Perfect Strangers (30 page)

‘There it is,’ he announced, craning his neck to read a passing road sign. He twisted the steering wheel suddenly to the right and shoved the map at Sophie. ‘Bois du Lac, five kilometres, see if you can find it. We must be close to the road for Chateau Cavail by now.’

Sophie looked at the map, tracing their journey from Cannes up into the foothills of Provence towards Avignon. They hadn’t taken the most direct route, partly due to missed turnings and the rather laissez-faire attitude of the French towards road signs, and partly because it made sense. The more they could make their movements random and unpredictable, the less likely it was anyone could catch up with them. Not that she was in any particular hurry to get to Chateau Cavail, anyway. As far as Sophie was concerned, all she would find there were more questions and more heartache. She knew by now that what she had imagined she had with Nick was just that – imagined. And she was fairly sure there were dozens of women around Europe who had shared the same delusion, possibly at the same time. But she had no desire to meet any of Nick’s ex-lovers, especially a glamorous winemaker Monsieur Durand had described as a genius. If she’d had her choice, Sophie would have simply stopped the car and walked through the fields until she found a stream, then bathed her feet and felt the sinking sun on her face. But she couldn’t do that, could she? The freedom, the liberation she had felt arriving in Paris had turned into another kind of trap – she felt herself being forced down a path. She didn’t know what she’d find at the end, but she was fairly sure it wasn’t going to be a sunny meadow full of butterflies.

‘Well this is the Bois du Lac, though I can’t see the
lac
,’ said Josh.

The village Josh had spotted on the map was really just one dusty road with a few boxy cottages straggling either side; the population couldn’t be pushing much past two hundred. Still, there was a butcher’s, a baker’s and a chemist, plus a garage that obviously doubled as the propane outlet and farm shop.

‘There!’ said Sophie, pointing to a sign. It was peeling and half hidden by an overgrown hedge, but she could still read: ‘Chateau Cavail, 1 km’.

‘At least it’s a decent road,’ said Josh. ‘They must have to drive trucks up and down here with deliveries all the time.’

They drove up into the estate, hemmed in on both sides by line after line of crocodile-green vines set out in shaggy rows that undulated with the curves of the hills. Finally they came over a rise and saw the house: a shimmering white chateau with turrets at each corner and a long drive with yews either side.

‘Nice place,’ said Josh as they pulled up by the wide stone steps at the front of the house. ‘No wonder Nick wanted a piece of this.’

‘Josh, please,’ said Sophie quietly.

‘Sorry,’ he said, looking genuinely apologetic.

‘I’m not exactly looking forward to meeting this Sandrine, even if it does seem as though we have a lot in common.’

‘Yeah, I can see that. Well, think of yourself as Constable Ellis again. We’re just here to get information, remember? Because the more we know about what Nick was doing, the quicker we can get you back home, okay?’

Sophie gave him a weak smile. ‘Okay.’

As they got out of the car, a tall woman with long black hair was walking towards them from the side of the house. She was beautiful; chiselled features and pale-brown skin and dressed in a loose smock that couldn’t disguise her slender figure. Sophie knew this was Sandrine Bouvier before she even spoke; she just had to be. She was everything Sophie was not: exotic, assured, with an air of experience and, yes, sexiness that so many French women seemed to possess.

‘You are the people who called?’ the woman asked in perfect English.

‘Yes,’ said Josh, shaking her hand. ‘Mrs Bouvier?’

She nodded. ‘And you say you want to talk to me for a newspaper article?’

Josh shook his head slowly.

‘I’m afraid I wasn’t entirely truthful with you on the telephone, Mrs Bouvier. I’m afraid we have some bad news.’

She looked from Josh to Sophie, then back again.

‘Bad news?’ she asked, the flicker of panic visible in her hazel eyes. ‘Then you had better come inside.’

The chateau was cool and surprisingly dark –
built to keep the sun out
, thought Sophie as they walked across stone-flagged floors, past simple rustic furniture with tapestry cushions and cut flowers in terracotta pots. Sophie guessed that most of the women on her fitness client list would pay a small fortune to have their multi-million-pound Georgian town houses transformed into a pale imitation of something this tasteful and understated.

Sandrine led them out on to a wide terrace at the back of the house with a fine view of the vineyards stretching away in their endless rows. A thatched pergola shaded them from the sun as they sat down around a wooden table.

