The Grave Gourmet Read online

  Ménard’s love of blather and bon mots did not entirely mask his hawklike senior civil servant acuteness. His two-beat pauses as he deliberately measured his words unnerved Capucine.

  “Ah, Président Delage, quelle tragédie, but as the scriptures tell us, we know neither the day nor the hour.

  “I understand you had invited him to lunch for the Saturday after he died.”

  “…Yes…I had…You are correct.”

  “Was it a social occasion or was the luncheon prompted by anything specific?”

  “…Social, of course. He was going to come to my home to eat en famille, as it were…. Although I have to say the lunch was his…initiative.

  “How do you mean?”

  “He called me during the week wanting to ask my advice about something. He sounded a bit…agitated…It was apparently a matter of some…urgency.”

  “Did he give you any indication of what it was about?”

  “No. He said he had a problem that might require the intervention of the DGSE or one of the other government security agencies and he wanted my advice on how to proceed. But since he never came to lunch, I have no idea what it was all about. Now we’ll never know.”

  Despite the boilerplate of a highly skilled player, Capucine had the distinct feeling he was holding something back.

  Chapter 8

  Capucine hesitated, her finger poised on the elevator button in the lobby of the “swimming pool,” the DGSE’s drab headquarters in the even more drab Twentieth Arrondissement. This was folly. If Tallon ever found out he’d sling her off the case and blot her file with a reprimand nasty enough to cripple her career forever. Of course, Jacques was like a brother. She had grown up with him. Even so, for Tallon it would still be the high treason of parading police secrets in another ministry. But you can’t make an omelet without breaking at least some eggs and this particular omelet just had to be made.

  “Cousin, I’ve come to you for help,” Capucine said to a young man of about her age who was far too well dressed to be employed anywhere, much less as a functionary in a government agency. “I’m working on a case that may involve the DGSE. I need your advice.”

  “Advice? How sweet of you. After all the big-sistering you’ve done for me over the years I’m touched.” Jacques made a moue and brought his eyebrows together in exaggerated humility. “But don’t forget that even though I’m on the director’s staff, I’m just a junior underling around here. I have no stripes on my uniform at all. In fact, I don’t even have a uniform.”

  “That’s not what I hear. I understand you’ve become quite the evil Machiavellian potentate. You have everyone’s ear and are a master manipulator of ministerial politics.”

  Jacques grinned a childish grin and carefully adjusted the silk square in his breast pocket. “Cousine, flattery will get you everywhere. Alors, Catullus said to Claudia, ‘Take the panties off your thoughts and we’ll give them a good spanking.’”

  Capucine launched into a summary of the case. When she reached Rivière’s interrogation of the two vigies Jacques guffawed loudly.

  “Ah ha! I saw that expression. Looks like you have the hots for this delectable flic. I told you that geriatric foodie of yours was too stodgy to keep you interested for long!” He whooped with laughter.

  “Jacques, will you shut up. This case is very important to me. And I’m still every bit as much in love with Alexandre as I ever was. And…well, you know…just as interested, and all that. More so, even.”

  Jacques whooped again and poked his cousin in the ribs. “Gotcha!”

  “Jacques, please! Let me get to the end of the story. It seems that Delage had made a date to have lunch at the house of Olivier Ménard for the Saturday after he died. Oncle Norbert bullied Ménard into speaking to me and it turns out that Delage wanted to consult him about alerting the DGSE—or maybe another government security agency—about an undisclosed matter. Ménard told me that was the end of the story, but I had a strong feeling he was hiding something.”

  “Slow talking Oli…vi…er Mé…nard? He just always sounds like he’s…what is the right word?…ah, yes…concealing something. He’s the most secretive man in the government. He won’t eat in a restaurant because he can’t bring himself to reveal to the waiter what he wants. Probably thinks it’s a…state…secret.” Jacques erupted in a shriek of laughter.

