Crime Fraiche (10 page)
Authors: Alexander Campion
As the dinghy approached the deer, the surrounding ice fractured and the animal began to sink. The men just managed to secure a loop of rope around its antlers, hauled the deer fast against the stern of the dinghy, and began to row back. The emotions on the bridge were ambivalent, the relief of success tainted by the pathos of the scene.
On the town side of the lake the crowd had grown considerably and seemed to have split around two distinct focal points. Even though they were a good five hundred yards away, it was clear that while most of the spectators seemed riveted on the boat towing the dead deer, a smaller group seemed interested in something on the ground. Capucine saw two gendarmes approach at a run.
She nudged Jacques, who understood immediately. The two cousins jumped on their bicycles and pedaled off at speed. Alexandre, who had missed the exchange, hesitated and then followed at his sedate pace, his bicycle squeaking loudly.
Capucine’s worst fears were confirmed. The crowd was huddled around the supine body of a man. Three gendarmes had given up the effort to keep them at a distance. This time they recognized Capucine as she pushed through, and they straightened up, saluting smartly.
A man was lying on the gravel at the edge of the lake, his sweater soaked in blood, an all-too-familiar black hole gaping in the middle of his chest.
CHAPTER 14
A
dank gloom weighed heavily over the dinner table that night. The dining room seemed damper; the Réveillon wallpaper seemed to peel more severely; the root vegetable soup seemed more bland. Even Jacques was despondent.
dank gloom weighed heavily over the dinner table that night. The dining room seemed damper; the Réveillon wallpaper seemed to peel more severely; the root vegetable soup seemed more bland. Even Jacques was despondent.
It turned out that the man who had been shot had worked at the élevage. Oncle Aymerie had learned from Vienneau that he was a native of the village who had been a hand at the élevage for close to fifteen years. Even though the latest death supported Oncle Aymerie’s suspicions, he seemed more depressed than vindicated. Capucine suspected he felt he was letting “his” village down since he was unable to stay the malignant tide.
The minute they rose from the table, Oncle Aymerie shuffled off to his room and Alexandre, Capucine, and Jacques made for the library to seek what solace the château’s
cave
could provide.
cave
could provide.
Capucine moodily prodded the logs in the fireplace back into flame. “Three deaths in a month does seem a bit much, even at what Alexandre persists in calling the marchland of French civilization.”
Jacques had his head deep in a cabinet under the bookshelves, noisily shuffling the stock of liqueurs. “Urrrmfllll!” he said, his voice muffled by the enclosure and drowned out by the loud tintinnabulation of the clinking bottles.
“Got it! This will cheer us up. Alexandre, it’s going to be your saint’s day.” Jacques proudly held up a bleach bottle with a faded antique label.
“What I was saying, my shapely little cousin, is that I wouldn’t be too hasty assuming these are murders. Don’t forget that our beloved yokelry has been notoriously cavalier with firearms since our suckling days. Where else on earth but Saint-Nicolas would you see someone shooting across a frozen lake in the direction of a large crowd with absolutely no one thinking that might be a dangerous thing to do?”
“What’s in that bottle? I’m hoping it’s not really bleach,” Alexandre asked, loyal as ever to his guiding sense of priorities.
“This,
très cher cousin,
is one of the château’s great treasures. Just before the war there was a gardener here who was very fond of making
alcool de poire
—pear liqueur. He would take his pear juice to the copper alembic owned by the canton and distill pure nectar.
très cher cousin,
is one of the château’s great treasures. Just before the war there was a gardener here who was very fond of making
alcool de poire
—pear liqueur. He would take his pear juice to the copper alembic owned by the canton and distill pure nectar.
“This good man was clever enough to guess what those
Boche
Nazis would get up to when they reached here, so he put up all his stock of poire in bleach bottles and hid them in the commons. Decades later Capucine and I—when we were taking a short break from our childish pursuits,” he said, leering and elbowing Alexandre in the ribs theatrically—“found the stash.”
Boche
Nazis would get up to when they reached here, so he put up all his stock of poire in bleach bottles and hid them in the commons. Decades later Capucine and I—when we were taking a short break from our childish pursuits,” he said, leering and elbowing Alexandre in the ribs theatrically—“found the stash.”
“You’re right, of course,” Capucine said. “But it’s just become too much. I’m going to need to investigate.”
