Roux the Day (27 page)

“The Witches are having their monthly luncheon tomorrow,” she informed me. “It will be at Jenny’s place, the General’s Tavern. We would like to invite you to join us. Noon for drinks, lunch at one. Hope y’all can be there. No need for a reply—just come!”

I debated, all the way through dressing and shaving and still all the way through grapefruit juice, sausage and bacon, hash browns, whole-wheat toast with strawberry jelly and three cups of coffee. By the time the waitress came with the offer of a fourth cup, I had decided to accept the invitation. But first, I went back to the room and phoned Lieutenant Delancey.

He listened to the account of all that had happened since I had last talked to him. He listened without interruption then asked, “And your conclusions?”

He listened to those, too, without interruption. “You did good,” he said when I had finished. “You did very good.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant. That’s high praise, coming from you.”

“Scotland Yard would be proud of you. So will Hal Gaines when I tell him.”

“Give him my regards.”

“I’ll do that. So you gonna go to this luncheon?”

“Yes. I think I have all the information I’m likely to get but those Witches—”

“What did you call them?”

“Witches—you know, ‘Women in the Catering, Hotel—’ ”

“Those women’s-lib broads … Yeah, okay.”

“Well, I may pick up a few corroborating items there. It’s worth a try.”

“Hmm,” he said. “Yeah, we’ve been working, too. I alerted the two men tailing you. One of them picked up on Landers, followed him back, ID’ed him. One of our sharp-eyed gals on night duty started a check on his business and that has brought up a few interesting points. She did a rundown on his background and she spotted his wife’s name in the file, too.”

I was a little deflated. “So you’ve reached the same conclusions I have, but by a different route.”

“It all goes together, all part of the same picture.”

“As far as evidence is concerned, I don’t know—”

“Don’t worry about that; it’s our problem. Like I say, you did real good. More I think about it, that lunch may be a good idea. They’re not aware how much we know, something might slip out.”

“What do you intend to do now, Lieutenant?”

“I’ll see you right after the lunch. Where is it?”

“The General’s Tavern.”

“Oh, yeah, I’ve heard of it. Never eaten there.”

“It’s an experience. Certainly will be today.”

“That it will. See you after lunch.”

The banquet room in the General’s Tavern probably dated from the times when it had had large gatherings of the names that mattered in old New Orleans. The old brick had had to be re-faced here and there but that only added to the charm and the atmosphere. The wooden ceiling-beams were even lower here but the copper lanterns gleamed and the tablecloths over the long U-shaped table were excruciatingly white.

Most of the Witches were already there when I arrived, and I renewed acquaintanceships. Leah was among the first to greet me and she looked adorable in a sheathlike garment of distinct Asian origin. It had a silky sheen and blended blues and golds in intertwined patterns. Jenny, the hostess, had on a smart white outfit with neat black trim. Her full figure did justice to it.

Marguerite’s features looked even more regular and perfect than I remembered them from that first encounter in the limousine when I had been “kidnapped.” Her hair was the same shiny black and her lashes just as long. She wore a black-and-yellow suit and next to her sat Emmy Lou Charbonneau, her soft brown hair, restless brown eyes and wide mouth accented by an autumn-brown pants suit.

Eleanor McCardle, she with the cooking school that I would have loved to visit, was businesslike in pastel colors, and Della Forlani of the Villa Romana wore an Italian creation—what else?—in swirls of light and dark green that made her look even more like a fashion model. I was still telling her that I was delighted to see her again when a voice behind me said, “Glad you could join us. What are you drinking?”

It was Elsa Goddard—
dressed to kill,
was my first thought but I quickly changed it. She looked as if she had just come from, or was on her way to, a television appearance, and she promptly confirmed it.

“I’ll have one of Jenny’s specials—the ‘light and healthy’ gin fizz,” I said. “Nice to see you, Elsa. How goes the investigation of crime via TV?”

“On the Belvedere book case, it’s slow,” she said. “So slow that we haven’t aired anything on it for a couple of days. Any new revelations for me?”

“Any minute now,” I said airily. I was being sincere but she didn’t read it that way. Perhaps the entertainment business blunted the perception.

