Dying on the Vine (3 page)

“Yes, the police. At once.”

He threw a baffled glance in my direction and hurried off. The girl turned to me.

“Who are you and what are you doing here?”

She was medium height and had a strong sturdy body. Her hair was cropped short and a dark blond color. She was attractive, her features strong and bold.

“I'm a journalist. I'm doing a series of stories on south of France vineyards owned by English. I walked in here looking for—well, you, I suppose … are you Simone Ballard?”

“Yes.” Her eyes searched my face. “You must be the man I received a fax about yesterday.” Her suspicion eased fractionally but I wasn't off the hook yet. Maybe I should get my questions in first. “Is this man one of your workers?”

“Yes. Emil Laplace. He's been with us a long time.” Still shaken, her gaze went back to the body. “What do you suppose happened to him?”

“I don't know. He's got a lot of injuries, probably internal too. He must have lost a lot of blood as well.”

She shook her head. “He wasn't due to come on duty for another two hours. He liked to spend his spare time gathering mushrooms.”

These didn't look like injuries that might be considered an occupational hazard of picking mushrooms. Behind me vineyard buildings rose high hills.

“Could he have fallen?” I wondered aloud.

She shrugged. “But how did he get here?”

A young man came running across the yard and went straight to Simone.

He stopped in front of the body. Gasping, he asked, “Is Emil dead?”

“Yes.”

“I found him, up near the caves.” Getting his breath back, he went on. “He was alive though very badly hurt. I couldn't carry him. I remembered this old cart in the storage shackup there. I put him on it and brought him here.”

“He was on the cart?” Simone asked.

“Yes.”

He must have recovered just enough to climb out, I guessed. He had flung out an arm over the wheel to steady himself and died in that position.

“I phoned for an ambulance,” the young man said.

Another man came walking out. “What's all the excitement?” he wanted to know. He spoke French but with an English accent. From the list of staff names that Sir Charles had given me I knew he must be Lewis Arundel, the business manager.

He was lean and lanky, with slick dark hair and a thin saturnine face. He was probably about forty.

His eyes flickered from me to Emil's body and back.

“What's happened?”

“Emil's dead,” Simone said. “Jean-Jacques found him up near the caves and brought him down here. He was still alive then but he must have died while Jean-Jacques was phoning for an ambulance. This man found him here dead.”

“Who's he and what's he doing here?” His eyes searched me.

“He's that journalist we got the fax about.”

He looked at me, full of suspicion. He studied Emil's body, cataloging every rip and every bloodstain, and looked at me again. More workers came strolling into the yard, probably to start their shift. They came over to stare, wide-eyed, at Emil's body and whisper to each other.

Marcel came back and proposed carrying the body inside, but Lewis Arundel quashed that idea before Simone could speak. It must be left here for the police, he said. They would want to see it exactly as it was found. He looked at me as he said it, and if it had been a trial and he were on the jury, I'd have been hanged right there on the spot.

There were desultory conversations in muttered tones and long, nervous silences. At length, the ambulance arrived in a swirl of dust and two young men in white uniforms joined our rapidly growing group. There was a spirited discussion about priorities and responsibilities. The two wanted to put the body into the ambulance but Lewis Arundel said, “Not until the police have seen it.” Marcel called for respect for a colleague who had been well liked. One of Emil's two co-workers referred sadly to a soccer bet that Emil had lost and not yet paid.

The French temperament includes a masterly ability to compromise, and the ambulance men decided that they would wait for the police but they wouldn't leave without the body. Yes, they said in answer to a question, they were authorized to transport dead bodies as well as live ones. This congenial arrangement had finally been reached when a dark blue Renault sedan with a flashing light on the roof roared to a dusty stop alongside the ambulance. Seconds behind it came a tiny white Citroen. The law had arrived.

T
HERE ARE SEVERAL POLICE
forces in France. The two principal organizations are the Police Nationale and the Gendarmerie. Both were represented in the two men who got out of the two vehicles and stood with us, looking at the body of poor Emil Laplace.

