Blowback

by Peter May

  “Can I help you?”

  “I believe Madame Fraysse has reserved me a room.” He saw the merest flicker of a shadow momentarily mar her smile.

  “Ah, Monsieur Macleod. Yes, we’ve been expecting you.” She reached beneath the desk and produced an electronic key card, slipping it into a shiny holder embossed with the initials MF, beneath which his room number, 23, was printed in curlicued gold. “It’s on the first floor. To your left at the top of the stairs. One of our suites.”

  Enzo took the card. “Thank you.”

  “Shall I send someone to get the luggage from your car?”

  Enzo raised his canvas overnight bag. “This is it, I’m afraid. I travel light.”

  Her eyes blinked at the bag and back at him, but her smile never faltered. “Of course. I’ll let Madame Fraysse know you’ve arrived. She’ll receive you in her private rooms. The double doors at the far end of your hallway. She’ll call you when she’s ready.”

  ***

  Madame Fraysse was a strikingly handsome woman in her late fifties. Fine silken hair the color of brushed steel was drawn back from a delicately featured face and arranged in an elaborate bow of black ribbons at the back of her head. She had the palest of green eyes and full, lightly colored lips that stretched back across perfect white teeth as she smiled her welcome. She oozed class and money, and Enzo thought that her taut, wrinkle-free complexion, and too-perfect teeth, probably owed much to cosmetic and dental surgery, betraying a certain vanity indulged by wealth. She offered him a firm handshake and ushered him into her private apartment.

  Enzo said, “I very much appreciate you giving me this kind of access, Madame Fraysse.”

  She waved him into an oxblood leather armchair, and lowered herself into another one opposite. “I would do anything, Monsieur Macleod, to find out who murdered my husband. The police have been worse than useless. And your reputation goes before you.”

  Enzo glanced around the sitting room. There was a spartan quality to it. The hard, cold shine of varnished floorboards; plain walls hung with frameless modern abstracts which no doubt had cost four and five, perhaps even six, figure sums; an unyielding leather suite; Venetian blinds on curtainless windows. Polished pieces of antique furniture stood around the room like staff awaiting instructions that would never come. There was no fireplace, and although the room was heated, there was something of a chill in the air. “I don’t want to raise your expectations too high, madame. There seems to be very little evidence to go on in this case. And a complete absence of apparent motive.”

  “But you have already solved four of the seven cases in Roger Raffin’s book, haven’t you?”

  “More or less, yes. But of all the cases he wrote about, this seems to me to be the most puzzling. Why would anyone want to kill a man who seemed to be universally loved?”

  There was an awkward silence.

  “Are you asking me?”

  “I suppose I am.”

  “Then I have to tell you that I haven’t the faintest idea, Monsieur Macleod. In many ways Marc was a weak man. He wanted people to love him. He needed their love. And he would do almost anything to win it. But he was funny, and generous, and never had a harsh word for anyone. He hadn’t an enemy in the world.”

  “I read that he was prone to depression.”

  She pursed her lips a little. “He was, yes.” Enzo detected a reluctance in the admission. “Marc was a man of extremes, you see. Extreme ambition, extreme hard work. And extreme depression when things went wrong. But that was rare. Mostly he was up, extremely amusing, and extremely gregarious. And, of course, extremely talented. Not only was he a unique and wonderful chef, but he was a wonderful motivator of people. Everyone who worked for him would have followed him to hell and back. And there were times, monsieur, as he fought for recognition, and toiled to create Chez Fraysse, that we spent more time in hell than anywhere else.”

  “Your husband inherited the auberge from his parents, didn’t he?”

  “Yes. Both he and his brother, Guy.”

  “So it’s jointly owned.”

  “Yes, although it was barely worth a thing when his parents died. Passing trade had virtually dried up with the opening of the A72 autoroute. Business had been dwindling for years, and the property was in a poor state of repair. It was only Marc’s growing reputation, with the awarding of the stars, that saved us from complete obscurity. And then, of course, the winning of the third and final star elevated us to another level altogether. Everything seemed possible, then.” She waved an arm vaguely around her. “All that you see here was only possible because of Marc’s brilliance in the kitchen.”