Twenty minutes later, we were seated and the first course was arriving. I had duly circulated among all the Witches and exchanged pleasantries, traded comments about the attractions of New Orleans and deflected questions about the quest for the book. “Going to keep us in suspense until after the meal?” Jenny asked. “That’s right,” I told her.

The first course was oyster stew. The plentiful supply of oysters off the Louisiana coast has led to their imaginative use in a number of ways in addition to the conventional raw condition. In this case, the oysters had been poached in a mixture of white wine and their own liquor, Jenny told us. Then they were put in a double boiler with cream, salt, pepper and cayenne.

A portion of Crab Imperial followed. This was served in a coquille shell and I could discern the tang of both Creole mustard and Tabasco sauce. The main course was Veal Detweiler, named, Jenny said, after a customer who came in three times a week and always ordered it. The name was changed in his honor. The small veal tenderloins had been seasoned and dusted with flour, sautéed in butter and set aside. To the hot butter in the pan had been added artichoke hearts, mushrooms, garlic, onions, cayenne pepper and dry white wine. It was a simple dish but exquisite.

The Café au Lait Soufflé was a local institution, said Jenny. Obviously the rich New Orleans café au lait was the basis but preparing it as a soufflé was a touch of inspiration and not easy to serve to that many diners as it needs to come directly from the oven to the table.

Small talk after the meal was at a minimum. I couldn’t exactly say that every member of the Witches was agog to hear what I had to say but they were certainly all curious. Jenny, as the hostess of the day, made a few statements about other business of the group, then she turned to me.

“And now, we will hear a report from the Gourmet Detective on his investigations on our behalf.”

I thanked them for their invitation to join them and congratulated Jenny on a superb meal. “Now, you want to hear about the Belvedere chef’s book …” I paused, milking the moment for the maximum effect.

“I’ll tell you what happened each step along the series of events that have tragically led to two murders.

“First, during the collection of books for the annual charity book sale, one of the volunteers saw the Belvedere book. Interested in food and cooking, she knew it would have considerable value and she listed it among the items to be put on sale. Then she read through the book. Certain comments by the chefs through the generations—the members of the family—were in the book, among the recipes, and
‘aides memoires’.
This volunteer realized that in the wrong hands, the information could be used to blackmail the current Belvedere, Ambrose. She decided not to put the book in the auction.”

“What sort of information are we talking about here?” demanded the stern-looking lady with the prematurely gray hair.

“You’re asking me to tell you exactly what it was that the volunteer wanted to suppress,” I said, and there was a titter or two. I went on.

“The publicity had already gone out and a lot of interest in the book had been generated. The volunteer decided on an unusual solution to the problem—she had a copy of the book made, using only passages that she selected. It was this copy that went to the auction. It was this copy that Richie Mortensen bought, allegedly on Michael Gambrinus’ account. Someone else wanted the book, though, and killed Mortensen to get it.”

“So where is the book now?” a voice called out.

“The killer realized that the book was a forgery—”

“You mean a copy?” another questioner called out.

“No, a forgery. It reproduced some of the original material but not all of it—and probably not the material that the killer wanted. An acquaintance of Mortensen’s tried to take over the book and exploit it but all he did was to attract the killer’s attention.”

A figure half rose farther down the table. It was Leah.

“That was my husband, Earl,” she said in a soft voice. “I don’t know how long he had been involved but he apparently wanted to cash in on the book. I used to go to see him periodically and I must have arrived just after someone had killed him for the book.”

Murmurs of sympathy went around the table and Leah sat down.

Della raised a hand. “I don’t think we would have wanted the book if we’d known it was going to cause all this hurt and anguish,” she said, and nods of agreement came around.

“Who would have thought it would come to this?” Marguerite wondered, and Elsa said, “But there was no way we could have predicted all this. We just wanted the book.”

“I hate to sound cold-blooded about this,” Jenny said, “and no one feels more sorry for poor Leah than I do, but what did happen to the book? You’re telling us that you haven’t recovered it, so where is it? And will we never know what was in it?”

There was a rare silence in the room.

