Murder on the Mediterranean (Capucine Culinary Mystery)

by Alexander Campion

  David laughed. “I got the gist of it from the commissaire’s cousin. Jacques and I had a long chat on the phone last night. By the way, this is Jean’s boat.” David indicated the elder of the two fishermen with his head. “He’s a good buddy. He fishes out of Bandol and was generous enough to give up half a day’s work to help us out.”

  “Anytime, Monsieur le Maire. You know I’m always at your service.” Jean flashed a broken-toothed smile accompanied by a respectful head bob, which David accepted as his due as a celebrity. He had clinched his new career by writing a runaway best seller about a murder, including a racy account of the victim, a rock-star chef originally from the village.

  As David sat on the gunwale, chatting with Jean, Capucine watched him ceaselessly preen his locks with his fingers. His love of clothes and his vanity about his hair were still very much there, but he had changed. He had added the mantle of power. He wore it casually, but it was still manifest.

  In Bandol, the fishing boat motored past the gleaming white sailboats and tied up at the plebeian rusty end of the marina. Walking through town, David came close to being mobbed. Everyone seemed to want a word in his ear. At one point David disappeared into a branch of the Crédit Agricole and returned in a few minutes with a thick envelope.

  “You both need to get kitted out. This should do for a reasonable spree.”

  Capucine peeked into the envelope. The sum surprised her.

  “David, I’m embarrassed. I’ll pay you back the second this is all over.”

  David flapped his hand in dismissal. He looked at his watch.

  “Oh là là. I’m late already. You two go shopping and meet me at a restaurant called Les Pieds dans L’Eau in an hour. It’s right over there,” he said, pointing down the quai. “If I’m a few minutes late, don’t worry. These meetings with constituents tend to run over, but missing lunch is inconceivable in the Midi.”

  An hour and a half later Capucine and Alexandre were seated, one row in, on the terrace of the restaurant, contentedly sipping rosé in the sunshine. Capucine wore a short, bouffant, frilly skirt with a pink stripe and a loose white cotton shirt with a low neckline. She finally felt comfortable in her skin. A leather-trimmed teal-green canvas bag sat by her feet, holding the rest of her acquisitions.

  David burst onto the terrace, beaming a public smile.

  “Désolé. I’m sorry I’m late. It was impossible to extricate myself.”

  “Your timing is perfect. We’re in heaven here,” Alexandre said. “They have Ott’s Rosé Cœur de Grain, which is by far my preferred rosé. It’s the only rosé that has such a prolonged note of honey. It—”

  Capucine cut him off. Even in difficult moments Alexandre could monologue about wine for hours if unchecked. She grinned internally. She was definitely back in her world.

  “How was your meeting?” Capucine asked.

  “Very positive.” David sat down. “I don’t know if anyone told you, but I’m exploring the possibility of running for député du Var. The election is in the spring. I was elected mayor of my village only a little more than a year ago, so it’s very quick, but my supporters have almost convinced me I’m a viable candidate.”

  The waiter arrived. David stood up and gripped his hand tightly. They exchanged a few words about the waiter’s children. Sotto voce David said something that had the tone of a promise. It wasn’t difficult to see why David’s supporters were so enthusiastic.

  When David leaned over to fill his glass, he said in a murmur, “Discretion is the order of the day. When you’re in office, everyone knows who you are and risks cricking their neck to pick up even the tiniest crumb of gossip.” And then, in a much louder voice, he added, “You’ll love this restaurant. The owner used to be a fisherman. He has a beautiful eye for seafood. No point in even looking at the menu. The patron will decide for us.”

  The owner turned out to be another character who easily could have been served up by central casting, a short man of nearly spherical rotundity, radiating bonhomie. He bustled up, complimenting them on the serendipity of having picked that particular day to eat at his restaurant. It just so happened that he had rouget, red snapper, of a perfection never before equaled in Cannes. And not only that, but he had exactly three of them, each more beautiful than the next.

