Read Chapter 12: The Verdict

The telephone rang at seven in the morning, a shrill, insistent sound that cut through the mistral's dying whine. Élise was already awake, her hands wrapped in bandages from the harvest work, watching the first gray light seep through the shuttered windows of the château's kitchen.

Julien answered before she could reach it, his voice rough with sleep. He listened, grunted twice, then held the receiver out to her. "Marseille."

She took it, her heart tapping against her ribs. The voice on the other end was brisk, professional—a lab technician with a nasal accent who introduced herself as Madame Roche. "We've completed the analysis on the sample you provided, Madame Delacroix. The results are... unusual."

Élise pressed the phone closer to her ear. "Unusual how?"

"The wine contains traces of *Aspergillus carbonarius*—a fungus that produces ochratoxin A. It's rare in French viticulture. The strain we've identified is almost exclusively found in vineyards along the southern Iberian coast, particularly the Alentejo region of Portugal."

A pause. Élise felt Julien's eyes on her, sharp and questioning.

"The concentration is low," Madame Roche continued, "but it's enough to taint the wine's character. It would have been undetectable to most palates, but your sample shows a distinct suppression of the fruit profile and a bitter, earthy finish. Whoever made this wine either had extraordinarily bad luck with their grape sourcing, or..."

"Or what?"

"Or they introduced contaminated fruit deliberately. A single barrel of infected grapes could do this to an entire blend. It's not an accident of terroir, Madame Delacroix. This is foreign matter."

Élise thanked her, replaced the receiver, and stood very still.

"Well?" Julien's voice was flat, but his hands were clenched at his sides.

"The wine is contaminated with a fungus that doesn't grow here. It comes from Portugal." She recited the lab's findings in a monotone, watching his face change. "The report says last year's vintage was a blend. The grapes weren't all from our vineyard."

Julien went very quiet. The silence stretched, filled only by the clock on the mantel and the distant sound of the last mistral gusts rattling the shutters.

He said, "That's impossible."

"Madame Roche was quite certain."

"That's *impossible*." He took a step toward her, then stopped, his jaw working. "I crushed every grape that went into that wine. I sorted them myself. I was there for every pressing, every racking. No one brought fruit into my cellar without my knowledge."

Élise held his gaze. "Then what does this mean?"

It meant he wasn't there for all of it. She saw the realization hit him like a physical blow—the flicker in his eyes as memory caught up with logic.

"Harvest," he said slowly. "Two days before the pick, I was called to Avignon. A supplier dispute with the cooperage—I was gone for a week." His voice dropped. "André was in charge of the fermentation schedule. He had access to the loading dock. The grape deliveries."

"The cooperage dispute," Élise repeated. "Who called you?"

Julien's face had gone pale beneath its tan. "A man named Beaumont. He claimed our barrel order was short. But when I arrived, the paperwork was in order and he apologized for the confusion. I thought nothing of it at the time."

"Someone wanted you out of the way."

He didn't answer. He turned and walked to the window, staring out at the vineyard—the neat rows of young vines, the old stone walls, the distant scar of the storm damage they had spent days repairing.

"Joséphine knew," he said finally. "She must have. She commissioned a full tasting panel for the vintage. She wanted certification for the export contract." He laughed, a bitter sound. "I thought she was being thorough. She was checking whether it was fit to sell."

"And the flaw we tasted in the old bottle from the cellar?"

"The same. She kept a bottle from every vintage. She would have noticed. She had the finest palate in the region—that's what they said about her in the old days." He turned back to her, and there was something raw in his face, something she had not seen before. "She left before harvest ended. She took her ledgers and she left. I thought it was because of the scandal—the debts, the merchants. But she left because she found this. She found what André did."

Élise thought of the baker's words—*he loved the vineyard too much to steal from it*—and of the boy, Pierre, searching for proof his father was murdered.

"You believe André was responsible," she said carefully.

"I believe someone brought foreign fruit into my cellar while I was gone, and André was the only one with the keys." Julien's fists clenched. "The cooperage—Beaumont—I've dealt with him for years. He's a competitor of mine. He supplies barrels to half the vineyards in Provence. If he wanted to ruin our reputation..."

"Julien," Élise said, "Beaumont wanted you out of the vineyard. Whether he supplied the contaminated fruit or was simply paid to distract you, this wasn't sabotage by a rival. This was deliberate. Targeted. Someone wanted this vineyard to fail."

The words hung in the air between them.

Below, through the window, Élise saw the first pickers arriving for the morning shift, their breath visible in the cold air. They moved toward the vines with their buckets and shears, unaware that the wine they had worked so hard to produce was poisoned at its source.

"Rival cooperage," Julien muttered. "An old feud. Either of those stories would explain it, if pressed. André could have been paid. Or threatened." He looked at her, and she saw the doubt in his eyes—the first crack in his certainty about his friend. "I don't know what to believe."

Then the telephone rang again.

Julien answered it, listened, and his face changed. When he spoke, his voice was low and careful. "Yes. He's here." Pause. "No. She's not." Pause. "How do you know her name?"

Élise watched him set the receiver down slowly, his eyes fixed on nothing.

He said, "That was the gendarme in Sablet. They've arrested someone for trespassing on the property at dawn. A young man. He was carrying a bottle of last year's wine."

The reversal landed—not in the answer to the contamination, but in this new danger unfolding beneath it. Élise's mind raced to Pierre, to the boy who claimed André was innocent, to the note about the cup and the father who had been taken.

"I need to go," she said.

Julien shook his head. "You need to tell me what you know."

But she was already moving toward the door.