Dead in the Dregs (33 page)

Lucien Gauffroy seemed utterly confused.

“It is the addition of the blood that makes it so?” Sackheim said.

“If I say the word
saignée
, what does it mean to you?”

“‘Bled’? Do I understand correctly?”

“Yeah, literally, sure. But it’s another winemaking term. You say, ‘to perform a
saignée
’ or, ‘a
saignée
of Pinot Noir.’”

Back on familiar territory, Gauffroy nodded authoritatively.

“Typically,
saignée
refers to a rosé,” I continued. “But in Burgundy, they sometimes bleed the skins to get rid of extra juice, to concentrate the wine.”

“
D’accord
,” Gauffroy said.

Then they looked at me and fell quiet.

“Jean, maybe Carrière as well, bled the skin of Eric Feldman,” I said. The
vigneron
set his glass on the barrel, staring at it, realizing what he had just tasted. “And then used it as a fining agent. Instead of purifying and stabilizing the wine, the blood spoiled it.”

“
C’est ça
,” Sackheim said.
“C’est brilliant, et c’est diabolique, n’est-ce pas
?”

“
Non, mais c’est horrible, c’est affreux
,” Gauffroy muttered, a look of total revulsion contorting his face.

“Yes, you’re right. It is. Horrifying and evil, both,” I said. “And very hard to detect.”

“Come, take the wine,” Sackheim said.

 

“Chez Pitot,” Sackheim
commanded. “
Allons-y.
”

At his instruction, I threaded my way back through Gevrey-Chambertin and headed toward Nuits. We were silent on the drive south. On the east side of town, Sackheim ordered me to pull over at the public swimming pool. He called Ponsard and told him to bring two cars and some men, and to meet us chez Pitot.

We parked on the street in front of Jean’s house behind Monique’s Fiat and a dark blue Mercedes that appeared distinctly out of place in the run-down
quartier
.

“Carrière,” Sackheim said. “And . . .”

“Mademoiselle Azzine,” I whispered.

The house was even shabbier than I remembered it. Sackheim seemed uncharacteristically nervous. He pushed open the gate—the crime-scene tape that ribboned the house was already torn—and we passed the shed and the well, both of which had also been cordoned off with tape, and approached the house. We stepped up to the front door. The TV was on. A game show. Sackheim motioned for me to keep quiet. He led the way around the side of the house. We passed through the carport, and as we reached the far corner of the house,
we could hear voices from a shed. It stood just outside the fence of the property. I’d noticed it two days before when we found Jean in the well and Eric Feldman buried in his shallow grave but hadn’t given it a second thought. Smoke seeped through chinks in its walls and roof.

Sackheim crouched down and I followed suit. The first voice I heard was Françoise Pitot’s.

“
Idiot
!
Con
! He dumps the body in a
foudre
and cuts off his hand. What am I supposed to do with a hand?”

“That should teach you!” It was the voice of Henri Pitot. “Fuck this asshole and that’s what you get!
Un arriéré
!”

“You should know!” she screamed.

“Leave this to me,” Henri said.

“This is ridiculous!” Now we heard Jean-Luc Carrière. “They will find this. You are crazy.”

“My God, I can’t believe this!” a woman said in English, and I realized it was Monique. “What are you doing? It’s disgusting!” she exclaimed, again in English, as if by the mere fact of language she might separate herself from whatever it was she was seeing.

We heard a car, two cars, in the street.

“Stay here,” Sackheim whispered, pointing to his ear, and backed up to intercept his lieutenant.

Though I hadn’t noticed it, the wind must have shifted. An odor reached me, foul and noxious.

Sackheim, in a running crouch, hurried to my side. I followed his eyes to the near edge of the field and saw Ponsard take up a position behind the hay bales I’d seen the day Feldman had been found. The arrow was still there, its feathers glinting in the sunlight.

“Don’t move!” he said and rose, gesturing for Ponsard to follow, and hurried to the entrance of the shed. I couldn’t resist running after him.

The scene we met was bizarre. Henri Pitot stood bent over an antique still. It looked like an hourglass fashioned from hammered copper, the upper chamber smaller than the lower, the whole thing no taller than a couple of feet. The contraption sat on a cast-iron wood stove. As I reached the entrance, Henri Pitot fed the fire and
slammed the door shut. A pipe emerged from the top of the still and twisted its way to a rusted copper bucket that sat on a wooden stool.

