A Good Year (20 page)

Madame Passepartout paused at the end of these breathless revelations for Max to comment, and seemed disappointed that he had nothing indiscreet to say. He promised to bring her back a large box of
canelés,
and put down the phone, a thoughtful man. But whatever the problem was, it would have to wait.

The four of them left the hotel after breakfast, a subdued group that moved slowly and talked quietly. The previous night’s alcohol had something to do with this, of course, but also the thought of the confrontation that lay ahead had taken the edge off their high spirits. It’s one thing to know a man is a crook and a liar, but quite another to tell him so to his face. Would he break down and confess? Deny everything and call the police? Lose his temper and start throwing bottles at them? Nobody was taking any bets.

They arrived at the house in the cours Xavier Arnozan as the tolling of a distant bell marked ten o’clock. Charlie squared his shoulders, adjusted his bow tie, and knocked on the door. The sound of footsteps could be heard coming down the corridor, and the door was opened to reveal a young man in a dark suit, stocky and impassive.

“I have an appointment with Mr. Fitzgerald.” Charlie’s voice sounded firm and confident, despite his surprise.

The young man neither smiled nor spoke, but stood back to let them in before leading them down the corridor and into the tasting room.

The long mahogany table was bare except for an ashtray. A chair behind the table was occupied by an older man with a long, bony jaw and his hair cut
en brosse.
Like the young man, he too was wearing a dark suit. As they watched him select and light a cigarette with studied deliberation, they heard footsteps behind them, and turned to see two uniformed policemen taking up their positions on either side of the door. The man behind the desk frowned, and spoke for the first time. “You two can wait outside,” he said to the policemen, with a flick of his finger, “and close the door.”

“Where is Mr. Fitzgerald?” Charlie made a brave attempt to bluster. “This is most irregular.”

The man behind the table held up a hand. “Who among you speaks French?” Max and Roussel nodded. “Good. You can translate for your colleagues. My name is Lambert. Inspector Lambert.” He left his chair and came round to perch on the corner of the table, squinting at them through the smoke from his cigarette. “Word reached us yesterday of your . . . activities, and I must tell you that here in Bordeaux we are not amused by this kind of adventure. To misrepresent the good name of our wines, to attempt this despicable substitution, to profit from fraud and breach of trust—these are crimes of a most serious nature, and the penalties are extremely severe.” He ground out his cigarette in the ashtray and went back to sit behind the table. Looking up at the row of frozen faces in front of him, he nodded and said again, “Extremely severe.”

“Putaing,”
said Roussel.

“Bloody hell,” said Charlie, who had understood the gist if not the detail of Lambert’s remarks.

“I can explain everything,” said Max.

“Thank God you called when you did,” said Fitzgerald. “You know, I was sure he was genuine: he did all the right things, said all the right things. And an order like that, on the other side of the world, well away from France—it was perfect. Although I suppose I should have smelt a rat when he didn’t even try to negotiate on the price. But we can all make a mistake.” He shrugged, and his face brightened. “Fortunately, it wasn’t fatal—thanks to you, my dear. Have some champagne and tell me again what made you suspicious. Our last conversation was a little rushed.”

Their table overlooked the enclosed garden of the Hotel Bristol, green and refreshingly cool in the heat wave that had turned Paris into an oven. Nathalie Auzet sipped her wine before replying. “Mostly luck. As you know, I had to talk to Roussel about this year’s shipment, and when I found out he’d gone away, I thought it was odd. He hates to travel; I’ve never known him to spend a night away from home. And his wife wouldn’t give me a number where I could reach him. So I went to see Skinner, and nobody was at the house apart from that nosy old boot of a housekeeper. That’s when I called you, and when you told me you’d just had a private tasting for an Englishman . . .” She stared into her glass, and shook her head. “It’s such a pity Roussel lost his nerve and had an attack of honesty. It was a wonderful scheme.”

