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Authors: Alexander Campion

BOOK: Crime Fraiche
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“We French are apparently incapable of such forthrightness. We masquerade our fast food as something edible. The pictures on the menu look like the sort of thing you might actually want to put in your mouth. But when it arrives,
mon Dieu!
Take this ghastly Charolais Allô chain, where,” Alexandre said, winking broadly at his audience, “save for the infinite indulgence of my peerless wife, I would be suffering perdition at this very moment. You all know what I’m talking about. You see one of them every fifty feet up and down the autoroute. Cheered by the solace of your bladder after your stop, you are deluded into thinking you might be in the presence of something that approximates a traditional steak house, but when their entrecôte arrives, it turns out to be a dog’s rawhide bone that’s been flavored with Viandox beef extract.”
The wag raised his glass. “Here’s to the eternal battle between the voluptuary and the vulgarian. May gastronomy prevail over the euro!”
Just as the debate was about to rage, the über-chef in question smilingly approached the table, brandishing a bottle of a liqueur of a rarity the targeted patrons of his bistro could only dream of.
“You’re all talking about me, I hope,” he said with a wry smile.
Capucine knew full well that a lively session of the group’s pastime of choice—fencing with polemics—was about to begin and would last until they all got hungry again and trooped off to dinner at a competitor’s restaurant. The point of no return was at hand. Capucine kicked Alexandre under the table with more force than was really required—hard enough to alarm him in any case. She jerked her head toward the door and started to walk out. He followed meekly, limping slightly. Behind her she could hear the level of hilarity rising like an incoming tide.
CHAPTER 3
E
ven though Maulévrier was the darling of cocktail-table architecture books—apparently it was a perfect bijou example of châteaux of the late feudal period—Capucine always found it embarrassingly scruffy, in the same way twelve-year-olds invariably find their parents mortifying.
She skidded her little Clio to a stop at the end of the long driveway bound by ancient, tall-trunked poplars to allow Alexandre a view of the structure, a disparate jumble of styles running from a brick tower that over half a millennium had mellowed to the precise shade of a lightly roasted partridge—all that remained of the fifteenth-century feudal keep—to a bright salmon and white façade dripping with Victorian prettification. The building looked out on the remains of the ward, now a neglected graveled yard bordered by a stone parapet that kept out the waters of the algae-filled canal that had once served as the moat. This architectural anomaly was the work of an earlier generation who had decided that the risk of the Saracen invasion was finally sufficiently remote to allow tearing down the fortified walls, thus enabling the inhabitants to eat lunch without the aid of candles. Behind sprawled the extensive commons, historically used to house whole herds of livestock but now useless labyrinthine structures with no purpose other than to satisfy their voracious appetites for new roofing and to provide the family children a vast theater for their illicit adventures. As testimony to their financial gluttony, a long blue tarpaulin stretched out over one of the numerous roofs.
“This is exactly the sort of place no man should be without, always assuming, of course, that he doesn’t have to pay the bills,” Alexandre said.
“My father’s sentiments exactly.”
Capucine abandoned the car in front of the main entrance, a capital offense in her uncle’s canon, rushed up the steps, and pushed open the carved oak portal. “Hurry up. We’re fifteen minutes late already.”
“Tush. You’d be lost without a dramatic entrance,” Alexandre said, his comment drowned in the turbulence of Capucine’s rush.
She dragged him across a large marble hall replete with the inevitable stern-faced ancestors receding into gilt-framed dun mists and burst into a cheerful library entirely appropriate for the set of an English cozy mystery film.
“Capucine,
enfin
—at last!” said a venerable, rosy-cheeked gentleman in particularly well-patinated tweeds. An awkward pause lasted two slow beats, until he took her in his arms and said, “
Bienvenue, ma chérie
. Welcome home.”
“Alexandre!” Oncle Aymerie said, grasping Alexandre’s hand in a warm two-handed clasp. “The last time I saw you was at your wedding.”
“And hasn’t he grown so?” said an aquiline young man—superbly dressed in a blue blazer with a patterned pink Hermès silk square drooping with studied negligence from its breast pocket—while patting Alexandre on the tummy. He had a catlike look, superciliously facetious yet somehow all-knowing.
Oncle Aymerie was horrified. “
Fils,
you promised to be on your best behavior.”
“Mon oncle,
he’s just teasing. They’ve become close friends,” Capucine said. “Ever since Jacques helped me out on a case a year ago, he’s been an inseparable member of our little household.”
