The thought of Agnes even stirred him in the early morning hours when mist cloaked the earth and the walnut trees stood in straight rows across the lane, beyond which nothing could be seen but the whiteness of the mists.
Lying in bed, he felt her body next to his and the thought comforted him. In reality, they were older now and the images of dreams were perhaps a little too kind. Her message on his answering machine was mysterious and he could sense the unfamiliar anxiety in her voice, though last night, when he came home and listened to the message, it had been too late to phone her.
He would wait until after breakfast because he liked to feel fresh and ready to soak in her voice and whatever she had to share with him. The cat needed feeding and purred on the end of the bed.
“Holy shit!” he exclaimed when Agnes explained what was wrong. He knew exactly how his cousin, Hector would feel about the loss. “How can you lose a whole crop of Beaujolais?”
“It wasn’t lost,” she said. “Some bastard competitor has stolen it. Hector’s reputation is on the line and they’re the only ones who gain from doing like that. Hector worked so damned hard to get the crop in and this year’s Beaujolais the best we ever produced.”
After the call, Pascal thought about poor Hector. He may have been married to Pascal’s fantasy woman but, apart from that, the man didn’t have much going for him. He didn’t have intellectual conversation or the ability to step outside the familiar. He only talked about wine and kind of missed out on the obvious nuances of life that others enjoyed. With his wine vats of Beaujolais empty, he would be pushed into seeing himself as a failure, since he measured everything by what success tasted like, and failure to provide the top markets with his best Beaujolais would certainly have left a bad taste in Hector’s mouth.
Agnes had asked Pascal to help investigate and of course, he was happy to drive up to the village where she lived in the Beaujolais region. At this time of year, it was very pleasant and hadn’t yet experienced the cold touch of winter frost. Packing his bags, he looked at the photograph of his wife, Jacqueline, as he left, remembering who he was and silently promising nothing had changed between them. His love for her, even though she was dead, was solid. Agnes had made Jacqueline a little jealous at first though, as their relationship had blossomed, she knew that Agnes was no threat to her. Agnes had been very pretty in those days, though now was just a shadow of who she used to be. The thoughts that Pascal had of her went back to a time when she was young and free and he knew them to be fantasy rather than actuality.
So who could have stolen a whole stock of Beaujolais less than a week before it was due to be shipped all over the world? Thoughts gathered as the road took Pascal out of the rocky landscape of the Lot toward Clermont-Ferrand and on toward Lyon. The outskirts of Lyon was always hectic with traffic, though back on the road toward Dijon and then turning toward Chalamont, Pascal was thinking about how the changes in the countryside affected the mentality of the people who inhabited in each region.
The small villages in the Beaujolais Nouveau district were no different, except perhaps not being wine snobs. They were simply proud to share that wine produced from this years’ crop but they took that very seriously indeed. It was a virgin taste of what was to come from the more mature wines. Hector would be devastated and Agnes had been more than anxious that the crime be solved within a short space of time because they only had a matter of weeks left before the competing chateaux would deliver to their customers and Hector would be embarrassed by non-delivery to his clients. That mattered.
Chapter 2 – The Competition
“I don’t understand it” explained Hector. “One day it was all there and the next it was all gone.” He hung his head in shame. He should have protected the wine better than he had done. Sure, there were always his dogs outside the main building where the vats were housed, but he couldn’t work out why they had given him no warning. The locks on the doors had been securely fastened the night before when they went to a neighboring farm to eat but, apart from that, he wasn’t absent from the chateau at all.
Hector was getting stocky, his moustache drooping and his hair turning silver. Pascal could see that the man was aging. His eyes looked tired and his skin pallid. He stuttered when he spoke, as he always had done as a youth and there seemed to be no hope left inside him. It was like watching an empty vessel try to come up with sounds when the man spoke. Sometimes, Pascal had to strain to hear what Hector was saying.
“He’s been like that since the theft” explained Agnes. “For now, you must settle in but tomorrow, I want you to take over the investigation. You’re an investigator and a good one and I don’t care how much you charge.”
It hadn’t occurred to Pascal to charge his friends. He just wanted to help. Looking at Agnes now and comparing him with the dream of last night, he could see that the Agnes of his dreams was younger and had firmer breasts. He noticed himself looking at her examining the differences, and snapped out of it quickly, embarrassed by his own infatuation for her. “I will help you” he said reassuringly. “There has to be some explanation and I will get to the bottom of it.”
She called the housekeeper to show Pascal to his room. He hadn’t wanted to stay at the chateau though could see there was little point in arguing. He preferred to work independently and perhaps tomorrow would persuade them that he needed that anonymity to be able to investigate without being noticed too much.
