Fen turned from the altar and her heart almost leapt out of her chest. Estelle was standing there watching her.
‘Bonjour, Estelle,’ Fen collected herself and tried to look nonchalant as her heartbeat gradually returned to normal. ‘I thought you’d still be up at the house.’
‘Why? Because I am only a housekeeper?’ Estelle replied, sounding and looking more than a little annoyed at Fen.
‘No, no. I just, I mean, I must have lost track of time. What have you there?’
‘Curiosity killed the cat.’ Estelle sounded no less annoyed, but instead of shielding the basket she was carrying, she made its contents more obvious – it was full of wild and cut-garden flowers.
‘Those are so pretty.’
Estelle ignored Fen’s compliment. ‘And what are you doing here? Gloating over our loss perhaps?’
‘Of course not, no. I’m as saddened at anyone over the theft.’ Fen tried quickly to explain herself as Estelle seemed more and more rankled by the conversation. ‘I was, er…’ inspiration struck, ‘getting my eye in, there will be so much to write about this beautiful church. And praying for Father Marchand’s soul, of course.’
This seemed to appease Estelle, who shrugged her shoulders and started to move towards and then past Fen to the vestry, which was situated next to the chancel.
‘My mother used to “do the flowers”, as they say. Are you on the rota?’ Fen said to the nursery maid, indicating the flowers in her basket.
‘Mind your own business.’ Estelle was not easy to draw out, but then Fen thought silence was often the best interrogator.
She was right, when, a few moments later, Estelle reappeared from the vestry, her basket emptied of flowers, but the cotton cloth that had cushioned them was still there, scrunched up in the bottom.
‘Fine, to stop you from questioning me more… Questions, questions, it is always with you!’
Fen smiled at Estelle, trying not to feel too self-satisfied that she was about to get some sort of answer.
‘Blue asters, white cosmos, red dahlias, or, in this case, a very dark pink, but beggars can’t be choosers. They are the colours of our mighty Tricolore flag!’
‘That’s awfully clever.’ Fen paused for a second, confused as to why Estelle would be bringing them into the church. Then it struck her, what Pierre had said about Father Marchand being a member of the Resistance alongside his own brothers. ‘Oh I see, to commemorate the priest. To show everyone who attends his funeral that he was, well, a patriot.’
‘We were all patriots! Liberté, égalité, fraternité!’ Estelle raised her fist in a sign of solidarity with her countrymen. ‘But yes, some were more willing to take the war into their own hands. And it was an act of defiance to our occupiers to dress in the colours of our flag! Father Marchand…’ she suddenly seemed overwhelmed by sadness, ‘oh, I didn’t mean what I said last night! He was so good to us. So honourable. He grew flowers, these flowers, in his garden, so we ladies could always have a bouquet.’
It was all she needed to say. Fen understood. The heart of this town’s Resistance network had centred around the church and Father Marchand had bravely co-ordinated the whole thing, from burying comrades to growing seditious flowers. ‘Look to the church,’ James had said, and Fen thought she could now see why.
Estelle had gained her composure and bustled out past Fen. Fen followed her but took the opportunity to check if Pierre was still next to his family’s tomb. He wasn’t. As the two women got to the door, Estelle’s wicker basket knocked against the thick wood and made a dull clanking sound. She huffed and puffed, ushering Fen out, and shut the creaking door behind her, all the sounds merging into one as Fen pondered the new information she’d been given.
Thirteen
The next day dawned and there were still hundreds of bunches of grapes to harvest in the vineyard. Unlike the previous day, Fen was the last one down to breakfast that morning, even though it was early. The evening before had been a quiet one, and Fen realised quite how much she’d missed having James in the house.
The mood around the dinner table had been unsurprisingly sombre last night, and Fen had slept badly, her dreams interspersed with garishly coloured flowers, nooses dancing wildly in the wind and a church she couldn’t escape. Today, however, was a new day and, unlike yesterday, she was due back among the vines, the harvest taking priority over housework. And she was pleased of the brisk walk on this fresh autumnal morning and thought it would do her good and help her put all of those crazy dreams to bed so that hopefully she could sleep better tonight.
