“Over two hundred euros a bottle for a bad wine!” Capucine whispered.
“Nuance, a bad great wine.” Théophile gripped his thighs so tightly, the tips of his fingers disappeared into the folds of his trousers. He was having a hard time restraining himself from making the first bid.
The room was heavy with the leaden silence of a church. A man cleared his throat in the back.
Bertignac pointed his pen. “One and a half.” He shook his head with a tolerant smile. “Mesdames et messieurs, this is Pétrus, not Beaujolais Nouveau.” The room laughed politely.
A man at the phone table raised his hand, thumb and index outstretched.
“Voilà, two!” Bertignac said. “Greatness is finally given its due.”
Théophile raised his finger so slightly, Capucine almost didn’t see the gesture. But Bertignac thrust his pen at him.
“Two and a half.”
Almost immediately his pen was jabbed at the back of the room.
“Three.”
There were two beats of silence. Bertignac shot an inquiring glance at the telephone table. The young man shook his head. His bidder had dropped out.
Tiny beads of sweat appeared on Théophile’s brow. He squeezed his thighs in a death grip. Bertignac invited him to bid with a cocked eyebrow.
Théophile stared straight ahead.
Bertignac shrugged his shoulders microscopically and tapped his pen loudly on the rostrum. “Going once!” He looked around the room. “Going tw—”
Théophile’s hand rose to the level of his chin.
“Three!” Bertignac said with a defiant look at the back of the room. “And three and a half,” he added, darting his pen at the back wall.
In a low voice Théophile said, “Cinque. Five.”
There was no answering bid. Bertignac waited barely a second, not even looking at the back of the room, then tapped his pen three times. “Once. Twice. Sold,” he said with the pen thrust at Théophile.
Théophile was in heaven. A woman walked over and handed him a slip of paper. A man in the row in front of them turned and shook his hand. Théophile got up to leave and bent over to whisper in Capucine’s ear.
“If you breathe a word about this to Cécile, I’ll . . . I’ll . . . I don’t know what I’ll do . . . but just don’t.” Inflated with the pride of victory, he floated down the aisle toward the cashier’s table.
Two more lots and it was over. People started to amble out. A line formed at the cashier’s table. Capucine went over to the rostrum. Bertignac bent down, chatting in a low voice with one of the men at the telephone table. Capucine stood patiently until he had finished. He straightened and looked at Capucine over his glasses with eyebrows raised inquiringly.
“Commissaire Le Tellier.”
“My apologies. I saw you with Monsieur de Rougemont and thought you might be here to bid. Let’s go up to my office.” He gave one more instruction to the man at the telephone table and began to make his way down the aisle, nodding, smiling, shaking the occasional hand.
The office was a treasure trove. Paintings filled every available inch of wall space. Silver and porcelain and faïence jostled each other for room on every flat surface.
“If I had an office like this, I’d never get any work done.”
“It’s one of the perks of the métier. All of this stuff will be gone in a month, so I don’t get attached to it. My clients have enduring relationships. My lot is to have one-night stands. But at least I have a lot of them. And they’re often of very high quality.”
“On the phone you said you had some information on the Brault case.”
Bertignac led Capucine to a long sixteenth-century mahogany table de travail, littered with morocco-bound books and bibelots.
He picked up what looked like a large, green faïence cachepot decorated with delicate long legged darker green herons and handed it to Capucine. “A sixteenth-century Menton rafraîchissoir.”
“Rafraîchissoir? It’s not a cachepot? My mother has two that look almost like that. She puts plants in them.”
Bertignac laughed. “That’s why they sell so well. It’s very refined to have an antique cachepot. A form of philistinism I encourage. But they were made to cool wine. Until the beginning of the nineteenth century people drank mostly rosé, and the upper classes, who had access to ice, preferred it slightly chilled. Normally, I’d start this one out at three thousand euros and expect the bidding to climb to five, maybe six, or seven at the most.” He paused. “But this is a fake. I had to pull it from the sale at the last moment.”
