By Alex Smith
These are languid hours: Sunday on the veranda at Diemersfontein Wine & Country Estate. Andrew smokes Camels and browses through Wisdom by another Andrew, Zuckerman; it’s a book from the Manor House bookshelf. One way to rate a country hotel is by its bookshelves; I like the shelves here in the lounge with the grand piano and the portrait of the Lady: they have José Saramago, and a little known, green book with illustrations by Maurice Sendak. In the branches above us, there’s a conference of birds – by the sound of things, every bird in Wellington is out to enjoy the cool after the storm of this morning.
I’ve found Agatha Christie’s first novel here too (online, though, because this fine old stoep has Wi-fi), The Mysterious Affair at Styles. It’s real winter now in the Cape, so we’re wrapped up in big jackets, but it’s worth being out; it’s so glorious: this terrace with its comfy sofas and view. Horses graze in the paddock below, wind stirs raindrops from the oaks and dislodges petals from hills of roses, yellow, crimson, white, and all the while my coffee steams and swirls up into the chilly air. The veranda we’re on has white metal chandeliers, three study-like seating areas of cane sofas with soft cushions, and is as wide as and three times the length of my bachelor flat in Sea Point. It’s a perfect day for reading, writing, wine tasting. It’s a perfect day for a murder too, of the Christie sort: quiet, domestic. Gah!
What an unfortunate affliction to be an obsessive compulsive tale-hunter. Even here in this pastoral paradise, forty-five minutes from Cape Town, stories are lurking all over; of course, none of them based on anything other than hung-over fancy (the famous Chocolate Pinotage we drank last night was quite sublime) and imagination …
“Is there a ghost here?” I asked Neil Kok, the genial restaurateur, earlier this morning as he set down our platters of eggs and farm breakfast. He seemed taken aback. Probably, as designated journalist, I should have been enquiring after the activities available to visitors – a spa treatment, a horse ride, a ramble through the vineyards of Wellington, a hike – instead of picturing kindly Kok as a potential suspect in an Agatha Christie – type whodunnit: The Mysterious Affair at Diemersfontein. I’m not sure the owners of this realm would approve of their elegant estate becoming the setting for a dark-howling-night fictional horror, but I cannot help myself. Poirot, the burly Belgian, would not do for detective here, though, so, as I pour more coffee from the flask, I ask Andrew, who reads like fury and is an expert story maker: “If you were creating a local detective, what would he be like?”
“Hasn’t it been done already?” Andrew shoots back.
“What!”
“No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.”
Clearly, all the fabulous Chocolate Pinotage we drank on this very veranda while eating cheese and playing cards – poker – before that lavish and saucy dinner last night has addled this lovely man’s brain. “That’s ludicrous. Is the whole of Africa only allowed one detective?”
I feel ready to pick a fight over this: see, I’m cranky, suffering too a bit from sleep deprivation. The storm kept me up, and when I finally did sleep I had nightmares about red snakes: the nine of diamonds card in the exquisite deck we were using had come to life and multiplied.
“Europe has hundreds of literary sleuths, so does America, why must Africa be limited to one Scotsman’s invention …?”
Andrew sips coffee, rubs his head and says he isn’t a great fan of hard-boiled crime and has no particular love of detectives other than Cruz-Smith’s Arkady Renko. “Serious crime just doesn’t do it for me.”
Flicking on through Wisdom, he pauses at a jolly moustachioed Norwegian illustrator who praises space, saying the more of it there is on a page, the more room there is for imagination.
Andrew looks up from the rosy-cheeked man in the photo and explains that if anything, he likes the slight supernatural twist to Colin Coterill’s unlikely detective Dr Siri, the national coroner of Laos. On the table along with the flask of coffee, the pile of books and my laptop with the Christie novel displayed is a brochure for Thokozani (Let’s celebrate) the Black Economic Empowerment partner company of the Diemersfontein estate.
Andrew lights another cigarette and, by way of changing the subject, suggests that when I write about this place I should mention that the Diemersfontein staff owns thirty percent of the company.
