Crime Fraiche

by Alexander Campion

  “What is that thing?” she asked.

  “The knickers to my shooting suit. Plus fours. They were my father’s. He was an excellent shot. Quite famous, really.”

  “Dear, it’s true people do wear knickers shooting, but they haven’t worn them as baggy as that for more than fifty years. You’re going to look like Tintin. All you’ll need is a little white dog.”

  Alexandre scowled and pulled a battered leather gun case from the back of the closet. He opened it lovingly and fit together an elegantly engraved, if diminutive, shotgun. It might have been made for a child.

  “That looks a bit insubstantial,” Capucine said.

  “It was my mother’s,” Alexandre said. “Sixteen-gauge, that’s what women shot in those days. More ladylike and the shells were cheaper. I had the stock reworked so it would fit me.”

  “I would have thought it was difficult to bring anything down with something as lightweight as a sixteen-gauge.”

  “It is. That’s why I like it. I’m a terrible shot, and this way I can blame the gun. In any case I avoid shooting religiously. It’s just as boring as golf, and the noise gives you splitting headaches. Mind you, every now and then you do get a half-decent lunch.”

  “Oh please, you know you love eating game.”

  “Up to a point. Unless properly hung and exceptionally well cooked, pheasant is as boring as battery-bred chicken. Mind you, there is an interesting element of Russian roulette involved. If you chew too vigorously, you stand a good chance of breaking a tooth on a pellet of shot. Still, there’s no point to suffering through all that cold and damp. All you need, as you well know, is a handful of acquaintances who are shooting enthusiasts. By the middle of October they blanch at the thought of eating another pheasant and will go to any lengths to get you to accept cartloads of their wretched birds.”

  The facetious vein was one of Alexandre’s favorites, and, once started, he was capable of amusing himself with it for hours on end. Capucine let him run on and packed her own two bags. That done, she eyed her Police Judiciaire issue Sig in its quick-draw holster that fit so neatly into the small of her back and decided there would be no need for it. She took a diminutive Beretta Px4 Storm Type F Subcompact—the official off-duty sidearm—out of the drawer of her night table, eased the slide back to peek into the chamber to make sure there was a cartridge inside, and dropped the toy-sized pistol into the silk compartment in the side of her suitcase. She added in two extra clips and decided that forty rounds of 9-millimeter ammunition was more than enough for anything she was likely to encounter during the next week.

  “You’re not planning on ridding the region of poachers with all that, I hope.”

  Capucine was not amused. She elbowed Alexandre painfully in the ribs and said, “If we’re going to lunch, let’s do it now. Missing dinner as well would be unforgivable.”

  The “bistro” turned out to be the latest venture of a chef who had already amassed sixteen Michelin stars. He had acquired a venerable restaurant that had existed in the guise of a Lyonnais bouchon since the late 1870s, only languishing into oblivion in recent years. The décor had been scrubbed and buffed but apparently left intact. Black-and-white squares in a convoluted mosaic on the floor, white ceramic tiles with hand-painted red-rose friezes on the wall, clusters of bright globe lights descending from the ceiling all contributed to the sensation that Toulouse-Lautrec might hobble in at any moment.

  Like all Paris openings, the restaurant was packed with food critics, pals of the chef, and a sprinkling of celebrities. Capucine was amazed when she was presented to Chef Legras, who had certainly already read Alexandre’s scathing review in the morning Internet edition, but who still embraced him warmly and thumped him loudly on the back as if they were close family.

  As she knew would happen, they found themselves at a table of honor populated by the cream of the culinary critics. Their group was so much the center of attention that Capucine half thought that she was morally required to scarf up every dish put in front of her with orgasmic grins and groans. The menu seemed to be as unchanged as the décor, an endless list of classic Lyonnais dishes, many unknown to Capucine.

  “What on earth is a tablier de sapeur? It sounds like the last thing you’d want to eat,” Capucine said to Alexandre.