“My understanding is that the volunteer returned the book where it rightfully belonged—to the Belvedere family,” I said slowly. “I also understand that the family destroyed it.”

There was a gasp.

“So we’ll never know,” said Eleanor.

“Probably not,” I agreed. Before the conversation could rise, coming from a dozen parts of the table, I said, “I didn’t complete my mission for you. I did not provide you with the book. So we’ll call the matter closed. You owe me nothing.”

“We did agree on expenses—” Jenny said, but I waved a magnanimous hand.

“Forget it.”

They were forgetting about me already. A few faces showed disappointment, probably having expected startling revelations. I nodded to a few of those I had gotten to know and slipped out as surreptitiously as I could so as to avoid questions. It wasn’t difficult.

A
MAN STEPPED IN
front of me as I went out on to the sidewalk. “Lieutenant’s across the street,” he said, and led me across to what looked like a novelty store. It seemed abandoned but the lieutenant and another man were there, involved with some electronic equipment on a bench.

Delancey looked up. “Be with you in a minute.” He resumed adjusting the equipment that I realized was of the recording type. Seeming satisfied, he said something to the other man and came to me. “We got it all.”

He caught my puzzled look. “We taped your lunch, Got it all, loud and clear.”

“You didn’t tell me you were going to do that,” I said, probably sounding a little peevish.

“Didn’t need to.”

“Is it evidence?”

“Probably not. But we didn’t know till we heard it.”

He jerked a thumb toward the door. “There’s a station a coupla blocks. Let’s go there. Need you to sign some statements.”

It was a quiet time, crimewise, in this part of New Orleans, if this station was any barometer. Men and women, some in uniform, some not, moved around, computer screens pulsed with data, phones rang. It was all low-key. Delancey appeared to have visiting rights, though, and we went into a cubicle with a table and a few chairs.

“Tell me the whole story,” Delancey invited. “Just the way you see it.”

We sat. A tape recorder was already on the table and Delancey pulled it forward. “Any objections if I—”

“None at all,” I said, determined to be mature about this. He squeezed down the
RECORD
button—I noted that the machine was all set anyway—and he leaned back to listen.

“It began with Enid Pargeter, a volunteer for the charity organization. Sorting out the donated books, she found one that was a chef’s book from the Belvedere restaurant. It must have gotten lost when the restaurant closed down and was found, along with a number of others, when the place was being cleaned out.

“She recognized it for what it was and put it in the catalog as a moderately valuable item. It was evidently a short while before she read it—that’s when she found she had a bundle of dynamite in her hands.”

“This is where the story gets interesting, right?” asked Delancey.

“It certainly is. The members of the Belvedere family, four of them before the current Ambrose, all kept a record, writing in that same book, recording their favorite dishes and recipes, making notes of tricks and secrets they ran across in the course of their cooking. All of that would have made the book of modest interest but not much more. There was one family secret that should never have gone in the book, though—and it was this that is at the root of this whole affair.”

Delancey nodded. “I’m all ears.”

“They were all absinthe drinkers—”

“This is where I need some input,” Delancey said. “Expand on this for me.”

“Absinthe is a liqueur, popular a century or so ago. We all know about Toulouse-Lautrec and the French Impressionist painters who drank it. It’s a hundred and sixty proof, that’s eighty-percent alcohol—more than twice scotch or bourbon—but that’s not its most dangerous feature.

“Absinthe contains wormwood, a plant that is not only habit-forming but causes delirium, hallucinations, memory loss, inability to function normally, permanent brain damage and early death. When its dangers were fully realized, it was banned in France in 1915 and in this country soon after.”

“Somebody must have come up with a substitute,” Delancey commented. “They always do.”

“They did; they came up with several substitutes—anise was the most popular, sometimes mixed with hyssop. Another plant known as ‘herbsaint’ was used, too, but to an addict, all of these were weak and unsatisfactory. Only absinthe gives the results they want, for drinking purposes as well as cooking. A great many people had become addicted by then and substitutes just didn’t do it. The oysters Rockefeller that made Antoine’s famous used absinthe but then lost its popularity when absinthe substitutes had to be used. The Belvederes served oysters Belvedere and other dishes, all probably containing absinthe.”