Nightmare in Burgundy (The Winemaker Detective Series)

by Jean-Pierre Alaux

  Virgile let out an immense sigh of relief as soon as he closed the car door.

  “That nutcase freaked me out!”

  “I confess, he didn’t put my mind at ease, either,” Cooker said as he stomped on the gas.

  Virgile put the two vials of Lucien Filongey’s tonic in the backseat and turned to his boss, letting out a nervous laugh.

  “Holy shit. I bet these two bottles will get rated nineteen out of twenty in the next Cooker Guide!”

  9

  The rounds of wine tasting in the Morey-Saint-Denis vineyards appellation would begin later than planned. Lucien Filongey’s ranting was still troubling the two men from Bordeaux, and they were struggling to concentrate on the work they had to do. Before they reached the Clos de la Bidaude, they slowed down to look for the place where Honoré Mancenot had met his death. Halfway between Vougeot and Morey, they saw the writing in black paint that ran across the pavement. They stopped short on the embankment.

  In his notebook Benjamin Cooker wrote down the Latin phrase that stretched in three segments across the gravel carpet.

  Deus virtutum convertere:

  respice de caelo, et vide,

  et visita veneam istam

  Et perfice eam, quam plantavit dextera tua: et

  super filium hominis, quem confirmasti tibi

  Incensa igni et suffossa ab increpatione vultus

  tui peribunt.

  “What are you thinking about, boss?”

  “It must have taken a lot of time to write such a long passage.”

  “You can’t say there’s heavy traffic on this road. You could write a book in between the time two cars go by!”

  “Maybe. In any case, the person who wrote this has an impressive memory and serious knowledge. There’s no doubt about that.”

  “And you’re forgetting something,” Virgile said. “He believes in God.”

  “In God or the devil,” grumbled Cooker.

  “At any rate, as for the phenomenal memory, I agree with you. I don’t see the guy holding his Bible in his left hand and writing with a spray can in his right. And also, it couldn’t have been easy in the middle of the night, in the dark.”

  “Maybe he used his headlights to help him?”

  “I don’t know. It looks to me like he was just trying to get it down,” Virgile said. “The way you just want to get something down when you observe a wine and take your notes without looking at your notebook. You see, in this spot, the writing is more spread out, as if he had to go faster. Maybe he heard a car coming. There, he hurried. Everything was written in one shot. The letters are strung together. Here, again, it’s very clear. And there, false alarm: the sound of the engine must have grown more distant, and he ended less frantically. The letters are more rounded in the last words. There is even a period.”

  “After such an explanation, my boy, what can I add?”

  Cooker checked to see if he had correctly transcribed the text and walked over to the embankment. The grass was still flat in some places. Perhaps old Mancenot’s moped had slid the length of it. He had probably gone down near the distance marker. He could make out a faint sign of impact. The body had surely rolled all the way down to the pile of rocks, where there were still large traces of blood. Cooker went back to the Mercedes, where his assistant was already searching for a radio station that would spare him the umpteenth tear-jerking scene from La Traviata.

  “I don’t want to tell you what to do, but we’re going to be late, sir.”

  “You are right, Virgile. Our work awaits us. But I forgot something in my room.”

  They stopped briefly at the Hotel de Vougeot. Cooker jumped out without turning the engine off and reappeared quickly with his Bible. He put the car in first, ground the gears, and headed off toward the secondary road.

  The plan for the day was entirely dedicated to the terroir of Morey-Saint-Denis, and a long itinerary lay before them. Virgile had taken care to organize the visits by calling all the estates that Cooker wanted to discover or study in depth for the new edition of the guide. Their side trip to the scene of the tragedy had disrupted their schedule. Now there was no time to waste, and they had to get down to business: taste without lingering, avoid long conversations, remember to get the informational brochures for all the wineries, file the notes immediately, and, if possible, get additional samples to back up their opinions once they returned to Bordeaux.

