A Market Tale Page 3
“That’s not in the market rules,” Bruno said.
“It’s quite a new one, a food-hygiene directive from Brussels. Unless you can show you’ve been in business for three years or worked in a restaurant, you have to go through the course if you’re selling cooked food for immediate consumption. It only takes a few days, and you may have to pay for it, but if you don’t take the course, the fines can be stiff and they can confiscate your equipment. Talk to Marie-Claire, who does the lunches for the kids at the collège; she’s a qualified instructor. That’s where my son got his certificate.”
Marie-Claire was helpful. She prepared the school lunches in the mornings and ran her courses in the afternoons. Better still, the collège courses were free, but they lasted a whole week. Kati could join the next one on Monday afternoon. But until the course ended she’d be risking prosecution if she continued to offer hot food. Kati said she would comply when Bruno explained, but there were tears in her eyes as she told him that after the previous fine she could not afford to give up a week of selling at the markets in the mornings. She would have to take the risk.
“But please don’t tell Marcel,” she added. “I don’t want to turn this into a family row between him and Nadette. I can’t stand the thought of that hanging over us.”
Bruno checked the hygiene regulations. Only one person at the stall needed to have the certificate, and they could have an unqualified helper. And so with Madame Vinh and Jean-Paul’s son and Ethel from Yorkshire, who had been running the stall for more than the three years required, Bruno arranged for Kati to be joined by one of the others for the five mornings.
It was on the fourth day, once again at Lalinde, that the hygiene inspectors arrived. Bruno had been forewarned. He had called his various counterparts in the markets to explain the problem, and with Guillaume Quatremer in Lalinde he had a stroke of luck. Guillaume, an ex-serviceman like Bruno, had developed a taste for Kati’s sausage rolls and was eager to help. He said a friend in the mayor’s office had e-mailed him a copy of the anonymous letter they had received complaining that the writer had suffered food poisoning after buying a pasty at Kati’s Kitchen at the Lalinde market.
Bruno, in civilian clothes, was enjoying a citron pressé at a table in the café by the small canal when the inspectors swooped. Fortunately, Jean-Paul’s son was in Kati’s van, wearing plastic gloves and equipped with his certificate. The inspectors checked that all the equipment conformed to the rules and took away with them a sample of each of the products on sale for testing. Bruno was at the counter paying for his drink when a familiar figure came into the café, brusquely demanded service and ordered a café-cognac. Nadette, in her usual bullish way, had evidently taken time off from the Trésor Public to witness the downfall of her rival.
Bruno slipped out through a side door and called Laurent, the director of the Trésor Public in St. Denis, and asked him if Nadette was at work that day. No, he was told; she had called in sick. How odd, Bruno said to him, with a feeling that poetic justice was being served, that she was at that very moment drinking café-cognac in the Lalinde market. Bruno then asked if Nadette had complained of food poisoning, or any other ailment, in the previous three weeks. No, Laurent replied, but Nadette would certainly have some explaining to do when she returned to work, he said. Bruno closed his phone and looked through the café window to see a second glass of cognac being placed on Nadette’s table. He went in search of Nadette’s blue Renault Clio, a vehicle he knew from the Trésor Public parking lot. When he found it, he called Guillaume, told him where to find the car and suggested that a Breathalyzer test might be in order.
“We got her,” Guillaume reported when Bruno was back in his office at the St. Denis mairie. “She failed the breath test, so we got the doc to take a blood sample, and we impounded the car until she is sober. I took her to the bus stop, but she’ll have a couple of hours to wait.”
Bruno checked his watch and then the bus timetable. He thanked Guillaume and walked down to the collège, where he saw Kati’s van parked. He peeked through the kitchen window to see her sitting in a row with three schoolgirls and taking notes while Marie-Claire was writing on the blackboard. One more day and Kati would have her certificate. He walked back to the Trésor Public and told Laurent his supposedly sick employee was about to arrive at the bus stop by the bank. They walked there together and waited outside the bank until the bus drew up and Nadette climbed out.
