Death of a Chef (Capucine Culinary Mystery) (8 page)

CHAPTER 14

C
apucine picked up the ringing phone. “
Pardon,
Commissaire,” the brigadier at the front desk said abruptly and then paused awkwardly.

“What is it?”

“There’s a person on the line for you who claims to be an officer of police, but I’m not sure if he is. He doesn’t sound like one.”

“What do you mean?”

“He says he’s a
commissaire-priseur.
Do we have those on the force?”

Capucine laughed. “He’s not a flic. He’s a licensed auctioneer. Put him on.”

“Commissaire, this is Bertrand de Bertignac. I’m a commissaire-priseur at the Hôtel Drouot. I think I have some information that might have something to do with one of your cases.”

“Which case?”

“Chef Brault’s murder. I could tell you about it over the phone, but since it involves a physical object, it might make more sense for you to come down here and let me show you what I’ve come across.”

Two hours later a frustrated Capucine wandered up and down the threadbare carpeting of the halls of the Hôtel Drouot, looking in vain for a receptionist or wall panel that might indicate the location of Bertignac’s office. Rounding a corner, she came across Théophile, Cécile’s husband, avidly making notes in an auction catalog, brows knit in concentration. With a start, he jerked up at Capucine’s approach.

“Capucine! What a surprise. You’re the last person I’d expect to see at a wine auction.” They exchanged air kisses.

“I’m looking for a commissaire-priseur by the name of Bertignac. Is there a list somewhere that tells you which office he’s in?”

“Bertignac? He’s holding the auction I’m bidding on. Right in there.” Théophile pointed at a set of oversized double doors across the hall. “Actually, I should be getting back in. I bought two lots early on, but the one I really want will be coming up in ten minutes or so. The auction’s nearly over. Bertignac will be out in about twenty minutes.”

“Take me with you. I want to see this Bertignac
à l’œuvre
.”

“Absolutely. But we need to get a move on.” Hard in the grips of acquisition lust, he almost pushed Capucine toward the door.

“Let me tell you what we’re after.” He squeezed Capucine’s upper arm excitedly. “Of course, you know that nineteen eighty-four was the worst
millésime
of the century, even worse than nineteen forty-four. Almost none of the Bordeaux châteaux bottled that year. One of the few exceptions was Pétrus. A whole case of it’s for sale. I’m betting that even in an execrable year, France’s best wine is still going to be remarkable. And with any luck, it will go for a song.” He beamed and quickened his pace.

The auction room was long, narrow, low-ceilinged; the walls were covered with panels of crimson cloth. Théophile, normally diffident to the point of shyness, marched purposefully up to the front, with Capucine in his wake. In the third row, two seats in from the aisle, a vacant seat had been reserved with a sale catalog. The man sitting next to it stood up and eased his way out.

“I see you’ve found a friend,” he whispered to Théophile. “She can have my seat. I’m quitting for the day. I lost the Yquem. There are some lunatics in the back who are offering absurd prices, and there is a phone bidder who is a complete loose cannon. I’m wasting my time. I just stayed to hold your seat. I’m going to spend the rest of the afternoon in a café, in the company of sane people. Good luck.”

Théophile and Capucine dropped into the two seats. From behind a podium a tall, spare man with thin hair and aristocratic features peered out intently into the room over tortoiseshell half-glasses, pointing at people with a gold pen, reiterating their bids in a loud voice. At a low table next to him two dark-suited young men and a pretty girl in a blue dress sat with telephones to their ears, raising their hands every now and then to place a bid. On the far side of the podium a man in a black jacket with shiny metal buttons and a crimson collar held the corners of a wooden case of wine, his hands in immaculate white gloves.

“The Savoyards,” Théophile murmured. “They have a monopoly on moving and showing the pieces at Drouot.”

At the podium the pace intensified. All the bidders seemed to have dropped out except a single individual in the back of the room and another on the telephone. Bertignac’s head swiveled back and forth as if he were at a tennis match.

“
Neuf,
” Bertignac said, pointing his pen at the back of the room.

“Nine thousand euros for a single case of wine!” Capucine exclaimed.

“
Chut,
” Théophile hissed, rapt. He dropped his catalog on the floor, bent down, and used the gesture to attempt to see the bidder in the back. The young woman at the telephone table raised a well-manicured index finger.

“Nine and a half,” Bertignac announced, then, without pause, pointed his pen at the rear of the room. “Ten!”

“It’s an American,” Théophile snorted, sitting back in his chair. “I’ve seen him at work. He’s dangerous. He must be made of money.” Théophile was pink with excitement.

Bertignac scanned the room over his glasses as avidly as a cormorant seeking out a fish. There was a long moment of silence.

He tapped the podium three times with his pen and stabbed it at the back of the room. “
Adjugé.
Sold.”

The room deflated with a collective sigh, and broke out in muted conversations.

Three more lots went by. After each one Théophile’s pinkness intensified. The white-gloved Savoyard placed a new case on the table as gently as if it were a newborn baby.

“
Doucement
. Carefully,” Théophile muttered.

“Mesdames et messieurs, this is an exceptional lot,” Bertignac announced. “The only nineteen eighty-four Bordeaux cru worth drinking. I’ve never tasted it myself, but since it’s from the glorious Château Pétrus, it’s bound to be highly interesting. Can I hear two and a half?”

“Over two hundred euros a bottle for a bad wine!” Capucine whispered.

“Nuance, a bad
great
wine.” Théophile gripped his thighs so tightly, the tips of his fingers disappeared into the folds of his trousers. He was having a hard time restraining himself from making the first bid.

The room was heavy with the leaden silence of a church. A man cleared his throat in the back.

Bertignac pointed his pen. “One and a half.” He shook his head with a tolerant smile. “Mesdames et messieurs, this is Pétrus, not Beaujolais Nouveau.” The room laughed politely.

