Killer Critique

by Alexander Campion

  For Capucine, the most egregious of the latter group was Juge d’Instruction August-Marie Parmentier de La Martinière, whose ambition was as boundless as his inhumanity. The police truism was that the only good juges were the ones who thought like flics; the bad ones thought like judges. Martinière thought only of himself.

  Capucine trotted a little breathlessly into Martinière’s office and apologized profusely for her lateness. His face black with rage, he scowled at his watch and pointed a long bony index finger at a chair, indicating she should sit. Junior in the juges’ hierarchy, Martinière had been allocated only a closet-sized office. From her last visit Capucine remembered the excessively ornate Empire desk that took up most of the floor space. Since then Martinière seemed to have transformed the room into a perfect Directoire period piece. Ponderous gilt framed portraits leaned threateningly from the wall at dangerous angles. Modern technology had been purged. The large surface of the desk was conspicuously devoid of a computer monitor and the phone had been banished to a tiny table at some remove from the desk, giving the impression it was very rarely used.

  The overall effect was that Martinière hankered to be back in the era of Fouché’s notorious police during the Napoleonic reign, when a handful of effete aristocrats ruled over armies of police thugs who accumulated extensive files of purloined letters, spied by insinuating themselves into households as servants, and resolved cases with fists and truncheons in dark alleys.

  Wordlessly, relishing the tension he was creating with his silence, Martinière lifted the gold-tooled top of an antique leather-covered blotter with the delighted anticipatory disgust of a small boy lifting a rock in the hopes that something truly awful will come slithering out. He produced a slim file, sheathed in flimsy blue-dun paper, and placed it delicately on his knee. Reaching into his jacket pocket, he extracted a gold fountain pen and used it to tap the top of the file.

  “This is a very valuable case. Very valuable indeed. A well-known journalist has been found dead in the restaurant of an heiress to one of the most important fortunes in France. The press will pay a great deal of attention.” His tight, close-lipped smile curved into an upward U in satisfaction.

  “I’m planning on a rapid arrest, next Friday at the latest, with daily press bulletins this week to announce my progress. In the following week I shall be unstinting in giving interviews about the success of my methodology.

  “I know that you agree with me that a rapid arrest is mandatory and eminently feasible. There are only ninety-three possible suspects. I want you and your policemen to screen them all and bring me a list of those who could have had any sort of motive. You are to spare no efforts. If you think wiretaps or close surveillance is indicated, I will approve those immediately.” He glanced at Capucine to verify she was following.

  “Based on your screening I will convoke the most suspicious individuals and interview them here. I will require your preliminary results so I can begin my interviews in the next two or three days. Is that perfectly clear? I’m confident I will have the culprit identified by the end of the week.” He again leaned forward to peer at Capucine, confirming that she had understood.

  “Commissaire, are you sure you’ve assigned enough staff to get the work done in the requisite time frame?” His tone was that of a governess questioning the study habits of a wayward young ward.

  “Monsieur le juge, I have a total of eight brigadiers on the case. I’m planning on having the entire list interviewed by the end of the week.”

  Martinière sat up straight in his chair and pointed his pen at her as if it was a weapon. “Attention, Commissaire! The police are not to interview the suspects, only check their backgrounds. I will interview them myself. This case is too important to be handled otherwise. I’m absolutely determined to make an arrest by the end of the week. This case is providential, both highly visible and rudimentarily straightforward. It’s precisely what I need to demonstrate the viability of the institution of the juges d’instruction.”

  Capucine was incredulous. “Am I correct in understanding that you don’t want us to contact any of the possible suspects?”

  “Commissaire, it’s not a question of ‘don’t want.’ I absolutely forbid it. I will do the interviewing. Suspects that have already been interviewed by heavy-handed policemen are of no use to me. They already know all the ins and outs of the case and have prepared their answers. It is imperative I see them first. Have I made that perfectly clear?”

  “And what do you expect the police to do, monsieur le juge?”