‘Bonjour, monsieur,’ she said to the cat, who was preening himself by the door to the kitchen, obviously having feasted well on breakfast scraps. He didn’t look up at her, but Fen smiled anyway and walked around the château’s internal courtyard and then under the tower arch, through the trees and down the gravelly track towards the winery.
The winery rose out of the morning mist, its cinder-block walls the perfect camouflage against the dispersing fog. Its vast doors were closed against the chill, bolted shut. The stark modernity did not compare well to the ancient stone barns that were more typical of the area. Other winemakers nearby had made do converting old threshing barns into homes for the wine presses and barrels, but this winery must have been renovated or built from scratch, perhaps before the war, when this was a flourishing high-end vineyard, used to sending the fine wine to Paris, London and Vienna and wherever else had a taste for expensive Burgundy. Fen remembered her father extolling the virtues of the Pinot Noir grape, its fineness of taste and elegance in the glass.
The thought of her dear Pa, beavering away in his study in Oxford right at this very minute no doubt, cheered her as she hugged her arms around herself. She could imagine knocking on his study door, entering and see him lean back in his chair and remove his glasses, these simple actions being her cue to tell him all about her day or, in this case, the diverting fact that she was now so close to Gevrey Chambertin and Nuit St Georges, some of his favourite winemaking villages.
‘A bottle of your finest Domaine Morey-Fontaine,’ she enunciated the words in her most RP vowels as if she were ordering wine at the Ritz. Pa would love that. Her breath hung in the air, momentarily suspended in the chill mist. The sun was not yet high in the sky, in fact it wouldn’t get too high at all now that the trees were turning golden and the dew clung heavy to the grasses. There was a breeze today and more clouds in the sky than yesterday – the season was definitely on the turn.
Fen took in a deep breath of the damp air and walked towards the vines. A dash of colour caught her eye among the dank greys and concrete blocks of the walls. Someone had draped a quilt over the inside of a small ventilation window; its red, white and blue geometric patterns making a stark contrast to the grey exterior.
Fen paused, wondering if she should go and investigate this oddity, especially with Estelle’s words from yesterday about patriots and the colours of the Tricolore still echoing in her ears, but the sound of the church bell prompted her to hurry away to the vineyard itself to get to work.
‘Hey, where’s Hubert?’
‘Who knows, probably off in that deathtrap truck of his.’
‘Ooh la la, he’ll cause an accident one day!’
Fen smiled to herself as she heard the other workers talk about Hubert. At least she wasn’t the only one who thought his truck, or his driving, was a bit beyond the pale.
She’d found a grape hod near the entrance to the winery a while earlier, and with no one around to tell her what her to do she’d followed some of the more experienced workers into the vineyard and had started harvesting. The cart was slowly filling with grapes as the workers laboriously selected, cut and hauled the bunches of fruit over to it. The large Shire horse that was used to draw the cart to and from the vines and winery snorted occasionally, his whiskery nose twitching as flies circled while his forelegs shifted the weight now and then.
Fen was about to try and take stock of what had happened
over the last day or so when her thoughts were interrupted by snippets of conversation she heard among the vines. Clearly she was not the only one thinking about Father Marchand’s death.
‘They say his head was as purple as an artichoke.’
‘Three different poisons apparently…’
‘Bof, poison? No, he accidentally drank some Bordeaux wine and it killed him!’
‘Zut alors, Michel, you are wrong – it was German wine!’
Their voices carried across the vines and Fen wondered how much of their crass humour was to hide their grief, as from what she’d seen, he really was a very popular local priest. And one who really might have choked on German wine, judging by his role in the Resistance.
Her reverie was broken by the sound of Hubert’s engine, and as Fen looked up from her vine, she saw a dust cloud follow the sound as the old Citroën drove at some considerable speed towards the winery from the main road.