The man from the Police Nationale was a strapping young fellow who surely had to be a rugby player. He introduced himself as Carl Nevernois and after he had ascertained all our names, he explained the setup, mainly, I supposed, for my benefit as a foreigner.

The Police Nationale handle all civil matters—domestic strife, land disputes, and, the most time-consuming, traffic offenses. The Gendarmes handle any criminal matters, but as the Saint Symphorien region was not large enough (or perhaps not unlawful enough) to justify a gendarmerie, it was customary for crimes to be reported to the Police Nationale who then call in gendarme assistance from a neighboring region.

However—and in France there are always a great many “howevers”—it just so happened that a Poste Provisoire de Gendarmerie had recently been established locally. I knew that this meant a temporary office but I wondered why it had been necessary to open one here. It wasn't the time to ask so I politely shook the hand of the gendarme.

His name was Aristide Pertois and he didn't inspire confidence in the least. He was about six feet tall, with a slim build, bristly black hair cropped close to his bullet-shaped head and a small black mustache. He had a look of perpetual surprise on his face, caused partly by his thick black eyebrows, which always seemed to be raised, and partly by the circular lenses in his wire-framed glasses. He might have nodded minute acknowledgment of meeting me, but more likely it was a reflex action caused by a fly buzzing across his face.

The two policemen soon had Jean-Jacques's story. “There was no one outside,” Jean-Jacques concluded. “I shouted but no one came. I went in to the office and phoned for the ambulance.”

I told my story, keeping it very simple. Simone confirmed that she had found me standing over the body.

The two ambulance men were examining the body while we were talking. The Police Nationale man, Carl Nevernois, had told them sternly not to touch it but their professional curiosity got the better of them. Disdain for authority is an essential component of the French temperament and the greatest disdain is expressed by one branch of authority for another. One of the ambulance men explained that they weren't touching, just looking.

The gendarme asked them what they thought had happened to Emil. The senior of the two answered promptly: “Sangliers.” There was a silence.

Sangliers are wild boars and are found scattered in various parts of Provence. They are hunted enthusiastically for their highly prized meat. They weigh up to a quarter of a ton, hunt in packs, and can be very dangerous.

“Do these wounds look like they were made by sangliers?” the gendarme wanted to know.

The ambulance man hesitated.

“Well?” pressed the gendarme.,

The wounds looked as if they had been made by the tusks of a sanglier, the ambulance man said, but admitted that he had never before seen a person so mutilated.

“We've never seen any sangliers near here,” Simone said sharply.

“But hunters go out after them,” Lewis pointed out. “They must expect to find some.”

“I've lived in these parts for thirty years,” Marcel contributed. He had identified himself to the police as Marcel Delorme, wine master. “I hunt all the time. I've never seen a sanglier, but there may be some.”

“If this was one sanglier,” said the senior ambulance man, “it was a monster.”

There was a chilly pause. Each of us was no doubt picturing a huge, slavering wild beast with tusks like an elephant and teeth like a crocodile.

“We will want statements from all of you,” the Police Nationale man said. “We can take them in the office here. Later, you may be asked to come to Police headquarters for further questioning.”

“Or to the Gendarmerie,” put in the gendarme.

“Then,” the other policeman went on, ignoring him and turning to Jean-Jacques, “you will take us to the place where you found the body.”

Jean-Jacques nodded, now beginning to feel grief at the loss of his colleague as the realization finally sank in.

The policeman pointed to the two ambulance men. “You can take the body to the hospital.”

“The hospital?” repeated one of them. “But he is dead.”

“That's right,” said the other. “He should go to the morgue.”

“He cannot go to the morgue until he is pronounced dead by the police surgeon,” said the policeman firmly. He used the term
médecin légiste,
which neatly describes the profession as legal doctor.

“Then send for the police surgeon.”

“It is simpler for you to take the body to the hospital. The police surgeon can go there.”

