The Grave Gourmet

by Alexander Campion

  “Isn’t that pushing this new molecular gastronomy to excessive lengths?”

  “Keep this up and I really am going to bed, dinner or no dinner. The next thing forensics did was to go over the body with an even finer-tooth comb than they had used the first time around. They found a miniscule hole in the neck going into the jugular vein. Under the microscope it turned out to have been made by a hypodermic needle. Is dinner ever going to be ready? All of a sudden I’m starving.”

  “Patience, my intrepid policewoman, only a moment or two more. So now all is clear. Delage was injected by a waiter with an expert knowledge of anatomy and poisons because he was upset over his tip, is that it?”

  “Don’t be such an ass. It had to be outside the restaurant or in the WC when he went there just before he left.”

  On the stove the liquid was boiling, making cheerful plopping sounds. Alexandre dropped in the ravioles with a small handful of julienned truffle slices and a healthy slosh from a bottle taken from the refrigerator. In less than four minutes the ravioles were ready.

  “Interesting. So it wasn’t the food and most likely didn’t happen at the restaurant,” Alexandre said, gently lifting the ravioles with a slotted spoon and placing them in large rustic soup bowls. Then he ladled some of the broth into the bowls and brought them to the table.

  “Voilà,” he said, bringing the bowls to the table. “Ravioles de foie gras truffés in a pheasant and Monbazillac broth. And the best part is that we get to finish the Monbazillac with it.”

  The ravioles were glorious. Alexandre’s joie de vivre leeched into Capucine’s spirits and lifted them. “You know, my dear,” she said, “your oyster thing, that’s just an old wives’ tale. Oysters aren’t really aphrodisiacs. And to think each one would work individually—”

  “Don’t be too sure, my pet. You know the story about the Saint-Germain cutie who was lunching with her pal complaining about her beau’s declining ardor. She’s in tears and says, ‘That thing you told me to do, you know, feeding him oysters; well, it’s just not that great. He ate a dozen at dinner and only five of them worked!’”

  Capucine didn’t crack a smile.

  “As a matter of fact, I had a dozen for lunch myself. If you want to keep count you’ll have to take one of your socks off before you go to bed.”

  Somehow, as they finished the ravioles and then the bottle of wine, Capucine never got around to telling Alexandre what she had planned for the next day.

  “Enough of this,” she said with a giggle. “Let’s go to bed. It’s going to feel funny with only one sock on.”

  Chapter 11

  Capucine was on the phone at 8:30 the next morning crisply convoking Diapason’s three senior employees to the Quai with all the insouciance she imagined in Rivière. Well, perhaps not quite, since she chose the times carefully to avoid any conflict with their jobs. One of the last things she wanted to do was to make life even more difficult for Jean-Basile Labrousse.

  The first on the list was the chef saucier, Silvestre Perrault, who arrived at 10:00. With his bald head, thick tortoiseshell glasses, tweed jacket, gray flannel trousers, and professorial serenity he seemed anything but the number-two chef of a major restaurant. Capucine knew that one of Labrousse’s many eccentricities was his refusal to have a sous-chef whose only function was to act as second in command. The number-two spot was reserved for the most senior of the chefs de partie, the chef saucier, who not only had his own complex dishes to prepare but had to be ready to manage the kitchen if the need arose. Perrault had little to add to his initial statement except for a comment that at one point in the service Labrousse had unexpectedly donned a fresh jacket and neck cloth to make one of his rare tours of the dining room. “He couldn’t have picked a worse moment. One of the line chefs had got himself dans le jus, as we say, and was a good three minutes behind his colleagues, who were doing the entrées for a four-top. Just as I was bailing him out and falling behind at my own station, Chef dumped the supervision of the whole kitchen on me. I’m used to him being a little absentminded, but I thought that was definitely over the top.” Perrault laughed. When Capucine told him about the two men who had been seen dragging a bag into the kitchen in the middle of the night, he was visibly shocked and alarmed that keys to the side door might be in circulation. He asked Capucine if he could be authorized to change the lock. Forty-five minutes after he arrived he was gone, presumably on the way to the locksmith’s.

