Dead in the Dregs (32 page)

“My father wouldn’t give him anything,” Eugénie said. “He made him pay. Rent. For everything!
Vouz comprenez
? He wanted him to pay for the barrels, for the vineyard, for his parking. To rent his own inheritance. He incorporated the domaine. Maybe, maybe by the time Jean died, he would have paid off the mortgage.” She stopped. “If he wasn’t already dead,” she added, her voice breaking.

“It is insupportable, for a father,” Sackheim said, shaking his head. He looked at her, his gaze unwavering, and she returned the look, her eyes seething.

Madame Carrière sighed, then stood up.

“So he chose to work here, for his uncle,” she said, her hands gripping the back of the chair.

Sackheim glanced at me with a look of suppressed confusion, as if I could answer the riddle.

“I do not understand. Monsieur Carrière is your mother’s brother?” he said to Eugénie.

“Her
beau-frère
,” she corrected him.

“Françoise is my sister,” Madame Carrière said, placing the coffee pot and a tray of cups on the table.

Sackheim sat there in silence, his eyes closed. I could see him trying to reconstruct Ponsard’s diagram in his mind, but his lieutenant had described only one-half of the family.

“I apologize,
Madame
,” Sackheim said to Madame Carrière
.
“I am quite confused.
Votre nom de jeune fille
?”

“Ginestet. Sylvie Ginestet.”

She was standing at the kitchen counter, her back turned to us.

“You think you understand now,” she said in a whisper. “But you understand nothing. Nothing at all.”

She put a creamer and a bowl of sugar in the center of the table and poured us each a cup of coffee. “
Comme vous voulez
,” she said, sitting down. She added a cube of sugar and a little milk to her coffee and stirred, her teaspoon tinkling against the porcelain.

“It was hard after the war,” she began. “No one had any money. You had to sell your wine to the
négoce.
My father was unhappy. No matter what he did, it was never enough. Once he even tried to get an American wine writer to come to our house to taste his wine. He was here for Les Trois Glorieuses. It was a long time ago—I don’t remember the year. But of course the man never came.” She paused and took a sip of coffee. “My father made good wine, nothing special. And the house was simple, not
un grand domaine
. Papa continued to make wine, but he never recovered. He would tell the story over and over again. He drove my mother, my sister, and me mad with his talk. Every night the same thing. He would complain,
Maman
would cry, we would run to our room.” She stared down at the table.

“And then?” Sackheim asked.

“Nothing. He drank himself to death,” Sylvie Carrière said. “
Maman
did not weep. In fact, it was almost a relief. She sold one small parcel to pay off the estate taxes. It was not much—we were not a wealthy family—and she took what was left and swore on his grave that neither of her daughters would marry a
vigneron.
But of
course, what the parent wants, the child refuses. I married Jean-Luc. He was handsome, and he was a hard worker. At least my mother told herself that he might succeed where her own husband had failed. Jean-Luc builds up our domaine slowly, buys more vineyards, each time elevating the property. He bought this house. But he is a cold man, and I was very unhappy.” For a moment she seemed overwhelmed by the memories, then went on. “Françoise married Henri. You know this. What you do not know is that my sister and I competed with each other,” she said, looking at her niece. “She envied me. I had the better property, the richer husband. There was only one problem.” She paused. “I could not have children. I was, how do you say,
stérile.
”

Eugénie was staring at her, her eyes beginning to well up. “You do not have to . . .” she said.

“No, I do,
ma chérie.
I have lived with this, this shame, long enough. I cannot hold it inside anymore. It is killing me.”

A tense silence enveloped the kitchen. Eugénie looked out the window, the tears now streaming down her cheeks. “Don’t, please,” she whispered.

“Françoise hated me and her husband. I do not know whom she hated more, me or him. She wanted her revenge.” Sylvie Carrière paused. “So she seduced my husband.”

“Why are you doing this?” Eugénie protested. “Why are you telling them?”

Sackheim folded his hands on the table. “Tell me,” he said. “I need to know. I want to know.” His tone was even, insistent.

Sylvie Carrière sat mutely, staring into her coffee.