“I thought you were already,” Alexandre said. “Spirits are not supposed to age, but this stuff certainly has. There’s not even a hint of pear, but there is a definite note of bleach. I wonder how scrupulous your gardener was in cleaning out his bottles.”
“Sweetheart, there’s a whole world of difference between a little poking around and a proper investigation. For starters, I’m going to pay a formal visit to the good capitaine de gendarmerie and find out what actual work has been done on these cases.”
“You might have a hard time with that one,” Alexandre said. It was no longer clear if the subject was
alcool de poire
or gendarmes.
alcool de poire
or gendarmes.
Capucine plopped down on her husband’s lap and sipped the water-clear, slightly toxic liquid from a delicately stemmed crystal liqueur glass with a chipped base. It might taste of bleach, but it was certainly effective. “I thought I saw you doing an inordinate amount of gossiping at the rendezvous. What did you find out? Come on, out with it,” she said, rubbing the tumescence of her husband’s stomach.
“Le Capitaine de Gendarmerie Départementale Augustin Dallemagne would appear to be a very frustrated man. It seems his ambition was to become an army officer, but he was neither smart enough nor from a good enough family to get into Saint-Cyr. He was also frustrated in his other great ambition, to marry well—an aristocrat or a
grande bourgeoise
at the very least. He settled for the gendarmerie and for a woman who is attractive enough and who has a good bit of money since her father owns a large Mercedes distributorship in Lyon.”
grande bourgeoise
at the very least. He settled for the gendarmerie and for a woman who is attractive enough and who has a good bit of money since her father owns a large Mercedes distributorship in Lyon.”
“My dear, the things you can learn in so little time!”
“It’s my training as a journalist. And there’s a good deal more,” Alexandre said with studied modesty. “The good capitaine tried very hard to become introduced into the society of Saint-Nicolas when he arrived two years ago. But, naturally, the harder he tried, the more he was rejected. In the end he gave up and is just counting the days until his next posting, which will be in eight and a half months.”
“My heart bleeds,” Jacques said, pouring everyone more
alcool de poire
.
alcool de poire
.
“The irony is that the village adores Madame Dallemagne, who bakes delicious pastry and is a paragon among mothers. She’s become a welcome addition to all the village teas and bridge afternoons.”
“That must drive her husband wild,” Capucine said.
“It does. And here’s the best part. It seems that the capitaine is particularly jealous of you, not only because of your social position in the village and—I blush to even mention it—your title, but also because of the brilliant success of your career in the Police Judiciaire. I hardly think he’s going to welcome you with open arms as a colleague when you start up your little investigation.”
“Have you been assigned an active role in the investigation? I received no communication to that effect,” Capitaine Dallemagne said crisply over the telephone.
“Good heavens, no, Capitaine. It’s nothing more than occupational curiosity. Since I’ve been down here, three people have been shot. All three worked for the business of one of my uncle’s close friends. Any flic’s ears would prick up, don’t you think?”
“It seems an odd way to spend one’s holiday, madame, but you’re welcome to stop by the gendarmerie if it pleases you. Come at eleven tomorrow. We’ll have a cup of coffee, and I’ll tell you the very little there is to be told.”
Capucine thought that he didn’t seem to be anywhere near as bad as the village made him out to be. But that was before things started to go downhill.
The coffee turned out to be more drinkable than what the Police Judiciaire usually offered, and the gendarmerie, as clean and efficient as an army facility, was poles apart from the seediness of any Paris PJ installation.
“So what precisely is it you want to know, Commissaire ?” the capitaine asked as prissily as a cormorant, his lips tightly pursed and his neck muscles stretched.
“I just wanted to learn what the official view was on these deaths. Purely informally, of course.”
“By these deaths, Commissaire, I assume you mean the one at the demonstration in the town square and the one at the hunt yesterday. The view of the gendarmerie is that they were both the result of accidental discharges of firearms, nothing more.”
“And was that confirmed by the autopsies?”
“Madame, the gendarmerie only performs autopsies in the event of a criminal death. Obviously, for accidental deaths we do not. It intensifies the grief of the family, serves no useful purpose, and increases the burden on the taxpayer.”
“So no autopsies were performed?” Capucine was astonished.
