overhead, like footsteps in wet snow.
‘Is Fabien not eating with us?’ she’d asked.
Madame Marre had glared at her. ‘He’s going out.’ Conversation over.
Nicole sighed, and wished she had gone with the others to the sommelier’s house at Cordes en Ciel. As soon as she was finished, she excused herself from the table and hurried upstairs to her room, in the hope perhaps of bumping into Fabien in the hall. What she had not been expecting was the sight that greeted her through the half- open door of his bedroom.
Fabien stood in front of a full length mirror, flowing crimson and black robes draped from the shoulders of his ample frame almost to the floor. He was adjusting his red triangular Rabelaisian hat with white-gloved hands. Nicole was unable to suppress a gasp of astonishment, and he turned at the sound, only for his face to flush as red as his robes. They stood staring at each other for several long moments.
Nicole finally found her voice. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m going to a meeting of the Ordre. A chapitre at the abbey.’
‘I didn’t know you were a member.’
Fabien shrugged, still cowed by the weight of his embarrassment. ‘It’s a family tradition.’
Nicole smiled. ‘Have you any idea how ridiculous you look?’
Fabien blushed again. Only now there was a defensive tone in his voice. ‘It was good enough for my father, so it’s good enough for me.’
‘Is that his outfit?’
‘No. His stuff would never have fitted me.’
‘Can I come with you?’
‘No, you cannot. It’s a private meeting.’
‘Oh, go on. I’ll wait for you in the car.’
‘No.’
‘I’ve nothing else to do all evening. I’ll just be sitting on my own in my room.’
‘You could sit with my mother.’
Nicole gave him a look, and the point was conceded without a word passing between them.
‘It could be a long wait.’
‘I don’t mind. I could take a wander around town.’ She put on her most appealing face. ‘Please, Fabien. It’s really depressing here on my own.’
‘What about your friends?’
‘Oh, they’re off tasting wine somewhere.’
Fabien straightened the collar of his shirt. ‘So how’s Monsieur Macleod’s investigation going?’
His enquiry was just too casual, and Nicole became suddenly guarded. She remembered Enzo’s admonition: ‘Fabien Marre has made it perfectly clear that he had nothing but antipathy towards Petty. And since both bodies were found on his vineyard, he has to be considered a suspect.’ Not that she believed it for a moment. But she was determined she would not commit any further errors of indiscretion. ‘Fine,’ was all she said. ‘So I can come with you, then?’
His sigh of resignation told her she had bullied him into submission.
It was more than twenty minutes since Fabien had disappeared through the arched gateway into the complex of offices, with its salle de degustation and wine museum, that comprised the Maison du Vin. The abbey next door had lost its pink quality in the dying light and huddled darkly now on the banks of the river until floodlights snapped on to throw it into stark relief against the darkening sky in the east.
Nicole was bored. She watched the faithful coming and going to confession through a small doorway in the entrance to the abbey. Whispering dark secrets to a hidden listener behind a latticed screen, then emerging minutes later muttering Hail Marys, absolved of all responsibility for life.
It was a long time since she had been to church. It brought back memories of her childhood. Squirming on uncomfortable pews next to her mother and father, listening to the cants and criticisms of the cure. Words that meant nothing to her then or now. But it made her think of her mother, and she felt a sudden stab of guilt. For two days she had barely given her a second thought. Except for a call the previous night to her father to ask how she was. He had been his usual uncommunicative self, and their brief conversation had left her depressed, bringing back the memory of sunlight splintering around the closed shutters of her mother’s bedroom, the air hot and heavy with the scent of impending death.
She decided to go into the abbey to light a candle and say a prayer for her.
The vast, vaulted space of the Abbey Saint-Michel was gloomily lit. She passed down the central aisle and crossed to the Madonna and Child, where candles burned and spilled their wax. She dropped some coins into the box, took a fresh candle, and lit it from one already burning. Then she knelt in front of the Virgin Mary and closed her eyes. She had no idea what to do. It was so long since she had prayed, she had forgotten how. She concentrated her thoughts and hoped with all her heart that her mother would be delivered from her suffering quickly and without further pain.
When she stood up again, she realised she was alone in the church. The confessional was empty. And yet she could hear voices. A babble of them, some raised in what sounded like anger. Away to her right, on the curve of the apse, a door stood ajar, and she crossed the nave to listen at it. The voices were louder, though still distant, and so she was unable to hear what they were saying. She glanced around, self-conscious and indecisive. There was still no one else in the church. And so after a moment’s hesitation, she pushed the door open and stepped into an ante-room with coat hangers and an antique armoire. An old stone staircase spiralled down into darkness, to the vaulted cellars below.
The offices of the Maison du Vin, and the museum, were all part of the original abbey, interconnected by its cellars. And aware that she was probably hearing the assembled dignitaries of l’ Ordre de la Dive Bouteille in mid- meeting, she started tentatively down the stairs, drawn on by curiosity.
She felt the temperature drop as she descended into darkness, with only a rope handrail for a guide. The air was suffused with a smell of damp. Light bleeding down from the abbey above was quickly snuffed out and she became enveloped by an impenetrable black that swallowed all shape and form. It occurred to her that there was probably a light switch at the top of the stairs, and she stopped, wondering whether or not to go back. But the voices were louder now. And as her eyes adjusted, she became aware of a faint glow coming up from below. She pressed on, following the spiral curve of the wall, until the world took shape again in light, and she found herself stepping into a vaulted salle with freshly pointed brickwork and tiled floors. Black triangular uplighters on the walls echoed the flaming torches that once would have lit this underground place. An unlit corridor led off south, towards the river. The voices of the assembled dignitaries of the Order of the Divine Bottle echoed along it. Nicole took the first tentative steps towards them, leaving the light behind her again. Guiding herself with fingertips on rough brick, she turned left and then right and saw light again ahead of her.
It spilled through a glass door in a closed archway, and from the obscurity of darkness, Nicole could see through it into a large vaulted meeting room, where the crimson-robed members of the Ordre were assembled on chairs facing a top table. Most of the dignitaries appeared to be older men, although there were three or four younger ones, Fabien amongst them, and two women.
The dominant voice was Fabien’s. He was on his feet, red-faced again. Only this time, from anger and indignation. ‘I’ve worked damned hard all year. And then this. Just as I’m harvesting the fruits of my labour, some foreigner playing amateur detective comes snooping around my vineyard, disrupting my vendange, threatening my livelihood. You know, he even sent one of his spies to rent a room at my house!’ He stopped to draw breath. ‘I can’t take issue with an official police investigation. A man was found dead yesterday on my land. But Petty’s murder was years ago. This Macleod character is just reopening old wounds. And for what? I’ve read about him in the newspapers, like everyone else. This all started with a bet. He doesn’t care about Petty. He doesn’t care about us. All he cares about is his own reputation-and winning a wager. Well, he’s not going to do it at my expense.’
There was a chorus of murmured agreement, and Fabien pressed on.
‘We all have livelihoods at stake here. The reputation of the wines of Gaillac. The whole point of our Ordre is to protect and promote those wines. I don’t think we should be cooperating with this Macleod. It’s not in any of our interests.’
The wall at Nicole’s shoulder seemed to give just a little. There was a click, and the corridor was flooded with
