Murder on the Mediterranean

Book 0: Capucine Culinary Mystery

by Alexander Campion

Genres: Mystery; International Crime & Mystery; Female Sleuths

Synopsis

Escaping the demands of Paris police work, Commissaire Capucine Le Tellier embarks on a well-deserved Mediterranean cruise. But wherever the renowned inspector goes, murder is sure to be close on the horizon. . . On the azure waters off the coasts of Corsica and Sardinia, what could be more relaxing and rewarding than traipsing around the Mediterranean enjoying the local culinary delights. Among the invited bon vivants are Capucine, her husband, the celebrated restaurant critic, her special agent cousin Jacques, a famed bar owner, and even her boss. To all appearances, the table is set for an affair to remember. In the midst of this pleasure cruise, Natalie, the yacht's cook, is lost overboard. A sudden squall is the assumed cause. But once a bullet hole is discovered in her jacket, suspicions quickly shift and the onboard bonhomie suffers accordingly. When a shell casing is uncovered that matches the gun Capucine is authorized to carry, for the first time in her stellar career, the hardworking detective finds herself the prime suspect. For Capucine, these are clearly not the deep waters she envisioned as part of her holiday. As the motives become murkier, the gifted Commissaire will need to harness all her powers of deduction to get to the bottom of the mystery--before she ends up at the bottom of the sea. Praise for Alexander Campion and the Capucine Culinary Mysteries "Francophiles love this series for its Parisian setting and police detective Capucine's culinary cases." -- Library Journal "Delectable. . ..sure to please the most discriminating palates." -- Publishers Weekly on Killer Critique "This intelligent series. . .will appeal to a diversity of readers. Devotees of G.M. Malliet and Charles Todd will especially enjoy this different and delicious series." -- Booklist on Killer Critique "A feast of crime with a soupçon of gourmet delight."  -- RT Book Reviews, 4 Stars, on Crime Fraiche "Full of amusing characters. . ..Readers will want a second helping." -- Publishers Weekly on The Grave Gourmet "This new series offers a uniquely blended mix of ‘hooks' that will appeal to a wide variety of mystery lovers."  -- Booklist on The Grave Gourmet "Features lively dialogue, much discussion of culinary delights, a peek into the French criminal justice system, and a pleasing mystery." --Library Journal on The Grave Gourmet

Release date: July 1, 2014

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 321

Sample

The cramps seared without mercy. On the lee side of the cockpit she contorted into a fetal twist, feet tight against buttocks, knees hard under chin. Like synchronized dancers, the twin wheels of the helm gyrated back and forth in the grip of the autopilot. Two women sat huddled on the other side of the cockpit, ostracizing her with their whispers. She glared at them, as if their rudeness was the source of her pain.

Another spasm wrenched her lower abdomen in a vise grip. She grunted. On the horizon a static of lightning was followed by a dull bowling-ball rumble of thunder. Greasy, fat drops of rain began to fall out of the sooty sky. She stood up, grabbed a foul-weather jacket from a heap at the foot of the settee, slipped it on, and inched across the sloping deck toward the bow.

Another spasm stunned her. A torrent buckled down, aimed only at her, soaking her to the skin. She couldn’t manage to pull the jacket closed. Drenched, her T-shirt stuck to her breasts and stomach. Shuddering, she continued to fumble with the jacket. It wasn’t hers. She must have picked up one of the women’s. Great. Now, on top of everything else, she was going to get an earful when she got back to the cockpit. Even in the downpour, those rich bitches would get their noses all out of joint if one of them had to wear her taped-up, oil-stained piece of shit.

A violent spasm heaved at her bowels. Only one thing mattered, getting to the bow before it was too late. Doubled over, she shuffled along the heaving, sloping nonslip surface of the deck, her bare feet skating through the cascading water. The pain intensified. She wasn’t going to make it to the bow.

