Dead in the Dregs (35 page)

When the rain had passed, I returned to the hotel and slept for a couple hours, undisturbed by dreams. I was empty. There was nothing left.

Twilight came on early, the sky darkened by a storm front moving in from the north. The
patronne
served me an apéritif unbidden as I lingered in front of the fireplace in the dining room. I smelled the
kir
but couldn’t get the odor of the
marc
out of my nose.

 

At seven I
heard a horn honk twice. Sackheim’s Citroën sat idling on the street. We drove to the western edge of Beaune.

“I must extend to you Burgundian hospitality,” he said, pulling into a driveway beside a modest house that was beautifully situated at the base of the Montagne de Beaune. “No restaurants tonight,” he said and winked.

As we got out of the car, he pointed to vineyards that might as well have been his backyard—Les Grèves, Les Toussaints, Les Mariages—indicating their boundaries. Before us stretched a cemetery, and in the middle distance, a half mile from where we stood, I could see the radio tower that rose from the
gendarmerie
on rue des Blanches Fleurs.

He had set the table formally: white linen, china, sterling silver that had seen daily use, its surfaces tarnished with age.

“A simple meal,” he said, his blue eyes refracting the shiny crystal stemware. “I did not have much time.”

“I can’t believe you had any time at all. What happened? Did they really pull you off the case?”

“They have taken it out of my hands. Even Lyon’s hands. Paris has taken charge. It is now a triple-murder investigation: Feldman, Kiers, Françoise. Not to mention Jean’s suicide. And two of the victims are Americans. It is too, how do you say, ‘high profile.’ We are unaccustomed to this.”

“I hope my being here . . .” I started, but he didn’t let me finish.

“Well, they are not pleased that I permitted you to accompany me to the scene of Kiers’s murder, that you were present chez Pitot, that I involved you at all. But these, these are technicalities. I told you, they have been trying to get me to retire. For the moment, I’m on temporary leave. But they have sent me out to pasture.” He paused. “It is fine. I am ready,” he added, and walked to the kitchen.

I felt awful. To avoid thinking about it, I examined the photographs on the mantel. I could hear Sackheim at work. He came out bearing two plates.

“Meursault, Les Charmes. Comtes Lafon, 1989,” he announced as he took his seat and lifted a bottle from a silver coaster. He poured the wine and raised his glass.

“
À votre santé
,” he said, and we clinked. “
Et à votre santé mentale
,” he added. “Forgive my buying a
boudin de mer
at the
charcuterie
, but
I’m sure you understand.” He took a bite. “
Coquilles Saint-Jacques, brochet, et écrevisses.
How do you say?”

“Scallops, pike, and crayfish.” He had finished the dish with a simple
beurre blanc.

“
Pas mal
,” he shrugged.

“What happened this afternoon?” I asked.

“We were overwhelmed. The team from Lyon took control chez Pitot. Another from Dijon started at Domaine Carrière. And then Paris arrived. My men? It is quite beyond their capabilities. They stand around and look at each other in shock.
C’est incroyable.
”

“What about Feldman? I’m still trying to figure out what happened, exactly.”

“I am convinced that Feldman discovered the real father and son. He overheard them at Domaine Carrière arguing the day he arrived for his appointment. But Jean, Jean is crazy,
non
? It is like a disease.”

“And you think this explains Kiers?” I said.

“Not exactly. I believe that Carrière shot Kiers.”

“Why?”

“You know this yourself, do you not?” he said. I put my fork down. He regarded me with studied restraint. “You said that Carrière threatened you at the
dégustation publique
,” Sackheim went on. “And you said that Kiers was there. And you have said that Kiers’s specialty was, how did you say, ‘human interest stories,’ stories about families.” He paused. I sat back in my chair. I could see it coming, but that didn’t make it any easier. “Carrière knew all about you, about your investigations in Napa, about the purpose of your trip to Bourgogne. He realized that he had threatened you in public, and he was afraid—apparently Kiers said something about your staying at the same hotel—that you would tell Kiers everything. And then, of course, Kiers, being a journalist, would write this story.”

“Jesus,” I muttered. “I got him killed.”

“Please, do not blame yourself. This family, they are mad, all of them. And they hate all wine writers, it would seem. Besides, what did we learn about Madame Pitot today?”

I didn’t respond. I was shaken and just sat there, guilt stricken.

“That she hates men, all men. I think that she goaded Carrière, insulted him, told him that he was not a man. He had to prove himself. He, too, had to be an accomplice. But, of course, he could not permit this story to be published.”

Sackheim rose from the table, cleared our plates, and served a salad of butter lettuce. He ate his in silence. I picked at mine.

“You saw the photographs?” he asked as he cleared the salad plates, not bothering to chastise me for not finishing mine. “My wife and daughter. My wife, Mireille, died in 1985. Breast cancer.”

“And your daughter?” I said, shaking myself out of it.

“She works for Microsoft. In Paris.” He shrugged, walked to the kitchen, and set to work on the next course. I could hear him opening and closing the oven door, and then the light sizzle of a sauté pan on the stove.

“There are two great French contributors to the investigative arts from the last century,” he called from the kitchen. “Who are they?”

I got up from the table and walked around the dining room, racking my brain to think of the French equivalent of Sherlock Holmes.

“No idea,” I said.

“Marie Curie and Louis Pasteur.”

“She invented X-rays, and he invented fermentation,” I said, standing at the door to the kitchen, wanting to reassure him that I wasn’t a complete moron.

