Crime Fraiche

by Alexander Campion

  CHAPTER 25

  Capucine skidded to a stop on the cool cracked marble tiles of the hall, gulping air like a surfacing diver who had gone too deep. How cruel life’s ironies were. Just as her old family was finally beginning to accept her back into the fold, her new one slapped her face. Well, she just wasn’t going to be bothered. That was all there was to it. As she stamped her foot in peevish irritation, she noticed that Odile had left a large picnic basket on the hall table. Two long-necked bottles of Touraine emerged from under the twined-down red check napkin like geese ready to be carted off to market. Of course! How could she have forgotten ? She had made plans to go mushrooming with Alexandre. Her mood lifted like a bubble of noxious gas rising out of a swamp and escaping in the sunlight. The day was going to be a glorious one, after all. This outing was going to be even more fun than the last one.

  But it turned out that you could no more go on the same mushroom jaunt a second time than you could step twice into Heraclitus’s proverbial river.

  The start was cheerful enough. Alexandre had filled his cane flask with a single-malt whiskey he had unearthed in the darkest recess of Oncle Aymerie’s liquor cabinet. Odile’s picnic proved to be up to her usual standard of bountifulness. Still, the joyous mood of the previous expedition was just not there. Even the interruption of leaping stags and horsemen in period costumes would have been welcome.

  As they sipped Calvados with their coffee, Alexandre asked, “You’re worried about muddying your watering hole, is that it?”

  “Who wouldn’t be, with all the grief you and Jacques have been giving me?” Capucine said irritably. She could see Alexandre wondering exactly when Jacques had proffered so much advice but, relishing the idea of a spat, made no attempt to sidetrack him. Discharging the tension, Alexandre bounded up, stuffed the detritus of lunch back in the basket, and began an intense scrutiny of the perimeter of the clearing. Lusting after something to sink her teeth into, Capucine joined him in his search with the enthusiasm of a puppy deerhound on a new scent. Wandering off, she came across a small bunch of lovely flat-capped mushrooms topped off exactly in the same hue as the weathered brick red pants yachtsmen so loved.

  “Capucine! Stand back!” Alexandre yelled in alarm.

  His tone was so sharp that Capucine recoiled, half suspecting Alexandre had seen a viper she had missed. They were too far north for vipers, but anything was possible.

  “Whatever you do, don’t touch those things.” He came up behind her and pinioned her arms. “Those are the arch villains of the mushroom world—Amanita muscaria. They’re a dangerous and unpredictable hallucinogenic. Normally, they’re fire-engine red, but these must have been washed out by the rain.”

  Fifteen minutes later Capucine discovered some identical-looking specimens and backed off cautiously. The shape was the same and the mushrooms were domed with a dull orange, not too far removed from the faded red of the muscaria.

  “These are okay,” Alexandre said, plucking one up and sniffing it. “Amanita caesaria, Caesar’s favorite. Or at least I hope they are. What if we have Odile put them in some omelets tomorrow for breakfast? Russian roulette is a game I’ve always wanted to try.”

  Naturally, the Pharmacie Homais was the first stop on the way home. It seemed deserted, but they could hear someone puttering around in the workroom in back, presumably Homais filling an urgent prescription. When he did not stick his head out for several minutes, Alexandre called out, “Is anyone back there?”

  Homais answered testily, “Minute! I’ll be out as soon as I’m done.” He arrived unhurriedly a good five minutes later.

  “Voilà. Voilà! What can I do for you?”

  Alexandre proffered his basket of mushrooms for inspection. Homais poked through them incuriously with a forceps. Eventually he came to the amanitas, picked one up with the long pincers, and squinted at it. “Clearly not Amanita muscaria. They’re Amanita caesaria, a good find, but you knew that already.” He looked ostentatiously at his watch, a heavy gold Rolex, and said, “You must excuse me. I have to close up. I’m expected at the presbytère for dinner.”

  “With the pastor?” Alexandre asked with a sardonic smile.

