Murder on the Mediterranean (Capucine Culinary Mystery)

by Alexander Campion

  Despite Jacques’s assurances, when they got down to it, it turned out to be a very far cry from snatching a lollipop out of a baby’s hand.

  At four thirty in the morning Capucine and Alexandre came on deck, miming a couple seeking a snap of cool air to bring on sleep. Serge, at the helm, had switched on the autopilot and sat on the stern rail, struggling to stay awake.

  Serge was delighted at their arrival. “Can you two look after the boat? I’m going below to make something to eat. I need something to get revved up.”

  “There’s some excellent prosciutto di Parma in the fridge, and the eggs are farm fresh from the outdoor market,” Alexandre said. “Put some butter in a skillet to fry the eggs, and when they’re nearly done, put the ham in for a few seconds, until it just begins to stiffen and turn brown.”

  “Sounds fabulous. I won’t be more than ten minutes.”

  As Serge started to go below, he brushed up against Jacques, who was coming up the companionway, yawning and stretching.

  “Couldn’t sleep. Our cabin is like an oven. I need a good jolt of the briny.”

  “We all do. I’ve had my fill of standing watch, and I’m going below to stuff my face. The worst part is I’ve got another two hours before we make port.” He shook his head to demonstrate the full extent of his heroic suffering.

  The instant they heard Serge rattling pans, Jacques got to work soundlessly. He tripped a release catch just above the transom, popping open the long, thin cover with a muffled clunk. All three froze, praying for Serge not to come back up. Capucine thrummed. Jacques pulled her over to him.

  “Your course is dead north. I just checked our position on the GPS. We’re twelve nautical miles south of the coast. When the dinghy goes in the water, you need to get right on board. I’ll hold on to the painter, but at the speed the yacht is making, the dinghy will surf with its nose out of the water. Capucine, you’ll go first and kneel in the bow to keep it down. Then you switch places with Alexandre and move to the stern. Tubby Hubby’s avoirdupois is just what we need to keep the dinghy level. I’ll cast you off, and you sit quiet as ship rats for at least fifteen minutes before starting the engine. That’s all there is to it. Even you two can pull it off with your fingers in your nose. Okay, off you go, now.”

  Jacques jerked the dinghy out of its niche and in the same motion knotted the painter around the stern rail.

  The tiny dinghy, barely long enough to lie down in, rose half out of the water, weaving a crazed, erratic wake.

  The idea of leaving the yacht seemed beyond suicidal.

  “Get your ass in gear, cousine,” Jacques said with steely eyes. Capucine could easily imagine him shooting a recalcitrant agent slowing up a field mission.

  Holding on to the rail, she lowered herself into the bucking dinghy. Alexandre followed immediately. For a split second they hung on the line running around the gunwales of the careening dinghy. Jacques cast off. The dinghy stopped as short as if it had hit a wall. Diomede receded into the night.

  Capucine and Alexandre sat on folded Indian legs on the wood slats of the dinghy’s sole and watched Jacques disappear, happily waving a vaudevillian good-bye.

  For the first time in her life, Capucine came close to a genuine panic attack. All she wanted was the normal context of her life restored. Instead, the only thing they could have called home was already almost over the horizon. What had she gotten them into?

  Conversely, Alexandre sighed contentedly. “How satisfying to leave behind all the silly squabbles of that plastic boat. Let’s have breakfast. I’m starved.”

  “And I suppose if we ring, a steward will appear?”

  Rather than reply, Alexandre produced several film-wrapped packages from the pockets of his Windbreaker. “Prosciutto and mortadella panini. I made them while you were getting ready.” He produced a large bottle, which he opened with a resounding pop. “This is that excellent Prosecco we bought at the market yesterday. I know it’s a bit early in the day, but a little bubbly does make for a perfect breakfast.”

  Capucine’s world came partially back into focus. Bless Alexandre’s priorities.

  The first rays of the sun winked over the horizon just as they finished breakfast, and they attacked the diminutive outboard lashed to one of the dinghy’s gunwales. Clamping it on the wooden transom and hooking up its tiny gas tank was easy enough, but getting it started was a whole other matter.

