French Pastry Murder

by Leslie Meier

  “Bought it at the Monoprix,” said Sue. “I wish we had one in Tinker’s Cove. Even the bags of salad are better somehow.”

  “Drink up,” urged Bill. “We have a reservation at Chez Loulou.”

  “What were you doing that made you so late?” Rachel asked Lucy as they all trooped down the stairs.

  “First, I stopped at the hotel to see Elizabeth, and then I went to the hospital to see how Chef Larry is doing,” she said as they crossed the courtyard and exited onto the street. It was only a short walk to the corner and Chez Loulou, but the sidewalk was narrow, which made conversation difficult. It wasn’t until they were all seated at a long table in the restaurant that they were able to talk.

  “And how is Chef Larry?” asked Pam.

  “I don’t know,” said Lucy. “He’s apparently alive, but there was a cop sitting outside his door.”

  “Did you talk to the cop?” asked Sid.

  “Are you kidding?” Lucy’s eyebrows shot up. “I got out of there as fast as I could.”

  They laughed, then got down to the business of consulting the menu, trying to decipher the French. “What is magret de canard?” asked Pam.

  “Duck breast,” said Sue. “But I don’t have a clue about cervelles en matelote.”

  “It sounds delicious,” said Rachel.

  “If you don’t know what it is,” advised Bill, wiser after his encounter with tête de veau, “I wouldn’t order it.”

  “Point taken,” agreed Sue. “I think I’ll have a salade niçoise.”

  “Better safe than sorry,” agreed Lucy. “I think I’ll have that, too. I’m not really very hungry.”

  “I’ve rather lost my appetite, too,” said Ted. “I guess witnessing the bloody aftermath of a violent stabbing does that to you.”

  “It looks like we’re going to have plenty of time to get acquainted with French cuisine,” observed Bob. “From what the guy at the embassy said, the French cops can keep our passports for as long as they like and we have no recourse except to cooperate.”

  “I called Richard this afternoon, and that’s pretty much what he said,” offered Ted, reaching for the carafe to top off his glass just as the waiter arrived to take their order. When that business was done, he continued his report. “Richard said we should tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. He mentioned this politician quite high up in the government who was tried for corruption and actually cleared, but, get this, the guy’s wife went to jail because she told some lies, attempting to cover up for him.”

  “I thought there’s some rule about spouses not having to testify against each other,” said Pam, taking a bite of bread.

  “Not unless they want to,” quipped Sue.

  “That’s back home,” said Bob with a sigh. “But it seems it’s not the case in France.”

  “Our only option is to cooperate,” said Lucy. “Not that we wouldn’t, of course. I asked Elizabeth if anybody at the hotel could help us.”

  “Good idea,” said Pam, forever the cheerleader she was in high school.

  “Don’t get too excited,” advised Lucy. “She was reluctant to get involved, and I guess I can’t blame her. She was afraid of damaging her professional reputation.”

  “Well, I called Sidra,” said Sue. “I figured that if anyone could help us, it would be Norah—and I was right. As soon as Sidra told her about our problems, she called me and promised to make arrangements with some big international lawyer she knows who can assist us. . . .”

  “That’s going to be expensive,” cautioned Bob.

  “Even better, Norah said she’d cover any additional expenses while we’re detained here in Paris, including the lawyer.”

  “That’s terrific,” said Pam.

  “I had a nice little chat with our concierge,” offered Rachel. “She speaks quite good English, and I asked if it would be a problem if we wanted to keep the apartment a bit longer.”

  “I hope you didn’t tell her we’re involved in a police investigation,” said Lucy.

  “I didn’t, but why not?” asked Rachel.

  “Because I don’t think she’d be very happy about renting to people who are under suspicion,” said Lucy.

  “Oh, don’t be silly,” said Rachel. “We’re not under suspicion, for one thing. And she’s really quite nice. She’s a terrific knitter. She was working on an adorable little sweater for her dog. His name is Gounod, and he’s very cute.”

  “And what did she say about the apartment?” asked Bob, intent on getting his wife back on track.