  “Of course with the pastor. Who else? And, madame, I saw you examining my watch,” he said aggressively, raising his arm to show Capucine the watch in question. “Don’t get your hopes up. It’s not the real thing, only a knockoff I bought in Lyon from a Senegalese street vendor last year,” he said with a cynical laugh.

  When they were out on the street, Capucine asked, “What was that all about? What’s with all your questions? The last time it was about some newspaper, and today it was all this business about the pastor.”

  Alexandre burst out laughing. “I adore you,” he said. “You’re becoming the perfect tough street cop. Any day now you’re going to be sporting a manly stubble. You’ve even forgotten your Flaubert. Remember the pharmacist in Madame Bovary? The one who plots continuously against the Bovarys because Emma’s doctor husband has displaced him as village medico? The puffed-up pseudo-intellectual who writes endless pretentious pieces for a Rouen paper called the Fanal? His name was also Homais.”

  “Of course. I never made the connection. But what about the pastor?”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t remember. Flaubert’s Homais was a militant atheist. His archenemy was the village pastor. They couldn’t abide each other, much less have dinner together.”

  “And what about that business about his watch?”

  “There I can’t help you. It was odd, all right, but I’m pretty sure Flaubert’s Homais didn’t have a fake gold Rolex.”

  Their second errand was to pick up fresh-baked rolls for dinner at the boulangerie. Even though the bread of choice in the country was a gigantic loaf of pain de campagne, which the paysans put on their chests to slice with their pocketknives, the Saint-Nicolas baker also made delicious glazed rolls, delightfully doughy and yeasty.

  The baker and his wife observed the classic division of labor of the métier: Madame looked after the shop while Monsieur, who had been up all night tending his oven, slept. It was rumored that this arrangement suited the baker perfectly as he couldn’t abide his spouse, a spindly, flinty woman, as haughty and unyielding as her outrageous hairdo, a coif made so rigid by an excess of lacquer that it looked like a snug bronze battle helmet. She presided imperiously over her cash register while a terrified village girl picked out the customers’ selections with tongs and placed them timorously in a white paper bag, which she clutched tightly until her mistress had been paid.

  Capucine gave her order for a dozen rolls and, with a politely expectant smile, stepped up to the baker’s wife to pay. The baker, who had clearly just woken up, opened the door behind the counter, scratched, and peered sleepily at the shop and at the street beyond the plate-glass window. “Bonjour, m’sieu’dame,” he muttered, bobbing his head and disappearing back into his apartment, leaving the door open, their living room plainly visible. Capucine was surprised to see that in addition to the inevitable oversized television and browning reproductions of stags at bay, there was also a substantial mahogany bookcase surmounted with family pictures in inexpensive plastic frames. Intrigued, Capucine leaned forward in an attempt to make out some of the titles. Outraged, the baker’s wife slammed the door violently and glared at Capucine.

  “Madame,” the baker’s wife said tartly, “it’s inadmissible for you to gape like that. You may well have the right to investigate, but please have the consideration not to disrupt my business. If you want to take an inventory of my possessions, show the courtesy of making an appointment first.”

  From behind, Capucine heard a mumble from the couple that had just entered the shop that sounded very much like a murmur of assent.

  CHAPTER 26

  Capucine slathered the thick slice of toasted pain de campagne with salty farm butter and then covered it with large dollops of Odile’s bittersweet cherry preserve. She gave a satisfied little sigh and looked around furtively
to make sure there would be no interruption.

  Just as she licked the dripping preserve from the side of the toast, preparing for her first big bite, she heard the dreaded words, “Madame la Comtesse est demandée au téléphone.”

  “Who is it, Gauvin?”

  “Monsieur Vienneau, and, if Madame la Comtesse will permit, he seems very upset.”

  “Capucine, it’s Loïc. Something terrible has happened. Can I come and see you?” He sounded close to the threshold of hysteria.

  “Of course. I’ll be here all morning, or would you like to come to lunch?”

  “Not lunch. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” A short pause, then, “Thank you,” awkwardly.