  Jean-Jacques Bouteiller, the maître d’, was next, arriving at 4:00, after the luncheon service had wound down. He came with an ingenuously complicitous smile. It was a bit unsettling to see him out of his severe blue suit and in a worn plaid sweater a size too large. He proved decidedly chatty when out from under Labrousse’s eagle eye. Surprisingly, he turned out to be an avid reader of the gossip press and a doting fan of his celebrity clients. Contrary to all appearances he paid a great deal of attention to the patrons’ deportment. He had volumes to say about Delage’s dinner. It seemed that at the beginning of the meal the atmosphere at the table had been tense to the point of acrimony but then improved considerably as the evening went on. By the time coffee was served both men were jovial. When Bouteiller had spoken to Delage after he left the men’s room after dinner he was positively beaming. But Bouteiller regretted that, try as he might, he had overheard none of the conversation and didn’t have a clue what the substance of the tension might have been.

  He was less taken aback than Perrault by the 2:30 A.M. delivery. He knew little about what went on in the kitchen but was aware of a large number of small deliveries of produce as Labrousse was supplied by a multitude of local artisans. These deliveries were a famous example of Labrousse’s eccentricity. Some of them came at surprising times, but 2:30 in the morning did seem exceptional. He was also astounded that anyone might have been given the key.

  The last was Grégoire Rolland, the sommelier, who arrived at 5:00. He, too, seemed to metamorphose when away from the restaurant. Sycophantic servility had replaced sommelier severity. He fawned over Capucine and poured syrupy adulation on Alexandre. Despite herself, Capucine’s irritation made her brusque. Offended, Rolland shrouded himself in the cloak of professional reticence that seemed the earmark of Diapason’s employees. It took several minutes of wide-eyed girlish curiosity about Rolland’s noble métier before peace was restored enough to allow him to be prodded toward the subject of the dinner. But once the sluice gates were opened an unstoppable flow of disdain rippled down the channel.

  “Président Delage’s taste in wine was insipid, hardly in keeping with a man of his position. That night he ordered a Forts de Latour, a second growth of the most noble of the Pauillacs for sure, but still a complete banality. The big name makes the wine safe. A man who orders a second growth is like a man who settles for the ugly sister because he is afraid to risk the reproach of the beautiful sibling, and once he is married he basks in the glory of his sister-in-law,” he said with a sneer.

  “I had no idea you were so demanding of your patrons,” Capucine said.

  “Of course I am. That’s why I’m at Diapason: it meets my standards. In order to work properly I need a certain level of cuisine and a certain level of clientele.” Rolland smirked. “Diapason has both.” He winked at Capucine. “You wouldn’t think so, but finding the necessary culinary level is the hard part. Anyone can charge high prices, but Diapason is one of the few places where the cuisine is up to my cellar.” Capucine arched her eyebrows in distaste at his arrogance, a gesture he mistook for disbelief. “Think about it. Let’s say someone orders a bottle of 1945 Château Haut-Brion—of which I have an entire case still in the original box, by the way—I have to be confident the meal will live up to the greatness of the wine before I serve it.”

  “There are actually people who order wine that’s that expensive?”

  “Oh, dear yes. In fact, my problem is to restrain them. Some of these Americans would happily get plastered on ten-thousand-euro wines. Obviously I’d never serve
it to them, of course.”

  “I’m sure you’ve already heard of the mysterious 2:30 A.M. delivery. What do you make of it?”

  “Doesn’t surprise me at all. Chef Labrousse is famous for being devoted to any number of tiny regional producers. They deliver at any hour of the day or night.”

  “But doesn’t 2:30 in the morning seem excessive even for a regional farmer?”

  Rolland smiled an offensively oily smile. “Lieutenant, you don’t mean to tell me that with that husband of yours you haven’t figured it out already? You’re making sport of me.”

  “Rolland, it’s never a good idea to be coy with the police. What are you talking about?”