  “Oh, she said she’d ask the owner,” said Rachel, smiling at the waiter who was setting a steaming plate of cervelles en matelote in front of her.

  “Ohmigosh,” said Sue, laughing. “Do you know what that is?”

  “Whatever it is, it’s quite good,” said Rachel after she’d swallowed a crusty mouthful.

  Sue took a moment to spear a green bean. “They’re brains, sweetie. Brainsss.”

  “How offal,” said Pam, unable to resist the joke and giggling at her own cleverness.

  “No, really, they’re very good. Anyone want a taste?”

  Bill was the only one who was game, agreeing with Rachel that the dish was delicious. “Maybe I’ll have them tomorrow,” he said, “if we eat here again.”

  “Norah also said we shouldn’t let this get us down,” said Sue. “She said we should enjoy ourselves while we’re here. So I say, if we don’t get a summons tomorrow, let’s head out to Versailles.”

  “I’m beginning to think Marie Antoinette was misunderstood,” said Lucy.

  “She was a victim of circumstance, caught up in events she couldn’t control,” said Bob, sighing. “Just like us.”

  But the next morning, as they got off the Métro at the Gare d’Austerlitz stop, Lucy felt quite cheerful. Perhaps it was just the fact that they were doing something and going somewhere. It was hard to get too depressed, she thought, standing in line at the ticket counter, when you were in France and on your way to see Versailles, with its Hall of Mirrors and fabulous gardens.

  “Château de Versailles,” she told the man at the ticket window, feeling a bit more comfortable with her mastery of French. “Deux billets pour aller et retour,” she added, specifying two round-trip tickets. When he responded with the rapid-fire speech that she still found incomprehensible, she simply handed over her credit card.

  Then, carefully tucking the tickets in her purse, she zipped it tight, checking the area for possible pickpockets. Not that she knew what a pickpocket looked like, she thought, noticing the usual mix of tourists and natives going their various ways in the station. One man, who was leaning against a pillar, turned his head quickly away, and she wondered if he’d been watching her. Was he a pickpocket? He was good-looking in the usual way, with very short hair and that stubbly, unshaven look they all had, and was wearing the required scarf over his black leather jacket, which was trimmed with metal studs. Or maybe he’d found her attractive? She’d heard that Frenchmen were more appreciative of older women, unlike the youth-obsessed Americans. It wasn’t impossible that she might attract an admiring male glance, she thought, feeling her cheeks warm as she joined the others and headed for the platform.

  The ten-mile ride to Versailles wasn’t nearly long enough for Lucy, who could have sat on the train all day, gazing out the windows at the little towns and quaint houses, their stuccoed walls and clay-tiled roofs so different looking from the houses in Maine. When they arrived in Versailles, they discovered it was actually a small city, with buses and a busy open market.

  “Oh, let’s have a picnic,” said Sue, and they were soon darting from stall to stall, stocking up on provisions for lunch. Then, carrying their bags of bread and wine and cheese and fruit, they followed the brown signs to the château, the gate of which was right on the tree-lined street.

  “Somehow I thought it would be more isolated,” said Ted. “This doesn’t seem very secure at all.”

  “It wasn’t,” said
Sue, who was consulting a guidebook. “There were guards, but anybody could go in if they had a sword and a jacket, and if they didn’t happen to own them, they could rent them.”

  “If they’d had TSA screening procedures, France might still be a monarchy,” said Pam. They were climbing the cobbled drive, gazing at the enormous château, which was golden in the morning sunlight.

  “It’s big, but it doesn’t seem big enough,” said Sue, referring once again to her guidebook. “This says that twenty thousand people lived here, from the royal family and their courtiers on down to the scullery maids.”

  “That’s bigger than Tinker’s Cove,” said Ted, who had a journalist’s fondness for statistics and was always comparing population and circulation figures.

  “It must have been grand,” said Pam in a dreamy voice. “Imagine having your hair powdered and wearing a long silk dress and meeting your handsome lover, in his stockings and silk breeches. . . .”

  “Great, until they chopped your head off,” said Bob.

