Death of a Chef (Capucine Culinary Mystery) (17 page)

CHAPTER 26

L
ike every other small-village café in the Midi, Le Marius was deserted from the evening Angelus at six—when the men went home to their dinners—until around eight thirty, when they began to trickle back. These were solitary hours for David, the only resident of the hotel above the café. Still, between rumination and pecking at his laptop, he found them satisfying. At six fifteen, Casimir, the owner, would serve David a large pastis and retreat to his quarters. At around seven thirty, Casimir would return, serve David another drink, put a plate of whatever his wife had cooked in front of him on the bar, and set a half-bottle flask of wine next to it. It never even crossed David’s mind to question why he was never invited to sit at Casimir’s dinner table. This was the Midi.

That evening’s dinner was particularly satisfying, a
bourride
—fish soup—this one made with clams and monkfish, the broth made rich with spoonfuls of aïoli, the seafood so fresh, it must have come up from Cassis that morning.

At eight thirty Casimir returned to clear David’s plate and immerse himself in his manic polishing of glasses. David looked over his laptop screen, contemplating the closed box on the wall shielding Fanny’s virtue. Césariot, the first of the evening throng to arrive, slid his elbows onto the bar next to David’s.

“She intrigues you, our Fanny, doesn’t she?”

“She’s like an elephant in the room that everyone can see except me.”

Casimir arrived with Césariot’s pastis. “
Quelle idée
. An elephant is the very last thing she was.”

When Casimir left to take a tray of glasses to a table, Césariot scratched the surface of the bar contemplatively with his thumbnail.

“Tu veux que je te dise?
Do you want me to tell you? There are some things no one in a village ever talks about.”

“Yes, at home it’s the same thing.”

Césariot went back to sketching on the bar with his thumbnail.

“You’re a good sod, Le Cannois. If I were you, and I had nothing to do one afternoon, I might pay my respects to Pamphile Cadoret, our mayor for nearly forty years. He finally got too old to fend for himself and went to live in one of those homes they have for old people.”

“Your old mayor’s not going to tell me anything. He’s a villager, too. Secrets are secrets.”

“He’s a villager for sure, but he’s also a very thirsty one. They don’t serve you the apéro in these nursing homes, and I hear tell he’s gotten so parched, he can hardly swallow anymore.”

 

Despite the fact that Monsieur le Maire, as he was still called by everyone, lived comfortably enough in a large room equipped with a hospital bed and rustic dark-wood furniture that must have come from his home, he seemed depressed and listless.

“You’re an author and you’re writing about Jean-Lu Brault?” he asked lethargically. “I don’t think I can help you. I have no memory left.”

“I’ve been staying in La Cadière for the past two weeks, and it’s beginning to feel like my second home.”

Monsieur le Maire paid no attention. “Tu veux que je te dise? Do you want me to tell you? I can’t even eat. How good is a meal going to taste if you don’t have an apéro first? Tell me that.”

“I couldn’t agree more, Monsieur le Maire. That’s why I brought us a little pastaga.”

The mayor sat bolt upright in his chair, his eyes as alert as those of an egret about to pluck a fish out of an estuary. David produced a mignonette of Pastis 51. The mayor’s eyes became saucers.

“It’s true I can’t remember what I had for dinner last night. But I can sure as hell remember everything that happened ten years ago as clear as if it was happening all over again. And—do you want me to tell you?—not remembering about dinner is no problem. It was bound to have been pure merde. It always is here.”

After three mignonettes of liquid gold turned milky white by cool tap water in a tooth glass, Monsieur le Maire was a man restored.

“
Ça fait du bien.
That does one good. So you’re interested in our village, are you, young man? And why shouldn’t you be? It’s a square acre of heaven that fell to earth.”

“As I told you, I’m writing a biography of Chef Brault, and I’m looking for background stories about his childhood. I learned that he was very close to the Folon household and had a particular fondness for Fanny.”

“
Particular fondness,
” the
maire
said with a chuckle, which turned into a deep laugh, which turned into a desperate convulsive heaving so severe, David thought he might have to summon a nurse.

The fit calmed.

“
Close,
you say. I’ll say he was
close
to Fanny.” The fit of laughter began again. It wasn’t until David produced another mignonette of pastis from his pocket and began to play with it absently that the fit calmed.

“So they told you about the incident, did they?”

David shook his head.

