The Grave Gourmet

by Alexander Campion

  Alexandre laughed cheerfully as he slid the omelets onto their plates. “I’ve already spoken to Jean-Basile and he’ll make room for us. But you’ll have to take that utensil off your head or people really will stare at you.”

  In the end it was Tallon who convinced her. “Lieutenant, a good soldier always capitalizes on the advantages of his terrain. You have the potential to obtain key insider knowledge. You’re here to solve a case, not to explore ethics.”

  Still harboring misgivings, she parked the Clio illegally on the corner opposite the restaurant and rushed in, fifteen minutes late once again. Alexandre was perched on the edge of the hostesses’ desk, peering intently into the décolleté of the striking young blonde. The hostess smiled back at Alexandre coquettishly.

  As Capucine hurried in Alexandre grinned and said, “Dear, this is Giselle, who just started two months ago. It seems her predecessor left because—”

  Just as Capucine began to clench her teeth the maître d’ floated up so smoothly he might have been on ice skates. “Bonjour, Madame le Lieutenant,” Bouteiller said with a tight but sincere smile. “Will madame follow me? Your table is ready.” Capucine smirked in silent satisfaction at the reversal of roles. Normally Alexandre, invariably lionized in restaurants, would be the honored guest. She sailed past him, gloating, and beckoning with a crooked finger.

  At the table Capucine couldn’t resist chiding Alexandre. “You’re sadly mistaken, my good squire, if you think unbridled randiness is integral to the Sancho Panza role.”

  Alexandre was saved from the need of a retort by the sacrosanct rogations of ordering food and drink. As he carried on his dialogue with the maître d’, Capucine looked around the room. There was not an empty seat. But the sound of American English did seem conspicuous in the buzz of conversation. For the thousandth time she wondered why it was such a distinctive trait of Americans to speak in public places as if they were on stage. Also, there might be more than the usual number of Japanese. Or maybe she was just being unusually observant.

  In due course the appetizers arrived. For Alexandre a lobster claw reconstructed from pigeon breast and Brittany homard and for Capucine Périgord foie gras on a bed of pureed noix de Saint-Jacques. Alexandre’s nostrils quivered like a hound dog’s. For him life never got better than this.

  Halfway through his lobster he sighed and said, “Let’s get to work. Time to compare notes. I’ll show you mine and then you can show me yours.

  “From the press’s point of view this is now a dead story. Poor Delage was too dull to be newsworthy. And Renault has done the most boring thing they could and put the chief financial officer temporarily in charge. He’s even less newsworthy than Delage and he’ll just sit as still as possible trying very hard not to rock the boat until the board appoints a full-time president after an eternal deliberation.

  “On the other hand, the rumor mill of well-heeled Paris is cranking full strength. They’ve decided it’s definitely a case of food poisoning. If a bigwig wants to impress a colleague by inviting him here, he’s laughed at. ‘Are you trying to poison me? What have I done to you?’ Overnight poor Jean-Basile has become a laughingstock. It’s his worst nightmare.”

  “But the place is packed,” Capucine said.

  “You’re right, but they’re all tourists. Not a member of the establishment in sight,” Alexandre said with obvious exaggeration. “If this keeps up Jean-Basile might as well put up a souvenir stand in the front. With that delicious creature up there he’d make a killing selling little Eiffel Towers with thermometers in them.”

  “The irony of that,” Capucine said, “is that the forensic people have now decided it wasn’t food poisoning after all. Of course they hem and haw and say nothing will be definite until the cultures are ready in another week, but since the death was from respiratory failure it could only have been the result of a chemical poison, botulism, or bad oysters. Since there were no preserves or oysters on the menu, logically it had to be a chemical poison of some sort. Mind you, they’re a little put out that none of the classic poisons showed up in the autopsy, but they’re doing another round of tests and hoping for something totally obscure.”

  Alexandre harrumphed. “And I’m sure they will come up with something. There hasn’t been a case of food poisoning in a three-star restaurant in the entire history of France.”

  Just then the maître d’ returned with two aide-serveurs bearing tiny silver cups on transparent crystal dishes.