  “You’re in luck, though. The silly old fool actually did call my boss, the director, who was quite irritated. He dictated the file note to me. Ménard had a vague story. He wanted us to send an agent to see a man called Guyon who is in charge of R & D at Renault. Apparently some development project or other at Renault had been leaked. Hardly the sort of thing we’d be interested in. The director sent him packing. Told him to take it to the DST. After all, they do domestic spooking and we do the foreign stuff. That’s presumably what Ménard would have told Delage if he had seen him.”

  “Sounds rather underwhelming,” Capucine said, crestfallen.

  “Cheer up, cousine chérie, you can still stick white-hot needles under the toenails of this man Guyon. Maybe it’ll turn out to be a sinister plot.” Jacques shrieked his high-pitched laugh. “I’ll call the liaison guy at the DST for you. Maybe they got a call. They’re supposed to keep us informed about all their actions, but with them you never know. And if we hear anything here I’ll call you instanter.”

  “You won’t forget?”

  “Forget my favorite cousin? The one who taught me to…” He paused and then put a finger to his lips, rolled his eyes, and said theatrically, “Shush, these offices are all bugged.”

  “Jacques, you’re impossible!”

  As he showed her out, he put his arm around her waist and fondled her rib cage. “Who’d have ever thought that my hottest cousin would wind up getting her rocks off with a big Pooh Bear?” Capucine slapped his cheek hard and walked down the hall. Two secretaries gave her very quizzical looks as she waited for the elevator.

  In the elevator she felt the same vague unease as after the call with Ménard. Had Jacques been just a little too glib with his facts or was that just part of his international spy persona?

  Chapter 9

  By the time she’d spent forty minutes waiting to see Florian Guyon, Jacques’ idea of inserting hot needles under his toenails had acquired a definite appeal. For the first fifteen minutes of the wait Guyon’s secretary had been sympathetic, apologizing repeatedly for the delay, attempting to ply her with coffee and cold drinks, insisting she wouldn’t be waiting more than a minute or two more. But as time wore on the secretary seemed to find the awkwardness of the situation contagious and averted her eyes whenever Capucine’s gaze met hers. Just as Capucine was about to stalk out and have the Quai order him down for an interview, the secretary’s phone buzzed and she sighed a little sigh. “He’s ready to see you now.”

  As she sat down in a stiff leather chair across from Guyon’s desk it was obvious that, like many moneyed Frenchmen, he held the police in considerable disdain. What surprised her was his obvious nervousness.

  “How can I help you, mademoiselle?” Guyon asked, with undisguised condescension.

  Capucine stared at him levelly for an instant. “I understand that Président Delage had expressed an interest in having the DGSE investigate a leak from your department just before his death. Can you comment on that?”

  Guyon paled slightly and his breathing became more rapid. “I don’t know who told you what, but it sounds like a complete exaggeration. I attended a meeting of R & D executives in Korea a few weeks ago and had the impression that a few too many people were conversant with some of our development projects. Nothing more than that. I brought it up in an update session with Président Delage and we discussed the possibility of tightening our security systems.”

  Capucine stared at him for a moment. “Nothing more than that?”

  “No. Not really.”

  “So Président Delage just might have wanted to consult the DGSE in a general way about improving
security. Is that it?”

  “Probably,” Guyon said with a smirk, relaxing a little.

  “But I have it on good authority that the request was very specific. That it concerned a specific project.”

  Guyon became even more pale, breathing very quickly through his mouth. “Look, let me be clear: I have no idea even if it was a leak, but, yes, there were rumors floating around Seoul that were distressingly close to some of the work we are doing here.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “Mademoiselle, there is no point to this conversation. The Seoul conference was about improvements to engine efficiency. I’m sure you can understand that with the current gasoline crisis that is the top concern of all the manufacturers. We have a number of engine projects ongoing. As it happens, the DGSE is already looking into the situation. Just yesterday an agent visited one of our test sites to ascertain if it was possible for any data to have been stolen.” At the sound of his own blather Guyon visibly relaxed, leaning back in his chair.

