An Important Sale of Faïence
Collection of the Late Chef Jean-Louis Brault
and other select pieces
Commissaire-Priseur Bertrand de Bertignac
Drouot-Richelieu
9, rue Drouot–Paris 75009
“So the probate judge announced his decision?” Alexandre asked.
“Two weeks ago. Delphine got all of Brault’s estate.”
Capucine opened the door to the refrigerator and extracted an open bottle of champagne. Her friends always complained about their husbands’ predictability, but how could anyone find it irritating that Alexandre always had a bottle of champagne on the chill?
“The sale’s this Saturday. I’m going. Want to come?”
“Wonderful idea. We can have lunch at Au Petit Riche. It’s just around the corner.”
Capucine and Alexandre arrived at the sale half an hour early, assuming that either Jean-Louis Brault’s fame or the notoriety of his death would pack the auction room. But the only occupants were two extremely well-dressed white-haired gentlemen in suede shoes, with brightly colored silk handkerchiefs cascading from their breast pockets. Three of the Savoyards in their black jackets with red collars expertly stacked wooden crates, organizing themselves to lose no time putting the pieces on the dais as they came up for sale.
They decided they had plenty of time for coffee at the café around the corner. It was packed. Squeezing up to the zinc counter, Capucine noticed Lucien Folon at the far end, drinking a glass of white wine and leafing through the Brault sale catalog. He caught sight of Capucine and Alexandre. Clutching his glass tightly, weaving, he pushed toward them through the press of people. Alexandre groaned.
Solemnly, Folon shook Alexandre’s hand and kissed Capucine’s cheeks. “Sad day.” He shook his head like a mournful Saint Bernard. “It feels like a large part of my life is being strewn to the pigs.”
Capucine’s and Alexandre’s expresses arrived. Folon continued on with his vin triste.
“Now that the restaurant is gone, when his collection is dispersed, there will be nothing left of Jean-Louis. Nothing at all.”
In the cone within the din of the café there was a long awkward silence.
With excessive brilliance Capucine said, “Bertignac did an impressive job putting together such a large sale at such short notice.”
“I was amazed at how many pieces Jean-Louis still had,” Folon said. “I always thought he’d sold most of his collection off to invest in that silly hotel. But I guess not.” He tapped the catalog and then flipped the pages with indifference, trying to hide his emotion. “Did you notice that four pieces have been removed from the sale? The entries are stamped ‘retiré de la vente’ in red. Isn’t that curious? I wonder why.”
Alexandre glanced at Capucine. They shared the strong impression Folon was trying hard to build a bridge over the deep cavern than had opened up between them.
“Allez, vieux. Come on, old man,” Alexandre said, patting Folon’s deltoid, addressing him as an intimate friend. “The auction starts in ten minutes. We need to get a move on.”
Once again Capucine marveled at the acuity of auctioneers. The small handful of serious buyers was evenly sprinkled throughout the now packed gallery. The crowd of gawkers, obviously there for the thrill of seeing the last possessions of a famous murder victim auctioned off, gossiped, pointed, exclaimed, totally ignorant of faïence, impressed only by odd shapes, unusual colors, high prices.
Despite the surf of hullabaloo, Bertignac unerringly divined the minimalist telegraphing from bidders: infinitesimal waves of folded catalogs, fingers raised a fraction of an inch, heads nodded a few degrees. With eyes in the side of his head, his singsong litany took account of the bids from the five—not the usual three—clerks at the telephone table. Most impressive of all was his ability to generate spirited bidding wars, sparking offers far higher than potential purchasers had ever intended.
When it was over, the successful bidders lined up at the clerk’s desk to write checks and proceed to the window down the hall to collect their purchases. Papers and notes under his arm, Bertignac made rapidly for the door, followed—like a minor rock star—by a small clutch of reporters and hangers-on. He caught up to Capucine and Alexandre at the door.
“Commissaire,” Bertignac said. The reporters pricked up their ears. “I need to talk to you about something.” The crowd closed in on them.