“Yes, I will,” I say, thinking Miss-Marple-like of the various potential suspects we have encountered so far: the tour guide, the head of marketing, the security guard whose face was hidden by his raincoat.
“Andrew, your detective doesn’t have to be humourless, he could be like that South American writer, Montalban’s PI, a quirky sleuth with a flair for gastronomy … you can’t really believe there’s no scope for any other detective around here after Precious Ramotswe … anyway, there already are lots, Margie Orford’s, Mike Nicol’s …”
It’s impossible to get overly worked up here, the air is so fresh and the view so serene.
“No, no,” Andrew says, “of course not, I don’t think I’d be interested in creating a detective is all. I’m just not into crime fiction, not at all.”
Bloody hell, that’s inconvenient. Before I can voice further argument, a woman in a navy raincoat marches past with two small dogs following. She’s grey-haired, sturdy, but slightly bent of back from tending to bulbs and roots: she is the master of these remarkable gardens.
Truly, along with the generous veranda and that blessed Pinotage, the gardens – stretching hills of lawn, tiered with rose beds, and framed in curves of forests – are the highlight of the estate, even in winter. I’d cast the mistress of the gardens as a wily bird, a watcher, not the murderer, but possibly a lay detective.
As if he can sense the confounded detective story coming on again, Andrew gets up and ambles through to the lounge with his camera and tripod. Voices drift out onto the terrace: he’s talking to the guest inside, a man who has just arrived from Russia for a conference, and is working on his laptop in front of a grand fire. More delegates are due to arrive soon. The estate makes a remarkable venue for conferences and weddings.
For a long while I listen to birds and frogs singing in the emerald landscape around me. A fearsome engine roars, tyres crunch over the gravel; the car making the disturbance isn’t visible, and most likely it is some ordinary vehicle belonging to another delegate, but for the sake of plot I imagine it’s a sporty Audi R8, painted a vintage shade of chestnut, metallic chestnut.
Two men emerge from the car: well shod men of ill intent. I read the first chapter of The Mysterious Affair at Styles.
“We’re supposed to be going for that wine tasting soon,” says Andrew, returning with his camera, no tripod, though. He tells me about the Russian, which is wonderful fodder for a brewing mystery. He shows me photographs he’s taken of the elegant guest rooms in the manor house. Each room, lit warm with golden light and traditionally furnished, has high ceilings and a private patio.
The thought of drinking anything other than coffee at this stage of the day makes me feel somewhat queasy and, besides, what do I know about wine? I usually drink gin, Bombay Sapphire if given a choice.
“Would you write up the wine?”
And rew agrees, joking that he will use lots of adverbs and gasps. Thankful for that, I give up on grilling him about a suitable detective, but, as we descend the manor house stairs, in my mind’s eye we brush past those two men of nefarious-intent, and, as Andrew talks about the beautiful light of this winter noon, I wonder how wine could be incorporated into the mystery.
Christie’s first-ever opening paragraph bends to a new continent and time: The intense interest aroused in the public by what was known at the time as “The Diemersfontein Case” has now somewhat subsided. Nevertheless, in view of the world-wide notoriety which attended it, I have been asked, both by my friend Poirot (no, Poirot will not do, my friend X until further notice, character under construction) and the family themselves to write an account of the whole story. This, we trust, will effectually silence the sensational rumours that still persist. I will, therefore, briefly set down the circumstances that led to my being connected with the affair …
It’s around midday. We saunter down a pathway, lined with wet elephant ears, moonflowers, ferns, oaks, bouganvilleas and vines, to the tasting room, where we perch on high chairs and sample a selection of wines, which Andrew does with more zest than I do.
He’s heard about a competition and tells me if we buy a mixed case of Diemersfontein wines to the value of R1 010, we’d be eligible for a draw to win a property in the Diemersfontein village, a country-style security residential development. I’m not listening properly though, I’m eavesdropping: two men, now seated on that generous veranda we’ve vacated, are speaking in my thoughts and, like us, they’re drinking Carpe Diem Cabernet Sauvignon 2001.
