Vintage (48 page)

T
here was little pre-Christmas jolliness going on at Champagne Arsenault. The last of the Christmas orders had gone out, along with their accompanying invoices, but Madeleine had a bigger debt to worry about.

After Mick Tremblant’s first visit, Madeleine had quizzed Henri about the man and his connection with her father. Henri knew of Mick Tremblant. Most people in town did. He knew that he’d gone to prison after being arrested for drug dealing, but he didn’t know if Mick had ever played cards with Constant Arsenault. Henri advised Madeleine to go to the police. But there was technically no offense, they said. Mick had asked for the return of a debt. He’d made no threat. The only thing she could do was alert them if he actually broke a law.

Since then, Madeleine had seen the man just once more. It was Halloween. Several neighborhood parents had given in to pester power and allowed their children to go trick-or-treating. Madeleine opened the door expecting
some neighborhood kids and found instead Mick and his henchman on the doorstep, with those vile “Scream” masks covering their equally scary real faces.

“By Christmas,” was all he said.

Madeleine tried to ignore him. If Mick Tremblant did turn up for his money and she didn’t have it, what could he do? He was well known to the local police. He wouldn’t risk doing anything stupid, surely. Madeleine decided that if he showed his face again, she would call his bluff.

The day he turned up was a sad and gray sort of day. Madeleine found a Christmas card from Mackesy in the mail. She hadn’t seen him since that morning in Paris. Their fond flirtatious relationship had degraded into something more business-like, conducted entirely by e-mail. She looked at the kiss below his signature and wondered whether he had scribbled it there deliberately or absentmindedly. Did he really think about her at all? He was probably looking forward to a Christmas
en famille.
Madeleine put his Christmas card with all the others on the mantelpiece in her office.

The doorbell rang.

Before she got to the door, Madeleine knew who would be there. She heard two gruff voices singing a traditional carol, but altering the words to something altogether more blasphemous. She kept the chain, fitted after Tremblant’s first visit, on the door as she opened it just a couple of inches.

“Félicitations,
Mademoiselle Arsenault,” said Mick Tremblant, removing his Santa hat with a flourish. “I have come to collect your Christmas donation to the poor.”

“I don’t have your money,” Madeleine said simply.

“Now, that’s not what I wanted to hear,” he said. “My
children will have no Christmas presents unless you’ve got what I’ve come for.”

“Then I’m very sorry but they’ll have to go without. I’m afraid, Monsieur Tremblant, that I’ve decided I won’t be responsible for my father’s debt to you. I have no reason to believe that my father ever knew you at all, let alone played cards with you. You should know that I have informed the police that you have been bothering me and I won’t hesitate to get them involved if I feel threatened in any way. In fact,” she bluffed, “I’ve had an alarm installed since you were last here. If I press the button my finger is resting on right now, I will be instantly connected to the local police station.”

Mick Tremblant took a step back as though he was the one who felt threatened.

“Wow. That’s fighting talk,” he said.

“Find someone else to pick on,” said Madeleine. “There’s nothing for you here.”

Mick Tremblant raised his hands. “If you say so, my dear. We’re terribly sorry for having disturbed you.
Bon Noël.”

Then, to Madeleine’s surprise, he merely turned and walked away, his enormous henchman shuffling after.

Could it be that easy? Madeleine asked herself as she climbed into bed. Perhaps it was. From talking to Henri, it seemed that Mick Tremblant was really quite a small-time crook. In all probability the debt he claimed her father owed him didn’t exist. Tremblant had just been trying it on. And now that he thought Madeleine had a direct line to the police station, it wasn’t worth the bother.

She pulled the sheets up to her chin. On nights like these she truly wished she had someone with her. Someone to hold her tight and reassure her that she had indeed seen
the baddies off. It took quite some time before she was able to fall asleep.

It was about three o’clock in the morning when Madeleine stirred awake again. Like an animal sensing the presence of a predator, she knew at once that something was not quite right. Her eyes looked out blindly into the darkness of her room with its small windows and heavy velvet drapes. She could see nothing. But she could hear something very strange indeed.

It was a creaking sound, like the mast of a great sailing vessel groaning in the wind. The creaking was punctuated by a high-pitched whine, like the sound wet logs make when you throw them onto a bonfire. Madeleine’s mental image was, alas, almost spot-on. Still it took a while before she connected the noise with its source: the ancient beams in the ceiling of the room below groaning and spitting as they started to burn.

By the time she opened the door of her bedroom, smoke was curling its way up the stairwell. There was no time to strategize. She had to act on animal instinct. Darting back into the bedroom, Madeleine snatched up just one thing—the shoe box full of her mother’s letters and the old photographs, from its place in the bottom of the wardrobe. Then she raced from the house, using the stairwell at the opposite end of the corridor to the one that was on fire. At the top of that stairwell, she turned and paused just long enough to see a flash of yellow flame chase her.

Madeleine called the fire brigade from her mobile phone as she ran.

When she got outside the front of the house, she found a crowd had already gathered.

“We’ve called the
pompiers,”
said Monsieur Mulfort.
“My son saw the smoke when he was coming back from the bar.”

“Thank you,” said Madeleine.

“They’ll be here any second,” Monsieur Mulfort assured her. “But you look terrified. Let me hold you.”

Madeleine refused his kindness. But the fire brigade wasn’t there in seconds. Or even minutes. It was at least another half an hour before the fire engine roared up to Champagne Arsenault, and by that time, it was much too late. The fire had spread from the hall into the upper floors. The old wooden beams merely acted as fuses for the fire to race along. Sparks shot up into the sky like fireworks as the roof began to cave in.

