A Continental Romance

Years later it was agreed: she murdered him in Speracedes and claimed the ticket. It was on a sunny day, just after the vendange and everyone was happy, if tired: there was to be a big feast in the village that night. The tourists would see the dead man as a sort of sacrifice to the grapes, but the locals took things in their stride: they had no thirst for mystery, for symbolism; they sought confirmation, only, that things were as they were. The man's name was Philpot, murdered by ... well, in the presence of his wife, who inherited the ticket.