by Katie Penryn
“Oh, a vague rumor here or there,” I said.
“Who’s going to answer that?” Diane asked her two companions.
“I will,” said Catrine. “I dated him, too.”
“Only once,” said Diane.
Catrine gave a little snort. “Once was enough. Such a creepy guy. All smiles and bonhomie on the surface but there was something kind of slimy about him underneath.”
“How do you mean?” I asked thinking of the flowery style of the letters we’d read. “Slimy?”
“I couldn’t put my finger on it. He made me uncomfortable. On the one hand his manner was unctuous to a point, but on the other every tiny little thing had to be his way even down to what I could drink and eat.”
“Did Hélène ever have anything to do with him?” I asked.
“She’d gone out with him before me and she warned me off him, but I hadn’t listened.”
“What did she warn you about?”
“Nothing specific. She said he made her skin crawl when he touched her. That they’d had a row. She dumped him as fast as she could, but he wouldn’t let go. He followed her about for months. We’d call it stalking these days.”
Felix kicked me to tell me to let the subject drop, I guess.
He took up the questioning. “You mentioned possible money problems. Did you ever hear of any pressure from competitors? Could Hélène have been blocking a sale of the business to one of the larger enterprises?”
Anne-Marie sought confirmation from the others then said, “Not that we know of. Hélène was tight-lipped about the business even though we were her best friends. The business was off limits for discussion. If we pushed, all we’d get was everything’s fine.”
Felix and I had run out of questions.
“Thank you all for helping us out here. You’ve been helpful,” I said.
“We have?” they said in unison and laughed.
“One thing you should be sure of,” Catrine said. “Everyone liked Hélène. We three find it difficult to think this could be anything other than an unfortunate accident because we can’t imagine anyone wanting to kill her.”
*
As usual now that we had to make so many trips to the Cognac area, Felix and I went over what we’d learned on the way home to Beaucoup-sur-Mer.
“Let’s summarize the results of that meeting,” Felix began. “The girls didn’t tell us anything to point us in any definite direction.”
“No, but they confirmed what we’d learned elsewhere: everyone liked Hélène and no one can imagine why anyone would want to kill her.”
“They couldn’t say the same for Gilbert Clancy.” Felix chuckled. “Can’t stand him, can they?”
“Doesn’t mean he’s a murderer.”
“Another point: they hadn’t picked up any vibes about an affair from either Jean-Claude or Hélène.”
A busy roundabout lay ahead. I threaded my way into the traffic reminding myself I had to go anticlockwise round the circle and not clockwise as in England. I’d found that sometimes if I let my attention stray I went the wrong way. Fortunately, I’d only done that when the roads were clear.
Safely out the other side and on the road back to our little town, I told Felix what had been running through my subconscious while my conscious mind coped with the traffic.
“The most important thing I took away from our conversation with the three of them was Hélène was anxious because she felt Jean-Claude was keeping a secret from her.”
“Yes, me, too. It can’t have been anything to do with the financial side of things because Hélène would have known about that. If it was anything to do with the business, it had to be concerned with the production department. That’s Jean-Claude’s area of responsibility.”
“We’ll have to confront him. If he wants us to solve this case, he has to be open and honest with us.”
My phone rang. I passed it to Felix. He took the call.
“It’s Diane,” he whispered.
I snatched my eyes away from the road to watch his face. As he listened his brows met in a frown of puzzlement. He thanked her and closed the call.
“That’s peculiar,” he said. “Diane didn’t want to mention it in front of the others, but she says Hélène spoke to her in confidence about her anxiety over the vines.”
“Vines?”
“Yes, apparently she found a patch of dead vines. They’re not dormant, they’re dead. She came across them when she was out riding. When she cut through the stem, the wood was hard and brown.”
“Does Jean-Claude know about it? He never said anything to us.”
“Diane says Hélène spoke to him about the vines and he brushed her off saying it was nothing to worry about.”
“There you are. Maybe it’s got something to do with his secret. It is the production side of the business.”
“But, boss, the oddest point is that Diane said the dead vines are in the area where Hélène’s body was found.”
“In that case, we must visit the spot tomorrow and check them out,” I said as we passed through the town gates.
“Better still. When we get home, we can look at the photos we took at the time.”
Chapter 20
The next day was a Saturday, so we took Jimbo along with us when we returned to Cognac to visit the Château de Portemorency. Jimbo wanted to see his friends. I’d phoned ahead to Jean-Claude telling him we needed to have another look at the site of Hélène’s death without telling him why. He said that was fine as long as we didn’t want him to accompany us. Meanwhile, our mayor, Monsieur Bonhomie, had called the mayor of Cognac to ask him to fix up an interview for us with the CEO of the de Gonzelles distillery. As luck would have it, he had returned from Paris that week. His distillery was working Saturdays in an effort to increase bottling to fulfill an export order to the United States, and he could see us that afternoon at half past three.
Felix’s comment when he put the phone down was that it must be costing him a pretty fortune with the tax on employees working more than a thirty-five hour week.
