Montmartre Mysteries Read online

  Praise for the

  Winemaker Detective Series

  “The Winemaker Detective mystery series is a new obsession.”

  —Marienella

  “It is easy to see why this series has a following. The depiction of French countryside enhances the story... the descriptive language is captivating...crackling, interesting dialogue and persona.”

  —ForeWord Reviews

  “The authors of the Winemaker Detective series hit that mark each and every time.”

  —Student of Opinions

  “Another clever and highly entertaining mystery by an incredibly creative writing duo, never disappointing, always marvelously atypical.”

  —Unshelfish

  “One of my favourite series to turn to when I’m looking for something cozy and fun!”

  —Back to Books

  “Summer in French wine country with murder on the list... a classic vintage.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “Wine lovers and book lovers, for a perfect break in the shadows of your garden or under the sun on the beach, get a glass of Armagnac, and enjoy this cozy mystery. Even your gray cells will enjoy!”

  —Library Cat

  “For a cozy mystery series, the reader is given a fascinating look into the goings on in the place the story is set and at the people who live there, not to mention all the wonderful food and drinks.”

  —The Book Girl’s Book Blog

  “A quick, entertaining read. It reminds me a bit of a good old English Murder Mystery such as anything by Agatha Christie.”

  —New Paper Adventures

  Montmartre Mysteries

  A Winemaker Detective Mystery

  Jean-Pierre Alaux

  and

  Noël Balen

  Translated by Sally Pane

  All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  First published in France as

  Ne tirez pas sur le caviste!

  by Jean-Pierre Alaux and Noël Balen

  World copyright ©Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2005

  English translation copyright ©2015 Sally Pane

  First published in English in 2015

  By Le French Book, Inc., New York

  www.lefrenchbook.com

  Translator: Sally Pane

  Translation editor: Amy Richard

  Proofreader: Chris Gage

  Cover designer: Jeroen ten Berge

  ISBN:

  Trade paperback: 9781939474476

  E-book: 9781939474483

  Hardback: 9781939474490

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall.

  —Colette

  1

  Benjamin Cooker, bundled in his Loden, left the lab on the Cours du Châpeau Rouge and picked up his pace as he headed to his office on the Allées de Tourny. He stopped only briefly under the Corinthian colonnade of Bordeaux’s Grand Théâtre to take a look at the musical calendars and posters for the coming weeks. For months now he had been promising Elisabeth a nice evening at the opera, and yet he hadn’t found the time for a proper date with his wife. Maybe he’d been putting it off because of the benign malaise he always felt in winter—as if something could go wrong at any moment.

  The quiet intimacy of his home, Grangebelle, the logs crackling in the large fireplace, and the aromas emanating from the kitchen were reasons enough to avoid Médoc’s freezing fog and slippery country roads. Especially when the thought of going to see a performance of Carmen for the umpteenth time left him cold. On the other hand, the new Don Giovanni would hit the mark with his wife, a lover of Mozart.

  Benjamin could see his lovely Elisabeth in her black silk gown, leaning on an armrest in a ground-floor box of the luxurious theater, which had served as headquarters of the French National Assembly when the Prussians invaded Paris. The building’s monumental dome had inspired Charles Garnier when he designed the Paris Opera House. Doubtless, the wine expert’s latest extravagance—a diamond necklace bought for Elisabeth from a celebrated jeweler on the Place Vendôme—would sparkle brilliantly under the thousand lights of the chandelier.

  Benjamin opened the door and headed through the foyer. He purchased two tickets in the best row and slipped them into his inside coat pocket.

  A fine rain was falling when Benjamin emerged from the theater. He could hardly make out the majestic silhouette of the nearby Grand Hôtel, which had recently undergone eight years of restoration to its former neoclassic glory. He pulled up his collar and made his way to 46 Allées de Tourny, where he found his assistant in a state of agitation.

  “Virgile, how were things in Languedoc? Did you resolve the fermentation issue for our client?”

