Chapter 16
I must inform the reader that, from this on, the narrative is no longer based on carbon copies of letters to Millicent Mooney.
Ayse returned from the airport with the bag. In it was a letter from Millicent. She has decided that we are not suited. She has met someone she likes in the Legion of Mary. His name is Derek Gibbons. He is a solicitor, serious, a good Catholic, doesn't drink, has prospects and is violently in love with her.
I am crushed. How complacently I accepted the faith healer's promise of bliss. How dismissive I was of Pierre's comment that he would be afraid of such a promise.
Nothing Millicent said or wrote until now led me to suppose that we were in the process of becoming disengaged. I have been sitting here at the desk for several hours, incapable of movement, or of thought. For a long time I have known myself as Millicent's fiancé. Now I don't know myself any longer. Everything has shifted. The calendar on which I had marked one likely wedding day after another is a mockery. Even my personal ambitions were Millicent's. I don't care a damn about my career. I kept this diary for her.
Ayse tapped at the door to say she was going home.
She saw that I was in a state of distress.
'Denis? Someone has died?'
'No. My fiancée has broken our engagement. I am devastated.'
'Poor Denis.'
'That is the only word for it. Devastated.'
But as I repeated the word, I realised that it was not at all adequate to describe my complicated feelings. There was, somewhere at the very bottom of my shocked system, a little gleam of something that was not entirely grief.
Ayse went out and returned presently with strong sweet tea.
'I'll walk down to the residence with you when you feel able.'
I protested that I was not infirm. Nevertheless Ayse accompanied me when I left the office. In fact, she considered it necessary to put her hand on my arm occasionally, as if to steady me. I tried to collect my wits and deal with the normal business of the day as we walked but my wits sang 'Jilted. Set aside. Shocked. Discombobulated....'
I concentrated on detection.
'Ayse, tomorrow morning, will you try to find a birth certificate for me, the birth certificate of our landlord's mother, Mrs. Muftu?'
My mood was contagious, Ayse's eyes were brimming with tears and she could signify assent only by pressing my hand. At the door of the residence she delayed to talk to Gül. I hurried upstairs immediately, but I could tell that my change in status was being reported. I gritted my teeth. Pierre would hear sooner or later but, for the present, I could do without his sardonic sympathy. I went into my room and closed the door firmly. A broken heart needs neither victuals nor company. I looked at my face in the mirror and it looked back at me – the face of a broken man. To work! The mind must be divorced from the heart and driven to work. I no longer care if the Department sends me to Protocol, or to Ulan Bator, or gets rid of me entirely. I intend to write a full report of my investigation.
What shall I do about Angelina? Every chivalrous instinct says that nothing should be done. Should Derek Gibbons, Solicitor, present himself before me foxtrotting with Millicent, who could tell what I might not do? That Millicent doesn't dance, makes the comparison a little unreal, but the point is a valid one, nonetheless. I don't want to hand Angelina over to the Turkish judicial system. After many lapses into daydreams about my own blighted prospects, I decide to talk to her in the morning. I must see if there is a way to save her without damning anyone else. I am confident that this would have been Colette's own generous solution.
I did not decide to go down to dinner. In my strange, abstracted condition I found myself on the stairs, heading for the kitchen before thinking about it. It may have been the smell wafted through my nose to the more primitive part of my brain, which reminded me that I needed sustenance.
'Filet mignon,' Pierre announced. 'It is not every day that a man gets back his heart from the pawnbroker.
'Gül smiled at me, patted my hand and poured out an aperitif.
'Surely I should have chicken broth, Pierre, not steak.'
'I have considered, mon ami. We will have consommé de poulet, with a Petit Sancerre, to begin with, to heal the heart. After that, we will have red meat for courage and a good red vin de table. For dessert, there will be glace au melon and a glass of Sauternes.'
'I am not hungry, Pierre.'
'Of course you are not hungry, Denis, but you will eat a little, to please us.'
'You will not give that one the satisfaction of going home thin,' said Gül, ladling out chicken soup.
'Croutons?' offered Pierre.
'I am cast adrift,' I said after my third glass of red wine, 'shipwrecked.'
'I am so sad for you, Denis Bey,' said Gül.
I had a sip of Sauternes.
'It is as vinegar, my friends,' I said. 'The vine has lost its sweetness. I must sleep here at the table for I have no strength to go upstairs. Samson's hair has been cut.'
'Précisément,' said Pierre. 'Therefore you will have a cognac with your coffee and sleep until you waken.'
'Millicent wouldn't dance. I never danced with Millicent.'
'She kissed well?' Gül enquired, solicitously.
'Millicent didn't like kissing,' I said sadly.