There had been better times for the chateau, which was now neglected almost to the point of losing its status. Yes, the entrance was still every bit as grand as it had always been, but there was something beyond the façade that told Pascal that Hector and Agnes were getting to the age when people seemed to lose that priority which kept a house in good stead. The wallpaper was peeling in his room and at today’s prices, it was unlikely that Hector would have the room redecorated, though the public areas were, of course, top notch. Wine tastings and sales to rich clientele meant that it had to look good.
Looking out of the window across toward the vineyards, Pascal could see how Hector had carved out his life around Chateau Trepagnier. He wondered how much time Hector had devoted to Agnes, though knew that Agnes was very capable of carving out a life for herself. She had been a society girl and one with very expensive tastes. Now, as an older woman, she was still stunningly beautiful. Her hair was thick and auburn and she had worn it tonight in a temptingly alluring Audrey Hepburn style. That prim and proper look always hid an element of excitement, and he could imagine her letting her hair down. She had impeccable taste and Pascal remembered the designer dresses she had worn to balls when she had been younger. Still very much a beauty in her own right, she was more like the matured wine than the Beaujolais Nouveau.
It’s strange how mist plays a part in the lives of most people in a rural area in France. The network of rivers across France seems to induce a mist in the mornings that lifts, allowing the sun to shine through. Agnes had described this as the morning dew kissing the crops and even the nightly mists that cloaked the valleys overnight was defined as protection for nature. Although Pascal felt safe here in the Chateau, there was a sense of wanting to escape its walls and a certain claustrophobia, perhaps of being too close to Agnes for comfort.
There were no dreams of Agnes tonight. He put thoughts of her out of his mind as his head hit the pillow. You can’t fantasize about someone sleeping in the next room. It’s immoral. Thus, tonight’s sleep was accompanied by visions of French vineyards and the road that he had traveled that day. Perhaps it was the competition that had stolen the Beaujolais, though it wasn’t easy to get rid of that amount of wine. Pascal thought about it in between thoughts of his travels and then slept the sleep of the dead.
Chapter 3 – Cloak and Dagger
There was a pause for silence when Pascal told Agnes and Hector that he needed to work from elsewhere.
“You can’t be serious!” she exclaimed. “You have a perfectly good room here.”
“Yes, but I am t
oo near to everything. I need to be able to observe.”
“You think we have something to hide?” she screamed. Pascal remembered the dramatic side of Agnes and it wasn’t endearing. In fact, it was one of the things that Jacqueline had avoided displaying. French women can get very theatrical and that wasn’t what he wanted from his wife.
“If I am here, my inquiries may be looked at with suspicion by the locals. I am obviously your friend and people won’t open up to me like they will if I stay in a local hotel and just mingle.”
“I agree,” said Hector. “You do need that because the farmers around here won’t tell you a thing if you are seen to be looking at things from a biased perspective.”
That was the end of it. They would eat their breakfast in silence and then Pascal would leave. He had all the information he needed and knew from Hector which particular vineyards were most likely to have been responsible. These were his competitors, people who simply wanted to win over his precious clients and it made sense that they had everything to gain by stealing the wine. However, discretion was needed because it was important not to let the cat out of the bag that the stock of wine from the chateau had been stolen. The last thing Hector and Agnes needed was publicity like that.
“Hey, can you look something up for me?” said Pascal. He had phoned a friend in the police force and wanted to check out the names of the local wine producers to see if there was any criminal record that may indicate the direction to go in.
“Sure can,” Gilles confirmed. He was an okay guy and had more knowledge of this area than Pascal had. Having a whole host of contacts within the police force had helped Pascal enormously in his career as a private investigator and these were people who had known Pascal for a long time and who trusted him.
The hotel where he booked in was kind of convenient. It was near the center of the town of Chalamont so took him far enough from the chateau to discourage Hector and Agnes from calling in and near enough to civilization to get good food.
“You know who I am and why I am here?” he asked the cop that seemed to have made it a point to introduce himself.
“Of course I do. News travels fast around these parts.”
The guy was balding and fat and seemed more intent on downing his coffee and smoking his cigarette. Pascal had chosen to sit outside because of the fresh air and sunshine, though of course this is where all smokers congregated since the changing of the law about smoking inside cafes.
“Then tell me, what are the cops doing about it?” he asked nonchalantly.
“Nothing…” the guy replied.
“Why?”
“I’m not going to discuss this here. Come back to the station and I will explain. There are too many people here.”
It seemed a bit of a mystery to Pascal why this guy had insisted that they go back to the station, but he did need more information to go on.
The fat cop passed him a glass of water from the cooler. It was a hot afternoon for this time of year and Pascal was glad of this consideration.
“So why won’t the cops do anything?” he asked.
“In these parts, when the Beaujolais Nouveau season starts, people go crazy. We have seen a whole crop disappear before to mysteriously turn up in time for distribution. It gives the producer extra publicity and it works like a dream. It’s happened twice in the last 25 years that I know of. The cops don’t have time to investigate things like this, especially when they know it’s a sham.”