He added, “But it has to be worth it. Last night, I checked on French cognac exports. Cognac exports to the United States last year hit an all time record of 458,600 US gallons. All from our departments of Charente-Maritime and Charente. That’s an amazing record of production and sales.”
“I’m leaning more and more towards the solution to our puzzle lying somewhere in the cognac industry.”
“Don’t be too hasty, Penzi. We still have to meet Gilbert Clancy, Hélène’s fancier, and there’s always past rivalries and employees who may bear a grudge.”
“We’ll have to leave most of that work to Inspector Dubois. There’s no way you and I can cover that number of people, many of them migrant workers who’ve not been back for several years now that so much of the harvesting is carried out by giant picking machines.”
“Maybe it won’t come to that and the answer will hit us slap bang in the face.”
I had to laugh at Felix’s optimism.
*
Saturday had broken bright and sunny, a perfect early summer’s day in this part of France. I almost regretted that we’d been invited to lunch. A picnic would have been fun but there was always time for that on another weekend. We waved goodbye to Sam who had turned down his chance to come along with us, preferring to spend his free time with Monsieur Bonhomie’s daughter Emmanuelle who was on vacation from Bordeaux University.
Jean-Claude hobbled out to see us leaning on a crutch. That was an improvement over the wheelchair, but it was still sad to see such a handsome man handicapped by the accident that had overtaken him. I made a note to ask him if he’d gotten to the bottom of why that had occurred.
Accompanied by much barking from the dogs, his three children ran down the steps to welcome Jimbo and dragged him off to their secret hiding places around the property. We three adults repaired to the veranda for aperitifs having wished Madame Brune bonjour on our way into the house. The dogs settled th
emselves in their baskets. It was good to see Juno walking on her sore paw with no difficulty.
Once we were seated and had admired the display of tulips in the beds close to the veranda, I asked Jean-Claude how he was coping.
“Life goes on,” he said, “especially when one has three children to care for. My leg’s improving and I have to be grateful that I didn’t lose it.”
“Have you found out yet how the safety switch happened to be disconnected?” I asked him.
“No. Nothing conclusive. The gardener swears everything was working fine when he gave the machine its monthly maintenance.”
Felix coughed and said, “Don’t you find it a bit of a coincidence that you should have been driving the mower when the switch failed?”
“And that it was a slippery slope that he’d neglected to mow?” I added. “That’s three points of coincidence. The odds of that happening by accident are negligible.”
Jean-Claude lowered his eyes and blinked slowly a couple of times as if processing what we were suggesting and finding the idea unpalatable.
He raised his head again to reply. “I can see where you’re going, but I have to tell you Paul Menton has worked for my family here at the château since he left school over ten years ago. I’d trust him with my life. We’ve had a little chat about the incident and he assures me he will double-check all our equipment to ensure there is no repeat.”
Felix gave my knee a nudge. I had to agree with him. The gardener would bear watching. He had the lawn mower incident against him, he had access to the tunnels under the château and he had the tools to clean up the traps. However, at the moment there was nothing to connect him directly to Hélène’s death and no hint of a motive.
We moved on to the business, asking how Jean-Claude’s search for a finance director was progressing. He said he was leaving the preliminary work to a recruitment agency and would only be involved in the final stages to ensure there was no issue of a personality clash. Felix offered to step in meanwhile and show Jean-Claude how to keep on top of cash flow analysis. The poor man was only too glad to accept. We arranged for Felix to begin when we returned from our inspection of the site of Hélène’s death. The sooner we left to conduct this re-examination, the sooner we’d be back.
*
This time our attention was on the vines themselves. It was obvious to us as we approached the cultivated area in front of the scrubland that something was wrong. I parked the car at the end of the rough lane and we got out, Felix with his camera. The photos we’d taken before hadn’t proved detailed or clear enough to be useful. A quick survey showed us that the vines in a triangle at the ends of the rows were bare of new growth. Ten plants in the middle row, nine in the next on both sides and so on, making a perfect triangle of… what? Stasis? Late development? Death? Not a green tendril among them. Quick mental arithmetic told me that was a hundred and ten vines, a significant number.
“What’s wrong with them?” I asked Felix.
“I’ll be blowed if I know,” he answered. “I know nothing about plants, let alone precious ugni blanc vines.”
“Don’t show off,” I said, laughing at his mention of the name of the grapes grown by most of the cognac producers.
He snapped away taking photos of the whole area and of the individual vines, zooming in for close shots from time to time. When he’d finished, he broke off a couple of twigs and showed the centers to me. Brown. No green. No sap.
“Try the trunk or whatever it’s called,” I suggested.
He took out his Swiss army knife and knelt down to slice a v-shaped gash in the nearest vine and eased out the chunk.
“Absolutely dead,” he said tossing it over to me.
I caught it and checked it. It was brittle and broke off into pieces, almost crumbling in my hand, as I tried to bend it.
Felix stood up and strode to another vine two rows along and three deep and went through the same performance with the same result. And then another one on the other side of the middle row.
“I’m no botanist as you know, boss, but these vines are as dead as door nails to me.”