  As she went back to her breakfast, she heard the ponderous knocker thump against the front door and Gauvin rush down the hallway to open it. Vienneau stood shyly on the threshold. He was unshaven and smelled of alcohol. It was obvious he had been standing in the driveway and had called on his cell phone.

  In the petit salon he refused coffee and sheepishly asked if he could have some Calvados instead. Gauvin brought a small crystal decanter filled with the dark brown liquid and a thimble-sized stemmed glass on a silver tray. Vienneau frowned at the size of the glass and downed two shots in rapid succession. He took a deep breath, shuddered, filled the glass again, and held it between thumb and index.

  “Capucine, I’m desperate. Marie-Christine has left.”

  Capucine looked at him, waiting.

  Vienneau downed two more measures of Calvados.

  “She had been even more affectionate than usual for the past few days. I thought things were getting better. You see, after Gerlier’s death I had to spend much more time at the élevage and so often I would come home late. Sometimes I even missed dinner altogether. That upset Marie-Christine. It would upset anyone! And she became a little—how can I describe it?—a little distant. But this week that changed and she was very loving and attentive, clinging almost.”

  He gave Capucine a look of almost childish expectancy. She nodded with a small smile.

  “Then last night, when I came home, she was in tears. She had been drinking. At first she was inconsolable. I tried to soothe her. We talked for hours. About everything. About nothing. Us. Her parents. The fact that we couldn’t have children. That made her sob hysterically.” He paused, visibly racked with guilt. “Then she seemed to calm down. The storm had passed. I made a cup of tisane tea for her and found some sleeping pills that Homais had given me last year. She took one and went to bed. I stayed with her until she fell asleep. But I could see that she was still restless, changing position and moaning constantly.” He tossed off another tiny glass of Calvados.

  Capucine still said nothing.

  “I had a bit to drink myself after she went to sleep. I was very upset. Very late I went to bed.”

  He stared at Capucine. This was the part he didn’t want to talk about.

  “When I woke up, she was gone. She’d left this note on her pillow.” He handed Capucine a sheet of very thick letter paper with the name of their house printed at the top from a hand-engraved plate. In the French manner, the paper had been folded in four with the writing on the outside.

  Dearest,

  It’s not out of cowardice but out of love that I tell you this on paper and not to your face. If you were in front of me now, I would not have the strength to do what I know I must do.

  I am moving to Paris. I will stay with my sister for the first few days, and then I will have to find someplace to live on my own. I do this not because I want to leave you but because I know I will drag you down. With me clutching your waist, even your very powerful wings are not strong enough to lift us both off the ground.

  Please forgive me and think of me fondly.

  I will love you forever.

  Yours,

  Marie-Christine

  “What do you think?” Vienneau asked.

  “You called your sister-in-law?”

  “Of course. Right after I woke up. Marie-Christine’s there, but she wouldn’t speak to me. My sister-in-law said she was asleep. I think she must have spat out the sleeping pill and waited for me to come to bed and then driven to Paris. What really amazed me is that a lot of her clothes are gone. She must have packed her bags and put them in her car before I came home. She had planned it all out. Right?”

  “That’s possible.”

  “Capucine, listen, I’m asking this of you, a police officer. I need the police to bring her back, and I want you to tell me how to get them to do it.”

  “The police have no authority whatsoever in matters like this. I can tell you as a friend—and as a woman—that your best course of action is to let her work through whatever it is that’s troubling her all by herself. If you interfere, it will only make it harder for her.”

  “You don’t understand.” Vienneau’s pitch had gone up a notch. “She’s a sick woman. Her letter is almost suicidal. ‘With me clutching your waist, even your very powerful wings are not strong enough to lift us both off the ground.’ That phrase makes me very afraid.”

  “Yes, she’s clearly highly upset.”

  “That’s why the police need to intervene. Can’t you order some officers to take her to be medically examined? She’s obviously taken leave of her senses. She needs help. I understand you are very powerful in the police.”

