Murder on the Mediterranean (Capucine Culinary Mystery) (16 page)

C
apucine had never liked Carcassonne. It was, of course, one of the great architectural wonders of France, with not one, but two intact medieval fortified walls still encircling the city. And it was a thrill seeing the fortifications dominate the hilltop when one first drove up. But once inside, the medieval architecture was crabbed and the walls were claustrophobic.

Florence’s address was on a narrow cobbled street at the edge of the vertiginously high wall. Capucine tapped the brass knocker on the white-painted wooden door. Nothing happened. After a few seconds, she raised the knocker a second time, but the opening door pulled it out of her hand. It dropped with a clunk. Florence scowled.

“Come in, Capucine. You’ve done something with your hair. You cut it short, is that it? It was much better before.”

Originally home to a tradeperson, the little house was the typical middle-class vacation residence. An architect had attempted to open up the space by demolishing a few of the interior walls, leaving oversize, bare rooms, monastically furnished with inexpensive antiques from local markets. The look was temporary and unlived in.

The only remotely appealing feature of the house was a closet-size courtyard with a tiny square pool fed by a plastic ignudo urinating angelically. Capucine wondered why Florence had not had it removed when she bought the house.

Dominique, barefoot in white trousers and a white shirt open down his flat stomach, was stretched out in a child-size canvas lounge chair, his feet propped up on the edge of the diminutive fountain.

He stood up and sneered insolently.

“That hair color suits you. The touch of vulgarity conveys a definite sense of piquantness.”

The eye of the artist,
Capucine told herself. “I’m surprised to see you here,” she said.

“Angélique gave me my walking papers, so I thought I’d look up our chum Florence.” He shot Capucine a provocative glance. “She gave me a very warm welcome.”

“Is that what you call it?” Florence said, carrying in a tray with glasses, a pitcher of dark liquid, and two bowls of supermarket salted treats. “I made us some Negronis. Régis used to do them very well on that ill-fated cruise.”

She handed one to Capucine and walked over to stand behind Dominique, her large hand proprietarily on his shoulder, a masculine gesture expressing pride of ownership far more than affection.

“What brings you to our little love nest?” Dominique asked.

“Alexandre and I are taking a little driving tour of the Midi before going back to Paris. We wouldn’t have missed Carcassonne for anything, and I thought it would be fun to drop in on Florence.”

“You’re so right. Florence
can
be a lot of fun under the right circumstances.”

Florence smiled tolerantly.

“Actually, Dominique,” Capucine said, “I’m glad I ran into you. I wanted to ask you some questions about the day of Nathalie’s death.”

“Ask away.” He put his hand on Florence’s thigh. When she did not respond, he let it drop.

“I had a hunch you might have had a little dalliance with Nathalie before you joined us in the old town.”

“ ‘Dalliance’? Is that what it’s called in the police?”

“What would you call it?”

“I fucked her brains out.”

Florence snorted.

“In her cabin?”

“In her little box, the ideal place. That little slut had been coming on to me even before we left Port Grimaud. I doubled back to the boat when you all went up the hill, and found her half naked, sweating, swabbing out the heads. She was like an animal. She wanted it everywhere. She couldn’t get enough.”

Florence didn’t look at him, but her parted lips were engorged.

“And after, you weren’t too tired to climb up all those steps to the old town?”

“Not me. I didn’t want wifey to worry.”

“But she was irate.”

“She’s always irate. That’s par for the course.” Dominique dropped into the chair. “You don’t understand Angélique. Jealousy was her biggest turn-on. It made her like a tiger in heat. That night she wanted to go at it all night long. And the storm intensified it for her. She made so much noise, I had to cover her face with a pillow.”

Florence gave him a complicit smile. Dominique slid his hand under her short skirt.

Repelled, Capucine decided to cut the interview short. She’d found out what she wanted to know. Dominique had an alibi—of sorts. It would have no weight at all in court, but it did have the ring of truth. And it didn’t look like Florence had any involvement with Tottinguer. High time to find Alexandre and get something good enough to eat to cover up the rancid taste in her mouth.

She got up and left awkwardly.

As she walked to the car, she slid one of her phones out of her pocket and considered calling Inès but didn’t have the patience for another burst of Inès’s one-track mind. She dropped the phone back in her jacket and drove off to pick up Alexandre. Rumbling over the tortuous cobblestoned streets, she chided herself on not having taken the time for a complete interview. But to what end? She had no doubt about who the killer was. What she needed was proof enough for a court case, and she wasn’t going to get that from either Florence or Dominique.