  “Do what the police are intended to do, I suppose. Look into people’s bank accounts. Gossip with concierges. That sort of thing.” He paused, clearly at a loss for what else the police might be useful for. His face brightened. He’d had a brain wave. “Oh yes, of course, fingerprints. Definitely fingerprints. And don’t forget the DNA. We must be up to date. Scrape everything for DNA. It can be very useful evidence. There you are. Create dossiers. Be meticulous. Courts require thick dossiers filled with accurate information. It facilitates the conviction. Is that clear?”

  It was the second time that afternoon that Capucine was completely at a loss for words.

  CHAPTER 6

  The next morning Capucine woke in a bad mood. Over coffee she traced her mood to the fact that, despite herself, she was kowtowing to the juge’s strictures. Visiting the Brazilian embassy was infuriatingly within the dictates he had laid down.

  Fortunately, as she slid the diminutive Twingo into the middle of a diplomats-only no parking zone in front of the embassy, the imposing, solemn façade of the former mansion of the Schneider family of steel magnates restored her natural equanimity.

  The arrival of Wilson de Mello, the embassy’s cultural attaché, lit up the gloomy mahogany paneling of the reception room like a Carioca sunrise. As he caught sight of Capucine, he was clearly held in the grips of two conflicting emotions. One she was used to, the exaggerated attention her physiognomy seemed to provoke almost invariably in members of the opposite sex. The other took her a moment to identify. It was fear, and it won out hands down over the first.

  Mello was such a perfect caricature of a rich Ipanema Beach playboy that it was obvious he had secured his plum posting by virtue of his family’s position. It was easy to imagine him wearing bathing trunks under his well-tailored summer suit, ready for the surf and a chope with the garo-tas from the beach afterward. Capucine hoped that the vista of the gray Seine flowing sluggishly on the other side of the cours Albert Premier didn’t make him too homesick.

  With obvious trepidation, he led Capucine into a reception room filled with Brazilian Baroque antique furniture in lustrous jacaranda and with courtly grace invited her to sit across from him at a very elegant octagonal table. Capucine had to admit that even by French standards his manners were perfect.

  “Senhor de Mello,” Capucine said, “I’ve come to talk to you about curare and blowgun darts.”

  “I was afraid that was what it was about, Madame le Commissaire. The incident was as inexcusable as it was deplorable, and the embassy extends its most profound and humble apologies. We profoundly hope the French government understands no affront was intended. Quite the contrary.”

  “You must be talking about those kids blowing darts into the portrait of the president. I heard about that, but that’s not what I’ve come to talk about. As long as the darts weren’t going into the president himself, it’s hardly a matter for the police. In fact,” Capucine said with a smile, “quite a few people would have been a lot happier if the darts had wound up in the president’s head.”

  Mello was transformed. He beamed almost from ear to ear. “What a relief. In my country the incident would have been considered treasonous or possibly even some form of lèse-majesté. The ambassador would probably have been recalled. My career would have been over.” He leaned over the table and took Capucine’s hand with sensual delicacy. “So how can I help you, dear madame? When my secretary told me a commissaire of the Police Judic
iaire wanted to see me, I imagined a big, fat old man with a pipe.”

  “The look may have changed, senhor, but Commissaire Maigret is still our role model. I’m here because we have a case that may involve curare, and I thought you might be able to tell me something about it,” she said, beaming her most fetching smile while gently retrieving her hand.

  “In that case,” Mello said, “you must come up to my office.” He winked with a charming parody of a leer. “I don’t have any etchings, but I do have all sorts of intriguing Indian artifacts.”

  Mello’s office could equally well have belonged to a museum curator or an editor of a fashion magazine. Almost every inch of wall space held a brightly colored tropical painting and even more were stacked upright in the corners. Bookcases were jammed with multiple copies of cocktail-table books about Brazil, obviously to be used as gifts. The sofa and chairs were heaped with Carnival masks and costumes. One sprawling leather chair, which Capucine recognized as Sergio Rodrigues’s famous Poltrona Mole, was piled high with Indian handiwork: clothing, jewelry, gourds. On top of the pile, a collection of long bows, eight-foot arrows, and blowguns was poised precariously.