Capucine said nothing.
Bertignac put the rafraîchissoir back on the table.
“Monsieur Brault sent it to me the week before he died.”
“Why did you wait until the last moment to remove it from the sale?”
“That’s a bit embarrassing. You see, this is really an extraordinarily good forgery. The decorations are perfect, and the cracking of the glaze is very realistic, but it just didn’t feel right. Maybe because the green background is just a bit too. And, of course, there’s a dead giveaway.” He turned the rafraîchissoir upside down on the table and pointed to a tiny black coat of arms on the base. “This is the Menton manufacturer’s mark. If you look carefully . . . Wait. Let me get you a magnifying glass.”
He handed Capucine an oversized well-worn wooden-handled magnifying glass. “Look at the mark diagonally against the light. See, it’s slightly raised. That’s because under the glaze there’s a transfer décalcomanie, what children call a decal. Menton did use those for the decorations but never for the manufacturer’s marks. Those were inked through a cutout template. There’s no doubt this is a fake, but it’s still an extraordinarily good one.
“Unfortunately, this sale was assembled by one of my assistants while I was in the States. She’s highly competent but still a bit new to the profession. And since it came from Brault, who was well known here, she, quite naturally, didn’t think to give it a good going-over. Of course, the minute I laid eyes on it, I saw it was a fake.”
“Was Brault a good customer?”
“He bought a few pieces from me over the years. He had a good eye and was very knowledgeable. Recently he had been selling far more than buying.”
“And why would you guess Chef Brault tried to sell a forgery?”
“It’s puzzling. It’s hard to believe Brault ever bought a fake, even though this one looks almost authentic. So good that once it was on a shelf or in a display cabinet, even an experienced collector wouldn’t have noticed something was wrong. Still, I just can’t imagine how he acquired it in the first place.”
Bertignac hesitated. There was something else he was wrestling with. “And I’ll tell you another strange thing.”
Capucine relaxed her face to encourage him.
“This is probably a violation of confidentiality, but under the circumstances it seems warranted. The catalog for this sale has been out for a week. One of the ways you can bid is with a pre-auction preemption. You bid a price, which the auctioneer keeps secret. If the bidding on the floor doesn’t reach your price, you get the item. Do you understand how that works?”
Capucine nodded.
“Well, we received a pre-auction bid for ten thousand euros for this particular piece. I was very surprised, believe me.”
“Now that is interesting. And who placed this bid?”
Bertignac furrowed his brow. “That’s confidential.” But as he said it, he was already pecking at the keyboard of his computer. He tilted his head back and made an exaggerated frown, peering at the screen though his half-glasses, moving his head back and forth, searching for the right focal distance. “Here are the personal details.”
Capucine walked over to the computer and took out her notebook.
“Madame Chéri Lecomte. I know her. She has a stand at the Puces. Obviously, she doesn’t buy pieces at Drouot to sell at the Puces, but she does acquire the odd item every now and then for her own collection. But never a
nything even as remotely expensive as what she bid.”
CHAPTER 15
According to the police database, Chéri Lecomte owned and operated stand D-44 at the Marché Cambo. Capucine decided to pay an unannounced visit.
This time around Capucine noticed that the rows and stands were labeled with little white enamel plaques high up on the walls. Row D turned out to be the location of the Vuitton stand she had visited. A sixth sense told her Chéri Lecomte would turn out to be the woman in the red dress at the communal lunch.
Her sixth sense was absolutely right, but what it didn’t prepare her for was being recognized.
“Commissaire Le Tellier, what brings you to my stand?”