“Madame, we are not in Paris here. The gendarmerie surgeon examined the body of the victim who died at the demonstration and extracted a Brenneke solid from the wound. As I’m sure I don’t have to tell you, these Brenneke solids are used commonly by paysans when they hunt big game. The fact that he was killed by one is an obvious indication that the shot was fired by one of the villagers during the commotion. This is exactly the sort of tragedy that will continue to occur until more stringent arms controls are put into effect.”
“I see. And what about the death at the lake?”
“The body is still downstairs. The gendarmerie medical officer will examine it when he arrives at some point this week. But I can tell you, I have had a great deal of experience with gunshot wounds and this one is fully consistent with a thirty-thirty fired from the piqueux’s Winchester.”
“But the trajectory is all wrong. Since the piqueux had been aiming at the deer, the elevation would not have been sufficient for the bullet to have reached the other side of the lake.”
“Ah, you see, that’s exactly why it’s so obviously an accident. The piqueux missed the deer. The bullet ricocheted off the ice and into the crowd. It seems impossible for it to have been otherwise.”
“I see,” said Capucine. “And what about the man who died three weeks ago at Maulévrier? Was an autopsy done on that one?”
The capitaine looked sincerely puzzled and shuffled through the papers in the right-hand drawer of his desk. He finally extracted a thin file and said, “Of course, the shooting accident. I’d forgotten about it. That sort of thing happens all the time. We certainly don’t have the time to investigate those. Good Lord, if we did, I’d have to ask for another platoon of gendarmes.”
“So what happened to the body?”
“I have no idea. I’m sure it was buried.”
“Capitaine, you have a very different way of treating these incidents than we do in Paris.”
“Of course we do, madame. What would be highly suspicious on the streets of Paris is nothing more than commonplace on the dirt roads of the country.”
CHAPTER 15
A
t eight o’clock the next morning, while Capucine was at breakfast in the petit salon, Gauvin announced she had a phone call. As he accompanied her to the cloakroom, he whispered conspiratorially, “It’s Capitaine Dallemagne, and he sounds very official.”
t eight o’clock the next morning, while Capucine was at breakfast in the petit salon, Gauvin announced she had a phone call. As he accompanied her to the cloakroom, he whispered conspiratorially, “It’s Capitaine Dallemagne, and he sounds very official.”
“Madame,” said Dallemagne, “if you would care to stop by the gendarmerie today, I have some supplemental information that will resolve our discussion of yesterday and put your mind at rest. I would be able to receive you at ten this morning.” Gauvin was right. Dallemagne did seem to have risen to new heights of self-importance.
At the gendarmerie she was shown into Dallemagne’s office and invited to sit across the desk from him. It was as if she were being interviewed formally in a case.
“Voilà, madame, the gendarmerie surgeon came by on his rounds yesterday and examined the body of, ahh”—he glanced down at a file on his desk—“Bellec, Lucien. The death was from a gunshot wound in the chest. He extracted the bullet and measured it. Seven-point-eight-four-nine millimeters. Exactly the diameter of the bullet from the thirty-thirty Winchester the piqueux was shooting. So you see it is irrefutable that it was an accident.”
“May I see the bullet?”
“See the bullet? Whatever for?” Dallemagne recoiled as if she had proposed they take their clothes off and perform an indecent act on the desk. “I’m sure the surgeon took it with him and filed it somewhere. No need for the bullet. It’s all right here in his report,” he said, picking up a sheet of paper and flicking it dismissively with the backs of his fingers. He read, “ ‘Bullet extracted. Caliber noted. Seven-point-eight-four-nine millimeters. Resulting in wound possibly perforating aorta, resulting in death.’ Voilà. Cut and dried. What else is there to say?” Dallemagne was very pleased with himself.
“ ‘Possibly perforating?’ And you’re still not tempted to perform an autopsy?”
“Of course not. You see crime everywhere. It’s a deformation of the Police Judiciaire. We are in the country here, madame, not Paris. These people are simple paysans, not master criminals. As I explained yesterday, we have shooting accidents all the time. If we were to autopsy each and every one of them, we would need a whole new budget. And there would be an outcry from the families. They certainly don’t want their loved ones mutilated.” He laughed dryly. “No, my report is written. Bellec, Lucien, died accidentally as a result of a stray bullet fired at a deer on the lake. Lamentable, but hardly a crime.”
