Murder on the Mediterranean (Capucine Culinary Mystery)

by Alexander Campion

  “Nathalie.”

  Serge jumped out of his berth, pushed Capucine aside, and made for Florence’s cabin, only to discover that Florence was already on her feet at the navigation console. She flicked some switches and raced up the companionway. By the time Capucine returned on deck, it was brilliant with masthead lights and even more conspicuously empty than it had been in the strobe flashes of lightning.

  CHAPTER 10

  The deck lights went out. Purple retinal images danced in Capucine’s field of vision, leaving her disoriented. It took long minutes for the splotches to disappear and her night vision to reemerge. Finally, she was able to discern the line between the greater darkness of the sea and the lesser darkness of the sky. The storm had passed through, leaving a clean sea smell. Far over the horizon, episodic, soundless flashes of lightning flared.

  The sails had been dropped into drunken, disordered piles, as if the boat had broken. Standing tall, her eyes sweeping the middle distance, Florence manned the helm. Next to her, like a little boy yammering for his mother’s attention, Serge sputtered, “We need to turn around, do the ‘man overboard’ drill, come up into the wind, jibe around, reach the position where she went overboard. Hurry. Hurry.”

  Florence ignored him.

  “We’ve already turned around and are heading back over our course, and the sails are down,” Capucine said.

  They came up to the pulsing dan buoy and took it on board. They motored on, staring sightlessly into the inky black. There was no sign of Nathalie. There was no sign of anything.

  “We have no idea when she went over the side,” Capucine said. “The best thing you can do now is to try to contact the nearest port and see if there’s any way to put up a search helicopter.”

  Energized, Serge bustled below.

  In less than a minute he returned with the gravitas of a heroic naval officer who had serious news to share. “I was unable to raise anyone with the VHF on channel sixteen. Also, there’s no signal on my cell phone. But the good news is that we are only thirty-five miles off Porto Cervo. If we steer two-six-oh, we could be there in less than four hours.”

  Before he had finished speaking, Florence spun the wheel and the boat heeled in slightly as it made a sharp turn to starboard. “Serge, I need you to get the sails back up,” Florence said curtly. “We don’t have enough gas to make port on the engine.”

  Serge set to work cranking the main halyard while Aude held the limp sheet, waiting for the sail to fill. Régis, looking a little dazed, took flash pictures of the deck. He went to the bow and continued snapping.

  Serge barked at him, “Régis, this is no time for your blog. Get the jib up as fast as you can. We don’t have a second to lose.”

  But Régis hesitated, taking several pictures of the bow area, even kneeling down to put the bow pulpit in dramatic perspective, before he came back to the jib halyard winch in the cockpit.

  Three hours later Serge was able to raise the port captain’s office in Porto Cervo on channel sixteen, the international distress frequency. The conversation reverberated loudly across the salon.

  “Porto Cervo? This is Diomede. Mayday. Mayday. Mayday,” Serge said in English, imitating Humphrey Bogart in one of his seagoing films.

  “Diomede. Isa you sinka?” said a young voice with the sleepy calm of someone who had heard it all before, too many times.

  “No, Porto Cervo. We’re not sinking. We think someone has gone overboard.”

  “Va bene. That’s a not a Mayday. That’s a pan. You coma inna port and tell me alla about it. I see what I canna do for you.”

  “Copied, Porto Cervo. We’re six miles out. We’ll be with you in less than an hour. Over and out!”

  They reached Porto Cervo as dawn broke. Even though the little harbor seemed as lifeless as if the world had ended, the port captain’s office in Porto Cervo was easy enough to find by the GUARDIA COSTIERA sign high over a steep vertical wall at the very end of a long marina filled with the largest boats Capucine had ever seen. The problem was that there were no empty berths.

  While Serge fretted, Florence tied the boat up next to the bottom step of a stone stairway leading up the vertical wall. Capucine and Serge walked up the mossy steps and discovered a new-looking white stucco building with a factory-made pine door. Serge opened it imperiously and strode in. Inside, a very young man in white trousers and a white short-sleeved shirt with black epaulets with one slim silver band sipped coffee from a thick demitasse. He looked up, unimpressed, caught sight of Capucine, and sprang to his feet.

