J-J advanced upon her, taking one arm firmly and opening the handcuffs. “Do you have anything to say?”
She looked helplessly at Bruno. “Answer the question,” he told her. “Do you have anything to say?”
“I don’t know,” she said hesitantly, her eyes fixed on J-J’s handcuffs.
“Well, let’s start where you lied the last time I asked you about this,” Bruno suggested. “You told me you spent one drunken night with Bondino in your hotel room. That wasn’t true. You entertained him in your hotel room at least three nights, the concierge tells me. And yet this was your cousin, from the other side of a bitter family feud. You seduced him and got him drunk so that you could get into his computer as he slept it off.”
Jacqueline closed her eyes and shook her head but kept silent.
“We can prove that, from your own computer files, and from the printouts we found in your files of confidential documents from the Bondino group. That’s commercial espionage,” Bruno said. “But let’s go on to your next lie. You said you left the bar with Max after the fight with Bondino and went to make love in the park by the river and then he left you to go and tread the grapes by himself. That wasn’t true, was it?”
“No.” She shook her head. “I went with him and we trod the grapes together.”
“Was that where you made love, at Cresseil’s place?”
She nodded, biting her lip.
“Did you go into the house, to the bedroom upstairs?”
“No,” she said quietly. “The old man was a light sleeper. And the dog …”
“In the open air, then? Were you telling the truth about that?”
“Yes. I mean, no,” she said urgently, her eyes very wide, a trace of panic in her voice. “We were in the vat, while we were treading the grapes. We made love in the vat.”
“So what happened?” Bruno asked quietly. “Why did Max suffocate but not you?”
“We were kissing …,” she began. She stopped and closed her eyes. Bruno and J-J just looked at her, letting the silence build. Her eyes opened but seemed to focus on nothing.
“My head was over the side of the vat and I was holding the rim with both hands. Max was behind me, he was … he was very passionate. Then he was slumped on me, a deadweight. I was trapped; I couldn’t move.”
She burst into tears, and let them fall down her cheeks. “I couldn’t move, and he didn’t respond. I thought he was asleep or that he’d passed out. I didn’t know what was happening, and even though my head was over the side of the vat I was dizzy, like I was fainting. I managed to push him away, and his head hit the side with a thud and I panicked.”
Jacqueline stopped, looking down at the ground. Bruno waited, his eyes fixed on her. J-J was immobile beside him.
“And when did Cresseil come into the barn?” Bruno asked.
“I climbed out of the vat and I must have been screaming because the old man came out of his house. He saw me at the door of the barn and pushed me aside and went in. I saw him climb the steps and then he crumpled and fell, right from the top of the steps. He just fell and lay there.”
“So why didn’t you call the emergency services, the pompiers, the ambulance?” asked Bruno.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. It was that damned dog, yapping. It was hardly able to move, its back legs crippled, but it kept creeping across to the old man and yapping and howling and turning to snarl at me. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t shut it up. I didn’t know what to do.”
“So you killed the dog.”
“I hit it on the head with a big stone to knock it out, but the stone was so big.”
“Your lover was dead. The old man was dead. The dog was dead,” Bruno said flatly. “You came here to Saint-Denis determined to ruin Bondino’s project. Max’s death gave you the perfect opportunity. You began to work out in a very cold-blooded way how this could be made to damage your cousin, to have him blamed for murder and take your revenge on the family.”
“You don’t know what they did to us,” she snapped back, her eyes suddenly ablaze. “They arranged the killing of my grandfather, they cheated my mother out of what was hers. They built their fortune on fraud. They’re the killers, not me. I didn’t kill anybody.” She stared defiantly into Bruno’s face. “And you know something else? They’re going to destroy this precious town of yours. They’re going to take your land and take your water and make their usual mass-produced crap. They’re going to swallow you all up, just like they devour everything else.”
Bruno just smiled and slowly shook his head. “No, they aren’t.” Into the silence came the sound of a distant car, drawing closer. J-J let out a deep breath, looked up the driveway and said, “My men.” Then he looked down at Jacqueline and snapped his handcuffs onto her wrists.
42
The leaves were thick on the ground at the edge of the woods, a fringe of browns and yellows and the occasional splash of red starting to cover the charred expanse of the field. Farther across the barren soil, the ruins of the large shed had crumbled under the rains and wind. Bruno felt himself shiver slightly as he remembered the sound of the gasoline can exploding and watching Albert topple to his knees in the flames. Beneath him, the gray mare twitched, perhaps feeling his brief shiver, perhaps sensing the change in his mood. Pamela had said horses could do that. He leaned forward to pat the horse’s neck.
“It’s all right, Victoria. Just a memory,” he said. The horse stood calmly, patiently allowing Gigi to sniff around her feet. The horses had grown accustomed to Bruno’s dog, but Bruno had yet to get comfortable with being astride an animal that seemed so much larger and more powerful underneath him than it did in the stables, and that kept him so high off the ground as he looked across the field.
“This is where it started,” said Pamela, bringing Bess to a halt alongside him. “There’s an old English saying, ‘Red sky at morning, shepherd’s warning.’ You remember the huge glow?”
“I remember. And I remember the hat you wore at the adoption ceremony. Cresseil told me you reminded him of his lovely Annette. He was right. You do look a little like her. I saw some of Cresseil’s old photos.” He looked at her. “You’re more beautiful.”
She smiled at him. “Do you feel ready to try a short canter?”