  “Madame le Lieutenant, monsieur,” Bouteiller said, “this is a little surprise to clear your pallets between courses. Oyster sorbet with a mousse of sweet Melissa, lemon-scent geranium, and verveine,” he announced proudly.

  “The plot thickens,” Alexandre said with a frown.

  “I beg your pardon!” the maître d’ said with concern.

  The meal marched on with its stately cadence. Main courses of rack of lamb raised to inconceivable heights with lemon and coriander for Alexandre and a dish of carrots, kohlrabi, turnips, and radishes brilliantly seasoned with an intricate mixture of Indian spices for Capucine. Then the cheeses, incomparably better than elsewhere, presumably because they were conditioned in a sixteenth-century cellar by a master affineur, one of Labrousse’s cronies. After, the desserts, strawberries in an undeconstructable sauce that had the aroma of hibiscus but none of the taste for Capucine and a soufflé of pistachios, pralines, and black chocolate for Alexandre. Finally, coffee and a plate of sweet macaroons made with vegetables from Labrousse’s own country garden, tilled by horse alone where no chemical had ever penetrated.

  Capucine’s almost postcoital afterglow was blown away by Labrousse’s appearance. He shambled down the aisle between the tables smiling with only the bottom of his face at the few remaining patrons and made his way as directly as he could to Alexandre and Capucine’s table. Despite his seemingly insuperable talent in the kitchen he was decidedly more haggard than when Capucine had seen him on Monday. An aide-serveur rushed up with a chair and Labrousse sat down with a thud. “C’était?” Labrousse asked with the brutal understatement French chefs use when speaking of food. “Was it as expected?”

  Alexandre smiled warmly at him. “Rien à dire.” In a country where everyone was a food critic and felt no meal should pass without a retort, rien à dire, nothing to complain about, was the highest possible accolade. Labrousse beamed.

  “It was exceptional, even for you,” Capucine added. “I particularly loved the oyster sorbet. It tasted more oystery than oysters in the shell.”

  “That’s the whole idea,” Labrousse said. “It’s all the rage, this molecular gastronomy. You extract the essence of the produce and reconstitute it with a few tricks from the laboratory and it becomes something entirely new with heightened flavor.”

  “But,” Capucine went on, “we didn’t see any oysters in the kitchen on Monday.”

  “Ah, my dear, always the police officer. Of course you didn’t. It’s a tradition that goes back to the Revolution. Good restaurants never serve seafood of any kind on Monday. The patrons would think it had been sitting in warm kitchens all day Sunday, and that just wouldn’t do.”

  Labrousse brightened up slightly. “Let’s drink a little sip of something.” He arched an eyebrow at a waiter who was removing tablecloths and whispered to him when he scurried over. “It’s a very old alcool de framboise that I get from a friend in the Midi.”

  When the waiter had gone, Labrousse deflated as the exhilaration of the afternoon’s stint at the stove wore off. “Did you really think it was up to standard? I nearly thought I’d lost it with all this business. You have no idea how the police have affected me.”

  He flushed and grabbed Capucine’s hand. “My dear, I certainly didn’t mean you. Without you there I don’t know what I’d have done!”

  The crystal decanter of framboise arrived, nestled in a silver tureen of crushed ice, and was poured out into tiny, tulip-shaped crystal glasses. The chemical bite of freezingly pure alcohol with barely the faint
est hint of raspberry slashed through the lingering taste of lunch that was just beginning to go stale in the mouth.

  “Let me tell you,” Labrousse continued, “the situation is impossible. The tension in the kitchen is strong enough to separate the sauces. The slightest incident becomes a serious dispute. But that’s not the worst of it. My patrons are abandoning me. Did you see who was here today? There were so many cancellations that I had to let in some of the backlog of Americans and Japanese. If I do too much of that I won’t have a French client left.”

  He took another sip of his framboise.

  “The situation is grave.”

  When it was finally time to go, Alexandre walked Capucine across the street to her car and held the door open for her. “As your Sancho, my advice is to focus on Renault. If your lab boys wind up deciding it’s murder after all, as they undoubtedly will, it’s almost inevitable the solution will be there.”

