Read Chapter 31: The Reply

The envelope was plain cream linen, the kind that cost more than a good meal in Beaune. Alex found it propped against the coffee maker in the château kitchen at dawn, the postmark reading PARIS 8E. He poured himself a coffee before opening it, letting the steam curl around his face while he turned the heavy paper over.

No return address. Just his name in an elegant, practiced hand.

Inside were two items. The first was a single typewritten page folded over a thick sheaf of photocopies, and the second was a cheque stub, old and brittle, stamped with the crest of a Parisian private bank.

Alex set the cheque stub aside and unfolded the letter.

*Monsieur Moreau,

As executor of the estate of the late Étienne Belrose, I have been instructed to deliver to you a copy of the sworn statement my client lodged with my office in April of the year of his death. He was explicit that, should anything happen to him, the contents should reach you—the owner of the Domaine—and not the gendarmerie. He did not trust the local authorities. Events have, regrettably, proven his caution well-founded.

The statement is enclosed. My client also left instructions regarding a sum held in escrow on his behalf, which remains unclaimed. I would be grateful if you could contact me to arrange its release or transfer.

I extend my condolences for your loss, though I understand from my client's notes that you were not close. He spoke often of the domaine's potential. He believed you might be different.

Yours faithfully, G. Delacroix*

Alex's coffee had gone cold by the time he reached the end. *He believed you might be different.* The words sat in his chest like a stone.

He set the letter down and picked up the photocopied statement. It was dated three months before Étienne's disappearance, typed on plain paper, each page carefully numbered. The handwriting marks in the margins were heavier, more urgent—underlined passages, exclamation points, a small arrow pointing to a name.

Hervé Moreau.

His father.

Alex had already seen the journal. He'd already heard the tape. But this was different. This was a formal, witnessed declaration of the kind a man makes when he suspects his life is in danger. Every sentence hit like a hammer.

*I, Étienne Belrose, cellar master of the Domaine Moreau-Belrose, make this statement of my own free will. I have been employed at the domaine for forty-three years, serving under Monsieur Henri Moreau and later under his son, Monsieur Hervé Moreau.*

*From 1998 onward, I became aware that portions of the harvest were being diverted from the main production. These lots were not recorded in the domaine's books. They were stored separately, in the eastern valley's old caves, under conditions I was told not to question.*

Alex stopped reading. The eastern valley. The four hectares. The disused well where they'd found Étienne's bones.

He turned the page.

*In 2001, I discovered the purpose of these diverted lots. Monsieur Hervé Moreau was not merely hiding inventory from the tax authority. He was supplying rare, aged vintages to a network of buyers through intermediaries. The wines were purchased from small estates that had gone bankrupt or been mismanaged, then re-bottled under forged labels. The Domaine Moreau served as a clearing house.*

*The scheme was careful. The wine never touched the domaine's official cellars after bottling. It was moved only at night, by men I did not know, in trucks without markings. The proceeds were laundered through the domaine's legitimate export contracts, inflating both volumes and prices.*

*I kept my own records. I know this was a crime. I should have gone to the authorities. But I was afraid. I have seen what happens to those who cross the Bouchard family, and I knew—though I could not prove it—that Monsieur Moreau was not acting entirely alone. The Bouchards provided the buyers. Monsieur Moreau provided the wine.*

*The arrangement was too profitable for either party to allow it to end quietly.*

Alex put the page down. His hands were trembling. He hadn't realised until the edges of the paper shook in his grip.

*Not just money laundering,* he thought. *My father was running a counterfeiting operation.*

He'd spent two months telling himself a version of the story that let him sleep at night. His father had been caught up in something bigger than himself, had tried to atone as an informant, had paid for it with his life. The redemption narrative he'd constructed at the village celebration—the restoration of the domaine, the toasting of his grandfather's wine, the promise of a future built on truth—all of it had been built on a foundation of what he hadn't yet allowed himself to fully know.

Now the foundation had cracked.

He read on, forcing himself through the rest of the statement. The details were methodical, almost obsessive. Dates. Places. Names. A familiar catalogue of the great Burgundy houses and the moments their wines had passed through his father's hands. Not stolen, exactly. The provenance was murky. Éstate closures. Bankruptcies. Widows who sold their late husbands' cellars without understanding what they held. The wines were legitimate at purchase, but the re-labelling—the passing off of Burgundy village wines as grand crus—was fraud on a scale that staggered him.

He reached the final page. The statement ended mid-sentence, not with resolution but with a promise:

*I have copies of the full records. They are secured with a lawyer in Beaune. Should anything prevent me from retrieving them, they will be delivered to the proprietor of the domaine, if he is found to be honourable.*

The irony was not lost on Alex. Étienne had been testing him from the grave.

He set the pages aside and picked up the cheque stub. It was from a private bank in Paris, dated six weeks before Étienne's death. The amount was substantial. The notation read: *Final payment—brokerage fee.*

Brokerage fee. Étienne had been paid. His father—or someone—had paid him to be silent, or to continue playing his part. But the money had never been claimed.

Which meant Étienne had either been killed before he could collect, or he'd refused the money and the payment had been a warning.

Alex folded the cheque stub into his pocket. The brass key was still in his desk drawer, labelled *VIEILLE* for bank box 214. He'd been putting off what it might open, telling himself that the gendarmerie would handle the official channels, that the brass key was a detail for the lawyers.

He was done putting things off.

He picked up his phone and dialled. Hélène answered on the second ring.

"Did you sleep at all?" she asked.

"I found something," he said. "A letter from a lawyer in Paris. Étienne's lawyer. He's been holding a copy of the sworn statement."

There was a pause on the line. "The one you were supposed to get from Delacroix in Beaune?"

"Different lawyer. Paris. And there's something else." He told her about the cheque stub, the brokerage fee, the notation about the claim being released if he contacted them.

"So Étienne was paid," she said slowly. "He was part of it."

Alex stared at the diary pages spread across his kitchen table. Étienne's careful handwriting, the underlined passages, the cross-references to barrels and vintages and dates. The man had spent his final months compiling evidence against his own employer. Why—

"The journal," Alex said. "The circled four-hectare valley. The phrase 'the truth is in the barrel.' I thought he meant human remains. I thought it was an admission of guilt."

"And now?"

"I think it was an instruction." Alex looked out the kitchen window toward the eastern valley, still grey in the first light. "I think he buried more than bodies in that well. I think he buried the wine itself."