‘It’s Nick, isn’t it?’ said Sandrine finally.

Josh nodded. ‘My name is Josh, this is Sophie. Nick was a friend of ours, Mrs Bouvier.’

‘Call me Sandrine, please.’

‘Nick is dead, Sandrine,’ he said. ‘He was killed in London a few days ago.’

She looked away, nodding, silent for several seconds.

‘Do you know? I was almost expecting this,’ she said, inhaling through her teeth. ‘Not today, of course, you never know when something like this will come, but Nick was . . . He lived that way, you know? He burned too brightly.’

Sophie saw tears in the woman’s eyes and felt wretched. On the drive from Cannes, she had imagined this meeting, imagined what Sandrine Bouvier was like, how she would react to the news of Nick’s death. But now she was here, face to face with this woman’s grief, it was a more difficult meeting than she had thought. Sandrine had loved Nick Beddingfield, she could see that. He wasn’t hard to love, after all.

A young woman in an apron appeared carrying a tray, and Sandrine quickly stood up and walked over to the edge of the terrace, staring out at the vineyards, hiding her tears.

‘
Sur la table, merci, Hélène
,’ she said, and the girl left a bottle of wine and three glasses, then disappeared.

‘You must excuse me,’ said Sandrine, as she returned, dabbing her eyes. ‘As you will appreciate, my relationship with Nick was a secret. If my husband ever found out . . . Let us say it is best the staff have nothing to gossip about, no?’

She poured them each a glass of the deep red wine, concentrating intently on the bottle.

‘You made this here, on the estate?’ said Sophie, smelling the wine’s heavy bouquet.

‘I blended it myself,’ she said, taking a long, steadying sip.

‘Really?’ said Sophie. ‘This is excellent. Truly.’

Monsieur Durand had been right; if Sandrine really had created this wine, it was very impressive. Rich, but not over-powering, it was as if ripe grapes were bursting on your tongue.

Sandrine shrugged. ‘It is the only thing I was ever good at. Actually, it is why I am here,’ she said, raising a hand to indicate the house. ‘I travelled all over the world studying winemaking techniques: Napa, the Hunter Valley, Chile. But then I met my husband and’ – she shrugged – ‘back
en France
.’

‘Do you make wine for your husband’s estate?’

She snorted. ‘The wine industry is dominated by men. As a woman, no one took me seriously; even my husband sidelined me to the role of
femme au foyer
. I think you say “housewife”. He just wanted me to make babies.’

She looked away again. The sadness in her eyes was replaced by something else – fear.

‘How was he killed?’ she asked softly.

Josh exchanged a look with Sophie.

‘He was found dead in his hotel room on Monday morning.’

‘He hadn’t returned my calls in several days,’ said Sandrine, thinking out loud.

Sophie felt another wave of guilt, working out that he had probably been avoiding Sandrine’s calls when he had been with her.

‘It was a wound to the head,’ continued Josh. ‘He was probably hit by an intruder.’

‘Someone he knew?’ she asked tensely.

‘The police don’t know,’ said Sophie, feeling suddenly more courageous in the company of Sandrine.

‘Who found him?’

‘I did,’ said Sophie, feeling awkward.

Sandrine nodded.

‘I see.’

Sophie watched the Frenchwoman’s mouth sour with hurt. She hoped she was too discreet to ask any more about the circumstances in which she had discovered Nick’s body.

The woman rubbed her eyes and turned back.

‘Then we must celebrate his life, no?’ she said, raising her glass. ‘
Bonne chance, mon chéri
,’ she said, looking up to the blue sky.

They sat that way for a long minute, Sophie sipping her wine and wondering if Sandrine had any idea about Nick’s other women. Perhaps not; he was very good at making you feel you were the only one who mattered to him. Maybe even a sophisticated, worldly woman like Sandrine Bouvier could be taken in.

‘How did you get involved with Nick?’ she asked finally.

‘You know how easy that is,’ quipped the Frenchwoman.

It was a few moments before she spoke again.

‘My marriage is not happy,’ she said. ‘But we are Catholic. Pierre, my husband, won’t divorce me, but he is happy to have mistresses all over the world. In fact, he is in Avignon with his girlfriend right now,’ she said, curling her lip. ‘Two years ago, I took a lover – no one important, a man from the village; I just needed to feel wanted again. But Pierre found out and he beat me until I was blue.’

