Killer Critique

by Alexander Campion

  “She did,” David said. “But that was half an hour before our stiff keeled over. One of the waiters told me. Those nerve things are supposed to be very fast acting. Does that mean she’s off the hook, Commissaire?”

  “No, not really,” Capucine said. “You know how unreliable crowd testimonies are. She could easily have come out again. We’ll need to go into that very carefully.”

  Isabelle snapped through the pages of her notebook noisily. “There were exactly ninety-two people—plus the chef makes ninety-three—who were either customers or worked in the front of the house. One of them has to be the killer. So the perp’s name is already right here in my little book. This is an all-time first!”

  “Oh, goody,” David said. “A locked-room mystery. I’ve always wanted to work on one of those.”

  Isabelle glared at him.

  “Make that ninety-one people,” Momo said with his ponderous logic. “The chef is the boss’s husband’s pal, and the boss is close buds with one of the customers.”

  “Let’s stick with ninety-three,” Capucine said. “Even if Béatrice Renaud were Alexandre’s buddy, which I don’t really think is the case, she very definitely could still be a suspect. And I was as amazed as anyone else to run into Cécile de Rougemont. It’s true she’s a very close friend, but that certainly doesn’t mean she won’t be investigated as thoroughly as anyone else.”

  Ever so slightly, the three brigadiers pursed their lips, moved their eyebrows together, and nodded fractionally in a highly attenuated version of the Gallic expression of ironic incredulity.

  “How many of the people in the dining room did you three talk to?” Capucine asked.

  Isabelle consulted her notebook. “We had a quick word with all twenty-one of the waitstaff and eleven of the customers. We concentrated on the ones sitting nearest the victim’s table, like you said.”

  “And?”

  “And same as always, big nothing. None of the customers saw anything, except two women who saw Fesnay fall over. One of them wanted to get up to help him, but her husband stopped her. And the waiters did what you’d expect them to do; they got that solemn priestly look, like what was going on at their tables was as secret as confession in church.”

  “But you got their names and addresses and told them not to leave Paris without permission?”

  “Of course,” Isabelle said. “We even double-checked their identity papers to make sure no one was fibbing. So what do we do now, Commissaire?”

  “Starting first thing in the morning, you’re going to haul each one of the ninety-three down here to the brigade and interview them formally. They’re going to be different animals outside of their comfort zone. Feel free to get tough. Use the usual tricks. You know, tell them that someone at the next table swears he saw them get up just before the murder. Scare them. When they get really desperate to get out of the interview room, they’ll spill whatever it is they might actually have seen.

  “Then start going through their backgrounds. See if you can find anyone who has even the remotest connection with the victim. Same hometown, worked in the same company, you know the drill. If the murderer really is one of the people in the room, we’re going to need to find a motive.”

  “And what do you want us to start doing in the fall?” Isabelle asked ironically.

  “Fair enough,” Capucine said. “It is a lot of work for you three. How many backups do you need?”

  “As many as I can get,” Isabelle said with a grin.

  Capucine shuffled through her duty roster file. “I think I can give you five brigadiers for a week. That should give you a start. We’ll figure it out from there. By the way, I had already planned a lunch with Madame de Rougemont tomorrow, but I still want one of you three to interview her down here just like the others. What are you so happy about, Isabelle?”

  “This case is a slam dunk. I mean, shit, how many times are we absolutely certain we have the perp’s name down on a piece of paper on day one? All we have to do is slog through the grunt work and we’ll have the guy in cuffs in no time at all.”

  “Let’s hope it’s that simple. It might not be. I’ve been ordered to see the juge d’instruction in charge of the case tomorrow.”

  “Big deal. Aren’t those guys just a formality?” David asked.

  “Normally they are. But I’m sure you remember the most excellent Juge d’Instruction de La Martinière?”

  “August-Marie Parmentier de La Martinière?” Isabelle asked. “How could I forget that pompous little faggot? The sun just went out of my life. Merde, it makes you want to quit the force.”

