
A motley assortment of twenty solemn peasants stood grimly at her front door, shifting from foot to foot, flicking the butts of numerous Gitanes into her would-be flower beds, and rearranging their big, baggy trousers. A young hatchet-faced man glowered at the stone façade of the farmhouse as if he had a personal vendetta to settle with the structure. He smoked angrily, it seemed to Maggie, one cigarette after another. He lifted and jerked the cigarettes to and from his face in abrupt, staccato movements. His hair was blue-black and fell to his collar.
Maggie sat on a packing crate, mindful of splinters, and watched the men through the panes of the large mullioned window of her living room. On the small terrace off the French doors that faced the fields, she listened to Laurent and Eduard Marceau speaking in thick, gurgling French. She felt a special prick of pleasure when she listened to Laurent speak French. That he could speak this magical, difficult language, when it was so much gobbledy-gook to her, increased, tenfold, his mystery quota with her. She listened to his erupting Gallic exclamations that sounded as if Marceau had just insulted his mother but she knew could mean anything from “what a good idea” to “you have asparagus on your tooth.” Funny, she thought, Laurent never made those odd, guttural noises when he spoke English.
A half an hour later, the negotiations were completed. Both men entered the house looking pleased with themselves. Maggie tried to remember the last time she had seen Laurent so animated. She had to admit, he seemed happy here.
“All settled?” she asked brightly as she watched Laurent pour two glasses of marc, the heady local liqueur, for himself and Marceau. He knew better than to offer her one. The stuff gave her a violent headache that all the powers of aspirin and codeine could do nothing to abate.
The Complete Maggie Newberry Provençal Mysteries 1-4 Page 33