Oncle Aymerie was clearly upset at the mention of cases, and in the silence Capucine thought she could hear Alexandre’s teeth grinding. A perfect left and right in the tact department, Capucine sighed to herself. A bird down with each barrel. She simply could not understand why Alexandre was so jealous of Jacques, the most favorite of her cousins. They had grown up as brother and sister, and now that he was some sort of mover and shaker in the DGSE—France’s secret service—they even shared a professional bond of sorts. So he liked to grope her a little; he always had; that was just his style; it didn’t mean anything; certainly nothing anyone could resent.
In a heroically chivalrous attempt to restore the evening to an even keel, Oncle Aymerie led Capucine and Alexandre around the room, introducing the other dinner guests.
“We’re just picnicking tonight. Now that your
Tante
Aymone is gone, I have no appetite for these endless elaborate dinners,” he whispered conspiratorially to Capucine. “I do hope dear Alexandre won’t be too disappointed.” He patted the back of Capucine’s hand, as if it were she who was doddering.
“Now, this is my great friend Loïc Vienneau,” he said to Alexandre. “His family has lived in the village since
le roi
Guillaume had the curious idea of leaving Normandy to conquer England. And, of course, he is the
propriétaire
of the
élevage
that produces the best beef in France.”
With cocktail party bonhomie Alexandre shook Vienneau’s hand and said, “I believe we met once a few years back at the Salon Agricole in Paris. You had demonstrated your expertise with an extremely convincing presentation of the superiority of Charolais beef over Limousin.”
Vienneau smiled modestly. “You’re too kind. I can’t tell you how nervous I was that day. I absolutely hate speaking in public.”
Oncle Aymerie forged on valiantly. “And this is Monsieur Henri Bellanger, a Parisian investment banker, who is spending a week with the Vienneaus for the shooting and who came along with them to dinner.” Capucine sensed that Oncle Aymerie was less than thrilled at the idea of Bellanger’s presence at his dinner table. While Jacques came across as being endearingly foppish, Bellanger was irritatingly overdressed. His clothes were too perfect for the occasion, too new, too costly. On top of it all, he exuded a miasma of new-moneyed self-assurance.
“Are you as keen on
la chasse
as everyone else in the village ?” Capucine asked. At the mention of the word
chasse
the temperature of the room seemed to drop a few degrees.
“I don’t shoot as much as I’d like to, just enough to keep my marksmanship up to my standard,” he replied with a slick smile. Capucine could understand her uncle’s reaction. He had a quality that strongly invited a bitch slap.
“And this,” continued Oncle Aymerie hastily, “is Marie-Christine Vienneau.” Alexandre was visibly moved by the charms of a woman who even in her forties was still a classic French beauty with a warm, broad smile, dense, dark blond hair framing her pale face, and cobalt blue eyes of infinite depth. He bowed deeply and lifted her hand for a
baisemain,
a hand kiss of a subtlety that now existed only in cape and sword movies and deep in the French countryside. Her husband scowled.
At that instant, Gauvin, Oncle Aymerie’s aged
majordome,
shuffled into the room in a high-collared white jacket so severely starched, his wattles drooped over the rigid neckband, and droned in a stentorian voice, “
Madame la Comtesse est servie
.”
Capucine started, wild-eyed. For half an instant she thought her aunt might have been somehow miraculously resurrected or that inexplicably she might have missed Oncle Aymerie’s remarriage. Alexandre took her by the elbow and whispered in her ear, “It’s you, you ninny. You may think of yourself as only hard-nosed Commissaire Le Tellier, but you’re also aristocratic Comtesse Capucine de Huguelet, wife of the charming and urbane Comte Alexandre Edouard d’Arbaumont de Huguelet, aka me. This title stuff only gets a snicker in Paris, but it’s obviously quite dear to your uncle’s man.” Capucine repressed the knowledge of her title, which in any case she viewed as only a technicality. Her nightmare was to be nicknamed
Madame la Comtesse
by her officers. That one she would never live down.
The guests rose and Jacques sidled up to Capucine. “May I have the pleasure of escorting Madame la Comtesse to the table?” he asked. As the procession started toward the dining room, his fingers nervously scuttled up and down her back. At first she thought he was feeling around for her weapon, and then, too late, she remembered their childhood. In a very well-practiced gesture he pinched open the clasp of her brassiere, letting her heavy breasts fall free. She kicked herself mentally. Jacques had been doing this ever since she had been given her first training bra. She should know he was never going to grow up.