My attention focused on Pierre's hands as he poured the coffee. They were priestly hands, beautifully manicured, emerging from gleaming white cuffs, set off against the silver of the tray. Gül was clearing the dessert dishes. Pierre's hands filled my whole field of vision. Each movement was immeasurably slow and graceful. Cup one for Gül. Cup two for me. Then he put sugar in mine. He had made a mistake. Pierre had made a mistake. Gül took sugar in coffee. I didn't. Not unless I was distressed. I was too tired, far too tired, to point out his error. I just took the proper cup and slid the sugared one across to Gül's place while she was saying something to Pierre about the choice of cognac.
They would not let me sleep in the kitchen, nor yet on the sofa by the television. I must go to bed. I remember Pierre removing my shoes and telling me that his fiancée had a sister, who also had a dowry.
'Sweet dreams.' he said, switching off the light.
I was awakened by a thumping headache. After a while I realised that at least some of the noise was not internal. Something was happening downstairs. It was extraordinarily difficult to get up. I had a swig of water in the kitchen and carried the bottle with me carefully to the head of the basement stairs. Gül's evil eye bead had been tossed aside and the door was ajar.
I sat on the top steps, drank more water and tried to make sense of the scene. The area around the pool was full of cardboard boxes of uniform size. There were workmen, whom I had not seen before, carrying the boxes up the driver's stairs and out, returning after an interval for more. The boxes were heavy. They carried one at time. I drank deeply, sure that once my thirst was quenched, I would remember what they were doing.
It came to me all of a sudden. 'Stop!' I commanded. 'Bring those boxes back at once. Robbers! The china and Newbridge silver belong to the Irish government. The personal effects belong to the Ambassador. Bring those boxes back or I'll call the police.
'In the stress of the moment, my Turkish failed me and I spoke in Irish. The workmen shrugged and continued to work.
'Gadaithe! Ropairí!'
The door behind me opened. Pierre and Félix d'Aubine came through.'My dear fellow,' said M. d'Aubine.'What the devil?' said Pierre.
'Arretez les,' I said wildly. 'They are stealing our artwork.'
'That hasn't arrived yet,' said Pierre.
'I put enough in his coffee to keep anyone, who is not Irish, quiet until the day after tomorrow,' he said over my head to M. d'Aubine. 'Shall I knock him out?'
'No violence is required, Pierre. Denis is reasonable.'
I shook my head. It hurt.
'Let us retire to the kitchen and sort this out,' said Félix d'Aubine. 'These gentlemen will postpone operations until you
yourself give the go-ahead, Denis. Word of honour. Pierre, bring them refreshments.'
We sat at the kitchen table. I drank coffee – horrid strong re-heated stuff that I sugared myself. I groaned, beginning to feel clear-headed but ghastly.
'What have they got in the boxes downstairs?''My own wine,' said M. d'Aubine patiently, 'My own wine which I delivered earlier in the week to Pierre for use in the Irish Embassy.
Here is the invoice.'He produced a dazzle of papers.
'You both knew at that stage that no wine would be required.'
'Pierre told me so yesterday. The sale was nullified immediately and the wine was sold to Anar and Sons, to be collected by them tonight. All open and above board.'
Even though my head was spinning, certain things began to coalesce.
'Bring me a glass of the wine that is by the swimming pool.'
'Certainly. I opened a case to give a bottle each to the workmen and one to the policeman on the gate. I troubled him to count the boxes in and out and sign several documents. This has kept him happy that the work is official. He will feel entitled to a bottle.'
'Pierre, bring a bottle and three glasses.'
The bottle was brought, wrapped in a napkin. They watched anxiously while I tasted the wine, rolled it around my mouth, swallowed and, to be sure of my verdict, tasted again.
'Is it not a wonderful wine?' M. d'Aubine asked anxiously.
'Does it not leave something to be desired?' asked Pierre, 'a certain je ne sais quoi, insignificant certainly, yet in its very insignificance pointing out the difference between a good wine and an excellent one.'
'This wine is a very good wine,' I said. 'I have tasted it here in the residence. I tasted it in Cappadocia. Pierre said it would do for a coq au vin. He was wrong. It is a superior wine, but it is not one of the great wines of the earth.'
M. d'Aubine sighed. 'I see that I must bow to your judgement, M. O'Gorman. For one of your years, for one from a country, which, forgive me, is not known for its wines, your taste is remarkable. It is a wonderful wine, but it is not the best of wines. In other words, it is not Château Fontenoy.'
Saying this, he slipped the napkin from the bottle. The label was the familiar Château Fontenoy label, appellation controllée, mise en bouteille....
'Your superior detective skills have left me at your mercy,' said M. d'Aubine. 'I have sold all my stock of Cappadocian wine overnight by borrowing my late cousin's address. Who could question that Château Fontenoy wine from the store of the French Countess, recently deceased, was absolutely genuine? Provenance is always important. It was a necessary move. Because of recent agrarian unrest in Cappadocia – local vendettas are always bad for business – rumours have been spread in the trade by envious people that there is a connection between a famous French wine and our own Cappadocian product. To sell our Cappadocian Château Fontenoy quickly, we had to provide the trade with an unquestionable source. Provenance, my dear Denis, is everything.'