  A man across the table, sporting enormous handlebar moustaches, laughed uproariously. “You have to think of those sapeurs from the Foreign Legion. You know, the ones with the enormous beards, shiny axes over their shoulders, and long, thick leather aprons. The dish is the gras-double—”

  “Exactly,” the man sitting next to him interrupted. “It’s the cow’s panse, the cheapest and thickest of its four stomachs. That’s why it’s named after the legionnaire’s apron. By far the best tripe of all. Interestingly, the Lyonnais also call it a bonnet de nid d’abeille—a bees’ nest cap. I’ve always found the etymology of that term exceedingly curious. . . .”

  As the conversation slid off into the subtleties of the culinary linguistics of the Rhône Valley, Capucine shuddered at the idea of eating any tripe, much less the toughest part, then glanced at Alexandre, half suspecting her leg was being pulled. He pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows in confirmation. “There are a number of things on the menu that you’d like a good deal better. Why don’t you start with the Lyonnais Pot de la Cuisinière? It’s a pig and foie gras confit that you’ll like. Then I’d go for the pigeonneau en cocotte—you like pigeon. I’m going to start with the Lyonnais charcuterie and then have the truffled boudin blanc.”

  After its brief foray into etymology, the conversation reverted to a subject that was dear to Alexandre’s heart: the underlying motivation behind the current trend for well-starred über-chefs to open traditional, relatively inexpensive bistros. Was it a desire to demonstrate their close ties to authenticity, or was it that they could double their margins because of their prestige and add yet another healthy trickle to their immense cash flows?

  “The fast food of haute cuisine,” one of the wags quipped.

  “Don’t even say that in jest,” Alexandre said with mock seriousness. “We French have created our own infernal version of that particular scourge. At least with American fast food you know you’re being poisoned and can act accordingly. It’s an honest and straightforward frontal attack—it’s appalling, yes, but it’s dirt cheap.

  “We French are apparently incapable of such forthrightness. We masquerade our fast food as something edible. The pictures on the menu look like the sort of thing you might actually want to put in your mouth. But when it arrives, mon Dieu! Take this ghastly Charolais Allô chain, where,” Alexandre said, winking broadly at his audience, “save for the infinite indulgence of my peerless wife, I would be suffering perdition at this very moment. You all know what I’m talking about. You see one of them every fifty feet up and down the autoroute. Cheered by the solace of your bladder after your stop, you are deluded into thinking you might be in the presence of something that approximates a traditional steak house, but when their entrecôte arrives, it turns out to be a dog’s rawhide bone that’s been flavored with Viandox beef extract.”

  The wag raised his glass. “Here’s to the eternal battle between the voluptuary and the vulgarian. May gastronomy prevail over the euro!”

  Just as the debate was about to rage, the über-chef in question smilingly approached the table, brandishing a bottle of a liqueur of a rarity the targeted patrons of his bistro could only dream of.

  “You’re all talking about me, I hope,” he said with a wry smile.

  Capucine knew full well that a lively session of the group’s pastime of choice—fencing with polemics—was about to begin and would last until they all got hungry again and trooped off to dinner at a competitor’s restaurant. The point of no return was at hand. Capucine kicked Alexandre under the table with more force than was really required—hard enough to alarm him in any case. She jerked her head toward the door and started to walk out. He followed meekly, limping slightly. Behind he
r she could hear the level of hilarity rising like an incoming tide.

  CHAPTER 3

  Even though Maulévrier was the darling of cocktail-table architecture books—apparently it was a perfect bijou example of châteaux of the late feudal period—Capucine always found it embarrassingly scruffy, in the same way twelve-year-olds invariably find their parents mortifying.

  She skidded her little Clio to a stop at the end of the long driveway bound by ancient, tall-trunked poplars to allow Alexandre a view of the structure, a disparate jumble of styles running from a brick tower that over half a millennium had mellowed to the precise shade of a lightly roasted partridge—all that remained of the fifteenth-century feudal keep—to a bright salmon and white façade dripping with Victorian prettification. The building looked out on the remains of the ward, now a neglected graveled yard bordered by a stone parapet that kept out the waters of the algae-filled canal that had once served as the moat. This architectural anomaly was the work of an earlier generation who had decided that the risk of the Saracen invasion was finally sufficiently remote to allow tearing down the fortified walls, thus enabling the inhabitants to eat lunch without the aid of candles. Behind sprawled the extensive commons, historically used to house whole herds of livestock but now useless labyrinthine structures with no purpose other than to satisfy their voracious appetites for new roofing and to provide the family children a vast theater for their illicit adventures. As testimony to their financial gluttony, a long blue tarpaulin stretched out over one of the numerous roofs.