“It’s the animal lover in me,” he whispered in her ear. “I hate to see such lovely bouncy bunnies caged up.” Jacques’s fatuous smirk was punctuated by his other trademark, a high-pitched, extremely loud, braying laugh, which brought all conversation in the room to a halt. This time it wasn’t her imagination; she really could hear teeth grinding, but she wasn’t sure if it was Alexandre, who followed behind with Marie-Christine on his arm, or Vienneau, who had taken up the rearguard.
The dinner began uneventfully. Gauvin staggered in and out of the sad old room with its damp-stained, ancient, hand-painted wallpaper, bearing and removing chipped Limoges bowls sloshing with indifferent root vegetable soup and crystal decanters of rare Bordeaux so old it was brick colored and watery tasting.
Finally Gauvin teetered in with an enormous chased silver platter.
“I’m a little embarrassed,” said Oncle Aymerie with a laugh. “We’re having pheasant. I know those of us from the country already can’t stand the sight of them, even though we’re only five weeks into the season, but I think we owe it to our Parisians, who are not as fortunate as we are and expect pheasant when they come to us.” There was a titter of polite laughter, followed by an awkward silence.
Oncle Aymerie carried on valiantly. “Odile has made her famous
faisan à la Normande.
She braises it in cider and adds apples at the end. The secret, of course, is the sauce she makes with the juice of the pheasant, a dash of crème fraîche, and a few good tots of Calvados.”
“The real secret,” Jacques said in a stage whisper that carried the length of the table, “is the Petit Suisse suppository she applies to the poor bird just before plunking it in the oven.”
Oncle Aymerie fired an angry look at his son, but it passed unnoticed.
“When you get right down to it,” Jacques continued, “le Petit Suisse is Normandy’s most glorious cheese, even if it’s made for children and you can only buy it in supermarkets.”
Oncle Aymerie glared as if firing a cannonade.
Alexandre, who had been very well trained by his parents, jumped into the breach. “Pheasant is a great luxury for Parisians,” he said, sincerely admiring the platter of plump birds laid out on a bed of rich sauce. “Shooting is one of the great benefits of country living. What a blessing to have one’s bag filled with every known species,” he said with a clubman’s comfortable chuckle.
Stunned that his anodyne comment was greeted with glacial silence, he queried Capucine with a brow-wrinkled glance, but she answered back in tacit husband-wife telegraphy that she had no clue either.
“I’m guessing that it’s a standard technique for food critics to establish a baseline by putting their foot in their mouths before eating,” Jacques said with his piercing falsetto laugh. “It must be one of these tricks of the métier, you know, like film directors looking at things through that odd little rectangle they make with their fingers,” he said, illustrating the gesture.
Vienneau attempted to come to the rescue. “There was a tragic accident last weekend and—” He stopped, completely at a loss for words.
“Yes,” Oncle Aymerie said. “On the first drive. Chap called Philippe Gerlier. Poor man died. Actually, he worked for Vienneau. Important job, apparently. These things happen, of course, but it was still a catastrophe.” He made a brusque gesture at Gauvin to fill his wineglass. A sense of embarrassment settled over the table like a damp fog. Oncle Aymerie downed the wine in a single go. Alexandre winced. With some difficulty he had just identified it as a 1966 Clos des Jacobins.
“Good Lord,” he said. It was not clear to Capucine if the comment was directed at the desecration of a noble wine or the tragic death.
“It was a partridge drive,” Oncle Aymerie said. “The guns were stationed at the top of a hill in a semicircle and the birds started up the incline a bit low but they quickly gained altitude. Somehow—it’s really not clear to me exactly what happened—this man Gerlier was hit in the chest. I suppose someone must have fired very carelessly from one of the ends of the line. He died instantly.”
Gauvin, at the ready, anticipated Oncle Aymerie’s authoritarian finger wave and filled his glass unprompted. It was drained instantly.
“Of course, one can only blame oneself,” Oncle Aymerie said.
“Capucine,” Marie-Christine asked as if she were addressing an expert, “aren’t hunting accidents very common ?”
Capucine beamed inwardly at having her vocation so openly acknowledged, nodded sagely, and tactfully refrained from adding that the police believed a good number of hunting accidents were actually intentional. After all, it took some doing to kill someone with a shotgun without forethought.
“You see, Monsieur le Comte! Capucine has just confirmed that these accidents happen all the time. There’s no need to blame yourself,” Marie-Christine said.
To Alexandre’s visible horror, Oncle Aymerie downed yet another glass of wine, looking particularly morose. Capucine wondered if his gloom was due to the accident or the fact that her status as a police officer was now taken as a given.
“Gerlier was my general manager and a great friend,” Vienneau said. “It’s a huge loss, not only personal but also professional. He was brilliant at looking after the day-to-day management of the élevage.”

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