Death of a Chef (Capucine Culinary Mystery) (10 page)

“Madame,” David said, “I would be enchanted.”

Capucine glared at him. Amazingly, both Isabelle and Momo seemed to like the idea. Isabelle’s face relaxed, and Momo’s frown became less severe.

Capucine, however, was close to panic. Keeping a
cordon sanitaire
between her private and professional lives was of the utmost importance. Her worst nightmare was having it known in the force that, by virtue of her marriage to Alexandre, she was a countess. If her brigadiers started calling her Madame la Comtesse behind her back, she’d quit the police. And, snob that her mother was, there was a real risk she would spill the beans.

Capucine made another miscalculation. Convinced a proletarian atmosphere would intimidate her mother into silence, she took them to Benoît’s, around the corner.

To Capucine’s chagrin, her mother adored the restaurant. Angélique, resplendent in her corpulence, greeted them warmly at the door, made much of Madame Le Tellier, herded them to a table in the middle of the room, scolded Capucine for not having brought her mother sooner, and itemized a long list of physiognomic similarities between the two women. Only when Capucine’s ears were quite red did Angélique dictate what they would be having for lunch:
tripes à la mode de Caen
for the men and
médaillons de veau
for the women. Naturally, they would be drinking the house Tavel.

“Such fun!” said Capucine’s mother, genuinely delighted. “It takes me back to my student days. I used to eat in a restaurant just like this one, right down to the napkins in cubbyholes.”

Lunch started out with a large dented metal serving dish on which were laid out rolled slices of
jambon de Paris,
tranches of three kinds of pâté, and a heap of tiny cornichons. An equally dented wire basket, filled to overflowing with slices of baguette, was placed beside it. Capucine was sure her mother would be horrified by the plebian nature of the appetizer, but, no, she loved it all and even took seconds of the cornichons.

“I just adore these. We never have them at home. I’m going to make sure Yvonne starts buying them.” Capucine offered a prayer to her guardian angel that her mother would not find it necessary to explain that Yvonne was the cook and that there was also a majordomo, a full-time maid, and a part-time laundress.

Over-brightly, Capucine said, “Maman, it’s wonderful you could come today. Otherwise you wouldn’t have met Brigadier Martineau. He’s leaving for the Midi on Saturday to start an investigation down there.”

“That is, if my boss, Brigadier-Chef Lemercier, lets me go. She’s a very hard taskmaster,” David said with a charming smile.

Isabelle gave him a black look.

“Oh, you must let him go, Brigadier-Chef. This is the perfect season for the Midi. The tourists have all gone, and it’s still warm enough for the beach in the middle of the day.”

“Madame, he’s not going to be on any beach. I can guarantee you that,” Isabelle said sourly.

“And are you my daughter’s boss, as well, my dear?”

Isabelle was at a complete loss for a reply.

David gently placed his hand on top of Madame Le Tellier’s. Capucine was sure she would leap like a gaffed salmon, but she smiled as warmly at David, as if he were a young nephew.

“We all report to your daughter, madame. She’s
our
boss,” David said.

“Maybe next time we could bring Capucine’s superior, as well. I’d very much like to meet him.”

“Madame,” Momo said in his growling bass, “I don’t think you get it. Your daughter is a commissaire.
She’s
the big boss. All fifty-seven of us in the brigade are under her orders. And I’ll tell you another thing.” He leaned over the table to lend weight to his words. Taken aback by Momo’s sheer mass, Capucine’s mother recoiled slightly. “She’s the best goddamn flic any of us have ever seen. And I’ll tell you one more thing. She’s going to be running the whole goddamn force before she’s done.”

Momo downed his half glass of Tavel in one go and thumped it down on the table to emphasize his point.

Capucine’s mother inflated with pride.

CHAPTER 17

L
a Cadière-d’Azur turned out to be not too different from the village he had grown up in. Both were in the hills, a few miles from the coast, dotted with Parisians’ fancy summer homes.