  But even Bob had to admit it was quite a place when they’d finished the tour, which took them through the various royal apartments, the impressive chapel, and the enormous Hall of Mirrors. After seeing so much brocade and gilt and marble, Lucy found it was a relief to step outside into the well-ordered formal gardens. There didn’t seem to be any place for a picnic among the neat gravel paths and geometric flower beds, but they followed a young couple toting a basket and found a grassy area beside the Grand Canal. There were lots of people picnicking on the grass. Others were rowing themselves around the Grand Canal in rented boats.

  It was warm in the sun, and their lunch of bread and cheese and fruit and wine made them all sleepy. Lucy was lying down, and Bill was resting his head on her thigh. She was thinking that there was much more to see and that they really ought to get up.

  “I’d like to see the Hameau,” she said, lifting her head and shading her eyes from the sun. Squinting for just a moment, she thought she saw the guy from the Gare d’Austerlitz, the one she thought might have been admiring her. Or was it? Whoever he was, he didn’t seem to be interested in her anymore; he was watching a couple of blond German girls in tight jeans toss a Frisbee back and forth.

  “Come on,” said Lucy, urging her companions on. “There’s a little train we can take to the Trianons and Marie Antoinette’s little farm. Maybe there are lambs and chicks!”

  “And a gift shop,” said Sue. “We can’t miss the gift shop.”

  Lucy loved the waterwheel and the thatched roofs of the houses in the Hameau, but she had to admit there was something ridiculous about a queen who dressed in a milkmaid’s costume and herded perfumed sheep with a crook made of Sevres porcelain. And outside the Petit Trianon, the queen’s private retreat, they stood in the stone grotto where she was informed that an angry mob of Parisian market women was marching on the château. The mob forced the royal family to go to Paris, where they were imprisoned, never to see Versailles again. The king and queen were eventually tried and beheaded, and their young son, the dauphin, died in prison of tuberculosis. Only their daughter Marie Thérèse Charlotte survived; after six long years of imprisonment she was finally released as part of an exchange of prisoners with Austria, then France’s enemy.

  Perhaps the group members were tired after their exhausting day in Versailles, or perhaps they were thinking about the violence that overtook France during the revolution, but they were quiet and subdued on the trip home. Lucy thought of the little dauphin, imprisoned in filth and neglected, only to die at the age of ten, and wished she could believe the human race had progressed from that sort of cruelty.

  “The more things change, the more they stay the same,” said Lucy as they made their way into the courtyard. “That’s a French proverb, isn’t it?”

  “Ah, there you are,” said Madame Defarge, popping out of her lodge by the courtyard entrance. She was waving a handful of papers and seemed decidedly uncomfortable. “These came for you,” she said, narrowing her eyes suspiciously. “You are all required to report to the commissariat tomorrow.” She paused, then hissed, “For questioning.”

  Turning on her heel, she disappeared as quickly as she had come, apparently unwilling to linger for the briefest of chats. There was no singsong “Bonne nuit,” no “À bientôt” with a little wave, no “Au revoir” with a smile, no farewell at all, only a firmly closed door.

  “That was some cold shoulder,” said Sue, turning to Rachel. “And you were saying how nice she is.”

  “She was,” insisted Rachel. “But I guess Lucy was right. She doesn’t want to get involved with suspected criminals.”

  They were somber as they climbed the twisting, uneven stairs to the apartment, each one dealing with this setback in their own way. Lucy amused herself by imagining what her friends were thinking: Sue was thinking of pouring herself a glass of wine or three, and Sid was hoping that this interview at the commissariat wouldn’t take very long, because he wanted to visit the Eiffel Tower tomorrow. Bob was searching his mind, looking for legal loopholes, while Rachel was wondering what information she might possibly have that would help in the investigation. Pam was planning to do a calming yoga workout, and Ted was wondering if the International New York Times would be interested in a story about an average American’s encounters with the French justice system. Bill was thinking of ways to level the stairs, while she herself was trying to think of some way she could crack the case and discover who attacked Chef Larry so they could get their passports back and go home on time.