  They went from one tasting to the next with almost military rigor. Virgile spat without a single lapse of protocol. More than once, however, he did wax enthusiastic about some cru that deserved to be more closely examined.

  Having read his boss’s works attentively, he knew perfectly well that the village of Morey-Saint-Denis constituted one of the smallest communal appellations of the Côte-de-Nuits. At the Vinexpo exhibition and during advanced training courses given by the faculty of oenology, he had been able to taste the five particular appellations that were part of the terroir: Clos de Tart, Clos Saint-Denis, Bonnes-Mares, Clos de la Roche, and Clos des Lambrays. These five red wines alone, classified as grands crus, brought together the qualities of the two prestigious appellations on either side of them. The nature of the terrain could be tasted in the wine. They had the intensity and the power of a Gevrey-Chambertin without losing the finesse and elegance of a Chambolle-Musigny.

  Virgile had never before faced so much Morey-Saint-Denis in so little time: a Clos de la Bidaude, one of Guy Coquard’s Les Blanchards, several vintages of the Dujac estate, as well as Domaine Alain Jeanniard, the cuvées En La Rue de Vergy from the Lignier-Michelot winery, Aux Charmes from Pierre Amiot et Fils, Les Millandes de Palisses-Beaumont, and Henri Perrot-Minot’s La Riotte Vieilles Vignes. All these terroirs, which the Burgundians called “climats,” contained enough aromatic marvels and richness to satisfy the most sophisticated palate. Virgile was therefore attentive and picked up several samples in order to continue exploring when he got back home. While he was finishing his list of small bottles and filing the cards at the Beaumont estate’s wine warehouses, Cooker retreated to the car.

  Benjamin was feeling weary. In his mouth, he could still taste a nice vintage that had had a sustained color and somewhat woody flavor. It was becoming cooked fruit, a bit like jam, with hints of vanilla. The nose had opened on notes of cassis and spices. Despite the sweetness on his palate, he was preoccupied with the writing discovered on the road. He had been thinking about it continuously while he worked. He pulled out his fountain pen and began translating, resolving as best he could the problems of syntax. Then he reached for his Bible in the glove compartment and consulted the psalms one by one, concentrating intensely. His index finger ran down the length of the pages with a regular cadence so that he would not miss the passage. Many minutes went by before his finger stopped at Psalm Eighty, lines fourteen through sixteen.

  God Sabaoth, come back,

  we pray, look down from heaven and see,

  visit this vine;

  protect what your own hand has planted.

  They have thrown it on the fire like dung,

  the frown of your rebuke will destroy them.

  He went over the text several times in its entirety and remembered having read it many years earlier. It was a prayer for the restoration of Israel, a heartfelt plea for justice. Nothing in the text where the vineyard was invoked managed to awaken in him the least hint of a clue. He got out of his car, pulled out his cell phone, and punched in the number for Robert Bressel as he strode through the courtyard across from the farmhouse. He motioned for his assistant to hurry up as he waited for Bressel to answer.

  “Hello,” he said simply, since Bressel claimed to have an ear for voices.

  “Mr. Cooker, good timing! I just came back this minute from the police station in Nuits-Saint-Georges, and there’s lots of excitement there.

  “The investigation is making progress?”

  “They took some photos of the graffiti and made enlargements so that the handwriting specialists coul
d analyze them. According to my information, nothing jumped out at them.”

  “They couldn’t say if it was the same person each time?”

  “I am pretty close to the captain,” Bressel explained. “But he doesn’t tell me everything.”

  “However, that is an important point.” Cooker’s words remained suspended in silence. “Hello?”

  “I’m still here, Mr. Cooker. I am weighing what you just said. Do you think that the latest writing on the road might not have been written by the same person?”

  “It’s just a theory. They don’t exactly match. But maybe it’s because of the way the writing was done.”

  “I am not following your reasoning,” the reporter confessed.

  “Writing on a vertical surface with a can of spray paint would have to differ slightly from writing on a horizontal surface. You understand? The act of bending over and tipping the can has to modify the handwriting. That’s without even considering the conditions, which had to be challenging. There was more urgency.”

