Killer Critique

by Alexander Campion

  “Ah, the famous Capucine intuition. What a powerful trump card you have, my dear,” Alexandre said. With great concentration he uncorked a bottle of 2000 Château Ausone, which had been provided to accompany the sweetbreads.

  “Idiotically, I crossed Voisin off the list almost immediately. Voisin had no problems with his parents whatsoever and not the slightest interest in the case. That left four. It was true Sybille had been abused by her father, but she had learned to use his guilt to manipulate him. She was so satisfied by that situation that it gave her a taste for the sexual manipulation of older men,” Capucine said.

  Vavasseur nodded in approval. “In fact, of all the suspects, she was by far the most well adjusted.”

  “Tanguy’s relationship with his father was unquestionably flawed,” Capucine continued. “So was his view of the entire fabric of social authority. But, somehow, he didn’t seem credible as a murderer.”

  “He had built such an effective temple of imaginary reality to hide in, he had no need of gratification from the real world,” Vavasseur said.

  They had finished the lobster. Jacques and Alexandre cleared away the dishes, and Jacques opened the thick-bottomed, heat-retaining canisters containing the sweetbreads. The air filled with an aroma that was round and unctuous at the center and pleasantly sharp at the edges. On their plates the half-inch-thick medallions of sweetbreads were surrounded by nubbly little navels of miniscule tortellini, which in turn were surrounded by the muted hues of the “forgotten vegetables.” They all fell silent, intent on their meals.

  When the dish was half consumed, Capucine sighed, sipping her Saint-Emilion in almost postcoital contentment.

  “Where was I?” she asked.

  “You were about to reveal the intimate details of your two most luscious suspects,” Jacques said.

  “Yes, at that stage both Cécile and Béatrice were possibilities.”

  “You suspected your childhood friend!” Jacques exclaimed in mock horror. “The one you and I spent that long rainy afternoon with in the commons of the château and ... Oh, sorry. I forgot Alexandre was here.”

  “Jacques, do you take anything seriously?” Alexandre asked.

  “I’m taking this ris de veau extremely seriously,” Jacques said.

  “Cécile was in the middle of a profound crise. No doubt about that. But even though it looked like she was trying to escape her parents’ paradigm, in fact she was trying to dive even deeper into it.”

  “Exactly,” Vavasseur said. “She had established a life that she thought would be challenging and stimulating, but it turned out to be too easy. Her successes frustrated her. She needed to distance herself from her world so she could focus on her true self, her vision of her Mirror Image. Of course, that’s a form of neurosis but it’s a very productive one. I’m sure she will have a distinguished career. She will leave a number of broken hearts behind, but she will be fulfilled.”

  “So it seemed to me that Béatrice was the most likely candidate,” Capucine said. “And in one of our final discussions Docteur Vavasseur confirmed the reasonableness of my assumption.”

  “Yes,” Vavasseur said. “And she fitted the profile perfectly. A classic case of the non du père—the father’s no. In her mirror image of herself she was utterly and completely a chef. But her immensely rich and powerful father opposed that life, which he characterized as ‘manual labor.’ Worse, he viewed her refusal to join the family business as an act of treason. Even though she was successful, she felt as if she was impotent and losing the battle against her father’s power. She needed desperately to protect herself.”

  “And I thought this psychological stuff was always sexual,” Jacques said, pouring himself and Alexandre another glass of Ausone. “What a disappointment.”

  Both Capucine and Vavasseur looked at him coldly.

  “Her only possibility of survival, as she saw it, was a series of symbolic victories,” Capucine said.

  “Exactly,” Vavasseur said. “After each killing her sense of well-being soared and then tapered off gradually until she required a new killing. Early on she must have learned that collecting tangible fetishes from her victims would prolong the feeling of satisfaction. So she gathered pens from her victims. They were very powerful symbols, simultaneously phallic and representative of the restaurant critics’ fatherlike power to sanction her.”

  “I knew sex would come into it sooner or later,” Jacques said.

  “The pens were critical in the case. They were the tip-off that there were two murderers,” Capucine said.

  Vavasseur finished his sweetbreads, touched his napkin to his lips, and sighed—a man content with life. “Yes, the pens. But that was all Commissaire Le Tellier’s work. All I did was underline the probability of the murderer’s reliance on fetishes.”

  “Early on I sensed the first murder was different from the others,” Capucine said. “The use of poison was a factor. It was only in the first murder that death resulted from poison. In all the others it was obviously symbolic. Also, all the other poisons were foodstuffs—even belladonna, which was once used as a condiment. Curare certainly isn’t edible. And the feel to the first murder was different. It didn’t have the same degree of hands-on violence of the other four.