“Please be in my office at eight-thirty tomorrow morning, Nadette, to explain why you were too sick to work but healthy enough to take jaunts around the countryside,” Laurent said to her grimly. He marched off, and after a moment the red-faced Nadette followed him across the bridge at a discreet distance and took the road to her home. Bruno thought he should give her some time to collect herself, and about an hour later he knocked at her door. She was wearing an apron, and the smell of baking wafted enticingly from within as she glared fiercely at him.
“Nadette, it’s time you and I had a serious talk,” he said. “I know it’s been a rough day, but it will get a lot rougher if we talk about certain anonymous letters, trumped-up denunciations and false claims of food poisoning.”
Her jaw fell open in surprise, and she made no objection as Bruno walked in and went straight to the kitchen, where a quiche Lorraine, fresh from the oven, was cooling on the counter beside the stove. The pastry was that perfect golden brown that Bruno knew meant she had used lard rather than butter. It smelled wonderful and reminded him that he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. He took a seat at the kitchen table, removed his képi and said, “I’m starving, Nadette, and that smells good.”
“It’s not a proper quiche, just an experiment,” she said, and brought out two plates, knives and forks and a couple of glasses. Even a woman as mean-spirited as Nadette could hardly ignore the Périgord tradition of hospitality. She took from the fridge an already opened bottle of Bergerac Sec, handed it to Bruno for him to pour and then sliced the quiche into quarters and served them.
“So you’re behind all this, Bruno,” she said. “I should have known.”
“No, Nadette,” he replied. “You are. You brought all this on yourself, including those café-cognacs in Lalinde where you were expecting to watch Kati get disciplined.”
He took a forkful of the quiche and suddenly felt a sense of contentment stealing over him, dispelling the quiet anger that had been building up against Nadette throughout the day. He could taste the heavy cream and the aged Cantal cheese she had used, and there was a hint of nutmeg teasing his taste buds, but there was something different about the flavor. That couldn’t be the bacon he’d expected to find, but whatever she had used the result was wonderful.
“Mon Dieu,” he said in surprise. “This is the best quiche I’ve ever tasted.”
“Better than hers, you mean,” Nadette said in her usual sharp way, but she looked pleased and began to eat. Bruno poured out the wine, and they ate in silence for a few moments, until Bruno put down his fork.
“This isn’t a quiche Lorraine,” he said. “I’ve just realized; it’s not bacon.”
“You’re right. It’s duck,” she replied. “Manchons de canard and some gésiers. I was wondering why they call it Lorraine, and then I thought why not try to make something local, a quiche périgourdine, so I used duck instead of ham.” She paused and looked at him nervously. “Is it all right?”
“All right?” he said, his mouth full. Bruno swallowed and took a sip of wine. “It’s wonderful. You’ve invented something historic. They’ll be serving this in all the restaurants once word gets around.”
They ate contentedly together in a silence punctuated only by Bruno’s grunts of satisfaction. But Nadette was obviously still troubled and kept glancing at him as if about to speak. She let him finish.
“Are you going to try to get me fired?” she asked, when their plates were cleared.
Bruno shook his head; his mouth was full with the final taste of the food, the pastry that seemed lighter than air but crisper than a cookie, its butter merging richly with the cream in the filling and the touch of salt on the slivers of duck.
“This is France,” he said, glancing hopefully at the remaining half of the quiche. “You won’t get fired for stealing a sick day. If we fired everybody who did that, there’d hardly be anyone left at work. But if you can bake like that, I don’t know why you don’t set up a business. You’d make a fortune. I’d be your first customer.”
Nadette’s face softened a little, and she served the remaining portions. Then she refilled their glasses. It was at that moment that Bruno realized that he might be able to achieve more than simply stopping Nanette’s campaign against Kati.
