Death of a Chef (Capucine Culinary Mystery) (11 page)

The five men exchanged covert glances. With a smirk, Piquoiseau muttered, “Beginner’s luck.”

Césariot’s team retreated a few feet away to discuss their strategy.

“But don’t get me wrong,” Ungolin said. “The Baron had a hard row to hoe with his wife gone and no money. He did his best to bring his boys up. And he had his work cut out for him. That Antonin was a bad egg from the beginning. A born
voyou
—a delinquent—he hot-wired cars so many times for joyrides, the gendarmes would go straight to him every time a car was missing. They’d keep him a night in the
cabane
and then let him go without booking him.”

“Anou did it only because the food in the gendarmerie detention cell was better than what he got at home. At least it had some meat in it,” Le Papet said with a smoker’s gurgling laugh.

Ungolin stepped into the circle and attempted to duplicate David’s shot. His boule landed a foot away from the cochonnet.

“What happened to Antonin?” David asked.

“One day he disappeared,” Ungolin said, flicking his fingers open into the sky. “No one knows why, but good riddance. Probably finally did something bad enough he knew the gendarmes wouldn’t be letting him go in the morning. Bound to be a mechanic somewhere. He knew cars. Or at least he knew how to start them without a key.”

The group chortled.

“Funny how the two boys were so different,” David said.

“That they were,” Césariot said.

“Little Jean-Louis was as shy as a goat kid, always hugging the walls when he walked through the village,” Le Bosco said.

“That was because he didn’t have a woman to bring him up when he was little. No man can grow up normal without a woman’s tender hand to help him,” Le Papet said. The men all nodded in reverence at this truism, despite the fact that the presence of the fair sex in the café and its environs was unthinkable.

The play continued for another two hours. The last shot was David’s. As he rocked back and forth, pivoting on his ankles, his arm swinging like the pendulum of a grandfather clock, he felt a wave of perfect contentment wash over him like the warm surf of a Provençal beach. He rose in the liquid release of a loosely coiled spring and launched the boule, sending it off with backspin from his fingertips. It landed seven inches behind the cochonnet and rolled gently backward. From where David stood, it was the same distance from the cochonnet as Césariot’s boule.

The men bent over the cochonnet in a huddle. Ungolin produced a twig and measured the distances with the care of a surgeon performing a brain operation. David’s boule was microscopically closer, but still unquestionably the winning boule. It was a shutout: Ungolin’s team had beaten Césariot’s thirteen to nothing.

“We’re going to make them kiss Fanny’s ass!” Ungolin shouted, giving David a warm hug. “And they’re going to buy us so much pastaga, they’ll have to take us home in wheelbarrows.” He was overjoyed. A shutout was something that almost never happened in pétanque.

Inside the bar Ungolin, as excited as a small child on a sugar high, rushed up to a well-patinated wooden box hanging on the wall and hysterically rang a small brass bell attached to the side, yelling, “They’re going to kiss Fanny’s ass. How sweet it is. They’re going to kiss the relic!”

To loud shouts and much laughter, the two portals of the box were opened to reveal a woman painted in a crude naïve style bending forward, lifting her skirt and frilly petticoat to expose ample and shapely buttocks of plaster bas-relief. One by one the three men from the losing team went up and ceremoniously kissed the painting to choruses of loud ribald cheering. Drinks were at the expense of the losers.

Césariot brought David his pastis. “I guess it must be true. You Cannois do have a bit of talent at boules. I guess some of our Provençal blood must have flowed your way. Do you also have the tradition?”

“Absolutely. In my village we have an almost identical box on the wall, but I’ve never seen it used.”

“Of course you haven’t. You’re all too good at the game. Or maybe the sun is too hot out there for you to have a taste for Fanny’s ass,” Ungolin said.

There was a soft rumble of sly laughter. David had been excluded from an inside joke. In a gesture of apology to the estranger, Césariot patted him on the back but didn’t explain the joke.