  “First things first. We need a cafezinho after all that emotion.”

  “Thank you, but no,” Capucine said. “I already had two coffees after lunch.”

  The attaché laughed his charming, boyish laugh. “Pas question,” he said with a perfect Parisian inflection. “The ambassador would never forgive me if I let you leave the embassy without tasting our coffee, particularly now that he is secure in his job once again.”

  He picked up the phone and spoke briefly. After an impossibly short pause, a servant in a high-collared, starched white jacket arrived with a small silver tray holding two demitasse cups, a silver coffee pitcher, and a small silver sugar bowl. The servant handed Capucine a cup and saucer, proffered the sugar bowl, then poured in the coffee. When it was the attaché’s turn, he filled his cup almost half full of sugar, leaving little room for the coffee. Mello stirred the sugary sludge vigorously and then downed the contents in one go. Capucine imitated his gesture. It was several times stronger than even the most powerful French express, but rounder in the mouth and with none of the sharp bite. The attaché had been right. That was something not to have been missed.

  “Tell me about the reception,” Capucine asked.

  “It was part of a year-long program we sponsor to raise money for a fund that protects Brazilian Amerindians. The focus is on their art. This is just some of the collection,” he said, waving his hand vaguely around the chaos of his office. “The exhibits include objects from prehistoric times to the present. You know, masks, feather finery, jewelry, weapons, statuettes, pottery, musical instruments, that sort of thing.” He smiled seductively at her. “But it’s the curare darts you’re interested in.”

  Capucine nodded.

  “Well then, let me show you.” He rooted around in the pile on his beautiful leather chair and produced a glass-fronted wooden case about three feet by two, flat as a picture frame, exhibiting about fifty darts in different stages of manufacture. At the beginning of the series the sticks were rough and irregular, but the last half dozen stood stiff and straight, as if they had come off a Bavarian assembly line.

  “It’s amazing the skill that goes into making these things. These particular darts are made from the central stalk of the leaves of a palm we call the inayuga and are smoothed and sharpened with piranha teeth, then hardened over a fire. Of course, each tribe has its own method. They use all sorts of plants. Some tribes even make the darts from rolled-up leaves. And every tribe uses a different kind of curare. Apparently, you can make the stuff from over seventy-five different plants.”

  “And when does the curare go on the dart?”

  The attaché rooted around in the jumble on the chair and produced an eight-inch quiver holding thirty or so darts. A blackened half jaw with long, thin razor-like teeth—certainly a piranha’s—and a six-inch orange gourd with a fibrous stopper dangled on thongs attached to the quiver.

  “The piranha jaw is for a last-minute sharpening of the dart. The curare is kept in a gourd like this. The hunter dips his dart in there, twirls it around, and he’s good to go. This is what they wind up looking like.”

  He produced another display case. One end of the back had been pulled from the frame. The tips of the darts were jet black. It was apparent that three were missing from the side of the case that had been pried open.

  “The missing ones were shot into the president’s portrait ?”

  “Yes, I was mortified. Two waiters and I escorted the miscreants to the door. I rather lost my temper, I’m afraid.”

  “And when you got back, you recovered the darts?”

  “I pulled seven darts out of the portrait. All of them were plain tipped and had been taken from the quiver. But the three curare darts were no longer there. The worst part is that they would still be quite lethal, even if the curare had been applied long ago.” He was visibly abashed.

  “Oh,” Capucine said tolerantly. “You know how exuberant the jeunesse dorée can be.”

  Mello smiled gratefully, entirely oblivious to the reference to his own persona.

  “Senhor de Mello, can I ask you for one more favor? Would you happen to have a list of the guests at the reception ?”

  “Of course, chère madame. The hostess made a check mark for the people who turned up. If they brought a guest, she made a note of the name.” Mello rooted around in the pile on his desk and produced a large folio-size piece of paper, which he folded, put in a large white envelope embossed with the seal and address of the embassy, and handed to her.