  “Boss, I need your advice. That Dardanelle dude is very stubborn. For two days now, his densitometer readings have been too high, the temperatures are going down, and he refuses to reactivate his vats. I’m running out of arguments.”

  “This calls for strong medicine, Virgile. Laffort enzymes—twenty grams per hectoliter.”

  “That’s precisely what I’ve been telling him for two full days. At any rate, he does just as he pleases and insists on letting nature run its course. You’re the only one who has any influence with him.”

  “If you insist,” Benjamin said, casting a wary eye at the stack of mail awaiting him on his desk. It had been piling up for three days. “Ask Jacqueline to get him on the phone.”

  “Oh, one more thing, boss. Can I have the day off tomorrow? I’d like to train for the Bergerac triathlon. It’s a week from Sunday and—”

  “In light of your pathetic performance in the Médoc marathon, I can’t begrudge you a bit of preparation, provided, of course, that it’s not an after-dark workout that you have in mind, if you get my drift.”

  “Um, no, I can’t say that I do.”

  “Go ahead and take the day off, Virgile. Just focus on the competition and not on any new conquests. I don’t want to see your face again until Monday. In Paris, remember?”

  Benjamin closed the door to his office to speak to the vintner at the Dardanelle de Saint-Chinian estate. The man hadn’t managed to get nature on his side. Benjamin gave his instructions, suspecting that they’d be ignored, and hung up. He poured a whiskey and lit a Honduran cigar, which was a bit too narrow in its cedar sheath.

  Benjamin knew he had to attack the unanswered letters and e-mail, and yet he let himself be distracted by the city sounds outside the window. For some reason it reminded him of his childhood on the banks of the River Thames.

  Finally he picked up his letter opener and put it to an envelope marked “personal.” What could it be? The letter was handwritten and signed “a very faithful reader of the Cooker Guide.”

  Dear Sir,

  As an expert in French wines, you’re familiar with our country’s vineyards, both large and small. That includes, of course, the well-known vineyard in Montmartre. But did you know that Paris has other grapevines?

  I am not talking about a few climbing vines or espaliered stocks against the walls of a forgotten garden, but a true plot of them, which chance has made me, if not its owner, at least its representative by proxy.

  It so happens, Mr. Cooker, that a few months ago I was appointed to run the Bretonneau Hospital in the eighteenth arrondissement. This old and beautifully restored establishment was once a children’s hospital. In 2001, it became a hospital f
or the elderly with 205 beds. Our patients, despite their white hair and unsteady gait, have eyes that light up when they toddle like children down the rows of this vineyard, picking the chasselas grapes.

  Unfortunately, this minuscule vineyard is now old, like the patients who love it, and each year the harvest grows more uncertain. Our table grapes suffer from lack of proper care, and many of them seem to be rotting on the vine. It is therefore in desperation that I call a vine doctor to our bedside. In all of France, is there a better choice than you?

  I do not know if your busy schedule allows you to take a look at what is certainly the smallest vineyard in France (barely one hundred plants) and hopefully prescribe a cure, but your knowledge would be very precious to us. Unfortunately, I do not have the funds in my modest budget to pay your fee. Could I simply call upon your benevolence and skill?

  On behalf of all of our patients, I thank you in advance and hope to count you among the healthy visitors to Bretonneau Hospital, whose entrance is on the Rue Joseph de Maistre.

  Yours sincerely,

  The name in the signature was perfectly legible, but the unusual letter was on plain paper, not stationery from the Paris Hospital system. Benjamin asked Jacqueline to call and verify that the author was, indeed, an employee of the institution.

