Murder on the Mediterranean (Capucine Culinary Mystery) (10 page)

A
s the prized cigar was reduced to shreds of tobacco, Capucine’s euphoria popped like a soap bubble, filling her eyes with tears. This was even worse than being back at square one, drifting pointlessly on that bathtub-size rubber dinghy. She looked up at Alexandre, expecting to find him sharing her despondency. But, on the contrary, he seemed in his element, delighted with life.

“This is perfect! I have a feeling I’m about to realize one of my life ambitions.”

Capucine’s jaw muscle relaxed, separating her lips.

“You know what’s going on?” she asked.

“I’m pretty sure we’re on the Île Saint-Honorat, a tiny island a mile off Cannes that has been a Cistercian monastery since the fifth century. About thirty monks live here and make wine and a bit of lavender honey.”

“And just how has all this information popped full blown into your head?”

“Well, a while back the paper asked me to write a piece on the gastronomic divinities monks are held to produce. You know, all those fudge truffle cakes, flavored beers, that sort of thing. I was supposed to tour all the monasteries in Provence and get the lowdown.”

“You must have had fun.”

“Au contraire. It was a total bust. First off, they would let me in, and the only good stuff they actually made was produced by commercial firms and labeled by them. The Abbaye de Lérins was the worst of the bunch. They rule with an iron hand. Uninterrupted introversion at all cost. Total silence. No laughing, ah, no radios, no fires—much less any thought of smoking. Just peace and prayer. They threw me out on my ear.”

“And what makes you think they’re going to be so welcoming this time around?”

“Ah, things are different now. St. Benedict, the granddaddy of all monasteriers, was famous for his desire to provide succor to needy pilgrims. And if we don’t qualify, I can’t for the life of me imagine who would.”

“I’m not too sure about the shipwrecked part, but I’m definitely in need of sustenance. A nice country breakfast with gobs of locally made jam would definitely hit the spot.”

The island was so tiny, it took less than ten minutes to locate the monastery. As they threaded their way through a labyrinth of outbuildings toward the main portal, a barely perceptible undertone became increasingly pronounced.

“Sext,” Alexandre announced.

“Come again?”

“Don’t be vulgar. We’re in a monastery, after all. Sext is the noon hour of the liturgy. When it’s over, they spend the afternoon deep in prayer until dinner. Our timing is perfect.”

Alexandre had thumped the portal with the hefty wrought-iron knocker. As he spoke, the door rasped open, revealing a man in a milky, ankle-length alb, over which he wore an ebony scapular. His frigid glare put small talk at the bottom of the list of priorities.

“I am allowed to speak if necessary. Do you require assistance?”

“We’re shipwrecked. We were on our way to Cannes when our boat sank. We just barely made it to your island on the life raft. We haven’t eaten for days.”

The monk appraised the cut of Alexandre’s and Capucine’s yachting clothes and seemed to stumble with the reconciliation of the chic of their turnout and the tall tale of their putative circumstances.

Alexandre attempted to lubricate the potential gaffe by introducing himself and Capucine with a clubman’s conventional cheer.

“You’re not by any chance the same Huguelet who writes the food reviews for
Le Monde
?”

“None other. But this is the last place on earth I’d expect my columns to be read.”

This was greeted by a supercilious smirk. “The Lord acts in truly unfathomable ways. We here at the monastery were all once men of the world. The fact that we have chosen a different life by no means implies we resigned from beauty. Appetite is one of the Lord’s greatest gifts. I myself was the
saucier
at Chez Le Bec Fin before I found my calling.” Alexandre’s eyebrows rose in amazement.

He went on. “Our cooking system is simple. Each night one of us prepares the evening meal, whether that person has any skill or not. We eat what we are given, and thank the Lord profoundly, even if it’s not the best thing we’ve ever eaten. Tonight it was Father Simon’s turn. But he is at the bottom of his bed in the infirmary. Another of the Lord’s little blessings,” he said with a wry smile.

“We were going to have to make do with the breakfast leftovers, hard cheese and dried bread. But you are here, and with a little nudge of my tutelage, I do believe we’ll be able to prepare a respectable squash, leek, and chickpea stew.” The monk crossed himself and glanced heavenward with gratitude before leading them to the kitchen.

The monk’s lips pursed in thought. “I’ll need you to get going right away with soaking the chickpeas. When they’re soft enough, I’ll give you a hand and we’ll get down to work.” The man of the cloth was transforming himself into a man of the chef’s toque.

