The disappearance of a friend and millions of Francs worth of wine interrupts David's buying trip in France when he pauses to assist and comfort his friend's wife, Catherine. Their lives are threatened, the intensifying circumstances draw them close...
"It would appear normal," I told the two gendarmes. "Trucks regularly come to the producers' cellars to load barrels of wine. This is a common sight here – or in almost any other wine region."
"It must be difficult and awkward to move them up these steps."
"No, not up the steps." I shook my head at the younger of them as I pulled the light along on its wires. "No, there's a big shaft up to the cuverie over here. The door at the top opens, and there's a gantry up there."
The older gendarme pulled a flashlight from his belt, turned it on and scanned the cellar. "There is a broken barrique over here, wine soaked into the gravel."
I pointed above it. "Yes, under the bottom of the shaft. It appears to have slipped from the sling, or rolled off the truck up there." Tipping on another light, I walked across to the end of the pièce to see it blank, so I moved to the other end.
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Chalked in a round fluid script was Bourgogne Rouge, and I breathed a sigh of relief. "This is but a simple Bourgogne, a blend of the youngest new vines, worth under two thousand Francs. They probably dumped it back down. If it had been one of the best wines, we'd still be smelling the bouquet."
The younger gendarme bent to smell. "And how much would the more expensive barrels be?"
"For this vintage, more than fifteen thousand Francs."
After a low inhaled whistle, he asked, "How many pièces were here?"
"Between three hundred and seventy-five and four hundred, we can check the records – precise figures must be kept for the State, for tax revenue and for the FIVB and the INAO ... Over there against that wall," I raised an arm to point, "they left the bidons and feuillettes. Probably too awkward for them to handle."
I turned and nodded up at the shaft. "I can show you up top, in the back of the cuverie where the loading takes place."
"Yes, we need to see that too. It is locked?"
"Oh, for sure. The keys are kept in the same place as the cellar key," I said as we made our way back to the stone steps and up into the courtyard. "I'll go get them and ..." I stopped myself. "Wait, check with your colleagues who were here last evening with Louis. Find out whether the cuverie and shaft keys were also missing. You look around, and I'll meet you over there by those sliding doors."
The keys weren't in their place on the rack, and as I searched, I noticed scattered powder. Appears they took fingerprints last night. Then, at the doorway into the long salon, I said, "This won't take much longer, Catherine; we're almost done. Are you okay?"
She looked up and nodded. "I have tea and some biscuits, and I'm trying to get back into my book, though it's slow."
Back outside, I slid open the unlocked door on its rails and, leading the gendarmes across the floor to a low coaming near the back, I explained, "This is the shaft down into the cellar. The cover is hinged along its far side." Then pointing up at the electrical cable winch on the I-beam above us, I said, "Using the push-button control hanging from the winch, one man in the cellar and one up here, it would take fifteen, maybe twenty hours to load four hundred pièces."
"That long?"
"Yes, with more men in the cellar to move pièces, it would be a bit quicker, but not by much, the bottleneck is the hoist. We can see on its plaque that this one is rated at twelve hundred kilograms, so it could lift four pièces at a time. Louis père didn't like risking more than one at a time, so he never got a multiple-slinging set-up, and young Louis continues this way."
"What if the thieves brought their own sling?"
"Much faster, likely less than five hours. You can check with the big négociants in Nuits or Beaune; they will give you a much closer idea of men and time."
"Who do you suggest?"
"Any of them. This was not a simple, impulsive theft. It would require a knowledge of the local wine business – a knowledge of this one, in particular. They would have to know the need to properly set the bungs in the pièces and how to do it. They would need four or five truck trips; they might have used four or five trucks. They would need a large place to cache the wine."
"How big?"
"Off the top of my head, let's say four hundred pièces a metre long and seventy-five centimetres in diameter, the dimensions are a bit less than that, but let's put it there to account for sloppy stowing. One barrel high would be fifteen by twenty metres. They can be stacked, but the pièces weigh a quarter of a tonne each, and they're awkward to handle. Two high would need a space of ten by fifteen metres – they'd nestle, so a bit less than that. You can play with the figures."
"That is not a small space."
"No, and if they don't want to ruin the wine, to lose its value, it needs to be properly stored in a cool, stable and relatively moist place. In warm or fluctuating temperatures, it would quickly degrade."
"Could Grotkopf do all this?"
"He certainly meets all the requirements. He has the knowledge, the equipment, the resources, the –"
"The motive?"
"Yes, that is possible too. Every year for five years now, Grotkopf has sent his trucks here to load and haul away wine to his chais in Nuits. Louis told me he had been here in early March to take the 1984 vintage. You just heard that last week Louis had told him he could have none of the 1985 wines. You also heard that Grotkopf had been angry and had threatened him."
"Thank you, Monsieur Michaels, this has been very educational. You have opened many doors to things we need to look at, to follow up. Here is my card – contact me at any time if you think of other things."
I looked at the card:
Jean-Marc Grattien,Lieutenant chef de brigade Gendarmerie nationale Gevrey-Chambertin
"Thank you, I will. My card has only my Canadian contact information, but I'll give it to you anyway. You can always reach me through Catherine – Madame Ducroix. We will be in close contact. I think I'll stay here for a few days and cancel next week's trip to the Alsace. I'd be too distracted, and it would be wasted time."
"This is my new Adjudant, Yvon LeBlanc."
We shook hands, then I watched as they got into their car and drove out through the stone portal.
My head was spinning with questions as I hung the keys on the hooks and walked from the kitchen toward the long salon. Would she want me to stay? Would it be appropriate? As I approached the couch, I said, "Catherine, I'm sorry that took so long."
"Will you stay with me here for a while, David?" she asked with a wistful expression, and seeing my nod, she continued, cutting me off as I opened my mouth. "I have nobody close to me. I haven't been here long enough to be close to any of the other women in town. This is a much more closed community than I know from before. Murielle was my only close friend except for Louis. Now, they are ..."
She paused and patted the cushion. "Rub my head again, it makes me forget." I sat next to her, and she laid her head on my chest.