“The best thing that can happen for you is if James Olusegun, is extradited,” says Mordekai Gadowski, a notorious power-broker from Joburg, with a smile. Age shows on his teeth – time has worn his enamel, and they’re discoloured to the yellow of dentine.
A Sunday newspaper opened wide to page three covers the book Wisdom, on the table in front of him.The man he’s talking to, Zach Ellis, grins back at him like Brutus. This double-crosser is tucking into a bowl of prawn and pepper pasta liberally doused in pink hollandaise sauce, made by the estate’s on-site Seasons restaurant. Usually food is served only in the restaurant, but Ellis knows a good bribe goes a long way, and he’s convinced their waiter to bend the rules on this occasion.
Ellis’s Apple laptop is live-streaming some kind of event at a friend’s Gentleman’s Club where tall women with short skirts and high heels drift past smiling shimmer make-up suggestions at the camera feeding him the visuals. Music vibrates through bodies and bottles and white lights flash over white floors and chrome furniture.
“Excuse me, can I take a picture of you for Society magazine?” A woman dressed in black leather and high boots asks Ellis’s friend, the club owner, who is up to his eyeballs in Serbian mafia connections. “A little closer please,” the photographer directs, as a blue fish in the tank behind swims into the picture.
Gadowski, the big man, Ellis’s selectively benevolent “patron”, has no interest in the laptop images, he’s rather taken with the view of several horses in the field below. He pulls off a hunk of country bread, butters it, piles it with blue cheese, and a preserved fig, eats that in one gulp and chases it down with a swig of his wine. “Shakespeare wrote that ‘good wine is a good familiar creature if it be well used.’”
Gadowski swirls the wine in his mouth. “Apricots, orange peel, citrus and biscuit.” He swallows.
“With a lingering marmalade and lightly wooded after taste … Stop staring at that wretched screen Zak, you’re an addict my friend – there are a few better uses for an early autumn day than to spend it in the fresh air, on the expansive veranda of a manor house like this, with a selection of fruit, fine cheeses and good wines.”
“It’s not fresh, it’s fucking cold.”
Zak has never been the romantic sort, he’d sooner be in a smoky bar than out here in cold country, but he humours Gadowski because Gadowski is a man of influence. He shovels another spoonful of prawn and pasta into his mouth and jerks his head in the direction of that Sunday paper.
“Don’t know what god I angered, but every bloody time that Olusegun’s in the newspaper, they mention me now, as if we’re bloody Siamese twins or something. Screwing up my wholesome image.”
His face turns purple red and he starts coughing. “Jesus, I think I ate a pepper corn, Jesus … ” He downs his glass of Cab Sav.
“Extradition my friend, that’s the answer.”
Gadowski stretches out and plucks a red grape from the cheese board. A small bird perched on a cane chair opposite, eyes the cheese board hungrily.
Gadowski reads out from the Diemersfontein brochure: “The first vineyards were planted at Diemersfontein during the 1970s and since wine production started in 2001, the estate has amassed an impressive number of vinicultural awards. Accolades include a Gold Veritas Award in 2003 for the Carpe Diem Cabernet Sauvignon 2001, and a multitude of Bronze, Silver, and Trophy Awards at the Fairbairn Capital Trophy Wine Show (now the Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show), including Most Successful Producer in 2005.”
Ellis grunts; he prefers whisky to wine. “I don’t think they’ll ever get Olusegun out of here. Not for years anyway, he’s as sly as they f**king come and, God forbid, the Hudson Commission decides to call him to provide testimony against me.”
Gadowski fancies himself something of a wine aficionado, and reads on: “The estate’s international popularity has further been confirmed by a multitude of awards at the Michelangelo International Wine Awards. Diemersfontein’s latest honour came when their Thokozani Red was awarded Top Red Blend of 2009 at the SA Terroir Wine Awards.”