  “I’m the skipper of Diomede. I radioed you. Remember?” Serge asked.

  The man smiled lazily, his eyes never leaving Capucine’s breasts. “The Maydaya. You surviva. Benissimo.” He eased around the desk and moved a chair two inches to indicate that Capucine should sit. He ignored Serge.

  “Ensign,” Capucine said, producing her Police Judiciaire ID wallet, “I’m Commissaire Le Tellier of the French Police Judiciaire. We think a woman fell overboard thirty miles out at sea and would like you to send up a helicopter in the hopes that she may still be found.”

  Butting in, Serge handed the man a slip of paper with latitude and longitude coordinates. “This is as close as I can reckon to where she went over. I’m the skipper.”

  It was as if the ensign had only just understood the situation. He sat up straight.

  “Commissario,” he said, his hands raised in the air, as if to appease the gods, his eyes still glued to Capucine’s breasts. “Of course, of course. Che tragedia! Che orrore! I’ll call the helicopter service immediately, immediately. You must forgive me. This is Porto Cervo. All we have here is movie stars and celebrities. Everything is an emergency. I had no idea you had undergone such an enorme tragedia.”

  He searched frantically though a dog-eared phone directory on the desk and punched in a number. The ringing at the other end could be heard clearly through the phone’s handset. As they waited, an even younger man in a white uniform with entirely unadorned black epaulets rushed into the room and whispered in the ensign’s ear in eager sibilants. He was waved away in irritation.

  The man cupped his hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone receiver. “He is telling me that your boat is moored at our stairway, which is normally forbidden. But, Commissario, you are welcome to remain there as long as you like.”

  His sycophantic smile was interrupted by a voice on the telephone. A rapid staccato of Italian ensued. The conversation over, he smiled warmly at Capucine.

  “Va bene. They are sending a helicopter. I let you know what they find.” He spoke only to Capucine. It was as if Serge was not in the room. “You looka tired. Go sleepa. I call you the minuto I heara something. I take cara everything.”

  Back at the boat, Capucine and Serge found no one on deck and only Aude and Régis in the salon. They sat at either end of the settee. Aude, impassive as ever, read from a very thick book. Régis typed energetically on his laptop. At the sight of Capucine, he sprang up.

  “Everyone’s gone to bed,” Régis said. “They were exhausted. We wanted to wait for you two, even though we’re punched out, as well.”

  “Go to sleep. They’re sending out a helicopter. They’ll let us know if they find anything,” Capucine replied.

  Punctuating her words, the drumbeat thumpa-thumpa of a helicopter flying close overhead reverberated in the salon.

  The next morning the members of the group seemed strained and ill at ease with each other. Alexandre realized that a communal breakfast was the last thing anyone wanted. He, Capucine, and Jacques began the long climb up the mossy stone steps, hoping to find a café not too far off. When they were halfway up, Inès called out to them to wait for her.

  They sat at a table on the terrace of the small quai-side café and drank caffelatte, made with impossibly thick espresso mixed into frothy steamed milk, and nibbled tasteless industrial buns from clear plastic wrappers.

  “I trust it hasn’t escaped your attention that the delightfully raunchy
Nathalie was wearing Inès’s jacket,” Jacques said, surveying the colossal yachts with insouciance, ripping the wrapper off a cornetto, an industrial glazed croissant.

  “That was the first thing I thought of,” Capucine said.

  “So you don’t think it was an accident?” Alexandre asked, unwrapping with grave suspicion a bombolone, a brioche-like industrial pastry. He frowned, having found a topic that interested him more than people lost at sea. “It’s curious that the Italians, from whom, after all, we have inherited our gastronomic heritage, have utterly surrendered their art of boulangerie to industrial processing.”

  “Of course it wasn’t an accident!” Inès said with verve. “Someone on that boat has been after me from the very beginning. First, I was nearly washed overboard by that so-called gust of wind. Then they tried to run me over in Bonifacio. And finally, they threw me overboard. But it was the wrong person!” She laughed victoriously.