A
lexandre opted for the prelunch apéro in the penthouse bar of a brand-new hotel with a sweeping view over the ramparts and out into the hills. With the last of the morning mist evaporating in the sun, the scenery had an overdone look in keeping with the licked perfection of the penthouse’s décor. Capucine found the scene cloying. This was always the hard part of the case, the legwork to assemble enough evidence for a judge to put together a viable case. It was dog work that was supposed to be done by brigadiers. The injustice of having to do it while exiled behind the dark side of the curtain of the law was beyond unfair. She sipped her Lillet Blanc. The limp-wristed drink just wasn’t doing the trick. She should have opted for a muscled single malt. The new drink in hand, Capucine still couldn’t shake the petulance of blaming the whole mess on the Police Judiciaire. Why weren’t they on her side, supporting her? Two more sips into the malt she realized the Police Judiciaire had damn well all to do with her predicament and would probably have rallied if only she had just called someone in time. She felt like kicking the leg of the table.

“I take it your efforts this morning weren’t crowned with success?” Alexandre asked, appearing over her shoulder.

“In a bizarre sort of way, they were. But right now, lunch is very much top of mind. Where are you taking me? Some multi-starred place where the food will send me into richly deserved paroxysms of delight?”

“There’s only one restaurant in Carcassonne that has a Michelin star, La Barbacane. Unfortunately, I know the chef there too well. He used to work in Paris. So I booked at the Domaine d’Auriac. It’s a Relais & Châteaux hotel, and their restaurant is supposed to be adequate.”

Fifteen minutes later they were sitting on a second-story balcony overlooking a garden of Prussian rigidity. Alexandre grumbled and snorted at the menu, blowing sharp puffs at his mustache, which had begun to irritate him. Even despite the mustache, it was clear he was enjoying hating the restaurant.

“With one or two exceptions, this is precisely the same menu Relais & Châteaux would present in Abu Dhabi, or anywhere else, for that matter. It’s all here. King crab ravioles, foie gras with an apple-rhubarb compote, cocotte-cooked veal in a secret sauce. Chérie, you order for me in a whisper. The element of surprise will add a nuance of drama. While you’re at it, I’m going to take a tramp around the garden and smoke the merest of panatelas.”

Capucine felt guilty. She had asked too much of Alexandre. He missed his Paris. He wasn’t cut out for life on the run. And on top of it all, she was behaving childishly. The mature thing to do was to call Contrôleur Général Tallon, go to Paris, have a long lunch with him, solicit his advice and patronage. In a word, abdicate and begin acting like the civil servant she was.

She knew exactly what he would tell her to do: report immediately for duty at the head of her brigade, confine her activities to non-newsworthy cases in her brigade’s arrondissement, and let the palliative police bureaucracy consign Nathalie’s putative murder to the oubliettes of the archives. In a matter of months it would be as if the case had never existed. The unacceptable rub was that somewhere there would be a murderer licking his chops in self-congratulation.

For Alexandre, she ordered an anchovy salad—with extolled anchovies from the famous Maison Roque in Collioure, on the Spanish frontier—followed by a fillet of
rascasse,
a small, red Mediterranean fish, well known as the sine qua non of bouillabaisse, and then a risotto made from
fregola,
the little balls of pasta Alexandre had made for their last dinner on the
Diomede.
For herself she ordered the foie gras, followed by the veal. She had none of Alexandre’s desire for surprise.

Halfway through the meal, Alexandre put his hand on top of his wife’s. “You order brilliantly. It’s a great art, knowing what will be good in any given restaurant. The anchovies were exceptional, and, I blush to confess, these fregola are in a class apart from mine.”

“But you miss Paris.”

“That I do,” he said wistfully.

“Good, because we’re going back tomorrow.”

Alexandre whooped and smiled broadly. The right-hand half of his mustache came away. Capucine creased her brows and made a little circular gesture with her finger under her nose. Alexandre put both hands to his mouth, pressing the mustache back into place.

“How wonderful. I thought we were on the run,” he said between his fingers.

“We are. And I may be kidding myself, but I think our disguises are effective enough. Angélique and Florence almost didn’t recognize me. And you look like some sci-fi character with that ectoplasm coming out of your nose.” She looked at Alexandre critically. “I’m going to give it a little trim right after lunch. You look like you’ve been straining your soup through the damn thing.”

“Good idea. I plan to get any number of decent meals in Paris and don’t want any encumbrances.”

“Don’t get your hopes too high. We’re just going for two or three days. We’ll be back down here before the week is out. I still need to interview a few people.”

“Anyone I know?”

