Death of a Chef (Capucine Culinary Mystery) (5 page)

Alexandre sat on the edge of the sofa, elbows on knees, engrossed in the screen.

The program cut to a clip of Folon scuttling off, head bowed, from the parvis of the church as the congregation began to emerge, and then flashed back to the pretty woman.

“It certainly
looks
like he’s the guilty party. But the police tell us a different story. According to a press release issued early this morning, it seems Chef Brault didn’t commit suicide at all. He was murdered.”

The talking head smiled with dripping sarcasm. “And the Police Judiciaire have placed the case in the hands of our favorite flic, couture cop, socialite, and girl about town, Commissaire Capucine Le Tellier, who . . .” The woman paused again for maximum effect. “Just happens to be married to
Le Monde’s
top restaurant critic, Alexandre de Huguelet.”

The screen cut to a shot of Alexandre and Capucine leaving the church after the funeral. As they walked down the steps, Capucine gave Alexandre a look that seemed laden with complicity, as if she had just pulled off a fast one. Capucine moaned.

The talking head came on again and favored the audience with her three-quarter profile, as if she was lost in thought. Then she molded her mouth into a coy, first-date smile. “What’s your guess? Is the much-mediatized commissaire just trying to cover up for the lethal consequences of her husband’s profession? Or do you think it might
really
have been a murder? But why would anyone want to extinguish the rising star of French cuisine? Maybe we’ll learn a little more tomorrow afternoon, when
Le Monde
appears on the stands.”

CHAPTER 8

“T
he tragedy was that Jean-Louis Brault allowed himself to be sucked into an Icarus flight of fancy,” David read mellifluously from the morning edition of
Le Figaro
. “Had this doggedly pedestrian cook accepted his terrestrial limits, we might still have a friendly little
bistrot
perfect for a Sunday family lunch prior to an afternoon’s leisurely stroll through the Parc de Saint-Cloud—”

Capucine bustled into her office. Isabelle looked up with a girl-to-girl smile. “Voilà, our very own couture cop.”

Capucine shot her a look so hostile, it was obvious she was restraining herself from administering a bitch slap. There were three long beats of shocked silence. Capucine attempted to unload the situation and dominate her anger.

“What were you reading?”

“Lucien Folon’s so-called eulogy of Jean-Louis Brault in this morning’s
Le Figaro,
” David replied.

“You’d think he’d be the last person to hang on to the myth that Brault committed suicide,” Capucine muttered through clenched teeth.

The meeting was off to a bad start. Normally her briefings with the three brigadiers were friendly and relaxed. They had been her constant companions ever since Capucine—then a rookie fiscal brigade lieutenant—had wormed herself into the Police Judiciaire’s fabled La Crim’, the section that dealt with serious felonies. The four saw themselves as close colleagues, accomplices who spoke to each other with the familiar
tu,
not the formal
vous.
But that clearly was not going to be the order of the day.

“All right,” Capucine said with a sharp edge to her voice. “This one has to get solved fast. Very fast. Do what you have to. Don’t worry about regulations. I want to tie this one up quickly with a nice red bow so we can shove the killer in the face of the press so hard, he sticks in their gullet.”

It was the first time they had seen Capucine seriously angry. They sat up straight in their chairs, waiting for orders.

“The news of the day is that Brault’s car was found at the
préfourrière
on the avenue Foche where they keep the vehicles the police have towed in the north of Paris. The car had been sitting unclaimed in an underground public parking lot on the boulevard Haussmann since the Friday of the murder. They don’t allow long-term parking and called the police to tow it after twenty-four hours. At the préfourrière, they checked the registration, discovered it was Brault’s, and called us. Forensics has already had a look at the car. The steering wheel and dashboard had been wiped clean. There was hunting stuff in the trunk . . . rubber boots, an olive-green coat, a cartridge bag, two boxes of twelve-gauge shells. No gun. The only prints on the objects in the trunk were Brault’s.

“Isabelle, I need you to get on the computer and take Brault apart. I want to know everything we have on him for the past five years. Bank accounts. Credit card records. Travel out of the country. The works. And get it done today.

“David, I need you in front of a screen, too. Find out everything about Brault’s family. They’re from a place called La Cadière-d’Azur in the Var. It’s near Bandol. Find out if the parents are still alive. If they are, get them on the phone. Press them a little. See if they know about any friends, enemies, financial problems, anything we should know about. In other words, the usual, but go deeper than normal.

“Momo, get down to the delivery company and interview the two guys who delivered the trunk. I need to know exactly what they saw when they picked it up. Spend time with them. Find out how they reacted to picking up a trunk that turned out to weigh a hundred and sixty pounds.”

“What are you going to be doing, Commissaire?” Isabelle asked.