“Yes,” Eugénie said dully. “Jean-Luc is Jean’s father. He fucked my mother.” She seemed to spit the words out. “Or she fucked him. She hated my father, she despised him. He disgusted her. So she fucked her brother-in-law and tortured my father. They fought. All the time. And she would scream at him, ‘What kind of a man are you? You can’t even give yourself a son! It took my brother-in-law to give you an heir!’”

Eugénie buried her head in her arms, sobbing. Her aunt stared across the table, looking at nothing, her eyes blank, her expression lifeless. I turned to look out the window, embarrassed by what
Sackheim had unknowingly brought me to witness. I could see nothing but the shadow of the house cast against the cliff face.

“
Vous comprenez maintenant
?” Sylvie Carrière whispered.

Sackheim leaned over to place his hand on Eugénie’s shoulder and said, “I am sorry,
Mesdames.
I deeply regret the pain I have caused you both. I am grateful, however, that you chose to share with me this very difficult history.”

Rising, he signaled me to stand as well.

“I’m sorry,” I said, turning back as we neared the door. “There’s just one more thing.” Sackheim looked at me in surprise. “Have you seen your family since getting back?” I asked Eugénie. “Your mother and father?” I added, needing to clarify what had become terribly murky.

“Yes, last night,” she said, her face still buried, her voice muffled.

“Did you bring any presents for your family?”

She lifted her head. “Yes, how did you know this?”

“A package that your brother asked you to carry?”

“How did you know?” Her eyes locked on mine.

Instead of answering her question, I asked another one: “Didn’t it seem strange that Jean would ask you to bring something back when he’d already left in September?”

“He left it at my house on his last visit. He told me he had forgotten it. Is it a crime to bring your mother a gift, a gift your brother is no longer alive to deliver?” Her tone now was sharp.

“No,
Madame
, it is not a crime,” Sackheim replied for me, casting a look my way that said we were done. “
Merci, Mesdames.
” He nudged my shoulder, and we walked down the hallway and left the house.

We sat for
some time in the car in the shadow of the brick wall.

“What are you thinking?” Sackheim said.

“Well, for one thing, this condition Eugénie described in her grandmother and uncle: It comes from excessive exposure to copper sulfate. Winegrowers dust the leaves with it to prevent powdery mildew, a fungus. You can take it in through your eyes and skin, and they breathe it when they mix it up, like her grandmother did.”

“I still do not quite understand. All
vignerons
do not suffer from this, or am I mistaken?”

“No, of course not. And copper sulfate doesn’t kill you. I mean, it can, in sufficient doses, but they probably used too much of the stuff. I don’t think they knew as much about it back then as we do today. But that’s not the point.”

“And the point is?” Sackheim asked.

“This family, they possess a genetic disorder that absorbs and stores the copper in the body.” I paused as Sackheim took in the awful nature of the malady. “I don’t know about her grandmother’s blindness. I never heard of that. But it makes you tired, and in really extreme cases, it can lead to seizures, Parkinson’s, a whole host of neurological and psychiatric problems. In their case, I’d say it’s made them crazy.”

“Very interesting. And hideous,
non
?”

“In English it’s called Wilson’s disease.”

He just stared at me. “Wilson’s disease?
Vraiment
?”

“Can you believe that?” I said and shook my head.

“This irony, it is too cruel.”

“And so sad,” I said.

“Sad, yes. In fact, it’s tragic. Unfortunately, it doesn’t help us at all. None of this explains why Jean killed Richard Wilson. Or Feldman.”

We sat silently a moment. It was all too much.

“Explain to me,
s’il vous plaît
, your question about the package,” he then asked.

“Richard Wilson’s hand,” I said. “Jean didn’t forget it. He left it at his sister’s on purpose. He needed to put some distance between himself and the crime.”

Sackheim looked at me with attenuated exhaustion. “And where is this hand?” he said.

“Chez Pitot,” I said. “But we have one stop to make first. I’d like to drop by Domaine Gauffroy in Gevrey, if that’s all right.”

 

The abbey was
sheathed in silence. I knocked—there was an iron ring on the timbered double doors—and we waited in the courtyard where Jean had accosted Monique. Gauffroy’s wife opened the door. She and Sackheim both looked to me for an explanation.

