Excerpt
Chateau Blanzac was low and squat. No pointed towers, no mullioned windows, much less tall chimneys. The building's elegance lay in its symmetry and simplicity, along with the lovely tiling that ran beneath the vertigris roof. A pair of two-hundred-year-old oak trees and three tall cedars dominated the grounds. Their branches caressed the sleepy country manor and its lichen-covered stones. Calling it a "château" was clearly deceptive. As for the titles of nobility claimed by its proprietor, there was no trace, aside from a wrought-iron coat of arms on the front-step railings, whose rust offset any hint of pretention. In the way of assets, the Castayracs owned only this home, with its few acres of vines and one-story outbuilding, along with the family title, which the baron liked to flaunt at the Biarritz casino on special occasions.
Benjamin pushed the doorbell. Its shrill ring set loose three large dogs, whose muzzles appeared at the windows. Benjamin scanned the surroundings. The vines hadn't been pruned. An antique Citroën DS 19 Pallas was parked in a garage, and on the right, a short distance from the outbuilding, four immense blackened walls stood silent. Burned beams, barrel hoops, and staves littered the frozen ground. Shards of glass, vestiges of the demijohns that had been turned into large Molotov cocktails, were everywhere. Benjamin could almost make out wisps of smoke amid the ruins. It had been less than two weeks since the catastrophe. Could the fire still be smoldering under this rubble? Its acrid vapors were stinging his throat.