“I’m going down to the Puces to see the person who owns the stand where the trunk came from. I want to find out how he fits into this. After that, I’m going to see what I can discover at Brault’s restaurant. . . . All right, let’s get going. I want you all back in here this evening. We’ll sit down and see what we have.”

 

Paris’ largest flea market, the Marché aux Puces at the Porte de Clignancourt, was actually a dozen separate markets, running the gamut from the Marché de la rue Jean-Henri Fabre, with its heaps of discarded, undoubtedly lice-ridden clothing, to the Marché Paul Bert, which offered antiques so precious, they rivaled those of the rarified shops on the Faubourg Saint-Honoré.

Cécile had bought her portmanteau at the Marché Cambo, which was a notch or two down from Paul Bert but still pricey enough to exude an odor of luxury. Cécile’s explanation of the location of the stand had been vague. “I think it was one or two rows after a stand that sells an amazing selection of apothecary jars.”

From the outside, the Cambo market looked like a nondescript, low-ceilinged warehouse, but the inside was a veritable Ali Baba’s cavern. The rows of open stalls formed compact, dark little streets, an almost oriental bazaar of antiques and bibelots. Every château in France seemed to have been pillaged and the booty placed on display.

Capucine walked down the central alleyway and found the stand with the apothecary jars. She zigzagged up and down the rows, looking for Vuitton trunks. It was only at the sixth row that she found it, a brightly lit cubicle, open at one end, with steep piles of Vuitton trunks and suitcases and tall glass display cases filled with handbags and leather accessories. The stand was unattended. She took a quick look without going in and then continued on down the row. Twenty feet away, a dozen people lounged at a long, thin monastery table that had been set out in the middle of the alleyway. It was clearly the end of the stand holder’s lunch break.

The group exuded intellectual shabby chic with the emphasis on shabby. The sole exception, a trim young woman with fire engine–red lipstick and nail polish, wearing a vintage, tight-waisted, bright red- and black-striped dress, was made even more conspicuous by the drabness of her colleagues. The table was littered with empty plastic and metal containers of food and nearly empty bottles of wine. The group chatted monosyllabically, smoking and sipping the last of the wine. As she passed the table, the woman in red scrutinized Capucine’s Gaultier suit out of the corner of her eye.

Reluctant to intrude, Capucine sauntered back down the row, peering into stalls. The world of the Puces was a mystery. Endless hours waiting for a passerby to show a flicker of interest, spending the day reading paperbacks or pouring over catalogs, with only brief breaks for a chat with a neighbor over a cigarette. How could any intelligent person want a life that idled along so placidly at five miles an hour?

She entered the Vuitton stand and examined a stack of trunks piled ten feet high.

A man in an ill-fitting green tweed jacket and baggy corduroy trousers rushed up with a yellow-toothed smile, hastily swallowing a mouthful of food.

“I see you’re fascinated by the striped ones,” he said, indicating a pile of beige- and brown-striped trunks. “Louis Vuitton designed those stripes, which replaced the original Trianon design, for the eighteen seventy-six exhibition in Paris. They really belong in a museum.”

He led Capucine to a stack of heavily distressed trunks and suitcases covered in the well-known brown cloth with the gold LV monogram. “These are from the very first run of the now famous Damier design, which was introduced in eighteen eighty-eight. They all date from the period between eighty-eight and ninety-two, when Louis Vuitton died and his son took over the business.”

“You’re the owner of this stand?”

“I am indeed, madame. Arnaud Boysson at your service.”

Capucine produced her police wallet, badge on one flap and tricolored striped ID card on the other. Boysson’s ebullient mood deflated like a collapsed soufflé. He looked at her guardedly.

“You sold a Vuitton trunk to Madame Cécile de Rougemont last week. When it was delivered, a dead body was found inside. I’m here to talk to you about that.”

Boysson became ashen. “This isn’t about Chef Brault, is it? The papers all said his body had been discovered in a Vuitton trunk, but I just didn’t make the connection.”

“Of course you did.”

“Madame de Rougemont’s name wasn’t mentioned in the press. I had no way of knowing the body was found in the trunk I sold her, now did I?” he said with a sullen look. He went to a desk in the corner of the stand and produced a large ledger bound in green cloth so old, it must have come from one of his Puces colleagues.

On the defensive, Boysson pointed a grimy finger at an entry. The name had been misspelled. “C. De RougeMont.” Capucine had seen the amount on the receipt, but was again taken aback that Cécile had paid the price of a secondhand car for an old trunk.

“Monsieur, I congratulate you on keeping such thorough financial records. That’s something one doesn’t expect at the Puces.”

Boysson sniffed a sniff of righteous indignation, but said nothing.

“Your trunks don’t come cheap, do they?”

