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Authors: Alexander Campion

BOOK: Crime Fraiche
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CHAPTER 11
“I
t’s very unwise not to bring me mushrooms before taking them home. Very. Everyone in the village should know that,” Homais said as he methodically probed the basket with a surgical forceps. “You say you found these in the kitchen. That poor Odile has lost all her good sense.” He dumped the mushrooms on his worktable and began examining them one by one.
Capucine felt a twinge of embarrassment at the primitiveness of her investigative technique, but this was
les provinces
after all. “Yes,” she said, “Odile was going to do something with them for dinner, but I thought it would be prudent to ask someone of your expertise to look them over first.”
“
Someone
of my expertise? Please. There’s no one with anything close to my knowledge of mycology between here and Rouen,” Homais said with utter seriousness. “Well, so far so good,” he said, continuing his examination. “These are all oyster
pleurottes
. A bit early for the season but sure to be very tasty.”
“While I’m here, Monsieur Homais, I thought I’d ask you about that poor man who was killed accidentally at my uncle’s shoot. They brought the body here, didn’t they?”
“Yes, they did. As you know, we don’t have a doctor in Saint-Nicolas, so I am often the resource of last resort, as it were. In fact, as you have seen, even though I don’t have a medical degree, I’m probably more skilled at dealing with bird-shot wounds than most doctors. But in that particular case there was nothing I could do. The poor man was dead long before he made it to this table.” Homais picked up a mushroom and held it high between index and thumb with the reverence of the
curé
elevating the host at mass.
“Now, this one is what we scholars call a
Cortinarius praestens
,” Homais said in what he imagined was the dusty tone of the university lecture hall. “What the paysans call the
cortinaire remarquable
. You have only a handful of them, but they are quite rare and exceptionally tasty. They’re already beginning to dry out, so I’d suggest you get the good Odile to make an omelet with them for your breakfast tomorrow morning.”
To Capucine the
cortinaire
in question looked more shriveled and nasty than remarkable. No matter how rare it was, it certainly was not going to be gracing her breakfast table in the morning.
“So the poor man was DOA,” Capucine said, fanning the embers of Homais’ description of the body.
“Dead a good deal before OA,” Homais said with a dry laugh. “He took almost the full charge of shot in the chest. Now, you might not know this, but the physiological effect of shotgun shot is entirely different from solid bullets. Imagine we are shooting a pheasant. No single pellet is lethal, and, in fact, the pellets rarely go into vital organs, but once you reach the critical mass of four pellets, the bird is rendered unconscious. Six pellets and it’s dead. It’s what we medical men call ‘shock.’ ”
“So you think the victim died instantly?”
“Or within seconds. There were at least thirty pellets lodged in the reticular layer of the dermis of his chest. None of them were very deep since the penetration was transversal.” He looked at Capucine and decided she was not up to the word. “By that I mean he had been shot from the left and the pellets entered diagonally and did not penetrate the chest very deeply. It was the shock that did him in, all the more since it was number six shot and not the smaller number eight one normally uses for partridge. The heavier pellets create that much more trauma, you see.”
“Isn’t using heavy shot on partridge unusual?”
“Remember we’re in the Pays d’Auge here, madame, not the Ile-de-France, close to Paris. Obviously, shooting small birds like partridge with number six is heresy, but here they throw anything that comes to hand into their cartridge bags. I’ve even seen pheasants fall out of the sky cut in half by Brenneke solids. To prove my point, these pellets were lead, which—as I’m sure you know—has been illegal in France for fifteen years. In the civilized world everyone threw out his lead shot when the law went into effect and bought cartridges with steel shot. But not here. Even fifteen years after they stopped selling it, people still have lead shot cartridges in the bottom of their bags.”
“And you’re convinced it really was an accident?”
“Madame, as long as people persist in downing three or four Calvas before going out in the hot sun and blazing away at anything that moves, there will be accidents like this. Trust me on that.”