  “Senhor Mello, I think you just may have made my life a whole lot easier. I know I’m imposing, but do you think I could possibly borrow your display of darts for a week or ten days?”

  “By all means. And when you’re done with it, I’d be delighted to come to your office to pick it up and, if you’re kind enough to allow me, to take you to lunch. I know a Brazilian restaurant that makes caipirinhas almost as good as the ones in Rio.”

  “What a charming idea. It would be a perfect occasion for my husband to meet you. He’s a food critic and particularly adores Brazilian food. I’m sure you’d love each other.”

  The attaché’s smile remained glowingly effusive. It would have taken the most observant eye to notice it had become just ever so slightly strained.

  CHAPTER 7

  Capucine hadn’t set foot in Le Florian since she was ten. Of course, as it was located on the Champs-Elysées, she had passed it countless times, each time invaded by the damp aura of haunted-house gloom. As a child, her parents would take her there for special occasions. She would sit, itching in a stiff smocked frock that had been painstakingly hand pleated by her mother’s seamstress, struggling to swallow the over-seasoned adult food, listening to her parents talk over her head, ignoring her completely save for the one or two times they remembered her presence and made a production of how lucky she was to be sitting outside in the glassed-in terrace, reserved for those known to the management, and not inside in the gloomy gilt purgatory, where the ploucs were consigned. Even now, Le Florian represented the absolute epitome of the bourgeois life she had struggled so hard to reject.

  “My editor cajoled me into this,” Alexandre said testily. “After this horrid place had sat quietly for a hundred years, like a little old spinster too well born to talk to anyone, one of the trendsetting chains finally bought it, turned the upstairs floors into a froufrou hotel, and decided the restaurant was going to be a fashionable hot spot. So naturally we have to review the bloody thing. Thank God you came. I couldn’t have faced another meal here by myself.”

  Alexandre closed his leather menu with an angry whip-crack snap. “I know the damn thing by heart. This is my third time. Their chain’s marketing department has taken over from the chef. They think it’s an act of genius to hark back to the days when the Champs-Elysées was the center of the French film
industry, and have rebaptized their tired old dishes with the names of movie stars.”

  He opened his menu again and read to Capucine.

  “Get this. ‘Risotto Robert Hossein, fried whiting Colbert, sea bream Charles Aznavour.’ Can you imagine less appropriate eponyms? One was Persian, not Italian, and the other two lived most of their lives in exile far from the sea. You order for me. I can’t go through with it a third time.”

  Hell had no fury like Alexandre’s when he had decided he didn’t like a restaurant.

  A waiter came up and was persuaded to bring a double of single-malt whiskey for Alexandre and a Lillet Blanc for Capucine.

  “And no ice, mind you!” Alexandre said sharply to the departing waiter. “They’ve been deformed by the American trade.” Alexandre shook his head in existential gloom.

  “Dear Alexandre isn’t being fed up to his usual standard. My poor sweetie.”

  “Nothing is more pathetic than the spectacle of a once noble institution attempting to save itself by bilking the press.”

  “A sentiment I share wholeheartedly.” Capucine paused, chewing her lower lip. “I had exactly the same experience with my juge. For the life of me, I can’t understand why these lost causes have such confidence in the press. I mean, here you are, detesting this place, and yet they’re pleased as punch to keep you coming back again and again for more. And my dear little juge seems to be utterly indifferent to the risk of opening up his Figaro one morning and reading that he has been attacked for obstruction of justice.”

  The drinks arrived and Alexandre downed his in one go. Its effect on his humor was instantaneous.

  “Ah,” he said. “There’s the rub. This restaurant knows how to use the media, but your juge doesn’t. There’s no such thing as bad press for a restaurant. What kills them is being forgotten. Your juge is in a much more vulnerable position. If we ran a story tomorrow with a head along the lines of MURDER OF A FAMOUS JOURNALIST GOES UNSOLVED BECAUSE OF A MEDDLING JUGE D’INSTRUCTION, that would be all the president needed to consign the function to the oubliettes. In fact, just say the word. I know exactly who to tip off at the paper.”