“Does the surgeon describe the bullet at all? Does he make any mention of the slug being flattened from ricocheting off the ice?” Capucine asked.
Making a show of humoring her, Dallemagne studied the one-page report with exaggerated care. “No, madame, there is a description of the man’s identifying marks and that is all.” He leaned across the desk and said as sternly as if he were a high school teacher scolding a student for having failed to bring her homework, “Madame, it is highly irresponsible to attempt to create a crime where none exists.”
Capucine left the commissariat in a rage. It had been pointless to explain the realities of the situation to Dallemagne. At least twenty popular cartridges fired a bullet that was 7.849 millimeters in diameter, not the least of which were a current NATO round and the very common .30-06 big-game cartridge. In the real world of crime detection one called for a thorough forensics examination and ordered a full autopsy. One didn’t beg for crumbs from a pompous gendarme in an overstarched uniform who was counting the days until he could retire on his pension. She drove home twenty-five miles an hour over the speed limit, hoping a roadside gendarme would pull her over and she could give him a piece of her mind.
Back at the château, Gauvin heard her arrive and opened the door gravely. “Madame La Comtesse has had another telephone call. This time from the Police Judiciaire,” he said as if they shared a deep secret. Capucine bridled. Alexandre was right. This country living was becoming too much. Gauvin incessantly calling her “Madame La Comtesse” was too much. His vicarious thrill with all these calls from the police was too much. Oncle Aymerie’s conspiracy suspicions and his resultant guilt were too much. Getting interested in a case that no one under the age of seventy wanted her to solve was too much.
She picked up the telephone. “Commissaire,” Isabelle said, a little more high-strung than usual, if that was possible, “I may have fucked up.”
Capucine sat down on a little stool Gauvin had placed next to the telephone table in the cloakroom. What was going to be next? A little vase of flowers? A picture of Alexandre in a silver frame? She forced her larynx to produce a gentle tone. “Tell me about it, Isabelle.”
“Well, two reporter types showed up at the commissariat this morning and asked for the officer in charge of the Belle au Marché case. The brigadier at the reception desk put them in the waiting area before calling me, so it was impossible to refuse to see them. Actually, it was a reporter and a photographer. The reporter was one of these guys who thinks he’s totally sexy in a way that just pissed me off. So he asks all these questions about the Belle and wants to know if we agree that all three incidents had been done by the same person. He gets me so cheesed off that I blurt out that there were four incidents, not three. Then I really lose my temper and this photographer guy is snapping pictures the whole time and the flashes are getting me even more pissed off. So there I am, about to have them thrown out, and David steps up and does his little number. You know, he gets all palsy and invites these guys into an interrogation room for coffee and acts like he’s having a fucking cocktail party. He says, yes, there might be a fourth case, but that we were looking into it and nothing was sure, but we’d be sure to keep them in the loop, and could he have their cards so he could call them when something happened? Anyhow, they wind up leaving, and I don’t think they’re going to write anything, but I sure got the impression they want to turn our Belle into some kind of folk heroine.”
“So let them. No problem there,” Capucine said.
“Yeah, but the other thing is that it would have been a disaster without David. You know how I get when I lose my temper.”
“Isabelle, it sounds to me like you showed good leadership. You left the stage to David when his skills were needed. Knowing how and when to delegate is the hardest part of responsibility.”
“Maybe,” Isabelle said in a sulk. “Anyway, I really want to get going on this case. What about if I get those two faggoty dancer guys down here to look at mug books? What would be even better would be rounding up some suspects and having a lineup. What do you think, Commissaire ?”
“Isabelle, if you’re going to advance in the force, you’re going to have to learn patience. Mug shots and lineups are going to get you nowhere except irritating a lot of people. Sit and wait and let it happen. I’ll be up there before the end of the week.”
Capucine rang off, none too delicately. In the ensuing quiet, the closeness of the cloakroom weighing on her like the claustrophobic sanctity of a church confessional, she realized that she had done more harm in the last few seconds of the call than whatever good she had achieved in the rest. Why? Because Isabelle had expressed exactly the same frustration Capucine was feeling? Or did she genuinely feel she needed to smooth out Isabelle’s rough spots to make her viable for the promotion? The only thing she was sure of was that her duty lay in Paris, not in the damned cloakroom.
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