A man at the phone table raised his hand, thumb and index outstretched.

“Voilà, two!” Bertignac said. “Greatness is finally given its due.”

Théophile raised his finger so slightly, Capucine almost didn’t see the gesture. But Bertignac thrust his pen at him.

“Two and a half.”

Almost immediately his pen was jabbed at the back of the room.

“Three.”

There were two beats of silence. Bertignac shot an inquiring glance at the telephone table. The young man shook his head. His bidder had dropped out.

Tiny beads of sweat appeared on Théophile’s brow. He squeezed his thighs in a death grip. Bertignac invited him to bid with a cocked eyebrow.

Théophile stared straight ahead.

Bertignac shrugged his shoulders microscopically and tapped his pen loudly on the rostrum. “Going once!” He looked around the room. “Going tw—”

Théophile’s hand rose to the level of his chin.

“Three!” Bertignac said with a defiant look at the back of the room. “And three and a half,” he added, darting his pen at the back wall.

In a low voice Théophile said, “
Cinque.
Five
.”

There was no answering bid. Bertignac waited barely a second, not even looking at the back of the room, then tapped his pen three times. “Once. Twice. Sold,” he said with the pen thrust at Théophile.

Théophile was in heaven. A woman walked over and handed him a slip of paper. A man in the row in front of them turned and shook his hand. Théophile got up to leave and bent over to whisper in Capucine’s ear.

“If you breathe a word about this to Cécile, I’ll . . . I’ll . . . I don’t know what I’ll do . . . but just don’t.” Inflated with the pride of victory, he floated down the aisle toward the cashier’s table.

Two more lots and it was over. People started to amble out. A line formed at the cashier’s table. Capucine went over to the rostrum. Bertignac bent down, chatting in a low voice with one of the men at the telephone table. Capucine stood patiently until he had finished. He straightened and looked at Capucine over his glasses with eyebrows raised inquiringly.

“Commissaire Le Tellier.”

“My apologies. I saw you with Monsieur de Rougemont and thought you might be here to bid. Let’s go up to my office.” He gave one more instruction to the man at the telephone table and began to make his way down the aisle, nodding, smiling, shaking the occasional hand.

The office was a treasure trove. Paintings filled every available inch of wall space. Silver and porcelain and faïence jostled each other for room on every flat surface.

“If I had an office like this, I’d never get any work done.”

“It’s one of the perks of the métier. All of this stuff will be gone in a month, so I don’t get attached to it. My clients have enduring relationships. My lot is to have one-night stands. But at least I have a lot of them. And they’re often of very high quality.”

“On the phone you said you had some information on the Brault case.”

Bertignac led Capucine to a long sixteenth-century mahogany
table de travail,
littered with morocco-bound books and bibelots.

He picked up what looked like a large, green faïence cachepot decorated with delicate long legged darker green herons and handed it to Capucine. “A sixteenth-century Menton
rafraîchissoir.
”

“Rafraîchissoir? It’s not a cachepot? My mother has two that look almost like that. She puts plants in them.”

Bertignac laughed. “That’s why they sell so well. It’s very refined to have an antique cachepot. A form of philistinism I encourage. But they were made to cool wine. Until the beginning of the nineteenth century people drank mostly rosé, and the upper classes, who had access to ice, preferred it slightly chilled. Normally, I’d start this one out at three thousand euros and expect the bidding to climb to five, maybe six, or seven at the most.” He paused. “But this is a fake. I had to pull it from the sale at the last moment.”

Capucine said nothing.

Bertignac put the rafraîchissoir back on the table.

“Monsieur Brault sent it to me the week before he died.”

“Why did you wait until the last moment to remove it from the sale?”

“That’s a bit embarrassing. You see, this is really an extraordinarily good forgery. The decorations are perfect, and the cracking of the glaze is very realistic, but it just didn’t feel right. Maybe because the green background is just a bit too. And, of course, there’s a dead giveaway.” He turned the rafraîchissoir upside down on the table and pointed to a tiny black coat of arms on the base. “This is the Menton manufacturer’s mark. If you look carefully . . . Wait. Let me get you a magnifying glass.”

He handed Capucine an oversized well-worn wooden-handled magnifying glass. “Look at the mark diagonally against the light. See, it’s slightly raised. That’s because under the glaze there’s a transfer
décalcomanie,
what children call a decal. Menton did use those for the decorations but never for the manufacturer’s marks. Those were inked through a cutout template. There’s no doubt this is a fake, but it’s still an extraordinarily good one.

“Unfortunately, this sale was assembled by one of my assistants while I was in the States. She’s highly competent but still a bit new to the profession. And since it came from Brault, who was well known here, she, quite naturally, didn’t think to give it a good going-over. Of course, the minute I laid eyes on it, I saw it was a fake.”

“Was Brault a good customer?”

“He bought a few pieces from me over the years. He had a good eye and was very knowledgeable. Recently he had been selling far more than buying.”

“And why would you guess Chef Brault tried to sell a forgery?”

“It’s puzzling. It’s hard to believe Brault ever bought a fake, even though this one looks almost authentic. So good that once it was on a shelf or in a display cabinet, even an experienced collector wouldn’t have noticed something was wrong. Still, I just can’t imagine how he acquired it in the first place.”

Bertignac hesitated. There was something else he was wrestling with. “And I’ll tell you another strange thing.”

Capucine relaxed her face to encourage him.

“This is probably a violation of confidentiality, but under the circumstances it seems warranted. The catalog for this sale has been out for a week. One of the ways you can bid is with a pre-auction preemption. You bid a price, which the auctioneer keeps secret. If the bidding on the floor doesn’t reach your price, you get the item. Do you understand how that works?”