He became so engrossed in his recipe, he didn’t notice Capucine slip her iPhone out of her shorts and fiddle with the buttons. Alexandre wondered who she was texting. She wore a pleased little secret smile. The monk barely noticed. As he collected kitchen paraphernalia for the stew, he glanced at Capucine and made an apologetic comment that the use of phones wasn’t allowed on the island and that they worked only on hilltops, anyway. Capucine smiled sweetly and pocketed her phone.

The dinner was a joy. The monks sat around a large U-shaped table, facing each other, not exchanging a word. But their eyes never left one another’s, and despite the silence, they managed an exchange in depth entirely with eyes and facial expressions. A powerful electric intimacy streamed freely across the table. When it was over, Capucine had the feeling that she had had a more significant exchange than at most of the Paris dinner parties she was used to.

After the meal, the monks retired to the chapel for compline, and the tomb-like Great Silence began. Alexandre and Capucine stole off for a quick constitutional before retiring. They climbed a hill high enough for them to see the lights of Cannes wink in the distance.

Capucine produced her phone.

Pic U up @ 8 am 2moro. Dvd, was the text on the screen. A sweet normality expressed in the banal lingua franca of the day. She would sleep well that night.

O
n the dot of eight the next morning—sated on toasted dark bread slathered with salty farm butter and monastic strawberry jam, the lot washed down with milky coffee served in bowls—Capucine and Alexandre arrived at the island’s diminutive dock, uncombed, unmade up, and ungroomed, despite their best efforts in the abbey bathroom. A dilapidated commercial fishing boat, broad streaks of rust blood disfiguring its hull, was tied up to one of the cement breakwaters, its idling motor thumping at half time.

A young man appeared on deck, stylish enough for the pages of
Vogue Hommes,
smiling so broadly his face risked splitting open. David Martineau, formerly
Brigadier
David Martineau of the Police Judiciaire, had been a key member of Capucine’s team until he resigned from the force to run for mayor of the village where he’d been conducting an investigation and to reassert his meridional origins. His political career was currently propelling him apace toward a seat in the Chamber of Deputies.

“Welcome aboard,” said David, followed by two fishermen wearing ramshackle smocks so typical, they might well have been supplied by central casting. The deck was crusted with decades of seagull droppings and was fetid with fish stench. David stepped forward, at a loss on how to greet his former boss, whom he hadn’t seen for two years. Alexandre rescued the moment by clasping David’s hand in two of his.

“Ravi de te voir, Monsieur le Maire!
Delighted to see you, Mr. Mayor.” The combination of the familiar
tu
and the mayoral title amply did the trick. To complete the tableau, Capucine presented her cheek for an air kiss.

But despite the warmth of the moment, there was still a hint of awkwardness.

“Do we cast off, Monsieur le Maire?” one of the fishermen asked.

“Oui, Jean.
Let’s get going. I need to be back before lunchtime. I have a meeting I can’t miss.”

They puttered away from the breakwater, heading west along the coast. David produced a thermos of strong, sweet coffee. He filled enameled tin cups, then served everyone, including the two fishermen.

“David,” Alexandre said, “I definitely prefer your yacht to that extortionate plastic contraption we’ve been cooped up on for the past week.”

David laughed. “I got the gist of it from the commissaire’s cousin. Jacques and I had a long chat on the phone last night. By the way, this is Jean’s boat.” David indicated the elder of the two fishermen with his head. “He’s a good buddy. He fishes out of Bandol and was generous enough to give up half a day’s work to help us out.”

“Anytime, Monsieur le Maire. You know I’m always at your service.” Jean flashed a broken-toothed smile accompanied by a respectful head bob, which David accepted as his due as a celebrity. He had clinched his new career by writing a runaway best seller about a murder, including a racy account of the victim, a rock-star chef originally from the village.

As David sat on the gunwale, chatting with Jean, Capucine watched him ceaselessly preen his locks with his fingers. His love of clothes and his vanity about his hair were still very much there, but he had changed. He had added the mantle of power. He wore it casually, but it was still manifest.

In Bandol, the fishing boat motored past the gleaming white sailboats and tied up at the plebeian rusty end of the marina. Walking through town, David came close to being mobbed. Everyone seemed to want a word in his ear. At one point David disappeared into a branch of the Crédit Agricole and returned in a few minutes with a thick envelope.

“You both need to get kitted out. This should do for a reasonable spree.”

Capucine peeked into the envelope. The sum surprised her.

“David, I’m embarrassed. I’ll pay you back the second this is all over.”

David flapped his hand in dismissal. He looked at his watch.