“
Pardonez-moi, Madame.
The day of the tasting a young man, the son of Madame Pitot, who brought the terrine late in the day, left a bottle of wine on your table. Do you remember?”

“
Oui
,” she said tentatively.

“Do you have it? Is it here?”

She thought a moment, then shook her head. “I am sorry.” She started to close the enormous door.

“Perhaps your husband knows?” I suggested.

“
Un moment, s’il vous plaît, Messieurs.
”

She excused herself and reappeared a few minutes later with her husband. I repeated the question.

He had to think for only a second before saying, “
Suivez moi.
”

We descended to the tiny cellar where Kiers and Rosen had had
their argument. He pulled open the wrought-iron gate at the very back of the cellar, leaned down to a niche, and pulled out a bottle of wine—the only one not displaying a skin of dust.

“I don’t know why I saved it,” he told us. But it didn’t surprise me. He might not have admitted it, but he’d been curious and probably intended to taste it. I’d never met a Frenchman who simply poured a bottle of wine down the drain. They weren’t that profligate.

A half dozen glasses sat on an upturned barrel surrounding a corkscrew that had been fashioned from a gnarled grapevine, the screw embedded in its shellacked knuckle.

“May I?” I said.

Gauffroy nodded. I put the bottle between my knees and pulled. Sackheim was studying me. I poured a couple ounces. I held it to the light, twirling it until it sloshed up the side of the glass, then concentrated on the wine, smelling it, twirling it, then smelling it again. Over and over. I held it up one last time and finally took a sip. I let it swirl around my tongue and paint the sides of my mouth. Then I aerated it and let it sit on my palate a long time before spitting it onto the ground.

Sackheim watched me, his impatience mounting.

“The color is too evolved for a wine this young. See this?” I said, indicating a bricky tint that rimmed the wine. The slightest tinge. “Here you call this
pelure d’oignon.
” Lucien Gauffroy nodded. “But you should never see this in a new wine. And the nose isn’t fresh. Not just tight, but off,” I added.

“And the taste?” Sackheim said anxiously. “How does it taste to you?”

Gauffroy, curious to understand my commentary, poured himself some wine.

“It’s not as ripe or as generous as it should be,” I said. “Even wrapped up—which you’d expect—it should possess a lushness, a concentrated fatness and depth, an undercurrent of fresh fruit held in check by the tannins, that it just doesn’t have.”

Gauffroy sipped and nodded but remained silent. He followed my English, but I wasn’t sure how much he had understood.

“And you explain this how?” Sackheim said.

“Do you understand the term
fining
, Colonel?” I said. I racked my brain for the French translation.

“
Collage
,” Gauffroy said, just as the word came to me.

“Exactly:
collage
,” I said.

“Gluing?” Sackheim said, confused. “This is what an artist does, gluing things to paper,” he said to the
vigneron.

“Yes, but it’s also a stage in the winemaking process,” I said, acknowledging Gauffroy.

“
Expliquez, s’il vous plaît
,” Sackheim said.

“Fining—
collage
—is the process of clarifying wine,” I explained.

“
Et puis . . .
?”

“You add an agent to the wine.”

“
La colle
,” Gauffroy interjected.

“Egg whites, milk, bentonite,” I went on, “that coagulates and absorbs the colloids in the wine, pulls out the particulates so the wine won’t be cloudy.”

“It helps to stabilize the wine, too,” Gauffroy added.

“
D’accord
,” Sackheim said, following along.

“But historically, in the olden days, the French used to use dried blood powder, ox blood, to fine their wines.
N’est-ce pas
?” I said to Gauffroy.

“
Oui, c’est vrai
,” he said.

Sackheim looked at us, an expression of bafflement slowly giving way to one of triumph.

“You see,” he said proudly, turning to Gauffroy, “our American friend is truly a scholar of wine. But how did you . . .”

“Last night I drank a bottle of Carrière’s Chambolle I bought in town. It was incredible. Gorgeous, opulent fruit. This,” I said, holding the glass to the lamp hanging from the stone ceiling, “is the same wine. And not the same wine.”