  “And I’m going to start you out with anchois, baby anchovies, dusted with a hint of flour mixed with piment d’espelette and fleur de sel and then deep-fried. I want you to trust me. When we get to the snappers, don’t forget they were alive barely two hours ago, and I’ll be serving them the way God intended, grilled very lightly, not cleaned out, and not scaled. As the great novelist said, ‘A rouget without its liver is a Paganini without his violin.’ ”

  The rouget were even better than vaunted, as round-bellied as the patron, moist and light, brimming with the sea and the inimitable flavor of red snapper. There was a great deal to be said for fish that had traveled a mere fifteen feet from boat to table.

  After lunch, they rattled off into the hills in David’s ramshackle little Peugeot.

  “I live in a mas. That’s what they call farmhouses around here. I bought it with the money I got for the book’s movie rights. I want you to think of it as entirely yours while you’re here.” He smiled and squeezed Capucine’s arm. “We’re going to need to buff up your cover story. I let it drop in the village that my Parisian uncle was coming on vacation with his beautiful young wife.”

  “Tonton Alexandre!” Capucine said. “It suits you.”

  “Provençal villagers will never breathe a word about anything to an outsider, and outsiders include even the people from the next village. But they don’t like not knowing every last thing that goes on in their own village. Trust me, they’ll quiz you both to death. We need a killer story and certainly new names. Tonton Edouard suits Alexandre perfectly.”

  “So, I think we should give La Cadière-d’Azura a miss tonight, until we get everything sorted out. I have Magali, an old widow who ‘does’ for me, as they say down here, and she cooks well, or at least I’ve gotten used to her cooking. Tonton, do think you can rough it for one night?”

  “Don’t get fresh with your uncle, fiston,” Alexandre said with a broad smile.

  “Also,” David continued, “I’ve confiscated five or six cell phones from some teens. Don’t look at me like that. They all owe me a favor or two for getting them off the hook for little run-ins with the gendarmes.” He nudged Capucine’s arm, then pulled back, thinking he had gone too far.

  “Cap . . . Commissaire, you can’t imagine what a kick I get when those local gendarmes come to attention and salute me.”

  “David, if you don’t start calling me by my name, I’ll have to start calling you Monsieur le Maire, and I don’t think that’s going to help our cover story.”

  “These cell phones are the pay-as-you-go kind, so they’re impossible to trace. Just what a perp on the run or the head of the local police force needs, right?”

  The mas might have started life out as a simple farmhouse, but it had come a long way. It sprawled out in all directions and embraced two large pools. Capucine flapped a hand in semi-mock admiration.

  “What kind of farmer lived here when you bought it?”

  “The kind that makes a lot of money on Wall Street and then gets hit hard by the recession. I’m afraid I had him over a barrel and was not quite as gentle as I could have been. Wait till you see the bathrooms. I still can’t get used to brushing my teeth out of gold faucets.”

  Capucine spent the better part of the afternoon sitting somewhere deep in the fragrant hills, brooding, trying to make sense of her situation. How could she possibly cope without the authority of her badge, the use of her brigade of police officers? She brooded on. It was even worse than that. She was manacled by her exile. She couldn’t call her friends, her family, not even her mother. She was naked in a wilderness. A wilderness with gold faucets, yes, but a wilderness, nonetheless.

  She rubbed the tears out of the corner
s of her eyes and dragged her heels back to the mas. She found David and Alexandre on the long trellised patio, sipping pastis and smoking cigars. Alexandre had found a store in Bandol that sold authentic Havanas and had spent more on Vuelta Abajo leaf than she had on clothes. Here she was, deep in mourning over her lost identity, and Alexandre was as serene as ever. For him it was just another cheerful adventure, one that he was already polishing to regale his cronies with.

  Capucine sat with them and was given a milky white glass of pastis. The two men fenced with quoted lines from the Provençal poet Frédéric Mistral. The sensual aroma of Havana leaf mingled with the heady aroma of wild thyme, blending with the unaccustomed licorice taste of the pastis. The sun dappled through the overhead canopy of vine leaves.

  Maybe it was just the odors, but a sense of peace descended over Capucine. She had found sanctuary. Her problems were probably as irresolvable as ever, but hopelessness wasn’t possible under that marquee of vines. She reached out and took David’s hand. Alexandre smiled at her.

