Free Killer Critique by Alexander Campion Page A

Seeing them in the light when you leave is supposed to teach you that beauty is not just skin deep, or some nonsense like that.”
    â€œWell, a restaurant critic’s been murdered there.”
    â€œGood Lord, that must be Jean Monteil. He was with the Le Figaro . The restaurant was bought out by an international chain, and he was going to review it. He even asked me to go along to keep him company. I decided it would be way more fun to eat with you than to spill bad food all over myself in the dark. Of all the bad luck. If I’d gone, I’d be spending the rest of the evening with you.”
    He leaned over to kiss Capucine, who pushed him away roughly.
    â€œThat’s in very bad taste and not funny at all,” she said as she stormed out of the apartment, stuffing her Sig into the back of her jeans, not at all sure why Alexandre’s comment had upset her so much.

CHAPTER 12
    E ven though Capucine left the Twingo double-parked directly in front of the restaurant, the rain was heavy enough to soak her by the time she reached the protection of the low black canvas awning over the restaurant’s door. She cursed the heavens. Two times in one night was just too much.
    Inside the tiny anteroom, decorated only with jet-black felt on the walls, a uniformed PJ officer stood guard in front of a high dark black wooden desk.
    â€œCommissaire Lacombe’s been waiting for you, Commissaire . He’s in the dining room downstairs. Go through that door and then the next one. But watch out. The stairs are right after the second door.”
    A ten-foot hallway, decorated in the same deep black felt as the anteroom, lay behind the first door, which swung shut behind her with the whoosh of a pneumatic door closer. She was in total darkness. The effect was surprisingly discomforting. She inched forward, guiding herself with a hand on the wall, and found the second door, which opened onto a precipitous staircase. The light from below was almost blinding after the dark.
    Lacombe was waiting at the foot of the stairs.
    â€œSee, you’re having a good time already,” he said with a deep belly laugh. “Nice setup, eh? There’s a pretend blind maître d’ who leads the customers down the stairs, whispers the menu in their ears, and then the fun begins.”
    â€œThe fun?”
    â€œIt’s a real gas. The food is as liquid and as hard to eat as they can make it. The idea is for the customers to feel as helpless as possible and think they’re bonding with blind people,” Lacombe said with heavy irony.
    Brightly lit, the room was even more depressing than a nightclub when the lights were turned up at four in the morning to induce everyone to go home. The walls were a shabby, faded, and splotched dark green and hadn’t been repainted in years. The beige carpeting was streaked with dirt and dotted with food stains. On the tables, once jet-black tablecloths were covered with a mosaic of spots and spatters in varying shades of brown and purple.
    â€œMust look a whole lot better in the dark,” Lacombe said. He moved aside to give her a view of the room, revealing a heavyset man slumped over one of the center tables. His body was twisted to the right, his head turned away from them, his ear resting in a deep dish of lumpy, liquid stew.
    Capucine was blinded by a spasm of anguish. For a split second she was convinced it was Alexandre. But as they approached the table she gratefully recognized Jean Monteil, whom she had seen many times at cocktail parties and restaurant openings. She breathed again but was still held by the nightmarish sense of déjà vu.
    Monteil was wearing the same sort of clothes Alexandre favored, a tweed jacket and gray flannel trousers. His head lay peacefully on the side of what was unmistakably a dish of bœuf bourguignon . Unlike the body in Chez Béatrice, there were no splashes of food. Shattering the image of repose, a six-inch metallic tube