The Grave Gourmet

by Alexander Campion

  “Biffing is not the sort of word the Police Judiciaire use. That’s because the reality is far too inhuman to joke about.”

  “Angel, I know all about it, trust me. All journalists do,” he said, taking her in his arms. “Don’t quote me, but I suppose it has to be done.”

  Capucine pulled away and said brightly, “Come on, I brought croissants. Let’s have breakfast. I’ll tell you what happened.”

  Capucine edged Alexandre away from the Pasquini, deftly produced two frothy cups of café au lait, and consumed one of the croissants with appetite. She was licking the butter off her fingers and contemplating a second croissant when Alexandre became impatient.

  “So what did happen?”

  “Well, my little plan worked. We caught the guy. Not without a little running around, of course. We chased him from Billancourt to nearly the front door of the prefecture. It was a car chase right out of an American movie…Well, almost.”

  “In your Clio? He must be a very accommodating man.”

  “Momo was driving. The next part was far less pleasant. It took all night for us to crack the poor man. Or rather, for Tallon to crack him. With a directory on the head. His story was simple. He’s a Trag guy, all right. They’d been sniffing around like Labradors after a downed pheasant, certain that sooner or later some company would make a gas catalyst that really worked. Our boy was assigned to Renault. When the président died he thought he finally might have found a way in and called on Renault’s head of R & D with the DGSE scam that Guyon fell for. So his bet paid off and he obtained a fair amount of data.”

  “Was Tallon able to worm his client’s name out of him?”

  “He claimed they were just trolling the field and if they came up with something they’d know what to do with it. He couldn’t be shaken on that.”

  “That might even be true,” Alexandre said. “What did he know about the président’s death?”

  “Nothing, it seems. He was pretty convincing about that. We went over it again and again. He just read about it in the papers. Figured Renault would be in a tizzy and ripe for someone to buy a shaggy-dog story. It was a long shot with no downside risk. If it hadn’t been for that carelessness with the cell phone—which probably wasn’t even his fault—no one would have ever traced anything back to Trag and they would have all the information they’d hoped for.”

  “And you’re convinced he wasn’t connected with the murder.”

  “Totally. We know he was out of the country that Friday and even Tallon agrees that it’s highly unlikely Trag would engineer a Machiavellian plot to assassinate the president of Renault.”

  “So what happens now?”

  “You tell me. What do you think your precious Marie-Hélène’s going to do to our Trag agent?”

  “Oh, that’s easy. She’ll let him go. She’ll never get any mileage out of the impersonation of an agent business in court and the worst she could do with the car chase is revoke his license if he had a French one, which I’m sure he doesn’t. In fact, if she moved to take him to court for any reason at all the DGSE would probably pull the whole case out from under her before she had a crack at tagging the murderer and that’s the last thing she wants.”

  “We’re back to square one,” Capucine sighed. Her eyes filled with tears and she deflated as Alexandre took her in his arms.

  Chapter 22

  The next morning, after the luxury of a twelve-hour night, Capucine arrived cotton-headed at the Quai and was jarred awake by the winking ruby eye of an “urgent” intradepartmental e-mail on her screen. She was wanted immediately by Tallon.

  Capucine had not seen Tallon since his theatrical appearance in the interrogation room. Once again she was dismayed to see Rivière already sitting in front of Tallon’s desk, this time stretched out indolently in a tipped-back wooden chair, cigarette dangling from his lips, a posture he no doubt imagined made him look like James Dean. Did Rivière spend the entire day closeted with Tallon?

  In contrast Tallon sat jauntily at his desk, smirking the smug smirk adults reserve for children they perceive to have done something clever or naughty but which is entirely beyond their comprehension. Capucine was reminded of an emotionally charged afternoon in her childhood when a precocious seven-year-old cousin had arrived in the salon of her aunt’s château just as tea was about to be served to the entire family, happily announcing that she had just discovered something wonderful to do with a spoon and was ecstatic at the idea of showing it off to the assembled company. Tallon’s expression reminded her of her uncles’ barely repressed grins. She had had no idea if she would be praised or criticized, but one way or the other it was beyond irritating.