  “Chaque année, le rossignol revêt des plumes neuves, mais il garde sa chanson. Every year the nightingale dons new plumage but retains his old song,” Alexandre quoted.

  What would she do without Alexandre? He was perfectly right. The trappings were the least of things. Gradually, the sun sank in the sky, and the rhythmic violin screeching of the cicadas fell silent.

  “Shall we have dinner out here?” David asked. “It’s a poulpe en daube—local octopus stewed in a wine-based marinade. My guardian angel, Magali, does it very well. She has a little trick we won’t tell Alexandre about.” He bent over in Capucine’s direction and spoke in mock confidentiality. “She freezes the octopus for a night before putting it in its marinade. She claims that makes it much more tender. Excuse me for a moment. I’ll go heat it up and come back and set the table.”

  “You’ll do no such thing,” Capucine said. “We’re in the Midi here, where no self-respecting woman will let a man do a woman’s work.” She had an irresistible itch for action. She jerked herself out of her chair. Alexandre protested. “No, no. Let me do it.”

  With an elegant wave of two fingers, David quieted him.

  In the kitchen Capucine found a long table covered in antique Provençal tiles, much larger than, but not dissimilar to, the one in her own kitchen in Paris. She wondered when she would ever see that again.

  The daube was still warm in a stoneware cocotte. She bustled around the kitchen, looking for plates, glasses, knives, forks, then took it all out to the patio with two bottles of a red Mourvèdre from Bandol.

  The daube lived up to David’s promise, not the slightest bit chewy, rich with the flavors of the wine marinade, olive oil, and a good number of local wild spices.

  After the daube came the cheeses—Annot, a strong goat cheese shaped like a doughnut; Banon, wrapped in chestnut leaves and tied with raffia and dotted with specks of blue mold; and Brousse, a goat cheese so mild, it came to life only when sprinkled with local wild thyme.

  “I can’t tell you how happy I am that you’re here, Com . . . Capucine,” David said. “How long do you think you’ll be staying?” He caught himself. “I certainly wasn’t suggesting you leave. To make me perfectly happy, you and Alexandre would stay all summer.”

  “David, it may well come to that.”

  “Look, Commissaire—” David flicked his hand in front of his mouth in irritation. “Look, Capucine, I used to be halfway okay as a brigadier, right? Well, I have a lot of free time right now, and, well, if you want, you can use me as if I were on your team. Give me orders. Send me places. All that stuff. Truth be told, I miss it. Actually, I miss the rest of the team more than I ever admit to myself.”

  Capucine was grateful for David’s enthusiasm, but it unsettled her.

  “The way your cousin described the situation, the intended victim had to be the juge d’instruction, Madame Maistre, right?”

  Capucine said nothing.

  “And the perp, or at least the man running the perp, was pretty obviously that investment banker guy. Are we going to be investigating him?”

  “Him and others. Yes.”

  David beamed. Capucine knew why. Despite herself, she had spoken in her commissaire’s voice, even though it was unlikely she’d play the role of commissaire for quite a while yet.

  CHAPTER 18

  Only half paying attention to what she was doing, Inès erected a protective rampart from the thick pile of clothbound legal files, which populated the desk of nearly every lawyer in Paris. She had placed an oversize business card upside down in the exact center of her blotter and tapped an irritated tattoo on it with her fingernail. Finally, with an exasperated snort, she flipped the card over. Beneath the raised engraving were two lines of fastidious handwriting in emerald ink. She pushed her reading glasses firmly up the bridge of her nose and read.

  Madame le Juge,

  Apologies for the inexcusable tardiness of this invitation, but it would give me the greatest pleasure to invite you to lunch at the Cercle Interallié tomorrow. Can we say 1:00?

  The card was from Etienne-Louis Lévêque, senior partner of Lévêque, Fourcade, and Levy, by far the largest and most prestigious law firm in France, with offices in twenty-five countries and several hundred lawyers on its payroll.

