Murder on the Mediterranean (Capucine Culinary Mystery) (3 page)

C
apucine couldn’t help but feel sorry for Serge. He moped on the stern rail, waiting for Alexandre and Régis’s return, mournfully scrutinizing the sun’s inexorable climb to its zenith. Finally, a good two and a half hours after they had left, Alexandre and Régis arrived, clattering two shopping carts piled high with produce. Alexandre smiled up at Capucine triumphantly, a returning knight paladin who had saved the village from dire perdition.

Serge sprang into action, dispatching his crew to collect the groceries, turned the ignition on, let it shriek its warning for a full minute while the cylinder heads heated, jabbed at the starter button, ordered Nathalie and Florence to cast off the mooring lines, and gently eased the boat out of the marina, while Alexandre and Régis went below to stow their bounty. The notion of a quai-side wait for a “light collation” had volatilized.

To the beat of the throbbing motor, Serge eased through the postcard emerald greens and Tyrian purples of the coastal waters and in fifteen minutes reached the ink–dark blue of the open sea. Capucine sat on the bow pulpit with Inès, smiling at the early afternoon tropical sun. Inès, unnerved even by the gentle rocking of the boat as it glided across the glass-flat sea, clutched the pulpit rails with both hands.

Far behind them, at the stern, Serge, skipper once again, ordered Nathalie to take the helm and Florence to raise the mainsail. As Florence began to crank the halyard winch on the side of the mast, Alexandre stuck his head out of the hatchway like a jack-in-the box, blinking from the brightness of the sea sun.

“Pas si vite, mon ami.
Not just yet, my friend,” Alexandre said, his voice heavy with authority. “Lunch first, and then you can play with your boat to your heart’s content.”

Clenching his teeth, Serge forced a smile as Florence dropped the six inches of mainsail she had raised and clipped three shock cords to secure the sail in place on the boom.

Alexandre emerged from the hatch with a tray, followed by Régis, bearing another one. Serge’s smile climbed up his face and lit up his eyes. He went below and emerged with two bottles of chilled Tempier rosé and a stack of flimsy plastic glasses adorned with the charter company’s florid monogram. He was clearly far more at home in the persona of a host than that of a skipper.

“Look what Alexandre’s brought us. We’re in for a treat,” Serge said.

“Three different bruschette,” Régis said, striving for stage center. “One is made with fresh plums, Serrano ham, and ricotta. Another with sautéed chicken covered with yellow and red cherry tomatoes sliced in half, topped with slices of fontina, and then grilled. And a third is made with onions, carrots, zucchini, red beans, baby spinach leaves, sprinkled with
herbes de Provence
and coated with a spinach pesto sauce.”

Régis produced his camera and snapped pictures of the trays. Serge filled and distributed glasses. Forgetting he was intended to serve lunch, Régis rearranged the serving dishes, creating an expressionist tableau of summer colors.

“Do we have to wait until you’ve completely reclothed the model before we can partake?” Jacques asked. There were three beats of shocked silence before the cockpit rippled with laughter.

The wings of the table in the middle of the cockpit were raised, converting it into a cozy restaurant booth. The group scuttled around like schoolchildren gathering for their three o’clock
gouter.
Aude wound up at the stern end of the cockpit, inches away from Nathalie, at the helm. Angélique and Inès squatted, legs folded, on the sill of the hatch. The volume of chatter increased as the wine circulated. The contretemps of the morning evaporated as quickly as summer dew. The bruschette were perfect: light, flavorful, estival. As the serving dishes passed from hand to hand, Aude pivoted and glared at Nathalie’s feet, directly behind her, gray with the grime of Port Grimaud’s streets.

Elegant as a prima ballerina rising from a plié, Aude stood up, stepped onto the deck, and repositioned herself on the sliding cover of the hatch, towering over the group, a princess with her subjects assembled respectfully before her.

Solicitous of every crew member, topping up every glass when it was half full, serving every nearly filled plate with additional bruschetta, Serge was in his element. Capucine knew from Alexandre that Serge’s success with his restaurant-bar business stemmed from his ability to simultaneously animate the front of the house of five different restaurants, and not from his business acumen.

