Bruno 02 - The Dark Vineyard

rinsing him with a bucket of cold water, when Captain Duroc appeared. Fabiola was still giving the kiss of hoped-for life to Max, and Ahmed was shaking his head sorrowfully at Albert, who was bent double, taking deep breaths of fresh air. Every one of them was purple with grape juice, thick gobbets of grape must in their hair and eyebrows and stuck to their arms.
    “It’s no good,” said Fabiola, leaning back, pressing her hands into the small of her back and wincing. “The boy’s been dead too long. We’re lucky we didn’t lose Bruno.”
    “What the devil has happened here?” asked Duroc, plainly shocked.
    “Two dead,” said Fabiola. “Nearly three. Carbon dioxide from the fermentation of the grapes. I’ve heard of it, though I’ve never seen it. I remember learning that the volume of carbon dioxide produced during fermentation is forty times that of the volume of the juice.”
    “But it’s not poisonous,” Duroc protested.
    “No, but it displaces the oxygen. That’s how it kills. Asphyxiation.”
    Bruno looked up. His head felt clearer, and the retching had stopped. He glanced at Pamela, who looked at him reassuringly and squeezed his hand. She was such a sight he almost grinned.
    “People die of it every year when they forget the need for ventilation,” Fabiola went on. “Bruno was taking deep breathsinside the vat, trying to force air into this poor boy’s lungs. He was suffocating himself.”
    She looked down at the must-smeared body of a well-muscled young man, tanned brown except for the pale band of white where his shorts had been. She went inside and came back with an old blanket. Just before she laid it over the body, she bent and wiped Max’s face clean, then she closed his eyes and laid a gentle hand on his cheek.
    “A fine-looking man,” she said. “Such a waste.”
    “A double tragedy,” Bruno said, standing up and addressing Duroc. “Cresseil, possibly a heart attack, possibly a broken neck when he fell off the ladder. There will be an autopsy. And Max, Cresseil’s adopted son, dead of asphyxiation in a wine vat. It looks to me like natural causes or a fall for the first one, and a tragic accident for the second.” He turned to Fabiola. “Do we need an autopsy for Max?”
    She shook her head, and then rubbed her eyes. “My first week on the job, and two dead,” she said.
    “You did all you could,” said Pamela.
    “If it wasn’t for you, we might have lost Bruno,” said Albert. “I’d never heard of death by fermenting wine.”
    “I never heard of anybody treading grapes naked,” mused Bruno. “I wonder why he took off his shorts. My guess is he took them off for some reason when he was in the vat, and then tossed them over the side.”
    “Putain de merde,”
said Albert, looking at Ahmed and then down at himself. “What a mess.”
    “I’m going to clean up in the bathroom here,” said Fabiola. “I’m sure the late owner won’t mind.” She began to walk toward the house but suddenly stopped to watch Bruno, who was poking about at the side of barn. “What are you looking for?”
    “Cresseil’s dog,” he replied, heading around the back. “He’snearly as old as Cresseil was. Give me a shout when you’re done and I’ll use the bathroom myself. First, I’d better tell Alphonse about Max.”
    Bruno braced himself for a difficult conversation. And he’d also have to tell Jacqueline about Max’s death. That would not be pleasant either, however much she’d been dallying with Bondino. He was curious to see how she’d react. He pulled his phone from its sodden leather pouch at his side. A clump of grape must obscured the buttons. He wiped them off, but the phone was useless.
    “Merde,”
he muttered, and stomped back into the barn to use Max’s phone.

23
    “The important question will be who died first,” said the mayor. Bruno, now washed and changed into his spare uniform and back at the
mairie
, accepted a restorative glass of Armagnac. “If old Cresseil died first, then Max’s heir would inherit. But we don’t know that he has one. He still has Alphonse formally listed as next of kin, but I’m not sure how much weight that has. And if Max died first, then Cresseil’s distant cousins would inherit, and that could be important for our project with Bondino. He tells me he still wants to go ahead, thanks to the way you fixed the problem at the research station,” the mayor went on. “So how do we establish who died first?”
    “That