The top of her head rammed into the wire cable of the forestay. She gasped a sob of pain and relief. The surprise loosened her grip on her muscles, and she felt the contractions of unstoppable peristalsis take charge. She ripped off the foul-weather jacket, threw it down on the deck, shrugged her shoulders out of the elastic suspenders of her foul-weather pants, pushed them down to her knees with the panties inside, gripped the forestay with both hands, swung herself out over the bow pulpit railing. The action unleashed the full force of the eruption. She was sure the explosion of her intestines could be heard in the cockpit, forty-five feet away, despite the din of the storm.

The relief lasted only seconds. She convulsed in pain again. And once again. And yet again. A figure emerged from the sticky darkness. Bound to be one of the two bitches, who’d come to see what was wrong. For a brief second, her embarrassment overrode the anguish of her gut. Hoping to keep from being seen in her mortifying position, she bleated out, “It’s nothing. I’ll be back in a second. Don’t worry about me.” Another spasm. Another spurt.

But it wasn’t a woman. Oh God, not now. He was back. This was absolutely too much. She hurled insults. Strong hands grabbed her naked ankles and shook her legs. Her colon pumped out a weak but satisfying spurt. She relaxed her grip on the forestay, felt herself shoved hard forward, toppled off the bow pulpit, fell butt first into the sea.

She tried to tread water, but the pants around her ankles held fast. As she squirmed to kick off the foulie pants, she felt the slick hull of the boat rub against her arm. She scrabbled, grabbing for a handhold on the slick gel-coated side of the boat. In an instant the boat was gone, its tiny white stern light no more than a pinprick in the blackness.

She thrashed, but the bagging pants dragged her deeper and deeper the more she struggled. She swallowed a mouthful of salt water, gagged, coughed, swallowed more.

Her last thought was that drowning was supposed to be the most peaceful of deaths. How could everyone have been so wrong about that?

“Capucine, I don’t know how I let you talk me into this escapade. The thought of tossing helplessly over the waves of the open sea in your tiny walnut shell has been keeping me awake for days.”

Police Judiciaire commissaire Capucine Le Tellier smiled at her erstwhile boss, Juge d’Instruction Inès Maistre, from under mischievous eyebrows and tilted her head back to swallow the sugary dregs of her demitasse of café express.

“The Diomede is hardly a nutshell, and she’s definitely not mine. She’s a bareboat charter. A fifty-five-foot Dufour with four cabins and all the room in the world. Much bigger than my first apartment after I graduated from Sciences Po. Look, you can see her over there.”

Capucine pointed at a substantial yacht docked on the other side of the marina. The mainsail furled on its boom was sheathed in a navy-blue cover lettered MEDITERRANEAN ANCHORAGE YACHTS.

Inès peered at the boats over reading glasses perched on the tip of her nose, shrugged her shoulders in Gallic resignation. With an effort Capucine twisted her frown into a smile. The women were almost the same age, still south of their midthirties, and had worked together often in the antediluvian era, a few years prior, when Capucine was still a reluctant hotshot in the fiscal brigade. Capucine had never been entirely at ease with Inès. Her neurotic obsession with putting corporate criminals behind bars was as unsettling as it was captivating.

Capucine had blurted out her invitation two weeks earlier, when an unexpected surge of camaraderie had washed over her during a luncheon meeting. Inès wanted Capucine to work with her on a case. Even though Capucine now had her hands full with her own brigade in the tough working-class Twentieth Arrondissement, the thought of lending a hand on an intricate financial problem had produced a thrill.

A waiter—an eighteen-year-old who was obviously paying for his summer in the sun by working tables—came up with menus. He had a hard time tearing his eyes away from Capucine’s décolleté. She concluded she might just have gone one button too far with her white linen shirt.

“Any news on your suspect?” Capucine asked Inès.

“He’s a bit more than a suspect. He’s guilty as hell. All we have to do is prove it.”

“Would you like me to explain about the dishes?” the young waiter asked, eyes still glued to Capucine. Capucine ignored him as if she hadn’t heard.

“And he was released two days ago, but that was only to be expected.”

