Crime Fraiche Read online

  David perched perfectly comfortably in the chair’s twin, lazily twirling a feathery lock around his index finger, preening for the two victims, who sat decorously draped on a Le Corbusier sofa in poses that left no doubt of their vocations as dancers. The two men had eyes only for him. For the hundredth time Capucine wondered if the entirety of David’s sensual life didn’t consist of sparking erotic attraction. Isabelle glowered at the scene, awkwardly balanced on a Gerrit Rietveld Z chair that looked like it would collapse into kindling at her first brusque movement.

  “She knew we absolutely loathed the damn thing,” said one of the dancers.

  “It was a bronze statuette of a deer. A deer, of all things, can you imagine? The only thing my horrible father left me,” added the other dancer. “He was a career army officer. Saint-Cyr and all that. Besides the army, the only thing that interested him was wearing ridiculous outfits and massacring deer with hounds. He certainly didn’t give a damn about his children. The day I told him I was gay, he disinherited me and never spoke to me again. When he died, he left me that fucking statuette as a pointed reminder of the virtuous life I should have led.”

  “So you encouraged her to take it?” Isabelle asked.

  “Now, wait a minute,” the first dancer said. “That piece is very valuable. It’s an original Pierre-Jules Mene. His work sells for quite a lot. We had it appraised at over ten thousand euros.”

  “Bertrand, don’t be silly. You know perfectly well that we both detested the ghastly thing. You only kept it on the Saarinen table so you could stick your bills on the antlers and laugh at it. And what’s stolen is stolen whether you cry over it or not, isn’t that right, Officer?” The latter directed exclusively at David.

  “Oh, you’ll get the insurance money, no doubt about that,” Capucine said. “I’m more interested in your relationship with the perp.”

  “What a vulgar term,” the dancer called Claude said. “Her name is Célestine. We found her collapsed at the Marché de Grenelle last Sunday. She’s a poet. She had run away from a lover who was abusive and did horrible things to her. She’s so noble she stayed with that terrible man out of a sense of duty until finally she could stand it no longer and then she bolted. She spent the whole night wandering around and found herself in the market in the morning. She had fainted just the instant before we arrived. Isn’t that right, Bertrand?”

  “A beautiful and moving story. We brought her home with us, of course,” Bertrand said. “She needed to be nursed back to health. After a day it was as if we had known her all our lives. She fit right in. She became happy. She made us happy. It was a wonderful moment for all of us.” He paused, as crestfallen as a children’s cartoon character. “Then one day Claude and I came home from rehearsal and she had gone. Poof.” He waved his fingers limply but gracefully in the air. “Just like that.”

  “And she stole the Mene. We didn’t give it to her. Let’s be perfectly clear,” Claude said.

  “Oh, how can you talk like that?” Bertrand said.

  “Look, no one’s going to question your goddamn insurance claim,” Isabelle said irritably. “You’ll get every centime of the appraisal value, even though the perp is sure to have sold it for less than a third of that.”

  Isabelle paused and consulted a piece of paper. “Did this woman have a long, melancholy face, which she usually carried slightly tilted to the right, an exceptionally long neck, and flowing, shoulder-length dark blond hair”—Isabelle held up the paper and quoted—“ ‘just like a spurned Modigliani model’?”

  “Wait a minute!” Claude said. “Do you mean she’s done this before? We were taken in by a scam? I find that impossible to believe. She’s our friend.”

  Bertrand stared into space, searching his memory, and breathed a sigh of relief. “Actually, she did look a teeny bit like a Modigliani sometimes, but her hair wasn’t blond. It was very dark brown, almost black,” he said triumphantly.

  “Hair coloring,” Claude said. “Now that I think about it, it was one of those horrid home-dyes. That’s our Célestine. No doubt about it.”

  “Good,” Capucine said, standing up. “At your convenience you need to call Brigadier Lemercier to make an appointment to give your deposition. Bring a copy of your appraisal. She’ll give you the affidavit for your insurance claim.”

  The dancer called Claude looked like he would burst into tears.