Like starlets running into each other at a cocktail party, there was a three-beat pause as the two women examined each other’s outfits. Today Lecomte wore a white ruffled-front silk blouse and a pearl-gray pencil skirt that Capucine suspected was Givenchy from an antique clothing boutique. The bright red soles throbbing from the front of the heels of her black pumps shouted they were Louboutins. With ruthlessly plucked eyebrows and pearly white teeth beaconing from behind plump carmine-red lips, she had the radiantly healthy bloom of a sixties pinup. Capucine felt invulnerable in the elegance of her new pale blue silk suit by Rochas. And her dark blue Sergio Rossi slingbacks were way more attractive than those tacky Louboutins.
Capucine smiled sweetly. “How is it you know who I am?”
“The Marché Biron is a tiny village. It’s news if anyone sneezes. And when a commissaire of the Police Judiciaire turns up, well . . .”
“Then you must be aware I’m investigating the death of Jean-Louis Brault.”
“Of course. How could we not spend all day gossiping about a celebrity who turns up dead in a trunk from our neck of the Puces?” Lecomte said with a laugh.
Capucine was again struck with the difficulty of pigeon-holing Lecomte. It wasn’t just the retro look. Even though her French was faultless and perfectly idiomatic, there was something unmistakably foreign about her. Maybe it was just that she seemed so out of place at her stand. In any event, Capucine was forced to concede she was a strikingly attractive woman.
“I hope I’m not going to disappoint you, but other than gossip, I don’t know anything at all about that trunk or how Chef Brault happened to be in it.”
“Actually, I’m here about something else. I understand you placed a pre-auction bid on a Menton rafraîchissoir at Drouot. Can we talk about that?”
Lecomte was momentarily taken aback. “How did you hear about that?”
“I was alerted that the piece had been sent to Drouot by Chef Brault just before he died.”
“Oh my God!” She seemed genuinely surprised. “I had no idea. It says ‘private collection’ in the catalog.”
“So it does. The interesting thing is that it turns out that the piece is a fake.”
Lecomte’s pencil-thin eyebrows rose almost to her hairline.
“It’s been removed from the auction,” Capucine added.
“How odd. I didn’t know that. I never met Brault, but I knew of his reputation as a collector. I wouldn’t have thought he’d be easy to fool.” She paused, thinking. “When I saw the piece on display at Drouot, it was in a glass-covered case behind several other pieces, but it shouted out to me. Love at first sight. I just had to have it.”
“Wouldn’t it have made more sense to go to the auction instead of making an exorbitant preemptive bid?”
“Of course it would have, but the auction is next Monday and the Puces is open then, so I had to be here. Sadly, only bigwigs get to bid by phone. You know the song, sometimes you just have to follow your heart no matter where it takes you. Anyway, money certainly isn’t everything, and I really, really wanted that rafraîchissoir.”
“I understand your bid was for over twice the estimate of the piece.”
“I thought the estimate was way low. The decoration was very delicate. Did you see it? Delicate, long-legged herons with long, sensuously curved beaks. And the glaze was green, which is extremely rare for Menton. It’s a fab—” She realized she was babbling and cut herself off.
“We were talking about your bid on that Menton rafraîchissoir. Why did you want it so much?”
“I told you. I fell in love with it. With that green decoration, the delicacy of the brushwork, it was almost unique. We women are entitled to be a little foolish about love every once in a while. Women’s prerogative and all.”
Lecomte beamed a toothy smile that shone out like a lighthouse on a stormy night through her dark lips. She raised her arms and pivoted, indicating her wares. “And faïence is my love. I live and breathe it.”
A couple walked in, obviously American in their puffy down jackets, and smiled at Lecomte’s gesture. They looked around the stand, respectfully taking great care not to touch anything. The woman stopped, riveted in front of a large four-footed terrine decorated with very detailed flowers: pastel pink roses and bright yellow buttercups.
“Look at this, honey,” the woman said in English.
The husband went up to her, clearly already bored by the stand.
“See, the handles on the sides are leopards, and the handle on the lid is a cute little fish. And look how real the roses look.”
The man gave a cursory look.