“The X-ray,
oui.
To unlock the mysteries of energy and see into the heart of matter. Not to be fooled by surfaces. Measure the constant of energy and follow it into the realm of the invisible,” he said as he pulled a roast from the oven. “
Sanglier
,” he said. “How do you say?”

“Wild boar.”

“But Pasteur,” he continued, “no, my naïve and ignorant American friend, Pasteur did not discover fermentation. Man has been fermenting things for thousands of years: honey, grain, grapes.”

“I knew that,” I said, leaning against the doorjamb and shaking my head. “I meant, he discovered how to control fermentation.”

“How to
stop
fermentation, to isolate the microbe from the ferment itself. Pasteur said, ‘
La génération spontanée est une chimère
’: ‘spontaneous generation is,’ how does one say in English, ‘an illusion.’” He tossed
the sauté pan like a pro. “
Trompettes des morts
,” he said. “I adore them. And appropriate for the occasion. ‘Only products originating under the influence of life are asymmetrical because the cosmic forces that preside over their formation are themselves asymmetrical.’ That’s a quote. One of the most perceptive things ever said of the criminal personality.”

He carved the pork into two portions and spooned a little pile of mushrooms on the side of each plate.

“Pasteur said that since every active substance originates from life, then fermentation itself must be the work of life, not the work of death. Yeast, microbes, germs come from life! Not from death! But . . .” and he paused, it seemed, for dramatic effect: “The conditions under which fermentation takes place, this corruption and putrescence of a living thing, is anaerobic, without air, stifling, suffocating!”

His eyes gleamed. He gazed at me imperiously, astounded by the brilliance of it, as he carried our plates to the table. He moved slowly, like an elderly waiter in a one-star restaurant, then brought an open bottle of wine I hadn’t noticed from the sideboard. It was an old-vine Musigny from Comte de Vogüé.

“A ’59?” I remarked, examining the label as he held it before me.

“The year of your birth,
non
?” he said, delighted with himself. “An auspicious year
en
Bourgogne.”

“No, sorry, I’m younger than that. But thank you for the thought,” I said.

I twirled the wine and smelled it. I was on the point of describing it, but he put his index finger to his lips.

“Do not speak. It requires no words. Drink it. Enjoy it. Trust me, it is . . .” and then, putting the tips of his fingers to his lips, he kissed them into a petite explosion signifying nothing, signifying perfection. We tasted the wine. “Just remember it,” he said. “
Ça suffit.
”

The meal was impossibly delicious. I hadn’t realized how ravenously hungry I was, and as I ate, I felt completely restored.

We ate in silence. When we had finished I said, “So, who is guilty? Other than me, I mean,” and winced.

He placed his knife and fork on his plate and pushed it back.

“
À la fin
, we arrive at an understanding of
la famille Pitot.
And truly, it is an unhappy story. Remember what I said of Pasteur. His insight was that the process by which wine is degraded is biological. The hatred of Françoise, it is like a bacterium, a germ, and it feeds on her, devours her, and through her, the entire family. Does it derive from her father? Her mother? Is this defect biological, genetic? Perhaps, but I am not a scientist,
mon ami
, I am a detective, a cop. What we know is that first she poisons her mother-in-law with her spitefulness, a woman who already lives secretly in disgrace; then she poisons her sister with her
cupidité
, how do you say, her greed. Then she infects her husband, who, too, is ashamed, though she does not yet know the secret of Henri’s birth. All she knows is that he’s a failure, so she uses her lover, her own sister’s husband, to inflict the ultimate injury on her husband, and then doubles back, as you say in your Westerns, and corrupts Carrière with her hatred, itself an infection passed from father to child. Even so, she is not finished. No, she has a son, and she will not be finished until she turns him to acid, too.” He paused. “Would you like a little
fromage
? Some dessert? I have a
petite tarte aux pommes
from the
patisserie.
”

“I don’t want to appear ungrateful, but, to mangle the words of Brillat-Savarin when he stood on the verge of death and was peering into the void, life is short. Let’s dispense with the cheese course—and in this case, dessert, too—and have a cigar with the last of the wine.”

“
Formidable
,” Sackheim said and fetched his humidor.

We took our time over the ritual.

“So, who is guilty?” I repeated.

“Who is guilty? Who committed the crime?” Sackheim asked. “It begins with Etienne Pitot, who is ashamed of the bastard he must call his son, and Pascal Ginestet, who is, in his own eyes, a failure. But how can you say they are guilty when one had taken his own life and the other . . . Well, I think he took his own life, too. One by the rope and one by the bottle. And of course, there is Robert Wilson and his son.”

He took a long drag on the cigar and blew two perfect smoke rings, the second passing through the first and blowing it apart.

“
Magnifique
!” I remarked at the feat. “But what about Françoise? I don’t get it.”

“She is the most important. The mother.” He nodded gravely.

“I get
that
,” I said defensively.

“No, I mean, she is the mother of the crime. Remember what Monique said today—maybe the one true thing she has said: ‘It was all her idea.’ It is Françoise who gives birth to the plan. She uses her son, her husband, her lover, everyone around her as if they are weapons.” Sackheim took a deep sip of wine. “Françoise wanted her revenge. By the time she met Monique, she knew the truth of her husband’s paternity. These things came together in her mind—and yet, she has killed no one. In fact, she is a victim herself.”

“What do you mean, by the time she met Monique?” I said.

“Ah, forgive me.” He got up from the table and reached into a briefcase that sat by the front door. “Monique asked me to give this to you.”

He handed me a letter. It had already been opened. On the envelope, in a feminine hand, was written BABE.

“Please, go ahead,” Sackheim said. “I have already read it.”

My hands were shaking as I opened the letter.