  Bertrand staved off the crisis by putting a hand on his partner’s thigh. “It all worked out for the best. We’re going to get cash for that eyesore, and Célestine, sweet creature whoever she may really be, will have enough to get by on for a month or so. What more could you ask for?” he asked with an only slightly cynical laugh.

  CHAPTER 10

  That afternoon Capucine indulged in a session of self-recrimination, a luxury she had only begun to permit herself once that she had established her authority over the commissariat and their arrest statistics had become the envy of the Paris force. The irritant was the interview of the two dancers. Isabelle had not lived up to expectations, clear proof that she was not being properly managed. David had stolen the focal point from her. Yes, the participants’ sexual orientation was a factor, but was that really all that was at work?

  As she danced between the Scylla and Charybdis of under- and over-managing Isabelle, she began to nibble away at the pile of files on her desk that seemed once again to have risen in the night like a bowlful of bread dough. Just as she was immersing herself in the peccadilloes of a gang of pickpockets who were doing quite well off the American tourists at the Père-Lachaise Cemetery, the phone rang. She picked it up, still swimming in the file.

  “Allô! Allô! Ma nièce?” asked Oncle Aymerie in the overloud voice of those who mistrust technology of any sort. “Are you there? It’s your uncle.”

  “Mon oncle,” Capucine said, turning a page, “how good to hear your voice. I was just going to call you to tell you how much Alexandre and I enjoyed our week at Maulévrier. So foolish of me to have stayed away.”

  “Formidable. I’m delighted you feel that way because I want you to come back. Would this weekend be too soon?”

  “Alexandre enjoyed himself immensely. He was particularly impressed with Odile’s cooking.” She turned another page. “And I was so happy to see you again. We must come down again soon. Maybe after Christmas.”

  “Perfect! We’re going to walk up Saint Agnès’ field on Saturday. It’s in stubble and there will be excellent partridge. The weather will be perfect. Not too sunny. Not too cold. Alexandre needs to get out more. He has definite potential as a gun. I’m going to put him in the center of the line.”

  Capucine turned another page. The lieutenant in charge of the investigation seemed to think there was a gang of at least twenty adolescents involved. She was going to have to adjust the duty roster and add more personnel to the case.

  “No point in arriving too early on Friday. It will just be family. Jacques will be here, of course. That will please Alexandre. And we can eat whenever you shake off the dust of the trip.”

  Capucine closed the file with a snap. “Mon oncle, we can’t possibly come this weekend.” A tiny furrow appeared in her forehead. “Is something the matter?”

  “In a way. I’ve been thinking. I believe this tragic death last week is linked to the mishap at our shoot. I’m sure neither one was an accident and both were connected to Vienneau’s élevage somehow. So I said to myself, since you are a commissaire in the Police Judiciaire, you would be the best person to investigate.”

  Capucine’s heart leapt like a little robin flying off into the sun at Oncle Aymerie’s acknowledgment of her chosen career, but she succeeded in marshaling the gravitas of a senior police officer. “Mon oncle, these are very serious accusations. If you feel this way, you should alert the local police.”

  Oncle Aymerie snorted. “But you are the police. Besides, you’ve met this plaisantin, the local capitaine of the gendarmerie. Be serious, ma nièce. I need you to come back and conduct a pro
per investigation. Don’t forget this is our village. Has been for centuries. We have a responsibility to the villagers. Noblesse oblige is not to be taken lightly. I need you to be here.”

  Capucine smiled. It was ridiculous. She’d had her little vacation and now it was time to get back to work. What nagged her was that she half suspected Oncle Aymerie was right. There was no doubt that the death at Bouvard’s demonstration had been foul play of some sort, and it did seem unlikely that both victims having the same employer was mere coincidence.

  “Mon oncle, look, it really is going to be next to impossible to leave Paris right now, but I will talk it over with Alexandre tonight. Odile’s faisan au choux made a great impression on him. Why don’t I call you in the morning. We’ll make a decision then.”