The situation was straightforward. The guilty-as-hell man in question was the young grandson of the chairman of a venerable family-owned Paris investment bank, Tottinguer & Cie. The house was so ancient, the name was pronounced differently from the way it was spelled. Nevertheless, Inès was convinced the bank’s management, including the grandson, were inveterate financial miscreants. She had been after them for years and had never been able to produce even the slightest simulacrum of a case.

But now she might have found a chink in their armour. André Tottinguer, the grandson, a gérant of the bank and also a known philanderer, had been arrested for assaulting his wife. Inès had explained that Tottinguer had arrived home, returning from a tryst, at four in the morning to find his wife pressing the barrels of his Purdey shotgun up against his nose, her finger white tight on the trigger. Fortunately, the silly woman had left the safety on. He grabbed the gun, chased her down the stairwell, fired one shot into the ceiling and another through the lobby’s interior glass door after she’d run out. The wife, in her bathrobe and pajamas, managed to find a cab and get to her sister’s. The concierge of the building called the police, who arrested Tottinguer.

“And why did the police let him go?”

“That was my idea. No prosecutor would have even tried to present a case of attempted manslaughter. Charges might have been brought for tapage nocturne, creating a disturbance in the night, but all you get for that is a fine.

“No, I want to use this incident for an investigation of domestic violence. With your experience in the Twentieth, you’re an expert. Once I have him solidly behind bars, the wife will cooperate with me and get me all the fuel I need for the financial prosecution of the whole family.”

Capucine didn’t know what to say. She twisted her mouth in the tight French frown that could mean either assent or incredulity.

“Capucine, I’m going to get him this time. Believe me. He’ll go up for twenty years. And the rest of the family will follow right after. Just watch me.” Inès gripped the edge of the table so hard, her knuckles paled.

There was an awkward silence. The tintinnabulation of steel halyards rattling against aluminum masts became audible.

Inès made a valiant attempt to put the conversation back on an even keel.

“Tell me more about this boat trip of yours.”

“We leave on the morning tide tomorrow morning and sail straight for Bonifacio. You’ll love it. It’s the most beautiful town in Corsica, built high up on a white cliff so eroded by the sea that the town overhangs the water and looks like it might collapse at any moment. Then we spend a few days exploring the east coast of Sardinia and sail straight back here.”

“And who else is there going to be?”

“There’ll be nine of us in all. Six others besides you and me and my husband, Alexandre. My cousin Jacques—he’s with the Ministry of the Interior—is coming, too. And one of Alexandre’s cronies, Serge Monnot, who owns a number of very popular bars in the Marais, will be the skipper. He’s an avid sailor, and he’s the one who chartered the boat. Then there’s Angélique Berthier and her husband, Dominique. Angélique was a classmate of mine at Sciences Po. She’s doing very well as a partner in a head-hunting firm. Actually, we’ve drifted a bit apart since school, but we used to be very close friends. Her husband, Dominique, is wonderful, a charming marine watercolorist. And there’s a woman I don’t know, Florence Henriot. She’s a friend of Serge’s and is in charge of one of the imprints at Hachette. She used to be a famous professional racing sailor. Twice she won the Route du Rhum single-handed yacht race to Guadeloupe.”

Inès grimaced and shuddered histrionically. “How could anyone want to do that? God knows how long she was alone on a boat without really sleeping or having a proper bath.” She looked up sharply at Capucine. “There are bathrooms on this boat, aren’t there?”

“Of course. There’s one attached en suite to each of the cabins. Except on a boat they’re called heads, not bathrooms.”

Inès snorted and shook her head slightly. “That only makes eight people. Who’s the ninth?”

“The professional crew member Serge hired. A young girl, apparently. She’s on board to cook and clean and help him when he maneuvers the boat, so all we have to do is lie around in the sun and eat delicious meals.”

“Good. We’ll put the time to good use. We need to brainstorm about Tottinguer.”