“Living people have to be taken to the hospital, dead people to the morgue.” The ambulance man was digging in his heels. “I can show you in the manual where it says that—”

“Sometimes it is necessary to use one's judgment,” said Nevernois, and there was a hushed silence at such an heretical pronouncement.

It was broken by the gendarme, Pertois.

“The body cannot be moved until the
médecin légiste
has examined it,” he said. His tone was flat and expressionless but it had an underlying ring of authority.

“I'll have to phone in for instructions.” The ambulance man was falling back on his standard means of existing from a difficult situation—get someone else to take responsibility for the decision.

“Tell them that you are under orders.” The policeman was determined to have the last word. He turned to us. “If you will all go inside, we will take your statements as soon as the body has been taken to the hospital.”

The ambulance man gave him a glare and went to his vehicle. We all went inside.

I
T WAS AFTER SEVEN O'CLOCK
when I arrived back at the auberge. The sun was dropping but it was still warm and the pool looked so inviting that I changed quickly and dived in. It was refreshing after such an eventful day and I could thrash away to my heart's content, unloading all the tension. Most of this was from waiting, as taking statements was clearly not a subject taught in any detail at the police academy. After the swim, I dressed and picked up the phone and dialed one of the numbers Sir Charles had given me.

No, he assured me, I was not interrupting his dinner. He didn't attempt to conceal his surprise at hearing from me so soon. Had I learned something already? he asked eagerly.

He took the news quite well after a hollow repetition of “You found a dead body!” Latching on to the sanglier aspect of Emil's death, he told me about being unhorsed by a wild boar in the Punjab when a young officer.

“So I know what ferocious beasts they are,” he continued. “Still, an unsettling thing to happen on the first day. Don't let it upset you. I'll look for your report in two weeks as agreed.” I took that to mean that he wasn't interested in local gossip, just facts on the case in hand.

We ended the conversation and I went down to the “library” where I ordered a much-needed glass of champagne. The shelves held a large number of volumes, all in French and mostly paperback novels. Maigret and Arsene Lupin dominated but Poirot and Hanaud were there too in translation. The book-lined walls, the thick well-worn carpet, the heavy drapes at the tall windows, and the pieces of period furniture gave the room a peaceful atmosphere. Ten minutes later, I went into the dining room and looked through the menu with eager anticipation.

A universal piece of eating advice is to savor the cuisine of the region, and in Provence this is no hardship. The region has its own world-renowned cooking styles and ingredients. Between this and Madame's helpful suggestions, I selected the Pâté de Grives followed by the trout with mushrooms. For the first course, three of the small thrushes are needed for each diner and only the gizzards are discarded as they make the pâté bitter. Everything else goes in including the bones, and the only unusual addition is juniper berries. Madame said that this was the recipe of the famous Troisgros Brothers whose restaurant in Roanne is well known throughout France.

Served with triangles of hot, thin toast, it was superb, and the trout, although a more conventional dish, was equal to it. A plump fish, fresh from local waters, made a fine main course. It was cooked in butter, meunière style, then covered with mushrooms and baked in the oven for a few minutes at the end and served accompanied by a sauce noisette and some steamed parsley-strewn potatoes.

I had asked for a wine from the local Peregrine vineyard but Madame shook her head. They did not carry any Peregrine wines. The vineyard was so near, I protested, surely the auberge should have them. No, it didn't, said Madame. It was not that extraordinary—I have stayed in the village of Chablis and been unable to buy the local wine, renowned as it is. Instead, I drank with my dinner a half bottle of Willesford wine, labeled Bellecoste. It was pleasant without being extraordinary. I took a bottle of Perrier up to the room, firmly resisting the temptation to have a dessert, despite Madame's entreaties.

The next morning, I had planned a tour of the Willesford vineyard and hopefully a beginning to an exposé of the mystery of the excessive offers. The death of the unfortunate Emil put a question mark against that. I decided to drive out there and decide what to do.