  “Sit down, sit down, Lieutenant,” Tallon said with his knowing grin. “Last week was refreshing. A good healthy emetic for the case. I enjoyed hearing about you running around shooting your gun off in all directions like a Western movie. And it also did me good to see that smug Amerloque get his just deserts, a great deal of good. Cleared the air. Didn’t get us anywhere, but it definitely cleared the air. That’s for sure.” His smile broadened. “Don’t get me wrong, Lieutenant. Actually, you did quite well. Very well indeed.”

  Rivière looked puzzled. He set his chair upright with a bang and looked anxiously back and forth at Tallon and Capucine like an excited spaniel hoping to get a treat.

  Capucine was irritated. This was a new and not entirely likeable Tallon. She had a limited capacity for being mocked. Her only satisfaction was Rivière’s obvious mystification.

  “Madame le Juge d’Agremont called me late last night. She released that Trag insect. She had had him carted over to her office for an interview, what she called a ‘private’ interview with only a shorthand stenographer present. She felt sorry for him. She found his condition, and I quote, ‘piteous.’ So she gave him a good dressing-down, threatened him with a writ barring him from the French territory if he ever gets so much as a parking ticket here, and had someone over there throw him into a taxi. Voilà. The last of Trag.” Despite herself, Capucine was impressed that Alexandre’s augury had been right on the money.

  “But after all that fun we still have the case to solve,” Tallon continued. “So we’re going to take a new approach. No more speeding around chasing people and shooting at everything in sight. We’re going to be delicate and subtle and insightful. And that brings me to Lieutenant Rivière here. Judging by your recent zeal, he’s done a beautiful job of tutoring you in homicide techniques. We’re both in his debt. However, as he has just been explaining to me, he’s been neglecting his current case. He has a suspect he thinks is ready to take the fall, but he hasn’t had the time to exhaust an embarrassment of riches of other leads.” He smiled cynically at Rivière. “I need you to pull out all the stops. I want to go to court with a bullet-proof dossier. I’m giving you two weeks to put a case together that would give even the stupidest prosecutor an easy conviction. So, no more”—Tallon paused slightly for emphasis—“flirting with the Delage case. Now, get out of here and get to work.” Rivière looked like a chastened schoolboy as he murmured, “Oui, Monsieur le Commissaire,” and shuffled out of the room. If she hadn’t felt the reproach was really aimed at her, Capucine might have almost felt sorry for him.

  “He’s a very solid man. Very solid,” Tallon said, once Rivière had left. “However, he has his own particular approach to things that certainly doesn’t include sensitivity to nuance.” Tallon gave a deep-throated bark that might have been a laugh. “Bref, you don’t need him anymore and he’d just get in your way. I want you to proceed delicately. Patiently. With your ears open to catch anything. If you feel you’re out of your depth, come to me directly. No need to consult Lieutenant Rivière unless it suits you. Is that clear?”

  Capucine nodded.

  “Très bien. We’re going to take a new tack, paying more attention to the psychological aspects of the case. That’s more up your alley, non?”

  “Oui, Monsieur le Commissaire.” Capucine had no idea where thi
s was going.

  “So let’s get down to it. I want you to start with this woman, Karine Bergeron.”

  “Delage’s old girlfriend? Rivière’s already seen her.”

  Tallon waved a file folder in the air, apparently Rivière’s report on the interview. “So he has. He asked straightforward questions and got straightforward answers. I want something more subtle.”

  “Do you really think Delage’s two-week affair over a decade ago could have anything to do with his murder?”

  “Lieutenant, you will find, if you are successful in permanently reorienting your career in the direction that you seem to want it to take, that crimes of passion are more subtle than these crimes of accounting you specialize in. They are possibly less intricate, but they are definitely more subtle. If a man takes your money, it’s obvious what he wants. But a man with a woman, well, who knows?”

