Moniales Residence
A corner of paradise two steps from central Bordeaux
30 upscale apartments just minutes from downtown
Near the university and shopping centers
Pool, tennis courts, playground, quality facilities
Offer yourself outdoor luxury in the heart of the city!
“Well done, Virgile! Well done!”
They opened another file. This time it was a spreadsheet with construction costs, profitability thresholds, supplier estimates and financial prospects that were a little difficult to decrypt. They scrolled through several dozen pages, a cold succession of measurements, percentages and sums. Enough to make them dizzy.
Benjamin picked up his telephone and immediately called Alain Delfranc. At this hour, he had probably finished the dinner service and was quietly smoking his pipe at the window of the kitchen.
“I have news in the Moniales Haut-Brion case. We just discovered something huge.”
“Where are you calling me from?”
“From my office on the Allée de Tourny. I’ll admit that this is a little too big for me.”
“OK, don’t move,” Alain ordered. “Starting now, don’t touch anything else.”
13
Taste that!”
Cooker lifted the glass to eye level. Then he lowered it slowly, tilting it slightly in front of the white tablecloth to judge the wine’s dark color and slightly oily texture as it slid slowly down the side.
“It’s good,” he said without showing any enthusiasm. “Very good, even. What is it?”
“Is the fabulous Cooker, the imperial winemaker afraid of losing face?” Alain teased him gently.
“Not at all, my friend. I can tell you that there is sun in it. It’s from the South. Perhaps it is made with syrah.”
“You’re getting warm. You’re even quite close.”
“Or rather, it’s grenache noir and carignan. In any case, it is a blend like that. There is also some mourvèdre, and perhaps a little cinsault.”
“You’re almost there.”
“Its attack is not so subtle. It is well structured. You can feel the tannins. There are hints of berries and a slight touch of warm spices. It’s well done.”
“So?”
“Perhaps a Côte-du-Roussillon. You can smell the terraces, the stone and the tramontane wind.”
“You’re burning hot.”
“I’d say a wine from Collioure, with a characteristic personality and a very concentrated licorice finale. Perhaps it’s Les Espérades from the Vial-Magnères domaine. It resembles that kind of wine.”
“Damn. How do you do that?
“You do your job, and I do mine,” the winemaker said, drinking another mouthful. “And what if you told me a little about yours.”
“The one that used to be mine,” Alain Delfranc corrected, lifting his index finger, “and that I was right to run away from, considering how rotten the world is!”
“In any case, you did me a great service by bringing the Moniales case to the police. Thanks to you, they were able to intervene more effectively.”
“I think that if you had brought it to their attention yourself, they would have passed it from department to department,” Alain admitted, “and they would have taken longer to order the search.”
Benjamin served himself another glass of Collioure, lit up a Villa Zamorano—a falsely rustic robusto from Honduras he had yet to taste but that he had heard about. He settled into his armchair and let out a thick puff of gray smoke.
“So, now you can tell me exactly what he confessed to, our Guéret.”
“Everything, absolutely everything! He didn’t try to deny anything. He was working for his uncle, Robert Guéret, who is a real estate developer who sells on the side, well, an unscrupulous fellow who helped out his nephew when Gilles Guéret had his car accident. He invested in the printing presses and got bank loans to help Sébastien. In exchange, he asked for some small services. The kid wasn’t a hard one to corrupt: He was a little snot who wanted to get ahead and most of all to prove to his mother that he could succeed better than his father had.”
“So it was Uncle Robert who planned the whole thing?” Benjamin asked, letting his neck lean back on the headrest.
“When Gilles Guéret had his accident, Sébastien was an intern at the Moniales Haut-Brion, and that is when the uncle got involved at the paper. He convinced the kid to stop his oenology studies and to take over the family business. Obviously, he put out some cash to persuade him, and he asked him to make a wax imprint of the cellar keys. The kid succeeded. Apparently it is not very complicated. He took advantage of a moment of inattention on the steward’s part to take the keys from a jacket hung at the door of the tank room, and he simply molded them in a special wax. Then he used the impressions to have the keys made. ”
“Had he planned the hit for a long time?” Cooker asked, setting down his empty glass.
“Not at all. It was when he went to pick up his nephew from the château that he got the idea of ruining Denis Massepain’s life and then offering to buy the estate, with the intention of building luxury apartments. No kidding. An estate of that standing, with several acres of trees and a small brook has great appeal to developers. But that you saw on the documents.”
“Yes, I saw. But that doesn’t explain how they managed to get past the alarm.”
“Guéret Jr. had overheard a conversation between Denis and the steward. One of them had mentioned a year, but it seemed out of context. Guéret realized that it was actually the code to the alarm. When he returned to put that damned yeast into the barrels, he entered the four numbers, and the alarm was turned off. He’s not dumb! In fact, he’s quite clever, because he specifically chose to pollute only some of the barrels so it wouldn’t look like a malicious act.”
“Absolutely. For the uncle and the nephew, it was just the first part of a strategy designed to drain Massepain’s morale and put a proverbial knife to his throat. In any case, they intended to go as far as they needed to get their hands on the Moniales. They were ready to act as soon as their attacks succeeded. That was clear when the uncle used Sébastien to begin building his marketing campaign for the luxury apartments. It was all in perfect order—starting with the overmantel used in the initial advertising. The whole campaign included posters, brochures, ads, promotional materials, all produced free of charge by the Guéret presses, of course!”
