Death of a Chef (Capucine Culinary Mystery) (13 page)

CHAPTER 21

C
apucine’s first stop in Châteauneuf was Madame Roque, who had become garrulous once in the press’s limelight. Flanked in protective custody by her two daughters, sharp-eyed recent university graduates, she embellished what she had already told Capucine with a wealth of detail, none of it useful.

She and her husband had gone out to dinner at a workers’ café. That was where they always went. Of course, there were real restaurants in the village, but her husband refused to go where workers didn’t eat. Even though he was now “leader” of the company, he would not spend “one single sou” more than the foreman’s salary, which was all he would accept. That suited Madame Roque just fine. The description of their meal of
steak frites
and of the conversations with the friends they ran into was interminable.

When they had come home, the lights wouldn’t go on, and so her husband had gone down to the basement to see what was the matter. She was terrified when he did not come up or answer her shouts. At this point the two daughters put their hands around her waist and hugged her. She then explained that she eventually found the courage to look for a flashlight in the kitchen drawers and creep down into the dark basement. When she got to the part about what she had discovered, she dissolved into damp tears but recovered enough to provide a long, humid dithyramb about the agony of the wait for the SAMU.

The daughters, cooingly overprotective, made her sit down at the kitchen table. Capucine took English leave, as the French insisted on calling it. None of the three noticed.

 

Capucine’s next stop was the office of Alfred Durand, the faïence’s
directeur des opérations,
the chief of operations, who was now also in charge of the company until a decision on Roque’s successor could be reached. Durand projected such a perfect ouvrier image that Capucine almost suspected it had been partially assumed. He wore the caricature of a blue-collar worker’s Sunday best: baggy gray suit, shiny from use, over an ancient, thick, gray, coarse-wool cardigan zipped up to the neck. The knot of a frayed dark crimson tie peeped out over the top of the sweater.

Wardrobe aside, there was no doubt at all about either Durand’s competence as a senior executive of a good-sized corporation or his intellectual baggage.

“Firmin—Monsieur Roque—was far more than a friend. We were
comadres de barricades.
”

“Barricade comrades?”

“I was at his right hand when we liberated the company.”

There was a slight pause as Durand waited for Capucine to rise to the bait of the notion of “liberating the company.” In his world the police were arch-villains.

“Politics have become trivialized in our country,” he continued. “Political demonstrations are now a rite of passage in France. American students go to Fort Lauderdale and get drunk during spring break. French students go out on the street and amuse themselves by kicking tear-gas grenades back at the police. It’s a game for them. It has no meaning. That’s why the sustained political manifestation that resulted in the liberation of the Faïence de Châteauneuf-sur-Loire is such an important milestone of our era.”

“Of course it is. We even studied it in depth at Sciences Po. You and Monsieur Roque were cast as true heroes.”

“You went to Sciences Po?” he said with the hint of a sneer. Intellectuals had their place in the Communist world. But university students who turned into flics very definitely did not.

“Did Monsieur Roque have any enemies that you knew of?”

“Only the entire right-wing population of France, and that would include the government. That would make it about thirty-five million people. And their animosity increased every day the Faïence thrived under our management. What they hate most about us is that we succeeded where the capitalists failed, and we are empirical proof that the capitalist model is not the only viable game in town.”

Capucine smiled.

“I’m not joking. The success of the Faïence is a thorn in the side of the right. The cornerstone of the capitalist industrial paradigm is the mindless quest for lebensraum—endless growth, ever-increasing market share, squeezing your competitors to death so you can capture their markets. Do you remember the strategy of the capitalists we threw out of here on their ear?”

“Only vaguely.”

“They wanted to trash our artisanal skills that had been honed over centuries and make cheap, ugly products that would be sold in large volumes in supermarkets. They were going to gut our plant of its ancient kiln and replace it with automated, high-flow-through machines. And they were going to fire close to fifty percent of the workforce—with no compensation, I might add—and destroy the lives of those who remained, because they would have lost the joy of expressing themselves with their artistic talent.”

Despite herself, Capucine was captivated. “So how did you succeed where they failed?”

“Simple. We’re not motivated by greed. We don’t need to compensate capital. We just need to pay ourselves an honest wage for an honest day’s work. Our shareholders, who happen to be our workers, don’t expect dividends. Their fulfillment is what they can achieve with their hands.” To illustrate, Durand raised his thickened, calloused hands in an almost papal gesture of benediction.

“Your success is very impressive. Can we talk more about Monsieur Roque? Of his long list of enemies, did any of them manifest themselves recently? Were there office animosities or anything like that?”

Durand shook his head slowly. “Roque was the most honest and humble man I’ve ever met. When he became president of the company, he continued to receive his foreman’s salary. He remained in his old house. He wore his old clothes. He drove his old car.” Durand paused to make sure Capucine was getting the point. “Once a week, if his schedule permitted, he would go down and work half a shift on one of the production lines. Not only because he needed to take the temperature of the plant. Not only because of the profound solidarity he felt toward the plant’s workers. But also because he loved working with his hands. He was a very skilled craftsman, and he didn’t want to lose that. I don’t think there’s a single employee here who wouldn’t have given his right hand—hell, his life—for Roque. Does that answer your question?”

Capucine knew that extracting anything more from Durand would be as difficult as getting one of the apostles to gossip about Jesus.

“Who was he close to at the plant?”

“Me, Mouton, and Tissot. If this was a capitalist company, we’d be the executive committee. But since it’s not, we’re just three guys. You know what I do. Mouton handles the finances, and Tissot is the product guy. You’re seeing Mouton next, right?”

 

Jean Mouton was a trim fifty with a military haircut and military wire-rim glasses. He pumped Capucine’s hand vigorously and led her to a plain pine table that served as a desk.