“Good for them. Do you want me to tell you? I’m amazed it didn’t happen before. Butchers and bakers put their wares in the window to excite consumers, and that girl’s
lolos
were always out there on display, so obviously the kids got excited. And what
lolos
they were, too! Round and firm, like grapefruits.” He shook his head sadly. “They say that growing old is a virtue, like wine maturing in a cellar, but . . .” His voice faded off. David produced another mignonette to get the mayor back on track.

“What exactly happened?”

“It was that
voyou
Antonin, the baron’s son. The way I heard it, Anou, as they used to call him, was out cruising one night with his little gang and came across la Belle Fanny having it on with her shriveled-up little boyfriend, the butcher’s son, in a copse at the edge of the village. Anou decided that Olivier—that’s the butcher’s son—should share his bounty. And bounty it was, let me tell you!”

The mayor tapped David’s side pocket, making the stock of mignonettes clink brightly. He waited for his first sip before resuming his story.

“The way I heard it told, Fanny was willing enough. She made some sort of sign to Anou, and he went
droit au beurre—
right for the butter. It seems Anou wasn’t enough for her, so she amused herself with two or three of Anou’s pals. Then she got sick of the game and shooed them off, and they scattered obligingly enough.

“If it had been up to me, I’d have let the incident drop, but we live in funny times, and I suppose in some highfalutin places that sort of thing might even be considered a crime. So I had the gendarmes investigate. Their report said there were five of them in all—Antonin Brault, Galinette Brun, Jean Cadort, Philoxéne Cabanis, and Escartefigue Anglade. Well, six, really, because young Jean-Louis Brault was also there. He was only twelve at the time, and you wouldn’t have thought he’d have enough of a
gourdin
at that age to do anything, but you can never tell with all the hormones they put in the beef nowadays, can you? Anyway, the gendarmes didn’t want to haul in a child, so they left Jean-Louis out of the procès-verbal. The other five denied everything, and of course, Fanny didn’t press charges, so that was that.” He paused. “That girl certainly had unbelievable
lolos
, though, that’s for damn sure.” He shook his head in wonderment at the memory.

“And there was no question Jean-Louis Brault was there?”

“He was present, all right. For sure. I interviewed the boys myself. They were a lot more open with me than with the gendarmes.”

“And so it was the boyfriend, Olivier, who took Fanny home?”

“No, it wasn’t. The gendarmerie report said that Olivier had run off in terror when he saw Anou’s gang arrive. I told you he was a limp dick. It seems that Angèle, Fanny’s mother, had sent her son, Lucien, out to get Fanny to bring her back to dinner, and he arrived just as Anou and his gang were running off. It must have been Lucien who took her home. But that didn’t come up in anybody’s questioning. Don’t get yourself in a state about this. But I’m sure it was just business as usual for Fanny. All that girl ever wanted to do was
faire la planche
.”

David looked at the mayor blankly.

“You know, make like a plank and spend as much time as she could flat on her back.” The mayor laughed and tapped David’s pocket again, relishing in the cheerful clinking sound.

As David poured out the final drink of the afternoon, the mayor looked at him wistfully. “You know, young man, you have a
bonne tête
—a good head. With your love of the village and your knack of making people talk, you’d be a natural for politics. Why don’t you come back again and we can chat about that? And don’t forget to bring your little friends.” He tapped David’s pocket and grinned at the jingle.

CHAPTER 27

T
he Travellers Club was quartered in the last remaining
hôtel particulier
on the Champs-Élysées, a memento of more opulent days, when the broad avenue served as a carriage promenade for
le tout Paris
to show off hats, spouses’ coifs, and perfectly matched steeds.

Because women were only admitted on Thursday evenings, Capucine, indignant with self-righteous feminism, refused to set foot in the place. Alexandre himself—who had joined in his university days—had ambivalent feelings about the antifeminist implications of his membership, but they didn’t prevent him from popping in for the occasional lunch. The appeal was the long members’ table, where he could breeze in and natter with fellow members, an attractive alternative to a solitary lunch shared with a newspaper on a café terrace.

At twelve Alexandre had completed an interview of the chef of a new restaurant on the Champs and realized that he was a good number of notches beyond peckish and only three minutes away from the Travellers.

Expecting nothing more than an adequate tournedos and an unremarkable Bordeaux, he climbed the onyx staircase and made for the long table.

Only two adjoining seats were vacant. Alexandre slid into one of them, cast a quick look at the succinct menu, and gave his order to a waiter: pheasant pâté to begin with, followed by a beef fillet with boiled, buttered, and parsleyed potatoes, the lot to be washed down with a half-liter carafe of the club Bordeaux.