  “Guy never cooked?”

  “Oh, he and Marc trained together, yes. Both of them had learned at their mother’s apron, but it was their father who sent them for formal training. Which was ironic, since he never worked in the auberge himself. It didn’t make enough money, you see. Just provided the family home and a supplementary income. Old Monsieur Fraysse travelled around France selling shoes. And it was in a restaurant in Clermont Ferrand, where he had eaten regularly for years, that he obtained apprenticeships for his sons in the kitchen of the Blanc brothers.”

  Enzo nodded. The Blanc brothers had, at one time, probably been the best known culinary siblings in France, even more renowned than the Roux brothers, or les frères Troisgros. Sent by their father to train under the best chefs in the country, they had returned to Clermont Ferrand to elevate the family kitchen from its humble origins offering cheap meals for working men and women to a three-star Michelin restaurant that had brought the food critics salivating all the way down from Paris.

  Almost as if she read his mind, Madame Fraysse said, “I think Papa Fraysse thought he might follow in Monsieur Blanc’s footsteps, and that Marc and Guy would return like the Blanc brothers to transform the fortunes of the auberge.” She sighed deeply, something approaching amused melancholy in her eyes. “He must have been bitterly disappointed when Guy dropped out to go off and train as an accountant. And, of course, he never lived to see any of Marc’s stars.”

  “So the restaurant is only worth what it is today because of Marc?”

  “Marc’s cuisine, yes. But Marc had no head for figures. It wasn’t until he won his third star that the fabric of the building itself was really transformed. That’s when Guy came to join us, and it was Guy who achieved that transformation.” She stood up, then, and wandered toward the window. She wore black pants that stopped several inches short of the ankle, and black leather boots beneath them. Over her white blouse she wore a long black shawl that she gathered around her now, as if cold, folding her arms and gazing from the window at the view of the Massif. “We had worked hard, with limited resources, to turn the auberge into a place that would impress a Michelin inspector, but it was Guy who really made the difference. He has a wonderful business sense, Monsieur Macleod. He used Marc’s reputation to raise the money needed to turn us into a hotel-restaurant that would one day be rated fifth in the whole world.”

  Enzo heard the pride in her voice, and saw it in her eyes as she turned back to look at him, arms still folded imperiously across her chest.

  “And the multi-million euro business it is today,” she added, almost as an afterthought.

  “Do you have children, Madame Fraysse?”

  “Two, yes. A boy and a girl. Both away at university.”

  “Training to follow in their father’s footsteps?”

  Her laugh betrayed genuine amusement. “Good God, no! They grew up seeing first hand just what a damned hard life it is running a hotel and restaurant. It’s much more than a career, you see, monsieur. It’s your life. And no escaping from it.” She laughed again. “And like most of the younger generation today, my children don’t really want to work at all. They’ll probably be perfectly happy to fritter away the next few years in education before inheriting a business that will keep them in the style to which they have become accustomed. No doubt they will either sell up or get others
to run it for them.” She met Enzo’s gaze directly. “Do you think me very cynical?”

  Enzo gave a tiny shrug of his shoulders. “You know your children better than I do, Madame Fraysse.” Yet he couldn’t help wishing that he had been able to persuade his own daughter to finish her degree rather than go to work in a gymnasium. Generalisations were dangerous things. “But I think that in order for me to make any real progress in this investigation, I am going to have to get to know your husband as well as you did.”

  “Not an easy thing, when he has been gone seven years.”

  “That’s why I have to rely on you. And Guy, of course. How did you first meet Marc?”

  She smiled, and her eyes glazed over with distant memories. “We were just kids, really. I think I was seventeen, and training to be a nurse at a hospital in Clermont Ferrand. Marc and Guy were in the middle of their apprenticeships with the Blanc brothers, and having a pretty hard time of it from all accounts.”

