Albert Baantjer - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 127, No. 6. Whole No. 778, June 2006

“I did not conduct an affair down here with Madame Montaud,” Baret insisted. “That’s simply too sordid to contemplate. I am a married man. And the notion that I killed her — pff! What possible motive would I have?”

Luc drew a carbon copy from his breast pocket. Reading upside down, Marie-Claude saw that the letter bore yesterday’s date, was addressed to the cellar master, and had been typewritten.

“This was on top of the paperwork in Madame Montaud’s desk,” Luc said. “The desk, incidentally, that we were only able to open with the key that was found in her pocket.”

Baret took the proffered letter and, as he read, the colour drained from his face. His jaw tightened. “I–I have never seen this before.”

Marie-Claude didn’t get a chance to read every last word before it disappeared back inside Luc’s pocket, but the gist was enough. In the most civil of terms, Martine Montaud was dismissing her cellar master.

“Is it, do you think, too sordid to contemplate?” Luc asked once they were alone in the distillery. “Tall, fifty, and with that thick thatch of dark hair, it seems perfectly reasonable to me that the earring of the widowed and lonely Martine would end up in his bed.”

“Not this bed,” Marie-Claude said, sending clouds of dust into the air as she tried to pull the curtains and found the hooks had rusted solid.

“Wouldn’t the risk of discovery have been the spice, though? Two educated, articulate, respected people fired by the danger of being caught in the act?”

“If there’s any danger, it comes from fleas, not ruined reputations,” she said, prodding the unsheeted mattress. “And anyway, who said she was lonely?”

When Madame Montaud tried on clothes in the shop, those were not sensible foundation garments she’d been wearing underneath!

“Who else has a key to the distillery and cellars?” she asked.

“No one who doesn’t have a cast-iron alibi.”

“While Monsieur Baret...?”

“Claims he went for a walk, and if you believe that, you can believe anything.” Luc ran his hand over the ticking on the bolster. “You know, Marie-Claude, just because they’re both polite, refined individuals, it doesn’t mean they don’t enjoy the occasional foray into degeneracy.”

She considered the new baby-doll pajamas that were all the rage at the moment. Both she and Luc agreed that these were the most depraved and decadent garments that had ever been invented, and indeed they’d considered them so depraved and decadent that they ripped them off no less than three times last Saturday night.

“So you’re saying Alexandre met with Martine last night, as usual. They came down here, as usual, made love in his seedy little camp bed, as usual, where she lost an earring in the heat of their passion... then fired him?”

“No,” he said, leaning his hip against the chest of drawers. “That’s what the evidence is saying. Not me.”

Marie-Claude threw her hands in the air. “Luc Brosset, you are the most impossible man on God’s earth! If you suspected all along that this was a setup, for heaven’s sake, why didn’t you just come straight out with it and tell me you wanted my help?”

“That’s funny,” he said. “I thought that was exactly what I had done.”

Centuries had come and gone, but the method of distilling cognac hadn’t changed. The still itself, the alambic, was made of gleaming red copper and, with its swan neck, long pipes, and balloon shape, resembled more a giant oriental hookah than a boiler. For nearly four months of the year, once the grapes had been pressed and their precious juice extracted, these three pieces of apparatus would be working night and day to produce the first distillation, the brouillis, before it underwent its distinctive second boiling. Only after that could the “heads” and “tails” be separated from the clear “heart” of the spirit that would eventually mature into cognac.

During these four months, though, the cellar master would virtually live next to his alambic while, outside, the town would grow warm from so many boilers pumping round the clock, the air would become impregnated with the sweet smell of brandy, and the characteristic black on the buildings would deepen, a symbol of status and pride. Incredibly, a tenth of the cognac was lost to evaporation, a contribution known as the angels’ share. Marie-Claude wondered whether Madame Montaud would be able to distinguish her own cognac from where she sat on her cloud. And how silly to get misty-eyed over someone she hardly knew!

“The way she was killed,” Luc said, “hit on the back of the head with a marble bust of the founder that took pride of place next to the alambic, that suggests the crime wasn’t premeditated.”

Marie-Claude thought about the key in her pocket. The fact that Alexandre’s were the only fingerprints. The way nobody else here had access.

“It suggests an earring coming off when she fell,” he continued, “and the killer taking the opportunity to implicate someone else.”

She wondered what the gem-smith who made Madame Montaud’s jewellery would have to say about such odds.

“Or,” she said, “it’s a double-bluff designed to look that way.”

Luc spiked his hands through his hair. “You mean Baret planned it from the outset, then left clumsy clues that pointed directly to him, leading us to think they had been planted?”

“If it was a spur-of-the-moment act, why didn’t he plead crime passionnel straightaway? Cellar masters are respected all over France, Luc, and think about it. Sex, rejection, dismissal? Any one of these things is enough to make a man feel emasculated and strike out in the heat of anger, yet here we have three stacked on top of each other. Alexandre Baret could have thrown up his hands and admitted his crime, and even the worst advocate in the country would have had him walking away a free man.”

She stared up at the shining copper works and saw Madame Montaud holding up two evening dresses, the navy blue and the green. What discount will you give me, Madame Garreau, if I take both? I see. Well, thank you for your time, but I think I’ll drive into Angoulême and see— Why, yes, Madame Garreau. Ten percent would be perfectly acceptable. But shall we say twelve?

“Madame Montaud was elegant, successful, she drove a hard bargain, but by all accounts she was fair. While a man who blends cognac that not only his successor won’t see sold but his successor, either, is a man who is patient, clever, and selfless.”

Luc scratched his head. “Are you saying he did or he didn’t?”

Marie-Claude straightened her hat in the boiler’s reflection. “It’s late,” she said. “I have to get back to the shop.”

“Some joint,” she murmured as they snubbed the distillery’s access road in favour of the broad sweep of the drive in front of the main house.

“Twelve bedrooms, five wings, and ceilings so high you can house a giraffe in each room, should you so desire,” Luc said. “And to prove how handsomely this business pays, the house is surrounded by seventeen hectares of beautiful but totally unproductive parkland.”

“If you think I’d live there, you’re mistaken,” Marie-Claude said. “Look at the number of windows for a start. And the height of them! I’d spend all my day washing them.”

“You’d have people to do that for you.”

“I would not,” she protested.

What? Strangers trooping all over her house, snooping all over her business?

“Some people might envy the rich for their lifestyle,” she said firmly. “Not me. Madame Montaud may have been successful, but the poor woman was a martyr to the business, she barely took a day off, and look at that sister of hers. Dresses like Grace Kelly, but never gets a chance to breathe, much less be her own person. No privacy, not even a house to call her own; she and her husband still live at the Domaine. And when her husband accompanies her to Madame Garreau’s shop, as he invariably does, the place stinks of stale wine and cigars for simply hours.”