  “Well,” Capucine said with her best schoolgirl smile. “Can you be a little more specific about the project or projects that the DGSE are investigating?”

  “Mademoiselle, you have to understand that these things are very technical. To be honest with you, most development projects are really just vectors for the marketing department. Something to build ads around. Sales gimmicks, really.” Guyon smiled and looked at Capucine to see if the explanation had satisfied her. She stared back at him without expression.

  “I’m going to insist you give me some details.”

  “Look, mademoiselle,” he said, fully intending the title to be disdainful. Then thinking better of it and glancing at her left hand he corrected himself. “Oh, do forgive me, madame,” he said ironically. “This is not a police matter. The police have no rights here. I’ve answered your questions. I’m certainly not going to give you privileged information. If you want anything more, you can always try your luck with a juge d’instruction and see how far you get. As far as I’m concerned this interview is over.” He swiveled slightly in his chair puffing out his chest, making the thin blue ribbon of the Chevalier of the Order of Merit—his establishment badge—all the more conspicuous.

  Capucine smiled thinly and got up. “Thank you for your consideration, monsieur. I’m sure we’ll meet again in the very near future.” She felt betrayed. Why had Jacques not told her about a DGSE investigation?

  Chapter 10

  That evening Capucine dragged herself through the apartment doorway at ten o’clock, utterly exhausted and in a perfectly foul mood. Hearing Alexandre in the kitchen she went straight to him. They lived in what had been Alexandre’s bachelor flat, a rambling, disjointed series of rooms deep in the Marais, in an area that was only just showing the first tentative signs of becoming fashionable.

  Capucine’s redecoration had been far-reaching, but it had been made perfectly clear that the kitchen was Alexandre’s sanctum and not to be meddled with. The largest room in the apartment, it was filled with deeply scarred, oversized antiques purloined from the attic of Alexandre’s parents’ country house decades before. Two large oak armoires housed a vast hodgepodge of pots, pans, small appliances, and kitchen impedimenta. A once elegant mahogany glass-fronted display cabinet contained a haphazard collection of bottles and jars: herbs, spices, vinegars, oils, mysterious liquids and powders. The walls were festooned with hanging garlands of garlic and peppers, magnetic racks of knives, cleavers, and unidentifiable metallic instruments. A collection of herbs grew in Italian clay pots—most cracked or chipped—in the south-facing window. High up on the top of an armoire, a collection of Alexandre’s empty bottles of memorable wines collected dust. Capucine itched to throw them out.

  The epicenter of the room was Alexandre’s pride and joy, a brand-new La Cornue range, imposing in its black enamel and polished brass trim, built around a central cooking plaque just like a professional kitchen’s piano. The plaque was about two-and-a-half feet in diameter, ferociously hot in the middle, the heat diminishing gradually toward the edge; rather than fiddle with minute adjustments to a flame, the cook simply moved his pot closer or farther away from the middle of the plaque.

  As Capucine clumped in, Alexandre was in a rapture, correcting the seasoning of an apparently finished stock while preparing to start another. Two chairs had been pulled from the table and their backs were draped with hanging ribbons of pasta hung out to dry. Alexandre was having a culinary extravaganza. She felt a stab of irritation as she saw his bliss with his own world while she floundered in hers. Here he was, happily planning on staying up until three or four in the morning when all she wanted to do was collapse into bed. Life was so unfair.

  She kicked off her shoes angrily, unclipped the heavy pistol from her belt, and clunked it down on the enormous farm table that filled the room.

  Alexandre swept her up in a bear hug. “Poor bébé. Tough flics don’t cry.”

  “The hell they don’t.” Capucine kicked him in the shin with her stockinged foot, only half playfully.

  “Baby,” Alexandre crooned on, “what are those appalling Gestapo types doing to you? You must quit that dreadful job immediately and take up a life of writing endlessly boring monographs on the sociopsychology of crime. That way you can spend your whole day at home eating with me and become hugely fat and twice as lovable. I would offer you anything in my kingdom if you did that.”

