Even though Labrousse had never met Gautier, they hugged and patted backs as if they had been classmates at the école hôtelière. Labrousse smiled at the sight of the lustrous, undecorated African hardwood paneling, the chrome-legged tables and chairs, the gleaming white linen tablecloths, the enormously long-stemmed wine glasses.
“You haven’t changed a thing,” Labrousse said.
“The menu is completely different,” Gautier said. “And I’ve added one or two touches to the dining room. I don’t have your depth of understanding of vegetables, so meat is more important in my cuisine.” With his head he indicated an almost black ham held by the bone in a silver clamp attached to a walnut base.
“Spanish jamón Serrano?” Capucine asked, proud of her knowledge.
Labrousse smiled at her and then at Gautier. “Pas du tout, ma chérie. This is jamón ibérico de bellota, the king of all hams. It comes from the Dehesa oak forests between Spain and Portugal. Cerdo pigs, a breed unique to the region, gorge themselves on the acorns. Then the ham is cured for three years. It’s one of the things I miss most in America. The USDA has only allowed imports for a year or two, and the prices are beyond belief. Ham at three times the price of foie gras. Can you imagine!”
Capucine looked abashed. Alexandre rubbed her back and kissed her ear.
“Gautier,” Labrousse said, “you don’t know how lucky you are to have so much produce. I’ve had to add more meat to my menu, as well. The Americans are a nation of beef eaters.” Both chefs laughed heartily. “But I’ve just bought a small farm in Pennsylvania and started plowing with a horse. Next year we’ll see what we’ll see.”
As the maître d’hôtel showed the group to its table, Gautier whispered earnestly to Alexandre, “I was at the church, but I skipped out on the burial. I know it was a grave faux pas, but I just had to be in my kitchen. Was it a terrible gaffe?”
Alexandre shook his head. “Not at all. Brault would have done exactly the same thing. In fact, he wouldn’t even have gone to the church. He’s up there right now smiling at you.”
Gautier wasn’t sure he wasn’t being kidded, and scuttled off to the kitchen where he would remain for the rest of the meal, with one eye on his ovens and the other at the judas in the kitchen door.
They sat; the inevitable flutes of champagne arrived. The mood was glum.
A fifty-year-old man announced to the table at large, “I lost my second star five years ago. If my wife hadn’t been so supportive, I would have thrown myself into the Seine.”
A sveltely elegant woman with patrician features nodded vigorously in agreement. “I lost my second star last year, too. That reptilian Folon gloated. He said that my restaurant had never been at the two-star level, and that with only one star, I would relax, fit better into my skin, and become a happy woman. Quelle connerie! If I don’t get my second star back in a year or two, I really will throw myself in the Seine. Thank God I don’t have a husband who’ll try to stop me.”
As the conversation progressed to the alternative response to a lost star of refusing to be listed in the Guide—something both Maxim’s and the Tour d’Argent had done—Gautier’s tasting menu was unfolded like a hand of gilt-edged tarot cards laid out to tell a fortune. They started with spoonfuls of beluga caviar on halves of baked potato and smoked eel surrounded by dots of creamy horseradish sauce. That was followed by creamy asparagus velouté with nuggets of sorrel sprouts. Next came medallions of warm duck foie gras decorated with a sauce of cherry and fresh almond. Then soft-boiled eggs served in their own shells with a creamy sauce of girolle mushrooms. Once the appetizers were over, the meal shifted up a gear with sliced fillets of sole served with a creamy violet sauce. The next gear shift brought two main dishes, sweetbreads studded with little nails of fresh bay on a bed of romaine lettuce, followed by a quail stuffed with foie gras and accompanied by a caramelized apple and summer truffle sauce.
The mood of the group remained somber even when the food arrived. Normally, the professionals of haute gastronomie felt it was as insulting to talk while eating as it was to check one’s BlackBerry while kissing a beautiful girl. Even though a hint of cheer eventually bubbled up through the semi-silence, gloom had jelled over the meal. The few exchanges were sorrowful ones of the sort that reposing in noble dignity at the bottom of the Seine was infinitely preferable to drifting ghostlike in the limbo of unlisted restaurants, to be noticed only by tourists. Gautier fretted at his judas window, wringing his hands in his apron and upbraiding his line chefs mercilessly.