“What a pleasant idea, monsieur,” Alexandre said. “Allow us to take you to lunch. I have a few cases of wine in my cellar that I’ve been intending to sell. It would give me the opportunity to pick your brain.”
Alexandre and Bertignac discussed the imaginary wine until the reporters and gawkers lost interest and wandered off.
“Au Petit Riche in fifteen minutes?” Alexandre asked. Bertignac nodded, smiling, and dashed off to his office.
The hallway was thronged. Five other sales had just ended, disgorging elated or frustrated bidders seeking lunch to boast or commiserate with their companions. Capucine and Alexandre wormed their way through the crowd toward the front door. Chéri materialized in front of them, haggard despite a jaunty seventies Givenchy tailleur with a wasp-waisted jacket and an impossibly narrow pencil skirt.
Capucine greeted her cheerfully. “Were you at the auction? Did you buy anything? There were some marvelous pieces.”
“He won’t talk to me!” Chéri’s eyes filled with tears.
“Who?”
“Thierry. Someone told me he had been released by the kidnappers, and I called him and called him, but he won’t talk to me.” She dipped the ladle even deeper into her pool of pain. “And you! The least you could have done was tell me he’d been released and that he was all right. You knew how worried I was. And you call yourself my friend!” Tears trickled down her cheeks.
Capucine hiked her eyebrows microscopically in surprise at the appellation. She had no idea how to reply.
“Have you really seen him?” Chéri carried on relentlessly.
“Yes.” Capucine paused, searching for a way to sugar the pill. “It was a legal requirement. It took some doing to get him to meet with me.”
“And how was he?”
“He was clearly weakened and in shock from his ordeal, but he recovered quickly.”
“That means that you saw him more than once.”
“Twice. Once informally. A second time to take his deposition.”
“And did he ask about me?”
“As you can imagine, we only spoke about the kidnapping. He tried to say as little as possible about anything.”
Alexandre caught Capucine’s eye and threw her a life ring. “We need to get a move on,” he said, ignoring Chéri.
Chéri’s eyes widened in hurt. She sighed deeply and turned on her heel, moving into the crowd. The soles of her Louboutins flashed crimson against the dark tan carpeting.
Au Petit Riche had been steadfastly faithful to the cuisine of the haute bourgeoisie under Louis Philippe ever since the declining days of the good king’s turbulent reign. The Belle Epoque interior remained inviolate with its glass-globe chandeliers, floor-to-ceiling fly-specked mirrors, gleaming brass overhead racks for coats and hats, dark paintings in gilt frames, and long rows of red plush banquettes—where diners, squeezed tight, elbow to elbow, would carry on conversations as intimately as if they were deep in the wastes of the Sahara.
Once seated, Bertignac alerted the waiter that the meal would have to be speedy since he had another auction coming up. Alexandre gritted his teeth. Rapide and repas were not words he liked to hear joined in the same sentence. Bertignac launched into an analysis of his upcoming auction, which consisted of the grandest of grand cru Bordeaux.
“It’s a very difficult sale. Yquem and Pétrus now go for several thousand euros a bottle. The buyer who shells out over twenty thousand euros a case is buying a pig in a poke, since we don’t guarantee the condition or even the authenticity of the wine.”
With great deference t
he waiter arrived with the menus. Capucine suspected some person in authority had impressed him with Alexandre’s influence in the restaurant world.
Their choice was simple enough. To start with, they ordered a selection of pâtés on a communal plate: an intriguing terrine de pot-au-feu with a sauce of reduced Bourgueil wine, a terrine of duck foie gras, and a pâté en croûte made of foie gras and trompettes de la mort mushrooms. After, both Bertignac and Alexandre ordered the beef tartare, vaunted to be made from prime Charolais beef, while Capucine chose a vol-au-vent de ris de veau—sweet-breads and their sauce in shell pastry.
When the sommelier arrived, Bertignac extended his hand for the wine list.
“Since you were kind enough to extend the invitation to lunch, allow me to make my modest contribution and invite you to the wine.”
He turned to the sommelier and ordered a Chinon Gatien Ferrand 1976.