Fitzgerald leaned across to touch her hand. “Never mind. It served us very well. Enough, more than enough, to set you up in California, and me in New York. What a convenient country America is if you want to disappear. And we’ll be there by this time tomorrow.” He turned to the third person at the table, a man with a long, bony jaw and his hair cut
en brosse.
“How about you, Philippe? Did you enjoy pretending to be a
flic
?”

A smile softened the angles of the man’s face. “Easy work,” he said, “and the pay’s good.” The wad of hundred-euro notes Fitzgerald had given him was so thick he had had to divide it between two pockets. “It’s funny. Once they saw the boys in those uniforms, they didn’t ask for any proof of identity. I suppose you believe what you see.”

“What you
think
you see, Philippe,” said Fitzgerald, “what you
think
you see. Very much like wine. Tell me, how did you leave it with them?”

“Skinner and Roussel put up quite a good case, I have to say. A court would probably let them off with a slap on the wrist and a fine. But I don’t think they’ll cause any trouble. I told them we would be launching a full-scale investigation into this so-called Monsieur Fitzgerald and his wine dealings, and that we’d be in touch. I let them think they might avoid prosecution if they behaved themselves and cooperated when the time came. My guess is that they’ll keep their heads down for the next six months and hope for the best.”

“
Chapeau,
Philippe. You did very well. And now I think we deserve to indulge ourselves.” Fitzgerald barely had time to raise his hand before there was a flurry of waiters at his shoulder. “The foie gras here is superb. And I believe they may let us have a glass or two of Yquem to go with it.”

Twenty

It wasn’t long before Max began to suspect that he’d been had. The first, most glaring clue was the overnight disappearance of Maître Auzet, which was to be the subject of fascinated speculation in the village for months, possibly years, to come. She had left no forwarding address at the post office, which the village took as a sure sign of irregular or possibly criminal behavior. Had she run off with a lover? Or was there—a thought always accompanied by a morbid but delicious shiver—something more sinister? A
crime passionnel
that would account for her empty office and shuttered house? Rumor was rampant—she had been spotted in Marseille, a light had been seen in her house, she had absconded with clients’ funds, she had forsaken this wicked world and joined the Sisters of Mercy. There was a fresh story every day. As one of the old men in the café said, it was better than anything on television.

Max and Roussel, for obvious reasons, kept their theories to themselves, hoping that in the way of these things, interest would fade. Eventually, they told one another, the case of the missing
notaire
would become just one of many unexplained incidents in the nine-hundred-year history of Saint-Pons.

Max discovered another disappearing piece in the puzzle when he tried to contact Fitzgerald in Bordeaux, only to find that his phone number had been discontinued. But what finally confirmed the deception was another call, this one made at the urging of Roussel.

Because he was a principal in the original scheme—even, it could be argued by the state prosecutor, the instigator—Roussel was an extremely worried man. Again and again he turned over in his mind the penalties he might face if the authorities chose to enforce them: back taxes (with copious interest) on the money he had made, fines for not declaring that income, bankruptcy, possible imprisonment, his family destitute, his life in ruins. During the days that followed the events in Bordeaux, one could almost see the black cloud over his head as he went through the motions of tending the vines. He lost his appetite, hardly spoke to his wife, snapped at his dog. At last, when he could bear it no longer, he persuaded Max to contact the Bordeaux police; knowing the worst, he felt, would somehow be better than fearing it.

The two men sat in the kitchen while Max called information for the number in Bordeaux and, after some delay, was put through to Inspector Lambert.

“Oui?”
It was the clipped, impatient voice of an overworked man.

“It’s Monsieur Skinner here. Max Skinner.”

“Who?”

“You remember? We, ah, met last week in Bordeaux.”

“No, monsieur. I’m afraid you’re mistaken.”

“You are Inspector Lambert?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry, but is there another Inspector Lambert in Bordeaux?”

“No.”

“Are you sure? It was only last week that . . .”