I inched my way forward and gagged. An overpowering stench filled the tiny room.

“
Arrêtez
!” Sackheim shouted. “You, all of you, I am putting under arrest!”

Jean-Luc Carrière stood there, his arms akimbo, paralyzed. Françoise Pitot glowered at us. Her husband wore a hunted, terrified expression. Monique simply stared at me.

“You see!” Carrière screamed. “Just as I said!”

“I have nothing to do with this,” Monique pleaded. “They’re crazy, all of them.”

“Liar!” Françoise said. “She helped Jean. You don’t really think he could have killed Wilson by himself, do you? He was nothing, a weakling. Your father rejected you,” she said, turning back to Monique. “You wanted revenge, too.”

“It’s not true!” Monique cried.

“Quiet! All of you!” Sackheim shouted. “Come with us,” he ordered.

At that moment, Henri Pitot somehow shoved his way past Sackheim and fled in the direction of the house. Ponsard took Carrière by the arm to make sure he, too, didn’t escape. Monique came up to me and took my hands in hers.

“You have to save me,” she said, her eyes desperate. “I don’t belong here. It’s a mistake. You have to believe me.”

“Bastards!” Françoise Pitot said. “You’re all bastards!”

“Be that as it may,
Madame
, it is over,” Sackheim said. “Lieutenant,” he added, indicating that Ponsard should take Carrière and lead the way. We ducked under the low door and walked in single file toward the house, Ponsard in front, followed by Jean-Luc Carrière, Monique, Françoise and me. Sackheim took up the rear.

As we entered the back gate of the property, I could hear Françoise Pitot muttering under her breath, “This is all your fault. I told Jean to get rid of you.” I glanced back, and Sackheim took her by the shoulder.

We entered through the kitchen and gathered in the foyer and
living room. The old woman sitting before the television screen stirred at the commotion.

“
Qu’est-ce qu’il se passe
?” she said. “Is that you, Françoise?” She turned, and I looked into the milky whites of her eyes, spectral against her jaundiced skin.

No one knew what to say, and nobody moved. Finally Sackheim ordered Ponsard to take Carrière to one of the police cars and to have another officer join us.

Ponsard was back within two or three minutes, accompanied by another
flic.
Sackheim told them to keep an eye on everybody and disappeared to search the cellar for Henri Pitot. He returned empty-handed and turned to the old woman, who hadn’t budged from the sofa.

“
Pardon, Madame
,” he said. “I apologize for the disturbance. And permit me to express my sympathies. It is horrible, what the
sulfatage
does to your family. I had not realized . . .”

Françoise snorted. “What do
you
know?”

“Your daughter, Eugénie, she explained this terrible condition.”

“This is what you think? That she is blind from the
sulfatage
?” she asked contemptuously.

“
C’est vrai, n’est-ce pas
?” Sackheim said.

“True? You want the truth,
Monsieur? Monsieur le gendarme? Le grand détective
? Do you think you can stand the truth?”

“Is it not so?” Sackheim appeared confused.

“That she is poisoned?
Oui, bien sûr.
But not as you think. It is not the poison of sulfur that kills her, though truly her insides have been eaten away. Tell him, tell him what you think,” she said to her mother-in-law.

“Forgive me,
Madame
, but I do not understand,” Sackheim said.

Françoise moved to the sofa and sat down heavily next to the old woman. I stood by the half wall that separated the foyer from the living room and could see the line of the elder Madame Pitot’s coarse stockings rolled above her knees. She slouched, her chin resting on her chest, her breath coming heavily.

“Two years ago, she thought she was dying,” Françoise Pitot said. “She finally confessed. She had never told anyone.”

I could barely hear her. Sackheim lifted his head as if he had
picked up a scent. The old woman appeared disoriented, baffled by the commotion and cacophony of voices.

“Are you going to tell them, or should I?” Françoise asked. The old woman turned to face her, but without her eyes, it was impossible to tell what she was feeling.

“Henri’s mother was a young girl during the war,” Françoise started, nodding at the diminished figure.

