Peter Mayle - A Good Year

They arrived at the house in the cours Xavier Arnozan as the tolling of a distant bell marked ten o’clock. Charlie squared his shoulders, adjusted his bow tie, and knocked on the door. The sound of footsteps could be heard coming down the corridor, and the door was opened to reveal a young man in a dark suit, stocky and impassive.

“I have an appointment with Mr. Fitzgerald.” Charlie’s voice sounded firm and confident, despite his surprise.

The young man neither smiled nor spoke, but stood back to let them in before leading them down the corridor and into the tasting room.

The long mahogany table was bare except for an ashtray. A chair behind the table was occupied by an older man with a long, bony jaw and his hair cut en brosse. Like the young man, he too was wearing a dark suit. As they watched him select and light a cigarette with studied deliberation, they heard footsteps behind them, and turned to see two uniformed policemen taking up their positions on either side of the door. The man behind the desk frowned, and spoke for the first time. “You two can wait outside,” he said to the policemen, with a flick of his finger, “and close the door.”

“Where is Mr. Fitzgerald?” Charlie made a brave attempt to bluster. “This is most irregular.”

The man behind the table held up a hand. “Who among you speaks French?” Max and Roussel nodded. “Good. You can translate for your colleagues. My name is Lambert. Inspector Lambert.” He left his chair and came round to perch on the corner of the table, squinting at them through the smoke from his cigarette. “Word reached us yesterday of your… activities, and I must tell you that here in Bordeaux we are not amused by this kind of adventure. To misrepresent the good name of our wines, to attempt this despicable substitution, to profit from fraud and breach of trust-these are crimes of a most serious nature, and the penalties are extremely severe.” He ground out his cigarette in the ashtray and went back to sit behind the table. Looking up at the row of frozen faces in front of him, he nodded and said again, “Extremely severe.”

“Putaing,” said Roussel.

“Bloody hell,” said Charlie, who had understood the gist if not the detail of Lambert’s remarks.

“I can explain everything,” said Max.

“Thank God you called when you did,” said Fitzgerald. “You know, I was sure he was genuine: he did all the right things, said all the right things. And an order like that, on the other side of the world, well away from France -it was perfect. Although I suppose I should have smelt a rat when he didn’t even try to negotiate on the price. But we can all make a mistake.” He shrugged, and his face brightened. “Fortunately, it wasn’t fatal-thanks to you, my dear. Have some champagne and tell me again what made you suspicious. Our last conversation was a little rushed.”

Their table overlooked the enclosed garden of the Hotel Bristol, green and refreshingly cool in the heat wave that had turned Paris into an oven. Nathalie Auzet sipped her wine before replying. “Mostly luck. As you know, I had to talk to Roussel about this year’s shipment, and when I found out he’d gone away, I thought it was odd. He hates to travel; I’ve never known him to spend a night away from home. And his wife wouldn’t give me a number where I could reach him. So I went to see Skinner, and nobody was at the house apart from that nosy old boot of a housekeeper. That’s when I called you, and when you told me you’d just had a private tasting for an Englishman…” She stared into her glass, and shook her head. “It’s such a pity Roussel lost his nerve and had an attack of honesty. It was a wonderful scheme.”

Fitzgerald leaned across to touch her hand. “Never mind. It served us very well. Enough, more than enough, to set you up in California, and me in New York. What a convenient country America is if you want to disappear. And we’ll be there by this time tomorrow.” He turned to the third person at the table, a man with a long, bony jaw and his hair cut en brosse. “How about you, Philippe? Did you enjoy pretending to be a flic ?”

A smile softened the angles of the man’s face. “Easy work,” he said, “and the pay’s good.” The wad of hundred-euro notes Fitzgerald had given him was so thick he had had to divide it between two pockets. “It’s funny. Once they saw the boys in those uniforms, they didn’t ask for any proof of identity. I suppose you believe what you see.”

“What you think you see, Philippe,” said Fitzgerald, “what you think you see. Very much like wine. Tell me, how did you leave it with them?”

“Skinner and Roussel put up quite a good case, I have to say. A court would probably let them off with a slap on the wrist and a fine. But I don’t think they’ll cause any trouble. I told them we would be launching a full-scale investigation into this so-called Monsieur Fitzgerald and his wine dealings, and that we’d be in touch. I let them think they might avoid prosecution if they behaved themselves and cooperated when the time came. My guess is that they’ll keep their heads down for the next six months and hope for the best.”

“ Chapeau, Philippe. You did very well. And now I think we deserve to indulge ourselves.” Fitzgerald barely had time to raise his hand before there was a flurry of waiters at his shoulder. “The foie gras here is superb. And I believe they may let us have a glass or two of Yquem to go with it.”

It wasn’t long before Max began to suspect that he’d been had. The first, most glaring clue was the overnight disappearance of Maître Auzet, which was to be the subject of fascinated speculation in the village for months, possibly years, to come. She had left no forwarding address at the post office, which the village took as a sure sign of irregular or possibly criminal behavior. Had she run off with a lover? Or was there-a thought always accompanied by a morbid but delicious shiver-something more sinister? A crime passionnel that would account for her empty office and shuttered house? Rumor was rampant-she had been spotted in Marseille, a light had been seen in her house, she had absconded with clients’ funds, she had forsaken this wicked world and joined the Sisters of Mercy. There was a fresh story every day. As one of the old men in the café said, it was better than anything on television.

Max and Roussel, for obvious reasons, kept their theories to themselves, hoping that in the way of these things, interest would fade. Eventually, they told one another, the case of the missing notaire would become just one of many unexplained incidents in the nine-hundred-year history of Saint-Pons.

Max discovered another disappearing piece in the puzzle when he tried to contact Fitzgerald in Bordeaux, only to find that his phone number had been discontinued. But what finally confirmed the deception was another call, this one made at the urging of Roussel.

Because he was a principal in the original scheme-even, it could be argued by the state prosecutor, the instigator-Roussel was an extremely worried man. Again and again he turned over in his mind the penalties he might face if the authorities chose to enforce them: back taxes (with copious interest) on the money he had made, fines for not declaring that income, bankruptcy, possible imprisonment, his family destitute, his life in ruins. During the days that followed the events in Bordeaux, one could almost see the black cloud over his head as he went through the motions of tending the vines. He lost his appetite, hardly spoke to his wife, snapped at his dog. At last, when he could bear it no longer, he persuaded Max to contact the Bordeaux police; knowing the worst, he felt, would somehow be better than fearing it.