Death of a Chef (Capucine Culinary Mystery) (14 page)

“This is the new kiln, apparently much larger than the one it replaced. It was originally wood fired, but that was changed to gas well before World War II.”

Six stocky men with bright red faces and thick leather aprons loaded six-foot-high wire racks of dishes into the cavernous kiln.

“We operate the kiln sixteen hours a day, two shifts, from six in the morning to ten at night. The kiln operators are on a different shift schedule from the other workers,” Tissot explained. “In the last one hundred and seventy-two years the poor old thing has only been shut down twice. Once when it was converted to gas and once when we liberated the plant. When we were squatting in here, the saddest thing was that the kiln was stone cold.”

“Does it run all night even when there’s nothing in it?” Capucine asked.

“No. At the end of the second shift the workers turn the gas off, and a timer turns it back on at four in the morning to get it hot for the first shift. But the brick walls are so thick, the temperature barely goes down at night. Actually, I was worried that when we shut down the kiln during the liberation, the bricks might crack when they cooled. The notion of the destruction of our beloved plant kept me from sleeping.”

“But not the idea of blowing the place up?”

“Of course not. That would have been for a good cause.”

CHAPTER 22

“W
hat are you up to this time, Jacques?” Capucine asked into the telephone, tapping the black-bordered hand-engraved card on her desk at the brigade.

 

 

It was no secret in the family that Jacques was bored by his money. There was a great deal of it, and it bored him a great deal. He had been an heir to all four of his grandparents’ families, and from the age of majority onward a stream of inheritances had flowed inexorably into the tutelage of his asset manager at Lazard Frères, a kindly and patient gentleman whose calls Jacques systematically refused to take.

One of the manifestations of his disdain was his apartment, the top floor of a building with a spectacular view of the place de la Concorde. Obeying a psychological dictate—which was far from fully understood by Capucine—Jacques redecorated his cavernous flat at least twice a year, each décor more extravagant than the last, and each presented to a close circle of family and friends at an elaborate dinner.

“I think I’m missing the point,” Capucine said, rubbing her thumb over the raised printing on the card. “Taedium vitae? Weariness of Life? You?”

“We are each entitled to our own particular ennui,
ma cousine
. I’ve been rereading my Huysmans: des Esseintes mourned the temporary loss of his virility at a black dinner, and I’m merely following suit in my own little way.”

“Ahh,” Capucine sighed. She had written a paper at the lycée on
A Rebours—Against the Grain
.

“You see, you’re not missing the point at all. I’m looking forward to seeing you in a disturbingly short black frock with the snaps of your garter belt peeping out from under the hem. And if you want to respect the author, black silk stockings woven with tears would be de rigueur. Why don’t you get here early and we can have a quiet”—Jacques paused for half a beat, and Capucine could imagine his salacious smirk—“tête-à-tête before the festivities get going.”

 

Capucine was greeted at the door by Madame de Sansavour, a caterer who was the rage of Paris’s beau monde and who even Alexandre admitted was a highly talented chef. Jacques hired her frequently for his dinners, and she was normally charmed by his eccentricities. But her creased brows glimmered with perspiration, and the corners of her mouth were turned down in an exasperated frown.

“Monsieur is waiting for you in his room, madame. If you could keep him out of the kitchen for a while, I would be deeply in your debt.”

Capucine crossed the living room to get to the back of the apartment. The walls had been upholstered in black felt, the armchairs and the sofa were of creamy black leather, the black wall-to-wall carpeting was punctuated with somber Persian rugs, and a black marble fireplace with almost invisible gold veining had been installed, housing a flame made dark purple with some chemical. The room was so overdone, it dripped almost comically with fin de siècle angst.

As promised, Jacques was in his bedroom, the only room in the flat that was inviolate. As ever, it looked like it might belong to an unwashed student of poetry at the Sorbonne. Jacques sat on his unmade single bed, a dented tin wine cooler containing a single bottle of champagne on a wooden wine crate in front of him. He wore a black ruffled evening shirt and a floppy black velvet bow tie. He stood up when Capucine walked in.

“Isn’t the living room delightfully horrible? It cost an arm and a leg, particularly the fireplace. But it was worth it.”

He sat down, patted the bed next to him, and poured Capucine a flute of champagne. He put his hand on her thigh, stockinged in sheer black silk interwoven with little luminescent beads, and stroked appreciatively.