“And the overmantel …”
“That is another story. It is, for that matter, exclusively your story. Had you not gone out looking for that painting and then instinctively put two and two together when you discovered the connection to Sébastien, this crime would have played out. Nobody would have known. For that matter, I would like to know how many dirty deeds of the kind have been carried out in the Pessac and Talence areas! Behind all those buildings, luxury apartments and suburban houses there must be some pretty sleazy politicking, scheming, bribing, intimidation and power plays.”
“Better not to imagine them. What good does it do? But how did they get their hands on that overmantel?”
“That was just by chance. Sébastien’s father had bought the painting some time ago, and it had been lying around in a back hallway. The son had known about it since he was little, and he thought it would be good for the marketing campaign. You can picture the spirit: a fine old home with some history. Very chic! Even small-time swindlers can have class.”
“Alain, I have to admit something that is not very honest on my part.”
“It’s time for the great confession!” the innkeeper said as he lit his pipe again.
“Yes, I have to tell you about a really ugly thing I did, a dirty trick you should never ever pull on a friend.”
Alain Delfranc’s started to turn pale.
“Are you serious, Benjamin? Or are you joking?”
“No, I’m serious. And if I tell you, promise me you won’t tell anyone.”
“OK, OK.”
; “Your Collioure. I knew what it was with the first mouthful. I wrote about it last week for an English magazine.”
“Cheater! And on top of that, you dragged out the pleasure, just so I’d think more of you?”
“No, no. Just to make fun of myself.”
HE made the decision when he woke up. He would use the first introduction to Blaye he had written. Just to be sure, Benjamin reread his new attempts to describe it and ended up throwing them away. He then immediately called his editor to tell him there would be no modifications, with the exception of three words he absolutely had to change: “milksop” for “coward,” “bloody” for “bloodthirsty” and “diverse,” which fit better than “contrasted.” When he hung up, he did not feel all that self-assured and was afraid that his final instructions would not be followed. He drank two cups of tea and decided to take Bacchus on a walk to clear his mind.
He didn’t return until lunch, his boots caked with clay and his face damp with perspiration. The dog was in no better shape than his master. His tongue was hanging out, he was dragging his paws, and he didn’t even bother to bark when Virgile’s Renault 5 came speeding up Grangebelle’s gravel.
“Hello, Mr. Cooker. Your friend Denis has sent over four cases of Moniales Haut-Brion to thank you for what you did.”
“Of course you told him that tomorrow I’m off to Burgundy and that I would stop by to see him when I get back.”
“I’ll be sure to do so. When you are gone, I’ll drop in to make sure everything is going well, but we can already say for sure that this year’s wine has been saved. Alexandrine is sure of that. ”
“Keep the cases, Virgile. You deserve them as much as I.”
“Mr. Massepain gave me four, as well.”
“He’s a gentleman. Let’s go in. Elisabeth must be waiting for us to eat. I think she prepared a beef estouffade with olives, mushrooms and a good red wine—a Canon-Fronsac she managed to steal from me.”
Before sitting down, Benjamin grabbed a book from the shelf and handed it to his assistant.
“Here, Virgile, it’s a pleasure for me to give you this. I grant you the leisure of not reading Montaigne and of frowning on Montesquieu, but you cannot not read François Mauriac.”
“Maltaverne. That’s an intriguing title.”
“It’s a fine text. I’ll be honest with you. I would give anything to have never read it so I could enjoy discovering it again. Indeed, that is the only advantage of youth.”
“Thank you. I’ll start reading it tonight.”
“Read it whenever you want, Virgile. Tonight, in a week, in a year. It doesn’t matter. Great writing is like a great wine. It finds those deserving of it.”
THE END
What are Benjamin Cooker and Virgile Lanssien up to next?
Check out the next book in the series. Find out more here: The Winemaker Detective Series.
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About the Authors
© David Nakache
JEAN-PIERRE Alaux and Noël Balen came up with the Winemaker Detective over a glass of wine, of course. Jean-Pierre Alaux is a magazine, radio and television journalist when he is not writing novels in southwestern France. He is a genuine wine and food lover, and won the Antonin Carême prize for his cookbook La Truffe sur le Soufflé, which he wrote with the chef Alexis Pélissou. He is the grandson of a winemaker and exhibits a real passion for wine and winemaking. For him, there is no greater common denominator than wine. Coauthor of the series Noël Balen lives in Paris, where he shares his time between writing, making records, and lecturing on music. He plays bass, is a music critic and has authored a number of books about musicians in addition to his novel and short-story writing.
About the Translator
© Lebenoist
ANNE Trager has lived in France for over 26 years, working in translation, publishing and communications. In 2011, she woke up one morning and said, “I just can’t stand it anymore. There are way too many good books being written in France not reaching a broader audience.” That’s when she founded Le French Book to translate some of those books into English. The company’s motto is “If we love it, we translate it,” and Anne loves crime fiction.
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
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About the Author
About the Translator
Treachery in Bordeaux (The Winemaker Detective Series) Page 10