  Late that night Capucine arrived at her apartment, as she so often did, simultaneously fulfilled, drained, and frustrated. Alexandre, as he so often did, stormed around the kitchen, humming loudly, moving a great deal of air in preparing dinner. Alexandre had owned the rambling apartment in the Marais since his antediluvian university days. He had bought it for a song well before the Marais even thought of becoming fashionable. The third story had housed a cheap brothel, and, day and night, the stairwell had been packed with a long line of illegal Maghrebian day laborers waiting for a quick ten minutes with a fat elderly prostitute. Of course, all that was long gone and the area was now prime Paris real estate. Needless to say, Alexandre would not even entertain theoretical discussions about selling, and Capucine agreed, feeling that its twenty-five hundred square feet would be perfect for rearing a squabbling brood when the time came.

  As she liked to tell her friends, Capucine had managed to housebreak almost the entire apartment, replacing Alexandre’s bachelor clutter with carefully chosen antiques from her family and setting them off with bright pastel colors on the walls and drapes. But two rooms remained unquestionably Alexandre’s, his study and the kitchen. From Alexandre’s point of view, the kitchen was even more inviolate than the study. It was the largest room in the house, filled with hanging garlic and sausages, shelves crammed with odd-shaped bottles of spices and culinary effluvia, long rows of copper pots dangling from rails on the wall. An immense brass and black enamel La Cornue stove enjoyed center stage against the far wall.

  Capucine rejoiced in dinner at home. Alexandre’s cooking was a solace and had the same salubrious effect as snuggling up to him on the sofa and rubbing the endearing gibbosity of his stomach. But as she walked in, her face fell. Beef! There was the unmistakable odor of beef cooking. A delicious enough odor for sure, but it was still beef, and she had told Alexandre that very morning that beef or game of any sort would not pass her lips for the rest of the month.

  Alexandre fully understood her frown. Catching her moods was one of his talents. “Yes, princess, it is beef,” he said, handing her a flute of champagne. “But it’s no dish your dear Odile would ever cook.” He swept Capucine in his arms. “This is a recipe that embraces the very essence of modern Paris.” He tightened his hug, lifted her, and spun with the lack of grace of a trained bear. Capucine let out a little yell. Alexandre dropped her. “What’s the matter ?” he asked.

  “You’re crushing my Sig into my spine,” she said, laughing and reaching to the back of her waist to unclip the holster and gun, which she clunked on the long table as she kicked off her shoes. “There, that’s better. So what is this dish?”

  “It’s an onglet—a hanger steak—that marinated all afternoon in a bath of wine, onions, and carrots, and was then rolled tightly around a horseradish paste, and is now happily cooking in the oven, waiting for you. It will be served with a sauce made from a reduction of the marinade and lovingly presented over a bed of the chopped leaves of celery and parsley. Can’t get farther away from Maulévrier than that, can you?”

  Capucine kissed Alexandre. “Only you understand me.”

  It took some time for Alexandre to finish cooking. The sauce seemed a great deal more complicated than he had described, involving egg yolks and furious whipping with a whisk. Completed, the dish was delicious, if a bit bizarre, with a sharp bite that was more Japanese than French. Imagining Oncle Aymerie wrinkling his nose in disapproval reminded Capucine of his call.

  “Oncle Aymerie called me this morning. He wants me—us, really—to go back to Maulévrier this weekend. He’s got it in his head that neither of the deaths were accidents and that they have something to do with the élevage.”

  “Back to Maulévrier, quelle idée!” Alexandre paused, looking closely into Capucine’s face. “Good God. You’re tempted, aren’t you?”

  “Maybe. A little. I don’t know. I shouldn’t even think of taking more time off, of course, but Oncle Aymerie seemed so distraught. If I’m going to discover anything, I’d have to leave before the weekend.”

  “Follow your heart and all that good stuff, but think twice about encouraging your uncle in the delusions of an old man. That gendarme capitaine seemed completely convinced the deaths were accidents, and it’s hardly surprising that both the victims worked at the élevage since it’s virtually the only business in town.”

  “The provincial gendarmerie is hardly expert in criminal investigation. It’s not their function. That’s why the Police Judiciaire has authority throughout France.”