Alexandre smiled at the idea of one of the greats of the Loire valley. He had found a kindred spirit who wasn’t a slave to Bordeaux.
“My head will be full of Bordeaux in three quarters of an hour. Having it in my stomach as well would be too much.”
Capucine was well aware that the wine would cost far more than the lunch.
“Was the Brault sale a success?” she asked.
Bertignac was prevented from answering by the arrival of the wine. The sommelier, who had clearly also been made aware of Alexandre’s identity, hesitated. With an almost imperceptible inclination of his head, Alexandre indicated that Bertignac would be tasting.
Bertignac, waving two fingers, indicated that the task would be shared. Capucine reflected that her mother would be impressed with his manners.
“Oh yes, definitely. Of course, faïence rarely comes even close to fetching what a case of Pétrus does.” He laughed conspiratorially in Alexandre’s direction. “But I think Mademoiselle Duclos now has more than enough to make a quite respectable down payment on a lodging in New York.”
“Did you really want to talk to me about something, or were you just escaping your admirers?” Capucine asked.
“Actually, I did.”
The arrival of the dish of pâtés and a large basket of baguettes cut into diagonal slices interjected a parenthesis into the conversation.
A few minutes later, as he cut off a corner of pâté en croûte, Bertignac asked, “You remember that I had a problem with the authenticity of one of Monsieur Brault’s pieces a few weeks ago?”
Capucine nodded.
“Well, as a result of that episode, I had his entire collection gone over by an independent expert. I wanted the sale certified beyond any possible question.” He paused for effect, sipping his wine. “The result was surprising. Four of the pieces were forgeries. Very skillful ones, but definitely forgeries.”
“Those were the ones you removed from the sale?”
“Exactly.”
The main courses arrived. Capucine regretted the departure of the pâtés, which she would happily have nibbled until they were finished.
“And do you know anything about their—what is the word you use?—provenance?”
“No, I don’t. But I have two of my assistants looking into that right now.”
Bertignac looked at his watch, made an exclamation, took a last big bite of steak tartare, dashed off to settle the tab for the wine, and then headed to Drouot to start his next sale.
The next morning Bertignac called Capucine at her brigade at nine thirty.
“I’m a little embarrassed, Commissaire. As I told you yesterday, I had some of my clerks check to see if we had any information on those four pieces the expert detected as forgeries. I was thunderstruck that Brault bought two of them at my auctions.” He paused, at a loss for words.
“I don’t really know what to say. It’s too much of a coincidence to believe that he acquired identical pieces from someone else. One was virtually unique, a Nevers vase from the second half of the seventeenth century. The decoration was in white against a dark blue background. The other was a very large terrine, called a pot-à-oille, dating from seventeen forty-eight to seventeen sixty, beautifully decorated with a handle on the lid in the form of an artichoke and handles on the terrine in the form of asparagus. It was decorated with very delicate purple and green flowers. The glaze that gave those colors was highly unusual at the time.”
“Pot-à-oille?”
Bertignac laughed. “Oille is the old term for a soup made with various pieces of meat and vegetables. It’s what the modern-day pot-au-feu emerged from. The interesting feature of these extensively decorated terrines is that they show that the hearty pot-au-feu were enjoyed by the upper classes, not just the paysans. I’m astonished that two forgeries of such important pieces could have slipped by me and my staff. I distinctly remember the pot-à-oille. It was on my desk for a week, and we all admired it continually. Frankly, I’m more than a little embarrassed.”
“There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. This is very good news. You’ve just confirmed all my suspicions.”
CHAPTER 41
The following Saturday morning found Capucine and Alexandre in their kitchen, sipping café au lait from the Pasquini and nibbling at croissants while plowing through the three-inch pile of Saturday papers. Capucine had been up for hours; had had a wake-up café au lait; had slipped on jeans and a quilted jacket from Hermès; had gone for a long, fast walk through her neck of the Marais, which she despaired of ever having enough time to explore properly; had bought a large white paper bag of pur beurre croissants at a bakery two streets away, relishing the oily butter slicks that appeared in the paper almost instantly; had stopped off at the corner newsstand to buy the thick, magazine-laden Saturday editions of the press, throwing in a copy of Le Monde Diplomatique for good measure; had returned home laden, hoping the day would be sufficiently unencumbered to allow her to luxuriate in the bounty of her foraging.