  Capucine smarted at the rebuff while realizing that none had been intended.

  “Spend some time with this woman. Get on her wavelength. Understand what was happening in Delage’s life at that point. See if you can pick up any threads that might turn out to be long ones. Then come back and we’ll move on to the next item.”

  Thinking about it in her Clio, Capucine had been unsure if being freed of Rivière was good or bad. One thing was sure: if word got out that his work was being redone by a rookie, Rivière was going to resign his membership in her fan club.

  Chapter 23

  Since delicacy was the order of day, Capucine had suggested the interview with Karine Bergeron take place on Saturday afternoon at her Seventeenth Arrondissement apartment, hoping that five o’clock would be a relaxed moment between afternoon shopping and whatever plans she might have for the evening. Despite Parisian snobbery, which wrote off the Seventeenth as the poor man’s Sixteenth—“très Dix-septième” was the chic set’s ultimate damnation—Capucine thought it was one of the most pleasant neighborhoods in Paris, filled with spacious apartments overlooking broad, tree-lined avenues.

  The apartment turned out to be well lighted and spacious, with a view of the grassed-over rail bed of the abandoned little train that had puffed around Paris’s perimeter in the days prior to World War II. The flat was filled with sleek inexpensive Ikea furniture contrasted by the occasional heavily ornate Louis Philippe piece, testimony to Karine’s share of an inheritance from previous generations of prosperous bourgeois that had undoubtedly consisted more of manners and taste than hard assets.

  Karine was in her late forties, unselfconsciously rejoicing in her svelte figure, carefully dressed in a pencil skirt and a striking, flowered silk blouse. Genuinely curious, Capucine asked her where she had purchased it. Karine served them pale Oolong tea in exquisite pale blue Sevres china. They discovered they had a distant cousin in common. The afternoon wore on serenely. Police work seemed very far away.

  Much later Karine said, “You don’t seem like a police officer at all. Certainly very different from the man who came to see me before. He was straight out of a Luc Besson movie.”

  “I hope he wasn’t rude.”

  “No, no, not at all,” she said apologetically. “Just very brusque. Very in character. Also, I’m afraid I wasn’t very communicative. I was still in a state of shock over dear Jean-Louis’s death. The whole subject is still very painful.”

  “Yes,” said Capucine, “it must have been totally unexpected.” She put two fingers on the back of Karine’s wrist. “I wonder if we could talk about your entente with President Delage?”

  “That’s a much more elegant way of putting it than that lieutenant did. He was offensively ribald,” Karine said.

  “What is there to say? We were very much in love. It was blissful. But he decided he just couldn’t leave Nadine, his wife, and didn’t want to cheat on her behind her back. So we ended the affair. Of course, we never stopped being wonderfully close friends.”

  “What do you mean? You continued the relationship?”

  “Certainly not. That would have been impossible. I became a friend of the family. You know, regularly at their house for dinner parties. That sort of thing. I became quite fond of poor Nadine as well. Of course, the dear never had any idea that anything had happened between Jean-Louis and me.”

  Capucine sipped her tea. It was almost colorless, its flavor ethereal and slightly acid.

  “The situation must have been a torment for you,” Capucine said.

  “Yes and no. You see, I had another gentleman friend. Martin Fleuret.”

  “Do you mean the man who was with Delage for his last dinner?” Capucine wanted to bite her tongue at the tactlessness of the phrase.

  “Yes, he was one of Jean-Louis’s closest friends, as well as his personal lawyer.”

  “Wasn’t the situation rather uncomfortable?” Capucine asked.

  “No, not really. It was all so sudden. You see, in those days I worked at Renault as a secretary. One day Jean-Louis’s assistant fell sick and I was asked to fill in for her. It was love at first sight. But as I told you, he broke it off after two weeks. I only told Martin about it much later.”

  “And you continued your relationship with Monsieur Fleuret?”

  “Yes. Somehow, my love for Jean-Louis seemed to have nothing to do with what I felt—feel—for Martin. They were such different sorts of relationships. Nothing had changed between us.”