“And unwind a little. Let’s not forget about that part. You’re going to be enchanted by Bonifacio, and the Costa Smeralda in Sardinia is the most beautiful coast in the Mediterranean.”

“Maybe, but my main objective is to keep you fully in my sights until you’re formally assigned to me. If need be, I’ll handcuff our wrists together.”

Capucine laughed over politely at the joke.

Inès frowned at Capucine over her reading glasses. “Capucine, I need to get this man. Without the quality of the police work you can bring to my team, I’m dead. Just dead.”

Five miles away in Saint-Tropez, Alexandre also sat at a restaurant table overlooking the inimitable azure of the Mediterranean. He had asked for the check, and the maître d’ had arrived with thimble-size glasses of liqueur de framboise and the assurance that the honor of Monsieur de Huguelet’s presence at the restaurant Pétrus was far more compensation than the establishment deserved. He was, after all, the undisputed doyen of restaurant critics.

“When was the last time you actually paid for a meal in a restaurant, mon cousin?” Jacques asked with a smirk.

Despite himself, Alexandre was invariably amused by Jacques, the son of Capucine’s father’s brother. The two had grown up together as brother and sister. Jacques never tired of hinting that there might have been something a bit more than purely fraternal to the relationship. Jacques also took unrestrained joy in the fact that he held an ill-defined, but apparently exalted, post with the DGSE, France’s intelligence service, which occasionally cast him in the role of éminence grise in Capucine’s cases.

Alexandre sipped his bone-chilling alcool. He would not allow himself to be baited. The meal had been excellent. They had both had Mediterranean spiny lobster. Jacques had chosen less well and had ordered his sautéed on a door-size teppanyaki grill, while Alexandre had chosen his presented in delicate fresh pasta ravioles with a creamy sauce of liquefied fennel bulbs, shallots, mustard, and just a hint of orange juice. Far more than satisfactory.

The restaurant Pétrus had recently opened at the north end of Saint-Tropez’s fabled quai Jean Jaurès and was fast making a name for itself not only as a fashionable, dans le vent restaurant, but also as the purveyor of reference of prepared meals to the mega yachts that populated the quai. Alexandre decided he would write something upbeat about the Pétrus in his blog on Le Figaro’s website.

The framboise downed, hands shaken, promises to return made, favorable mentions in the press hinted at, Alexandre and Jacques set out on their postprandial stroll down the quai Jean Jaurès.

The Saint-Tropez port was immutable, crammed with wide, porch-size fantail decks of gigantic yachts berthed stern to quai, invariably decorated with an ornate vase of flowers on a table, swarming with young, tanned, obsequious, athletic crew in shorts and T-shirt uniforms.

“We have only one boat slave, it seems,” Jacques said languidly, aping a disappointed moue. “I hope she makes up in pulchritude what we lack in quantity.”

Alexandre harrumphed. “The last thing we need on this cruise is a boat girl. Florence is a world-champion sailor. Serge is very competent. Capucine knows her way around boats. If you ask me, Serge took one look at that coffin-size forepeak cabin and decided it would be perfect for some minion he could boss around like Captain Bligh.”

At this point in their flânocherie, as Alexandre called it, they reached Sénéquier, the fabled café epicenter of the Riviera. Considering that the vacation ideal of every French person under the age of thirty-five was to spend the month of August with elbows propped up on one of Sénéquier’s red, triangular tables, it was not surprising that there were no seats available on the terrace.

Two girls, their long legs at the apricot beginnings of their summer tans, stood up to leave. Jacques pirouetted into a canvas director’s chair with the finesse of a dancer, and Alexandre followed suit by spilling into his. A waiter arrived, imperiously flicking his side towel in irritation. There was a queue inside, and he had already received copious tips in exchange for a table. Jacques looked blandly at the man, straightening the crease in his Lanvin white-linen trousers, revealing creamy soft, baby-blue suede Tod’s driving shoes. The waiter checked and respectfully stood up straight. Then he caught sight of Alexandre, felt he should recognize him, stood up straighter still.