  As her car proceeded off at its leisurely pace Capucine thought about it. He was right, of course, but she still had the distinct feeling that the entire outing had been well engineered as the sort of maneuver a mama fox attempts when trying to draw the hounds away from her cubs.

  Chapter 7

  The Renault headquarters building was lavishly decked out in the bland opulence so dear to the heart of French big business: affluence without ostentation. Capucine, in a cream Inès de la Fressange suit, dutifully trotted after Rivière, his tough flic outfit enhanced by a scruffy leather jacket and well-worn cowboy boots. Crossing the deep pile prairie of the reception area, she was torn between relief at finding herself back in her environment and revulsion at the world she longed to escape.

  Eight almost identical blond receptionists, resembling each other so closely they could well have been clones, dressed in flight attendant–style uniforms complete with large corporate logo brooches, were at a thirty-foot-long white marble counter. Their seats were on a recess a foot and a half below floor level so that their eyes just skimmed the surface of the counter and their computer screens were hidden from view.

  Rivière sprawled over the countertop and goggled down at one of the receptionists as frankly as if he were a roué in a nightclub about to order a drink from a topless bartender. He was visibly disconcerted when she stared back at him dispassionately. Abashed, he announced almost timidly that they had an appointment with Monsieur d’Arbaumont. The receptionist stroked her keyboard, murmured inaudibly into a miniscule mouthpiece attached to a headset buried in her hair, and, almost without pause, smilingly turned to Capucine and announced that they were to go to the fifteenth floor, where they would be met at the elevator. Rivière gritted his teeth.

  A matronly secretary greeted them warmly. In the center of the wall opposite the elevator a large chrome sign laid claim to the floor for the “Direction Financière.” It was clear that, either to emphasize the interim character of his appointment or even possibly out of respect for his late boss, the acting president had opted to remain in his own office rather than move into Delage’s.

  As Capucine had expected, Thiebaud d’Arbaumont turned out to be an archetypal senior executive of the old school. The tiny navy blue rosette of the Order of Merit and the miniscule blood red ribbon of the Legion of Honor established his rank to the cognoscenti and his impeccably tailored Savile Row suit to all others. He welcomed the police officers with the buckram affability of a funeral director, intending to lubricate the start of the interview with the traditional well-polished patter of senior executives. Just as he began to relish the sonority of his alexandrines, Rivière interrupted him rudely.

  “Look, pal, this is an investigation of a possible murder. Let’s cut the cackle and just get down to it, okay?”

  D’Arbaumont’s affability crumbled like spun sugar. It was not clear to Capucine if it was the affront to this meter or if he was shocked at the notion of murder occurring in his world.

  “Surely that can’t be. Why on earth would anyone want to murder Président Delage?”

  “That was exactly what I was going to ask you,” Capucine said with a soothing smile.

  “I have no idea. No idea at all. Président Delage’s entire life was the company. He had virtually no outside interests. When his wife passed away seven or eight years ago, just after he became president, he threw himself into his position body and soul.”

  “Does he have any close friends in the company?” Capucine asked.

  “Not that I know of. Naturally, he spent a good deal of time with his five direct reports, but I doubt any of us saw him socially.” D’Arbaumont paused. “Actually, now that I think about it, in the last week or so he may have spent a bit more time than usual with Florian Guyon, who’s in charge of R & D. That was unusual, particularly since—”

  Visibly exasperated, Rivière jumped in impatiently. “Hey, can the office gossip. We don’t have all day here. Cut to the chase, my friend, and give us something useful. Did he have his hand in the till? Was one of his mistresses pissed off at him? What was going on with the guy? Get specific.”

  D’Arbaumont pursed his lips. “I’m afraid I really have nothing more to add,” he said stiffly. “I wonder if you could excuse me. My schedule really is rather fraught this morning.”