When Serge bent over Inès to pour wine, she fingered at his shirt.

“I couldn’t find a life preserver in my cabin. Isn’t it dangerous not having one? Shouldn’t there be one?”

As she spoke, her pluck on his shirt escalated into a crumpling grip. Alexandre felt the calm of the afternoon percolate away in an unpleasant sea change. High time for Inès to have the conversation nudged back ashore.

“Do you know, Inès, that we have a movie auteur on board so skillful, he could have made our mouths water even for the canned Panzani slop we so barely escaped?”

“Régis? I thought he was in advertising.”

“I hardly think of it as advertising,” Régis said, affronted. “I’m a
table
director, not a
movie
director. Trust me, that’s where the real skill is required. I work only with food. Take that TV ad for Charolais Allô that came out yesterday—you know, the one with the steam rising from a succulent
pavé de bœuf
and fries that look like they would melt in your mouth. It took me a whole week to pull it off.”

“Inès,” Dominique said, wresting the attention back, “there’s nothing to worry about. These boats are unsinkable. But I’m sure if you think you’d feel safer with a life vest on while you’re on watch, Serge would be happy to issue you one.”

He showed Alexandre and Capucine the sketch he had been working on. In the drawing the dumped mainsail had been morphed into something organic, perhaps the disemboweled colon of an animal. A blond woman, naked from the waist up, sat in the cockpit, contemplating the sail. All that could be seen of her was a shapely back, hair done up in a ballerina bun, a long and sinuous neck.

Angélique peered down at the sketch and screeched, “That’s not my breast. My breasts are larger.” She pressed her index finger hard into the pencil drawing, smudging the side of the torso, where the shadow of a breast might, or might not, have appeared. “And I know exactly who it is! It’s that filthy boat girl. Serge, if I’d known you were going to hire people like that, I’d never have come.” She pushed by her neighbors, stalked down the companionway, and slammed the cabin door.

Unperturbed, Dominique restored the offending breast with a few pencil strokes. Jacques made the merest moue at Aude and hiked his eyebrows microscopically. Aude produced the hint of a smile back at him. Capucine was sure she saw that.

His confidence restored, his belly full, Serge took over the helm and, with a sweep of his hand, motioned Nathalie to clear the dishes. With a plastic clatter she piled them up, stuffing the remains of half-eaten bruschetta into her mouth. The cockpit was quickly vacated.

The sails went up with a rattle of halyard winches, the boat heeled over, the engine stopped, and the sounds of the sea lapping at the hull became audible.

Capucine, Aude, and Angélique slipped below to put on bathing suits and reappeared on deck, Angélique with a pile of art magazines, Capucine with the latest Fred Vargas mystery, Aude with a slim volume of poetry. The women spread out on deck, removed the tops to their bathing suits, and lathered themselves with suntan oil.

Angélique sat at the masthead with Dominique, flipping through the pages of art magazines, as he observed the mandatory ritual of oiling his wife’s naked back. Alexandre joined Capucine on the bow. They sat, legs dangling over the side, heads ducked under the top wire of the lifeline to keep themselves vertical, admiring the receding coast. This was pure bliss, Capucine told herself. Why hadn’t they ever gone on a long cruise before? Capucine smirked when she caught Alexandre scrutinizing the breasts of the two women. Men and their inexplicable breast fetish. How odd it was. Aude, with her sculptured alabaster breasts, was indifferent, but Angélique caught Alexandre’s glimpse and arched her back, making her full breasts even larger.

Of course, women were even more caught up in the fetish than men were. Proud as she was of showing off her mammaries on deck, Angélique would be mortified if one of the males on board had come across her topless below deck. And all this over instruments the Maker had intended merely for the nourishment of offspring.

Half an hour later, just as Alexandre and Capucine were contemplating a short siesta in their cabin, Régis appeared on deck with a large pitcher and another stack of plastic glasses.

“Negronis,” he said. “My own variety. I make them with gin, Campari, Martini & Rossi, a healthy splash of Prosecco, and a wedge of orange. Since we’re heading for Italy, we may as well italianate ourselves.” The bubbly Negronis elevated the afternoon into something significant, possibly even transcendent.