It wasn’t until the dessert was reached—a small scoop of cacao ice cream on a bed of creamy chocolate ganache made with Venezuelan Araguani chocolate—that the traditional ebullience of a pack of gastronomes at a renowned watering hole returned and the topics of abusive critics and suicides over lost stars were finally abandoned.
Capucine was amazed that the police’s announcement that Brault had been murdered had had no effect whatsoever on the conventional wisdom that Brault had committed suicide as a result of Folon’s insinuations that he was about to lose a star.
An anxious Gautier came out bearing a crystal decanter of alcool de framboise—raspberry liqueur. Four aide-serveurs followed him with tiny stemmed glasses and coffee, which they placed before each guest as Gautier searched their eyes, trolling for approval.
He asked Labrousse, “C’était? Was it?”
Labrousse rose, beamed at him, and said, “Rien à dire. Nothing to say.” It was the highest possible praise in the restaurant code. It had been so good, no criticism of any kind was possible.
Labrousse gave Gautier a hug. “It fills me with pride to see cuisine of this excellence made in what used to be my restaurant. I used to feel in New York I had to live up to my Paris standards. Now I have even higher standards to live up to.”
The entire table lit up with smiles. Still, as far as Capucine could tell, the group’s conviction was that while the only true criticism came from a peer, the only significant criticism came in print from a professional critic.
Capucine and Alexandre did not get home until four in the afternoon. Alexandre closeted himself in his study to write a short piece on the funeral for the last edition of Le Monde, while Capucine sat in the living room, on the phone to her brigade, reviewing the incidents of the day.
When Alexandre appeared an hour later with two flutes of champagne, Capucine grimaced and said, “I can’t face the thought of another meal. I’m stuffed with lunch and drained by the funeral. I feel like a sagging party balloon.”
Alexandre smiled at her. “A little massage and you’ll be as good as new.”
As was the way with connubial massages, one thing led to another, and the living room sofa led to the bedroom four-poster.
Much later, Capucine shook Alexandre awake.
“You know, I believe I actually am becoming a little peckish.”
“Good,” Alexandre said into his pillow. And then, rising like a whale bursting through sea foam, he added, “I’m always hungry when it comes to you.”
“No, no, I mean really hungry. Let’s eat something.”
Alexandre pouted. “I suppose I could make us a light souper.”
He paused for a moment, deep in thought.
“Actually, there is a new recipe I’d like to try. I think it would be perfect.”
He jumped up, shrugged into a red and gold kimono Capucine had given him for Christmas, and made off energetically for the kitchen as Capucine disappeared into the bathroom.
A few minutes later, Capucine found a flute of champagne waiting for her on the long table in the kitchen and Alexandre chopping furiously with a long kitchen knife. It looked like salmon.
“I’m making you a Japanese delicacy. Actually, it’s not Japanese at all, just a clever recipe by a Japanese chef, Aiko Kikuchi. She’s apprenticed in two three-star restaurants and is now looking for a place of her own.” He paused. “There, that’s the salmon,” he said, scraping the pink cubes off the cutting board onto a dish. �
��Now for the onion,” he said, attacking a large red onion. Next came a cucumber and finally an apple, all cubed identically.
He placed the cubes in a big glass bowl, poured in a healthy dose of soy sauce, and topped it with sections of chives snipped with a pair of kitchen scissors. He cut a lime in half, squeezed the contents over the mixture, then mixed it all vigorously with a wooden spoon.
“Voilà,” he said. “Salmon tartare à l’oriental.”
“When do we get to eat it? I’m famished.”
“It needs to chill for an hour, and I’m exhausted after all that chopping.” He mimed a sad, drooping Pierrot. “Please, oh, please, help me to my bed before I collapse right here.”
An hour later they were back in the kitchen. The tartare was delicious, cold, salmony, crunchy from the apples, onions, and cucumbers, tangy with chives and soy and lime. More than enough to fill the palate with taste, but not bulk.