  Both Capucine and Alexandre yanked the starter cord to no avail. Despite the early morning chill, they both began to sweat.

  Capucine stopped to rest. She noticed that there was a rubber bulb in the middle of the fuel line. She remembered her early teen years in La Baule, in Brittany. There had been plenty of outboards in those days. Of course, they had been the boys’ purview, but she had been an attentive observer.

  “I wonder if you need to pump it up to get it going?” Capucine asked.

  “All the girls ask that.”

  Capucine shot Alexandre a mock scowl and gave the bulb three vigorous squeezes.

  The engine caught at the first pull of the cord with the purr of an oversize cat. The dinghy advanced, bouncing cheerfully over the miniscule waves of the lake-flat sea.

  Capucine turned on her iPhone and frowned. It was dead.

  “Don’t worry about it, about not having the GPS. France is a big country. If we keep the sun on our right hand, we’re bound to run into it sooner or later.”

  It all seemed simple enough. Capucine almost began to enjoy herself as the morning wore on tranquilly with the bubbling burp of the outboard.

  Without warning the outboard gave a moribund cough and fell terminally silent. Capucine lifted the gas container and shook it. Dead empty. The dinghy turned until it steadied, facing the rising sun.

  “We seem to be heading toward Pisa. Not an unpleasant place, of course, but at this rate we won’t get there till la Toussaint,” Alexandre said.

  “There must be oars on this thing.”

  There were. Two toylike objects that required assembly like the shafts of beach umbrellas.

  Alexandre began to row. It was obviously hard going. The broad-beamed rubber boat seemed immovable. After twenty minutes he looked at the palms of his hands and frowned.

  “Think of that wonderful scene in A Farewell to Arms when Frederic and Catherine row all the way across Lake Maggiore to escape to Switzerland,” Capucine said.

  Alexandre frowned again. “As I recall, that particular boat trip ended a bit tragically.”

  In another ten minutes, Alexandre sagged and let go of the oars. The dinghy immediately resumed its easterly direction.

  Capucine grabbed Alexandre’s hands by the wrists and twisted his palms toward her. Blood oozed down his wrists.

  “Change places with me. I need some exercise,” Capucine said.

  It took some discussion, but Capucine finally gained control of the diminutive oars. She was astounded how difficult it was to get even the slightest motion out of the little boat.

  “How far from the coast would you guess we are?” she asked.

  “Jacques said we were twelve nautical miles off when we started. With any luck we’re halfway there, maybe less.”

  Capucine deflated. Square one. They might just as well be in the middle of the Atlantic.

  In the stern, Alexandre contracted his brow, deep in thought. He inserted his index finger in his mouth and then held it up in the air, nodded, and checked the position of the sun. He broke into a broad smile and sang two bars of cracked Verdi “We’re going to be all right,” he said. “We’re being pushed along by a wind from the south.”

  “The sirocco?”

  “No, its friendly little cousin, the Ostro, mild and humid, not harsh and dry with desert air.”

  Over the next half hour they became skilled jury-rig sailors. First, they discovered that if they kneeled upright side by side, the little boat would actually move in the right direction, even though it was impossible to steer. Then it dawned on them that they could
make a perfectly serviceable sail by threading an oar through the sleeves of their Windbreakers and zipping them shut. Steering with their hands in the water, they managed to produce a bow wave almost as satisfactory as with the outboard.

  Within an hour Capucine smelled land. She didn’t actually smell it, but she knew without a shadow of a doubt it was close to hand. Seagulls appeared. Half an hour later they were lifted by a compact breaker and gently deposited on a gritty beach. The grotesque cruise was at long last over. They were ashore, on a rational, ordered, and—above all—normal shore. Capucine’s heart soared.

  They sat on the sand, basking, catching their emotional breath, rejoicing that they had survived an adventure that, in retrospect, had been conceived in folly and could have ended tragically. But it had worked. Here they were, back in France. Mere steps away from the chic of the Midi, well stocked with haute couture and gastronomic delights.