  “Loïc, the police only get involved if there has been an infraction of the law, which is certainly not the case here. This is not the way to deal with this. Let time do its work.”

  “No, no, you’re not understanding. I need Marie-Christine. I can’t function without her. I can’t function without her even when things are going well. And they’re certainly not going well now. I never realized how much Gerlier actually did at the élevage. I have to spend all day there, and the work is still not done. Listen, Capucine, I tell you this in the strictest confidence. Last month was the first time since I took over from my father that we lost money. Not a lot, thank God, but we were actually in the red.”

  He put his elbows on the table and ground his eyes with the heels of his hands. “What am I going to do?” he asked the tablecloth. He raised his head to down another thimbleful of Calvados. “Don’t you have any bigger glasses?”

  CHAPTER 27

  Even the exterior of the little house announced that Lisette Bellec was thriving in her widowhood. Her husband, Lucien, had died violently barely two weeks before, but the narrow stucco row house exuded a feeling of well-scrubbed serenity.

  Capucine clunked the knocker, an old horseshoe welded onto a cast-iron hinge, and the door opened immediately. There was a moment’s fluttering hesitation as the Widow Bellec—as she would be known in the village for the rest of her days—anxiously wrung her hands, drying them in her apron.

  “Mademoiselle,” she almost sighed, “I was sure you would come.” She paused. “Oh, excuse me. I know I’m supposed to call you Madame la Comtesse now, but I always think of you as Mademoiselle. I’m sure you don’t remember, but I worked in the kitchen at the château when you were just a little girl.”

  Capucine hesitated for only a short beat. “Of course I remember you. You used to teach me to bake when you weren’t washing dishes. We made all sorts of cakes. How could I ever forget?”

  Capucine was led down the long, thin house—clearly built in the lane between two existing houses in the last century—and into a minuscule sitting room where a dining table and six chairs fought for space with a high-backed banquette. A boxy television, so old it had a large circular dial with numbers for the channels, had pride of place at the end of the table. It was easy to imagine the table elbow to elbow with family, one eye on the flickering screen and one ear on the conversation. There was a single window, which looked out over a yard as long and narrow as the house. A large number of rabbits hopped lethargically in a chicken-wire cage raised to shoulder height on stilts. Beyond, a kitchen garden was being diligently wound down for the winter.

  “I’m glad to
see you’re so comfortable,” Capucine said.

  “Yes, mademoiselle, I did well by the Père Bellec, thanks to the Lord.” She made a rapid sign of the cross and glanced at the crucifix hanging on the wall over the television. “He was a hard man but a good provider.”

  “I’ve come to ask you some questions about your poor husband. I’m trying to understand about his death.”

  Lisette snorted. “He wasn’t that poor. He got a good wage at the élevage, and he never spent a sou on me or the house, as you can see. There was quite a good bit more in his postal savings account than I expected. And don’t feel sorry for me. His death was like a weight lifted from my shoulders. But I don’t have to tell you that. You’re married, so you know what men are like.” She paused. “Would you like some tea? I was just going to make some.”

  As the tea was poured from a flowery teapot obviously reserved for special occasions, Capucine nudged the conversation gently back to the murdered worker. “It doesn’t seem that your marriage was much of a success,” Capucine said and immediately regretted using a phrase more appropriate to a Saint-Germain cocktail party.

  Lisette looked at her in incomprehension. “I did what women have to do. I married the first man who asked me so I could have a home of my own and no longer needed to work ten hours a day for servant’s wages, sleeping in a freezing cubicle under the roof. Even if I had known what it was going to be like, I still would have done it.”

  “Are you telling me he beat you?”

  “No, not really, or at least not when I didn’t deserve it.” She laughed as if she had said something clever. “You know what marriage is like. He would go to the café after work and come home drunk, yelling and swearing if his dinner wasn’t nice and hot on the table, waiting for him. Then he’d sit in front of the TV, drinking beer until he fell asleep. I’d help him to bed and he’d curse at me.” She paused, lost in her memories.