Though they worked on the blaze until dawn broke, the fire brigade could save nothing of Champagne Arsenault but the walls around the courtyard. Madeleine could only watch as the once grand house burned. Her family history, going up in flames.

C
learly it was arson,” Madeleine insisted to the local police chief, Inspector Delahey. “Mick Tremblant came to my house that afternoon. He asked for the money. I told him I didn’t have it and the very same night my house catches fire. You really think that’s a coincidence?”

“Mademoiselle Arsenault,” Delahey sighed. “I understand that you must be feeling very tired and upset. But don’t let the shock of the fire trick you into making false
accusations. The preliminary report from the fire department suggests that the fire was probably started by a candle left unattended when you went to bed.”

“What? I didn’t leave a candle burning.”

“I’m sure you didn’t mean to. I know how you girls love scented candles,” said Delahey. “My wife fills the place with them. I told her when I heard about your fire: that could happen to us, dear, if you’re not careful.”

“I did not leave a candle burning,” Madeleine reiterated. “You know that’s rubbish.”

“Then perhaps it was an electrical fault,” said Delahey. “It was an old house. When did you last have the electrics checked? In either case, I’m happy to wait for the fire department’s full report. I’m not about to go out and arrest someone just because you don’t like the look of him … Now, where are you staying at the moment? Do you have people you can spend Christmas with? I don’t like the thought of you spending Christmas alone, Mademoiselle Arsenault.”

“I will be fine,” said Madeleine, “if I think that you’re doing your job. At least try to find out where Mick Tremblant was last night. Him and his henchman.”

“That’s easy,” said Inspector Delahey. “They were playing cards at Maison Randon with me and Axel Delaflote.”

Axel could hardly bear to look at the gates of Champagne Arsenault. Split and warped by the heat of the fire, they hung from their hinges like a pair of broken wings. Mathieu Randon was not quite so squeamish. He wound down the window on his side of the car and leaned out for a better view.

“Must have been quite some blaze,” he said. “Thank goodness Mademoiselle Arsenault was not hurt. The caves remain untouched, yes?”

“As I understand it,” said Axel.

“And the Clos Des Larmes?”

“Covered in ash, but that shouldn’t be a problem. The vines are dormant right now, of course.”

“Of course. And where is Mademoiselle Arsenault staying?”

“Delahey said she’s at the hotel by the bank.”

“I think we should pay her a visit,” said Randon.

Axel could think of nothing he wanted to do less than go to Madeleine’s hotel with Randon. But Randon wasn’t about to let up. And Axel wasn’t in the position to refuse his boss’s orders anymore.

Though Randon never mentioned it directly, the events of that night at the party in Paris sat between them like a grenade without a pin whenever they met. Axel berated himself on a daily basis for having been taken in. Randon had made him feel like a friend and an equal. He’d encouraged Axel to reveal his darkest desires, and now that he knew them Randon used them like invisible handcuffs. There was certainly no way that Axel could leave Maison Randon unless Randon decided it was time for him to go. And so he turned the car in the direction of Madeleine’s temporary home.

Madeleine was in her room, going through a pile of papers retrieved from her father’s strong box, which thankfully had survived the fire, when the hotel receptionist called to say she had a visitor. Her heart sank as she reached the lobby and saw the back of Mathieu Randon. When he turned and smiled at her, she felt positively queasy.

“Come to gloat,” she said.

“Not at all,” he assured her. “I’ve come to offer you my assistance.”

“I don’t need your assistance.”

“I thought you might say that. You modern girls have
made a rod for your own backs, refusing to allow yourselves to be looked after from time to time. So, knowing that you would be too proud to accept my help, even though you need it, I took the liberty of putting in place a scheme that will lift a great weight from your mind anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“I understand that your father died owing rather a lot of money, thanks to his penchant for the card tables.”

“It’s not true,” said Madeleine.

“That’s not what Mick Tremblant said. I’m very sorry you had the misfortune to have to meet him, Madeleine. He’s not a very pleasant man. He has, as I think you might have guessed, some very ugly connections and he’s not afraid to use them. The last thing you need, after such a tragedy as this fire, is to have to worry about someone like him. And so, because I admired your father and his champagne house so much, I decided to neutralize your little problem with Tremblant for you.”

Madeleine shook her head uncomprehendingly.

“You’re familiar, from your years in banking, with the concept of selling debt. Well, Mick Tremblant has sold your debt to me. He won’t be bothering you again. I’ve paid him off. From this day forward, you need deal only with me.”

“What?”

“I think you’ll find me a very flexible lender, Madeleine. I understand that you’re not in a position to pay me back right now and so I’m going to give you time to come up with the cash.”

Madeleine snorted. “I don’t have to listen to your crap. If you really gave Mick Tremblant two hundred thousand Euros on my behalf, then I’m sorry. He pulled the wool over your eyes. My father had no gambling debts.”

“Now you’re lying to me. This must all be very stressful for a dear sweet girl like you. No family. All alone in the world. How it must haunt you to think about what might have happened had you not woken in time to escape the fire. And though the fire was an accident, who would blame you for feeling jumpy when it came so close after your run-in with that pimp? There are nasty people out there, Madeleine. You have until April to pay back the money you owe me. I’ll accept cash. Or, if you prefer, I’ll accept property. I’m ready to renegotiate my offer for Champagne Arsenault whenever you are—though, of course, now that the house has burned down, my offer will be considerably lower than it was.”

“I’m never selling to you, Randon. And if you continue to threaten me, I will file a complaint with the police.”

“With my friend Inspector Delahey? A good idea. Good afternoon, Madeleine.”

Randon left.

Outside, Axel was waiting for him in the car, reading that day’s newspaper.