‘Now where are you coming from so quickly, Mr Hubert?’ Fen said to herself as she stood upright and walked with her heavy hod towards the waiting horse and its cart full of grapes. She heard the truck’s engine cut out and wondered if it would be terribly unsporting to put some of her knowledge of farm vehicles to the test and somehow tinker with it – not permanently, but just to serve him right for a day or two. The thought was possibly a little too gratifying.
She was about to upend the hod into the cart, picturing in her mind the point in the engine where she could disconnect the cambelt, when there was a yell that pierced the air around them.
Fourteen
‘Whoa, whoa!’
Fen heard the carter behind her trying to calm down the large horse, but instinct told her to run towards the scream – someone obviously needed help, urgently. She dropped the hod, and its precious cargo, and ran in the direction of the screams straight towards the winery. The doors were now flung open and other workers, summoned by the yelling, were milling around the entrance.
‘He’s in there—’
‘How did it happen?’
‘Why didn’t he raise the alarm?’
‘This shouldn’t happen in this day and age…’
The voices passed judgement on the situation and Fen, instinctively curious, headed into the darkness of the building. Once her eyes had adjusted to the poor light, she saw that she was now standing in a vast room full of grape presses, each one topped off with a massive screw that was used to slowly but surely crush all of the juice from the fruit. Fen could well imagine a grisly accident happening here, but it wasn’t to the presses that anyone was paying the slightest attention. Instead, like the other workers who had heard the commotion, she hurried past them to the next room, the room that held the vast barrels used to ferment the juice from the presses.
Fen elbowed her way through a cluster of men who were blocking the one doorway that separated the rooms. To her shock, she saw Hubert, pale as a sheet, kneeling next to Pierre. His body was lying in the foetal position, his eyes closed and his cap still grasped in his fingers. He looked like he had just curled up for a nap.
‘What has happened…? Pierre, is he…?’
‘Dead. Quite dead.’ The worker standing next to her removed his cloth cap and held it to his chest, his words barely audible, but prayer-like in their tone.
The eerie quiet of those left standing in the winery had been broken by the arrival of the town’s doctor. He had taken control now of the situation and was examining the body.
Fen, who had become a little shaky after the initial shock, had regained any composure she might have lost, adjusted her headscarf and, after a brief introduction of herself to the medical man, asked him pointedly, ‘Was this an accident, Monsieur Docteur?’
‘Sadly, I think it might have been.’
‘How did he die? I… I don’t want to sound ghoulish, but I can’t see any wound. Poison?’ Fen couldn’t help but draw a parallel to the very recent death of Father Marchand at the kitchen table – a table that Pierre had been dining at too.
‘Of a sort.’ The doctor studied the position of the body once more and went through the motions – he raised Pierre’s lifeless eyelids and checked for a pulse one more time. He continued talking, correctly assuming Fen was still listening. ‘It’s a rare, but not unheard of, death in these parts. Though, in truth, I thought Pierre Bernard would have known better.’
‘I don’t understand?’
‘Carbon dioxide poisoning. It’s a natural by-product of the fermentation process. These great barriques churn out hundreds of cubic litres of it, but, generally, this room is well-ventilated. Of course, it’s a heavy gas, so Pierre may have accidentally walked into a “cloud” of it, if you will.’
‘A heavy gas? Heavier than normal air, you mean?’ Fen barely remembered her classroom chemistry lessons, but something the doctor was saying rang a few bells.
‘Yes, and it can build up on top of the liquid and if it builds up too much, or if the barrel is too full, well, like a waterfall, it bowls over the top, and if it hits you before it’s dispersed, you become overwhelmed and can die.’
‘Gosh.’ Fen thought about it for a second.
The doctor must have seen her grimace as she looked down at the dead man. ‘If it makes you feel better, mademoiselle, it would have been a very gentle death. He would have felt sleepy and drifted off, never to wake again. How many of us dream of such a peaceful end for ourselves, especially after what our countrymen, and yours, have been through.’