“Your two buddies, Serge and Régis, are at the top of my list. Serge is behaving oddly. His cell phone is eternally off, and the phone in his office announces the business is closed until the
rentrée
in September.”

Alexandre continued taking small bites of his rascasse, concentrating on the flavor. He had stopped listening to Capucine.

“This is quite a challenge. Only two or three days, eh? Two dinners and three lunches. That’s going to take a bit of planning.”

It was supposed to be a nine-hour drive, but Capucine was positive she could shave off two good hours. They were going to leave at eight in the morning, stop in Limoges for lunch at a place Alexandre promised would be delightful, and make it to Paris in time for the apéro before dinner.

Capucine loved to drive, and gallantly, Alexandre was happy to surrender the wheel. Capucine had a
pied de plomb
—a lead foot. The speed limit on French autoroutes was eighty miles an hour, but Capucine felt ninety-five was more than reasonable enough for a police officer. Once or twice over the years she had been stopped, but her police card had produced a smart salute and a friendly chat about the doings in the local gendarmerie.

The route to Paris was almost entirely over expressways. Capucine pressed the accelerator of the Renault hard to the floor. The speedometer gradually crept up to ninety and kept on going until it waved just south of a hundred.

Forty-five minutes away from Limoges, Capucine saw a blue pulsing light in her rearview mirror.

“
Ah, là là!
What fun. We’re being pulled over. Now, not a peep out of you. Let me handle everything.”

Like a model bourgeois, Capucine pulled over into the narrow breakdown lane on the right, hands in clear view at the top of the wheel. In the rearview mirror she could see two gendarmes in khaki military uniforms, one talking into the radio, calling in the license plate, the other looking down at his lap, filling out a form.

Despite her delight with the unexpected break, Capucine experienced a slight frisson of fight-or-flight anxiety. So this was what it was like on the reverse of the medal. In real life, stopped at that speed, a normal citizen would find herself on the backseat of the gendarmerie squad car, on her way to a nightmare. And when you got right down to it, she herself might already be on some list that would put her in the same spot.

“
Papiers
,” barked the uniformed gendarme at her window, without the courtesy of a “s’il vous plaît.”

Capucine leaned over Alexandre’s leg and foraged in the glove compartment, producing a plastic wallet with the car’s registration and insurance policy, both in the name of Siméon Flaissières, from Marseilles, the owner of the car David had borrowed.

The gendarme examined the papers with unnecessary attention and ordered, “
Permis de conduire.
Driver’s license.”

Capucine rooted through her bag and turned to Alexandre.
“Chéri,
have you seen my wallet? It’s not in my bag. Do you think I could have lost it again?”

“Not again! That will make it twice this month.”

“
Bon, bon,
” the gendarme said. “Where are you going? I’ll send the report there, and you can present your license at the gendarmerie.”

“We’re going to Paris,” Capucine said sweetly.

“Paris, Madame Flaissières? In the middle of August?”

“Bien sûr.
We’re having a little vacation in Paris. All by ourselves.”

The gendarme gave her a knowing look, then focused on Alexandre. “Monsieur, are you Monsieur Flaissières?”

Alexandre was perfect. He managed to look disconcerted for almost an entire second, then turned haughtily to the gendarme. “What business is it of yours? I’m not at the wheel. I’m just a passenger enjoying the view. I see no reason to give you my name.”

The gendarme looked from Alexandre to Capucine and back to Alexandre again, comparing the age difference and noting Capucine’s curves and provocative hairdo. “I see,” he said with a smirk. “Enjoy your ‘vacation.’ ” He handed the car’s papers back to Capucine. “And I understand your rush, madame, but do try to make at least some effort to respect the speed limits.”

Capucine pulled out of the breakdown lane, with the gendarme behind her. After a few hundred yards he passed Capucine’s car, turned his head, gave her a broad smile, and accelerated on. Capucine and Alexandre burst into laughter.

“You were fantastic,” Capucine said. “Have you ever considered a career on the stage?”

“I certainly wasn’t acting. I was thinking, Madame Flaissières, about our
cinq-à-sept
—our five to seven—this afternoon. I know just where we will go. L’Hôtel, in the rue des Beaux-Arts.”

“That overdecorated place where Oscar Wilde died?”

“The very same. The rooms are redolent with the musk of illicit passion. And the restaurant!” Capucine turned her head toward Alexandre. He touched all five fingers to his lips and cast them heavenward. “A méli-mélo of silk settees in a delightful Belle Epoque jumble, where you eat cuisine that fully merits its Michelin star.”

“It sounds as if you know the place inside out.”

“A restaurant critic has to be au fait, my dear. But remember, even if many may own my stomach, only you own my heart.”