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  Praise for the series

  “The perfect mystery to read with a glass of vino in hand.”

  —Shelf Awareness, starred review

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  “Decadent, delicious, and delightful, the Winemaker Detective series blends an immersion in French countryside, winemaking, and gourmet attitude with mystery and intrigue.”

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  “A fun and informative take on the cozy crime mystery, French style.”

  —Eurocrime

  “It is easy to see why this series has a following. The descriptive language is captivating... crackling, interesting dialogue, and persona.”

  —Foreword Reviews

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  “Recommended for those who like the journey, with good food and wine, as much as the destination.”

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  “The reader is given a fascinating look into the goings on in the place the story is set and at the people who live there, not to mention all the wonderful food and drinks.”

  —The Book Girl’s Book Blog

  “A quick, entertaining read. It reminds me a bit of a good old English Murder Mystery such as anything by Agatha Christie.”

  —New Paper Adventures

  “I love good mysteries. I love good wine. So imagine my joy at finding a great mystery about wine, and winemaking, and the whole culture of that fascinating world.”

  —William Martin, New York Times bestselling author

  “It is best consumed slightly chilled, and never alone. You will be intrigued by its mystery, and surprised by its finish, and it will stay with you for a very long time.”

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  The Winemaker Detective Series

  Treachery in Bordeaux

  Grand Cru Heist

  Nightmare in Burgundy

  Deadly Tasting

  Cognac Conspiracies

  Mayhem in Margaux

  Flambé in Armagnac

  Montmartre Mysteries

  Backstabbing in Beaujolais

  Late Harvest Havoc

  Tainted Tokay

  Red-Handed in Romanée-Conti

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  Requiem in Yquem

  A Winemaker Detective Mystery

  Jean-Pierre Alaux and Noël Balen

  Translated by Sally Pane

  Copyright information

  All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  First published in France as

  Noce d’or à Yquem

  by Jean-Pierre Alaux and Noël Balen

  World copyright ©Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2004

  English adaptation copyright ©2017 Sally Pane

  First published in English in 2017

  by Le French Book, Inc., New York

  www.lefrenchbook.com

  Translation: Sally Pane

  Adaptation: Sally Pane, Amy Richards, Anne Trager

  Translation editor: Amy Richards

  Cover designer: Jeroen ten Berge

  ISBNs:

  Trade paperback: 9781943998111

  E-book: 9781943998104

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  What through youth gave love and roses,

  Age still leaves us friends and wine.

  —Thomas Moore

  1

  It was a rustic bed. Resting on a pine frame, the thin mattress had served for more than sleep. Lovers had coupled in the night here, and children had been birthed in white-hot pain. Under the goose-down comforter, the sheets were heavy and rough. A crucifix above the bed attested to a faith filled with incense and rosary beads. A frond secured behind it awaited Ash Wednesday, when it would be reduced to gray dust—a reminder

  of mortality.

  An antique clock with a brass pendulum ruled over the dreary room, which was steeped in darkness day and night. Éléonore and René Lacombe were too discreet to let the sun reveal their furrowed faces, skeletal torsos, and arthritic joints. The couple anticipated death with resignation mingled with apprehension.

  On this late-autumn morning, the two old creatures were lying side by side, with waxy faces, half-closed eyes, gaping mouths, and limp, fleshless arms. Éléonore and René looked like marionettes abandoned by a puppeteer who had rushed offstage. Except for the blood.

  The bullets had been carefully aimed. Had Éléonore and René awakened? Had they seen the murderer’s face? Clearly, there hadn’t been enough time to switch on the lamp or let out a word or a cry. And certainly not enough to grab the shotgun below the bed, which René hadn’t used since he stopped pigeon hunting five years before. No, the scenario had unfolded without a hitch. No mess in the house. No closets forced open or drawers rifled through. The covers were even pulled up, as if to keep the victims from getting cold before moving on to the afterlife.

  Was it possible that someone was after the couple’s modest possessions? A postal employee’s pension, combined with the meager savings of a seamstress, was hardly enough to motivate a crime like this.

  They kept no wads of euros tucked beneath their mattress. The small savings they had managed to accumulate was safely deposited at a bank in Preignac, a commonplace town in the Sauternes appellation of southwestern France. The Lacombes’ nest egg was available for withdrawal if anything happened. But nothing ever happened. Theirs was a humdrum life permeated with silence, small grimaces, groans, and occasional laughter. Some bickering, of course, but nothing serious.

  Éléonore and René had sometimes joked that they would be inseparable even in death. And when the first officer on the scene carefully pulled down the covers, it was confirmed. Éléonore and René were holding hands.