  “That makes sense, especially since it all happened at nightfall, around seven-thirty, according to the autopsy report. It was still early, and there was a bit of traffic.”

  “That’s what I was thinking. I went to the scene, and if you examine everything very carefully, you notice some nuances, slight changes, compared with the graffiti in Vougeot and Gilly. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen the writing at Adèle Grangeon’s.”

  “You seem to be giving this matter a lot of thought,” Bressel observed in a tone that could be interpreted as respectful, intrigued, or sarcastic.

  “I can’t help it,” Cooker responded a bit curtly. “And by the way, I also had the chance to see your nephew in Dijon. Strange boy!”

  “Pierre-Jean is a brilliant young man, but he has never had much luck. He deserves more than that job at the library, and I think he is bored there.”

  “He told me a lot of interesting stories, but I didn’t learn anything. I had the impression that he was taking me for a ride.”

  “I’m surprised to hear that. That’s not like him.”

  “What I mean is that he didn’t give me any leads, and he kept changing direction. At the end of the day, I felt a bit lost.”

  “Pierre-Jean never says anything without a reason, so that surprises me. Perhaps he didn’t have any insights.”

  “Possibly. Did he talk to you about our meeting?” the winemaker asked as he signaled to Virgile to put the cases in the trunk of the convertible.

  “No, I haven’t spoken to him since your visit.”

  “You don’t see each other regularly?”

  “Very rarely. He’s pretty introverted. He lives in his books and doesn’t mix with people much. He has a hard time with his looks, and I am afraid he’ll end up a bachelor. It’s true that he has never been attractive. He was in love once, a girl in his class, but she went off and married some wife-beater. He’s good-natured, though, and remarkably sensitive. I think he never quite recovered from the blow of not getting the job of curator of the historical archives.”

  “That’s an important position for a young historian,” Cooker said.

  “Indeed, and he worked very hard for it. He passed all his exams brilliantly and submitted a dissertation that received a special award from the jury. The position should have gone to him. I have always suspected some maneuvering went on.”

  “Who was named in his place?”

  “The grandson of a prominent regional politician who’s the mayor of a town near Nuits-Saint-Georges and a big wine trader. I’m sure he influenced the administrative authorities who made the decision.”

  “I see.”

  “That said, his grandson was not a bad student. He was a decent candidate, but he hadn’t really distinguished himself on the exam. At any rate, the scores have never been made public. Just one mention in the Journal Officiel. But why am I telling you all this?”

  The winemaker did not answer. Robert Bressel cleared his throat and excused himself on the pretext of having to meet a deadline for the next day’s paper.

  “I’ll be sure to buy Le Bien Public to have the pleasure of reading your article,” Cooker said by way of good-bye.

  10

  “This time they attacked the château, Mr. Cooker!” Aurélie shouted this without taking the time to greet him. She was trembling, and Cooker didn’t know if she was frightened by the events or simply excited by so much activity in so few days.

  “What happened?” the winemaker asked.

  “There are firemen, and policemen, and other cars, and—”

  “Are all those people up there? At the Château du Clos de Vougeot?”

  “Yes, Mr. Cooker, they flew by, no sirens, but they were going fast!”

  Cooker raced to the annex to knock on his assistant’s door. After several tries went unanswered, he began to bang. Virgile finally responded and stood in the doorway in a white T-shirt and navy-blue boxer shorts with yellow polka dots. His eyes were half-closed, and his face bore the creases of his bedsheets. His mouth was frozen in a half yawn.

  “You have five minutes to take a shower and meet me.”

  While he waited, Cooker went to drink a cup of tea without bothering to eat anything. He checked the inside pages of the Le Bien Public. Robert Bressel had written an evasive article mentioning only that the investigation was running its course, that some new clues had appeared, and that the police were following every lead. The journalist seemed to be trying to reassure readers, but his tone was almost clinical.