  “Thinking about becoming a nun again, Isabelle?” David asked.

  With blinding speed Isabelle landed a short right jab on David’s upper arm. The pain was enough to take his breath away.

  CHAPTER 4

  At lunchtime, La Dacha—a caviar bar smack in the middle of Paris’s Golden Triangle, home to the cream of its business world—was the canteen for a select handful of investment banks, management consulting firms, and advertising agencies, the senor staffs of which felt that their expense accounts fully entitled them to lunches as exorbitant as the portions were small. In the evening the fauna expanded to include talking heads from TV news shows and senior officials from government ministries. Cécile de Rougemont was a frequent participant at both servings.

  From early childhood Capucine and Cécile had been best friends, with that white-hot intensity that men invariably mistook for sexual glue. Their friendship had survived the cruel watershed when intimacy was transferred to the opposite sex and had even grown as they evolved into womanhood.

  As Capucine entered, Cécile rose from the miniscule table to greet her. The two women stared deeply into each other’s eyes, embraced, kissed on both cheeks.

  “I loved seeing you at work last night. Right out of a movie. So tough, so completely in charge, so ordering people right and left!” Both women laughed. “All I get to do,” Cécile continued, “is humbly offer my little opinions to my clients.”

  “Humble. Right. You charge three thousand euros a day and you order your associates around like slaves. If I took that tone with my brigadiers, they’d probably shoot me in the leg.” Cécile was an associate partner—one small step away from becoming a full partner—at the most prestigious of management consulting firms, Beisdean and Company, a firm so elite that knowing the correct pronunciation—BASE-tchan—separated the winners from the losers throughout the Western business world.

  A waiter in a severely starched formal white mess jacket cut off at the waist, trimmed with shiny brass buttons and gold brocade epaulets, came up with the menus. The intended effect was to vaguely evoke Czarist Russia. The menus were entirely superfluous. Both Cécile and Capucine had known the contents by heart for years.

  Cécile smiled warmly at the waiter. “Hervé, just bring us a quarter of vodka and give us some time to sort ourselves out.”

  The vodka came promptly: a small quarter-liter decanter frozen into a solid block of ice in a silver-plated cooler. The cooler has been dipped briefly in very hot water so that the block of ice would come free when the decanter was lifted. The waiter filled two dollhouse-sized crystal stemmed glasses. The liquid was thick and oily from being so close to its freezing point.

  Both women raised their glasses and giggled happily. Capucine took a sip. The vodka was so cold, it had no taste at all, just a numbing feeling on the tongue. But once in her stomach it spread with an acid flame that melted the edge of her perpetual angst. Her shoulders relaxed a half a notch. She grabbed Cécile’s hand.

  “It always does me such a world of good to see you.”

  Cécile put her other hand on top of Capucine’s and squeezed her reply with an earnest smile. Then she broke the moment by tapping the back of Capucine’s hand impatiently with her index finger.

  “So. Tell me, whatever happened yesterday? What did that poor man die of? Food poisoning? And who was it? Anyone we know of?”

  Capucine�
�s answer was delayed by the return of the waiter, who announced that the restaurant had just received a good quantity of beluga caviar that was of a far better quality than he had seen in months. Capucine was impressed. Beluga, the largest grained of the three caviars, was now on the endangered species list and illegal to serve. The fact that the waiter, who knew full well that Capucine was a commissaire in the Police Judiciaire, felt not the slightest qualm in touting it spoke volumes about the insouciance of an establishment that catered to the upper echelons of politics and commerce.

  “Voilà,” said Cécile. “We’ll each have fifty grams of your beluga with a mountain of toast and worry about the rest later.” She was transparently eager for the waiter to leave.

  “Come on, ma belle, you’re tormenting me by not telling what happened last night.”

  “It was Gautier du Fesnay. You know, the restaurant reviewer for Le Figaro.”