  Benjamin relit his Flor de Copan, which he had abandoned in an ashtray. Then he stood up and walked over to his mahogany bookcase. He slid his finger along the green leather spines of his Quillet encyclopedia and stopped at the letter B. He pulled out the volume, put on his reading glasses, and thumbed through the pages until came to the one he was looking for:

  BRETONNEAU, Pierre. French doctor (1778–1862), a pioneer of modern medicine. He identified diphtheria and croup, as well as typhoid fever, and formulated the doctrine of the specificity of infectious diseases. In Tours, his students included: Jules Baillarger, Armand Trousseau, and Alfred-Armand-Louis-Marie Velpeau.

  Benjamin was quite familiar with the name “Velpeau.” He had been swaddled in Velpeau bandages after a skiing accident with his father in Megève. He had just turned ten, and it was his first attempt on skis. Benjamin had managed to fracture both wrists in a single morning on the powdery snow in the Alps.

  The cigar was glowing nicely again, and Benjamin was immersed in sepia-colored memories of childhood, when his secretary interrupted his daydreaming.

  “Mr. Cooker, I have Mrs. Lacaze, the director of Bretonneau Hospital, on the line. She is very eager to talk to you.”

  “Jacqueline, you are frighteningly efficient. Put her through, please.”

  The conversation was long and pleasant. Benjamin promised Mrs. Lacaze that he would examine the vines before the month was out. And he would diagnose the problem free of charge.

  “‘Do not neglect to do good and share what you have,’” Benjamin, quoting Hebrews 13:16, concluded with a smile. “It’s the least I can offer, considering all the good work you’re doing. I’ll be in the capital next week, so I’ll stop by on Monday.”

  With that, the wine expert hung up. The Honduran cigar had not forgiven him for this new abandonment. Only a stick of cold ashes remained on the gold-lipped edge of the porcelain ashtray. The wine expert paid it no mind. He was too intrigued by the invitation to visit the tiny vineyard.

  He returned to the rest of his correspondence and when he sent the final e-mail, it was twelve-thirty. Jacqueline had slipped away without warning. Benjamin hastened to meet Elisabeth at Le Noailles, the most Parisian of Bordeaux’s brasseries and one of their favorite haunts. He knew he was already late, but it didn’t matter. He would be forgiven as soon as he displayed the two tickets for Don Giovanni.

  2

  For two days, sooty clouds had clogged the skies over Paris, and now the snow was falling. It was quickly covering the landscape with a blanket of white. The taxi driver was just as quick with his grousing.

  “Goddamned bloody weather! As if getting around wasn’t bad enough already.”

  Benjamin, however, was enjoying the snowfall. “Let me off at the end of the Rue des Saules,” he instructed the driver.

  The walk would do him good. Montmartre’s famous butte was taking on the charming appearance of a postcard. This, along with the rest of the snowy scenery, seemed to delight the other pedestrians, as well. Boys and girls squealed as the snowflakes landed on their faces. Parents laughed as they made sure their little ones’ coats were zipped up.

  Benjamin climbed the Rue des Saules. Passing the cabaret Le Lapin Agile, he thought of his early years in Paris, where, as a student at the École des Beaux-Arts, he had been infatuated with an English girl named Sheila Scott. Both of them had set about following in the footsteps of Renoir, Picasso, Verlaine, Carco, Dorgelès, and other disciples of bohemian life.

  Benjamin had been eager to impress Sheila with his worldliness, and one night he had captivated her with his tales of Le Lapin Agile.

  “The place was called Cabaret des Assassins because the walls were covered with paintings of murderers, most notably Jean-Baptiste Troppmann, the spree killer.”

  “Oh, how exciting,” Sheila had responded.

  “A little too exciting, in fact, and it was renamed Le Lapin Agile. The old paintings were covered up, and an André Gill painting of a rabbit jumping out of saucepan went on the wall. But it remained a rough place. Even you, my dear, as headstrong as you are, wouldn’t have dared to venture in.”

  Benjamin remembered leaning over and nuzzling Sheila’s neck, which elicited a giggle.

  “Finally, a cabaret singer, Aristide Bruant, bought the place and cleaned up its image,” he had continued. “You might not recognize Bruant by name, but I’m sure you’d recognize his looks. Toulouse-Lautrec immortalized his big black hat and red scarf.”