CHAPTER 18

T
he banner headline of
Le Figaro
read
FIRMIN ROQUE—HERO OF THE FRENCH COMMUNIST PARTY—DIES TRAGICALLY.
It was not surprising the headline went across all eight columns. Roque had been an icon of the Party, an institution that, even though now toothless and backward looking, had once been a vibrant force on the French political scene.

It was the large box that took up most of page one above the fold that caught Capucine’s eye: portraits of the five key individuals in Roque’s worker-run and worker-owned company, with brief bios underneath. The face in the middle was Thierry Brissac-Vanté’s, considerably younger, his hair curlier, his smile pearlier, looking even more like an empty-headed playboy.

The uniformed receptionist, who also served as her secretary, knocked on the door. “Commissaire, don’t forget you have your weekly review with the lieutenants in five minutes.”

“Push it back half an hour. Something’s come up.”

“Oui, Commissaire.”

The reason for the big box filled with pictures was that there was no real information on Roque’s death. All that was known was that he and his wife had gone out to a local bistro for dinner. When they came home, the lights wouldn’t turn on, so Roque had gone down to the basement with a flashlight and was electrocuted as he inserted a new fuse. That was it. No commentary from the local gendarmes. Nothing other than a tearful quote from the wife, who, the reporter assured the reader, was “hysterical with grief.”

Capucine sipped her coffee, now cold. Much had been made of Roque at Sciences Po. It had been quite a story, the archetypal liberation and revival of a dying business by its workers.

The Faïence de Châteauneuf-sur-Loire, an ancient concern that had been started just after the Revolution, had filed for bankruptcy. The chairman made speech after speech promising the workers that not a single employee would be fired after the debt had been restructured. The workers were convinced that the problem was mismanagement and that the business was fundamentally sound. A charismatic young foreman, Roque, became their spokesman. There were daily demonstrations of increasing violence.

One day, the chairman’s driver attempted to force his limo through a crowd of demonstrators in front of the factory gates. A worker was knocked down. The crowd went wild. The chairman was pulled out of his car. Roque grabbed the chairman’s briefcase and later found a list of two hundred workers who were to be dismissed as soon as the banks agreed to the board’s terms.

The gates were chained shut, and Roque announced the factory had been lawfully taken over by the workers. Roque then moved the inventories to a warehouse at the edge of the factory compound and laid a bonfire over twenty butane tanks, announcing he would blow everything up if the police attempted to breach the fence.

Roque spent the night going through the files in the executive offices and discovered the details of the restructuring plan. In addition to the two hundred workers who were to be let go without indemnities, the factory was to be retooled to make cheap, mass-produced products. The faïence’s artisanal skills, honed over the centuries, would be irrevocably lost. On top of it all, other documents revealed that management had received massive bonuses, while worker pay was frozen due to the crisis. The press lapped it all up.

In the end, the government capitulated and created a special form of bankruptcy that handed the ownership to the workers. The bank debt was rescheduled, and a pool of new investors was found to create a capital base. Much was made of the fact that the ancient production techniques, an important part of French heritage, would be preserved. Roque would act as “leader,” since capitalist titles had been abolished.

The saga had held the nation enthralled for months. Roque became immensely popular, and it was even rumored that he would run for public office, but he never did.

The caption under Brissac-Vanté’s photo explained he was pro tem head of the investors’ pool, which held 25 percent of the faïence’s shares.

Capucine asked the receptionist to find the number for the gendarme
capitainerie
that was responsible for Châteauneuf-sur-Loire and the name of the
capitaine.

When she dialed the capitainerie, a crisp military voice answered, “Gendarmerie National, brigade de Gien.”

Capucine announced her brigade and rank and asked if Capitaine de Crébillon was available.

“
Affirmatif,
Commissaire,” the young voice barked, keen on leaving no doubt whatsoever that the gendarmerie was part of the military. Capucine’s heart sank. She had a very bad track record with the gendarmerie.