  “You mean the one with the blog that has all those prissy videos of him eating with his face fuzzed out? Who on earth would want to kill that bumptious little man?”

  “That’s the sort of thing they pay me to find out. Someone seems to have injected him with some form of nerve drug, and he fell over and drowned in his dish of lobster ravioles floating in a nice thick tandoori sauce.”

  “I had that myself. It was outstanding. Good Lord, the poor man actually drowned in his dinner?” As Cécile thought about it, her face became rigid and she began to tremble. Finally, she could contain herself no longer and erupted in giggles.

  “I know it’s terrible, and he must have died horribly, but what a perfectly appropriate death for that catty little snob.”

  Capucine was caught by the mood and knew she was fighting a losing battle with suppressing her own giggling fit. In desperation she took a deep swig of vodka, choked, coughed, and finally broke free from her attack of fou rire.

  Both women patted the tears out of the corners of their eyes with napkins, careful not to spoil their makeup.

  “What was he injected with that killed him so quickly?” Cécile asked.

  “The forensics people think it might have been some sort of nerve poison, curare or one of the military versions. The thinking is that it was probably an air-gun pellet tipped with curare. One of my detectives is hoping it was done with a jungle blowgun.” Capucine laughed, expecting Cécile to join in.

  Cécile looked at her expressionlessly.

  “Blowguns don’t shoot metallic projectiles,” Cécile said with the heavy gravitas of a Beisdean consultant. “They shoot darts made from the stems of the inayuga palm, which grows in certain parts of the Amazon rain forest. The stems soak up the curare mixture, which is then dried. The darts remain effective for years.”

  “And you know this from your Beisdean Little Consultant’s Handbook, of which you read a few pages every night before bed even if you’re a bit tipsy?”

  Cécile smiled tolerantly. “No. Oddly enough, I was at a reception last week at the Maison de l’Amérique Latine—you know, that old hôtel particulier in the Faubourg Saint-Germain—for some fund or other that protects Amerindians. There was an exhibit of Brazilian Indian hunting weapons with lots of blowguns and darts and bows and arrows and stuff like that. A man from the embassy gave a little lecture about the exhibit.”

  “Interesting?”

  “Au contraire. In fact, it was so boring that some of the guests got a little out of hand. A few golden youths who were pretty drunk to begin with decided that it would be great fun to wander off and blow darts into a portrait of the president of the republic that had just been unveiled in the reception room.”

  “Really?”

  “Actually, it’s a lot harder to shoot those things than you’d think. I must have smoked too much in my teens.”

  “You shot darts into the president’s portrait? I don’t believe it!” Capucine shrieked.

  “Certainly not! Whatever gave you that idea?”

  “And were there any darts tipped with curare?”

  “That’s what made me think of the reception. As it turned out, a few of them actually were, even though most weren’t. The exhibited items were on pegs on a decorated board. The darts were in little quivers next to gourds used for the poison. But some of them were behind glass in a kind of picture frame thingy to show how the tips were all dark black after they’d been soaked in the curare solution. A couple of the kids managed to pry off the back of the case and grab a handful of poisoned darts. The guy from the embassy was furious and snatched them all back, but I saw he missed the three that had already been shot into the portrait.”

  “Do you have any idea what happened to them?”

  “Nope. The mood of the party had turned sour, so I left right after the incident.”

  “I’m going to have to look into that. I think I might just drop by the Brazilian embassy tomorrow.”

  The waiter came up, removed the empty carafe of vodka, and asked them if they wanted anything else. They both opted for smoked salmon on blinis topped with dollops of crème fraîche and a half bottle of Chablis.

  Capucine was flooded by a wave of embarrassment. She masked it by staring, apparently entranced, at the woman in the window of the restaurant slicing their salmon with a two-foot-long knife no wider than a wooden pencil. With consummate skill she produced oily pink strips so thin they were translucent. There were questions Capucine needed to ask. Questions that would have been asked routinely in a police interview but that somehow seemed out of place for a friend—even a very close friend.