  She’d never met Lévêque, but she’d seen him speak a number of times. What lawyer hadn’t? He was at the epicenter of the legal power structure, an intoxicating speaker, a big man with a shock of silver hair and a gravelly voice that rolled like thunder. He was supposed to be over eighty but looked forceful enough to be in the prime of his life.

  The invitation was enigmatic. Inès guessed it was a tickle at a job offer. Having a former juge d’instruction as a criminal litigator would be a feather in the cap of Lévêque, Fourcade, and Levy. Of course, it was well known that she was as faithful to the magistrature as a nun to her convent, but still, the rumors were abounding that the function of juge d’instruction would be discontinued in the near future. These were hardly the times to turn one’s nose up at anything. Still, places like the Interallié gave her hives. She certainly wasn’t going to join the ranks of those who took three hours for lunch and returned to the office tipsy. No, she wasn’t going to show up.

  The problem was, she’d let the card sit on her desk since the day before. It was too late to beg out, and simply not showing up was clearly not an option. When you got down to it, she really had no choice but to go.

  In the oak-paneled foyer of the Interallié, a liveried servant informed Inès she was expected in the garden. She walked through the painted, gilded, mirrored rooms of the rambling hôtel particulier and emerged into the brilliant summer sunshine. Blinking, she took a moment to become oriented. She had eaten there a few times. The over-manicured eighteenth-century garden abutted an area graveled in white marble chips, filled with white-painted metal tables capped with oversize parasols. Hermès ties and the latest in summer frocks were the order of the day.

  In a far corner, Maître Lévêque waited for her, standing, magnificent as a statue in a light beige suit, his nimbus of white hair glowing preternaturally in the sun.

  When Inès reached his table, Lévêque smiled at her in greeting, bent at the waist to kiss her hand in a baisemain, remembered just in time she was not married, transformed the gesture into a two-handed clasp. Despite the silliness of his antediluvian manners, Inès was struck by his majesty of power.

  “Madame le Juge, please accept my apology for the abruptness of this invitation, but I have been wanting to meet you for quite some time, and I thought with the suddenness of your return from vacation—you weren’t expected back for another week—your calendar might not be overcharged.”

  Inès wondered how—and more importantly, why—he was so well informed.

  It was deliciously cool under the tentlike parasol. Beyond its rim, the sun beat down ruthlessly.

  “Maître,” Inès said, “I’m amazed you’re out and about in this impossible
heat.”

  “You’re absolutely right. Paris is no place to be in August. I’ll be off in a few days. I have a little house on the beach in Loctudy, in Brittany. The weather there is glorious. Even at this time of year one has to wear a sweater in the evening.”

  Flutes of champagne appeared. Inès felt that she was at the rim of the vortex of the world she abominated. Lévêque prattled soothing banalities. Food arrived, followed by even more food. The service was as impeccable as the cuisine was mediocre: savorless smoked salmon, pallid chicken paillard salad. It went on and on. Overdressed people sauntered by to nod obsequiously at Lévêque. Inès didn’t have a clue what she was doing there.

  Over the fraises des bois sorbet, the penny finally dropped. It had to do with a European consortium created to house several major French and German airplane and missile manufacturers. A Frenchman was at the head of the consortium, which had recently missed the due date of a large order of jumbo passenger planes to an American airline. A few weeks before the announcement of the delay, the French chairman had exercised his options and sold them hours before the stock plummeted. The shares had been “portaged” by Tottinguer & Cie to safeguard the anonymity of the transaction.

  It took Inès a while to decode her role. At first Inès thought she was being offered the smaller fish, the son André, on a platter if she would keep her hands off the biggest fish—his grandfather, the chairman.

  But as the sorbet transformed itself into coupes of champagne, the scenario became murkier and the meaning clearer. Underneath the multiple layers of circumlocutions, she was being offered the grand prize: all the top brass at Tottinguer—as long as she forswore investigating the conglomerate itself.

  Various governments and senior politicians had to be immersed up to their eyebrows. The object of the exercise was to limit the list of “blamables” to salaried executives and to avoid interfering with political careers and the eternal European diplomatic ballet.