“In a moment, perhaps,” he said. “You’ve had me riding so much that the inside of my thighs are sore and I feel as if I’ve scoured all the hairs off my legs.”
“Your legs are still gripping too tightly. As you get more confident, you’ll relax, and it’ll be fine.” Pamela paused, and in a different tone of voice said, “I suppose you know what was in the paper, about Jacqueline?”
He nodded. She had been returned to Quebec under a treaty that allowed French and Canadian nationals to serve prison terms in their home country.
“Nine months wasn’t much of a sentence,” Pamela said.
“Obstruction of justice, providing false evidence and statements, failure to report a death, killing an animal; no, not much of a sentence. The commercial espionage count was dropped, since Bondino decided not to press charges. And there was no proof that she’d been paid by the Australians,” Bruno said.
“Australians?” Pamela asked. “There was nothing about them in the newspapers. How were they involved?”
“She did some research for her professor in California on that paper he wrote for Bondino on commercial prospects in the Dordogne,” Bruno explained. “So she had a copy of the paper and got in touch with the big Australian wine group she’d interned with when she was studying there and sent them a copy. They were interested to find out what the competition was doing and Jacqueline wanted a job, so the relationship grew. From her e-mails, it’s clear she sent them everything she got from Bondino’s computer, including the contract on drought-resistant vines with the research station.”
“Did she put Max up to setting the fire?”
“She denies it, and we couldn’t prove anything,” Bruno said. “And she was very good at the trial,
beautiful and vulnerable and young. She milked the tragic ordeal in the vat and convinced the judge she had panicked. She probably didn’t even need the good lawyer her parents got her.”
“So next summer, she’ll be out and free again,” said Pamela. “It doesn’t feel right.”
“Her real punishment will start then,” said Bruno. “She’ll never work in the wine trade again. She’ll be notorious, after all the publicity. And Bondino escaped her plot. The feud’s over. He won.”
“You have a very idiosyncratic sense of justice, Bruno,” she said.
“Wait,” he whispered, pointing. “See over there, at the edge of the field?” At the horse’s feet, Gigi was pointing, one paw half raised and his head up to catch the faintest scent, his tail out horizontally behind him. Pamela peered across the field but saw nothing, and then suddenly there was a fluttering in the far hedge and a small black shape emerged to dash across the gray November sky, darting up and down as it flew.
“Bécasses,” said Bruno. “Soon it will be hunting season.”
“Good hunting. I’m looking forward to another of your dinners with bécasses. And what wine do you plan to feature this time?”
“It’s an embarrassment of riches,” Bruno said. He still could barely believe what an extraordinary case of wine he had been given, even though he had been to Hubert’s cellar to see the twelve bottles of Château Pétrus. There were three each from 1982, 1985 and 1990, and a single bottle from each of the great years: 1947, 1961 and 1975. It was Bondino’s gift, and it had taken Hubert a month to assemble it from various cellars. It had come with a simple card saying “Thank you, Bruno. Fernando.”
Bruno realized it had cost a ridiculous amount of money. Hubert told him the case was worth more than Bruno’s investment in the new company Vignerons de Saint-Denissur-Vézère. “Maybe I’ll sell it and buy more shares in the company,” he’d told Hubert, knowing he wouldn’t. There were some things more valuable than money.
Another dinner, another wine, another love. He looked gratefully at Pamela, a woman who seemed content to give him all the time in the world.
“Let’s try a canter,” he said, pressing his heels into Victoria’s rounded sides as they rode past the ruined shed and headed for the break in the woods that led down to the valley and Pamela’s home.
Acknowledgments
This is a work of fiction, in which all events and characters are invented. But like the first in the Bruno series, this book once again owes everything to the kindness and generosity of the people of Périgord and the splendid way of life they and their ancestors have devised over thousands of years. Many of them have become dear friends, and some deserve a special mention. The Baron and Raymond, Pierrot and René and the staff of the inestimable cave of Julien de Savignac have among them done wonders for my knowledge of wines and the wine trade. They also taught me a lot about the challenge of finding jobs and investment opportunities in the small towns of rural France and the hard choices involved. Michael and Gabrielle Merchez, each of whom served as a town council member for the Green Party, taught me a great deal about the local politics of the environment and about the remaining communes. I should stress that the many Green supporters I know are far too sensible to start fires. My wife, Julia, and our daughters, Kate and Fanny, were wonderfully helpful first readers, and our basset hound keeps making us new friends. Once again, Jane and Caroline Wood and Jonathan Segal whipped this book into shape, and I am very grateful.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Martin Walker is senior director of the Global Business Policy Council and editor emeritus and international affairs columnist at United Press International. His books include The Cold War: A History, short-listed for the Whitbread Book of the Year Prize and a New York Times Notable Book, and The Caves of Périgord, a novel. He has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker and The Times Literary Supplement. He lives in Washington, D.C., and in the southwest of France.
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2009 by Walker and Watson Ltd.
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.aaknopf.com
Originally published in Great Britain in slightly different form by Quercus, London, in 2009.
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Walker, Martin, [date]
The dark vineyard : a mystery of the French countryside / Martin Walker.—1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-59381-8
1. Police chiefs—France—Fiction. 2. Arson investigation—Fiction. 3. Murder investigation—Fiction. 4. Environmentalists—Fiction. 5. Vintners—Fiction. 6. Country life—France—Fiction. 7. Dordogne (France)—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6073.A413D37 2010
823′.914—dc22
2009045814
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
v3.0
Bruno 02 - The Dark Vineyard Page 27