  She tapped Alexandre energetically on the arm. “That means someone’s worried that I’m on their trail, don’t you think, Monsieur le Journaliste?”

  Alexandre looked at her. He frowned deeply, pensively chewing an exceptionally dry-looking Mulino Bianco, and said nothing. Capucine was positive he hadn’t heard a word she had said.

  CHAPTER 11

  On their way back to the boat, Capucine stopped off at the port captain’s office. At the desk, a white-uniformed ensign informed her that the port captain was indeed present but was winding up a meeting in his office. If Capucine would care to wait for a few minutes at the very most, the ensign was sure the captain would be delighted to see her. She sat for nearly forty-five minutes before the ensign took her to an office at the rear of the open-plan area. The door had been in full view the whole time, and Capucine had seen no one leave.

  Inside the office a man in his early forties with two gold stripes on his epaulets, sporting an officer’s cap decorated with the badge of a fouled anchor, looked at her guardedly, ignoring her breasts.

  Capucine introduced herself.

  “Yes, of course,” the man said in perfect French. “The night-duty ensign left me a detailed note. I have also received a report from the helicopter service, which saw nothing, even though they patrolled the area for two hours.”

  He paused, constructing a melancholy look.

  “It’s a tragedy, of course, but I’m afraid nothing more can be done. These things happen at sea, I’m sad to say. It’s fortunate that none of you were close to the young woman.” He shrugged, the weight of the world on his shoulders, and raised his hands slightly, palms upward.

  “That’s it?” Capucine asked, not bothering to hide her irritation. “That’s all the Italian authorities are going to do?”

  “I regret the loss of your servant,” he said, intensifying his melancholy look. “But you have to understand the situation. The fact that your skipper noted the position of the boat only a good while after he was alerted tells us that we have no idea exactly where she went overboard. An extended search over a broad area would take a small fleet of aircraft, and it is almost certain that it would be fruitless. In my experience it is extremely rare that drowned bodies float.”

  Capucine sat mute, radiating irritation.

  “Commissario, naturally I spoke to my superiors about this regrettable incident this morning.” The melancholy look had been replaced by a shrewd, knowing one. “They are, naturally, very deferential to your rank.” He paused. “They regret the ‘loss’ of your servant girl.” The quotation marks were heavy in the air. “But a factor exacerbating the futility of the search”—he paused again to let Capucine admire his mastery of the French language—“is that, given the ambiguity of the boat’s position at the time of the incident, it is quite possible, even likely, that you were in French waters.” Delighted with himself, he smiled at Capucine, leaned over the desk, and gave her an earnest, curtain-closing look.

  Capucine sat back in her chair. The penny dropped. The superiors, whoever they might be, wanted no risk of international complications, particularly if it involved a ranking French police officer. Nathalie, even dead, was an embarrassment.

  “Commissario, I’m afraid the case is closed.” He smiled again, the smile of someone of who had tied up all the necessary loose ends. “Of course, you’re more than welcome to remain in Porto Cervo. But I would appreciate it if you could vacate my mooring. My launch is normally tied up there. One of my men can help you find an anchorage, but I’m afraid it may have to be on the other side of the seawall. Marina berths are booked up months in advance, as I’m sure you understand.” He favored Capucine with a grandfatherly smile.

  “That’s very generous of you, Captain. But we won’t be staying. We’re on our way to Tortoli. We’d planned a dinner there.”

  “Va bene. Have a good sail. And don’t forget to check in at the port captain’s office when you get to Tortoli.”

  Despite the glory of the day, the deck of the boat was deserted. Capucine inched down the long flight of algae-slick steps.

  Halfway down she stopped. The situation was intolerable. The opera buffa of the Italian authorities would have been charmingly comical if it weren’t for the context of the probable death of someone they had shared an existence with, even if only for a few days. This was her world. A world she should be in control of. Of course, she could always make calls to Paris. The most likely call would be to Contrôleur Général Tallon, her mentor, now a god in the stratosphere of the Police Judiciaire hierarchy. But she would sound ridiculous. What would she want him to do? Pull strings to the get the Italian authorities to do something? But what, exactly? That was the whole problem; there was nothing to be done.