  When her cell phone rang, she grabbed it eagerly, noting the caller was Elizabeth and hoping her daughter had some good news for them. “What’s up?’ she asked, by way of greeting.

  “Well, it’s Sylvie’s birthday and she’s giving a party tonight for herself and you’re all invited.”

  Lucy didn’t understand. At home, a young person wouldn’t dream of inviting members of the older generation to what would surely be a raucous, boozy celebration, one that would probably include a visit to a tattoo parlor. “Really?” she asked.

  “Yeah. I know it seems weird, but she’s quite insistent. She’s been making little treats all day. She calls them petits fours, but I don’t think they’re cake. And she’s got a case of champagne.”

  “Well, I like champagne,” said Lucy in a doubtful tone.

  “I’m afraid she’ll take it out on me if you don’t come,” said Elizabeth. “She can be really bitchy if she doesn’t get her way.”

  “Okay,” said Lucy, thinking there were worse ways of spending an evening than drinking champagne and eating petits fours, whatever they turned out to be. And it would keep her mind off the present situation. “Who else is coming?”

  “Tout le monde. That means everybody she knows,” said Elizabeth.

  “I know what it means,” said Lucy, thinking that maybe she’d pick up some information about Chef Larry. If everybody in Paris was going to be there, surely somebody would know him, right?

  Despite Lucy’s urging, only Pam and Ted were willing to venture out to the party. Sue was cooking up French bread pizzas in the kitchen, Sid was absorbed in a soccer match on TV, Rachel was relaxing with a novel, and Bob was busy with his iPad. So the Stillingses and the Stones made their way to the Métro station, stopping first at the Monoprix to buy a box of fancy chocolates for Sylvie.

  The party was in full swing when they arrived. They could hear music and voices as they climbed the stairs. Sylvie greeted them enthusiastically with double bisous and graciously posed for the birthday photos Ted insisted on taking with his smartphone. Elizabeth shooed some young people off the futon so they could sit down, and before they knew it, they had been given flutes of champagne and plates of assorted canapés.

  Lucy was savoring a stuffed mushroom when she noticed Adil and Malik standing together in a corner, and went over to talk with them. “Lovely party, isn’t it?” she said.

  “Terrific,” said Adil, looking past her and scanning the crowded room.


  “How is your friend?” asked Malik. “The one in hospital?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t allowed to see him,” admitted Lucy as Elizabeth came by with a bottle of champagne and refilled her glass. Adil and Malik refused. They were drinking orange juice.

  “Sylvie loves to entertain,” said Elizabeth with a touch of sarcasm.

  “I like the Western way,” said Malik. “I like it that a woman can invite her friends for a good time.”

  “But you wouldn’t want to marry such a woman as Sylvie, would you?” said Adil with a smirk.

  “Not even a girl like my Elizabeth,” said Lucy. “She would be too independent for you, right?”

  Malik was gazing wistfully at Elizabeth, who was busy greeting people and filling glasses. “I might like a Western wife, but my family would not approve.”

  “Nor would I,” said Adil in a pompous tone. “A wife should be submissive to her husband in all things.”

  “Would you let her drive a car?” asked Lucy, thinking of the women in Saudi Arabia who had been testing that country’s prohibition on women drivers.

  “Of course,” said Malik, grinning easily.

  “Only with my permission,” said Adil. “She would have to ask me before she could take the car.”

  “Every time?” asked Lucy.

  “Yes.” Adil nodded, his expression serious. “I would want to know why she needed the car, where she was going, and what she was doing.”

  “I think you might have a hard time finding a wife who would agree to that,” said Lucy. “At least in France, anyway.”

  “That’s true. Even the Muslim girls are adopting Western attitudes,” said Adil, who clearly disapproved. “But it is better for us to be in Paris. Things are not so good in Egypt now. There’s no stability, and the mob is in charge, overturning one government after another. They need a strong leader.”

  “Is that why you’re in France?” asked Lucy, who was curious. “Because of the Arab Spring?”

  “Not exactly,” said Adil. “Our families left Egypt with King Farouk in nineteen fifty-two,”