  2

  Antoine Barbaroux pulled the wadded handkerchief from his pants pocket and blew into it noisily, startling Deputy Rivard in the passenger seat. Rivard shifted and looked out the window. A blanket of mist covered the vines, which just a short time earlier had been thick with berries. A second car with two other men was close behind.

  Barbaroux and his deputies had headed out as soon as the prosecutor gave them the heads up, and they were near their destination. The inspector was a veteran when it came to homicides, yet he still felt a tinge of sorrow for the vict
ims whose murders he investigated. This old couple wouldn’t be any different, but Barbaroux was a man who rarely showed his emotions.

  Barbaroux turned down the long drive to the Lacombes’ house and parked in front. A handful of local authorities were at the scene, along with the crime-beat reporters.

  “That’s quite a crowd,” the deputy said.

  “Let’s just hope the local guys didn’t ride roughshod all over the place and ruin the evidence,” Barbaroux answered.

  The inspector got out of the car, and a large man with thick white hair and a paunch walked over to greet him.

  “Mayor Pontier,” the man said, extending his hand. “Such a terrible thing. The Lacombes didn’t have many close friends, but they didn’t have any enemies either. They were simple people. Not a soul had anything bad to say about them. This has to be the work of a psychopath.”

  Barbaroux grunted as he checked out the house.

  “You should have seen the wedding anniversary celebration we threw for them,” the mayor continued. “Everyone was at the Bommes village hall, hugging and toasting them. And the Lacombes were so grateful. Too bad Cecile wasn’t there…”

  Barbaroux cut him off. “Can we go inside?”

  The mayor opened the door, and the inspector looked around. Straight ahead there was a hearth with a threadbare armchair on each side. A couch with carved-wood trim was to his left. From the looks of it, the couch was more for visitors than the residents. A tall hutch on his right held a few pieces of good china. In the kitchen, a checked oilcloth covered a table big enough for four people. A rag rug—perhaps braided by Éléonore Lacombe herself—was on the worn floor, near the sink.

  Barbaroux carefully inspected the bedroom, his hands behind his back as he slowly walked around the bed. He emerged ten minutes later and told his deputies to start collecting the evidence. Then he went back outside to find the mayor. “I’d like to talk with some of the neighbors.”

  “Of course. There’s Mrs. Soules, down the road. And the Guerins, who live just past her. I can take you over and introduce you.”

  “That won’t be necessary.” The inspector sniffed and pulled out his handkerchief. He would go in his own time.

  3

  Benjamin Cooker settled himself on the sunny though chilly terrace of the Régent restaurant on Place Gambetta. This was one of his favorite spots in Bordeaux to read the paper—actually, papers. France’s preeminent wine expert was a voracious consumer of the news. On his way to the Régent, he had stopped at the kiosk by the Grand Théâtre to pick up the Herald Tribune, Le Figaro, Le Monde, and finally, the Sud-Ouest, Bordeaux’s regional newspaper. He always wanted to know what was happening on both sides of the Garonne River.

  “Earl Grey, Mr. Cooker?” the server asked.

  The winemaker nodded, but changed his mind before the server walked away. “No, make that a Lillet.”

  The aperitif wine from a village south of Bordeaux was a blend of blanc, rosé, merlot, and macerated liqueurs. Yes, a Lillet would be perfect.

  The autumnal gusts had chilled the port city, forcing its residents to pull out their coats and parkas. Benjamin, snug in his Loden, was happy to have the terrace, with its privileged view, all to himself. He savored interludes like this, when he could escape from his offices on the Allées de Tourny and just page through the newspapers while watching the comings and goings. The Régent’s terrace, in addition to being strategically located, had a certain weight of history that gave coherence to his reading. When it came to dining in Bordeaux’s famed golden triangle, the city’s neoclassical heart, he preferred the Noailles, which had a first-rate wine selection. There was no contesting this.

  Over the years, Benjamin’s routine at the Régent had become a ritual. Making eye contact with the staff members, all of whom knew him by name, he would claim a table that was just far enough from the other patrons to give him privacy. Although he had many friends and business acquaintances, Benjamin didn’t want to feel obliged to acknowledge anyone else when he was reading.

  No matter the season, he sat on the terrace. In good weather, he would take off his Loden and lay it on the chair opposite his. Even before unfolding the newspapers, he would remove his fountain pen from the inside pocket of his tweed jacket. The Parker pen was a prized gift from his daughter, Margaux, who was all too familiar with his habit of scribbling things wherever—if not in his notebook, then on the paper tablecloth in restaurants, the margins of magazine articles, or on the backs of business cards. Benjamin annotated constantly, as if his memory might fail him. It was a habit that served him well. His Cooker Guide was, in fact, a compilation of all these notes. His comments on wines, the châteaus he visited, and the hopes tied to countless vintages had all been nothing at first but arcane shorthand in black ink.

