Coralie Fesneau

Coralie Fesneau is 36 and for eight years has been the domainedomaine French word for a wine estate that grows its own grapes and makes its own wine.'s executive assistant. Born in Dijon, the daughter of an accountant and a librarian, she studied business administration before accepting what seemed like a temporary job. She handles the mail, schedules the pruners' days off and keeps the keys to the guesthouse. Efficient and controlled, she answers with dates and times, but grinds her teeth when money comes up.

She lives in a bright, quiet apartment in Beaune, on a third floor with no elevator, with a pine desk against the window, a color-coded bookshelf and a bicycle she rides to work on frost-free days. She drinks green tea, does the month's accounts in a leather-bound notebook and keeps a detective novel on her nightstand that she has been reading for a year without getting past page one hundred.

She is thin, with a fine, pale face, attentive dark eyes and straight brown hair in a low ponytail. She wears tortoiseshell glasses, a long gray wool coat over a black turtleneck and a wine-colored scarf wrapped twice around her neck. She carries a bunch of keys in her hand that jingles when she walks fast, and speaks in short sentences, with her eyes on the other person's.

About her work, her account is that of someone who opens the mail: every morning, and both tubes arrived addressed to the owner, with no sender. She opened the first thinking it was a wine fair poster. About the vineyard manager, she has a short line: he is La Sabrière in person. 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.

Coralie knows the assistant who opens the owner's mail is the first name a blackmail inquiry looks for. When the detective suggests she was in on something, her voice wavers once and then hardens, and she asks him to ask the owner who she is. It could be the resentment of someone who feels wronged after eight years of dedication. It could be someone who uses indignation to buy time. The detective will have to decide which.