Away from the land, the breeze stiffened to the promised twenty knots and backed to the south. Serge trimmed the sails flat and hard as iron, and the brave
Diomede
heeled well over, crashing aggressively into the intensifying chop. Sleek as the Dufour looked at her berth, Capucine realized that she really was a heavy bathtub of a boat, built stiff to make an inexperienced crew feel secure. She came alive only in a strong wind, and even then she was still unyielding, hanging on to the vertical with all her might, plowing through the waves instead of soaring.

Inès groaned and rolled her eyes. Serge motioned Angélique to the helm and went below. There was no doubt Angélique was a master at the wheel. Capucine snuggled under Alexandre’s arm and rejoiced in the afternoon. They were definitely going to go cruising more often.

A good bit later Alexandre went below to begin some culinary complexity that apparently was the sine qua non of dinner. Capucine gave the large deck a cursory look for Inès but didn’t see her. Just as she concluded that Inès had gone below to nurse her seasickness in her bunk, Capucine heard a retching sound and saw Inès’s skinny buttocks, clad in olive-drab shorts, peek out from under the taut genoa.

Capucine went forward to the bow and swung around the luff of the jib. Inès was kneeled over the lifeline, pathetically making an offering of Alexandre’s bruschetta to the sea. Capucine commiserated. There was no despair deeper than wrenching seasickness.

Her hand loosely around the lifeline, Capucine inched down the deck to join Inès, who looked up and smiled bleakly. Hidden behind the luminous backdrop of the enormous genoa, they were isolated in a magical world, sandwiched between the rushing sea and the glowing white expanse of Dacron.

A strong gust heeled the boat over more, putting the rail under water. Capucine clutched the lifeline as the water rose to her knees. Inès was slammed hard into one of the vertical stainless-steel lifeline stanchions and then began to slip under the lowest wire. She was inches away from being washed overboard. Capucine pushed through the water, folded one arm around Inès’s torso, locked the other around the lifeline, clenched her muscles.

The Dacron of the genoa crashed down on them like a falling brick wall. Capucine stretched, put her arm around the lifeline until her hands could clasp onto opposing wrists, locking Inès in her grasp. Capucine hung on for all she was worth. They both went under water for eternal seconds. The sail scraped roughly over their backs, tearing at their clothes until the boat’s angle of heel lessened. Capucine and Inès coughed and sputtered. Florence crossed the deck in long, sure-footed strides, picked them both up by the collars, dumped them none too gently onto the cushions of the cockpit. They sat in lumps, still gasping for breath, salt water streaming from their bedraggled hair.

Ignoring them, Florence went to the port-side wheel, unscrewed a knob, and jockeyed the helm, looking sternly at the rigging and the sea. Like a rambunctious dog subjugated by the return of its master, the boat sailed placidly on through the brilliant afternoon, guided only by Florence’s two fingers lightly on the top of the giant wheel.

A drowned rat, Inès sputtered, wet strands of colorless hair covering her eyes. Her glasses were gone. Capucine smiled at her. “Why, you’re beautiful without your glasses.” She giggled. Inès giggled with her. It was the first time Capucine had ever seen her laugh.

People poured through the hatchway like circus clowns bursting out of a miniature car. Angélique was furious. She shouted at Capucine and Inès, stabbing at them with her index finger. She had been at the helm, doing quite a good job with such a big boat, when Serge had abandoned her to go below. The boat had been hit by a violent squall. Frightened as she was, she had had the presence of mind to do the right thing. She had edged the helm downwind and had eased the sails to reduce the list. She’d had no idea two people were sitting on the lee rail. How could she have? They should have told her. It was their fault, not hers. And she had been brave enough to stay at the helm until she had been relieved by Florence. No one appreciated her.

As Alexandre led Capucine below to the comforts of towels, hair dryer, fresh clothes, and a hot rum toddy, Dominique emerged on deck to the harridan shrieks of Angélique. “You had the nerve to leave me alone on deck while you were panting after that grubby, hussy boat girl, and just look what happened. Your incessant skirt chasing nearly killed two people.”

W
hen the sun set with a kaleidoscopic show of brilliant reds and pinks spread out over the slate-blue sea, Capucine told herself the ultimate proof of the Dear’s divinity was His ability to keep such a garish show from being vulgar.