  “This is exactly the sort of place no man should be without, always assuming, of course, that he doesn’t have to pay the bills,” Alexandre said.

  “My father’s sentiments exactly.”

  Capucine abandoned the car in front of the main entrance, a capital offense in her uncle’s canon, rushed up the steps, and pushed open the carved oak portal. “Hurry up. We’re fifteen minutes late already.”

  “Tush. You’d be lost without a dramatic entrance,” Alexandre said, his comment drowned in the turbulence of Capucine’s rush.

  She dragged him across a large marble hall replete with the inevitable stern-faced ancestors receding into gilt-framed dun mists and burst into a cheerful library entirely appropriate for the set of an English cozy mystery film.

  “Capucine, enfin—at last!” said a venerable, rosy-cheeked gentleman in particularly well-patinated tweeds. An awkward pause lasted two slow beats, until he took her in his arms and said, “Bienvenue, ma chérie. Welcome home.”

  “Alexandre!” Oncle Aymerie said, grasping Alexandre’s hand in a warm two-handed clasp. “The last time I saw you was at your wedding.”

  “And hasn’t he grown so?” said an aquiline young man—superbly dressed in a blue blazer with a patterned pink Hermès silk square drooping with studied negligence from its breast pocket—while patting Alexandre on the tummy. He had a catlike look, superciliously facetious yet somehow all-knowing.

  Oncle Aymerie was horrified. “Fils, you promised to be on your best behavior.”

  “Mon oncle, he’s just teasing. They’ve become close friends,” Capucine said. “Ever since Jacques helped me out on a case a year ago, he’s been an inseparable member of our little household.”

  Oncle Aymerie was clearly upset at the mention of cases, and in the silence Capucine thought she could hear Alexandre’s teeth grinding. A perfect left and right in the tact department, Capucine sighed to herself. A bird down with each barrel. She simply could not understand why Alexandre was so jealous of Jacques, the most favorite of her cousins. They had grown up as brother and sister, and now that he was some sort of mover and shaker in the DGSE—France’s secret service—they even shared a professional bond of sorts. So he liked to grope her a little; he always had; that was just his style; it didn’t mean anything; certainly nothing anyone could resent.

  In a heroically chivalrous attempt to restore the evening to an even keel, Oncle Aymerie led Capucine and Alexandre around the room, introducing the other dinner guests.

  “We’re just picnicking tonight. Now that your Tante Aymone is gone, I have no appetite for these endless elaborate dinners,” he whispered conspiratorially to Capucine. “I do hope dear Alexandre won’t be too disappointed.” He patted the back of Capucine’s hand, as if it were she who was doddering.

  “Now, this is my great friend Loïc Vienneau,” he said to Alexandre. “His family has lived in the village since le roi Guillaume had the curious idea of leaving Normandy to conquer England. And, of course, he is the propriétaire of the élevage that produces the best beef in France.”

  With cocktail party bonhomie Alexandre shook Vienneau’s hand and said, “I believe we met once a few years back at the Salon Agricole in Paris. You had demonstrated your expertise with an extremely convincing presentation of the superiority of Charolais beef over Limousin.”

  Vienneau smiled modestly. “You’re too kind. I can’t tell you how nervous I was that day. I absolutely hate speaking in public.”

  Oncle Aymerie forged on valiantly. “And this is Monsieur Henri Bellanger, a Parisian investment banker, who is spending a week with the Vienneaus for the shooting and who came along with them to dinner.” Capucine sensed that Oncle Aymerie was less than thrilled at the idea of Bellanger’s presence at his dinner table. While Jacques came across as being endearingly foppish, Bellanger was irritatingly overdressed. His clothes were too perfect for the occasion, too new, too costly. On top of it all, he exuded a miasma of new-moneyed self-assurance.

