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Authors: Alexander Campion

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CHAPTER 40
O
n her way to the Quai, Capucine called in and learned that Alexandre and Momo had been sent to the small police infirmary in the enormous Hôpital Hôtel-Dieu adjacent to the Quai. Béatrice had been placed in an interrogation cell in the basement of the Quai after she had regained consciousness. She showed no obvious external signs of concussion but had become violent when the doctor attempted to examine her.
Walking down the hall to the infirmary Capucine could hear Momo and Alexandre laughing uproariously. She shook her head in wonder that she had actually thought her husband might experience a post-stress reaction. As she approached the sound she realized she was dreading seeing him. The rush of triumph of the arrest had worn off leaving the bitter realization of the enormity of her actions. She had used the depth of his love for her as a cheap tool in her cheap career, which was really no more than a cheap effort to find a cheap reality for herself. She had actually
used
him.
It was worse than creeping home in the early dawn after having spent the night with another man. Far worse.
A male nurse in dark blue scrubs the same color as a police uniform sat at a desk reading a paperback edition of Jean-Claude Izzo's
Solea
. With his wire-rim glasses and spiky, close-cropped hair the nurse seemed more like a university intellectual than a member of the police force. Wrenching his eyes away from his book, he looked up at Capucine, inquiring with his eyebrows.
“Commissaire
Le Tellier. I've come to see my husband and
Brigadier
Benarouche.”
The nurse stood up out of respect for Capucine's rank and smiled.
“Oui, Commissaire.
They're the ones making all the noise. Good thing the ward's empty. Your
brigadier
had some of his pals from
La Crim'
bring in some beer. They've been at it since the doctor made his last visit. Naturally, I haven't noticed a thing.”
“What did the doctor say?”
“Their eyes had been squirted with a concentrated atropine solution.”
“I didn't know it was concentrated. Are they in any danger?”
“Good Lord, no. If they were, I wouldn't be letting them get soused. Atropine is just a harmless cycloplegic. It only produces mydriasis.”
“Mydriasis?”
“An abnormal dilation of the pupils. It was standard stuff a few years ago when ophthalmologists examined retinas. They don't use it anymore because the patient would be blind as a bat for two to six hours.”
“I was told my husband might have swallowed some of the stuff.”
“The doctor didn't think so. If your husband had ingested any of it, he'd have a severely upset stomach.” In the next room Alexandre sang six bars of
Don Giovanni,
even more painfully off-key than usual. “Of course, that might not have been a bad thing.”
Capucine did not smile. She turned toward the ward. The nurse sat down, clearly delighted to be able to get back to his book.
Capucine took two steps and turned back to the nurse. He rose reluctantly, meeting her gaze.
“If atropine's no longer in use, isn't it impossible to get?” Capucine asked him.
The question obviously pleased the nurse. He put his book down on the desk, pages open so he could get right back to it. “No. Nothing could be easier. All you have to do is boil down the juice of belladonna berries. It doesn't need any further processing. Anyone with a kitchen could do it.”
In the ward six beds were lined up with military precision, all empty except for Alexandre's and Momo's. They sat on the sides of their bunks, facing each other, their gazes not quite meeting. They each held an infirmary tumbler of beer. A full quart bottle was beside each bed. Two empties had rolled against the wall, and two other bottles were neatly stacked under Momo's cot.
“So,” Alexandre said, tapping Momo's knee, “three nuns walk into a bar and—”
“Alexandre,” Capucine said sharply.
Alexandre—clearly two, if not all three, sheets to the wind—looked around sightlessly for the source of the sound.
“So you two are having a little party?” Capucine asked.
“
Parfaitement,”
Alexandre said. “We're toasting Momo's bravery and celebrating the fact that I've crossed off the top item on my bucket list—being a murder victim in one of my wife's cases.” Alexandre erupted in laughter and poked Momo's upper thigh. “Bucket list, murder victim, get it?” He exploded into peals of laughter again.
Momo looked sheepish. “ 'S'cuse me,
Commissaire.
I was assuming I'm not on duty anymore, so it'd be okay if I rinsed a little of the dust out of my throat. Ale ... Monsieur de Huguelet is safe here. No more worries. Right?”
Momo reached down to the floor, grabbed the quart bottle and sloshed beer into their glasses. Amazingly, only a small portion wound up on the floor.
“If you're drinking to Momo, you ought to drink one or two to David as well. I seem to recall he had a little more than a mere assist in the play for your salvation,” Capucine said.
“By all means. Absolutely. Definitely,” Alexandre said, waving his glass in the air, wildly seeking to clink it against Momo's. Failing in his effort, he drank deeply.
“The nurse—he's a great guy, by the way—said that just as soon as our vision comes back, he'll send us home in a squad car. But,” Alexandre said, wrinkling his forehead and putting his index finger to his lips to indicate the extreme secrecy of what he was about to say, “we're going to get the car to take us to the Pied de Cochon, near the old Halles. They stay open all night and we're starving. Absolutely ra-ve-nous. You're right. We'll need to get David to come with us. And maybe the nurse too. Did I tell you what a great guy he is?” Alexandre drained his glass of beer and tapped Momo's knee to get him to pour another.
“You two are going nowhere except home. I'll leave orders. Trust me on that. If you want, you can take Momo home with you. And if you're still all that hungry, you can make your truffled scrambled eggs, but that's all you're going to get tonight. Put Momo up in the guest bedroom. He needs some rest.”