When they finished the tartare, they took their thimble-sized glasses of Armagnac into the living room, collapsed onto the sofa, and turned on the eleven o’clock TV news, wondering if the funeral would be covered. Alexandre nibbled Capucine’s ear. Capucine kissed Alexandre’s nose. He kissed her neck at the sensitive spot where it joined her shoulder. Capucine reached for the remote to switch off the TV. As she looked up, she was astounded to see her face. She turned the volume up.
A very pretty young lady was reading from the next morning’s press. The screen would flash the headline and then cut to the face of the young woman, who was smiling with provocative cynicism, making knowing comments.
“And so, the burning question earlier today at three-star Chef Jean-Louis Brault’s funeral was . . .” The talking head paused to pout coquettishly at the camera. “Whether über–restaurant critic Lucien Folon really drove Brault to suicide with his merciless attacks in the press.”
Alexandre sat on the edge of the sofa, elbows on knees, engrossed in the screen.
The program cut to a clip of Folon scuttling off, head bowed, from the parvis of the church as the congregation began to emerge, and then flashed back to the pretty woman.
“It certainly looks like he’s the guilty party. But the police tell us a different story. According to a press release issued early this morning, it seems Chef Brault didn’t commit suicide at all. He was murdered.”
The talking head smiled with dripping sarcasm. “And the Police Judiciaire have placed the case in the hands of our favorite flic, couture cop, socialite, and girl about town, Commissaire Capucine Le Tellier, who . . .” The woman paused again for maximum effect. “Just happens to be married to Le Monde’s top restaurant critic, Alexandre de Huguelet.”
The screen cut to a shot of Alexandre and Capucine leaving the church after the funeral. As they walked down the steps, Capucine gave Alexandre a look that seemed laden with complicity, as if she had just pulled off a fast one. Capucine moaned.
The talking head came on again and favored the audience with her three-quarter profile, as if she was lost in thought. Then she molded her mouth into a coy, first-date smile. “What’s your guess? Is the much-mediatized commissaire just trying to cover up for the lethal consequences of her husband’s profession? Or do you think it might really have been a murder? But why would anyone want to extinguish the rising star of French cuisine? Maybe we’ll learn a little more tomorrow afternoon, when Le Monde appears on the stands.”
CHAPTER 8
“The tragedy was that Jean-Louis Brault allowed himself to be sucked into an Icarus flight of fancy,” David read mellifluously from the morning edition of Le Figaro. “Had this doggedly pedestrian cook accepted his terrestrial limits, we might still have a friendly little bistrot perfect for a Sunday family lunch prior to an afternoon’s leisurely stroll through the Parc de Saint-Cloud—”
Capucine bustled into her office. Isabelle looked up with a girl-to-girl smile. “Voilà, our very own couture cop.”
Capucine shot her a look so hostile, it was obvious she was restraining herself from administering a bitch slap. There were three long beats of shocked silence. Capucine attempted to unload the situation and dominate her anger.
“What were you reading?”
“Lucien Folon’s so-called eulogy of Jean-Louis Brault in this morning’s Le Figaro,” David replied.
“You’d think he’d be the last person to hang on to the myth that Brault committed suicide,” Capucine muttered through clenched teeth.
The meeting was off to a bad start. Normally her briefings with the three brigadiers were friendly and relaxed. They had been her constant companions ever since Capucine—then a rookie fiscal brigade lieutenant—had wormed herself into the Police Judiciaire’s fabled La Crim’, the section that dealt with serious felonies. The four saw themselves as close colleagues, accomplices who spoke to each other with the familiar tu, not the formal vous. But that clearly was not going to be the order of the day.
“All right,” Capucine said with a sharp edge to her voice. “This one has to get solved fast. Very fast. Do what you have to. Don’t worry about regulations. I want to tie this one up quickly with a nice red bow so we can shove the killer in the face of the press so hard, he sticks in their gullet.”
It was the first time they had seen Capucine seriously angry. They sat up straight in their chairs, waiting for orders.