The village hotel was exactly what he expected: five rooms over a café, a single shower, and two Turkish toilets at the end of the hall. There were no pillows on the bed, only a hard upholstered roll with the bottom sheet wrapped around it. He hated those things. They gave him a crick in the neck.

The café, Le Marius, was like every other small village café in the Midi: ten or so tables, big glass windows looking out over the town square, long dark-wood bar in front of a thin row of bottles up against a fly-specked gray mirror.

David propped himself up on the bar and replied “Pastis” to the barman’s querying eyebrow.
Merde
, the first time he opened his mouth, it had to be a big mistake. No one in the Midi called it pastis. That was Paris talk. Down here the closest you ever came was to call it
pastaga.
Usually you said something like “Fifty-one,” one of the better known brands.

Hoping to recover from his gaffe, David took a small, square-ruled, spiral-bound Clairefontaine notebook out of his pocket, snapped off the rubber band that held it shut, and began to scribble. He was proud of the prop, which he felt sure was exactly the sort of thing a writer would have.

The only other patron was a thickset man, with a sunbaked face and work-stiffened hands, sitting at a table, his arms wrapped defensively around a glass of rosé, chin jutting out in an aggressive angle at the square. David picked up the square water pitcher that had been delivered with his drink and poured a thin stream into the glass. For the millionth time he admired the miracle of the clear golden pastis turning opaque and milky white.

Gradually the bar filled up and became thick with singsong meridional patois and tobacco fug. David continued to scribble nonsense in his notebook. In the mirror he could see the men casting glances at him out of the corners of their eyes: two parts hostility to one part curiosity.

Just as David was thinking about ordering his second apéro, an older man, who looked like he might be the elder of the village, walked up to the bar, his distance from David nicely calculated: not close enough to be an invasion of David’s territory but close enough to indicate a desire to talk. David closed his notebook and snapped on the rubber band with a loud snick.

The man looked at him over droopy haws as mournful as a basset hound’s. “
Hè bè, l’été n’est bien pas fini. Ça va cogner aujourd’hui.
Well, summer sure isn’t over yet. It’s going to be hot as hell today
.
” The
hè bè
was a locution of emphasis so Provençal, it made David long for his village. Even though the conversation in the café continued loudly, David was well aware that everyone in the room had an ear cocked at them.

“
Hè bè, oui. C’est pour ça qu’on aime le pays, non?
Of course. That’s why we love it here, isn’t it?” David replied, unleashing the Provençal accent he tried so hard to repress in Paris.

“So you’re from around here,
estranger?
” the man asked, using the Provençal word for
stranger.

“Not at all. I’m from St. Jean de l’Esterel.”

The man looked at him blankly.

“It’s behind Cannes, up in the hills.”

“A
Cannois,
eh?” He gave David a long searching look. David held his gaze without wavering. “You look like a
Parigot,
a Parisian. And the Var is a long way from the Alpes Maritimes. What good wind blew you to La Cadière?”

The conversation at the tables had become murmurs. A stranger outside of the tourist season who didn’t look like he was selling farm machinery was almost unheard of.

“I’m an author. I write biographies. And I’m writing one about Chef Jean-Louis Brault.” David let this sink in and stuck out his hand. “David Martineau,” he said with a politician’s smile.

The old man looked at him levelly and did not extend his hand. The abruptness of the proposed handshake was an imposition, but, then, so was asking an estranger what his business was. If the old man refused to take the hand, he would give offense and he might come to regret that later. But if he didn’t refuse, he would lose face. He thought it over for a few beats and then grasped David’s hand in a grip like a hare trap. He looked at the barman.

“A
cent deux,
Félix.”

“A cent deux”
—
a hundred and two—was patois for “two glasses of Pastis Fifty-one.”

David nodded his thanks.

“Come drink this with us,” the old man said, using the familiar
tu
and indicating his table with a tilt of his head.

At the table, the old man introduced his three companions with juts of his chin, Félix, Piquoiseau, and Le Bosco. “And they call me Césariot,” the man said.