“The trunk Madame de Rougemont acquired is pre–World War I. It’s a true collector’s piece, complete with
all
fifteen of the original wood hangers. A very wise investment. I’m sure she’s an important collector.”

Even though Capucine found the little man profoundly irritating, she resisted the temptation to tell him what Cécile planned to do with the trunk.

“Did you notice anything unusual when you arrived here on Saturday?”

“Yes, both of my shutters were down, but the padlocks had disappeared.”

“Show me.”

Boysson found a long pole with a steel hook at the top, went to the front of the stand, and pulled two screens halfway down.

“All the stands are equipped the same way. The inside screen is mesh. You pull it down if you have to go out when the market is open. That way people can see the merchandise. The second screen is solid metal. We all lock both of them when the market closes. I thought it was the men from the delivery company who had forgotten to put the padlocks back. I called and scolded them, but the dispatcher didn’t seem to know anything about it, so I just bought new locks and forgot about it.”

“I’m amazed you leave such valuable objects with so little protection.”

“It’s more secure than you’d think. The doors to the building are locked at night, and there’s a night watchman with one of those portable time-clock devices to keep him patrolling all night long.”

“And who has the keys to the building?”

“All the stand holders do, of course, as well as the delivery companies. They usually make their pickups very early in the morning to beat the traffic.”

“How does that work?”

“We all have our own systems. Personally, I put a bright red sticky note on the piece to be picked up and also tie the bill of lading to the handle. That way the delivery people know where it goes and I get a signed receipt. The delivery people have the keys to my padlocks and are normally very scrupulous in locking up after they leave.”

“We’re not sure where Chef Brault was killed. If it was here, do you think anyone might have heard the shot?”

“I have no idea. I’ve never been here much after closing time. But when you think about it, the watchman’s circuit takes him to the far end of the building. You might not hear a shot that far away.”

“Did you know Chef Brault? Had you ever been to his restaurant?”

“Good Lord, no. I couldn’t begin to afford places like that. It’s true my pieces are valuable, but this is not a very profitable business. The holding costs for the inventory are enormous. When you work at the Puces, you trade a life of luxury for the privilege of spending your day surrounded by the things you love.”

CHAPTER 9

“P
rosper!” the shirt-sleeved maître d’ called out.

“Someone to see you.”

He used the familiar tu. Ouvrard was obviously still one of the boys, clearly not yet Chef Ouvrard to his staff.

Capucine had arrived at the restaurant just as the cleaning crew was getting to work after the luncheon service. Standing in the foyer, which was identical to the one in the hotel with its satin drapes and expensive-looking faïence on Greek pillars, she could hear the vacuum cleaners at work in the dining room. Ouvrard arrived with a blend of diffidence and truculence. Playing to his vanity, Capucine stuck her hand out to be shaken.

“Chef, it’s good of you to find the time to see me. I know how busy you must be.”

“No problem. Let’s go to the office. It’ll be quieter there.” Capucine couldn’t help but notice that it wasn’t
his
office yet.

The small glass-walled room looked out onto the kitchen, which was being mopped down while the
plongeurs
attacked pots and pans in a deep, steamy stainless-steel sink. Capucine and Ouvrard sat on either side of a small marble-topped table strewn with papers. The only decoration in the tiny room was a tall cylindrical faïence vase containing a few tortured, twisting branches.

Ouvrard noticed Capucine examining it.

“Chef loved this thing. It’s apparently a very valuable piece. I should probably move it into the dining room, but I don’t like to tamper with his stuff.” He seemed to realize the incongruity of what he had just said, and gave a short laugh. “I’m in a funny spot. I’m a sous-chef with no chef to report to.”

“That can’t be easy.”

“For now it’s not a problem. I just do what sous-chefs do—cook the boss’s cuisine. Sous-chefs exist so the chef can take a day off without anyone noticing.” He paused. “We keep our three stars until the new Guide is published on the last day of February next year. But they’re not my stars. They’re Chef’s. Until February I have to carry on as if he was still here. So I’m trying to fit into his clogs and lead my life as if it was his.” He looked at Capucine with a quizzical smile and snorted. “Right down to fulfilling his obligations to his girlfriend.”

“And when you’re free to do your own cooking, will it be very different from Chef Brault’s?”

“Of course. Chef was famous for his passion for vegetables. He took Alain Passard’s hyper-organic, neo-vegetarian school one step further. The blossoming of the philosophy of not putting anything on the table that doesn’t come from a horse-plowed field.”

Capucine told herself that she was going to have to ask Alexandre to explain these horse-plowed fields chefs never seemed to stop talking about.

