“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.
CHAPTER 28
Alexandre 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.”
CHAPTER 29
They arrived at L’Hôtel a few minutes before six. Alexandre had spent much of the ride to Paris on one of Capucine’s cell phones, calling cronies, using his pull to secure them a small suite at L’Hôtel under the name Estouffade.
Alexandre checked in with ebullient good spirits, providing a cash deposit instead of a credit card number, just like a prosperous provincial farmer showing off. As he signed the register, he repeatedly blew puffs at the mustache to keep stray hairs from tickling his lip. The pretty woman in a dark suit behind the desk assumed the deadpan face of a novice poker player with an exceptional hand and took frequent peeks at Capucine out of the corner of her eye. It was clear she was having a hard time suppressing her giggles.
Capucine had not set foot in L’Hôtel in years. The atrium, narrow and deep as a well, brought back memories not only of her youth but also of Paris Match photos of famous rock groups leaning over the balustrades of the top floors, making funny faces. Capucine and Alexandre’s room was decorated with cubist furniture made entirely of mirrors. It had a thirties charm, Capucine told herself, she would find amusing for exactly one night.
The restaurant was exactly as she remembered, a heavy rococo caricature, dripping with brocade drapes and hooded lamps, awash in a sea of red velvet and striped silk. They sat facing each other on wide green silk-covered settees, nestled into throw pillows, separated by a diminutive round table inlaid in veneer. The fare was classic one-star haute cuisine. Alexandre chose veal sweetbreads in a dried chanterelle herb broth, and Capucine the wild pigeon in a sauce diable. The plating of both dishes was melodramatic, amorphous foams providing the ubiquitous molecular cuisine touch.
Alexandre was back in his element. Capucine could see him framing a review and lamented that it would go unpublished for quite some time. “This is an institution that has been able to hang on to its niche for a good many decades,” Alexandre said, punctuating the utterance with a puff at his mustache.
They both looked around the room. There were a handful of Parisians in exorbitant casual attire and a greater number of English people, the men in brocaded waistcoats and luxuriously flowing locks and the women in designer harem pants under silken blouses open to their navels. They all smacked of the world of music or fashion.
“How glorious to be home again,” Alexandre said, cheerfully blowing at his mustache.
The next day, Capucine abandoned Alexandre to his mustache and wandered around Serge’s part of the Marais, visiting his restaurants to see if she could come up with any news of his whereabouts. She was tranquil that her new hairdo would safeguard her anonymity.
Her first stop was a restaurant-café on the rue Vieille-du-Temple in the Marais, not far from her apartment. It was a bijou place that had been in business for over a hundred and fifty years. The tiny bar was U-shaped, corralling two bartenders, who supplied drinks and snacks to the artsy crowd until the small hours of the morning. At night the bar was invariably packed tight as the rush-hour Metro.
She arrived at the restaurant-café at eleven and sat outside, at one of the four round marble-topped tables on the sidewalk. She was the only customer on the terrace. The waitress, a pretty young girl with long pale chestnut hair, so clean-looking and light it bounced when she walked, came out to take her order. Capucine had never seen her before; she’d never been there during daylight hours before.
When the waitress returned with Capucine’s express, Capucine smiled at her in thanks and asked, “Has Serge Monnot been in yet today? I was hoping to see him.”
“The owner? I’ve been working here for a year, and the only time I’ve seen him was when he interviewed me. I think he comes in only at night. Anyway, someone told me he’s on vacation and he won’t be back until September. And why should he?”
She looked in at the bar. Capucine followed her gaze. It was completely deserted.
“This place is a wasteland in August. I don’t know why Monsieur Monnot bothers to keep it open. He should close down for August like everyone else.”
Capucine crossed the street to another restaurant-café owned by Serge. This one was essentially a bookstore with a long mahogany bar. Capucine sat on a stool and ordered another coffee. While it was being prepared, she wandered around the long room, examining the titles. The selection leaned heavily to avant-garde poetry and aggressive postmodern literature. Capucine picked up a slim book of poems and returned to the bar. She had also come here frequently with Alexandre for nightcaps. Patrons with books in their hands were a common enough sight, but she had never seen anyone actually buy one.
The bar girl was even more attractive than the waitress across the street. She wore her dark blond hair crinkled in waves cut so it formed an equilateral triangle with a flat base. The hair provided a dramatic frame for her face.
“Vénus Khoury-Ghata,” the bar girl said, nodding at the book in Capucine’s hands. “A genius. She won the Goncourt for poetry last year. One of the great visionaries of our century.”
Capucine had scanned two or three of the poems. She was unable to concentrate enough to get into the verse. She slapped the book down on the table. The bar girl looked up in alarm.
“You don’t really want to buy it, do you?”
Capucine smiled at her and shook her head. The bar girl seemed relieved.
Murder on the Mediterranean (Capucine Culinary Mystery) Page 17