“So, Le Cannois,” Piquoiseau said, “you think you’re going to find out all about Jean-Louis Brault’s life down here, do you?”

“Cannois,” Le Bosco said, “no one down here has seen the Brault boy since he left when he was . . . what? Sixteen?”

“Fifteen,” Félix corrected.

“I know that. My book is going to start with his childhood. It’s going to explain how Brault’s genius germinated in the smells of the wild herbs in the hills of La Cadière-d’Azur.”

The men at the table glanced at each other out of the corners of their eyes and repressed grins.

“I want to find out all about his childhood. Was he a gifted cook even as a small boy? What did he like to eat at home? Who were his friends? Did he have a girlfriend? You know, stuff like that.”

At the word
girlfriend
the four men at the table exchanged sharper glances. Césariot drew his lips into a frowning moue.

Changing the subject, Le Bosco turned to the elder and said, “
Hè bè,
Césariot, I hear tell these Cannois are not completely useless when it comes to boules.”

“Do you play?” Césariot asked David.

“Do I breathe?” The question had been rhetorical. What man in the Midi didn’t live to toss steel balls into the dust in the cool of the evening? The mood softened a tiny notch.

“What you want to do is go see the baron,” Césariot said. “If you can understand him, you might just learn something about his son. When you’ve done that, come back so we can see if the Cannois live up to their reputation. But don’t get your hopes up. You might wind up buying the pastaga tonight.”

The noon Angelus rang slowly from the single bell in the church belfry. Three strokes. A pause. Three more strokes. And three more again, until the count of nine was reached. The men fell silent, counting, and then rose almost as a single person to go home and eat the meal their women had prepared for them. David sat alone in the café.

 

Three hours later, after a solitary meal—a
daube de canard,
a stew of wild duck marinated in white wine and then simmered for hours in a bath of broth, brown Niçoise olives, and orange zest—David walked up the hard-earth road to the town’s château.

It wasn’t much of a place. The iron gate was long gone from the crumbling stone archway. In the distance he could see the château, a small abandoned building pretentiously decorated with pseudo-Gothic crenellations, now gap-toothed, the façade ruined by blind eye sockets of frameless windows. The weed-choked land between the gate and the château was dotted with small, cheap, disintegrating prefab bungalows.

David banged on the cracked oak door of the gatehouse. Even through the thick door the television was painfully loud. There was no answer. He shouted. Still no answer. He pounded continually on the door with the heel of his fist. After a very long wait, the door opened. The din from the TV hit him like a falling wall.

An emaciated man in shapeless olive corduroy trousers bald at the knees blinked at him, working his jaws as if he was trying to chew gum on the sly. David knew he was fretting badly fitting false teeth.

“Monsieur le Baron?” David asked.

There was no reply.

David yelled his question. “I called from the village an hour ago, remember? I’m the author writing a biography of your son.”

The baron looked confused. “Jean-Louis? Is he all right?” A tear rolled down his cheek. He took a none-too-clean, balled-up handkerchief from his side pocket and blotted the tear. Without a word he turned and walked into the house. David followed him.

There was a single room on the main floor. A threadbare Persian rug with a hole worn in the middle lay on a grimy floor of cracked black-and-white tiles. The few pieces of furniture all dated from the early nineteenth century but were broken and crudely repaired. On a dining table with buckled veneer and a fractured leg nailed back together sat three large faïence vases. All three had been broken, and the pieces glued by an unskilled hand. The noise from the television was far louder than a discothèque. David switched the set off. The sudden silence rang in the room.

The baron collapsed into a dusty Louis XVI
fauteuil
and waved David toward a rattan settee. Most of the rattan was missing. David sat on the edge of the frame.

“I’ve come to talk to you about your son,” David yelled.

“There’s no need to shout, my good man. I can hear you perfectly. I’m assuming you mean poor Jean-Louis. I haven’t seen his brother, Antonin, in years and can’t imagine why an author would have any interest in him. But Jean-Louis, now there’s an exceptional son.”