“Messieurs?” he asked with exaggerated politeness.

“Pastis,” Alexandre ordered, glancing at Jacques, who nodded.

When the drinks came, they both fell silent, admiring the high-school chemistry trick of the clear golden pastis turning milky white when water was added.

“Actually,” Alexandre said after his first sip, “I really am in a pet about this boat girl of Serge’s. I’d planned on doing the cooking myself. Working on those tiny boat stoves is an exciting challenge. I have a whole folder of recipes and a carrier bag filled with basic necessities . . . tins of pâté de foie gras and a few jars of truffles and . . .”

Alexandre had failed to attract Jacques’s attention. Alexandre searched the terrace for the source of Jacques’s fascination. Jacques seemed captivated by some creature in the very depths of the terrace. This was unexpected, since Jacques never looked at women. A fact that, when combined with his immoderate interest in clothes, made the family wonder if he wasn’t, well, just possibly a soupçon fey. Then Alexandre focused on the woman, a translucent beauty with alabaster skin, silken pale blond hair, and ice-blue eyes. Even a woolly mammoth would have stared.

Alexandre caught sight of her companion and jumped up.

“Régis!” he exclaimed happily. “Toi ici! You’re the very last person I expected to run into in this crass temple of see and be seen. What on earth are you doing here?”

It was the work of a moment to whisk two chairs away from an adjoining table and make introductions. Régis de la Rochelle was a food photographer, well known for his commercials and his illustrations of pricey coffee-table cookbooks; the seraphic creature was called Aude Theve-noux and was, apparently, some sort of lawyer.

“Having an absolutely miserable time,” Aude answered for him. Her face revealed not the slightest trace of expression when she spoke. It was almost as if she were a life-size porcelain doll of exquisite delicacy equipped with a sound system operated by a third party.

“The plan was to come down here and charter a boat and go somewhere,” Régis said, “but everything is rented, so we’re stuck in our drab little hotel room up in the hills.”

“And the traffic jams are so bad, it’s an hour cab ride to drive the two miles into town,” Aude contributed with no more than a ventriloquist’s movement of her lips.

“I have the perfect solution,” Jacques said. “We have a boat chartered in Port Grimaud. We’re leaving for Corsica in the morning. Why don’t you come with us? We have plenty of room.”

Alexandre hiked his eyebrows. This was a whole new Jacques.

“We could put you up on the settee in the main salon,” Jacques said. “It can turn into a double bed. We’re going to do an overnight crossing straight to Bonifacio. We could drop you off there, and you could have your vacation away from the crowds, or at least the worst of them.”

Aude looked into Jacques’s eyes, mute. Even though not a word had been exchanged, the bargain was sealed.

More pastis was ordered.

Régis chatted at Alexandre about his current project as one of the photographers on Alain Ducasse’s latest tome. Jacques and Aude looked into each other’s eyes.

Lubricated by a series of pastises, they became steeped in conversations as the radiant sunshine bore through the umbrella over the table and the afternoon wore on. When the shadows lengthened, Alexandre’s thoughts turned to dinner. It was high time to find a cab and make their way back to Port Grimaud to hatch a plan for the evening meal with Capucine and that odd juge d’instruction friend of hers. He called for the bill, waving away any attempt from Régis to share. As they rose, Aude looked into Jacques’s eyes.

“A demain,” she said. Alexandre had a strong sense of their complicity.

“We’re at the Mediterranean Anchorage Yachts Marina in Port Grimaud,” Jacques said. “Our skipper wants to get going by ten tomorrow morning.”

Aude said nothing. She shook Alexandre’s hand and leaned forward to allow Jacques to kiss her cheeks.

“You let Jacques do what?” Capucine glared at Alexandre, her spoon dinging loudly as she stirred her café au lait on the tiny terrace of their hotel room overlooking one of the myriad canals that had been constructed to provide Port Grimaud with a veneer of antiquity. The contrived mix of burnt siennas and red ochers intending to create the look of “the Venice of France” exacerbated Capucine’s irritation.