  “I know it’s none of my business, but we’ll need it for the file. Who is this Honorine Lecanu you were having dinner with last night?”

  For half a beat Cécile seemed put out. Then, retreating into the bastion of her adamantine self-confidence, she smiled.

  “Honorine is one of my associates. An exceptional young woman. One of the brightest the firm has ever recruited.”

  There was something in the tone that wasn’t quite right.

  “And I suppose you were taking her for an expensive night out as a reward for some job well done? I’m going to start doing that with my brigadiers every time they solve a case. I wonder if the Police Judiciaire will spring for it.”

  “It wasn’t quite that. Honorine and I are ... well ... we’re having a ... I guess you’d call it a liaison.”

  “What on earth do you mean?”

  “Oh, Capucine, how can you be so dense? You know it hasn’t been going all that well with Théophile. We’ve talked about that, right? Well, I’m having a fling with Honorine to unload the tension. And just between you and me, I’m finding her a great deal more fulfilling than Théophile.”

  Capucine was staggered, utterly nonplussed. She had been best friends with Cécile since they were four years old at école maternelle. How was it possible she didn’t have the first clue about her sexual orientation?

  “So what does this mean?” Capucine stammered. “Are you going to divorce Théophile?”

  “Don’t be silly. You can be such a little girl at times. It means that my life is very complicated right now. I’m at a turning point in my career. I’m at a turning point in my marriage. Théophile is just a big fat lump who’s more interested in his wine tastings and his cave than anything going on with me. And so I’ve found a friend. We do things that drain out my tension and leave me fit and productive. It’s my way of forging on. Surely you can understand that.”

  Capucine stared at her, mute.

  “Look,” Cécile said. “This is nothing. It’s like smoking a cigarette or having a drink, nothing more. Don’t try to turn it into a big deal. I have to get back to the office. We’ll talk soon and I’ll fill you in on all the fun details.”

  Cécile stood up, making the classic writing in the air sign of requesting the check, except that this time it meant that it was to be added to her running tab, and dashed out of the restaurant.

  Capucine didn’t see it at all. She wasn’t revolted. She was just thunderstruck. When her own life
became impossible, she automatically turned to Alexandre. And sleeping with a woman! She saw herself as a feminist. Of course she did. Hadn’t she studied all the greats: Simone de Beauvoir, Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray? Hadn’t she put herself to sleep the night before reading Elisabeth Badinter’s Le Con-flit? But there was a vast difference between an intellectual exercise and the necessity of having a man as the mainstay to your life. Anything other than that was as incomprehensible as viewing tripe as a great delicacy. Wasn’t it?

  Capucine sat, staring, mesmerized by the woman untiringly slicing smoked salmon, until with a jerk she realized she was far more than her usual fifteen minutes late for her appointment with the juge d’instruction. It wasn’t really important, she told herself, but still, she hated being rude to anyone.

  CHAPTER 5

  As her brand-new Renault Twingo purred its way across Paris, Capucine thought of the president’s portrait defaced by poisoned blowgun darts. She herself was far from a fan of the man. She despised his philistinism—he had publicly announced that reading Madame de Lafayette’s La Princesse de Clèves was a waste of time—his indifference to gastronomy—an endomorphic, fanatic runner, he took no pleasure at all in restaurants—and, most of all, his trophy wife—a former model whose naked breasts had adorned the popular press for months after their wedding until everyone got tired of the little things.

  But one thing about the president pleased her enormously: his recent decision to phase out the function of juge d’instruction as part of his overhaul of the French judicial system, which he had labeled archaic and no longer viable in modern society.

  From the police’s point of view, the juges d’instruction were a bane. Not only were they nominally in charge of most investigations, they had a monopoly of control over surveillances, wiretapping, and arrests. It was true that most of the juges had the good sense to recognize their real utility was to ensure that the police assembled all the legal niceties that would guarantee the public prosecutor a conviction, but a small handful seemed to genuinely believe they were running the show.