“Monsieur”—the voice was now sounding exasperated—“Lambert is a common name. I happen to know that there are approximately sixty-seven thousand families in France with the name of Lambert. However, I also know that there is only one Lambert in the Bordeaux police department, and that is me. I’m sure you have something better to do than to waste my time. Good day, monsieur.”

Roussel had been leaning forward intently, chewing his lip, trying to guess at the other half of the conversation. Max put the phone down and shook his head, the beginnings of a grin on his face. “That crafty sod.”

“Who?”

“Fitzgerald. He must have set it up. Lambert, or whatever he’s really called, was no more a police inspector than I am. The whole thing was a fraud.” Max couldn’t stop shaking his head, like a man who’s just been shown how the white rabbit gets into the magician’s hat. “We’ve been conned,” he said. “Isn’t that great? We’ve been conned.”

The frown disappeared as hope began to dawn on Roussel’s face. “But the policemen . . .”

“Claude, you can rent anything nowadays, especially uniforms. Remember, we didn’t ask for any identification. You don’t, not in a situation like that. No, I’m sure of it. The only people who know what’s been going on are us and Fitzgerald and his friends. And they’re not about to tell anyone, are they? I mean, if it all got out, what are the penalties for impersonating a police officer? I think you can relax.
We
can relax.”

Roussel got to his feet and came round the table, his arms spread as wide as his smile.
“Cher ami. Cher ami.”
He plucked Max from his chair, clasped him in an embrace that threatened to crack his spine, whirled him off his feet as if he were no heavier than a sack of fertilizer, and kissed him on each cheek.

“Steady on, Claude,” said Max. “Put me down. I’d better call Charlie and tell him the good news.”

The rest of the summer passed under blue skies, with only the traditional mid-August storm as a temporary relief from the heat. There was hard, unremitting work in the vines and in the
cave,
with Fanny providing food and sweet consolation at the end of each long, blistering day. Max learned to drive a tractor and, as the shining season of autumn came, to pick the grapes and sort them according to size without bruising them. His face and arms turned the color of a pickled nut; his hands developed a thick carapace of rough skin; his clothes became dusty and faded; his hair grew shaggy. He had never been happier.

Madame Passepartout took enormous pleasure in the postcards that arrived regularly from London, particularly those featuring members of the royal family. It appeared, to her great satisfaction, that Christie and Charlie were carrying on what had begun under her very eyes in Saint-Pons.

It became a litany. “I should never be surprised,” she would say to Max without fail every time a new postcard arrived, “if this doesn’t end in something more permanent. A ceremony at the Mairie would be most appropriate,
non
? I must think of something to wear. Of course, Monsieur Max, you will be the
témoin de mariage.
”

And even taking into account his friend’s past success at avoiding matrimony, Max was inclined to agree.

He and Roussel, with the help of a loan arranged by Maurice at the local Crédit Agricole, were planning to uproot the tired old vines during the winter and replace them with Roussel’s Cabernet and Merlot mixture. Working with a cousin in the building trade, they had made much-needed changes to the
cave,
scrubbing it out, whitewashing the ceiling and walls, and installing a simple stone bar just inside the door. They leveled the track that led to the barn and put up a plain but handsome sign on the road for passers-by who might want to stop for a
dégustation.

As for their pride and joy and hope for the future, the wine from the stony patch, it was no longer called Le Coin Perdu. Instead, they had decided to use the name of the property, with a presentation suitable for an exceptional wine. The corks were long, the capsules were lead, the bottles were
feuille morte,
that particular and expensive type of glass that prevents the penetration of harmful ultraviolet rays. And the label was a model of classic understatement: Le Griffon. Vin de Pays du Vaucluse. M. Skinner et C. Roussel Propriétaires. Their ambition was to join that other distinguished
vin de pays,
the Domaine de Trévallon, as one of the very few non-appellation wines worthy of a connoisseur’s consideration.

These were early days, of course, but the indications were encouraging. Several good restaurants, one as far away as Aix, had agreed to put Le Griffon on their lists; this despite its price, which was very high by Luberon standards. Next year, when May came around, Max and Roussel planned to enter the wine at Macon, to see if it could win a coveted medal. But already the word of mouth was good, and growing.