“That’s not your real problem,” he said. “What can bring about your downfall is your false accusation of food poisoning. Once an official dossier gets opened, that’s serious, particularly when we trace the paper and printer and show you wrote it on Trésor Public equipment. Your fingerprints will be on it. That could get you fired and render you liable to criminal charges. Then Kati would have quite a lawsuit against you. Is that what you want?”
Nadette stopped eating. Bruno continued in almost casual tones, “And I doubt whether Marcel would ever speak to you again. I know you’re devoted to your brother, but you’ve got to see how happy Kati is making him. Put yourself in Marcel’s shoes, Nadette. Don’t you think he deserves to be happy again, after all he’s been through?”
He finished his quiche, emptied his glass and picked up his képi. “That quiche was so good, I’d love another one. I’ll come here and pick it up Saturday morning after the market opens, about nine. Don’t worry, I’ll happily pay for it. Your cooking is worth its weight in gold. Thank you for the meal. Think about what I said. Your choice is pretty clear. Either you stop harassing Kati, or I pursue this false accusation of yours.”
The next afternoon at four, he and Marcel, along with Stéphane, Raoul and Jean-Paul, were in the collège kitchen waiting to applaud when Marie-Claire handed the certificates of attendance to Kati and the other students and told them they were now qualified to work as food preparers for the public. When Kati turned, waving her certificate, to embrace Marcel, Bruno remembered how Nadette had stayed immobile at the table when he left her kitchen, tears beginning to spill down her cheeks.
Marie-Claire, who had conspired earlier with Bruno, was opening the cupboard and bringing out wineglasses as Bruno went to fetch the bottles of champagne he had placed in the big refrigerator earlier. When all the glasses were filled, they drank a toast to the students’ futures, to the success of Kati’s venture, another to Swiss-French relations and a final one to the happy couple. And before the two lovers left, hand in hand, Bruno drew them to one side and told them of his plan for the following day. So intent were Kati and Marcel upon each other, he wasn’t sure they had fully grasped what he had said, but he could take care of everything in the morning.
So just after nine on a lovely Saturday in early autumn, with the trees along the riverbank just turning to a rich gold and the ducks waddling with all the fatness they had stored in summer to fuel their long migration flights, Bruno presented himself at Nadette’s door. She offered him coffee, which he accepted, and she served a fresh, hot brioche she had made, along with some of her own apricot jam. Both were delicious, but they could hardly compete with the scent of the quiche, wrapped in a dishcloth, that awaited him.
Nadette shrugged when he asked what he owed her and then said, “Call it two euros.” Bruno gave her the money, asked her to remain in the house until his return and left for the market, the quiche held carefully in both hands.
Within thirty minutes he was back and without explanation asked Nadette to accompany him on an errand. He knew from Laurent at the Trésor Public that Nadette had been given a formal reprimand and a written warning the previous day and doubtless now she was wondering what new punishment was in store for her. He led her in silence to the market, past the fishmonger and Stéphane’s cheese stall so they could avoid Marcel, and stopped in front of Kati’s van.
In pride of place on the counter stood the dish that Bruno had bought that morning, and a hand-lettered sign behind it read NADETTE’S INVENTION: QUICHE PÉRIGOURDINE, 6 EUROS. Underneath, in slightly smaller letters, were the words: “THE BEST I EVER TASTED”—CHEF DE POLICE BRUNO.
“It’s already sold,” said Bruno, “and here’s your share of the profit.” He took a two-euro piece from Kati and pressed it into Nadette’s hand.
“She’s family now, Nadette, and I think you have here the makings of a good family business,” he said as Marcel came around the corner from his stall to take Kati’s hand as she descended from her van. They all admired Nadette’s quiche and the poster in the brief moment before Stéphane called them all to join him and his friends for the casse-croûte. And as Marcel led his sister and his lover to the table, Bruno took the quiche from the counter and carried it across to the casse-croûte table.