“You’ve got the stockings right,” he said, squeezing her thigh.

Jacques refilled his own champagne glass and let his limpid eyes lap over Capucine’s silhouette.

“So tell me quick before the madding horde arrives, have you made enough of a hash of your current case to get on bended knee and beg for my help?”

“Not at all. Maman’s joined the team. Her latest craze is having lunches with my brigadiers in proletarian restaurants in the Twentieth. It’s a whole new her.” Capucine laughed happily.

“And you’re really quite sure you haven’t made your usual balls-up?” Jacques asked, a little more seriously than Capucine would have liked.

“Au contraire, we’re almost drowning in clues.”

“Voilà,” said Jacques with his all-knowing Cheshire cat grin. “That’s the difference between the police in fiction and in real life. Fictional detectives always have too many clues. Real live ones never have enough.”

Madame de Sansavour tapped discreetly on the door.

“Monsieur de Huguelet has arrived.”

“No point in pushing Tubby Hubby’s blood pressure into the red zone by letting him catch us in bed together, ma chérie. Let’s greet him in the salon.”

They followed Madame de Sansavour into the living room, her stiff gait eloquent testimony to her displeasure. Alexandre, a glass of whiskey in hand, studied a jumble of dark etchings over the mantelpiece. Jacques slipped on his evening jacket, smoothed his hair with his hands, and tugged on Capucine’s sleeve to straighten her frock, as if they had both dressed hurriedly at the announcement of Alexandre’s arrival.

For once Alexandre did not rise to the bait.

“Your Madame de Sansavour is seriously displeased, Jacques. She is now an official
vedette
—a star—in the culinary world. I would suggest you not trifle with her.”

“Asking her to honor one of the great classics of French literature hardly constitutes trifling. I merely suggested she follow Huysmans’s black dinner to the letter and have it served by naked Nubians clad only in black silk stockings—”

“Woven with tears,” Capucine interjected, showing off her leg with an elegant turn of her ankle.

“Exactly. Woven with tears and worn with black satin mules. Was that too much to ask?”

Alexandre smiled. “I see your point. There would have been an undeniable charm to that. However, apparently it was the bats that exercised her.”

“Bats?” Capucine asked.

“Of course,” Jacques said. “The food is supposed to be all black. So I had a few Seychelles
roussettes—
you know, those gigantic bats they have
—
flown out in the diplomatic pouch. And I asked her to make a
civet
with them. But the silly woman refused. Now I can’t even make ice cubes, because my freezer is packed with bats.” Jacques pouted at the injustice of the world.

Madame de Sansavour rushed into the room, her brow wrinkled in recrimination and concern. “Monsieur, when I make the risotto with the ‘forbidden rice’ you gave me, it comes out violet, not black. I’ve added squid ink. Now it’s jet-black. Is that all right?”

“Madame, you are a paragon among chefs. You always know exactly what to do,” Jacques said. “Without you, my life would be no more than a heap of dry ashes.”

Only partially mollified, Madame de Sansavour retreated to the kitchen.

“I’m definitely looking forward to this dinner,” Alexandre said. “Who have you invited to your funereal bacchanal?”

“Familiar faces and some new ones to give the soirée
piquant
. Of course, Cécile, our nubile childhood playmate, and her enologically inclined consort. There will be a rotund éminence grise from the Ministry of the Interior, so Capucine will have her very own string to pull when she’s thrashing about in the choucroute.”

Capucine scowled at him.

“There will be a publishing luminary, scion of a great family, who owns any number of magazines and publishing houses. He’s recently become a widower and is making his first timid steps into
le beau monde
to mend his heart. And, of course, a femme fatale, an unknowable woman of great allure and infinite layers, which, when peeled away one by one, eventually reveal a gossamer veneer of La Perla lace, complete with straps and stockings. But once that’s removed, poof, there’s nothing left.”

“Do you speak from experience?” Alexandre asked.

“Hardly. She’s here merely to illustrate the virtue of knowing when to stop. The domain of unrequited experience is embodied by another guest. A Greek goddess with the body of a nymph. Sadly, a mere acquaintance. It was a coup to get her to come to dinner. Careful, cousine. Portly Partner may well lose his head tonight.”