Most of the group was still on deck, chatting. A ship’s bell clanged. Régis stuck his head out of the hatchway.

“
Allez. Allez, les amis.
Dinner’s ready. Do you want to eat up here or down below?”

“It’s such a beautiful evening. Let’s eat on dec—” Dominique started to say.

He was cut off by Angélique, who sat at the bow with Capucine and Inès.

“Below, definitely, Régis. It’s starting to get cold.”

Régis gave Dominique a conspiratorial smile.

Without the horizon as a reference, the heel of the boat was far more apparent below deck. Capucine let the slope of the deck propel her to the galley console. Alexandre was at his diminutive stove, in the midst of one his cooking epiphanies. The stove, set on gimbals, was the only horizontal surface in the salon. Alexandre had found a wide strap that hooked into the counter at the sides of the stove, allowing the cook to lean back in complete comfort against the boat’s heel. On one burner he was making some sort of sauce; on another he was sautéing something that could have been miniature rugby balls. The salon smelled pleasantly of garlic.

At his side, Régis was enthusiastically taking pictures of Alexandre
à l’œuvre.

“Our first real meal on the boat,” he announced at large. “My blog entry is going to be fabulous. I’m going to write it right after dinner.”

With a flourish Alexandre wrapped a side towel around the handle of the metal skillet and put it in the oven. He undid one of the clips of the strap and climbed up the incline into Capucine’s arms.

“I’m so in love with youuu,” he sang. “And also so in love with this little stove,” he continued in his normal voice. “Cooking on that toy-size thing is a challenge. But you know what they say. The test of a deep-sea sailor is the ability to make perfect profiteroles in a gale-force storm. And I intend to pass that test before this cruise is over.”

Behind them, Régis laid a damp cloth on the table to prevent the dishes from sliding and then proceeded to lay the table. He tucked the knives and forks wrapped in paper napkins on the uphill sides of the plates and tested everything with his finger to see if it was secure against the list.

Six of the group inched their way up the hill onto the settees, those in the center sitting back as if in reclining chairs. Serge sat at one end and squeezed over to make room for Aude, who sat perfectly erect without any effort or apparent means of support.

Capucine sat in one of the three swivel chairs screwed into the floor and leaned far forward, bracing herself on the table with her elbows. The damp from the tablecloth was clammy and unpleasant on her elbows. The boat hammered through the chop with loud banging resonating through it from the bow. Still, Capucine told herself, the discomfort was part and parcel of the thing, more a testimony to adventure than a trial. They really were deep at sea, in their own private universe. The feeling could not be equaled.

With a flourish, Régis placed a large Plexiglas bowl filled with dark primary colors in front of Angélique. He shuffled downhill back to the galley area and returned with a small metal pot containing a dark liquid, which he poured with great care over the dish. He handed Angélique a Plexiglas salad knife-and-fork set and dropped back a few feet, his camera poised.

“Can you toss this and then serve, Angélique? It seems we have to eat it while the sauce it still hot.” The second Angélique’s implements touched the bowl, a bright flash and then two more dazed the diners. “Great shot,” Régis announced. “Now give me some action, Angélique. I want to see some real tossing. I need drama.”

Turning to face Alexandre, who had removed his little rugby balls from the oven and was covering them with aluminum foil, Régis asked, “What do you call this again?”

Alexandre pushed his way up the incline, smiling the proud grin of a three-star chef emerging from his kitchen. Capucine was sure he imagined himself in a foot-high, immaculate white chef’s toque.

“
Bagna cauda.
It’s a Niçois classic. Potatoes, baby beets, baby leeks, baby carrots, spring onions, radishes, bell peppers, endive, and many other things, but most importantly, properly trimmed baby artichokes. The sauce is made with anchovies and garlic in olive oil. But the point of the thing is that it has to be eaten hot. Hence the name.”

As always, Alexandre’s food had a mesmerizing effect. No one spoke for thirty seconds. The anchovies gave the delicate baby vegetables a piquancy that elevated them to the ethereal. Dishes like this never surprised Capucine when Alexandre made them on his enormous La Cornue stove in their apartment, but the fact that he was able to pull it off on a tiny stove on a heaving sea impressed her. She hoped they might have a serious storm so he could attempt profiteroles.