'Stop,' I groaned. 'I see now what you were up to. Wealthy people pay an outrageous price for imported wine of quality.'
M. d'Aubine sighed 'Three-quarters of it tax.'
'You have been selling Cappadocian wine in Turkey, at inflated prices, under the Château Fontenoy label.'
'You put it so crudely, my dear Denis. I have established wonderful vineyards in Cappadocia. I have brought cuttings of our own vines. I have brought the soil of our own vineyard and salted each plant with its native earth. To all but the expert, the wines are as close as any two vintages from the same vineyard.'
'Selling on the black market.'
'On the wine-red market. We are present on the very best tables.'
My head ached.
'With your permission, Denis,' said Pierre, 'I will tell the workmen to continue to load the wine. After all, it isn't ours. It was bought this afternoon by the Ankara office of Anar of Istanbul.'
'It is in everybody's interest to get rid of the evidence as soon as possible,' M. d'Aubine urged.
'Was my incarceration in Cappadocia linked with this wine scam?''I did apologise to you, Denis, for that unfortunate occurrence. It isn't friendly of you to keep referring to it. It was unfortunate that the innkeeper mistook you for a certain French investigator. Also unfortunate that Pierre and I suspected, for a while, that you were using your investigation into Colette's death to probe our wine business with a view to claiming a cut.'
'Never,' I shouted, incensed.
'You kept bothering me about the wine,' Pierre reminded me patiently. 'Then I found you beside me on the bus.'
'You, Pierre, were involved in this scam?'
'But of course. We were keeping the Château afloat.'
'The Countess knew about it?'
'The Countess created the scheme. It takes, you may imagine, quite a while to found a business like ours. The first years you only have expenses. Madame's dollars set us up in Cappadocia. Then the wine started to flow and everything was beautiful. We were prepared for all kinds of difficulties, but not for the one that presented itself. The Ambassador was posted to Turkey. Madame ordered that the business be suspended during his stay here. We agreed, of course. A woman must be humoured when she is trying to please her husband. But it was not at all possible to suspend operations. We considered a different label and immediately ran into difficulties. It must be a wine that is also legitimately imported from France. Our product must be close enough to the import to convince a good palate. We reviewed the list. There really was no suitable one. We were stuck with Château Fontenoy. There was no need to alarm the Countess. We would tell her when she was safely out of Turkey. Then she would be pleased to have the profit, without having had to deceive her husband.'
There was a knock at the kitchen door. The workmen wanted to know if they might continue. If they could not finish now, they would come back in the morning.
'Take it away now. Immediately!' I cried, the instinct to free the residence from such an albatross stronger than the inclination to hold on to the evidence. M. d'Aubine nodded his approval.
'Did the Ambassador know what was going on?'
'Oh no! My cousin was most careful of her husband's honour.'
'The row that you, Félix, had with Mrs. Brown. It was about the Cappadocian wine.'
'My cousin found out that I had not discontinued the arrangements. Of course she knew that I would not discontinue them, could not discontinue them, but she needed to be able to believe, with a clear conscience, that they were no longer in operation. It was Pierre's fault that she found out.'
'With all due respect, it was yours, M. d'Aubine.'
'Who mixed up the bottles?'
'Who brought Cappadocian Fontenoy into the house and left it where I could make the mistake?'
'How could I promote the wine in Ankara if I did not have supplies?'
'Why didn't you keep the supplies in your own room?'
'What could I say to Colette if she found several cases of her wine in my room.'
'It wasn't her wine.'
'How could I tell her that?'
'Stop it,' I said. 'There is no point in arguing about it. The whole business is a disgrace. I don't know what I can do about it.'
'Do about it, dear Denis? But you need do nothing about it. Everything has been accomplished – or will be as soon as the lorry pulls out of the driveway.'
'Oh my God. The guard. He will report ––'
'Why should he? A delivery made, by mistake, after the death of the buyer...returned to seller as soon as the error is detected...all the paperwork beautifully in order...signed and re-signed by him, as an added security measure. My paperwork has always been meticulous.'
'You, M. d'Aubine, have just shown that you had a very good motive for your cousin's death. If she reported you, you would have had the customs and the fraud squad of Turkey and of France down on you.'
'Denis,' he said wearily, 'How could she have reported us? It was her business. She set it up with my help originally. Could she p
rove that she tried to cancel it?'
I went to bed. There was nothing else to do. As I reached the top of the house, I heard loud, resolute snoring. Gül was sleeping off the dose intended for me. The movements in the basement continued as I fell asleep. I never heard the lorry leave.