‘Well, yes,’ Fen agreed but wondered, briefly, if the doctor had a penchant for amateur dramatics or Gothic literature as she saw him cross himself and elegantly kneel to pray over the dead body. She couldn’t help but interject, ‘Dying peacefully is one thing, but dying tends to not be on the cards at all when you’re in your prime, due to inherit a château and have a wife and two young children.’
The doctor stood up. ‘Quite so, mademoiselle. Death wields his scythe indiscriminately, I fear.’
Fen turned away from the doctor and Pierre’s lifeless body. ‘I’m not so sure Death had as much to do with it as a common or garden murderer,’ she mumbled to herself, remembering the thick quilt she’d seen pressed up against the closed ventilation slats earlier that morning. The very same window she was now looking at quite clearly, with no multicoloured quilt in sight.
Fen tuned back into the wailing and general hubbub that was still going on outside the winery door. She let herself out of the smaller fermentation room and headed towards the daylight, recognising, as she got nearer to the entrance, the voice of Estelle outside.
‘We are cursed! We are cursed!’
‘Come, come,’ Fen found the housekeeper on her knees in the dirt and helped her up and to dust herself off. ‘You have to be stronger than this, Estelle, think how Sophie will feel.’
Miraculously, this seemed to buck Estelle up and, along with a couple of the other workers and the town’s doctor in tow, they formed an incredibly sad and sombrely slow procession back to the kitchen, where they found Sophie playing marbles on the kitchen table with Benoit.
Fen was relieved that the burden of telling Sophie about the death of her husband didn’t fall to her, but as the doctor uttered the words, she felt the full force of the newly widowed woman’s grief. As with Father Marchand’s sudden demise, Fen’s first thought was to protect the innocent boy, who was now looking petrified as he gazed at the sobbing face of his mother.
‘Come, Benoit,’ Fen practically pulled him away from his mother’s skirt, his feet kicking her as she grasped him tightly to her and carried him into the courtyard. It took all of her powers of negotiation to convince him to stay put once she put him down and she sat there with him, out by the washing line, until she could no longer hear the shouts, cries and sobs from the kitchen. The little boy looked up at her occasionally, annoyed at how distracted she was from their game of throwing wooden clothes pegs into the washing basket.
‘Papa?’
‘It will be all right, litt
le one.’ Fen couldn’t break the news to him herself, unsure of how much a small child could take in.
In his stammering childish French, he answered, ‘Mama sad. Papa gone away.’
Fen couldn’t bring herself to do much more than nod and scruffle his blond hair. Luckily, before the peg-throwing game had lost the child’s interest, Estelle, herself now recovered enough to look after the child, came to relieve her.
‘She’s taken to her bed,’ Estelle told her. ‘And unless you want to come into town to pick up Jean-Jacques from Madame Grignon, I suggest you get back to the vines. It’s what Pierre would have wanted.’
Fen took her cue to leave and headed out of the courtyard, back along the track, towards the vineyard. Estelle was right, it wasn’t even mid-morning and there was still work to be done. Far from being out, alone, in the vineyard, Fen wanted desperately to talk to someone, but who could she trust with her suspicion that Pierre’s death was no accident?
Estelle, as far as Fen knew, was nowhere near the winery when Pierre was found. Sophie, the grieving widow, was safely back at the house and, in any case, she could barely put weight on her ankle, let alone have the strength to climb a ladder and fit a quilt to the window. Hubert’s innocence was in question, he had ‘discovered’ the body after all, although what motive he would have to kill his employer, Fen couldn’t say, but Marchand had commented on Hubert’s conscience before he had died, had Pierre perhaps done something similar?
Clément… where was Clément, and did he know his last remaining son was dead?
James was locked up, which made her sure now that he couldn’t have killed Father Marchand either. She was sure this was the work of the same person and Fen knew that if her suspicion was correct, she needed proof that Pierre had been murdered.
A Dangerous Goodbye: An absolutely gripping historical mystery (A Fen Churche Mystery Book 1) Page 12