Invitation to Provence(36)
Rafaella still hesitated, her hand on the brass doorknob. She knew that, unlike Felix’s room, Alain’s was not exactly the way he’d left it. After he’d gone, Haigh had made order out of the chaos. He’d cleaned it, put everything in its place, which was certainly never the way it was when Alain was in residence. She would find no trace of her younger son’s personality here, except perhaps a leftover hum of energy in the air.
Alain had lived in an aura of light and movement. A hedonist, he drew people to him, then crushed them, turning away when he was finished with them. Which is what people said must have happened with the young woman from Marseille, except it still seemed more likely that Felix was the culprit, because Alain had witnesses who said he was in Antibes. Anyhow, Rafaella still believed it was an accident because whatever Felix might have been, he was no murderer.
Jake had still not been able to find Alain, however. He was gone from her life as surely as Felix was. Resolutely, Rafaella turned away from Alain’s door. She would never see her younger son again, but she still wondered if he was really the father of her new granddaughter.
27
LATER, LYING WIDE-AWAKE in her big four-poster with the curtains pulled back to let in the cool air and the soft flutters and scurryings of a country night, Rafaella was still thinking about her younger son, pinpointing the time when her life changed. Jake was gone, she had lost her lover, then Felix, and then she also lost her best friend when Juliette and Rufus moved suddenly to Australia, where Rufus had been posted as an aide to the governor-general. Rafaella missed Juliette terribly. She missed the yapping little Pomeranians, missed the joyous boom of her laughter, missed her loud, confidential whispers and the exchanged secrets between women, but Australia was far away from Provence and life had to go on. The chateau was no longer crowded with happy faces, and laughter no longer rang in the hallways. She spent her days alone with her dogs. In the hope that Felix might come home, she even purchased the little vineyard in Saint-Emil-ion for him.
It would be her gift to him, something of his own and nothing at all to do with his brother. Then, to her surprise, Alain had suddenly returned to live at the chateau, between jaunts to Paris, that is, and for the first time he’d shown an interest in the winery. He’d also talked constantly of Felix, undermining him subtly to her. He hinted at how sullen Felix had always been, how unrewarding as a person, how self-contained and dangerous.
“Dangerous?” Rafaella had repeated, alarmed.
And Alain had turned and looked at her, his blond hair flopping boyishly over those Marten-blue eyes. “Well, he turned out to be a murderer, didn’t he?” he said, and Rafaella thought it was odd that he was laughing as he said it, as though it were all one great, marvelous joke.
She remembered grabbing him by his shirt, her eyes blazing with anger. “Don’t you dare say that,” she’d cried. “Felix did not kill that girl. He told me so, and Felix does not lie.”
Alain simply raised one elegant dark brow. “He told you that, maman? I don’t think so. From what you said, he told you to ‘believe whatever you want,’ ” and he’d laughed at her again, because it was true, and he had her and he knew it.
Then, looking suddenly repentant, he’d put his arms around her and hugged her. “There’s nothing you can do about him, maman. You must just face the facts.”
In the end, though, it wasn’t just the facts about Felix she had to face, it was the facts about Alain.
A few months later, when Alphonse Giradon, the winery manager, along with her accountant and her head enologist, asked for a meeting at the chateau, Rafaella was surprised. Alain had taken over two years ago and she had left the running of the winery to him.
She had known Alphonse for forty years, but now he stood stiffly in front of the long table in the grand dining room, refusing to sit down. Then Haigh arrived with cold drinks and sugar biscuits and the espresso she thought by now must surely flow in their veins.
“Madame,” Alphonse had said hesitantly, “we have sad news to relate. It is not easy to tell you this story, Madame, especially after …”
He had not said the name, but Rafaella knew he meant “after Felix” and also “after the Lover,” because there was nothing the villagers and her workers did not know about her life. It was part of the price she had to pay for being their patronne and a price which, until now, she had not regretted.
“Yes?” she said. “Please go on, Alphonse.”
The other two men stood silently by his side, lending moral support, while her old friend Alphonse told her that Alain had been systematically siphoning off money from the winery accounts. Alain claimed to have ordered thousands of expensive new growth-stock, but instead he’d pocketed the money. He’d found a dozen different ways of filling his pockets. And he’d left the Marten winery devastated.
Alphonse had hung his shaggy gray head. “Iam distressed to be the bearer of this bad news,” he’d said finally. “Your son has been very clever. We never knew until the audit that he robbed the winery. Every penny we made over the past years has gone into his pockets. Everything you and your family and the village have worked for centuries to build is in jeopardy. Madame Rafaella, we are looking at the end of the Marten winery.” He’d lifted his head to look at her, and Rafaella saw the tears in his eyes. “What can I say, Madame, to comfort you, to comfort all your workers who now face unemployment. All is in disarray, Madame, and I only wish I had known and come to you earlier.”