  When Virgile tumbled into the dining room, Cooker did not even let him come to the table, where Aurélie had just laid out a generous breakfast. He led him directly to the road leading to the vineyard. They walked quickly without exchanging a word and soon arrived at the Château du Clos de Vougeot. Several vehicles were parked helter-skelter, and a crowd had formed in front of the heavy door. Police officers were talking quietly with a group of firefighters, while some other men in uniforms stood slightly apart, chatting with the farmhands. Cooker and Virgile approached cautiously.

  A small owl was nailed to the enormous entry door. Its wings were spread apart to reveal a cavity of brown flesh swarming with maggots. The animal was in an advanced state of decay, and its mud-stained plumage had disappeared in certain places. On the left panel of the door, an enormous black inscription was written diagonally: “Jeremiah,” and on the other side, below the bird, slightly skewed near the hinges, Cooker could make out “26.”

  “Mr. Cooker, how are you?”

  Cooker swung around and recognized the head of the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin, who was walking toward him with his hand extended in a friendly gesture. Despite the worried expression that was darkening his face, the man could not neglect his good manners and natural cordiality.

  “For heaven’s sake, I’m very well, my friend, if it weren’t for these unusual distractions.”

  “Since your arrival, it seems impossible to get a good night’s sleep in Vougeot!”

  “By that do you mean I am a bird of ill omen?” the winemaker allowed himself to joke as he introduced his assistant.

  The Burgundian was delighted to see that the specialists from Bordeaux were so interested in the productions of the Côte-d’Or. He did not try to hide his satisfaction when they mentioned their recent wine tasting experiences and announced their desire to return soon.

  “I am very sorry that you happened to arrive in the middle of such business,” he said, chagrined. “I don’t understand any of this.”

  “Oh, we’ve seen things like this before. Haven’t we, Virgile?”

  Virgile gave Cooker a knowing look.

  “But who could this Jeremiah be?” continued the representative of the brotherhood. “Certainly not the author of all these senseless acts. He wouldn’t sign his own crimes, would he? Could the culprit have wanted to expose someone named Jeremiah?”

  “Who knows?” Cooker said, shrugging.

  “I don’t know of an
y Jeremiah in the vicinity. And I don’t mean to brag, but I think I know Vougeot and its environs pretty well.”

  They reeled off pleasantries and useless theories, all in a tone of impeccable civility. But Cooker was preoccupied and in a hurry to leave. He was grateful for Virgile’s intervention.

  “I believe we are expected elsewhere, Mr. Cooker.”

  “Indeed, Virgile, duty calls.”

  They said good-bye with the utmost courtesy and headed back to the hotel.

  “I think I know what it is, my boy.”

  “I suspected as much, boss.”

  “Really?”

  “When I saw that frown, I knew right away.”

  “I didn’t look too unpleasant, I hope?”

  “It was close, but you were okay. But anyone who knows you well could tell.”

  “Thanks for letting me escape honorably.”

  “You’re welcome. I was in a rush to go back myself. I still haven’t had a bite to eat this morning.”

  “This Jeremiah doesn’t exist,” Cooker said without responding to his employee’s remark. “He does not exist, or at least not the way they all think. It’s that ‘26’ that put me on the right track. At first I stupidly thought that it was about a guy who was twenty-six years old or maybe about someone who was born in 1926.”

  “That’s not all that stupid. Maybe it’s a simple clue. Why complicate things?”

  “But who says it’s complicated? Go and have your breakfast. I have two or three things to check in my room.”

  Cooker got back to the annex and rushed to his Bible. He went straight to the Book of the Prophets and stopped at Jeremiah, which was preceded by the words of Isaiah and announced “The Lamentations.” The text contained fifty-two paragraphs, or two times twenty-six.

  § § §

  As soon as he saw the drawn features and sad eyes of the abbey porter, Cooker understood that Brother Clément’s health had deteriorated even further.

  “Everything is going very quickly, Mr. Cooker. Since yesterday he has not been able to get out of bed, and I fear that he will not hear the bells of the next vespers.”