“Oh, honey, this would be perfect as a centerpiece for our dining room table.”
Her husband did not reply.
Lecomte sidled up and said heartily in perfect, unaccented English, “It would make anyone’s dining room.” As if she thought she had gone overboard, she continued on more quietly. “It comes from the Fabrique de la Veuve Perrin,” she continued, rolling the r’s of “Perrin” with an almost caricatural French accent. It dates from seventeen sixty and is one of the earliest examples of the petit feu technique.”
The man looked at her with interest.
“You see, prior to the mid-eighteenth century the decoration was applied to porous clay, which soaked it right in. So it had to be simple, and the only really good color they had was blue, which is why so much older faïence is blue on white. And they needed a really hot kiln, the grand feu.”
The woman continued to devour the terrine with her eyes. The husband seemed fascinated by the technology.
“So what happened then?” he asked.
“They developed new glazes. A first coat was baked on so the decoration could be painted onto a nonporous surface. That’s how they got all the wonderful detail in the roses on this piece. And the glaze that went on top of that would harden at a lower heat—what they called a petit feu—so they could use more glazes and get a full range of colors. Look at the color nuances in the flowers.”
“Oh, honey, the seventeen hundreds!” the woman said.
“It’s an awesome piece,” Lecomte said with her broad American accent. “And I’ll give you a hella good deal.”
“Are you from California?” the man asked.
Lecomte blushed. “No, I’m French, but I went to California a lot when I was a kid.”
“It shows in some of the words you use. But your English is just about perfect. I like it when foreigners know how to speak English. Say, how much are you asking for this?”
“Oh, honey, I can so absolutely see this in our dining room.”
The man gave her a stern look. He was getting down to business.
“Because I like you guys so much and you clearly love the piece, I’ll give you my rock-bottom price, five thousand euros.”
The man’s face was so immobile, it was clear he was taken aback. Capucine, once again attentively examining a display case, guessed he would get it for thirty-five hundred.
The man said nothing for several long beats, while his wife looked at him with pleading sheep’s eyes.
“Do you take American Express?”
“Of course, monsieur.”
“Then you got yourself a deal, young lady,” he said with a broad smile, sticking out his hand to shake Lecomte’s.<
br />
This time the sale was wrapped lovingly in three layers of bubble wrap and then carefully swathed in brown paper, which was gently taped and tied with purple string.
The couple left, the woman with the beatific smile of a young girl who had received her first porcelain doll as a Christmas gift, and the husband with the tight-lipped, virtuous grin of a good soldier who has done right by his family. Capucine could easily imagine them that evening at the Tour d’Argent, eating the fabled pressed duck, watching the setting sun paint a rosy backdrop behind Notre Dame, rejoicing in the thought of finally getting back to Fort Wayne with their trophies.
CHAPTER 16
The brigadier at the front desk called, sounding very put out. “It’s that commissaire whatever guy again. I called him Monsieur le Commissaire, and he laughed at me.”
“Allô, Madame Le Tellier? I have another object I think is going to interest you,” Bertignac said.
“And you’re going to insist I come to Drouot to examine it.”
“Pas du tout. One of our porters is already on his way up to you. It’s not an antique, just an old leather jotting pad. But, given the monogram, it’s not impossible that it belonged to Chef Brault.”
“How did you come by it?”
“One of the stand holders in the Marché de la rue Jean-Henri Fabre down at the Puces—you know, where they sell the secondhand clothes and stolen car radios—found it in a Loden coat he bought with a bunch of other clothes. The pad had my card in it, so he called me. When he described the gold monogram on the back with a B surmounted by a crown, I was happy to give him twenty euros for it. I know I should have alerted you, but if a flic showed up, the pad would have disappeared.”
“I’m very grateful, and of course, the police will reimburse your outlay.”
“Why don’t you come to one of my auctions and buy something pricey instead?” he said with a laugh.
Death of a Chef Page 8