  Sighing in well-being, Alexandre dug through the pockets of his Windbreaker, extracted an aluminum cigar tube, and removed a cigar, which he rolled lovingly in his hands. Capucine shared vicariously in his return to rational order. Alexandre bit off the end of the cigar and patted his pockets for matches. As he prepared to light up, an ancient man, in clothes so old they were almost rags, a heavy burlap bag slung over his shoulder, shuffled over to them double time. Both Capucine and Alexandre smiled at him. Alexandre lit the cigar.

  The man broke into a run. “Non, non, non!” he shouted. “No smoking. It is forbidden!” He snatched up the cigar—a prized Hoyo de Monterrey Double Corona—flung it down on the beach with a grunt of disgust, ground it into flakes with his heel, and continued his amble down the beach, growling in irritation.

  CHAPTER 16

  As the prized cigar was reduced to shreds of tobacco, Capucine’s euphoria popped like a soap bubble, filling her eyes with tears. This was even worse than being back at square one, drifting pointlessly on that bathtub-size rubber dinghy. She looked up at Alexandre, expecting to find him sharing her despondency. But, on the contrary, he seemed in his element, delighted with life.

  “This is perfect! I have a feeling I’m about to realize one of my life ambitions.”

  Capucine’s jaw muscle relaxed, separating her lips.

  “You know what’s going on?” she asked.

  “I’m pretty sure we’re on the Île Saint-Honorat, a tiny island a mile off Cannes that has been a Cistercian monastery since the fifth century. About thirty monks live here and make wine and a bit of lavender honey.”

  “And just how has all this information popped full blown into your head?”

  “Well, a while back the paper asked me to write a piece on the gastronomic divinities monks are held to produce. You know, all those fudge truffle cakes, flavored beers, that sort of thing. I was supposed to tour all the monasteries in Provence and get the lowdown.”

  “You must have had fun.”

  “Au contraire. It was a total bust. First off, they would let me in, and the only good stuff they actually made was produced by commercial firms and labeled by them. The Abbaye de Lérins was the worst of the bunch. They rule with an iron hand. Uninterrupted introversion at all cost. Total silence. No laughing, ah, no radios, no fires—much less any thought of smoking. Just peace and prayer. They threw me out on my ear.”

  “And what makes you think they’re going to be so welcoming this time around?”

  “Ah, things are different now. St. Benedict, the granddaddy of all monasteriers, was famous for his desire to provide succor to needy pilgrims. And if we don’t qualify, I can’t for the life of me imagine who would.”

  “I’m not too sure about the shipwrecked part, but I’m definitely in need of sustenance. A nice country breakfast with gobs of locally made jam would definitely hit the spot.”

  The island was so tiny, it took less than ten minutes to locate the monastery. As they threaded their way through a labyrinth of outbuildings toward the main portal, a barely perceptible undertone became increasingly pronounced.

  “Sext,” Alexandre announced.

  “Come again?”

  “Don’t be vulgar. We’re in a monastery, after all. Sext is the noon hour of the liturgy. When it’s over, they spend the afternoon deep in prayer until dinner. Our timing is perfect.”

  Alexandre had thumped the portal with the hefty wrought-iron knocker. As he spoke, the door rasped open, revealing a man in a milky, ankle-length alb, over which he wore an ebony scapular. His frigid glare put small talk at the bottom of the list of priorities.

  “I am allowed to speak if necessary. Do you require assistance?”

  “We’re shipwrecked. We were on our way to Cannes when our boat sank. We just barely made it to your island on the life raft. We haven’t eaten for days.”

  The monk appraised the cut of Alexandre’s and Capucine’s yachting clothes and seemed to stumble with the reconciliation of the chic of their turnout and the tall tale of their putative circumstances.

  Alexandre attempted to lubricate the potential gaffe by introducing himself and Capucine with a clubman’s conventional cheer.

  “You’re not by any chance the same Huguelet who writes the food reviews for Le Monde?”

  “None other. But this is the last place on earth I’d expect my columns to be read.”

  This was greeted by a supercilious smirk. “The Lord acts in truly unfathomable ways. We here at the monastery were all once men of the world. The fact that we have chosen a different life by no means implies we resigned from beauty. Appetite is one of the Lord’s greatest gifts. I myself was the saucier at Chez Le Bec Fin before I found my calling.” Alexandre’s eyebrows rose in amazement.