“I was pretty then,” Madame Pitot suddenly said. Her voice was thin, frail. “There is a photograph somewhere,” she said and waved her hand distractedly, then lapsed into silence.

“When the Americans came that September,” Françoise continued, “she told her father she wanted to go to Dijon to welcome them. He said no, but she went anyway. You always did whatever you wanted.”

“Many people went. It was like a holiday, everybody in the streets waving American flags,” the old woman said, reliving the scene in her mind.

“That night—one night—she spent with an American, a soldier,” Françoise said.

“He was with the army of Patton,” her mother-in-law whispered. “He took me to a warehouse. We drank wine. He was so handsome, so gentle.” Her voice trailed off, swept away by the undertow of memory.

“And then, the next morning, he was gone,” Françoise said.

Sackheim stared from one to the other. Monique, who had gone to the window, turned back into the room.

“You know about Henri’s father,” Françoise said.

“The car accident,” Sackheim responded. “Yes, I have seen the records.”

“Hnh,” she snorted. “There was no accident. He killed himself, hung himself in the shed,” and she gestured with her chin through the window to the little outbuilding that teetered in near collapse toward the well. “It is the shame that killed him, the disgrace.”

The old woman’s face crumpled.

“And this . . . child,” Sackheim said tentatively.

“This bastard?” Françoise said. “He is my husband,
Monsieur.
”

“
Mon Dieu
,” Sackheim muttered.

“Yes, God, that’s what she says,” Françoise Pitot went on. “She believes that her blindness is God’s punishment for her sin.”

“It is true,” the old woman insisted, her head pivoting vacantly.

“And this explains, perhaps, your husband’s feelings for Gilbert?” Sackheim asked the old woman. She did not reply.

“What do you think?” Françoise answered for her. “They were married that October. Henri was born in June. By then, Etienne was trapped. He knew the child was not his, but he could tell no one. For thirty years, this disgrace, it gnawed at him. So, yes, of course, he adored Gilbert.”

“And you never heard from the American again?” Sackheim asked the old woman.

“He said he would return after the war. He promised. Bob, that was his name. Bob.” She pronounced it
Bawb.

Sackheim’s eyes bored into her as if the sheer intensity of his gaze would unlock the secrets buried in the walls and floorboards and cellar of the house.

“That was his
prénom
,” Sackheim said.

Françoise Pitot turned to him with a look that disfigured her face.

“But, of course, you saw the patch on his uniform,” Sackheim said.

A silence enveloped the room. I could sense Sackheim holding his breath.

“Oh, yes, Colonel,” Françoise said. “It was Wilson. Robert Wilson.”

“But what makes you think . . .” Sackheim started.

“You do not see it?” she said.

Sackheim didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. It was obvious to all of us. You had only to look beneath the stubble and shabby clothing. Henri Pitot’s resemblance to his half-brother was unmistakable, even to Sackheim, who had only seen photographs and had never met the great Richard Wilson in person.

Monique raised her hands to her lips, her eyes widening, dawning comprehension suffusing her face with horror. Old Madame Pitot seemed to collapse in on herself, a blind and broken old woman.

“I deeply regret . . .” Sackheim said but stopped. He seemed at a
loss for words. What could he possibly say that might staunch the overwhelming tragedy that had engulfed their family?

“I am sorry,” he said. Then he faced Françoise. The tension between them unnerved me. I couldn’t look. I let my eyes survey the living room, moving over it inch by inch, an exercise in concentrated distraction. Françoise Pitot labored to rise from the sofa, and I could see her following my gaze.

My eyes stopped at a hutch that stood against the wall. Behind one of its doors, an oddly shaped bottle was tucked between a Bas-Armagnac and a bottle labeled VIN CUIT
.
It was small, no larger than a split of Champagne, its lip curled back to reveal a tiny cork.

I walked up to the hutch, opened the brass-knobbed door, and took it in my hand. A wan smile flitted across her lips, and a strange light, a look half fascinated, half demented, shone in her eyes.

As I held it to the light, I could see that its contents—the bottle was only half full—were deep gold in color. On a thin label, like one you would find on a medicine bottle or a home canning jar, a fine, formal, old-fashioned hand had written MARC PITOT—RÉSERVE DE LA FAMILLE. I pulled the cork, held the bottle to my nose, and winced.