Flambé in Armagnac Read Free Page B

scoundrel!”

3
    Château Blanzac was low and squat. No pointed towers, no mullioned windows, much less tall chimneys. The building’s elegance lay in its symmetry and simplicity, along with the lovely tiling that ran beneath the vertigris roof.
    A pair of two-hundred-year-old oak trees and three tall cedars dominated the grounds. Their branches caressed the sleepy country manor and its lichen-covered stones. Calling it a “château” was clearly deceptive. As for the titles of nobility claimed by its proprietor, there was no trace, aside from a wrought-iron coat of arms on the front-step railings, whose rust offset any hint of pretention. In the way of assets, the Castayracs owned only this home, with its few acres of vines and one-story outbuilding, along with the family title, which the baron liked to flaunt at the Biarritz casino on special occasions.
    Benjamin pushed the doorbell. Its shrill ring set loose three large dogs, whose muzzles appeared at the windows. Benjamin scanned the surroundings. The vines hadn’t been pruned. An antique Citroën DS 19 Pallas was parked in a garage, and on the right, a short distance from the outbuilding, four immense blackened walls stood silent. Burned beams, barrel hoops, and staves littered the frozen ground. Shards of glass, vestiges of the demijohns that had been turned into large Molotov cocktails, were everywhere. Benjamin could almost make out wisps of smoke amid the ruins. It had been less than two weeks since the catastrophe. Could the fire still be smoldering under this rubble? Its acrid vapors were stinging his throat.
    The door remained hopelessly closed. Benjamin rang the bell again, more insistently this time. An imposing figure, despite the cane, finally appeared. Jean-Charles de Castayrac fit the image of a country squire that Benjamin had formed on his way from breakfast at the Bouglons. Minor provincial nobility, apparently bankrupt but intent on maintaining his status, even if it meant deluding people with window dressing, such as an old but shiny car, a tweed jacket missing a few buttons, a green felt hat, and a fine shirt frayed just a bit at the collar. Baron Castayrac stepped toward his visitors, shooing away the three Labradors.
    “Don’t worry, gentlemen. They don’t bite. Athos, Porthos, Aramis: get lost! Go lie down! Down, I say!” The dogs ignored him and bounded out the door to greet the visitors. “Whom do I have the pleasure of speaking to?”
    Benjamin introduced himself and his assistant. Right away, the baron’s tone and expression became more gracious. A smile crossed his face.
    “Please come in,” he said. The cold was already turning his cheeks and hairy earlobes pink. “These dogs don’t have enough sense to stay inside.”
    “No, it seems that they don’t,” Benjamin said, petting Porthos’s black rump.
    Virgile attempted to give the two other dogs a friendly pat, but they scooted past him and ran toward a building where a young man in a fur hat was watching from behind a Massey Ferguson tractor. He looked like a Russian peasant.
    Without warning, the timid January sun seemed to dissipate entirely in the freezing weather. A thick cloud of condensation escaped from the baron’s thin lips as he pointed his cane at the ruined wine cellar and lamented, “The work of a lifetime up in smoke. A damn shame.”
    Was it the cold or a surge of emotion that brought the tears to his eyes? Once in the shelter of the entryway, the baron removed his broad-rimmed hat and hung it on a hook next to a long dark coat. He did the same with his cane. He invited Benjamin and Virgile into his library without offering to take their coats. Two dueling embers were struggling in a tiny fireplace. Benjamin noticed that the bronze clock hopelessly showed twelve-thirty. Its pendulum was motionless. Had the baron deliberately left it unrepaired in the hope of banishing all notion of time from his home?
    “Can I offer you anything?”
    Benjamin picked up a