“Lose my head, indeed!” Alexandre said. “I’m sure this woman will be one of the androgynously muscular creatures you dig out of the DGSE operative pool. She’ll be decked out in the standard ministry-issue little black dress, with the silencer of her long phallic pistol tucked in between the cheeks of her over-muscular
fesses.
Another harried junior civil servant pressed into dinner service.”

“Cousin, you’re making progress. The concept of the silenced pistol as a sex toy is fraught with potential.”

 

The guests were ushered into the darkened living room by a black-clad valet, one of Madame de Sansavour’s extras. Each was handed a jet-black Blavod vodka martini with a black kalamata olive sunk into the turgid depths, and then plied with canapés of beluga caviar on black Russian bread.

The first to arrive was the ministerial éminence grise, who proved to be toad-like in appearance and utterance. Then came a young woman in her early twenties who looked like she rose every morning at four thirty to swim fifty laps in a pool. Her knee-length, tightly clinging silk shift made it abundantly clear there was no holster at her back.

Capucine’s eyes widened perceptibly at the next arrival: Chéri Lecomte. She wore Yves Saint Laurent’s famous Le Smoking from the sixties: a man’s tuxedo cut high-waisted with trousers outrageously flared. As she made her entrance, the bloodred soles of Louboutins pumped arterial jets from under the flapping pant legs. She had completed her look with jet-black lipstick and nail polish and an unlit cigarette in a two-foot black holder. Even though the ensemble smacked of mothballs from various eras, there was a perceptible hush in the room as she entered.

The publishing magnate arrived, surfing into the room on a breaker of epigrams and bons mots. Introductions completed, he made a beeline for Capucine and Chéri’s settee.

“Madame,” he said to Capucine, executing an elegant
baisemain
, “I am a great admirer of your husband’s.” He wagged his finger at her. “Warn him that I intend to steal him away from
Le Monde
and get him for one of my magazines.” Duty done, he turned to Chéri and took possession.

“Gérald de Boysson,” he announced.

“Chéri Lecomte,” Chéri said. The brilliance of her toothy smile in the frame of her black lipstick created a pool of light between them in the somber room.

“What a charming name.”

“My mother was very fond of Colette.”

“But wasn’t Chéri a beautiful young man?”

“Was he? My mother was American, and I’m sure she never actually read Colette. And you have to admit it really
does
sound like a girl’s name.”

Boysson bent over Chéri, entranced.

Manifestly excluded from the conversation, Capucine rose to wander around the room. Chéri’s recitative of her biography pealed on loudly behind her.

“But I
am
French. Entirely French in spirit. I love it so much here, I never went back from my junior year abroad, when I was at Vassar. . . .”

Capucine turned to look.

“
Of course,
there was a man involved, Géri. Can I call you that?” Chéri gave Boysson a playful punch on the shoulder. “But the silly boy left to make movies in Rome, and Mama bought me his stand at the Puces. And then . . .”

Alexandre sat next to the nymphet at one end of the long black sofa. Every time she turned to glance anxiously at Jacques, Alexandre scoured her lower body with his eyes. Capucine beckoned him with a crooked index.

“Got it figured out yet?” she asked.

“No, but she’s clearly nervous about something.”

“She’s got a small holster taped to her inner thigh. You can see the outline through the dress when she stands in front of the light. She’s probably worried the gun will fall on the floor. Or she might just be put out that Jacques is ignoring her.”

“Don’t be silly. Who on earth would care if Jacques wasn’t paying attention to them?”

Madame de Sansavour opened the door to the dining room and announced dinner in a loud voice.

The once-large dining room had been transformed into a theatrical version of a dessert tent with hangings of shimmering black satin. The oppressively claustrophobic gloom was relieved only by the purple flames of black candles set in ornate silver candelabra placed among black-rimmed plates and black napkins on a black linen tablecloth. The tent blocked out all street sounds, leaving a humid, unnatural silence.

Black cards inscribed with silver flourishes placed the guests. Capucine found herself between Jacques and the toad-like ministerial official, catty-corner from Alexandre, who sat next to the putative DGSE operative. At least he would be amused. Directly opposite, Chéri had been placed between Théo and Boysson. Théo peered around the table, blinking, apparently wondering what he was doing there. Boysson concentrated on Chéri, his eyes saccading rapidly back and forth between her face and her ruffled silk bosom.