“A woman by the name of Martine Montaud—”
“Madame Montaud?” She wiped her hands on the dishcloth and set out a plate of palmiers still warm from the oven. “Handsome, late forties, with dark hair?”
“You know her?”
“As one would expect of the owner of a cognac house, she was one of Madame Garreau’s best customers.” Marie-Claude sat on the table and began swinging her legs. “Very elegant lady,” she said. “Exquisitely made-up, hands neatly manicured, and I wouldn’t like her hairdresser’s bill, I can tell you.” She sighed. “I shall miss her coming in, though,” she added. “She never took offence when I told her what didn’t suit her—”
“Marie-Claude, that’s the reason Madame Garreau adores you. You give her clientele an honest appraisal and you don’t hold back. People respect that.”
She wondered how he could possibly know her employer’s opinion. As far as she knew, Luc had never met Madame Garreau, but that was beside the point. No woman wants to be told lilac suits her when it makes her look bland, any more than being sold the concept that wide stripes will flatter her hips. Especially Madame Montaud, who invariably left the shop hundreds of francs lighter, but every inch looking the successful businesswoman she was.
“She never struck me the type to get herself murdered,” Marie-Claude said, sipping her coffee. “Well, not bashed on the head, anyway. It seems so... vulgar.”
“You’d have preferred she was strangled?”
She shot him a look to say that wasn’t funny. “Who killed her, do you have any idea?”
“Everything points to the cellar master,” he said sadly. “Like that art theft back in May, there’s very little detective work involved in this case. Oh, and talking of art, I suppose you know Matisse is dead?”
“Cellar master? Luc, the cellar master of a cognac house is just one step below God. He’s not just responsible for the blend, he oversees the whole process of distillation from beginning to end, he even chooses the oak trees from which the barrels are made that will store his precious cognac, for heaven’s sake!”
“And you know this because...?”
“Suzette. I told you. Her husband died in a boiler-room fire.” She brushed a curl out of her eyes with the back of her hand. “We spend a lot of time talking when she picks up the kids.”
“You babysit?”
“Don’t sound so surprised. It gives her a chance to do a typing course and — hein. The point is, you’re looking at the wrong person, Luc. The cellar master couldn’t possibly have clonked Madame Montaud on the head. That wouldn’t have been his style, either.”
“Ah. You’d have preferred he strangled her?”
“That wasn’t funny the first time, and besides! What motive would he have for killing his employer?”
“Something sexual, probably, it usually is.” Luc shrugged as he reached for the last pastry. “Money or sex lies at the root of most murders, plus his were the only fingerprints that we lifted and I found one of her earrings in his bed—”
“It was so obvious, you searched his house?”
“Not exactly.” He leaned his weight against the back of the chair and folded his arms over his chest. “But because her body was found in the cellars, I conducted a thorough search of the entire factory, including the distillery, which happens to have a small room sectioned off that serves as the cellar master’s bedroom.”
“Only from November until March, when distillation takes place around the clock and he needs to be on hand night and day.”
“Suzette?”
“Suzette.”
“Hmm.” He scratched his chin. “Well, if you know so much about the process for making cognac and you don’t believe my suspect is the killer, why don’t you go up there and tell me who is?”
Marie-Claude jumped down from the table. “I’ll need a cardigan.”
“What about the shop?” he called up the stairs, and look! it proved the acoustics in this house were rubbish. It sounded for all the world as though he was laughing.
“What about the shop?” she called back, reaching for her green hat with the feathers. “They’re rich, these women. They can afford to wait awhile longer.”
Poor Madame Montaud could not.
The Domaine de Montaud lay on the north side of Cognac, protected by woodlands and snug inside a bend in the river. For almost two thousand years, vineyards had covered its sun-kissed slopes, which gazed over the valley of the Charente and the hills that unfolded beyond, but its acidic soil produced a wine whose low alcohol content played havoc with its conservation and so, in the seventeenth century, foreign merchants hit upon the idea of importing it in spirit form and diluting it on arrival. Because of the double distillation process involved, the Dutch named this spirit brandwijn — burnt wine — which had the added advantage of being cheaper to ship. But no matter how economical the costs of transport, when recession hits, luxury goods are the first to suffer. Huge stocks of brandy piled up in the cellars. Things were not looking good.
Until local producers noticed that their spirit not only improved with age, it tasted even better drunk neat...
But as cognac was born, so evolved a world of secrets and magic. In each dark saturated cellar, the cellar master became sorcerer, blending smooth with mellow, amber with gold, elegance with subtlety, to produce a unique and individual range of cognacs, from the youngest, at under five years, to prestigious reserves that had been maturing in oak casks for decades.
Marie-Claude had imagined such sorcerers to be sober, unsmiling, aloof, and dull. Undertakers in different suits. If they were, Alexandre Baret broke the mould.
“Enchanté, madame.”
Any other time and the eyes behind the spectacles would be twinkling flirtatiously. The crows’ feet either side said so. But today they only viewed the inspector’s assistant with mistrust, and were clouded with something else, too. Guilt? Grief? Fear? Marie-Claude couldn’t say, but following him through the shadowy barrel-lined chambers, their walls black from evaporation, she felt prickles rise on her scalp. With the rigorously controlled temperature, light rationed to brief and rare visits, the oaky tang to the air, it was like walking through a cathedral. That same air of reverence. Humility. Silence. Tranquility. The taking of life here seemed sacrilegious.
“I have informed the workforce that this area is out of bounds until further notice,” Monsieur Baret said, studiously avoiding the outline of a body chalked on the flagstone floor. “But in any case, only a handful of employees have access, and I assure you it is quite impossible to enter without the necessary keys. Indeed,” he added dryly, “one would stand a better chance breaking into the Banque de France.”
“You don’t think this could be a robbery turned sour, then?” Marie-Claude’s voice echoed softly. “After all, there are hundreds of migrants in the vineyards right now, breaking their backs to bring in the harvest.”
Alexandre Baret watched dust motes dance in the air over the spot where every trace of his employer’s blood had been scrubbed clean. “No, madame, I do not think that.”
“You’re not exactly helping your case,” she said, and behind her heard Luc grind his teeth.
“Why?” The cellar master swung round sharply to face him. “Am I under suspicion, Inspector?”
Marie-Claude was acutely conscious that her husband didn’t look at her when he replied. “Madame Montaud was found with just one emerald cluster in her left ear,” he said mildly. “An identical cluster was found in your bed next to the still.”