WE HAD RETURNED TO his office and his secretary had brought coffee, I said, “I must say you surprised me. That little pip-squeak actually wants to buy you out?”
He smiled slightly. “I think that map helps you understand our predicament.”
“It is a puzzler,” I admitted, “if the idea of Peregrine wanting to expand is ruled out.”
Sir Charles pursed his lips. “Their latest offer is nearly a million pounds over true market value. They can’t be that desperate to expand.”
“And all attempts at contacting them have failed?”
“Completely without success,” said Sir Charles. “There’s one other thing I should tell you … we hired a private detective, a Frenchman, formerly with the Nice police—a man with a very good reputation.”
“And what did he find out?”
“Nothing.” A brown folder lay on the desk. Sir Charles put a hand on it. “Here are copies of his reports. You can take this with you. But I can tell you that it contains nothing of any real help.” He hesitated. “There’s another factor influencing us in hiring you. This French detective has had no contact with us for some time.” I felt a pang of alarm but he added quickly, “That has no sinister connotation. We have checked and he has been seen recently in Nice. His last report was thoroughly negative and he inferred he wanted to drop the case due to his lack of success.”
“Sir Charles,” I said. “I’m not a detective. Oh, I know I use that sobriquet, the Gourmet Detective. It’s good for business but I’m not really a detective at all and—”
“I know,” said Sir Charles firmly. “As I’ve just told you, we hired a detective, a good one, and he got nowhere. Maybe a different approach is needed. Maybe some detail would be obvious to a man like you with a knowledge of the wine business where a detective might go right past it.”
We both seemed to be assuming that I was going to take the assignment. I had already decided to do so—it was an intriguing problem even though the answer might turn out to be, as Sir Charles said, obvious.
“Tell me about your vineyard,” I invited.
“The names and positions of all the staff are in that folder too,” he said. “We have 147 acres under cultivation. We produce five wines. Top of the line is our Sainte Marguerite—an excellent white. It’s an ‘appellation controlee,’ a very good ‘vin de paille’ made from Savagnin grapes. We bottle only one red but it’s a near-classic and many critics have compared it to a Crozes-Hermitage, Then we have two white table wines, both made from Chardonnay grapes and with a good reputation in the neighborhood, in the Paris region and here in the U.K. We call one Pont Vieux and the other Bellecoste. Then we have a rosé which we call Val Rosé. It’s not bad as rosé wines go though we probably should discontinue it and switch that effort to another white, but it sells well. And—as I’m sure you know—rosé wines are very profitable.”
I knew what he meant by that last remark. Grapes that might not be good enough for any of the white wines could be used in a rosé and a clever wine maker could use up one hundred percent of his produce that way, getting rid of even the poorest-quality grapes. Furthermore, as rosé wine has no vintage, the cash flow is excellent, there being no delay between bottling the wine and putting it on the market for immediate sale.
“You’re quite sure that there are no exterior factors which might make the vineyard desirable?” I asked. “Nobody wants to build a mammoth shopping center there, for instance?”
Sir Charles laughed, a deep, throaty chuckle. “Not a chance of that.”
“Sean Connery doesn’t want to build a golf course there then?” I persisted.
“The former 007 has bought several parcels of land in Provence for that purpose but none are in this area.”
“What about an industrial park? Land can be very valuable to a group contemplating one of those.”
“What is probably the largest industrial and scientific park in Europe is already not far away—at Sophia Antipolis, near Antibes. A second would be out of the question.”
“The route for the alternative A8 autoroute must run somewhere through there—”
“Much farther north,” said Sir Charles. “Believe me, we’ve considered a great many such possibilities and we could find nothing. We’ve talked to all the local authorities and we also had Morel—that’s the French private detective we hired—we had him check independently.”
“No possibility of gold or oil deposits?” I smiled to show that I wasn’t really serious even though I was.
“We had a geological survey conducted recently, just in case modern techniques might show up something that had not previously been apparent. There was nothing—and even if there were minerals of any kind, under French law the right to exploit them doesn’t have to be sold with the land.”
“Hmm,” I said, “I think I’m running out of ready answers.”
Sir Charles waved a deprecatory hand. “My dear fellow, perfectly reasonable suggestions, all of them. No,” he went on, “we’ve spent a lot of time, money, and effort trying to guess what’s behind these offers. We’ve come up with absolutely nothing.” He glanced at me sharply. “Which is why we hope that you can do better.”
“When you say ‘we,’ who does that—”
“Our board of directors. It consists of my son, Nigel; Richard Willoughby; Tommy Traynor, who recommended you; and myself.”
I had known Tommy Traynor for many years. He was a good businessman and a shrewd judge of wine—not to mention horses and women. Willoughby, I had heard of and knew to have fingers in many pies.
Sir Charles was still regarding me keenly.
“If I take this assignment, I would want to know how many people are aware of it,” I explained.
“Of course. When we hired Morel, we didn’t impress upon him any particular need for secrecy. I know he didn’t go around Provence trumpeting who was paying him—he is, after all, an experienced private detective. But when he asked questions, people knew who he was. With you, we want to use a different approach.”
“What exactly do you mean?” I wanted to know.
“One of Richard Willoughby’s interests is a publishing chain, magazines and newspapers mainly. We propose to arrange a cover for you as one of their reporters—doing a series of stories on vineyards in Provence owned by Englishmen.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” I said, relieved.
“So only the four of us on the board and Willoughby’s senior editor will know about this.”
“Good.”
“So what are your terms?” he asked.
“A hundred pounds a day plus expenses.”
He nodded, but before he could speak, I added quickly: “Plus a bonus of five hundred for a satisfactory answer to the question ‘Why does Peregrine want to buy you out?’”
He hesitated, then nodded again.
“When can you start? The sooner the better as far as we’re concerned.”
“Today’s Tuesday. I have a few loose ends to clear up … I can do that tomorrow … I could leave Thursday morning.”
He pushed the brown folder over to me.
“There’s a voucher for first-class return travel on British Midland, Heathrow-Nice in there. They’ll exchange it for a ticket when you tell them which flight you want to take. Mildred will give you a week’s advance in cash and she will make a reservation for you at Le Relais du Moulin. It’s one of the better places in the area and convenient for both vineyards. She’ll also reserve you a car at Nice airport.”
I don’t have a car in London. I hate driving and in a metropolis like London, a car is more trouble than it’s worth, but in a widely spread region like Provence, I knew I had no choice.
“I suggest you phone me in two weeks,” said Sir Charles. His tone implied that if I didn’t have any results in that time, I wasn’t going to get any. “We can decide then if we want to continue.”
It wasn’t very long but it wasn’t altogether unreasonable. I might not have solved the whole case by then but I should have some clues as to where the answer might lie.
I picked up the folder and we shook hands.