“To Nadette and her wonderful quiche,” said Kati, raising her glass. And as the others joined in the toast, Bruno grinned widely at the happy young woman from Schaffhausen and saw her give him a conspiratorial wink.
“This quiche is great,” said Stéphane, “but there’s not much to go around for all of us.”
“I’ve got two more at home,” said Nadette, rising from the table. “Give me a few minutes and I’ll bring them.”
ALSO BY
MARTIN WALKER
* * *
The Bruno, Chief of Police Series
BRUNO, CHIEF OF POLICE
Meet Benoît Courrèges, aka Bruno, a policeman in a small village in the South of France. He’s a former soldier who has embraced the pleasures and slow rhythms of country life. He lives in a restored shepherd’s cottage, shops at the local market, and distills his own vin de noix. He has a gun but never wears it; he has the power to arrest but never uses it. Most of his policework involves helping local farmers—his friends and neighbors—to avoid paying E.U. inspectors’ fines. But then the murder of an elderly North African who fought in the French army changes all that. Now Bruno must balance his beloved routines with an investigation that opens wounds from the dark years of Nazi occupation, and he soon discovers that even his seemingly perfect corner of la belle France is not exempt from his country’s past.
Fiction
THE DARK VINEYARD
When a bevy of winemakers descend on Saint-Denis, competing for its land and spurring resentment among the villagers, the idyllic town—where Benoit “Bruno” Courreges is the town’s only policeman—finds itself the center of an intense drama, with suspicious fires at the agricultural research station that is working on genetically-modified crops. Two young men—Max, an environmentalist who hopes to make organic wine, and Fernando, the heir to an American wine fortune—become rivals for the affections of Jacqueline, a flirtatious, newly arrived Québécoise student of wine. Events grow ever darker, culminating in two suspicious deaths, and Bruno finds that the problems of the present are never far from those of the past.
Fiction
BLACK DIAMOND
Something dangerous is afoot in St. Denis; in the space of a few weeks, the normally sleepy village sees attacks on Vietnamese vendors, arson at a local Asian restaurant, and subpar truffles from China smuggled into outgoing shipments at a nearby market. All of it threatens the Dordogne’s truffle trade, worth millions of dollars each year, and all of it spells trouble for Benoît “Bruno” Courrèges, master chef, devoted oenophile, and beloved chief of police. When one of his hunting partners, a noted truffle expert, is murdered, Bruno’s investigation into the murky events unfolding around St. Denis becomes infinitely more complicated. Because his friend wasn’t just a connoisseur of French delicacies, he was a former high-profile intelligence agent—and someone wanted him dead.
Fiction
THE CROWDED GRAVE
It’s spring in the idyllic village of St. Denis, and for Chief of Police Bruno Courrèges that means lamb stews, bottles of his beloved Pomerol, morning walks with his hound, Gigi, and a new string of regional crimes and international capers. When a local archaeological team searching for Neanderthal remains turns up a corpse with a watch on its wrist and a bullet in its head, it’s up to Bruno to solve the case. But the task will not be easy, not with a meddlesome new magistrate, a series of attacks by animal rights activists on local foie gras producers, and a summit between France and Spain approaching—not to mention two beautiful, brilliant women vying for Bruno’s affections.
Fiction
THE DEVIL’S CAVE
It’s spring in St. Denis. The village choir is preparing for its Easter concert, the wildflowers are blooming, and among the lazy whorls of the river a dead woman is found floating in a boat. This means another case for Bruno, the town’s cherished chief of police. With the discovery of sinister markings and black candles near the body, it seems to Bruno that the occult might be involved. And as questions mount—most notably about a troubling real estate proposal in the region and the sudden reappearance of an elderly countess—Bruno and his colleagues are drawn ever closer to a climactic showdown in the Gouffre de Colombac: the place locals call the Devil’s Cave.
Fiction