  For a moment, Enzo felt as if she had left the room, transported back in time to relive those precious memories of a youth long lost. There was a lengthy silence, but he didn’t dare break it. Then she smiled again, as if returning from a journey that had taken only seconds in reality, but hours in her mind. She was back.

  “Some of the other girls and I used to sneak out of the nurses’ home at night to meet up with the boys from the restaurant. They all lived in the hotel in some horrible cramped rooms up in the attic, and they had to sneak out, too. There was a park near the university, Jardin Lecoq, and an old boat shed on the lake. That’s where we used to meet up and have secret meals. The boys always cooked for us. Best food we’d ever had.” She laughed. “There were a lot of teenage hormones being given free rein in those days. But Marc was hopeless. So shy. Guy was much bolder, much more sure of himself. But it was Marc I always had the soft spot for.”

  “You were married young, then?”

  “Good heavens, no! We all went our own ways, and it was some years before Marc and I met up again. I was over thirty when we got married.”

  “And Guy? Did he end up marrying one of the nurses, too?”

  But Madame Fraysse just shook her head. “No. Guy never married. I don’t know why. Just never met the right woman, I suppose.”

  Enzo scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Would you say that Guy dominated his younger brother?”

  Madame Fraysse thought about it for a moment. “In many ways I guess he did. In the old days, certainly. He was older, more outgoing, never short of confidence. I suppose Marc must have aspired to be like him. But in the end, it was Marc who had the talent and the drive to make the most of it. Guy would probably still have been working in some grey accountant’s office, wasting his life counting other people’s money.”

  For some moments, Enzo was lost in thought. Memories he hadn’t entertained for years flickered on the periphery of his consciousness, like an old black and white movie seen out of the corner of the eye.

  “Monsieur Macleod?”

  He looked up, surprised.

  “Are you still with us?” Her smile was a little forced.

  “I’m sorry. Just running some thoughts through my head.” He made himself focus again. “What did Marc do when he wasn’t in the kitchen?”

  Madame Fraysse laughed again. But there was no amusement in it this time. “When was he not in the kitchen?” She perched herself on the edge of the armchair opposite again. “When Marc got his third star, Guy got the money to build him his dream kitchen. You’ll see it shortly. Extended out from the original house, but mostly hidden from the view of the clients. He had an office built on to it, with picture windows looking into the kitchen so that he could always see what was going on. He spent a lot of time there, planning menus, taking phone calls. He was the darling of the Paris media, you know. They couldn’t get enough of him. And he was always making early morning dashes up to Paris to record some radio or TV show, then driving like a maniac back down the autoroute.

  “And then, of course, he ran. Every day. He was fanatical about his fitness. So many chefs die young, Monsieur Macleod. All that butter and cholesterol in French cuisine. That was one of the reasons he worked so hard to develop the low-fat style Fraysse, as he liked to call it. Food that used few of the fatty ingredients of traditional French cooking, but which was still served with wonderful sauces that fizzed with flavour and life. Only the best, purest ingredients were good enough for Marc. He really elevated the preparation and cooking of food to a pure art form.”

  There was no disguising her undying admiration for her late husband, almost as if she were defending him from attack. And there had been those critics, Enzo knew, who had not admired the style Fraysse, and who had taken no small delight in saying so.

  “He also had a small office up here in the apartment, just off our bedroom. You can see it if you like.”

  Enzo stood up. “I’d like that very much.”

  He followed her through an open doorway to the bedroom. More austerity. An uncomfortably high-looking bed with antique head and footboards, a couple of pink Chinese rugs the only compromise to comfort on the otherwise hard, polished surfaces of the floor. A dresser with a large, circular mirror sat in the window space, and an enormous dark-wood armoir stood against the far wall.

  “All his clothes still hang in the wardrobe,” she said. “I never did have the heart to throw them out.” She stopped to open one door of the armoir, revealing a row of pants and jackets hanging neatly on the rail. Polished shoes lined up beneath them, and shelves up one side contained scarves and hats, gloves and sweaters. She reached in to touch a Paisley-patterned silk scarf lined with cashmere, stroking it fondly. Then she grasped it and raised it to her face, breathing deeply. Her smile was bittersweet. “I can still smell him on it. Even after all these years. It’s strange how we leave something of ourselves behind us, so long after we are gone. A scent, a strand of hair. It’s comforting, really, to think that we don’t just vanish entirely without trace.”