  “Maybe,” said Alexandre with just the hint of an edge in his voice, “but don’t forget that the Elevage Vienneau is one of the pillars of French gastronomy. Even the slightest hint that it’s involved in a crime in any way would sully its reputation, and that would be a blow to the national glory. You know how fickle the world of haute cuisine is. Not to mention the fact that rooting around the village like a Périgord pig after truffles isn’t going to make you any friends either.”

  Capucine’s brow wrinkled as she contemplated his response.

  In a flash she brightened. “There’s also the matter of my accrued vacation time,” she said. “I have four weeks left to take. If I don’t use them before the end of the year it will send the wrong message to the troops. I want them to be fulfilled and well adjusted, not mindless slaves to their jobs.”

  “Well, do what you want,” Alexandre said. “I won’t be able to go with you. I’m in the middle of writing a piece. It’s going to be called ‘Critics Who Hurt—Critics Who Kill,’ all about the damage some restaurant critics have done to haute cuisine.”

  “It doesn’t sound like the piece is going to make you any friends either.”

  “Well, you know my policy, bloody the noses that deserve to be bloodied.” Alexandre paused and looked at his wife fondly. “Actually, if you were to go, I think I could come down for the weekend and finish the piece there. I could take the train on Friday. I still have four more interviews to finish, not to mention a restaurant to review on Thursday.” Alexandre smiled and kissed her on the forehead. “Besides, a few nights out with the copains—my dear old buddies—would do me a world of good.”

  The fact that Alexandre had been so quick to let her go off by herself tipped the scale back away from another week in the country. But as she remembered the glow of affection for her family that the week at Maulévrier had rekindled, it teetered back the other way. It was going to take more than irritation with Alexandre to get her to renege on familial duty, particularly as that piece of the puzzle of her life seemed to be fitting itself so nicely back into its slot.

  “You deserve some time off with your playmates,” she said. “I’ll go, but you have to promise to come on Friday evening and to behave while I’m gone.” When Alexandre kissed her forehead again, she felt her face flush.

  CHAPTER 11

  “It’s very unwise not to bring me mushrooms before taking them home. Very. Everyone in the village should know that,” Homais said as he methodically probed the basket with a surgical forceps. “You say you found these in the kitchen. That poor Odile has lost all her good sense.” He dumped the mushrooms on his worktable and began examining them one by one.

  Capucine felt
a twinge of embarrassment at the primitiveness of her investigative technique, but this was les provinces after all. “Yes,” she said, “Odile was going to do something with them for dinner, but I thought it would be prudent to ask someone of your expertise to look them over first.”

  “Someone of my expertise? Please. There’s no one with anything close to my knowledge of mycology between here and Rouen,” Homais said with utter seriousness. “Well, so far so good,” he said, continuing his examination. “These are all oyster pleurottes. A bit early for the season but sure to be very tasty.”

  “While I’m here, Monsieur Homais, I thought I’d ask you about that poor man who was killed accidentally at my uncle’s shoot. They brought the body here, didn’t they?”

  “Yes, they did. As you know, we don’t have a doctor in Saint-Nicolas, so I am often the resource of last resort, as it were. In fact, as you have seen, even though I don’t have a medical degree, I’m probably more skilled at dealing with bird-shot wounds than most doctors. But in that particular case there was nothing I could do. The poor man was dead long before he made it to this table.” Homais picked up a mushroom and held it high between index and thumb with the reverence of the curé elevating the host at mass.

  “Now, this one is what we scholars call a Cortinarius praestens,” Homais said in what he imagined was the dusty tone of the university lecture hall. “What the paysans call the cortinaire remarquable. You have only a handful of them, but they are quite rare and exceptionally tasty. They’re already beginning to dry out, so I’d suggest you get the good Odile to make an omelet with them for your breakfast tomorrow morning.”

  To Capucine the cortinaire in question looked more shriveled and nasty than remarkable. No matter how rare it was, it certainly was not going to be gracing her breakfast table in the morning.