  “Are you as keen on la chasse as everyone else in the village ?” Capucine asked. At the mention of the word chasse the temperature of the room seemed to drop a few degrees.

  “I don’t shoot as much as I’d like to, just enough to keep my marksmanship up to my standard,” he replied with a slick smile. Capucine could understand her uncle’s reaction. He had a quality that strongly invited a bitch slap.

  “And this,” continued Oncle Aymerie hastily, “is Marie-Christine Vienneau.” Alexandre was visibly moved by the charms of a woman who even in her forties was still a classic French beauty with a warm, broad smile, dense, dark blond hair framing her pale face, and cobalt blue eyes of infinite depth. He bowed deeply and lifted her hand for a baisemain, a hand kiss of a subtlety that now existed only in cape and sword movies and deep in the French countryside. Her husband scowled.

  At that instant, Gauvin, Oncle Aymerie’s aged majordome, shuffled into the room in a high-collared white jacket so severely starched, his wattles drooped over the rigid neckband, and droned in a stentorian voice, “Madame la Comtesse est servie.”

  Capucine started, wild-eyed. For half an instant she thought her aunt might have been somehow miraculously resurrected or that inexplicably she might have missed Oncle Aymerie’s remarriage. Alexandre took her by the elbow and whispered in her ear, “It’s you, you ninny. You may think of yourself as only hard-nosed Commissaire Le Tellier, but you’re also aristocratic Comtesse Capucine de Huguelet, wife of the charming and urbane Comte Alexandre Edouard d’Arbaumont de Huguelet, aka me. This title stuff only gets a snicker in Paris, but it’s obviously quite dear to your uncle’s man.” Capucine repressed the knowledge of her title, which in any case she viewed as only a technicality. Her nightmare was to be nicknamed Madame la Comtesse by her officers. That one she would never live down.

  The guests rose and Jacques sidled up to Capucine. “May I have the pleasure of escorting Madame la Comtesse to the table?” he asked. As the procession started toward the dining room, his fingers nervously scuttled up and down her back. At first she thought he was feeling around for her weapon, and then, too late, she remembered their childhood. In a very well-practiced gesture he pinched open the clasp of her brassiere, letting her heavy breasts fall free. She kicked herself mentally. Jacques had been doing this ever since she had been given her first training bra. She should know he was never going to grow up.

  “It’s the animal lover in me,” he whispered in her ear. “I hate
to see such lovely bouncy bunnies caged up.” Jacques’s fatuous smirk was punctuated by his other trademark, a high-pitched, extremely loud, braying laugh, which brought all conversation in the room to a halt. This time it wasn’t her imagination; she really could hear teeth grinding, but she wasn’t sure if it was Alexandre, who followed behind with Marie-Christine on his arm, or Vienneau, who had taken up the rearguard.

  The dinner began uneventfully. Gauvin staggered in and out of the sad old room with its damp-stained, ancient, hand-painted wallpaper, bearing and removing chipped Limoges bowls sloshing with indifferent root vegetable soup and crystal decanters of rare Bordeaux so old it was brick colored and watery tasting.

  Finally Gauvin teetered in with an enormous chased silver platter.

  “I’m a little embarrassed,” said Oncle Aymerie with a laugh. “We’re having pheasant. I know those of us from the country already can’t stand the sight of them, even though we’re only five weeks into the season, but I think we owe it to our Parisians, who are not as fortunate as we are and expect pheasant when they come to us.” There was a titter of polite laughter, followed by an awkward silence.

  Oncle Aymerie carried on valiantly. “Odile has made her famous faisan à la Normande. She braises it in cider and adds apples at the end. The secret, of course, is the sauce she makes with the juice of the pheasant, a dash of crème fraîche, and a few good tots of Calvados.”

  “The real secret,” Jacques said in a stage whisper that carried the length of the table, “is the Petit Suisse suppository she applies to the poor bird just before plunking it in the oven.”