Free Death of a Chef (Capucine Culinary Mystery) by Alexander Campion Page B

first time. She wondered how the effect was achieved. The bar now seemed to be partitioned off from the twenty or so tables behind a gleaming, head-high, varnished wooden partition, topped by opaque, turn-of-the-century cut-glass panels. Capucine asked herself if it had been recently added or if it had always been there and she had just never noticed it.
    As she sat down, the hilarity at the table was just shifting up a gear.
    “ Mon chou— my cabbage,” Alexandre said, loading her plate with oysters from a platter of crustaceans on crushed ice raised high by a wire frame, “you have to try these. They’re fabulous.”
    For the thousandth time Capucine wondered why being called a cabbage was the universal French form of endearment for women and children.
    “The big ones are Gillardeaus, these smaller ones are fines de Prat-Ar-Coum, and of course, these are fines de Claire, but they’re the largest ones I’ve ever seen.”
    The oysters were delicious. Even after an overnight ride in a refrigerated truck from Brittany, they still brought the full delight of the briny tang of the sea to her mouth. A woman at her right—well into her late seventies, her skin leathery and nut-colored from endless summers in the Midi, the red ribbon of the Légion d’honneur winking out between the tweedy pastel threads of a Chanel suit—smiled at her. “Pure bliss, n’est-ce pas?”
    Just as Capucine eyed the depleted plateau, about to grab the last remaining tourteau —a tiny pink Mediterranean crab—a waiter snatched away the platter and its supporting stand. Another waiter emerged from behind him and placed a large, shallow soup bowl in front of her.
    “That’s going to be far better than that crab,” Alexandre said. “I ordered for you. Lobster ravioles in a sauce of crustacean butter.”
    A waiter placed a dish in front of Alexandre, intoning, “ Aiguillettes de saint-pierre vapeur aux poireaux et truffe. ”
    “I love John Dory, and this one has been steamed and truffled and is served with leeks.” He took a bite. “Absolutely perfect.”
    A man across from him, who had been given the same dish, said, “Absolutely. It would have been delicate enough even for Jean-Louis Brault.”
    At the table there was a silence as shocked as if someone had passed wind loudly. Brault’s suicide-murder had unquestionably been placed on the index of the culinary world.
    Mercifully, there was a buzz when the multi-starred restaurateur appeared to make his lap around the tables, accompanied by the executive chef of the restaurant, a fresh-faced young man still in his twenties, wearing a highly starched chef’s outfit with an immaculate white kerchief knotted around his neck. Significantly, the restaurateur wore a business suit, making it clear that, while the cooking was the domain of the executive chef, his was the genius of creation.
    As hands were shaken and backs patted, the elderly woman next to Capucine leaned over and said in a loud aside, “How young they are nowadays. I can remember when chefs had to be in their sixties and have enormous bellies.”
    Another unfortunate comment. The table was cued to recall that Jean-Louis Brault had been the second youngest chef in France to receive a third star.
    With intense fervor the diners at the table applied themselves to their dishes.
    A man lurched out from behind the bar screen, squinting angrily into the room with deep-sunk, cadaverous eyes over frameless half-glasses. Visibly drunk, he careened into a table, coming to rest by supporting himself with both hands on the back of a diner’s chair. The room iced in embarrassed silence.
    “Mille fois pardon, Monsieur Ducon . A thousand apologies, Mister Asshole,” the drunk sneered when the man turned angrily.
    “Lucien Folon,” Alexandre whispered to Capucine, who had never met him and had only had a glimpse of his profile as he scuttled away from Brault’s funeral mass.
    Hands still on the back of the chair, head jerking, Folon