“No wonder Hélène was concerned,” I said. “And no wonder she was down here that day. She must have been checking this out. Do you think it’s something contagious? Are the vines infected?”
“The dreaded phylloxera that almost killed the French wine industry in the late 1800’s hasn’t returned as far as my internet research goes. That bug was imported on Californian rootstock brought in to increase production. The funny thing was it ate the leaves of American vines but the roots of French vines. So the French developed hybrids and also grafted French vines onto American rootstock.”
“Yes, I did know that. It only goes to show how important the terroir is. Same rootstock as California but different product and all due to the soil.”
Felix tried another vine. It was as dry and brittle as his last test.
“I did read about a new problem that’s been causing trouble in the region. In a small way so far, but still a threat. It could be that: phytoplasmas. They attack the leaves or fruit of the plant and are spread by leaf hoppers. However, the article I read said they’re being monitored and I would have thought Jean-Claude would have known if they’d reached his vineyards.”
“Can you see any leaf hoppers on the surrounding vines?” I asked.
Felix had a good squint, even using his telephoto lens, but shook his head.
“I don’t really know what I’m looking for,” he said.
I sat down on the grass cross-legged at the foot of the row of vines Felix was examining. I patted the ground beside me.
“Come and sit down for a moment. We need to talk this through,” I said.
He put the lens cap back on his camera, stowed the camera away in his bag and sank down beside me. We sat in silence for a few minutes, each of us churning over what we’d discovered and trying to make sense of it in our own way.
“Okay,” I said at last, after taking a deep breath. “There’s something seriously wrong with the vines in this small area. Diane told us Hélène spoke to Jean-Claude about her misgivings but he refused to answer and brushed it off. Why wouldn’t he be as worried as she was? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe he already knew. Maybe he knows it’s isolated to this small patch. Otherwise, I can’t guess,” said Felix.
“It has to be significant. Someone put traps here. Possibly with the intent to kill anyone who investigated too closely.”
“But, Penzi, just because someone–Jean-Claude or Hélène–examined the vines doesn’t mean they would walk off into the scrubland, does it?”
I shrugged. It was all so complicated. Nothing made sense.
Felix put his arm around me and gave me a squeeze. “Where do we go from here? I suggest we tackle Jean-Claude about Hélène’s concern. Find out his side of that story.”
“And I want you to take some cuttings. We can get them examined for this phylly-what’s-it and the bugs. At least then, we’ll know what we’re dealing with.”
“True. But if these vines are diseased why wouldn’t Jean-Claude want something done about it? Wouldn’t he have to report it to the BNC or some other authority; the Ministry of Agriculture for example?”
I pushed myself off from the ground and stretched out my cramping legs as I stood up. As I brushed off the grass from my jeans a frightening thought crossed my mind. “Felix?”
“Yes,” he said as he rose to his feet, slung his camera over his shoulder and began to walk back towards the car.
I went on with my unthinkable idea. “What if… just what if… Jean-Claude is denying the damage to his vines because he’s worried this part of the vineyards will have to be destroyed to contain the infection?”
Felix stopped in his tracks and turned back to me. “Penzi, you do realize that would give him a perfect motive to kill Hélène.”
I stared at Felix as he put my thoughts into words. “If so, we’ve read their relationship wrongly. Fa
ced with such a catastrophe, I would have expected them to talk it over and tackle it together.”
“But Jean-Claude rebuffed Hélène’s fears and wouldn’t even discuss them.”
“I don’t like where this is leading, Felix. I don’t want to continue working for him if he’s guilty.”
“Now you’re being illogical. He may be your client for the time being, but you’re not his lawyer, you’re his private investigator.”
“This is the worst case we’ve ever been involved in,” I moaned as I climbed back into the car. I switched the engine on and was about to turn the car round when I realized we had no samples. I cut the engine making Felix ask in alarm what was the matter.
“We need the samples. Please go and cut some, Felix. I’ll wait here.”
He gave me a long suffering look and went off to do my bidding returning with a selection of wood cut from several vines.
“There,” he said. “That should do. Who should we get to do the testing?”
“We’ll ask Catrine. She’ll know.”
*
On the way back to the château we discussed whether we should put the matter to Jean-Claude but in the light of our reasoning, we decided to play safe and not say anything to him until we had the results of the test on the vine samples.
After lunch Felix had to put away any suspicions we had and give Jean-Claude a lesson in cash flow for an hour, while I spent the time with Jimbo and Jean-Claude’s children. At three we left for the de Gonzelles distillery and our meeting with the CEO.
Chapter 21
Phillipe de Gonzelles kept us waiting half an hour in the lobby. No one was on duty in the reception area. I guessed that was because it was an extra workday. Felix tried all the doors leading out of the area but they were all locked. He rang de Gonzelles several times while we kicked our heels, all his calls going to voice mail. Ten minutes delay I would have accepted with grace, but thirty minutes seemed excessive given that we had an appointment. Even then he didn’t come out to welcome us. At last, he took Felix’s call and told us to come through. We heard the lock on the door on the left click and pushed the door open to find a short corridor leading to double doors marked: Phillipe de Gonzelles, PDG, the French for CEO.