  “You know, of course, that in the past few decades many of our most traditional delicacies have been declared illegal. Absinthe, beque-figues, ortolans are all gone. Apparently, foie gras will be next on the list. Can you imagine? Naturally, a number of people consider these so-called illegalities an absurdity. Like Prohibition was in the United States.” He put his finger to his lips dramatically and said, “I’m sworn to secrecy, naturally. I mustn’t lead you to believe that anything illegal could ever transpire at Diapason’s. Never!” He raised his hands palms outward in mock horror. “But such meals are available in many a three-star restaurant. If you were interested in, say, a meal of ortolans, I could make the suggestion of a most excellent place and even advise you of the proper wines to go with it. But, I’m sure you understand, that is absolutely as far as I can go. My lips are sealed.”

  By seven Capucine was home impatiently snapping through the pages of Vogue and Marie Claire, ears straining for Alexandre’s footfall. He eventually turned up a little before eight.

  “Finally!” she said, jumping up to greet him.

  “Ahh, yearning for me, I see. How lovely. I’m moved to the very core of my being. But is it really me, or are your days in that beastly place becoming too long? Give it up! Stay with me all day. Then our joy will be boundless.”

  “Alexandre, be serious. I need your professional advice.”

  “With pleasure: throw open the prison doors; release all the prisoners; feed them exquisitely; the country will be entirely free of crime.”

  “Please, I really do need your help. What’s an ortolan?”

  Alexandre burst into laughter. When he recovered he said, “I need something to drink, and apparently so do you.” Still chuckling, he twisted open a bottle of champagne and poured them both flutes. “What’s this all about?”

  “No, you first. Tell me and then I’ll fill you in.”

  “Well, chérie, an ortolan is a tiny little bird. A very yummy tiny little bird that with great sagacity summers in northern Europe and flies south to winter in North Africa, as we all should. Sadly for them but happily for us along the way they are netted in great quantities in the Landes and eaten with enormous appreciation.”

  “Is that legal?”

  “Sadly not. Apparently they appear to be an endangered species so hunting them is forbidden. But that certainly doesn’t prevent the Landais from catching about a hundred thousand of the little darlings each year. And who could blame them since they sell them for about a hundred and fifty euros each.”

  “So that’s it? We’re talking about poaching?”

  “There’s a bit more. A number of delicate souls are shocked at the way the birds are prepared. The process is a bit barbaric. First they are caught by being driven into nets by beaters. And then they are blinded with a hot poker.” Capucine grimaced. “The dark is supposed to be restful for the little things and give them an appetite. They are fed on a special diet, usually millet, grapes, and figs, until they are four times their original size. As you can imagine, there is great controversy about the perfect diet. At that point their cute little beaks are forced open and a single drop of aged Armagnac—nothing else will do—is popped down their gullets. They die in a paroxysm of delight. Then, and only then, are they ready to eat.”

  “So it’s about birds that are poached and then tortured to death?”

  “Actually, it’s even a bit more complicated. They have to be eaten in a certain way. Obviously, there are any number of recipes. But no matter how they’re cooked, the diner puts his napkin over his head like a little tent, picks up the steaming bird by the beak, puts the whole thing in his mouth, and lets it cool while the delicious fat trickles slowly down his throat. Then he eats it bit by bit, everything but the beak. The napkin is supposed to intensify the aroma of the bird, but it is often said that it’s really to hide the spectacle from God’s view.”

  “You’re making this up, you overstuffed old dipsomaniac! That’s the most ridiculous story I’ve ever heard. It sounds vile and gross.”

  “I most certainly am not making it up. Ortolan is held to be the epitome of French cuisine. A dish you absolutely must eat before you die. So much so that when Mitterrand finally knew he was only days away from the end, he had himself carted to a restaurant, trussed up in blankets at the table with a dozen friends, and consumed a Pantagruelian meal of oysters, foie gras, capons, and ortolans. The whole thing found its way into the press, pictures of benapkined heads and all, and so the public knew not only that he was about to expire but also exactly to what extent he thought the laws of France applied to him personally. In his case the napkin kept much more than the ingestion of a hapless bird from God’s sight.”

