Anatole Vigier

Anatole Vigier is 57 and spends the winter on his knees in the mud, pruning vines for a daily wage. Born in Mâcon, the son of a cooper, he studied viticulture in Beaune when he still dreamed of owning a piece of land with the family name on the gate. The land never came, and he learned to talk to other people's vines. He speaks of vineyards with the precision of someone who studied and the bitterness of someone who never owned anything.

He spends his mornings off at a back table in the village café, among last night's drunks and yesterday's newspapers, drinking a table wine he silently analyzes, sip by sip, like an expert. He has no wife, no car and no picture on the wall, only a cracked leather suitcase and a case of pruning shears wrapped in a linen cloth. He says he is a man of few possessions and much memory.

He is tall and slightly stooped, with a thin face wrinkled by the sun, unshaven gray stubble, sparse hair cut short and pale, wary eyes. He wears a worn olive-green quilted jacket over a wool sweater, pruning gloves stuffed in his pocket and a pruning knife on his belt. He is quiet and polite, calls his employer sir and speaks slowly, looking at the ground, like someone choosing each word before paying for it.

About this winter, his account is that of a worker: he has been pruning, vine by vine, on his knees in the mud, since November, and today he cuts canes for a daily wage with what he studied in Beaune thirty years ago. With the domainedomaine French word for a wine estate that grows its own grapes and makes its own wine. dark and the rows unlit, nobody can say for certain where each person was during the winter nights. When the blackmail comes up, he only says that whoever knows the trade knows how a vine is killed and how it is saved.

Anatole knows a temporary, solitary pruner is the kind of name a domainedomaine French word for a wine estate that grows its own grapes and makes its own wine. forgets to remember until something goes wrong. When the detective stares him down, he doesn't raise his voice, only sets his jaw and says being the outsider on the crew is enough for everything to land on him. It could be the hurt of a man who is always looked at sideways. It could be someone who knows what to say so no one asks the rest. The detective will have to decide which.