“I’m the only one on the management team who came after what’s known around here as the Glorious Takeover. Roque realized he couldn’t do without the banks. Someone has to finance inventories and deal with the suppliers.”

“That must have been a tough job to fill. There can’t be all that many qualified financial managers who are members of the Communist Party.”

“More than you’d think. I was working for a group that published four Communist magazines. I jumped at the chance to come here because I wanted to be close to physical production—you know, something being made, not just words—and I wanted to be in a building filled with good, honest people I’d enjoy having a beer with, not guys with complicated, over-intelligent ideas, even if their hearts were in the right place. I’m sure that makes no sense to you.”

“Actually, it does. That’s more or less why I joined the police.”

“The police!”

Mouton was genuinely shocked. Capucine told herself that you never really knew how deep the gulf was until you walked right up to the edge of the precipice and looked down.

“Is the company as solvent as the press tells us?”

“It’s in no danger whatsoever of collapse, if that’s what you’re trying to discover. We make a profit, but not enough if we had shareholders who expected a return. But we don’t, so that’s not a problem.”

“So you have no capital cushion? That must make you a poor sleeper.”

“We do have a cushion. The way the restructuring worked is that the banks and the shareholders waived all claims. A new company was formed, and the shares were divided among the workers. Also a consortium of three private investors offered a pool of debt funds that was the cash nut that allowed the company to go forward. Those loans are technically interest bearing, but they are so subordinated that the interest is only due if there is the ability to pay it.”

“And how did you find such a benevolent group of investors?”

“That was before my time. The consortium was already in place when I got here.” He gave Capucine a hard look that did not completely mask his defensiveness. “And there’s nothing benevolent about them. They’re capitalists who extended us a perfectly straightforward financial product.”

 

Guillaume Tissot could easily have passed for a poet. In his checked shirt and tight jeans, it became quickly obvious that he was continually half focused on some distant horizon that only he saw.

He explained his job dreamily. “I’m the guy that figures out what we make. I used to make suggestions to Roque and we’d decide together, but now I guess I’ll have to do it all by myself.”

“How does that work? Do you go and interview clients and do market research?”

“Oh no, that would be too much like capitalist marketing. We just make things we like. Every now and then I walk through the warehouse, and if there are too many of any given product, we just stop making it for a while.” He paused, lost in thought, got to where he wanted to go, and floated back to the conversation. He looked at Capucine as if he was surprised to see her still there. “You know, it’s easier if I just show you instead of trying to explain it. Anyway, I need to check something in the warehouse. Why don’t you come with me and I’ll show you how the shop floor works?”

To Capucine’s untutored eye, the factory couldn’t have changed an iota from the eighteenth century. Long tables were stacked with powdery white “blanks” of dishes. Women in late middle age, interspersed with the occasional senior man, sat gossiping cheerfully, decorating the blanks with paintbrushes. The atmosphere was that of a ladies’ bridge party.

Tissot stopped beside a woman in a florid housedress.

The use of first names and the familiar
tu
to a senior executive was not lost on Capucine.

Tissot explained that Capucine was a “visitor” from Paris, avoiding all mention of the police, which would have created a snap frost in this world, and asked Huguette to explain what she was doing. Proudly, Huguette showed Capucine her brush, which consisted of a single partridge feather tied to a stick with thread. The feather was dipped in a little pot of light red glaze and gently laid at the end of a stalk that had been painted by Eugénie, who was sitting next to her, using a sable brush.

Laughing and bouncing with schoolgirl liveliness, Huguette pushed Eugénie aside to make room for Capucine on the bench. She handed Capucine her brush.

“I can’t do this!” Capucine said with a shriek. “I couldn’t even draw in the
maternelle
.”

Huguette ignored her. “It’s not drawing. You just lay the feather down, and it makes a petal.”

Tissot smiled at her. “I have to check on something. I’ll be back in a little while. If you’re any good at this, I might be making you an offer.” There was polite laughter from those at the table within earshot.

Huguette guided Capucine’s hand, and a perfect petal was formed, but as Capucine lifted the brush, a small streak of glaze leached out, spoiling the flower.

“Tant pis,” said Huguette. With indifference, she threw the ruined blank into a plastic bin behind them. She reached for another half-finished blank in the pile on the middle of the table, and they began again.

On the third attempt Capucine actually managed to finish a flower. During the twenty minutes it took, her ear had become attuned to the pattern of
Berrichon
patois, and she understood almost three quarters of the exchange at the table. It struck her that this was far from being an unpleasant way to spend one’s day.

Tissot appeared at her shoulder.

“Your first plate. That’s quite an achievement. Now you have to sign it,
n’est-ce pas
, Huguette?”

Huguette produced an extremely fine-pointed brush and a miniscule pot of black glaze, turned the blank over, and handed the brush to Capucine.

“You just put your initials or mark or whatever you want on the back.”

Tissot added, “All our work is signed. Every piece produced at the Faïence carries the mark of the decorator.”

Their next stop was another long table with a shallow water basin recessed into the middle.

“This process,” said Tissot, “oddly enough, requires more skill than hand painting. They apply a décalcomanie to the blank. It’s a technique that’s been used since the sixteen hundreds. Now we use a photoreproduction process, and the décalcomanies are actually extremely thin plastic, but the process is essentially the same.”

They watched as a man in his fifties slid a convoluted blue design onto a blank and positioned it with great care.

“It requires a special touch to do that without tearing the décalcomanie. After it’s dried, the blank is coated with clear glaze, just as we do with the hand-painted ones, and given its final bake in the kiln.”

The kiln looked like a museum piece. The well-patinated heap of white thermal brick bore a large bronze plaque announcing that it had been inaugurated by one of Louis-Philippe’s ministers in 1836.