French Fried (6 page)

“Skeletal is chic,” snapped his wife, “not to mention healthful. You should order salad yourself.”

What a bossy
man! Jacques Laurent tried to insist that I order that nasty sausage. And his nose! Not to mention hair so black it looked dyed. His wife’s silver hair was lovely, but she was as sharp-tongued as he was pushy, not that he paid attention unless she disagreed with him. And I’m happy to say that my trout tartare was very tasty. They’d flavored it with lemon, olive oil, and fresh herbs. “It was so thoughtful of the department to send us the foie gras and champagne,” I said to the chairman.

He looked up from his sausage and Lyonnais potatoes fried in goose fat (Think of the cholesterol count in that meal!). “I’m not aware that we sent anything. Why wasn’t I told?” He looked offended. “I’ll have to ask the departmental secretary.”

“It was waiting for me at the hotel.” I didn’t mention that it might have had a terrible effect on the pâté thief, serious enough to bring on the aborted autopsy. And what would the thief think when he regained consciousness and discovered the cut on his chest?

Jason was asking Sylvie Girard if there were any special rules for runners in Lyon. Goodness, but she was pretty with her curly black hair and elfin face! At least she wasn’t a chemist, so Jason wouldn’t become infatuated. And obviously he planned to take his usual morning run tomorrow. Given the problems I’d had just walking to the hotel, the thought of my husband loping along in that traffic was terrifying.

Professor Laurent answered the question for Sylvie. “Our law officers tend to suspect runners of being criminals escaping the scene of their crimes. Unless, of course, they are running on designated paths.”

“I didn’t see any running paths as I took the train over to the university,” said Jason. “I want something close to the hotel.”

“If you go early in the morning, you shouldn’t have a problem,” said Catherine. “Where is your hotel?”

Jason told her, and she suggested a route he might take before traffic became heavy. She was a handsome woman, although rather aloof.

“It is most unfortunate that Adrien and Albertine had to leave Lyon before your arrival,” said the chairman. “I believe Albertine had plans to show Madam Blue the city. Is that not so, Victoire?”

“She mentioned the murals, the churches, and the traboules, all sights visitors to Lyon would wish to see. Unfortunately, I have too many engagements to assume those duties myself. Perhaps you can hire a guide, Madam Blue.”

Jason frowned. Doubtless he thought a guide would be expensive, but what did he expect me to do? Sit in my room at the hotel watching the leaves blowing on the slender branches outside. For excitement I could eat hotdogs at the Perrache Station and visit newspaper kiosks.

“I would be happy to show Madam Blue around Lyon.” Sylvie flashed me a merry smile. “We could go to see the murals first. You will find them so exciting.”

I thanked her, while pondering the fact that Sylvie had a British accent, but spoke what sounded like excellent French. Her husband warned me that I would have to put up with her endless picture taking.

“Indeed, our Sylvie is worse than a Japanese tourist,” said Madam Laurent.

“And you must ride in a car with no top,” her husband continued. “An ancient Austin Healy.”

“Still, the weather is fine, Raymond, so why would one need a top? Anyway, I am having a new one made. Perhaps it will be ready tomorrow.”

I agreed to ride in the topless car and then discovered that Jason would have to bring me to the university with him tomorrow to meet Sylvie, which meant getting up very early after so little sleep this afternoon. However, that trip would give me the chance to question the secretary about the pâté. And a local guide with a car was not to be passed up, unless, of course, rain was predicted.

Following Sylvie’s offer, Gabrielle Doigne decided that she would be the best person to show me the major churches of Lyon, although Sylvie was welcome to drive, and finally Madam Laurent offered to devote a morning on the third day to showing me the traboules, passages cut through private property so that pedestrians could cross from one street to another. They dated from the days when residences crowded together, sharing walls, for long distances. Even in the company of the chairman’s acerbic wife, I longed to see the traboules; they had courtyards, towers, and ornate winding staircases inside.

“I will drive that day, too,” said Sylvie. “The traboules are—”

“Garçon,” commanded Laurent, evidently tired of the plans to entertain me. He burst into a stream of irritated French, and the waiter promptly removed the one chair that had sat empty beside Catherine.

“Robert didn’t tell you that he would be absent from the dinner?” Madam Laurent demanded. “That is unlike him.”

“He has been absent all day. But wait.” The chairman turned to Jason. “Did he not meet you at the airport, Professor Blue?”

“Levasseur?” Jason asked, and his question gave me a start. “I haven’t seen him. We received a message saying the Guillots had to leave town. In fact, I left Carolyn at Perrache because I hoped to talk with Robert today.”

“Very strange,” muttered the chairman. “Levasseur was to meet you at the airport and drive you to your hotel.”