By ten thirty Alexandre was up, regal in a crimson raw-silk kimono he had acquired on his last trip to Tokyo, grunting in irritation at an ebullient review in the International Herald Tribune of a restaurant he had detested.
The phone rang.
“Allô, Commissaire? It’s Delphine Duclos. Am I disturbing you?”
“Not at all. I’m just sitting in the kitchen, reading the papers with my husband.”
“Monsieur de Huguelet?”
“He’s the only one I have.”
Delphine laughed dutifully. She seemed uncharacteristically ill at ease.
“I’ve just had an argument with Prosper, well, more of a fight, and . . . actually . . . really . . . I was calling to see if Monsieur de Huguelet could . . . I don’t know what.” She ground to a halt and then blurted out, “Give Prosper some advice, because he won’t listen to me at all.”
The thought of Alexandre pouring oil on troubled conjugal waters opened the stopcock of a fit of giggles. Capucine could imagine him advising Ouvrard with the severity of a high-court judge that a shopping expedition to La Perla to buy sexy lingerie was the panacea to any marital problem. Capucine bit her lip to choke back her laughter. The silence intensified Delphine’s lack of confidence. Alexandre looked up from his paper and frowned.
“You see, Prosper’s had an offer—well, not an offer exactly, but almost—from Chef Labrousse in New York, and we had a fight about it, and I don’t want him to do it, so I thought he could chat a little with Monsieur de Huguelet so Monsieur de Huguelet could talk some sense into him, so could we stop by this afternoon for just a moment or two if that isn’t too inconvenient?”
“By all means. Why don’t you come around five? We have to go out later, but there’ll still be plenty of time for a chat.”
When she hung up, Alexandre cocked an eyebrow at Capucine.
“What was all that about?”
“Prosper Ouvrard is coming at five so you can explain to him how he should deal with his girlfriend.”
“You should have handed me the phone. I could have told him straight off. A good spa
nking usually does the trick.”
Capucine threw half a croissant at him.
“So in your dotage you’ve decided to come up with new diversions, have you? And who do you think is going to be spanking whom in our relationship?” She twisted Alexandre’s ear until he howled. When she let go, he gave her be-jeaned left buttock a playful slap. Capucine teetered on the edge between irritation and adoration. She sat on Alexandre’s lap and muttered something inaudible into his neck.
Much later they realized it was far too late to go out for a proper lunch, and walked arm in arm around the corner to the Alsatian bistro for baeckeofe, which, despite its high-sounding name, was no more than a simple stew of pork, lamb, and beef topped with potatoes and served in a folksy faïence terrine hand painted with gamboling ducks.
Delphine and Ouvrard arrived punctually at five and sat stiffly on the sofa as if they were schoolchildren waiting for a dressing-down by the lycée principal. In honor of his guest, Alexandre produced a bottle of Taittinger Comtes de Champagne, Blanc de Blancs, 1999, rather than his standard Deutz. By the second glass the mood had eased.
“So you’ve been talking to my good friend Jean-Basile Labrousse?” Alexandre asked Ouvrard.
Ouvrard stood up and hovered. Capucine seized the moment and took his place next to Delphine on the sofa.
“Yes, I have. I understand you know him quite well.”
“Are you familiar with Japanese single malts?” Alexandre asked, standing up to face Ouvrard.
Ouvrard shook his head, taken aback by the abrupt change in tack of the conversation.
“Then you have a treat in store. Let me give you a taste of something that you may find life changing.” Alexandre led Ouvrard down the hall to his study.
Capucine hesitated. The flic in her burned to discover whatever it was that was problematic enough to have prompted Ouvrard to solicit an interview with Alexandre; the feminist in her was loath to play the role of the subjugated woman obliged to sit on the sidelines, speculating on men’s private conversations behind closed doors; but the diplomat she had been trained to be at Sciences Po won out.
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