The slightly gelatinous pâté arrived in less than three minutes, accompanied by two slices of very toasted sliced bread. Alexandre poured himself a glass of the Bordeaux and reluctantly began on the pâté.

An exceptionally well-dressed young man slid into the seat next to him. Alexandre recognized London tailoring and amused himself by attempting to guess which of the Savile Row tailors had made the suit. It took his mind off the pâté.

The newcomer fidgeted, played with his silverware, fussed with his napkin. Thinking he was a new member, Alexandre took pity on him.

“It’s not the done thing to shake hands in the club, but I can still introduce myself. Alexandre de Huguelet.”

“Thierry Brissac-Vanté,” the young man said, extending his hand and immediately pulling it back with an embarrassed grin. “I know you so well by reputation, you’re almost an old friend.”

The waiter approached to take his order.

“You can’t drink that plonk,” Brissac-Vanté said, indicating Alexandre’s carafe with his chin. “Let me order a bottle of something halfway decent for the both of us.” He flipped through the wine list with a clearly put-on air of knowledgeable insouciance and ordered a bottle of 2005 Belair-Monange.

Alexandre raised an internal eyebrow at the idea of a three-hundred-euro bottle of Saint-Emilion for a
déjeuner sur le pouce
—a snack lunch eaten on the run—but even though he found the ostentation offensive, he was the last person to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“The food’s appalling here if you don’t stick to steaks and chops, but the wine list’s absolutely first rate, don’t you think?” Brissac-Vanté said.

Alexandre didn’t. A substantial fortune in grand crus tossed and turned fitfully in the cellar, kept awake by the rumbling of the Number 1 metro line, which ran feet away from the building. Even though the beleaguered wine committee had managed to agree on an acceptable house wine, it was well known in the club that between that and insomniac grands crus lay a deserted wasteland. The young man was definitely no oenologist.

With the fresh-faced enthusiasm of a Boy Scout, Brissac-Vanté continued on. “I commiserate with you on your battle with Lucien Folon. I’ve read all the articles in the press. I was honored to be a partner—purely financially, of course—of Chef Brault. It’s offensive to me to see his memory tarnished by a hack like that Folon.”

Alexandre was grateful that the Belair-Monange arrived and that Brissac-Vanté’s insistence that he do the tasting spared him the necessity of commenting on his feud with Folon.

The food arrived, and they maintained desultorily club patter for a brief half an hour. As they put their knives and forks on their plates, Brissac-Vanté looked at Alexandre with wide-eyed keenness.

“It’s absolutely fabulous that I ran into you,” Brissac-Vanté said. “Can I ask you a professional question? How do you think Michelin is going to rate Chez La Mère Denis in their next Guide?”

Alexandre laughed. “Michelin is as inscrutable as the Oracle of Delphi. Like everyone else, you’ll have to wait for the Guide to come out on February twenty-eighth to learn the answer to that one.”

The tradition at the Travellers’ was to take coffee in the downstairs bar. Alexandre and Brissac-Vanté beat the rush and found a table next to the window overlooking a pocket courtyard. On the other side were the curtained windows of the so-called card room, where members played backgammon for high stakes in flagrant violation of the law.

A waiter came and took their orders: a coffee for Alexandre and a coffee with a double cognac for Brissac-Vanté.

The room began to fill as members came down from the dining room. Brissac-Vanté became as skittish as a young mare who had heard thunder in the distance. Impatiently he signaled the waiter and ordered another double cognac.

A group of six men burst noisily into the bar, installed themselves on the upholstered rail in front of the enormous fireplace, and lit cigars. Brissac-Vanté ordered another double cognac. His nostrils flared.

The group at the fireplace rapidly downed their coffees and made for a door at the back of the bar. Two of them stopped and smiled at Brissac-Vanté.

“Are you joining us this afternoon?” one of them asked.

Automatically, Brissac-Vanté stood up and took a step toward the back door. Remembering his manners, he turned back, gave Alexandre a half bow, and left the room in a rush.

Alexandre went to the bar and ordered a Calvados and a second demitasse of coffee. The venerable barman was the only club servant who got away with open sarcasm about members.

“Your friend is a fool,” the barman said to Alexandre as he brought his espress and Calvados. “You stand some chance of surviving drinking and driving, but drinking and backgammon is invariably fatal. Especially with those sharks.”