“Oh dear,” I said. “This professor’s name is Robert Levasseur? Is he, by any chance, French Canadian?”

Jason said he was sure he had mentioned Robert to me after the Canadian meeting. “Well, if you did, I was much too upset to remember after being rescued from the lifeboat,” I retorted. What a terrible story I had to tell these people about a member of their department. “I’m afraid I know what happened to your professor. When I entered my hotel room, I found him seemingly asleep across our beds, having eaten half the pâté delivered to us as a welcome gift. I took him for a thief and had the police summoned.”

“A
thief
!” exclaimed Madam Laurent.

“Well, he did eat our pâté,” I replied defensively, “and I didn’t know who he was. He was lying there on his stomach making funny noises, and then the horrid hotel woman said he was dead.”

“Dead?” they exclaimed in a ragged chorus.

“If you didn’t know who he was, why was he in bed in your hotel room?” demanded Victoire, as if I had arrived for an assignation, only to find his body.

“I really couldn’t say,” I replied. “I’d never seen the man before, or even heard his name until today. You’d have to ask a very unpleasant woman at the hotel desk. She’s the one who let him into our room. Maybe he was a friend of hers.” Madam Laurent looked exceedingly angry.

“As I was saying, when the medical examiner arrived, he agreed with Yvette that he was dead, so Professor Levasseur was taken away in a body bag.”

“My God, not another corpse!” muttered my husband.

“Actually, he wasn’t dead,” I protested, “and if he had been, it wasn’t my fault. After I had lunch with the inspector and the doctor, Doctor Petit went off to perform the autopsy. At that time it was discovered that your friend wasn’t dead after all.”

“Then where is Levasseur?” demanded the chairman.

“In some hospital. They sewed up the autopsy cut and sent him off, according to Inspector Roux, who called me with that information tonight. That’s what I was trying to tell you, Jason, when I arrived.”

All the members of our group then burst into agitated conversation in French while the waiter served a dessert that the chairman had ordered for the whole table, something to do with the Red Cross—a red tart, a red fruit, some white strips, and something that looked like a chile relleno with sugar sprinkled on it. I approached the dish with great caution, while Jason stared at me accusingly, as if I had personally endangered his friend.

We were both
so tired that we dozed until the cab driver woke us up at Perrache and then the hotel. Much to my surprise, the Charlemagne was nicely decorated. We were given a large key at the desk, after which we squeezed into an incredibly small elevator. When I mentioned that the hotel seemed better than expected, Carolyn admitted that it was, except for the bathroom, where the shower sprayed water everywhere, especially on the floor because there was no curb between the shower stall and the bathroom floor. She also assured me that we were not in the room where Robert had fallen ill.

Feeling conscience stricken that I had left her to face such a trying situation, I apologized. Then, while I had a shower in the dripping bathroom, Carolyn returned a phone call. When I waded out, wrapped in a damp towel, she told me that Robert was now dead.

More bad news. “It’s hard to believe that a medical examiner could make a mistake like that,” I said, accepting the pajamas Carolyn had retrieved from my suitcase, which the cab driver had, for a tip, retrieved from the locker at Perrache.

“Doctor Petit thinks it’s significant that your friend appeared dead when he wasn’t. He’s having the lab follow up on an idea he has about what might have been in the pâté, and of course, he’ll have toxicology done on the stomach contents.”

“Poor Robert. He was an excellent scientist and very personable. Why do they think the pâté killed him?” I asked, as we climbed into twin beds and turned off the lights. “It could be something else entirely, something that sent him into a coma.”

“A stroke? He looked too young for that,” said Carolyn, “and Jason, I wish you’d take the pâté theory seriously; that pâté was meant for us. If I’d eaten it, you’d have found me dead when you got home.”

A terrible thought. What kind of food poisoning would one find in pâté? Something the goose had eaten that ended up in its liver? Or perhaps something put into the pâté, part of a recipe? “Did it have mushrooms in it?” I asked.

Carolyn thought there might have been truffles because it had looked so delicious, and she had been furious that the man, whom she hadn’t known was a friend, had eaten our gift.

“If the black specks were toadstools mistaken for mushrooms—”

“Why would the department send us a welcome present made at a place that can’t distinguish mushrooms from toadstools?” she asked.

“We don’t even know who sent the gift. Maybe Robert brought it.”

Carolyn said he hadn’t according to Yvette, and would I at least consider being careful, in case there
was
someone who wanted to kill us?

“Who, in Lyon, would want to kill
us
?” I asked her. Carolyn muttered something about Albertine and her wretched dog, and I had to laugh, which did not go over well. Acting on a better idea, I gave my wife a good-night kiss, and we both drifted into exhausted sleep.