  She hopped on board. The rest of the party was huddled around the salon table, drinking Prosecco, serving themselves something out of a Plexiglas bowl, looking unhappy.

  “We’ve been kicked out of Porto Cervo,” Capucine said.

  “Good,” Alexandre said.

  “Kicked out?” Florence asked.

  “Well, not exactly. But we’ve been occupying the mooring of the port captain’s launch. He wants it back. There aren’t any berths available in the cove. We were graciously invited to drop our anchor outside the seawall.”

  “That’s safe enough,” Florence said. “It’s a good, shallow, sandy bottom out there. Fine for one or two nights with the fair weather that’s coming up.”

  “So what do we do now?” Serge asked nervously, poking at the food on his plate.

  Capucine squeezed into the banquette. Alexandre handed her a plate scintillating with bright summer colors. He must have found a market and gone foraging. He’d whipped up a salad of Barilla three-cheese tortellini, zucchini, green peppers, cherry tomatoes, and scallions, seasoned it with a delicate lemony vinaigrette, and topped the whole affair off with thinly shaved slices of Parmesan cheese. One of the things Capucine loved most about Alexandre was that, no matter how severe the crisis, his priorities remained inviolate. The salad was delicious.

  Capucine refocused on Serge. “Descartes would have been eloquent in explaining we have only two choices, go on or go home.”

  “Ah, the quaint notion of free will. It’s the sort of concept that you could conjure up only if you lived in an oven,” Jacques murmured, sipping Prosecco. Capucine half thought Aude smiled at him.

  “I don’t care what we do as long as we get out of this godforsaken Costa Smeralda,” Angélique said. “I’d just as soon move to Hollywood as stay here.”

  Through the salon ports Capucine could see portly owners of mega yachts on their decks, with bare-breasted trophy spouses being served flutes of vintage champagne by fawning tanned, athletic young things in uniforms of brief shorts and tight T-shirts.

  There was a universal murmur of agreement.

  “Serge, how far away are we from Tortoli?” Dominique asked. “I know the whole episode has been a shock. But I really don’t want to go back to France just yet. I think it would be kind of fun to meet your friend and see the way real
people live in Sardinia.” Angélique slid her hand into his and smiled lovingly at him. Mentally, Capucine shook her head at Angélique’s protean mood shifts toward her husband.

  “The timing is bad,” Serge said. “It’s a ten-hour sail. If we leave now, we won’t get there till midnight.”

  Jacques purred. One of his knacks was attracting the attention of a crowd with a mere murmur. “In that case, my vote would be to stay here and sample the nightlife of this delicious den of iniquity. Nothing is more enticing than the musk of barely teen starlets in rut. Then we can perform our usual trick of stealing off like thieves in the night.”

  There was a moment of silence as the group chewed over this alternative.

  “Could be fun, when you think about it,” Angélique said. “I’d like to see the stars at play. Don’t you think, darling?” She slid her arm through Dominique’s.

  “It’s what Nathalie would have wanted,” Jacques said, cackling his braying laugh. Aude shot him a dirty look, one that Capucine was almost sure she saw.

  Half an hour later they were beyond the breakwater. It was hardly the open sea, just a protected cove with no dock. Florence contemplated Serge as he maneuvered the boat, attempting to drop the anchor. He cruised around, found a spot, went too far, turned, came back over it, overshot, went around again. Florence came up beside him at the wheel. She did not even have to ease him aside. He moved away gratefully.

  “This is too close to the other boats,” Florence said. “We might hit one of them in the night if we drop the hook here. Why don’t you go forward and get ready with the anchor while I find us a spot?”

  Serge went to the forecastle and opened a little hatch. He extracted a three-foot anchor, a length of chain, and an electronic device that looked exactly like a TV remote control. Régis snapped pictures with the zeal of a paparazzo.

  “When are you going to post all these pictures?” Capucine asked.