In less than five seconds a suave voice came on the line. “Bonjour, madame. What a pleasure to hear your voice again.” Capucine was at a complete loss. The upper-class accent could easily have been that of any one of the denizens of her family’s dinner table, but no memory popped into her head.

“Capitaine, a thousand pardons for intruding into your busy morning, but—”

“Chère madame, my mornings exist but to be of service to you.”

There was nothing Capucine loathed more than these flowers of aristocratic politeness, but she had to admit it was a pleasure to deal with a gendarme cut from a different cloth.

“Capitaine, you’re too kind. As it happens, there’s some possibility—a minor one, really—that the death of Monsieur Roque might have something to do with one of my cases in Paris. Would it inconvenience you greatly if I came down to discuss his death with you?”

There was a pause. The
fleur de politesse
seemed to have wilted. But it quickly revived. “Commissaire, who could refuse an offer so politely put? When would it be convenient for you to come?”

“Would this afternoon be too soon? With the new autoroute I could be there in an hour and a half.”

“Let’s have lunch then. There’s an army of journalists camped outside of my office. The last thing I want is for the press to think that the Police Judiciaire is investigating the case. There’s a reasonable enough restaurant in Gien called the Auberge des Moines. I’ll meet you there at one. How’s that?”

 

Lunch was surprisingly good. They started with
friture de Loire,
little two-inch river fish that were deep-fried straight from the Loire and were eaten whole—heads, bones, and all. The uniformed captain turned out to be a rubicund, short man in his middle thirties with a perfect half hemisphere of hard, round belly. Capucine was sure she had run into him at some social engagement or other. The fact that he took some time over the wine list was no surprise given the complexion of his cheeks, prematurely rosy from ruptured capillaries. When the fritures arrived, they were deliciously crunchy and perfectly set off by the icy Domaine de la Garenne Sancerre the capitaine had chosen.

“They come from right out there,” the capitaine explained, waiving his glass at the broad, listless, almost stagnant Loire outside the window of the restaurant. He raised his glass at Capucine. “Sancerre is the great asset of this posting.” He aimed his glass at the region, a few leagues on the other side of the river. “I’m up for rotation next year and shudder at the thought of where they’ll send me.”

“Who knows? With a little luck you may wind up assigned to Bordeaux,” Capucine said with her best smile. “Tell me about Roque’s death.”

“There’s really nothing to tell. According to his wife, they went out to dinner, came home, the light switch didn’t work, Roque went down to the basement, and didn’t come back. She didn’t know what to do. She’s a fidgety kind of woman. Not what you’d expect with a husband like that. Anyhow, it took her ten minutes to find the courage to go down the stairs in the dark. She found her husband collapsed on the floor, his flashlight still shining at the wall. She ran back up and dialed sixteen. The SAMU people pronounced him dead. We weren’t called.”

“So how do you know the details?”

“How do I know? I know because I got a call from the lieutenant-colonel, my big boss, less than an hour after the SAMU picked up the body. He told me that Roque had died and they didn’t want the press to run away with the story. Madame Roque was not to be interviewed, and I was to leave three brigadiers in front of her house until further notice to make sure the press left her alone.”

As if he had uttered a dinner-party banality, he lifted the glass of Sancerre to his nose and inhaled the bouquet without drinking. He looked over the top of the glass at Capucine to make sure she had understood the nuance of what he had just said.

“Naturally, as common courtesy required, I offered my condolences to Madame Roque when I placed my men, and also had a quick look around the basement.” He lowered his head confidentially, shook it, and whispered, “This current government is so unsubtle.”

This gendarme really was cut from another bolt of cloth, Capucine told herself. “Would it be possible for me to see the scene?”

“I don’t see why not. You’re not the press, are you?” He gave a great rumbling laugh that made his rock-hard stomach jump up and down like a leather-covered exercise ball. “Ah, voilà,” he said as the main courses arrived.

