Free Crime Fraiche by Alexander Campion

in her forehead. “Is something the matter?”
    “In a way. I’ve been thinking. I believe this tragic death last week is linked to the mishap at our shoot. I’m sure neither one was an accident and both were connected to Vienneau’s élevage somehow. So I said to myself, since you are a commissaire in the Police Judiciaire, you would be the best person to investigate.”
    Capucine’s heart leapt like a little robin flying off into the sun at Oncle Aymerie’s acknowledgment of her chosen career, but she succeeded in marshaling the gravitas of a senior police officer. “Mon oncle, these are very serious accusations. If you feel this way, you should alert the local police.”
    Oncle Aymerie snorted. “But you are the police. Besides, you’ve met this plaisantin, the local capitaine of the gendarmerie. Be serious, ma nièce. I need you to come back and conduct a proper investigation. Don’t forget this is our village. Has been for centuries. We have a responsibility to the villagers. Noblesse oblige is not to be taken lightly. I need you to be here.”
    Capucine smiled. It was ridiculous. She’d had her little vacation and now it was time to get back to work. What nagged her was that she half suspected Oncle Aymerie was right. There was no doubt that the death at Bouvard’s demonstration had been foul play of some sort, and it did seem unlikely that both victims having the same employer was mere coincidence.
    “Mon oncle, look, it really is going to be next to impossible to leave Paris right now, but I will talk it over with Alexandre tonight. Odile’s faisan au choux made a great impression on him. Why don’t I call you in the morning. We’ll make a decision then.”
     
    Late that night Capucine arrived at her apartment, as she so often did, simultaneously fulfilled, drained, and frustrated. Alexandre, as he so often did, stormed around the kitchen, humming loudly, moving a great deal of air in preparing dinner. Alexandre had owned the rambling apartment in the Marais since his antediluvian university days. He had bought it for a song well before the Marais even thought of becoming fashionable. The third story had housed a cheap brothel, and, day and night, the stairwell had been packed with a long line of illegal Maghrebian day laborers waiting for a quick ten minutes with a fat elderly prostitute. Of course, all that was long gone and the area was now prime Paris real estate. Needless to say, Alexandre would not even entertain theoretical discussions about selling, and Capucine agreed, feeling that its twenty-five hundred square feet would be perfect for rearing a squabbling brood when the time came.
    As she liked to tell her friends, Capucine had managed to housebreak almost the entire apartment, replacing Alexandre’s bachelor clutter with carefully chosen antiques from her family and setting them off with bright pastel colors on the walls and drapes. But two rooms remained unquestionably Alexandre’s, his study and the kitchen. From Alexandre’s point of view, the kitchen was even more inviolate than the study. It was the largest room in the house, filled with hanging garlic and sausages, shelves crammed with odd-shaped bottles of spices and culinary effluvia, long rows of copper pots dangling from rails on the wall. An immense brass and black enamel La Cornue stove enjoyed center stage against the far wall.
    Capucine rejoiced in dinner at home. Alexandre’s cooking was a solace and had the same salubrious effect as snuggling up to him on the sofa and rubbing the endearing gibbosity of his stomach. But as she walked in, her face fell. Beef! There was the unmistakable odor of beef cooking. A delicious enough odor for sure, but it was still beef, and she had told Alexandre that very morning that beef or game of any sort would not pass her lips for the rest of the month.
    Alexandre fully understood her frown. Catching her moods was one of his talents. “Yes, princess, it is beef,” he said, handing her