  She smiled up at him and stroked the slight gibbosity of his stomach gently.

  “Anything at all? Really anything? How about something of no value? What if I just asked for those dusty bottles up there?”

  “Ah, my dear, there you ask for too much. You ask for the irreplaceable.” He moved over to the shelf, selected two bottles, blew off some of the dust, and held them high in the air like a banderillero about to place his darts. “Château Pétrus 1961 and Château d’Yquem 1945. Both downed in this very room. Today, if you could find them at all, either one would be a steal at ten thousand euros, which would make them literally more costly than gold. You see, these things are now dinosaurs of the past. Even if one had the money it would be immoral to drink something so expensive. These empty bottles are archaeological relics.”

  “So I’m condemned to be a flic. Damn! I was ready for a life of leisurely intellectual pursuit.”

  “Your day was that bad?”

  “Worse. Filled with humiliation and obfuscation.”

  “I have the perfect antidote for both.” Alexandre twisted the cork out of a squat bottle of Dom Pérignon so dexterously it made little more than the most discrete whisper of a sigh, poured two flutes halfway to the top, and handed one to his wife. “Start with the humiliation part.”

  “I saw an extraordinarily pompous man at Renault who had the presumption to treat me like a streetwalker simply because I was a cop. Worse, he tried to give me a run-around. Delage seems to have wanted to contact the DGSE about some sort of leak in this man’s department. The man in question tried as hard as he could to get me to believe that it was really just about improving Renault’s security. The sad part is that he half convinced me.” She caught herself before mentioning Jacques. Entirely unreasonably, Alexandre actually seemed to be jealous of her sweet little cousin.

  “What about the obfuscation?”

  “Forensics finally came out of the closet and announced that it’s murder by poisoning.”

  “How wonderful to be so confident of the obvious.”

  “Actually it’s a bit complicated. At first the lab thought it was the oysters used in the sorbet that did Delage in. They supposed the oysters might have been contaminated by red-tide algae. The symptoms were perfectly consistent. You know, it’s that algae that builds up every now and then on the Atlantic coast and produces something called saxitoxin. The oysters eat it and become yummy poison capsules.”

  “Of course. Two elderly people died from oysters in Arcachon last year. There was a big to-do.” Alexandre said.

  “Exactly.
The lab tests showed that Delage had saxitoxin in his blood. So it really looked like the restaurant might have been sold bad oysters.”

  “But then why didn’t everyone in the restaurant get it? The sorbet was served to all the patrons.” Alexandre asked.

  “Excellent question but it turns out to be completely irrelevant. It’s perfectly clear that the poison didn’t come from oysters.”

  As her enthusiasm filled the sails of Capucine’s tale, Alexandre began dinner. He picked up one of the long sheets of pasta from the back of a chair, dusted some flour on the table, threw the pasta down with élan, and dotted it with triangles of foie gras. Then he produced a large black truffle from a jar in the refrigerator and shaved it carefully with a sinister-looking long-bladed knife with a carved handle. Finally he placed another sheet of pasta on top, pressed down around each of the pieces of foie gras, and cut out oversized ravioles with his brigand’s knife.

  “How can they know?” Alexandre asked.

  “It took forensics a while to get around to making up their minds about how much of the toxin Delage had actually ingested. Apparently the calculation is pretty tricky, but it turns out he would have had to eat the equivalent of seventy-eight oysters.”

  “And if oysters really are aphrodisiac, and he had eaten that many, and if all of them had worked, what a night he would have had,” Alexandre murmured.

  “Smart-ass. Do you want to hear this or not? If you’re not going to take it seriously I’m just going to go to bed.”

  Alexandre smiled at her, ladled a good portion of the completed stock into a copper saucepot, and turned on the heat. “Go on, my love. Don’t let me distract you.”

  “Even if the oysters were pureed and reduced to make the sorbet, the amount in Delage’s blood was so high it would have had to come from a concentrate made in a chemical laboratory. Forensics said there was no question about that.”