Capucine looked over at Inès to see how she was coping with her first in-cabin meal. She seemed to be relishing the bagna cauda.

“So tell us, Serge,” Angélique said with exaggerated cheerfulness, “all about Bonifacio. What time are we going to get there, and what’s it going to look like?”

Serge puffed out his chest like a carrier pigeon. “Bonifacio is one of the great natural harbors of the world. It’s at the end of a narrow gorge nearly half a mile long and cut into the rock. And high up on the rock, above the harbor, there’s a small town—”

Florence cut him off. “There are places where you can have lunch and lean out the window as far as you can and still not see where the sea meets the bottom of the cliff. I always move my chair very carefully.”

Serge jockeyed to regain the microphone. “We’ll arrive in the middle of the morning. We’re going to have a hard sail tonight, and so I’m going to tell you how I want to assign the crew—”

“Voilà,” Alexandre said, arriving with a platter, leaning forward against the incline. Régis’s incessant flashes lit up the room like a nightclub.

The main course was beautifully browned squid, bloated with a stuffing of crab, the squid’s chopped tentacles, onions, green peppers, red bell peppers, and a bit of garlic; seasoned with curry and hot mustard powder; and sprinkled with lime. It was accompanied by an elegant
tian
of thin slices of tomatoes and eggplant, topped with little pieces of fresh goat cheese, covered with the Midi’s ubiquitous herbes de Provence and a latticework of a truly excellent olive oil Alexandre had unearthed on his shopping foray. This all was served with an unctuous, round, honey-noted Ott rosé.

There was another moment of silence as the first bites were tasted. From her seat Capucine could see Nathalie scowling at them from her position at the helm. Even though the sun had set nearly an hour before, the dusk was still rosy bright.

Florence followed Capucine’s gaze.

“Serge,” Florence said. “Whose head is Nathalie going to use?”

“I, er, hadn’t—”

“It’s going to take more than a bathroom to scrape the filth off that girl’s feet,” Angélique said. “Someone needs to put a pressure hose to her.”

She glanced at Aude, hoping for an agreeing comment, but Aude just looked back, her porcelain face expressionless. Angélique smirked self-righteously, as if Aude had agreed with her vigorously. Capucine noted, not for the first time, that Aude’s blank face had a Rorschach quality of reflecting the mood and opinion of the person talking to her. It must be those all-knowing, preternaturally blue eyes.

Jacques also stared at Aude, the top half of his face deadly serious, but the bottom twisted into a wry smirk. “I wouldn’t be too quick with that pressure hose. Nothing is more erotic than a big-breasted wench seasoned with the soil of the earth. Think Tom Jones.” He shrieked his donkey bray, ear piercingly loud in the confines of the salon.

Obviously embarrassed by the turn the conversation had taken, Régis said, “Florence, tell us about your single-handed races. I just can’t imagine anyone sailing a boat as big as this all by herself.”

Florence smiled modestly. “Actually, most of the boats I sailed were more than twice as long as this one, and since they were three-hulled trimarans, they were a whole lot wider. Handling the boat is the easy part. You just take everything very, very slowly, very carefully, one step at a time. You win races by being lucky about the weather. The first Route du Rhum I won, I arrived a full day before the others because I took a southerly route and had a nice following wind for three days, while everyone else was stuck in a dead calm.”

“Don’t you get lonely?”

“No. If you’re not terrified in the middle of a storm, you’re numb from lack of sleep. It’s like being on drugs. Of course, you lose it a little. I can understand why so many of these guys who do the single-handed circumnavigation of the globe wind up nuts.”

Florence continued on with tales of loopy single-handed sailors. Capucine lost the thread. She wondered who had really been at the helm when they took their ducking.

With a clatter, Régis cleared the dishes and put new plates on the table, along with a selection of cheeses from the Midi, a big wedge of pale Moulis, three different goat cheeses, and a large slab of Bleu des Causses, which looked like a thick-crusted Roquefort.