  Rivière turned on his heel and strode out. Capucine could almost hear him growl. He stopped short in the hallway. “Look, little sister, this is your case, remember. I’m just here to give you a hand if you need it. If you want to spend all week here gabbing about ‘direct reports’ and ‘R & D’ and whatever other bullshit these fat-cat faggots come up with, suit yourself. Me, I’m going back to the Quai where I have a real case on the boil.”

  Heaving a deep sigh of relief, Capucine sought out Clotilde Lancrey-Javal, Delage’s secretary, a comely brunette in her early forties, clearly grieved by the death of her boss. She sat in a tiny room adjacent to the ominously closed door of the president’s office. She, too, was clearly eager to be helpful, but as she chatted with Capucine her eyes flicked incessantly at her computer screen.

  She smiled in apology. “I’m sorry. You can’t imagine what it’s been like since the président’s death. I’m inundated. Monsieur d’Arbaumont has made it very clear to everyone that his role is only titular and he wants everything directed to the office of the president to be handled here.”

  “You must be swamped. I won’t be long. I promise. Just a few questions about Président Delage. How well did you know him?”

  “Not at all, really. I’ve only been here for six months and he was very stiff and formal and not at all chatty. Of course, I handled his agenda and made his reservations and calls and all that, so I know what he did, but he never gossiped about his life in the least.”

  “Did you make the reservation for his dinner at Diapason?”

  “Of course. It had been set up for a week. He ate with Maître Fleuret, his lawyer, who was also a personal friend. They met over dinner about once a month or so. But you must know that already.”

  “Did you notice anything out of the ordinary in the weeks before he died?”

  “No, nothing really. Of course the Paris Automobile Salon is a month away and he was focused on getting speeches written and organizing dinners and meetings. Oh, yes. Maybe there’s one thing, but I’m not sure if it’s important. The Wednesday before he died he asked me to call Olivier Ménard. You know, the chef de cabinet for the président. The président of the Republic, that is,” she said grandly.

  “They were friends since they were students at university. Every now and then Président Delage would be invited to Monsieur Ménard’s for dinner. But this didn’t seem social, somehow. It was almost as if there was some urgent reason for the meeting. Président Delage seemed upset when the call wasn’t returned within an hour and he asked me to call again the same day, which was unusual. You know, pushy. Thank God Ménard’s secretary called very early Thursday morning and we scheduled a phone conversation for that afternoon. Président Delage seemed very relieved. After they spoke Présid
ent Delage told me he was going to have lunch at Monsieur Ménard’s house on Saturday. I’m sure it can’t have anything to do with his death, obviously, but it did strike me as unusual at the time.”

  They chatted on for a few more minutes, Clotilde’s eyes jolting to her screen with increasing intensity. When Capucine asked her if she could make an appointment with Monsieur Guyon she beamed in obvious relief that the interview was over. She was genuinely apologetic that Monsieur Guyon would not be available until the end of the week when he returned from a trip to Lyon.

  Back at the Quai Capucine looked up the number for the Elysée Palace in the interministerial telephone directory and found herself speaking to a crusty switchboard operator.

  “Monsieur Ménard, s’il vous plait.”

  After an interminable wait a supercilious male voice came on the line and asked the nature of the caller’s business with Monsieur Ménard.

  “This is the Police Judiciare. We require an official interview with Monsieur Ménard.”

  “In that case, madame, someone from the Ministry of the Interior must contact the Elysée directly. Such an appointment cannot be made at your level.”

  The tone was such a burlesque of disdain that Capucine was unable to get mad. Laughing, she thanked the man and rang off. The best part, she reminded herself, was that Ménard would undoubtedly fall over himself getting to the phone if Alexandre, or any other well-known journalist for that matter, wanted to see him.

  Happily, Capucine could count on dear, doting Oncle Norbert, who would do anything for her, particularly after the wet firecracker of his attempt to lubricate Capucine’s transfer. Two hours after her call to him, an entirely different man—this one politely brisk and purposeful—rang from the Elysée. “Madame de Huguelet?” Capucine recalled that Oncle Norbert disapproved of her not using her married name at the police. “Can I ask you to please hold for the chef de cabinet?”