Capucine kissed Alexandre on the forehead with what she hoped was great tenderness and made for the Quai interrogation rooms. Alexandre smiled at her and turned back toward Momo, anxious to unleash another joke.
When she had worked upstairs in
La Crim'
, the basement interrogation rooms had dismayed her—tangible proof of the brutality for which the
Police Judiciaire
was infamous. The rooms were in the third level basement, well below the level of the Seine, which flowed on the far side of the walls. Imagining the water pressure added to the sense of oppression. The rooms were so damp the green paint on the walls flaked and peeled no matter how frequently repainted. The furniture consisted of old, dented and stained oak tables and gray metal chairs with bent legs. Aluminum dome lamps hung from the ceiling, lighting only the table and whoever was unlucky enough to be sitting at it.
Béatrice was in Room C. Capucine knocked quietly on the ice-cold, ancient, iron door. The judas window in the door opened a crack was closed immediately. The door swung open slowly, screeching on hinges that remained rusty even though they were oiled constantly.
The scene was one Capucine had witnessed far too often while at
La Crim'
. The table had been pushed aside. An unknowable number of people lurked almost invisibly in the shadows. Béatrice sat in a chair directly under the harsh light of the lamp, her forearms duct taped to the arms of her chair, as was done when the suspect's violence threatened wounds from handcuffs.
Only two men were visible in the glow from the cone of light. Capucine had seen them at work many times but had never learned their names. A portly older detective, who—save for the old-style Manurhin three fifty seven in a sweat-darkened leather holster under his left armpit—could have passed for the sort of financial adviser who went to people's homes to sit around the dining table to advise them on their mutual funds—and a young, viperous man, so pallid and rangy he could have been a heroin addict. These were the good and bad cops
de service
.
As Capucine approached the tableau, Béatrice raised her head and spat at her.
“You filthy bitch!” she hissed.
The viperous man slapped her. She hissed at him but then let her head fall on her chest again.
Tallon emerged from the shadows.
“I'm wasting my time down here. These two are getting nowhere. I'm counting on you to produce something. I'm using the conference room upstairs. Call me when you have something to tell me,” he said as curtly as if he were still running the
La Crim'
. The door screamed open and clanged shut behind Tallon.
At the sound, Béatrice stood up, arms attached to the chair, and ran at Capucine, attempting to head-butt her in the stomach. Two uniformed officers, of considerably beefier morphology than the average on the force, grabbed the back of the chair and slammed it back in its original position.
The viperous man approached to administer another slap. Capucine stopped him with two raised fingers.
With monosyllables and hand gestures Capucine ordered the two uniformed officers to stand at a distance behind Béatrice and to have a chair brought for herself. She placed the chair so she was diagonally opposite Béatrice, left leg inches away from left leg.
Capucine attempted to recreate the tone of their intimacy.
“You must be exhausted. Would you like some tea? I used to have a selection of tea bags from Mariage Frères in the closet of my old office upstairs and I'll bet they're still there. I can have someone make you a cup of a first-blush Darjeeling.”
“
Pute,”
Béatrice spat at her.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Capucine said, maintaining her girl-to-girl cheerfulness.
“There's nothing to talk about. My father will be here soon to take me away. That's what he always does.”
“Why were you so angry with Alexandre?”
“Because he's one of them. In fact, I think he may even be their leader.”
“Them?”
“Them. Those who judge. Those who command. Those who suck the life out of you.”
“Oh,
them.
And they had to be ... removed? Is that it?”
“Obviously.” Béatrice relaxed in her chair. Her breathing slowed. Some color came back into her face.
Capucine inched her chair closer to Béatrice.
“And killing them was the only way of removing them,” Capucine said in a whisper.
“I never killed anyone. What the hell are you talking about? You're trying to put words in my mouth. But it's not going to work,” Béatrice said loudly.
Capucine needed a long silence. No one in the room moved or even seemed to breathe. They might be brutal but they were definitely very good at the nuances of interrogations.
Just as the silence became unbearable, Capucine said, “I was at your apartment. I saw the pens.”
“The pens,” Béatrice said wistfully.
“They're important?”
“They're the whole thing. They're what it's about. The distillate of the power. The elixir. The key to the door.”
“And you had to kill to get them, didn't you?”
“You bitch! I keep telling you. I never killed anyone. I'm just sitting here waiting for my father to come get me. And he will!”
Another very long silence.
“Tell me about Jean Monteil.”
“That fat old buffoon. He knew less about food than my mother, and that's saying a whole lot. I'm talking about a woman who thinks that heating up a few trays of frozen hors d'œuvres for cocktail guests is the culinary achievement of the century. That guy was a serious menace.”
“And that's why you had to kill him?”
“Bitch! Shut your fucking mouth. I told you. I haven't killed anybody. I'm just sitting here waiting for my father. So get off my fucking case,
pute!
”
Another very long pause.
“One of the pens had the initials ‘A. P.' engraved in the cap,” Capucine said.
“Arsène Peroché. What a fucker that guy was. He had taste and he knew what he was talking about. That's true. But he was like all the others. He didn't know how to control his power. He would diss brilliant chefs who were cooking from their hearts. He would suck the life out of them and leave only a hot, sweaty, stinking shell.”
“So he had to go.”
“Of course he had to go.”
“And you needed to kill him.”
“You stupid bitch! Will you fucking listen to me? I've never killed anyone in my life. I'm not going to talk to you anymore. So there! Happy now?” She pouted like a child.

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