They both had
quenelles de brochet,
made from pike poached in court bouillon, crushed in a mortar, mixed into a creamy paste with eggs and flour, baked into quenelles, and served with a creamy, bright ocher Nantua sauce.

“The pike comes from right out there,” he said, pointing at the river again with a stubby finger. “Doesn’t it, Jean?” he asked the waiter.

“Oui, Capitaine. I caught it myself just this morning.” They both laughed heartily, as if it was the funniest joke in the world.

 

Madame Roque turned out to be as skittish as promised. She greeted them at the door, wringing her hands in her apron, blinking like a startled fawn in a Disney cartoon.

“Madame,” said the capitaine, “this is one of my colleagues. She needs to make a report, and I wonder if you would be kind enough to let her look at your basement.”

Rather than reply, Madame Roque looked at the floor and shuffled over to a low door under the stairway of the modest cement house. The capitaine held his flashlight as they inched their way down the steep stairs. At the bottom, he flicked on the lights, and two naked bulbs revealed a damp cement cellar with an ancient washing machine and dryer, a metal wine rack a third full of wine bottles, and numerous baskets and plastic cases filled with the detritus of a modest life.

The capitaine walked over to the wine rack and picked out a bottle. Obviously, fingerprints were not top of mind at the gendarmerie.

“Wouldn’t keep my wine in a cellar as humid as this.” He held the bottle up, wrinkled his nose, and then sniffed the cork end. “It’s cheap enough stuff, and the rotting cork isn’t going to help it any. Good thing the Communists didn’t win out, or we’d all be drinking this swill.” He shuddered and made a histrionic grimace.

While he spoke, Capucine examined the fuse box. It was the old type that took screw-in fuses. Two or three spares were stored on top of a rag on the bottom of the box. On the floor underneath, a small puddle—no more than a foot in diameter—was surrounded by a large damp stain.

“The SAMU said they found Roque lying dead right there, still holding the replacement fuse. They put it back on the sill and screwed in another so the lights would go on.”

“Which one did they take out of his hand?”

“This one here.” The capitaine made to pick it up.

“Let’s let it sit for a moment. When you were down here yesterday, was the puddle larger?”

“I’m not sure. Possibly. Why? Is it important?”

“Do you think I could take the fuse found in Roque’s hand back to Paris? I’m curious how he was electrocuted.”

The capitaine gave her a shrewd look. “You know you’re playing with fire. It was made very clear to me that this entire incident was to go away very, very quietly. I’m sure you understand that.”

“It’s just that it may have a bearing on another case I’m working on. If it does turn out that there’s a connection, I’ll make sure you get full credit. If not, I’ll forget all about it. Does that work for you?”

“As long as you leave me out of it altogether no matter what happens, feel free to take anything you want. If it turns out I’ve been useful to you and you insist on expressing your gratitude, you might ask Monsieur de Huguelet to suggest a bottle or two of wine you could send me.” He winked broadly at Capucine.

 

Back in Paris Capucine called Pascal Challoneau in forensics.

“One of my brigadiers is bringing you something I picked up this afternoon. It’s the fuse that electrocuted Firmin Roque. Can you work your magic on it for me?”

“If you suspect foul play, we should check the whole scene out.”

“Too late for that. And the gendarmes have been ordered to downplay it.”

There was an uncomfortable silence.

“Got it. Don’t like it, but I’ve got it.”

 

That evening, as she walked down the hall to the kitchen of her apartment to look in on Alexandre’s dinner preparations, her cell phone rang.

“Tell me, Commissaire, was there a puddle under that fuse box?”

“A small one. But it looked like it had mostly dried up. My guess was that it was a lot larger yesterday.”

“That figures. The fuse you sent me is coated with a highly conductive gel. It’s probably the stuff that’s sold with those electronic muscle-contracting exercise machines you see in the ads. We’re doing tests right now to identify the proprietary formula, but there’s no doubt it was highly conductive.”

“So what does that mean?”

“It means, Commissaire, that it was murder. That’s what it means.”