  “But it was the pens that were the clincher. It took me a while to see it. Fesnay had his pen in his pocket. Monteil had two plastic pens on him. So at that point they weren’t an issue. Peroché had no pen but he might have forgotten it somewhere, so I didn’t give it a second thought. It wasn’t until I checked and found out he had been taking notes during his dinner in a spiral notebook that the penny dropped. Someone had clearly taken his pen. And then Laroque was found without a pen. So it was clear that the murderer was taking pens as trophies. We found Monteil’s plastic pen in Béatrice’s trophy case. He’d had three plastic pens in his pocket but Béatrice only took one.”

  “All that’s very well, but how did you know Voisin was the other killer?” Alexandre asked.

  “Motive. The most powerful motive of all, money.”

  “And I thought with those pens we were finally going to get a little sex into this story. Can’t you work that teen temptress into this somehow?” Jacques said.

  Capucine ignored him.

  “From the beginning a lot of little things about Voisin didn’t quite add up, the fact that his son had had such an easy time deposing him, the fact that he was so broke his girlfriend had to pay to have his car maintained, things like that. But we were looking for a serial killer and that he definitely wasn’t.

  “Even when he let drop at the Salon du Bordeaux that he knew Fesnay, it was obvious he’d told us a lie but I still couldn’t see him as a serial killer. Of course, when it dawned on me there were two killers the whole thing popped into focus. I could have spent weeks digging into Fesnay’s and Voisin’s background would have come up with a nice paper trail of the blackmail, but I decided to chance it with a quick arrest and interrogation.”

  “Cousine, get back to the sexy chef and her phallic pens. How did you know it was her?”

  “That’s the whole point. I was sure, but I didn’t know. You see, we had breakfast a few days after the murder at Dong. She gave herself away with a tiny slip. She was horrified that Laroque had died with ‘his pipi hanging out,’ to use her phrase. We had never released that detail to the press.”

  Jacques’ cackle erupted. “Ah, finally sex rears its ugly little head. I knew that would happen sooner or later.” He brayed loudly.

  “At the time I was confused. I knew from my first interview that she had a very positive reaction to Gautier du Fesnay. She convinced me she thought he was going to be instrumental in getting her first Michelin star. But when I knew there were two murderers, then she was obviously the serial killer. Her profile was perfect, and she had tipped her hand. But I didn’t have a single scrap of evidence.”

  “So you resorted to entrapment?” Jacques asked.

  “It was the only thing I could do. Other
wise, she could have gone on killing for years. We had nothing. Even what we found in her apartment is so circumstantial, we couldn’t have made an arrest stick without her attempted murder of Alexandre.”

  “And other than my boyish good looks, how were you so sure she’d walk into your trap?” Alexandre asked.

  “She was already far overdue for her fix and must have been completely strung out. And the setting was just too good to pass up—famous critic, opening of the year, celebrity guests, lots of press. It would have been her most exciting killing. I knew she would bite. And she did.”

  “So without Alexandre there would be no case at all,” Jacques said. “Fabuleux! Alexandre is the real hero! Let’s drink to him.”

  They all raised their glasses. Alexandre beamed. It was obvious that for him the attempt at his murder had been far less troubling than a broken cork in a bottle of grand cru. Still, Capucine bit her lip. She could just not bring herself to believe that her ambition had not cost her a good bit of her Alexandre.

  As if he had read her mind, Alexandre shot her a look. He nodded almost imperceptibly. They rose, walked to the river’s edge. Alexandre fished a leather cigar case out of his jacket, eased out a Rey del Mundo robusto, bit off the end, lit it slowly and sensually. The heady aroma of the Cuban cigar floated over the group. Jacques opened his mouth to say something. Vavasseur pursed his lips slightly. Jacques closed his mouth.

  Capucine leaned up against Alexandre and took his hand. Slowly they strolled up the stone walkway, their hands swinging slightly with the cadence of their stride.

  After a few dozen yards they stopped and looked deeply into each other’s eyes. Capucine took the cigar out of Alexandre’s hand and cocked her arm to toss it into the river.

  Instead she took a deep puff, held it in her mouth for a second, and let it out.

  “These things are really quite good. Why didn’t you ever tell me?” she said with a giggle and gave the cigar back to Alexandre. He puffed contemplatively for a few beats and returned it to Capucine.

  They continued off, hand in hand, down the walkway to the far end of the island, passing the cigar back and forth. In a few minutes the walkway curved to the right and they were lost from sight.

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  Copyright © 2012 by Alexander Campion

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  Library of Congress Card Catalogue Number: 2012934789

  ISBN: 978-0-7582-7873-9