  Sheila had shot Benjamin a teasing look. “My Benjamin, you’re just a font of knowledge.”

  “No, you’re the one who’s teaching me,” Benjamin had said as he laughed and gazed at his girlfriend’s impish nose, sparkling teeth, almond-shaped eyes, and milky skin sprinkled with freckles.

  How could he have guessed when they said their good-byes all those years ago that fate would one day bring them together again in Jarnac? The past, it seemed, always had a way of catching up.

  He remembered ending that long-ago conversation with “Le Lapin Agile is quite tame these days, maybe a bit too tame for you.” How right he had been. But that was another story.

  Benjamin sighed. Oscar Wilde had summed it up. “The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.”

  The vines of Montmartre, sloping and dusted with white, came into view at the corner of the Rue Saint Vincent and the Rue des Saules. An employee of the city of Paris was moving along the vines, pruning as he went. Nearly two thousand vine stocks had been planted here in 1932.

  The winemaker, who considered himself something of a historian, knew practically everything about wine in the City of Light. Introduced by the Galls around 390 BC, vines had covered much of the Montmartre area in the tenth century, most of them planted by the Dames-de-Montmartre Abbey. In the eighteenth century, there were two major vineyards: the Haut Coteau to the north of the present-day Place Saint Pierre, and the Bas Coteau near the Rue Cazotte. There was a smaller vineyard called La Rochefoucauld between the streets Tardieu and Orsel, as well as one called Montaigu near the reservoirs and another called Église, adjacent to the apse of the Saint Pierre Church. Today’s Place Jean-Baptiste Clément also once held vines.

  The square’s namesake is famous for writing “Le Temps des Cerises” in 1866. The song reminded him of Sheila too. She used to translate the title literally. She had loved cherry season and would often sing Clément’s lyrics, which told the story of a beautiful young woman who delivered scarlet-colored cherries to the defenders of the barricades in Montmartre during the Paris Commune. Benjamin didn’t doubt that she identified with the violence of those times.

  The Clos Montmartre vi
neyard had fascinated Benjamin as a student. It was an incongruous patch of stocks planted in the midst of cobblestone alleyways and a confusion of buildings. They were forced to compete with numerous tall chimneys for the beautiful Parisian sky.

  Year after year, those who tended the Montmartre vineyard replaced the weak vine stocks, pruned assiduously, and in the end produced a hearty red wine that was good enough. On the nose it was often ripe berries, and in the mouth it developed lovely licorice notes. Good year and bad, they produced about seven hundred bottles of the stuff.

  One October, Benjamin and Sheila had attended the harvest celebration with much feasting and drinking. The traditional parade started at city hall in the eighteenth arrondissement and headed down the Rue Ordener, the Rue Damrémont, and the Rue Lamarck before reaching the vineyard. The festivities continued at the Louise Michel gardens at the foot of Sacré Coeur.

  The snow was falling more heavily now, making the city look immaculate, and the municipal employee appeared ready to beat a hasty retreat to the gatehouse. Benjamin spotted a couple of tourists gazing at the vines.

  “Sir, could we take a closer look?” one of them yelled to the worker.

  “Impossible,” the man said. “It’s forbidden.”

  “Really? Why’s that?”

  Benjamin walked over to the couple, whose accent gave them away as Americans.

  “I’m afraid this is a protected space,” Benjamin said. “Even Parisians aren’t allowed in. They have access to the vineyard only once a year, during Heritage Days.”

  “So you’re familiar with this little plot,” the second tourist said. “Tell me, is the wine worth drinking?”

  “Let me assure you, it’s every bit as good as California wines,” Benjamin responded, giving the tourists a nod and walking away. He felt a bit mischievous. California made some of the finest wines in the world, while Montmarte produced only a red that was decent at best, but it was the French capital’s only wine, and that counted for something.