“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.
“Becasses,” said Bruno. “Soon it will be hunting season.”
“Good hunting. I’m looking forward to another of your dinners with becasses. 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 Chateau Petrus. 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-Vezere. “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.
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The dark vineyard b,op-2 Page 27