Murder on the Ile Sordou by M. L. Longworth Page B

“As in oenology?”
    â€œWell done,” Monnier said. “It means people from the land of vines.”
    Serge tried to smile, having lost his place center stage. He continued, “Their Greco di Bianco might be the oldest wine in the world. But we’ve selected a red for the pasta, made from three different Calabrian varieties and aged in chestnut barrels.”
    â€œNot oak?” Marine asked. “How interesting.”
    â€œIt’s fresh and young and fruity,” Serge continued, “with notes of tobacco and black licorice.”
    â€œTobacco sounds good,” Monnier said.
    â€œSo does licorice,” Marine followed. She looked at the poet, as Antoine called him, and asked, “Would you like to eat with us, M. Monnier?”
    Monnier hesitated. “Thank you, but no,” he said. “Too much work,” he continued, patting the fountain pen in his pocket. “But perhaps another evening.”
    â€œThat would be very nice,” Marine answered.

Chapter Nine

    About the Boatman
    H ugo Sammut had not begun walking until he was almost two years old, but when he did, he had, as his mother bragged, “Run for it, and hasn’t stopped since.” He was a naturally gifted athlete, coordinated, and wasn’t nearsighted like his siblings. He was good at both soccer and rugby but he excelled at sailing and alpine skiing, two sports dear to the French middle and upper classes. His parents, now retired, had been high school teachers and had spent their numerous school vacations with their three children either skiing (in winter, in the cheaper Alpine ski resorts like Saint-Martin de Belleville, or Les Houches) or boating, in summer, at Mme Sammut’s parents’ vacation apartment in Arcachon on the Atlantic coast near Bordeaux.
    As the third child, and an unexpected one, he had been pampered. His older sister and brother had been good at sports, but better at academics, and were now a family doctor and accountant, respectively. Hugo’s love was the outdoors, and sports, but a grave dyslexia—which even in the mid-1980s still wasn’t diagnosed as a treatable learning disability in France—had made studies for him unbearable.
    Difficulties with reading and writing, and attention deficit disorder, finally diagnosed along with dyslexia when he was fifteen, meant that Sammut was put in remedial studies, and he graduated at nineteen with a 10/20 on the technical baccalaureate, on his second attempt. His classmates went into trades: plumbing, masonry, and electricity for the boys and hairdressing for the girls. But his athletic skills and cheery disposition—cheerier now that he was finally finished with school—gave him employment as a skiing instructor in the winter and as a boating teacher in the summer. His good looks helped too: his olive skin and dark curly hair often meant that he was mistaken for an Italian or Spaniard; odd, when both his parents, and his brother and sister, were blond.
    M. and Mme Sammut were thrilled that their son found employment, even if it was seasonal. In between jobs Hugo would be in Nancy, helping to garden or do fix-it jobs around their large suburban house. Hugo was easy to be with and loved his mother’s cooking, and was an ideal uncle to his nieces and nephews, who, with their parents, all lived in Nancy. But Hugo had a temper, brought on, his mother now knew, by his ADD. When he had been young, she and her husband and Hugo’s siblings had learned how to treat his rare—but powerful and frightening—outbursts by making sure that he couldn’t hurt himself or anyone else and leave him to his screaming. When he first came home, elated, with the news that he had found employment as a ski instructor, Mme Sammut’s first worry was his temper. But Hugo seemed to control his anger while on the slopes; it was if the constant exercise and fresh air wiped away his tantrums.
    After his fifth year