“Be sure to try that,” Alexandre said to the group. “It’s Roquefort’s milder, more elegant cousin.”

Florence edged out of her seat and stood up effortlessly, despite the steep list of the floor. “Serge, why don’t you have a peek at our position and make sure we don’t have a course change? Shout it up to me if you want a new heading. I’m going to spell Nathalie so she can eat.”

“Yes, good thinking. I was just about to do that.” Serge stood up, limped his way to the navigation desk, and began poking at the electronic instruments and making pencil marks on the chart.

“Florence, we’re dead on course. Steady as she goes,” he shouted.

Nathalie’s bare feet thumped down the companionway steps. She swept the table with a rancorous look. She went to the galley area, where Régis was washing dishes. Two of the squid had been left in the foil-covered frying pan for her. She pulled off the foil and wrinkled her nose in distaste. The group at the table watched her out of the corner of their eyes.

“Here’s how we should divide up the watches,” Serge said.

Nathalie picked up one of the squid with her fingers, put it to her nose, sniffed it suspiciously. She made a childish moue of distaste. Alexandre frowned at her.

“The boat will be on autopilot, so there’s nothing to do except keep your eyes open and call me if there’s a change in wind direction. Is that clear?”

Nathalie took a deep, resigned breath and bit off a third of one of the squid. The stuffing oozed out, sticking to her upper and lower lips as she chewed. She swallowed with a loud gulp, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and stuffed in the rest of the squid.

“I’ll take the first watch with Alexandre and Aude. Then at midnight Florence will come up with Capucine and Jacques. At four in the morning Nathalie will take over with Angélique and Régis. How that?”

“Perfect,” Jacques said sotto voce to Capucine. “Angélique can get to work with her power hose.”

Nathalie appeared to approve of the squid. She grabbed the second squid in her fist and took a large bite. A blob of stuffing fell on her dimpled chin. She chewed on, swallowed with a gulp, scraped the stuffing off her chin with two fingers, then put them in her mouth and sucked loudly.

The people at the table made a great show of avoiding the spectacle. Capucine had not the slightest doubt that Nathalie was putting it on intentionally.

“Pure Antonioni,” Jacques said sotto voce with his Cheshire cat smile. “Only he fully understood the eroticism of the
belle fauve
—the beautiful savage.” He shrieked his high-pitched laugh. Capucine looked at Aude to see how she would react. She had turned her head toward Jacques, and Capucine was sure she saw a faint smile, but when she looked again, she thought she must have imagined it. Aude’s lips had remained as immobile, as if they had been cut from white Tuscan marble.

At one in the morning Capucine leaned back in the cockpit, her feet up on the now-folded table and her head resting on the back of a settee cushion, watching the canopy of stars gyrate lazily back and forth as the boat rolled. She thought of Ulysses, who had sailed these very waters in his adventures and misadventures. She thought of how this little sea, when you got right down to it, was the placenta of the Western world’s civilizations.

Florence was at the helm, a few feet away, her hand languidly draped over one of the twin wheels, eyes glued to the horizon, throwing an occasional glance at the compass in front of her, which cast a faint, candle-like glow on her mannish features. She had switched the autopilot off. The feel of the boat had immediately softened, the boat itself becoming responsive to the give and take of the sea. On long cruises Capucine was always amazed how, even when you were eyes-shut-tight asleep in your bunk, you could always tell who was at the helm. And you always slept far better with an experienced hand on the wheel.

The sky was solid with stars. There were so many, it seemed almost that the lighted dots occupied more area than the dark spaces. Harking back to her childhood summers on the beach in Brittany, she found the few constellations she could recognize. There was the Big Dipper, guiding her eyes to the North Star. She searched for her father’s favorite cluster of stars, the Pleiades, which he always liked to call “a little pâté.” Where was it? There it was. Fainter than she remembered, but very much present and accounted for.

Finding the Pleiades had always been her summer nighttime swan song. Her father would sit with her on the beach until they found it and congratulated themselves. Then—

“You know,
cousine,
you should do the wet T-shirt thing more often. You have the perfect
nichons
for it. It’s a look that suits you. Your juge chum, not so much. If the best you can muster is a fried egg, you should stay dry.”