French Fried (4 page)

“Well.” I thought about that. “The back of him did not look familiar.”

“
Bon.
We will all go in. Do you need the assistance? You will not mind to look at the deceased once Kahled has taken the pictures and the evidence necessary to our investigation. We do not yet know why the deceased is died. Perhaps only autopsy will tell the cause. Eh?”

Since he was holding out his hand, I had to make an effort to rise. Oh-h! A bad idea! Both men hastily took my arms when I wobbled to my feet. “Jet lag,” I gasped. I was so very tired.

Regardless of my condition, I was led into the room, where Kahled announced, “Robert Levasseur,” and some things in French.

“So you know Monsieur Robert Levasseur, the French Canadian, madam?” asked the inspector, as if, having come from the same continent, the dead man and I should have been acquainted. I shrugged helplessly. “Now we turn the body. Eh?” With some difficulty, due to the large size of the man, they rolled him toward the center of the two beds and gestured for me to look. I’d never seen Robert Levasseur before. He was a nice-enough-looking man, probably in his thirties, but a stranger to me.

Doctor Petit proceeded to examine the body, first for signs of life, but there seemed to be none. Then he looked at eyes, mouth, which he sniffed, and even fingernails. While this was going on, Kahled politely brushed fingerprint powder off a chair and indicated that I should sit down. I did, although it was not a chair in which one could easily doze off.

Inspector Roux donned rubber gloves and went through the billfold of the late Robert. He was interrupted when the doctor straightened and spoke to him in French, after which the inspector said to me, “Doctor Petit says, because of cyanosis showing in blue fingernails and eye pupils of fixedness and dilation, maybe the deceased died of overdose.”

“An overdose of pâté?” I asked, bringing looks of shock and anxiety to the faces of the two Frenchmen, but not Kahled. “I have read,” I continued earnestly, “that people have strokes after eating a large quantity of very fatty foods. Mr. Levasseur evidently ate two slices of pâté that were sent to my husband and me as a gift, as he could have seen had he bothered to read the card on the champagne. Not very nice of him, I must say.”

The doctor looked very much offended and said something angry in French, which the inspector translated. “Doctor Petit wishes you to know, madam, that pâté does not kill. Many millions of Frenchmen eat pâté as often as they can afford and live long and healthy lives. Please do not assume that this man died by our fine Lyonnais pâté. Should such opinion be published, it would do great harm to our reputation as the culinary capital of France.”

The doctor again spoke with impatience, and Inspector Roux informed me that pâté did not cause dilation of the pupils. Various illegal drugs and poisons did that. Did I have any of them in the room?

“I have nothing in this room,” I replied. “I never got to move in. My suitcase is in the hall.”

“Are illegal drugs and poisons in your suitcase, madam?”

“Certainly not. And if I may make a suggestion, you should put that card in an evidence bag. Just in case the pâté killed him, you’ll want to find out where it came from. In fact, perhaps Yvette downstairs can describe the messenger who delivered it.”

“Kahled knows the collection of evidence, madam. He is a Frenchman, although Algerian.”

“I was not questioning his competence because of his ethnicity,” I protested. “In fact, being Algerian would make him less likely than you and Doctor Petit to ignore the possibility of killer Lyonnais pâté. Now, please contact the front desk and tell them another room must be assigned to me. I do not wish to sleep—”

“We must get first your information, madam,” said the inspector.

“—in a room where this man died. And I want another room that has trees outside the window. I like the trees, but I don’t want to have to talk to that woman at the desk again. She was very unpleasant.”

“This is true,” the inspector agreed. “But you must not judge we of Lyon by her. We are a very friendly people, madam. She is probably from Paris.”

We went downstairs,
leaving the dead man sprawled across the beds with the door carefully locked by Inspector Roux. While he and I sat behind a cactus drinking coffee from the neon bar, he took my name and personal information, looked at my passport, and then questioned me about my reasons for being here, my discovery of the dead man, everything I did and touched thereafter, my interactions with Yvette before and after the discovery, and everything she said. I was even asked to provide my fingerprints for comparison purposes. Naturally I agreed and allowed Kahled to ink my fingers and roll them on cards. Afterward he provided little packages of detergent wipes so that I could scrub the ink off, which was very thoughtful. I couldn’t remember seeing that amenity offered by American policemen on television at home.

When we finished the interview, the doctor, who had talked to Yvette and supervised the removal of the French Canadian, joined us at the table and said, through the inspector, that the hotel would not have a substitute room with trees ready for several hours. That was certainly bad news. By then I was so tired that I was experiencing difficulty in focusing my eyes.

“I must now interview Mademoiselle Yvette,” the inspector murmured, after expressing sympathy for my sleepless plight.

“And I must have a nap, even if it has to be on a sofa.”

“But of course,” cried the inspector. “I can show you to one of sufficient length, madam.” He led me to a three-cushion leather sofa and plucked a decorative cushion from a chair for my head. I was dozing as soon as my head touched the pillow with its Mondrian-inspired color blocks. I did hear, as if in a dream, the raised voices of the inspector and Yvette as their combative interview ensued, but I found it comforting and sank down into deep sleep, from which I was aroused later by Inspector Roux saying, “Madam, it is at least another hour until your room is ready. Perhaps you would join Doctor Petit and me for a meal. An excellent brasserie of culinary and historic interest is close by.”

I blinked dazedly, wanting to fall back into sleep but also aware that I’d had nothing to eat since the continental breakfast served before landing in Paris. Culinary and historic interest? I should go for the sake of my column. So I dragged myself into a sitting position, regretted my rumpled appearance, and agreed to their kind suggestion. Brasserie Georges was, of all places, situated down the industrial side street to the left of the Perrache Station. However, once inside, I found a bustling nineteenth-century establishment with white tiled floors, gilding and draperies, framed advertisements for products no longer made, and a large menu.