Unfortunately, it had not yet reached the group of Americans who came to the
cave
one bright October morning while Max and Roussel were in the back, stacking cartons ready for delivery. Roussel went to greet the visitors at the bar, setting out a line of glasses, pouring the wine and wishing them a
bonne dégustation
before returning to his cartons.

Max couldn’t resist eavesdropping.

“Hey, this is pretty good.” There was a murmur of agreement from the other members of the group. “You know, it’s got that Bordeaux taste. I bet there’s some Cabernet in there somewhere.”

“Do you think they ship?”

“Sure. Everybody ships.”

“Where are the prices? Oh, right, this little card here. It’s about one for one with the euro, isn’t it?”

A moment of silence. Then: “Jesus! Who do these guys think they are? Thirty bucks a bottle!”

“For a minute or two,” said Max, “I thought they were going to try to haggle. But then they had a whip-round and bought a couple of bottles between them. That’s when I began to think the vineyard motto ought to be Get Rich Slow. Actually, it was a historic moment, because it was our first American sale. Mondavi had better watch out.”

He picked up his glass and looked past Charlie at the faces around the long table that had been set up under the plane tree in front of the house. When Fanny had learned that Christie and Charlie were coming over from London for the weekend, she had offered to close the restaurant and cook her specialty for lunch: she would make the first cassoulet of autumn. The guest list reflected her opinion that one needs a crowd for cassoulet—as well, of course, as the correct weather. And in this, she couldn’t have asked for better: October was coming to an end with a series of spectacular, Indian summer days—cool in the morning, cool at night, warm enough in the middle of the day to eat outdoors, but not too hot to stifle the appetite.

In fact, jackets were already coming off as the guests paused after a first course—nothing serious, in view of what was to come—of quails’ eggs spread with tapenade,
brandade de morue
on toast, and crudités. The Roussels were there, with daughter and dog. Madame Passepartout, in dazzling autumnal hues of red and gold, had brought her special friend, Maurice, his shaved head, silver earring, and tattooed forearms marking him out as one of the region’s less conventional bank managers. Fanny had invited her chef and his wife, and, to make up a round dozen, young Ahmed, who helped in the restaurant’s kitchen.

Charlie had turned away from Max to resume his efforts to pass on to the Roussels some of the basic curiosities of the English language. “There is no sex in English, you see,” he was saying, “no
le
and
la,
which makes life much easier.
Plus facile.
”

“No sex,” repeated a thoughtful Roussel. “But much cricket,
non
?”

Max left them to plunge ever deeper into the thickets of English grammar, and followed his nose into the kitchen, where Christie and Fanny had just removed from the oven a vast, deep-sided earthenware dish. It sat on the kitchen table, the size of a cartwheel, with a golden crust of bread crumbs covering the top.

“Voilà,”
said Fanny,
“le vrai cassoulet de Toulouse.”
Max looked at her and smiled. He couldn’t imagine any other woman who could look desirable while wearing oven gloves. She took them off and ran her fingers through her hair.

Max bent over the dish and breathed in the heavy, rich aroma, humming with the promise of cholesterol. “God, that smells good. What did you put in it?”

Fanny started to count off the ingredients on her fingers: “White beans, confit of duck, garlic sausage, salt pork, breast and shoulder of lamb, duck fat, baby onions, loin of pork,
saucisses de Toulouse
(of course), tomatoes, white wine, garlic, a few herbs . . .”

“Max,” said Christie, “stop drooling and do something useful.” She gave him Fanny’s oven gloves. “Careful when you take it out. It’s heavy.”

The dish was greeted with a round of applause when it reached the table, and Christie was given the visitor’s privilege of making the first ceremonial incision in the crust, releasing a fragrant sigh of steam. Plates were passed and filled, the wine was tasted and admired, the cook was toasted, and then, as frequently happens when cassoulet is served, silence descended on the table.