Over the next few hours the ball of handkerchief was in constant use as the baron rambled on about his son. Like a pointillist painter the baron flitted from one topic to another, from one era to another, but, in the end, the picture that emerged made up in depth what it lacked in clarity.

The baron’s wife had died of cervical cancer when Jean-Louis was five. Shortly after her death the baron had been cheated out of his house and lands by an unscrupulous developer in a failed deal. He had managed to hang on to the gatehouse. He had gradually sold off his father’s collection of faïence. All that was left were the three pieces on the table, which no one wanted to buy since Antonin had broken them in a fit of rage and Jean-Louis, then age six, had glued them back together, hoping his father would not notice. At this point the story paused for a full minute as the handkerchief was put to use.

The baron had always been a keen gardener and had been able to feed his boys on his produce. Without Jean-Louis, who had been a gifted cook even as a child, it might have been monotonous. But Jean-Louis made every meal a feast. More handkerchief. The harvest of his sweet red Midi asparagus, for example, lasted over two months, and they were on the table every night. But Jean-Louis made a different dish every meal. The handkerchief came out again. There was a summer salad Jean-Louis would make from fresh asparagus, summer squash, new potatoes, and one or two pinches of duck gizzard confit, the whole sprinkled with a few drops of olive oil.

“And this, monsieur, from the hands of an eight-year-old boy!” The handkerchief stayed in use for a full two minutes. “Even though we had no money, we had our family honor and our pride, and we were very happy. Very.”

The baron proved as persistent as a leaky but valiant steam engine. At six, the evening Angelus rang out its stately nine strokes, reminding David of his promise to show off his prowess at boules. He rose to leave. The baron blinked in alarm. David turned on the television and rotated the dial to maximum volume. The thundering sound and flickering image mesmerized the baron so completely, David doubted his departure was noticed.

 

Two tables in front of the café had been pushed together. Five men sipped pastis and watched David cross the dusty square with his fluid gait. The sun was low in the sky, and the temperature had begun to drop, drawing in the odors of grasses and wild herbs from the hills. The cymbal rasping of cicadas had quieted, leaving the square in silence.

“Alors, Le Cannois,” Césariot threw out, “you managed to escape from Monsieur le Baron?”

There was a peal of raucous laughter. It was obvious they had started on the apéros sometime before. In addition to Césariot, Le Bosco, and Piquoiseau, there were two men David didn’t know. Césariot introduced them: Ungolin and Le Papet.

“Did he make you take a flat of his famous Thermidrome onions, the pride of the Midi?” Le Papet asked. There was another shout of laughter.

“Enough of that,” Césariot said. “We’re wasting daylight. I propose Piquoiseau and Le Bosco team up with me, and Le Cannois can play with Ungolin and Le Papet.” There were grunts of assent as the men downed their drinks and moved out onto the powdery, cement-hard earth of the square.

Ungolin presented David with a much-dented set of three boules, which must have sat under the counter of the bar for the use of estrangers since well before the Second World War.

“They’ve never liked Le Baron here. They didn’t like his father either. The old baron pissed his fortune away on the French attempt at the Panama Canal. His son was even stupider and lost the little that was left,” Ungolin said confidentially to David.

“Alors, Ungolin, are we here to play
pétanque
or to gossip like old women?” Césariot said. He flipped a ten-euro coin high in the air with his thumb, caught it, and slapped it on the back of his wrist. “Heads or tails?”

Ungolin picked tails and won the toss. He drew a three-foot circle in the dust with a stick, stood in the middle, ankles together, and tossed the
cochonnet
—a small wooden ball—out into the dust.

“You go first,” Ungolin said to David.

David stepped into the circle, sank down on bended knees until his buttocks almost touched his heels, holding the boule loosely, arm straight down, the back of his hand facing the cochonnet. In a single fluid motion he rose, hoisting his arm forward for the throw, at the last second imparting a hint of forward spin on the boule with his thumb. The boule rose high in the air, landed an inch in front of the cochonnet, and rolled gently until it just kissed the little ball. A perfect shot.