  “I doubt Monsieur Fleuret saw it that way.”

  “Men are so linear about these things, as I’m sure you know. Anyway, Martin swallowed his pride about the whole episode. He wanted us to get married. He’s been after me to get married ever since.”

  “Oh, I know how little men can understand. I really do. So you’ve refused to marry Monsieur Fleuret?”

  “Well, for a long while I did. Somehow it didn’t seem fair to Jean-Louis. I suppose I always hoped he still loved me. I thought things might change when Nadine passed away, but they didn’t. I never knew what to do.”

  “And now?” Capucine asked gently.

  “Well, I think I might just marry Martin after all. Neither of us is getting any younger, and it will make him so happy. I just might.”

  Chapter 24

  Capucine took a strong dislike to Martin Fleuret even before she met him. She found his office rankling. It was located in an overstuffed and pretentious neighborhood near the Parc Monceau, jammed with overstuffed and pretentious Louis Philippe velvet furniture artfully chosen to give an impression of stolidity and propriety.

  Fleuret received her somewhat breathlessly, attempting to convey the impression that he had stepped out of a desperately important meeting to receive her and was counting the seconds until he could get back to it.

  Despite Capucine’s near certainty that she might have met Fleuret at a dinner party or two, his condescension was as complete as if she were a menial subordinate he was forced to talk to at an office Christmas party.

  “You know, of course, that I have already seen your Lieutenant Rivière,” Fleuret began. “It was necessary to disabuse him of a ridiculous notion that I had had an altercation with Président Delage over dinner. I can’t imagine where he acquired such an idea. I hope you don’t intend to persist in that vein.”

  “Maître, I think we know all we need to know about your dinner with Président Delage. For the time being, at least. No, I’m here today to talk about Karine Bergeron.”

  Fleuret recoiled as if he had been slapped. “Mademoiselle Bergeron has nothing to do with the matter. Nothing whatsoever.” His lips stretched into a tight thin colorless line and his eyes darkened around a pinpoint of pupil.

  “Maître Fleuret,” Capucine said soothingly, “I’m sure you can understand that in a case of this sort the investigation is unusually thorough. It often involves aspects that are apparently irrelevant.”

  “I know only one thing, that a competent police force would have had it solved long ago. You are just meddling with innocent people because you don’t have a clue how to proceed.” He rose, walked in a tight, ner
vous circle, and sat down again. “All right. I suppose I can’t stop you. What do you want to know?”

  “I understand that you have had a romantic attachment to Karine Bergeron for some time.”

  “What of it? Neither of us is married. We’re both adults. What business is it of yours?”

  “I also understand that you had been pressing her to get married and she had refused due to her attachment to the late Président Delage.”

  “Ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous. It’s true that we have discussed marriage on and off over the years. The timing has never been appropriate. We both, let me repeat that, we both have agreed the timing was not appropriate.”

  “And do you feel it is more ‘appropriate’ now that Président Delage is no longer with us?”

  “Madame, that question is blatantly offensive. It is the sort of comment that will oblige me to make a complaint to your superiors.”

  “Very well, then, let me try another approach. What did you do after your dinner with Président Delage?”

  “I went home, Lieutenant. I went home like a man who had a great deal of work to do the next morning, even if it was a Saturday.”

  “I see. Since you’ve been so helpful, I’ll be frank with you. We now believe that the death of the président was a murder, not an accidental poisoning. And that the murder was committed during the night following your dinner. But we couldn’t seem to come up with anyone who has a motive. That is, we couldn’t until today. It would seem that things are going to get a lot better for you with Président Delage out of the way.”

  “Madame, your offensiveness really has no limits. I really am going to make a complaint. Jean-Louis Delage was one of my closest friends. His death was a great personal loss to me. However, as it happens, I have what you in your sordid little milieu call an alibi. After the dinner I went to the apartment of Mademoiselle Bergeron and I remained there until the following morning. So my whereabouts are fully accounted for.”