Deadly Tasting (The Winemaker Detective Series) Read online

  I didn’t know them very well. Our conversations were often too brief, but they had handsome faces and beautiful blue eyes. Yours are the only blue eyes we have ever had in the Jouvenaze family. It was Dr. Capderoque, the doctor from Libourne and a good friend of your father’s, who took them in and hid them in the abandoned monastery at the intersection leading to Petite Racine. This man was good and generous. He listened only to his heart when he decided to protect Jews no one else would help. It was 1942, and I realize now that he was naïve, as well as good and generous. Dr. Capderoque thought his status and influence, his Catholic faith, and the good will of his many acquaintances were enough to save an entire family. For two years, Isaac, Irma, your brother, Simon, and your sister, Sarah, lived behind closed shutters in fear of being discovered. They even went without heat in the winter, because they feared someone would see smoke coming out of the chimney.

  The doctor trusted us enough to ask us to help these poor people. Under the pretext of airing out the monastery, I was able to help your parents by bringing them hot meals, taking care of their laundry, and keeping them in supplies. Your father (I’m talking about Antoine, my husband, because it’s hard not to think of him as your dad) helped me enormously.

  Once a month, the doctor would spend the weekend at the monastery. He told people that he was doing light maintenance on the grounds. What he was really doing was bringing books to the family and generally looking after them. Irma became pregnant in the spring of 1943, just as I did. We were both very proud of our big bellies. We wondered which of us would give birth first. You were born November 17, eight days before your sister Madeleine. Irma’s pregnancy was more difficult than mine. I’m sure her anxiety over giving birth in secret played a part. The fact is, she could have died if Antoine hadn’t gone by bicycle to Libourne to get the good doctor. She came out of it very weak and didn’t have enough milk to nurse you. You were beginning to waste away, and we were all terribly worried.

  Luckily, I had given birth to your sister at exactly twelve fifteen on November 25, and Antoine, without asking me, went to get you at the monastery. When your little hands grabbed my breast, I knew there would be enough milk for two babies. Irma was heartbroken but also relieved. She knew you would be saved. With your parents’ consent, we went to the city hall and registered you as our own son. That is how you and Madeleine became twins.

  In January 1944, during the nights of the tenth and the eleventh, there was a big roundup, and we found out through Dr. Capderoque that two hundred and twenty-eight Jews, both adults and children, had been confined to a synagogue in Bordeaux and then sent to Drancy in cattle cars. The train stopped at the Libourne station to transport other Jews who had been arrested in the region, as well as Blaye.

  We paid even more attention to our every movement between the house and the monastery. We had to be guarded around everyone and heighten our vigilance. Irma was doing a little better, despite the terrible winter that year. I don’t know, and we will never know, how Armand discovered that your family was there. I never felt close to my brother-in-law, but I couldn’t imagine that he would be that soulless to have any part in what happened next. When he and his friends got to the monastery, they were already drunk. I never understood why he started going to that billiard club. People in the area said it was owned by a collaborationist, and all sorts of informers and black-market traffickers from Bordeaux frequented the place. What could have come over him that he would wallow among such swine?

  I would rather not tell you exactly what they did to your family. I’ve had too many nightmares. Just know that your father was killed with a knife while trying to defend his family. Irma, Simon, and Sarah were sent to the Mérignac camp before being shipped to Auschwitz on the convoy of May 13, 1944. They never returned.

  Your family’s other executioners were Jules-Ernest Grémillon, Émile Chaussagne, Gabriel Bergerive, Édouard Prébourg, Gustave Tasdori, Jean Sauveterre, Arthur Darnaudon, Élie Péricaille, Joseph Larède, Albert Bitrian, and Edmond Cosinac.

  I don’t know which one of them held the knife that killed your father, but they are all guilty of exterminating your family. Now you know why I never had anything to do with Armand. You can only imagine the depth of his darkness when I tell you that we saw him prowling around the monastery the day after the crime. We watched him carry out several cases of wine. I believe Dr. Capderoque kept them stored there. That good man had already been arrested and shot.

  I think Armand might have had some suspicions about you. Every day I sensed him spying on us from behind his curtains, and I was always on edge when I saw him watching you playing near the barn or in the yard. I was afraid that your eyes would give you away. But I believe that Armand, as depraved as he was, could not turn in his own brother’s family. Likewise, your father didn’t have the heart to turn in his brother after the liberation. So we ignored one another, although it wasn’t easy having him so close.

  When he died, we inherited his house, of course. There weren’t many people at the burial, just a few friends, I was told. I never wanted to set foot in his house, and neither did your father.

  So now you know. They are just names on a piece of paper, and they are not worthy of being called men. Maybe they are dead today. Who knows what became of them, what fate had in store for them? Whatever you do, do not try to find them. I know you. There is no point seeking revenge after all these years. I am sure their lives have been miserable, and one day or another they will pay for their crimes, if they haven’t already.

