Twenty-oneThe young man with a disbelieving stare had not committed the heinous crime of which he stood accused. Sir John Russell trusted his inner senses when rooting out falsehood.
He glanced at the paper under his hand, one he hadn’t shown Aristide Laurent yet. A telegram from Ramsden Meadows advising him of a proposed rule change for entries to the Golden Gate Wine Symposium, to be voted on early this week, before the first round of blind tasting. Only winemakers who were signed up members of the Buena Vista Cooperative would be eligible for entry.
That both Meadows and Hector de Vile had been quick to leak the smear story under the guise of sharing a sympathetic confidence when he’d seen them at a Wine Board meeting shored up his certainty of Laurent’s innocence more than he was wil