  He went on. “Our cooking system is simple. Each night one of us prepares the evening meal, whether that person has any skill or not. We eat what we are given, and thank the Lord profoundly, even if it’s not the best thing we’ve ever eaten. Tonight it was Father Simon’s turn. But he is at the bottom of his bed in the infirmary. Another of the Lord’s little blessings,” he said with a wry smile.

  “We were going to have to make do with the breakfast leftovers, hard cheese and dried bread. But you are here, and with a little nudge of my tutelage, I do believe we’ll be able to prepare a respectable squash, leek, and chickpea stew.” The monk crossed himself and glanced heavenward with gratitude before leading them to the kitchen.

  The monk’s lips pursed in thought. “I’ll need you to get going right away with soaking the chickpeas. When they’re soft enough, I’ll give you a hand and we’ll get down to work.” The man of the cloth was transforming himself into a man of the chef’s toque.

  He became so engrossed in his recipe, he didn’t notice Capucine slip her iPhone out of her shorts and fiddle with the buttons. Alexandre wondered who she was texting. She wore a pleased little secret smile. The monk barely noticed. As he collected kitchen paraphernalia for the stew, he glanced at Capucine and made an apologetic comment that the use of phones wasn’t allowed on the island and that they worked only on hilltops, anyway. Capucine smiled sweetly and pocketed her phone.

  The dinner was a joy. The monks sat around a large U-shaped table, facing each other, not exchanging a word. But their eyes never left one another’s, and despite the silence, they managed an exchange in depth entirely with eyes and facial expressions. A powerful electric intimacy streamed freely across the table. When it was over, Capucine had the feeling that she had had a more significant exchange than at most of the Paris dinner parties she was used to.

  After the meal, the monks retired to the chapel for compline, and the tomb-like Great Silence began. Alexandre and Capucine stole off for a quick constitutional before retiring. They climbed a hill high enough for them to see the lights of Cannes wink in the distance.

  Capucine produced her phone.

  Pic U up @ 8 am 2moro. Dvd, was the text on the screen. A sweet normality expressed in the banal lingua franca of the day. She would sleep well that night.

  CHAPTER 17

 
On the dot of eight the next morning—sated on toasted dark bread slathered with salty farm butter and monastic strawberry jam, the lot washed down with milky coffee served in bowls—Capucine and Alexandre arrived at the island’s diminutive dock, uncombed, unmade up, and ungroomed, despite their best efforts in the abbey bathroom. A dilapidated commercial fishing boat, broad streaks of rust blood disfiguring its hull, was tied up to one of the cement breakwaters, its idling motor thumping at half time.

  A young man appeared on deck, stylish enough for the pages of Vogue Hommes, smiling so broadly his face risked splitting open. David Martineau, formerly Brigadier David Martineau of the Police Judiciaire, had been a key member of Capucine’s team until he resigned from the force to run for mayor of the village where he’d been conducting an investigation and to reassert his meridional origins. His political career was currently propelling him apace toward a seat in the Chamber of Deputies.

  “Welcome aboard,” said David, followed by two fishermen wearing ramshackle smocks so typical, they might well have been supplied by central casting. The deck was crusted with decades of seagull droppings and was fetid with fish stench. David stepped forward, at a loss on how to greet his former boss, whom he hadn’t seen for two years. Alexandre rescued the moment by clasping David’s hand in two of his.

  “Ravi de te voir, Monsieur le Maire! Delighted to see you, Mr. Mayor.” The combination of the familiar tu and the mayoral title amply did the trick. To complete the tableau, Capucine presented her cheek for an air kiss.

  But despite the warmth of the moment, there was still a hint of awkwardness.

  “Do we cast off, Monsieur le Maire?” one of the fishermen asked.

  “Oui, Jean. Let’s get going. I need to be back before lunchtime. I have a meeting I can’t miss.”

  They puttered away from the breakwater, heading west along the coast. David produced a thermos of strong, sweet coffee. He filled enameled tin cups, then served everyone, including the two fishermen.

  “David,” Alexandre said, “I definitely prefer your yacht to that extortionate plastic contraption we’ve been cooped up on for the past week.”