  Although there’s not a day that I don’t grieve for the mother who brought you into the world, I thank God for the privilege of raising you as my son. I have loved you with every fiber of my being. Maybe when you were little, you thought I loved you too much. But now you understand how fiercely I wanted to protect you.

  Take care of yourself, my love, and when you wrap that scarf around your neck, remember me.

  Your mother, in spite of everything.

  Epilogue

  Seated at the back of the Gravelier restaurant, Benjamin Cooker and Virgile Lanssien ordered a bottle of Pomerol, Château Beauregard, 2000. After enjoying some appetizers of salmon in puff pastry, they greedily devoured their entrées. Virgile feasted on a sea scallop fricassee with spinach in a lemon cream sauce, while Benjamin was happy with a rabbit confit embellished with prawns and a blood-orange sauce.

  When the dishes arrived, the bottle was almost empty, and they agreed to be unfaithful to their native territory and treat themselves to the caress of a Savigny-Lès-Beaune, La Dominode, a premier cru from Pavelot. They had both chosen the same main course: pigeon served with fried liver, bean sprouts, and grilled carrots, which they ate without exchanging a word.

  Virgile did not order dessert and opted for a very strong coffee instead. Benjamin could not resist the promise of a dessert in the form of a cigar: a sweetly oily Cuba Libre with hints of dark chocolate. The winemaker poured himself another glass of Burgundy, discreetly loosened his belt, relaxed his stomach muscles, sank deeper into the cushioned bench seat, and rolled the cigar between his fingers.

  A sad smile came across his lips.

  In a single evening, Benjamin Cooker had certainly gained back half the weight he had lost on his seven-day cabbage-soup diet.

  Thank you for reading Deadly Tasting.

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  The Winemaker Detective Series

  A total epicurean immersion in French countryside and gourmet attitude with two expert winemakers turned amateur sleuths gumshoeing around wine country. The following titles are currently available in English.

  Treachery in Bordeaux

  The start of this wine plus crime mystery series, this journey to Bordeaux takes readers behind the scenes of a grand cru wine estate that has fallen victim to either negligence or sabotage. Winemaker turned gentleman detective Benj
amin Cooker sets out to find out what happened and why. Who would want to target this esteemed estate?

  www.treacheryinbordeaux.com

  Grand Cru Heist

  In another epicurean journey in France, wine critic Benjamin Cooker’s world gets turned upside down one night in Paris. He retreats to the region around Tours to recover. There, a flamboyant British dandy, a spectacular blue-eyed blonde, a zealous concierge, and touchy local police disturb his well-deserved rest. From the Loire Valley to Bordeaux, in between a glass of Vouvray and a bottle of Saint-Émilion, the Winemaker Detective and his assistant Virgile turn PI to solve two murders and a very particular heist. Who stole those bottles of grand cru classé?

  www.grandcruheist.com

  Nightmare in Burgundy

  In this one, the Winemaker Detective leaves his native Bordeaux to go to Burgundy for a dream wine-tasting trip to France’s other key wine-making region. Between Beaune, Dijon and Nuits-Saint-Georges, the excursion becomes a nightmare when he stumbles upon a mystery revolving around messages from another era. What do they mean? What dark secrets from the deep past are haunting the Clos de Vougeot? Does blood need to spill to sharpen people’s memory?

  www.nightmareinburgundy.com

  About the Authors

  Noël Balen (left) and Jean-Pierre Alaux (right).

  (©David Nakache)

  Jean-Pierre Alaux and Noël Balen came up with the Winemaker Detective over a glass of wine, of course. Jean-Pierre Alaux is a magazine, radio, and television journalist when he is not writing novels in southwestern France. He is a genuine wine and food lover, and won the Antonin Carême prize for his cookbook La Truffe sur le Soufflé, which he wrote with the chef Alexis Pélissou. He is the grandson of a winemaker and exhibits a real passion for wine and winemaking. For him, there is no greater common denominator than wine. Coauthor of the series Noël Balen lives in Paris, where he shares his time between writing, making records, and lecturing on music. He plays bass, is a music critic, and has authored a number of books about musicians, in addition to his novel and short-story writing.

  About the Translator

  Sally Pane studied French at State University of New York Oswego and the Sorbonne before receiving her master’s degree in French literature from the University of Colorado, where she wrote Camus and the Americas: A Thematic Analysis of Three Works Based on His Journaux de Voyage. Her career includes more than twenty years of translating and teaching French and Italian at Berlitz and at Colorado University Boulder. She has worked in scientific, legal, and literary translation; her literary translations include Operatic Arias; Singers Edition, and Reality and the Untheorizable by Clément Rosset. She also served as the interpreter for the government cabinet of Rwanda and translated for Dian Fossey’s Digit Fund. In addition to her passion for French, she has studied Italian at Colorado University, in Rome and in Siena. She lives in Boulder, Colorado, with her husband.

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  Contents

  Cover

  Praise

  Title

  Info

  Quote

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Epilogue

  Thank you

  Winemaker Detective Series

  About the Authors

  About the Translator

  More books