“Trouble is,” said Pascal, “If Chateau Trepagnier are really doing that for publicity, why would they call me in? My services don’t come cheaply.”
The cop had to admit that was a bit of a mystery.
“Can you tell me what you got so far so I can at least use that?” he asked.
“Here’s the file. It gives you the timeframe. It gives you the movement of people who work at the Chateau and one thing you will notice is that all the staff were off at the time. That’s pretty rare in a large place like that, so my guess would be that this was an inside job. That’s why we didn’t pursue it.”
Glancing through the papers, Pascal could see what he was getting at. This left too many questions. Who knew that the chateau staff would be absent? Who knew that Agnes and Hector would be away for such a short time frame and who had the means to get rid of the wine and to what purpose? He was beginning to see why the cops were not taking the situation seriously, but still felt, due to his trust in Agnes, that there was more to this than met the eye. The cop shook his hand and let him have copies of all relevant information, relieved that at least Agnes Trepagnier would not be telephoning today as he had every day, to complain that nothing was being done.
“I presume you won’t blow my cover?” laughed Pascal.
“No. We know what happens around here, but I won’t let on who you are if anyone asks. At least that way, you can do your cloak and dagger act and put an end to this stupidity.”
Something was wrong, very wrong, but Pascal wasn’t quite sure what it was. He sensed there was more to this than met the eye.
Chapter 4 – Confrontation
“I need to know if you are using me.”
“Using you in what way?” replied Agnes, actually surprised that anyone would question her motives, let alone a friend like Pascal.
“The cops seem to be under the impression that vineyard owners around here have done this before.”
“Done what before? You are not making sense” said Agnes.
“Reported the whole stock as having been stolen and then finding it at the last minute and increasing their sales in the meantime.”
“And you believed that I would do that to you?” she asked, her eyes showing that puppy dog sadness that he recognized from years before.
He felt half sorry for doubting her and Hector, but he had to ask.
“If you think that, then you are not the friend I took you to be” she replied coldly. “I asked you here because we don’t want the publicity, not because we want more. Hector has the best clientele and other producers are jealous of that. It’s a known fact. The police may not be taking this very seriously, Pascal, but I expected better of you.”
“I had to ask and would have been foolhardy not to have asked” he said.
Her face seemed to warm a little after that explanation. As for Hector, he had only just entered the room and welcomed Pascal. He was looking very ill and Pascal couldn’t remember him looking that bad. The stress and the worry of the wine disappearing was starting to tell. Pascal almost felt sorry that he had confronted Agnes with such a suggestion but, as he had explained, it was necessary.
“I need timescales and a lot more information,” said Pascal. What he had up his sleeve was the fact that he already had the notes from the gendarmerie. They didn’t know that and he would check their account of the robbery against their original complaint to make sure that there were no questions left unanswered.
“Who drives a wagon capable of emptying the vats in that space of time?” he asked at the end of his interrogation on the movement of that night.
“Most wine producers, but you can cross two off your list. These are two smaller vineyards that don’t produce enough to worry about having a wagon. They are more hobbyists than serious wine producers. Hector had written down the names and passed Pascal the paper.
“And who else in this area produces the Beaujolais Nouveau?”
“They all do,” said Hector. “This is the only part of the country where the Gamay grapes thrive.”
With all the information that they had given him, Pascal took his leave. He had to visit the various chateaux in the region which were within a distance that made the theft viable. He had the timing down to the minute, so that shouldn’t be too hard. Those which were too distant could be eliminated. Although this was tedious work, it was part of what was needed to actually get anywhere near close to answers. He would also be able to get a feeling about the other vineyard owners and he trusted his instincts.
As f
or Agnes and Hector, they were both looking weary and, above all else, Pascal wanted to see them happier than they currently were. It seemed as if the theft was taking its toll on both of them. There was still a feeling of unease that Pascal couldn’t quite place, but time would fill in those gaps. That’s where instinct was really put to work and he was certain that he would find the answers.
The local air was good and strolling around the vineyards and tasting the local wine would be a pleasure, dotted with questions which wouldn’t seem out of place from a typical holiday-maker.
Chapter 5 - A Warning
Pascal was building up a profile. His encounters with people in the wine making business was proving to be very useful indeed. There were at least three producers that he could knock off his list of suspects. These were producers with no access to transport so it would have been impossible for them to have stolen the wine.
“Do you work like a cooperative with other vineyards?” he had asked at one winery.
MYSTERY: Pascal Tourret Private Detective (Mystery, Suspense, Crime, Murder, Detectives, Fiction, Unsolved Mysteries, Mysteries, Thriller, Intense, Drama) Page 4