  No, Enzo thought. Only some murderers manage that.

  She pushed open a door to an adjoining room. “He had his petit bureau in here. His little private den.”

  Enzo followed her in. It was a small room with one single tall, arched window facing out on the view. A roll top desk was pushed against the wall beneath it, mahogany filing cabinets on either side, one topped with an inkjet printer/copier. The rest of the room was bare but for a couple of armchairs arranged around a fireplace that looked and felt as if it hadn’t seen flames since the flame of life had been extinguished from its owner. The walls were painted cream, the skirting boards and architraves a dark chocolate brown. Framed photographs of Marc Fraysse covered the walls. Press photographs, mostly. Marc pictured with celebrities, politicians, movie stars; engaging in a round table debate in a TV studio; in the kitchen, dressed in his chef’s whites and tall hat. And in framed reviews, letters from Michelin, and a hand-written note from the late French president, François Mitterand. Dear Marc, I have no idea how to fully express the pleasure I derived from indulging in the pure “style Fraysse” at Saint-Pierre yesterday evening. I am salivating still. Or, as my political opponents would probably have it… dribbling…

  Enzo studied a portrait of the young Marc taken by the celebrated Robert Doisneau. A chiaroscuro in black and white of a fresh-faced young man inclined to plumpness, dark eyes shining with life and humour. And something else. Something intensely felt, burning somewhere far behind them. The ambition, perhaps, the drive that had made him one of the world’s top chefs in the years to come. Whatever it was, Doisneau had caught it. Magically. It had been the great talent of the man to capture what no one else even saw.

  He turned, then, noticing for the first time another door, in the wall opposite the window.

  “It opens off the hall,” Madame Fraysse said. “He liked to come and go without going through the apartment.” She cast a critical eye around the room. “It feels a little cold now.” And Enzo realized she didn�
�t mean the temperature. “I had it redecorated after his death. I regret that now. There was so much of him in here. But I just couldn’t bear the constant reminder. Now, it might have been a comfort.”

  She turned toward the roll top and drew back the lid to reveal a cluttered desktop, shelves and brass-handled drawers ranged along behind it. It was a handsome piece of furniture

  “But I never cleared out his desk. So many personal things. It didn’t seem right.”

  Among all the papers lay a titanium MacBook Pro laptop computer, and next to it a white pearl fountain pen, intricately worked in what looked like matte silver. It stood in an elegant desk stand. Enzo lifted it up and removed the cap to reveal the engravings on its silvered nib. “It’s a beautiful pen.”

  “It’s a Dupont Taj Mahal. The workings are in palladium. It’s softer than platinum, and more beautifully colored, don’t you think? It was one of a limited edition of a thousand.”

  Enzo raised an eyebrow. This was no ordinary pen. “Must have been expensive.”

  “I think, monsieur, you could have dined at Chez Fraysse every evening for a week, and still had change. After he gained that third star, nothing was too good for Marc. Only the finest pen was good enough for writing on the finest paper.” She lifted up a sheet of stationery from the desk. “You only have to touch it to feel the quality. He had all our stationery watermarked with the MF logo.” She held it up to the light, and Enzo saw the pale graphic representation of the intertwined M and F subtly embedded in the fabric of the paper.

  “He hand wrote each day’s menu himself, sitting here at his bureau.” She slid open the top drawer of the right-hand filing cabinet and extracted a sheet from one of a dozen or more suspension files. “He kept all the originals. A kind of archive.” She passed it to Enzo, and he was struck by the distinctively ornate flow of the handwriting, the light and heavy lines of the palladium nib, the flourish at the end of each word. Like the work of an artist: la tarte aux cèpes de pays à l’huile de noix; rafraîchie d’un bouquet parfumé. A mere forty euros for this appetizer on the à la carte.