CHAPTER 12
T
he next morning Capucine joined Oncle Aymerie for breakfast in what he liked to call the
petit salon,
a bright circular room at the bottom of the old turret. Several French windows cut through the thick wall looked out over the old moat and the fields beyond and made the room dance with dappling light reflected from the surface of the water. It was Oncle Aymerie’s refuge, where he spent most of his day and took his meals when he was alone.
After café au lait and a blotting-paper-dry croissant—one of the many impenetrable gastronomic mysteries of France being the striking inferiority of country bakers compared to their Paris brethren—Oncle Aymerie asked her how her discussion with Homais had gone.
“We talked about mushrooms mostly. But he is definitely certain that Gerlier’s death was accidental. He says that sort of thing happens all the time.”
“He’s quite correct, of course. Shooting accidents are very frequent. But this was no accident.” He poured a quarter of a cup of coffee from a delicate silver
cafetière
and stirred in a lump of sugar
.
“But what I haven’t told you,
ma chère petite nièce,
is that I think I can prove it was a murder.”
“You actually have proof?”
“An ocular witness, as I believe you say in the police.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“More specific? I’m taking you to lunch with him today. Is that specific enough?”
 
Colonel Hubert de Blignières lived in a square two-story house that had been built in the reign of Louis XV as a hunting lodge. Capucine had met him often; since the death of Tante Aymone he had become her uncle’s inseparable companion. A widower himself and not overburdened with intelligence, since his retirement he had become devoted to Phébus—his Brittany spaniel—shooting, and gardening, in that order.
Lunch was served by a prodigiously rotund woman who not only cooked but also “did” for Blignières. As they sat down at the table, he strictured the housekeeper, Euphémie, sharply. “There can be no wineglasses on the table when we serve eggs. It creates anxiety. The guests wait for wine, which will not come, because it is unthinkable to drink wine with eggs. I’m sure your husband does precisely the same,” he said, addressing Capucine.
The housekeeper removed the offending glasses with an exasperated shake of her head and retreated to the kitchen to return with a porcelain tureen of creamy scrambled eggs slowly cooked in a
bain-marie.
It was the way Alexandre loved making eggs on Sundays. Alexandre, of course, got around the no-wine-with-eggs rule by insisting that champagne was a legitimate exception. He also served his eggs with finely chopped black truffles. Still, Capucine admitted to herself that the orange-yoked country eggs, unobtainable in Paris, elevated the dish to its acme.
After the eggs came a
blanquette de veau.
Even though this one was well enough prepared and the wineglasses were back for an exceptional Côtes du Rhône, Capucine had never been able to find it in her heart to love
blanquettes.
The runny white milk sauce always seemed particularly ill-assorted to the veal. Still, it was one of the great classics, and she lavished compliments on Blignières, who beamed.
As the meal progressed, Oncle Aymerie became progressively more and more agitated. Finally he could contain himself no longer.
“Hubert, you must share your thoughts with Capucine.”
“Aymerie, we’ve discussed this. It is not appropriate that I make allegations to the police, and Capucine is not only a police officer but a very senior one.”
Reflexively, Capucine put a soothing hand on Blignières’ arm. As she did so, she cringed inwardly. It was one of the basic gestures taught in interrogation courses, in the part about dealing with a reluctant witness—“confidence building: use a physical gesture that develops camaraderie and demonstrates the interviewer’s concern.” So she was now using police techniques on her uncle’s friends? Had it come to that?
“I’m hardly here as a police officer,” she said with what she hoped was her little-girl smile. “Oncle Aymerie tells me you’re troubled about the death at his shoot.”
“
Troubled
is precisely the right word. You see, everyone thinks I’m the one who fired the fatal shot. It’s a terrible thing to live with. But I’m quite certain it wasn’t me. I think I can demonstrate that beyond the shadow of a doubt.”
“You seem very sure,” said Capucine.