“
Oh là là.
I’m late already. You two go shopping and meet me at a restaurant called Les Pieds dans L’Eau in an hour. It’s right over there,” he said, pointing down the quai. “If I’m a few minutes late, don’t worry. These meetings with constituents tend to run over, but missing lunch is inconceivable in the Midi.”

An hour and a half later Capucine and Alexandre were seated, one row in, on the terrace of the restaurant, contentedly sipping rosé in the sunshine. Capucine wore a short, bouffant, frilly skirt with a pink stripe and a loose white cotton shirt with a low neckline. She finally felt comfortable in her skin. A leather-trimmed teal-green canvas bag sat by her feet, holding the rest of her acquisitions.

David burst onto the terrace, beaming a public smile.

“
Désolé.
I’m sorry I’m late. It was impossible to extricate myself.”

“Your timing is perfect. We’re in heaven here,” Alexandre said. “They have Ott’s Rosé Cœur de Grain, which is by far my preferred rosé. It’s the only rosé that has such a prolonged note of honey. It—”

Capucine cut him off. Even in difficult moments Alexandre could monologue about wine for hours if unchecked. She grinned internally. She was definitely back in her world.

“How was your meeting?” Capucine asked.

“Very positive.” David sat down. “I don’t know if anyone told you, but I’m exploring the possibility of running for
député du Var.
The election is in the spring. I was elected mayor of my village only a little more than a year ago, so it’s very quick, but my supporters have almost convinced me I’m a viable candidate.”

The waiter arrived. David stood up and gripped his hand tightly. They exchanged a few words about the waiter’s children. Sotto voce David said something that had the tone of a promise. It wasn’t difficult to see why David’s supporters were so enthusiastic.

When David leaned over to fill his glass, he said in a murmur, “Discretion is the order of the day. When you’re in office, everyone knows who you are and risks cricking their neck to pick up even the tiniest crumb of gossip.” And then, in a much louder voice, he added, “You’ll love this restaurant. The owner used to be a fisherman. He has a beautiful eye for seafood. No point in even looking at the menu. The
patron
will decide for us.”

The owner turned out to be another character who easily could have been served up by central casting, a short man of nearly spherical rotundity, radiating bonhomie. He bustled up, complimenting them on the serendipity of having picked that particular day to eat at his restaurant. It just so happened that he had
rouget,
red snapper, of a perfection never before equaled in Cannes. And not only that, but he had exactly three of them, each more beautiful than the next.

“And I’m going to start you out with
anchois,
baby anchovies, dusted with a hint of flour mixed with
piment d’espelette
and
fleur de sel
and then deep-fried. I want you to trust me. When we get to the snappers, don’t forget they were alive barely two hours ago, and I’ll be serving them the way God intended, grilled very lightly, not cleaned out, and not scaled. As the great novelist said, ‘A rouget without its liver is a Paganini without his violin.’ ”

The rouget were even better than vaunted, as round-bellied as the patron, moist and light, brimming with the sea and the inimitable flavor of red snapper. There was a great deal to be said for fish that had traveled a mere fifteen feet from boat to table.

After lunch, they rattled off into the hills in David’s ramshackle little Peugeot.

“I live in a
mas.
That’s what they call farmhouses around here. I bought it with the money I got for the book’s movie rights. I want you to think of it as entirely yours while you’re here.” He smiled and squeezed Capucine’s arm. “We’re going to need to buff up your cover story. I let it drop in the village that my Parisian uncle was coming on vacation with his beautiful young wife.”

“
Tonton
Alexandre!” Capucine said. “It suits you.”

“Provençal villagers will never breathe a word about anything to an outsider, and outsiders include even the people from the next village. But they don’t like not knowing every last thing that goes on in their own village. Trust me, they’ll quiz you both to death. We need a killer story and certainly new names.
Tonton
Edouard suits Alexandre perfectly.”

“So, I think we should give La Cadière
-
d’Azura a miss tonight, until we get everything sorted out. I have Magali, an old widow who ‘does’ for me, as they say down here, and she cooks well, or at least I’ve gotten used to her cooking. Tonton, do think you can rough it for one night?”

“Don’t get fresh with your uncle,
fiston,
” Alexandre said with a broad smile.

“Also,” David continued, “I’ve confiscated five or six cell phones from some teens. Don’t look at me like that. They all owe me a favor or two for getting them off the hook for little run-ins with the gendarmes.” He nudged Capucine’s arm, then pulled back, thinking he had gone too far.

“Cap . . . Commissaire, you can’t imagine what a kick I get when those local gendarmes come to attention and salute me.”