She looked up at them, her green eyes sparkling defiantly.

‘Oh, you say, why not leave him, yes? Of course I would have, but I had no money. Pierre controls everything, including my bank account.’

Sandrine paused, a half-smile coming on to her face.

‘I met Nick at a party thrown by the wine merchant Jean Polieux in Antibes. Nick was different, funny – exciting. And we began an affair. I was so scared that Pierre might find out, but I couldn’t help myself.’ She turned to look at Sophie. ‘I fell in love.’

‘But you never left your husband,’ said Sophie.

‘I told Nick I wanted to leave Pierre. We had a plan to make enough money so I could start a new life.’

‘The counterfeiting,’ said Josh. Sandrine looked at him sharply, but he just raised his eyebrows.

‘Nick was my friend, madame. He told me everything; that is why we are here. I knew he would want you to hear of his passing from a friend.’

‘That is kind,’ she said, her voice cracking. ‘Thank you.’

Josh glanced at Sophie again.

‘But that’s not all. Nick was murdered. We need your help to find out who killed him. What you were doing here, well, it could be important.’

Sandrine gazed at Josh for a moment, then nodded.

‘Come,’ she said, standing and leading them down from the terrace, along a gravel path and through a green wooden door. Sophie immediately felt goose bumps rise on her bare arms as the temperature dropped. They were inside a large stone warehouse with concrete floors and a grey steel gantry running down one side. The rest of the space was taken up by hundreds of wooden barrels, all stacked on top of each other. Sandrine unlocked a door and they stepped into a large room dominated by a long table cluttered with dozens of bottles, flasks, even a small stove. It was like a cross between a chemistry lab and a farmhouse kitchen.

‘My sanctuary,’ she said with a smile. ‘This is where I come to create my wines, such as the one you tasted at the house and . . . the others.’

She chose two bottles from a shelf and gave one to Sophie to examine.

‘Pétrus 2003,’ Sophie said, reading the label. ‘This is a two-thousand-euro bottle of wine.’

Sandrine put the bottle into a machine and pulled a lever to remove the cork, then poured the dark liquid into a wine balloon and handed it to a wide-eyed Sophie.

‘Try it, I think you’ll enjoy it.’

Sophie swirled it around for a minute or so to oxidise the liquid, mesmerised for a moment by the deep purple colour. Then she raised it to her nose to take in the aroma and quickly sucked in a mouthful, letting it wash over her tongue to absorb the flavours.

‘What can you taste?’ asked Sandrine.

‘Blackberry, roasted coffee, maybe even vanilla?’

‘Exceptional, isn’t it?’ she smiled. ‘Now try this.’

She opened a second bottle, this time without a label, and poured the plum-coloured wine into another glass. With a glance at Josh, Sophie repeated the process.

‘It’s Pétrus,’ she said. ‘It’s the same wine. Isn’t it?’

‘No, it is something I created.’ Sandrine shrugged. ‘I made twenty bottles of it. I will give you one to take back to London.’

‘But this is amazing,’ said Sophie. ‘You’re so talented, why isn’t your chateau more famous?’

‘Because I am not the winemaker. Sure, I help out with blending, tasting, finalising the wines, but not officially. Even if I was appointed to head winemaker tomorrow, it takes years, even decades for a winery to establish itself to the point where it can charge more than a hundred euros a bottle. Even then, you need the nod from influential critics like Robert Parker.’

She opened her hands to indicate her blending lab.

‘So this remains my hobby: to create the best wine I can, perhaps to match the masters.’

‘Does your husband know?’

She laughed mirthlessly.

‘Of course not. He is never here. On business, in bed with his mistresses. And none of the staff dares ask questions about the wife’s little hobby.’

‘And it was your hobby which Nick suggested as a way out for you?’ asked Josh.

Sandrine nodded.

‘Come, let’s walk back to the house,’ she said. She locked the warehouse and led them along another path which wound through the vineyards.

‘I knew about counterfeit wines, of course, they have always been part of the industry,’ said Sandrine as they walked. ‘But the way Nick talked about it, he didn’t make it sound like it would be something illegal. He said it was a way to use my talents – and if the wine we put in our bottles was as good as the real thing, who would ever know? He made it sound like my escape.’

‘What wines did you make for sale?’

‘Older ones generally.’