  “Jean-Louis Rolland—you know, Jean-Basile’s sommelier—hinted that the mysterious midnight delivery might have been ortolans for some sinister secret meal that Jean-Basile was planning.”

  Alexandre burst into laughter again. “He was pulling your leg. He’s a funny one, Rolland. I’ve never been able to figure him out. This whole ortolan thing really is very much ado about very little. The general public likes to think of it as some sort of highly secret black mass of the obscenely rich. But in fact in the Landes any number of restaurants serve ortolan more or less openly. They don’t actually put them on the menu, of course, and they’re certainly not cheap, but they’re easy enough to get if you ask. And they don’t really do that funny business with the napkins except at frou-frou dinners. Anyway, no one is going to bother sneaking ortolans into Diapason in the middle of the night.” He paused. “Also, when you think about it, since those boys with the 2:30 A.M. bag were staggering under the load, there would have been enough birds to feed an army if that’s what it was filled with. I hardly see Jean-Basile wholesaling endangered game on the side.”

  Capucine pouted. “So that damned man was just having his little joke at the expense of a foolish girl wannabe flic, is that it? What do you need to do to be taken seriously in this business?” As Alexandre attempted to hug her she slipped out from under his embrace and stalked off to the bedroom.

  Chapter 12

  When she arrived at the Quai the next morning, an angry red lozenge throbbed on Capucine’s screen: an urgent e-mail convoking her to a meeting with Tallon that had been scheduled for fifteen minutes earlier. Rushing into his office, she was dismayed to find Rivière already there. At first she thought she was the latecomer at some sort of early-morning male-bonding session. But no, Rivière was slumped dejectedly in his chair while Tallon leaned on the sill of his open window moodily meditating on the scene below. The room was damp with defeat and unfulfilled expectation.

  The last few days’ newspapers were heaped in an unruly pile on the corner of Tallon’s desk. They had not been kind to the Police Judiciaire. The press had lost interest in Delage for three days, but a lull in domestic and international news had incited a number of editors to inflate the case into a minor cause célèbre. The police were accused of indifference and incompetence, and an outrage had been fabricated from whole cloth describing a quasi-government employee dining at the public’s expense in a restaurant where a meal for four cost more than the monthly minimum wage. In actual fact Renault had been privatized for over a decade and Delage had paid out of his own pocket. Tallon must be under considerable pressure from his superiors to produce
results or, at the very least, some newsworthy bones to throw the press.

  As Capucine stood at the desk waiting to be invited to sit, three brigadiers in the courtyard below were in the process of extracting two Arab men from a police van. The detainees’ hands were cuffed behind their backs and they had difficulty getting out. One lost his balance and stopped to steady himself. A brigadier slapped the back of his head to get him moving, hard enough for the crack to be heard in the room. Tallon shook his head in disappointment. It was not clear if the disappointment was with the brigadiers in the courtyard or the situation in general. He spun his chair and focused on Capucine.

  “Lieutenant, if you remain in the Brigade Criminelle you will discover that these cases usually go one of two ways. Sometimes the right lead pops up immediately. Then everyone is happy. The press becomes like a litter of fawning puppy dogs licking our photogenic officers, like Lieutenant Rivière here, as they pose for pictures and gloat about their victories. Or, sometimes, nothing comes up and we have to do the work of real flics.”

  He paused. Capucine waited for the other shoe to fall. Eventually he resumed, “And that’s what we have to start to do now: cast our net very wide and draw it in very slowly and very carefully. Invariably, and I mean invariably, there will be one little lump of evidence in the sludge we drag back that will produce the murderer. But while we do our monotonous work the press will mock us and most of our police officers will get so bored they will be driven to do things like run off to the South of France to take computer courses.”

  Rivière bridled. “Sir, that’s unfair. The very morning I got back from that course I found out how the body had been introduced into the restaurant.”

  “I wasn’t talking about you. But since you bring it up, Lieutenant, all you did was conclude the obvious: in a street that has a higher number of vigies guarding buildings than most streets have pedestrians, one of those vigies would have noticed something. Brilliant police work.” Rivière sagged like a balloon the morning after a birthday party.