Alexander Campion - Crime Fraiche (Capucine Culinary Mysteries)

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Chantal Croizette Desnoyerswho had the indulgence to put up with me as a husband for twenty-six yearsdipped into her reserve of patience once again to share her extensive expertise on mushrooms.

Thanks also to my daughter Charlottenow a registered nursefor her tireless patience in answering my endless medical questions just as she was trying to get to sleep after a long night on the ICU floor.

And of course, I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Sharon Bowers, my ninja agent who, in addition to being a gifted negotiator and invaluable co-conspirator, is without peer at applying the old oil when the machine starts to squeak alarmingly.

Also by Alexander Campion:

THE GRAVE GOURMET

CHAPTER 1

S o she wants people to think shes what? Dead? Raped? I dont get it, Brigadier David Martineau said, lazily twisting a silky auburn lock around his index finger with far more insouciance than was normal for Police Judiciaire brigadiers.

Brigadier Isabelle Lemercier rose to the bait and rolled her eyeballs skyward, shaking her head, her rough cropped hair swaying angrily like wheat in a summer storm. Look, numnuts, wake the fuck up. Its a scam. Shes hoping some patsy will get all mushy and take her home and nurse her back to health, right, Commissaire?

Thats the way she works it, Isabelle, Commissaire Capucine Le Tellier said. Shes

In this town people go out of their way to ignore someone lying on the sidewalk. Shes gotta be doing something special, David said, glaring at Isabelle.

She does seem to have a gift, Capucine said with just enough steel in her voice to let her rank be felt. Both the brigadiers sensed they were at the threshold of going too far and straightened up in their chairs. Apparently, she exudes a defenselessness that attracts people. Shes done it three times so far. Once in the Sixth Arrondissement, where two American tourists took her in, then in Neuilly, where a retired senior civil servant befriended her, and now in the Twentieth, where two women, magazine illustrators, cared for her in their apartment.

And theres bling in this? David asked.

Oh, very definitely, Capucine said, unclipping a lethal-looking black Sig service pistol from the small of her back, reclining in her government-issue swivel chair, putting her feet on the scarred top of her desk, and dropping the inch-thick file on her lap. She caught Isabelle admiring her legs and David her shoes, a brand-new pair of Christian Louboutin sling pumps that probably werent really appropriate for police work, at least not in the Twentieth Arrondissement.

She was well aware this wasnt the tone commissaires were supposed to take with their brigadiers, but they were all on the same side of thirty and these were two of the three street-savvy flics who steered her through her first murder case a year before, when she was still a rookie in the Crim , the Police Judiciaires criminal brigade. In fact, if it werent for them, shed probably be back watching the clock as a lieutenant in the fiscal fraud squad instead of running her own commissariat.

Beyond the glass wall of her office Capucine could see the third brigadier, Momo BenaroucheMomo to everyoneat his desk in the squad room, glowering at a pile of official forms as blue uniformed officers and unshaven, be-jeaned, sneakered plainclothes detectives gave him as wide a birth as they could.

She snapped herself back to the present and tapped the file. Shes doing very well indeed with her con. By the way, our perp has been given a name. With their usual love of high culture, headquarters seems to think shes the archetypal Disney character and is calling her La Belle au March Dormant the Sleeping Beauty of the Market.

David and Isabelle snorted derisively. Headquarters, the Direction Centrale de la Police Judiciaire, was well known for its tragicomic bureaucracy.

The Americans were both professors of French philology at someplace called Valparaiso University, which, oddly enough, is in Indiana. Theyd done an apartment swap for a month and

Why the fuck would anyone who lived in the Sixth Arrondissement of the City of Light want to spend a month in Indiana? David asked. Man, things just keep getting weirder and weirder around here.

Capucine smiled at him with the tolerance of a parent for a wayward child. After three days of tender loving care from these Indiana philologists, the Belle walked off with an illuminated page from a medieval langue dol manuscript they had bought the week before. Apparently, the thing was rare enough for the Bureau of Antiquities to question if they would allow it to be taken out of the country.

Both Isabelle and David pursed their lips in respect. Its nice their little problem was solved for them, Isabelle said.

In Neuilly, continued Capucine, reading from the file, she walked off with a Daumier caricature. The civil servant in question collects them. But this was the only one in his collection that was an original drawing and not a print. Its also worth thousands.

David and Isabelle nodded appreciatively.

The two magazine illustrators, a couple, apparentlyCapucine paused for a beat while Isabelle looked up sharplywere robbed of a small Marie Laurencin watercolor portrait of someone called Natalie Clifford Barney. It was the single picture stolen from among at least fifty in their apartment.

Barney was a great person, Isabelle said, an American writer who expatriated herself to Paris to become one of the pathfinders of the lesbian movement. Im sure a portrait of her by Laurencin is worth a bundle.

Voil! said David with a broad smile from which any trace of sarcasm had been scrupulously scrubbed. Finally, the ideal case for our dear Isabelle.

Isabelles pupils contracted and her face darkened. She punched David in the arm, putting her whole upper body behind the blow, visibly causing him considerable pain.

In fact, David, I am putting Isabelle in charge. This inquiry is just what Im going to need to support her application for promotion to brigadier-chef. And youre going to back her upwithout any lip, understood? Isabelle put her thumb to her nose and wiggled her fingers at David as he massaged his arm. Heres the file, Capucine said, thumping the dossier on the desk in front of Isabelle. Im off for a weeks vacation. You can tell me all about your dazzling progress when I get back.

Where are you going, Commissaire? Isabelle asked. Some fabulous island in the Antilles?

No such luck. Just to my uncles house in the country. Im not sure how its going to work out. Its the first time Ive been down there since I joined the force. He was pretty upset at the time.

Yeah, I got that, too, David said. My mother was devastated.

She had her heart set on you becoming a hairdresser, right? Isabelle asked.

My uncle tells everyone Im a civil servant with the Ministry of the Interior, Capucine said. I dont know how hes going to react to seeing me as a flic in the flesh.

Why dont you wear your uniform? Isabelle asked. You look fabulous in blue, and all that silver braid would set off your hair.

From the look Capucine gave her, Isabelle knew for sure she had gone too far.

CHAPTER 2

W hen Capucine arrived at her apartment in the Marais, she found her husband, Alexandre, in his study, sprawled in a decrepit leather club chair, frenetically typing with two fingers on a laptop nestled against the gentle protuberance of his stomach, the stubby remnant of a Havana Partagas Robusto clenched between his teeth, an empty on-the-rocks glass perched precariously on the arm of the chair, and piles of newspapers and magazines heaped in a sloppy bulwark on the floor. As she walked in, he continued to stare fixedly at the screen and lifted one hand, index finger raised, wagging it slowly from left to right in supplication to be allowed to finish his sentence. Alexandre was the senior food critic for Le Monde, the grande dame of Paris journalism, and Capucine was well versed in the tensions of deadlines. He typed energetically.

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