Hoping to spend the afternoon asleep in my new room, I chose a soup recommended by the doctor—tomato, shrimp, and ginger, an interesting combination, and very tasty. With it, I ordered a nice white wine, also recommended by the doctor, whose rumpled suit made me feel less self-conscious about my own travel-worn appearance.

Meanwhile we held an interesting bilingual conversation. Yvette had revealed, grudgingly, information previously withheld. The inspector began by asking if she’d informed me that she had sent a man to my room. Imagine my astonishment. “Yvette claims he was a friend who came to see you. You are certain, madam, that you do not know Monsieur Robert Levasseur?” asked Inspector Roux.

“Certain,” I assured him, “and she never said a word about sending him to our room. Why would she do that? No matter what he told her, she had no right to offer our room to a stranger. And look what happened. He ate our pâté. My husband and I love pâté.”

The inspector and the doctor, who evidently understood some English but did not speak it, agreed that all sensible people loved Lyonnais pâté and that Yvette’s behavior was suspicious.

“Perhaps he was a friend of hers, and when she told him about the gift in our room, he wanted to have it,” I suggested. “Then he became ill before he could remove the evidence of his theft. Jason and I would never have known the difference if Monsieur Levasseur had consumed both the champagne and the pâté and disposed of the evidence.”

“But if that is the case,” said Inspector Roux, “why would she send you to the room when she knows the friend was there enjoying your repast?”

I thought about that. “To frighten me? She seems a very spiteful woman. And what did she say about the person who brought the pâté to the Charlemagne? Could she describe the delivery man?”

“Just as a messenger in the green uniform, she said. She could not remember more.”

Our first courses arrived at that point, and I dipped hungrily into my soup, a thick tomato broth, fresh-tasting and tangy with the exotic flavor added by the strings of ginger. Ginger is another of those many foods once thought to be an aphrodisiac, although professors at the medical school in Salerno during the Middle Ages stated in verse that it was good for all sorts of things. Maybe I should try writing recipes in verse for my columns. Or maybe not. To this pairing of tomatoes and ginger, the small, salty shrimp provided a lovely contrast. And there was crusty French bread. Even as exhausted as I was, I wouldn’t have missed that soup. “The identity of the messenger may be important if Monsieur Levasseur is found to have died from pâté.”

Both men protested such a blot on the culinary escutcheon of Lyon, but I pointed out that someone might have added poison to the pâté. Where once such a thing would never have occurred to me, I had recently encountered so much crime during my travels that I easily conjured up that scenario.

“But madam, if that should be so, then you or your husband are the intended victims. Have you enemies in Lyon? At the university?”

“We hardly know anyone here,” I protested.
Albertine Guillot!
I thought.
Can she be harboring a grudge over her poodle, Charles de Gaulle, who made such a pest of himself in Sorrento that they had to put him in a kennel? Surely not. Albertine and I became friends of a sort before the meeting ended.

When I finished my soup, the men were being served a second course. I was so upset at the thought that Albertine might have sent us poisoned pâté and then skipped town while we were dying that I called the waitress back and ordered dessert. On my first perusal of the menu, I had noted wistfully a dish called Crousillant aux Framboises. At that time I overcame my interest by reminding myself sternly that I was no longer eating desserts. I had eaten enough desserts on the cruise to last a lifetime.

But now, with the thought that Albertine might have planned my death by pâté, I needed dessert, and it was delicious, a crispy bag of filo dough, tied at the neck and containing raspberries and almond cream on a plate drizzled with raspberry coulis. Did they bake the cream-and-fruit-filled dough and then run it under the broiler to brown and crisp it? If the men had ordered dessert, I’d probably have had another serving.

“Let us hope the mysterious Monsieur Levasseur died of natural causes,” said the inspector, who was enjoying a hearty sausage and potato dish. “If not, madam, I will inform you as soon as the doctor discovers the cause of death. In the meantime you and your husband should take care. Eat in restaurants. Give no one access to your food and drink,” he advised. “I am regretful to warn you in this way when you have the culinary delights in Lyon awaiting you, but in this situation you would be wise to—”

“Yes, yes,” I agreed, not much worried because the only people in Lyon who knew us were now out of town. “Thank you for your concern.” I finished my Crousillant aux Framboises without a qualm. After all, I doubted that the inspector or the doctor would have any interest in poisoning me.

Most experts advise
the jet-lagged traveler to stay up until bedtime in the country of destination for a faster adjustment to the new time zone, but my wife prefers to fall directly into bed, sleep until dinnertime, eat, and get a full night’s sleep. I’m always amazed that it works for her, but she is a very grumpy companion if forced to stay up until bedtime on the first day in Europe. We’ve tried that.

So I expected her to be rested when I called about the welcome dinner planned by the chairman. I’d have returned to get her, but I’d stayed too long talking science with new colleagues since the man I had specifically gone to see, in the unexpected absence of Adrien Guillot, hadn’t been there. “It’s Jason,” I said into the chairman’s telephone. “We’re invited to dinner at a restaurant highly recommended for its local dishes. I knew you wouldn’t want to miss that, sweetheart. Did you have a good sleep?”

“Don’t ask,” she muttered.

So I didn’t. “Look, could you get dressed and meet us over here? It’s an easy trip from the Perrache Station. I’ll give you—”

“You want me to go by myself? On the train? During rush hour? I’ll get lost and end up in Toulouse, maybe even Spain.”