“Great.” Ellis mops up some of the pink sauce with a swab of farm bread. “I’ve met some in my time, but he’s a pathological liar that Olusegun … Who knows what he’ll say next. Some kind of publicity junkie, I think he does it all for the attention. My wife’s sister is a psychoanalyst, and she says Olusegun’s got penis-envy.”
Mordekai chuckles. He looks up from the estate brochure and is fascinated with the life in the field below, which has filled with guinea-fowl and Egyptian geese.
His associate is more intrigued by the Gentleman’s Club still flickering on his laptop, where lights dim, the music’s volume increases, and an army of strippers emerges.
“Usually, these things just blow over. You know what it’s like: a few greased palms here and there. But with Olusegun there is no blowing over … Besides anything else, the man is totally incapable of keeping a low profile. I mean, how do you like this: I was talking to my buddy Silvio Alemangna, – you know of Alemanga Motors?”
“By reputation,” says Gadowski, trying out a triangle of camembert. The robin hops closer. “Not personally. I’m a supporter of the British when it comes to cars – no Nazis or Fascists for me.”
“Ja, well, he told me Olusegun has three cars on order – a Pagani Zonda C12, a Cerbera 4.5 and a Saleen S7. What happened to the good old Lamborghini? I’ve never even heard of a fucking Saleen S7. Have you?”
“He’s driving the trustees crazy. Either he’s a complete fool or he has absolutely no conscience, just doesn’t care.”
Gadowski picks up reading the brochure again. “The estate is committed to producing wines that represent the characteristics of Wellington, with around seventy percent of the grapes used coming from its own vineyards and the remainder being sourced from other Wellington vineyards. Diemersfontein produces three wine ranges to appeal to a range of palates and pockets.”
“Paganini Zonda, what the fuck is that?” Ellis quaffs down more wine, incensed, jealous and anxious. He resents Olusegun’s freedom to do as he pleases. Ellis knows he will never be free like that; his life belongs to his patron who is still reading out to him from the estate brochure, even though Ellis doesn’t give a toss about the bloody Thokozani range.
“The Thokozani range is matured in steel and offers the most affordable and easy-drinking range of the three. Its popularity is demonstrated by the fact that the 2009 vintages of both the Chenin Blanc/Chardonnay/Viognier, and the Rosé are sold out. This year sees the launch of Diemersfontein’s first sparkling wine; the 2006 vintage Méthode Cap Classique, a blend of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.
“How does he do it, where’s he hiding all that money he conned out of those pensioners?”
“Ah come on, Zak, it’s no secret: Swiss, Korean, Chinese and Austrian bank accounts … The Diemersfontein Premium range has been matured in wood for six to nine months. It is easily drinkable when young and also has the potential to age well. Aside from offering a Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz and Pinotage, two red blends can also be found in this range; the Summer’s Lease, made up of Shiraz, Mourvedre and Pinotage, and the Bourdeax-type blend named Heaven’s Eye. Both of these blends scored four stars in the Platter Guide.”
Frustrated, Ellis lights up a cigarette. “I don’t know what I’m going to do … ”
Gadowski folds away the Sunday paper, so that Wisdom is revealed. “Don’t stress, Zak, your problem is being sorted out. When we’ve finished with Olusegun he’ll be begging for extradition.” Gadowski opens Wisdom. “Nice book this.”
Down at the wine-tasting room Andrew and I are listening to the sommelier telling us about the Diemersfontein Pinotage, the best known wine from Diemersfontein estate. “Central to this wine’s appeal,” says the sommelier, “are its distinctive, rich coffee and chocolate notes. This convention-busting Pinotage has polarised opinions among wine drinkers, garnering a number of critics and fans.”
“I’m definitely a fan,” Andrew says.
The sommelier pours us each a finger of another wine from the estate’s flagship Carpe Diem range. “This was the estate’s first white wine and it manages to reveal crisp citrus flavours while also being pleasantly smooth.”
Andrew tastes and nods approval and I taste and think: if Andrew were to remember the tripod he left in the manor house lounge now, and go back to retrieve it, he may overhear something he shouldn’t about that Olusegun character and then …
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