  On this morning, Benjamin Cooker had received the final copy of the newest edition of his guide, which was due in bookstores by the feast of Saint Martin, November 11—a fitting day because it marked the formal end of the agrarian year. In addition, this was when the newly produced wine was ready for consumption.

  Benjamin’s publisher, Claude Nithard, had picked the release date himself, and there was no putting it off.

  “Benjamin, we’re going to exceed one million copies,” Claude had told him in a phone call. “And that’s just in French-speaking countries. I’m taking bets. This will be an exceptional vintage of your Cooker Guide!”

  Benjamin needed to verify that his final corrections had made it into print. He had modified an appraisal that seemed too severe, revised three ratings by a half-point, and added a château he had fallen in love with after the final draft was sent in. Suffice it to say, he would have to lock himself in his office at his beloved home, Grangebelle, for a couple of hours, at least, to give the guide a last read.

  In truth, Benjamin didn’t want to disappoint Claude, who was more than his publisher. Claude was a friend. Their relationship was based on copious feasts and bottles unearthed from wine cellars festooned with cobwebs.

  They had hit it off the first time they met. Benjamin had been thinking about writing a wine guide, based on his extensive travels and tastings, and Claude had immediately taken to the idea. The publisher, whose offices were on the Rue des Saint-Pères in Paris, had invited the prospective author to dinner at La Tour d’Argent. Neither advances nor royalties were mentioned during this initial meeting at the famed Paris restaurant, with its view of Notre Dame and the Seine. The only figures that mattered were the dates of exceptional vintages they had experienced, several of which were in their very own cellars. The wine—or rather, wines—they consumed that night put them in a joyful mood, and Benjamin concluded the deal with a quote from Homer: “Wine can of their wits the wise beguile, make the sage frolic, and the serious smile!” The men toasted one last time with plum brandy, and the Cooker Guide was born.

  Over the years, Benjamin and Claude had grown close. The two men, along with the winemaker’s wife, Elisabeth, and the publisher’s girlfriend, had even gone on a cruise of the Danube together.

  Benjamin had every intention of getting through the final read of his guide, and a timely delivery was the guarantee of a meal accompanied by a bottle of Pétrus. Claude Nithard was a man of his word.

  So why was he wasting time on the terrace of the Régent, when he also needed to stop at the lab on the Cours du Chapeau Rouge and review instructions with his lab manager regarding the châteaus that kept him on retainer?

  Benjamin pushed the thought away, as though it were a plate that needed to be cleared from the table. “Taking time when time is what you’re sorely lacking is an aesthetic delight,” he mused as he opened his Sud-Ouest.

  The headline and photo blared at him. “Elderly Sauternes couple murdered in their sleep.”

  The man and woman, both in their early eighties, were beaming in a black-and-white photo taken at their sixtieth wedding anniversary. The caption explained that the entire village of Bommes had gathered for a celebration, organize
d by the mayor himself.

  “Unfortunately, we missed the Lacombes’ fiftieth anniversary,” the mayor had told the reporter covering the double homicide. “We didn’t want to let this one slip by. They were such good people. And they had experienced a terrible loss. We all felt for them. How could anyone murder them this way?”

  According to the mayor, the Lacombes’ only child, Pierre, and his wife, Françoise, had drowned many years earlier, and Éléonore and René had brought up their granddaughter, Cecile.

  The tragedy hadn’t dampened Éléonore’s faith in the least, the mayor said. In fact, Éléonore embarked on a Notre Dame de Verdelais pilgrimage the Sunday after the drownings. She attended Mass regularly, sang in the choir, cooked meals served after funeral services at the church, and lent a hand for a variety of charitable causes.

  “She was a gentle woman,” a neighbor told the reporter. “She wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  The authorities had found no sign of forced entry. Was this the act of a lone killer, or were there accomplices? The case had already been turned over to the prosecutor’s office in Bordeaux, and Inspector Antoine Barbaroux had been named lead investigator.

  Benjamin smiled. Antoine Barbaroux, the detective with the runny nose. Rough around the edges, and those who didn’t know better rarely gave him the credit he deserved. He was a shrewd man. The winemaker had learned this while working with him on a case involving a serial killer and some prized bottles of Pétrus.

  Benjamin read the rest of the article with even more interest. He imagined the couple under their sheets: René with his bushy moustache, stained with the tobacco he rolled and smoked, and Éléonore, wearing a gold chain with a cross blessed at Lourdes.

  Even René’s doctor was quoted in the article. “I told him he smoked too much. He said, ‘You have to die of something.’ How could we have known that this would be that ‘something’?”

  4