Alexandre was still partially enveloped in the arms of Morpheus. For him, seven thirty was hardly the hour for a levee. Left to his own devices, he would have begun his day at ten at the earliest. He looked balefully at Capucine from under lids three-quarters closed. It was clear that he would remain mute until he had taken the first sip from the split of champagne he had ordered, further escalating Capucine’s ire.

“All right, I admit I made a mistake, too,” Capucine said. “Inviting Inès was an impulse. I confess she intimidates me. And, yes, she may be a little too, well, intense, and, well . . .” Capucine lowered her voice. “Maybe just a bit too plebeian for this crowd.” Her volume returned to normal. “But still, we talked it over with Serge, and he had absolutely no problems with her. Remember? But inviting on the spur of the moment not one, but two, people you ran into at a café, and proposing that they sleep on the sofa of an already overcrowded boat, without even thinking of consulting anyone, well, my dear, that’s frankly quite over the top.”

Capucine’s tirade was interrupted by the arrival of room service.

The restorative power of the good monk Dom Pérignon’s sparkling wine on Alexandre was never anything less than astonishing. Halfway through his flute Alexandre’s ebullient bonhomie was fully restored.

He favored Capucine with his most fulsome smile. Capucine thawed, but only around the edges.

“Serge will be over the moon when he sees Aude. Trust me. And Régis is a good buddy and an excellent cook. Between the two of us our victuals alone will make the trip worthwhile.”

“That remains to be seen.”

Nearly an hour late—after all, the physical elements of post-squabble reconciliations are not to be rushed—Capucine and Alexandre stood at the end of a long floating dock, facing the ample stern of a generously proportioned sailboat. Their friend Serge, transformed from his Paris persona, stood sixty-five feet away at the bow of the boat. In the City of Light, in trim Italian suits worn tieless, with the top two buttons of his silk shirts left undone, he seemed always prepared for a paparazzo to snap him for the lifestyle pages of the glossies, which seemed never to tire of him. Now he had recast himself into a Mediterranean sailing bum. Clad only in shorts and boat shoes, he was already deeply tanned, his cheeks stubbled, his hard, flat chest adorned with a luminescent jade juju hanging from his neck on a leather thong. He stood next to a fresh-faced young man in a blue polo shirt marked MEDITERRANEAN ANCHORAGE YACHTS. Both peered intently at a clipboard, checking off the boat’s inventory. Serge’s bubble of self-importance was palpable even from the dock.

Capucine and Alexandre greeted Inès, who hovered twenty feet from the stern. Exchanging inanities about the glory of the weather, the trio waited to be invited on board once the inventory was complete. A couple clanked down the aluminum ramp leading to the dock, their shrill argument far louder than the ringing of the metal plates under their feet.

“I saw the way you were hitting on that waitress! You’ve reached the point where you don’t even wait for lunch. You’re on the prowl even at breakfast. And you have the effrontery to do it right in front of me!”

It was hard to detect even a vestige of the sensitive Sciences Po Angélique in her current headhunter manifestation. The Modigliani face and shock of chestnut hair were still there, but her earlier delicacy had been overlaid by the intransient hardness of a top-of-the-line headhunter. On the other hand, Dominique, dreamy and placid in the storm of the harangue, remained the quintessential artist, concerned only with adjusting the knot of his fuchsia Liberty Print neck scarf.

Catching sight of Capucine, Angélique doused her rage. The females air kissed loudly, while the males thumped backs robustly. As this display of affection went on, a tall, wiry woman, face sunbaked brown as a saddle, clanked down the ramp with no more luggage than a diminutive backpack slung over one shoulder. Florence Henriot’s face was unforgettable. It had been plastered over every Saturday supplement for decades when she was the queen of the daring single-handed transoceanic yacht races that so captivated the imagination of the country. She seemed not to have aged a bit. Capucine supposed that was the result of having had her face embalmed by the sun as a teenager.

Puffed up as a blowfish, Serge appea. . .