Read Death in the Vines: A Verlaque and Bonnet Provençal Mystery for Free Online Page A

some time before the train could leave. Passengers began mumbling about a suicide and then, slowly, began filing out of the carriage. Verlaque followed the crowd out of the station and up to the Ruede Rivoli, where he battled with others for a taxi, all of which were already occupied. Lunchtime in Paris…Verlaque cursed under his breath. He walked up to the next street—Rue Saint-Honoré—where traffic flowed in the direction of the Gare de Lyon, moving as quickly as he could, at the same time checking over his shoulder for a vacant cab. All were full. By the time he got to the next metro entrance, at the busy Châtelet, he looked at his watch, seeing that he had missed the twelve-forty-nine to Aix. He could risk taking the line 14 from Châtelet, which was automated, or keep walking. He kept walking, trying to admire Paris and be philosophical about the missed train. It had been a profitable day. He had gone over the family’s finances with his parents—a twice-yearly obligation—and obtained good information from Hippolyte Thébaud. Thébaud was the quintessential
dandy
—a word that had no translation into French, so the French had taken it on as one of their own. Verlaque couldn’t wait to tell Marine about the wine thief.
    He whistled as he walked, and arrived at the train station in time for the one-fifty-three train, showing his ticket to the controller and explaining the delayed metro.
    â€œYou’ll still have to buy a new seat.”
    â€œWhat?” Verlaque exclaimed. “It wasn’t my fault. There was a suicide at one of the metro stations.”
    â€œThat’s what they all say. You have to allow yourself extra time for things like this. That will be ninety-five euros for a new ticket, in second class.”
    Verlaque handed him his credit card and cringed at the thought of sitting on one of the narrow seats in second class. “There will be plenty of empty seats, don’t worry,” the controller said. “You can pick any one.”
    The controller was right: the train was only half full, and Verlaquewas able to have to himself four seats facing each other, spreading out his books and papers. He looked around for an outlet to plug in his laptop, but this car didn’t have one. He hoped he had enough battery power. The countryside whizzed by, in the full, glorious sun of an Indian summer day, and Verlaque felt as happy as he had ever been. He had begun to draft some e-mails that he had been avoiding when a terrible noise, as if some teenagers had pelted the train with rocks, or the train had run over some fencing, was heard. His fellow passengers stopped what they were doing, setting down books and magazines and removing headsets. The noise continued for a few awful seconds. The train slowed down and finally came to a full stop, while the passengers let out a communal moan. “We’ve hit something,” the man across the aisle said to himself.
    â€œNo,” an elderly woman said, “it was more like the sound of something being thrown at the train. Like rocks.”
    The car had remained silent for a few seconds when two young girls came running through, looking for the controllers. “There’s a broken window in our car.”
    The passengers again moaned, not knowing how the window came to be broken, but knowing that this would mean a delay, possibly for hours. Verlaque was about to text Marine and tell her to eat without him when one of the TGV’s staff—a short, thick woman with spiked white hair—came through the car, her face as pale as her hair. “We hit someone,” she said, resting her hand on the back of Verlaque’s seat. “Suicide. Three hours’ delay, at least.” Verlaque texted Bruno Paulik about the delay, since the commissioner had offered to pick the judge up at Aix’s TGV station. He would be getting in too late for that now, and would take a taxi or the shuttle bus