“David, if you don’t start calling me by my name, I’ll have to start calling you Monsieur le Maire, and I don’t think that’s going to help our cover story.”

“These cell phones are the pay-as-you-go kind, so they’re impossible to trace. Just what a perp on the run or the head of the local police force needs, right?”

The mas might have started life out as a simple farmhouse, but it had come a long way. It sprawled out in all directions and embraced two large pools. Capucine flapped a hand in semi-mock admiration.

“What kind of farmer lived here when you bought it?”

“The kind that makes a lot of money on Wall Street and then gets hit hard by the recession. I’m afraid I had him over a barrel and was not quite as gentle as I could have been. Wait till you see the bathrooms. I still can’t get used to brushing my teeth out of gold faucets.”

Capucine spent the better part of the afternoon sitting somewhere deep in the fragrant hills, brooding, trying to make sense of her situation. How could she possibly cope without the authority of her badge, the use of her brigade of police officers? She brooded on. It was even worse than that. She was manacled by her exile. She couldn’t call her friends, her family, not even her mother. She was naked in a wilderness. A wilderness with gold faucets, yes, but a wilderness, nonetheless.

She rubbed the tears out of the corners of her eyes and dragged her heels back to the mas. She found David and Alexandre on the long trellised patio, sipping pastis and smoking cigars. Alexandre had found a store in Bandol that sold authentic Havanas and had spent more on Vuelta Abajo leaf than she had on clothes. Here she was, deep in mourning over her lost identity, and Alexandre was as serene as ever. For him it was just another cheerful adventure, one that he was already polishing to regale his cronies with.

Capucine sat with them and was given a milky white glass of pastis. The two men fenced with quoted lines from the Provençal poet Frédéric Mistral. The sensual aroma of Havana leaf mingled with the heady aroma of wild thyme, blending with the unaccustomed licorice taste of the pastis. The sun dappled through the overhead canopy of vine leaves.

Maybe it was just the odors, but a sense of peace descended over Capucine. She had found sanctuary. Her problems were probably as irresolvable as ever, but hopelessness wasn’t possible under that marquee of vines. She reached out and took David’s hand. Alexandre smiled at her.

“
Chaque année, le rossignol revêt des plumes neuves, mais il garde sa chanson.
Every year the nightingale dons new plumage but retains his old song,” Alexandre quoted.

What would she do without Alexandre? He was perfectly right. The trappings were the least of things. Gradually, the sun sank in the sky, and the rhythmic violin screeching of the cicadas fell silent.

“Shall we have dinner out here?” David asked. “It’s a
poulpe en daube
—local octopus stewed in a wine-based marinade. My guardian angel, Magali, does it very well. She has a little trick we won’t tell Alexandre about.” He bent over in Capucine’s direction and spoke in mock confidentiality. “She freezes the octopus for a night before putting it in its marinade. She claims that makes it much more tender. Excuse me for a moment. I’ll go heat it up and come back and set the table.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” Capucine said. “We’re in the Midi here, where no self-respecting woman will let a man do a woman’s work.” She had an irresistible itch for action. She jerked herself out of her chair. Alexandre protested. “No, no. Let me do it.”

With an elegant wave of two fingers, David quieted him.

In the kitchen Capucine found a long table covered in antique Provençal tiles, much larger than, but not dissimilar to, the one in her own kitchen in Paris. She wondered when she would ever see that again.

The
daube
was still warm in a stoneware cocotte. She bustled around the kitchen, looking for plates, glasses, knives, forks, then took it all out to the patio with two bottles of a red Mourvèdre from Bandol.

The daube lived up to David’s promise, not the slightest bit chewy, rich with the flavors of the wine marinade, olive oil, and a good number of local wild spices.

After the daube came the cheeses—Annot, a strong goat cheese shaped like a doughnut; Banon, wrapped in chestnut leaves and tied with raffia and dotted with specks of blue mold; and Brousse, a goat cheese so mild, it came to life only when sprinkled with local wild thyme.

“I can’t tell you how happy I am that you’re here, Com . . . Capucine,” David said. “How long do you think you’ll be staying?” He caught himself. “I certainly wasn’t suggesting you leave. To make me perfectly happy, you and Alexandre would stay all summer.”

“David, it may well come to that.”

“Look, Commissaire—” David flicked his hand in front of his mouth in irritation. “Look, Capucine, I used to be halfway okay as a brigadier, right? Well, I have a lot of free time right now, and, well, if you want, you can use me as if I were on your team. Give me orders. Send me places. All that stuff. Truth be told, I miss it. Actually, I miss the rest of the team more than I ever admit to myself.”