“Actually, I think Chef was just neurotic. It wasn’t so much that he loved vegetables. It was that he was afraid of meat. Protein was an alien substance to him. But the result was phenomenal. His cuisine was truly ephemeral. He managed to create intense flavor without the burden of substance—foams, purées whipped as light as air, magical things no one had ever eaten before. His dishes were like a chiffon veil wafting behind a dancing ballerina.” He looked up at Capucine to see if she understood. “Me, I want to hold the ballerina in my arms and feel the warmth of her body.”

“Does that mean you’re going to do more meat?”

“Naturally. Spring lamb, sweetbreads,
poulet fermier
raised on the farm of a friend of mine in Brittany. But it will be done with a delicacy that Chef would have appreciated. Absolutely nothing heavy. No beef and, above all, no game.”

“Chef Brault enjoyed hunting, didn’t he?”

“I don’t know if he enjoyed it, but he certainly went pheasant shooting every now and then during the season. It was odd. He never brought back any birds. He said he didn’t want the reek of them even in the trunk of his car. If you ask me, it was another one of his neuroses. Did you know his father is a baron? I think he only went shooting because he thought it was a baronial sort of thing to do. It was his duty. A way of keeping a link to his family traditions.”

“Did he have any enemies that you knew of?”

“Enemies? Chef didn’t know enough people to have enemies. Other than the staff at the restaurant, he only talked to his producers, and he had a love relationship with every last one of them. And, of course, his financial backer, who was the closest thing he had to a best friend.”

“No girlfriends other than Mademoiselle Duclos?”

“Not that I knew of, and Delphine tells me he wouldn’t even turn his head to look at a pretty girl on the street. She kept hoping he’d have a little fling on the side and cut her some slack.” Ouvrard laughed.

“Tell me about the financial backer, Monsieur Brissac-Vanté.”

“A bigmouthed playboy. The front-of-the-house staff didn’t like him all that much, because he’d come in and act like he owned the place. But I didn’t mind him, because he was good for Chef.”

“Did he come here often?”

“About once a month, sometimes more. Always a six-or eight-top, and he’d only call the day before. That would create real problems for the maître d’, as you can imagine. Then he’d talk big at his table, order very expensive grand crue wines—all of which we’d comp, of course—and expect Chef to come out so he could make a big production and tell his guests he was the éminence grise of modern haute cuisine and Chef was his favorite protégé.”

“Did this irritate Chef Brault?”

“Au contraire. He adored Brissac-Vanté. They’d spend hours on the phone. Brissac-Vanté was the only one who could get Chef out of the dumps. And thank God he could, because Chef could get very depressed when he set his mind to it.”

“But Brissac-Vanté refused to invest more money in the hotel.”

“Damn straight he did. That hotel was a complete waste of time. Brault probably picked up the idea from the Troisgros when he was an intern down there. It was right out of the Michelin Guide of the nineteen thirties. One-star restaurants were ‘very good,’ two-stars were ‘worth a detour,’ and three-stars ‘merited a trip.’ So naturally, the idea was that if you were taking a trip to a restaurant, you had to spend the night in the restaurant’s hotel.” He laughed. “Not only was that from another age, but it made no sense at all if you’re twenty minutes from Paris. I think Brissac-Vanté only staked Brault because he wanted to keep him happy and motivated in his kitchen. The idea of doing up more than three or four rooms was insane, but it was Chef’s biggest hobbyhorse.”

“So who owns the restaurant now?”

“The court hasn’t decided yet. Brissac-Vanté acts like he does. He came the other day with his wife and had a long lunch with some very heavy-duty wines. He stayed until the service was over and then gathered everyone in the kitchen for a pep talk. He was going to insure that no one had anything to worry about and the restaurant was going to go on forever and climb to new heights. He implied that I was in full charge, but didn’t actually say it. That didn’t make my job any easier, let me tell you.”

“So Chef Brault had no enemies that you knew of?”

“The only person that came even close to being an enemy was that son of a bitch Lucien Folon. That guy couldn’t stop hammering away at Chef. He’d write these reviews that you wouldn’t believe. Always the same stuff. Chef’s cuisine was limp-dicked, tasteless vegetarian crap, sexed up with bizarre, exotic spices. Everyone in the kitchen hates his guts. And he couldn’t stop coming. He’d be here at least once a month for lunch or dinner. If Chef didn’t insist on cooking everything that went on Folon’s table himself, the guys would probably have pissed on it.” Ouvrard chuckled.

“Why do you think Folon hated Chef Brault’s cuisine so much?”

“That’s the funny thing. I don’t think he hated it at all. He’d clean off his plate. I’d watch him through the judas. You know when they love the meal. You can see it in their eyes. Folon absolutely relished what he ate. Every time, we were sure he was finally going to write a good review, but the more he seemed to like his meal, the more he trashed us in the press. Go figure.”