Private Paris (Private 10)

Fontaine and the other four employees broke down crying and hugged each other. The sommelier, a stocky blonde named Adelaide St. Michel, stopped crying long enough to say, “Does it have to do with the Bocuse d’Or?”

“What makes you say that?” Louis asked.

“The other chefs in France hated Chef Pincus,” she said. “Three times he wins the Bocuse d’Or, and every time you hear the vicious rumors right away, the terrible things they said about him. It was all envy, and I think it was strong enough for people to want him dead. How did he die?”

Hoskins hesitated.

“How did he die?” asked Fontaine, the maître d’.

“He was drowned in his chicken stock,” I said.

The sommelier snapped her fingers at me, and then at Hoskins, who was glaring my way. “There you go, then,” Adelaide St. Michel said. “Chef Pincus was world famous for his stock. This is a statement.”

I had to agree. Killing him in his own soup was designed to send a message. But what, exactly?

Chapter 36

IT CERTAINLY DIDN’T appear to me that any of the staff were involved. All of them appeared genuinely heartbroken. To a person they seemed to have loved René Pincus. He was demanding. He was precise. He could be a withering critic of their work. But he was also extraordinarily generous.

“It was a side of René that no one outside of us knew, really,” said the maître d’. “To the staff, he was like a demanding uncle. In public, he was the French chef of iron.”

He’d said this last in English, so I corrected him. “Iron chef.”

“Yes?” Fontaine said. “René was the iron chef of the world, and now he is no more.” The grief-stricken man broke down sobbing again. “What is to become of us? Who will carry on with the restaurant?”

“Who would be the natural person to step forward?” I asked. “There must be a senior chef working beneath Chef Pincus.”

“That would be me,” said Peter Bonaventure. He looked about forty but had the build of a marathoner. “But I can’t even think this way. I did not want his throne. I loved my job. René was a genius who made our work a passion. And he paid us well, gave us profit shares that were equal to his own.”

“Equal?” I asked.

They nodded. With every one of them making the same amount of euros as Pincus, the idea of financial gain as motive seemed to be diminishing rapidly.

“How many of you smoke?” Louis asked.

Four of the staff members, including the maître d’, raised their hands.

“How many of you would discard a cigarette on the kitchen floor or in the wine cellar?”

All four hands dropped. To a person they looked horrified.

“That would be grounds for termination,” the sommelier said. “No smoking in the restaurant. René would have a fit.”

Louis, Hoskins, and I exchanged glances. Someone with no fear of Pincus had tossed the cigarettes. Probably his killers.

Louis got out his iPhone and called up a picture of Henri Richard. He showed it to them. “Did you see him in the restaurant in the past six weeks or so?”

Remy Fontaine, the maître d’, took one look and said, “Bien sûr. He is the dead opera director. Monsieur Richard. He came here often.”

“Alone?” Hoskins asked.

“Never alone,” Fontaine said. “Always with a woman.”

“Same woman?” I asked.

The maître d’ and the sommelier glanced at each other before she said, “The last two or three times we think it was the same woman. Exotically beautiful, with perfect caramel-colored skin and big cat eyes. But she was different every time she came in. Hair color and cut.”

“And eye color,” the maître d’ said. “Twice they were dark brown, but the last time they were in, her hair had been hennaed red, and her eyes were, I don’t know, like a cat’s eyes?”