“The news of the day is that Brault’s car was found at the préfourrière on the avenue Foche where they keep the vehicles the police have towed in the north of Paris. The car had been sitting unclaimed in an underground public parking lot on the boulevard Haussmann since the Friday of the murder. They don’t allow long-term parking and called the police to tow it after twenty-four hours. At the préfourrière, they checked the registration, discovered it was Brault’s, and called us. Forensics has already had a look at the car. The steering wheel and dashboard had been wiped clean. There was hunting stuff in the trunk . . . rubber boots, an olive-green coat, a cartridge bag, two boxes of twelve-gauge shells. No gun. The only prints on the objects in the trunk were Brault’s.
“Isabelle, I need you to get on the computer and take Brault apart. I want to know everything we have on him for the past five years. Bank accounts. Credit card records. Travel out of the country. The works. And get it done today.
“David, I need you in front of a screen, too. Find out everything about Brault’s family. They’re from a place called La Cadière-d’Azur in the Var. It’s near Bandol. Find out if the parents are still alive. If they are, get them on the phone. Press them a little. See if they know about any friends, enemies, financial problems, anything we should know about. In other words, the usual, but go deeper than normal.
“Momo, get down to the delivery company and interview the two guys who delivered the trunk. I need to know exactly what they saw when they picked it up. Spend time with them. Find out how they reacted to picking up a trunk that turned out to weigh a hundred and sixty pounds.”
“What are you going to be doing, Commissaire?” Isabelle asked.
“I’m going down to the Puces to see the person who owns the stand where the trunk came from. I want to find out how he fits into this. After that, I’m going to see what I can discover at Brault’s restaurant. . . . All right, let’s get going. I want you all back in here this evening. We’ll sit down and see what we have.”
Paris’ largest flea market, the Marché aux Puces at the Porte de Clignancourt, was actually a dozen separate markets, running the gamut from the Marché de la rue Jean-Henri Fabre, with its heaps of discarded, undoubtedly lice-ridden clothing, to the Marché Paul Bert, which offered antiques so precious, they rivaled those of the rarified shops on the Faubourg Saint-Honoré.
Cécile had bought her portmanteau at the Marché Cambo, which was a notch or two down from Paul Bert but still pricey enough to exude an odor of luxury. Cécile’s explanation of the location of the stand had been vague. “I think it was one or two rows after a stand that sells an amazing selection of apothecary jars.”
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p; From the outside, the Cambo market looked like a nondescript, low-ceilinged warehouse, but the inside was a veritable Ali Baba’s cavern. The rows of open stalls formed compact, dark little streets, an almost oriental bazaar of antiques and bibelots. Every château in France seemed to have been pillaged and the booty placed on display.
Capucine walked down the central alleyway and found the stand with the apothecary jars. She zigzagged up and down the rows, looking for Vuitton trunks. It was only at the sixth row that she found it, a brightly lit cubicle, open at one end, with steep piles of Vuitton trunks and suitcases and tall glass display cases filled with handbags and leather accessories. The stand was unattended. She took a quick look without going in and then continued on down the row. Twenty feet away, a dozen people lounged at a long, thin monastery table that had been set out in the middle of the alleyway. It was clearly the end of the stand holder’s lunch break.
The group exuded intellectual shabby chic with the emphasis on shabby. The sole exception, a trim young woman with fire engine–red lipstick and nail polish, wearing a vintage, tight-waisted, bright red- and black-striped dress, was made even more conspicuous by the drabness of her colleagues. The table was littered with empty plastic and metal containers of food and nearly empty bottles of wine. The group chatted monosyllabically, smoking and sipping the last of the wine. As she passed the table, the woman in red scrutinized Capucine’s Gaultier suit out of the corner of her eye.
Reluctant to intrude, Capucine sauntered back down the row, peering into stalls. The world of the Puces was a mystery. Endless hours waiting for a passerby to show a flicker of interest, spending the day reading paperbacks or pouring over catalogs, with only brief breaks for a chat with a neighbor over a cigarette. How could any intelligent person want a life that idled along so placidly at five miles an hour?
Death of a Chef Page 4