“I am. Let me show you.” He went to the sideboard and returned with two fistfuls of silver knives, which he arranged on the table in a curve. “This is the way the line was set up, a shallow semicircle close to the crest of a steep hill. The victim, Gerlier, was two positions to the left of center. By left I mean from the birds’ point of view, of course.” He put a silver saltcellar slightly to the left of the middle of the line of cutlery. “And I was all the way down here on the right, on point, at the bottom of the hill. Aymerie always puts people on point there in case the birds veer off at the last minute. Maxime Boisson-Brideau, one of our good friends, had the point position opposite me on the left side.” He removed the crystal vessels of oil and vinegar from a silver cruet set and put them perpendicular to the ends of the line to indicate their positions.
As the battle map was being sketched out in tableware, Capucine heard a barely audible keening and glanced down to find Phébus looking up at her in wide-eyed expectation. She divined correctly that the dog had learned the precise volume that would slip by unnoticed beneath the radar of his master’s diminished hearing. Surreptitiously, she slipped him a large piece of veal.
“As the birds came in, I fired toward the field.”
“And got a very elegant double,” Oncle Aymerie said, giving him a playful punch in the arm.
Another piece of veal descended Phébus’s gullet soundlessly.
“But,” Blignières continued doggedly, “when the birds started up the hill, they were so low over the ground, it would not have been sporting to fire. It wasn’t until they reached the crest that they gained enough altitude for anyone to be able to begin shooting. Do you understand?” he asked Capucine anxiously.
“Absolutely. Go on.”
“Obviously, once they rose, I started shooting for all I was worth. But Maxime—remember he was opposite me at the bottom of the hill—couldn’t shoot because his gun jammed. He still uses his father’s old Callens et Modé, and he hasn’t had it gone over by a gunsmith in twenty years, so the ejectors are very prone to freeze up, which is exactly what they did. He was dancing quite a merry little jig when the birds flew in, believe me.”
Capucine nodded her understanding and surreptitiously slipped Phébus some more of her veal.
“So you see, the only person who could possibly have shot Gerlier accidentally was me, since the people next to him were shooting high in the air at birds well over their heads. And I am absolutely positive it wasn’t me. I saw him jerk when he was hit. A military man knows all too well what that looks like. And at that moment my gun was broken open and I was reloading.”
“Voilà!” Oncle Aymerie said, banging his fist on the table. “What more proof do you want?”
“Mon oncle, that’s certainly a very convincing argument, but, unfortunately, courts only consider tangible facts as proof. Let me ask you a question, Colonel. What size shot were you shooting that day? Do you remember?”
“Do I remember? What kind of question is that? I was shooting number eights, of course. What else would I be shooting?”
“And there’s no chance that you had the odd number six cartridge in your bag?”
“There are certain things a gentleman does when he returns home from the field,” Blignières said rigidly. “He cleans and lightly oils his gun, he brushes the mud off his shoes and puts trees in them, and he takes whatever cartridges are left in his bag and puts them back in their boxes. And only then, and not one second before, does he allow himself a whiskey.”
“And, of course, you use steel shot, not lead.”
“Madame, I have devoted my life to serving my country and its laws. Lead shot has been prohibited for fifteen years. I would no more use it than powder my garden with DDT, even though I deeply regret the loss of both.”
“I wouldn’t have thought any less of you, Colonel. It will interest you to learn that the shot in Monsieur Gerlier’s wound was number six lead shot.”
“Voilà! What a relief. I knew I hadn’t fired that shot, but I still lost a good deal of sleep over it. Ah, that calls for a celebration. Euphémie! Bring us some Calva! No, no, no, not that! The good stuff in the crystal decanter.”
As they left, Phébus wagged his little stub of a tail vigorously at Capucine. If nothing else, she had made a new friend. Walking home to the château, Oncle Aymerie gave tongue to the two pertinent questions she had been juggling silently. “Well, if it wasn’t Hubert, it had to be intentional. But who? And why?”

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