Peter May: Blowback

Enzo studied a portrait of the young Marc taken by the celebrated Robert Doisneau. A chiaroscuro in black and white of a fresh-faced young man inclined to plumpness, dark eyes shining with life and humour. And something else. Something intensely felt, burning somewhere far behind them. The ambition, perhaps, the drive that had made him one of the world’s top chefs in the years to come. Whatever it was, Doisneau had caught it. Magically. It had been the great talent of the man to capture what no one else even saw.

He turned, then, noticing for the first time another door, in the wall opposite the window.

“It opens off the hall,” Madame Fraysse said. “He liked to come and go without going through the apartment.” She cast a critical eye around the room. “It feels a little cold now.” And Enzo realized she didn’t mean the temperature. “I had it redecorated after his death. I regret that now. There was so much of him in here. But I just couldn’t bear the constant reminder. Now, it might have been a comfort.”

She turned toward the roll top and drew back the lid to reveal a cluttered desktop, shelves and brass-handled drawers ranged along behind it. It was a handsome piece of furniture

“But I never cleared out his desk. So many personal things. It didn’t seem right.”

Among all the papers lay a titanium MacBook Pro laptop computer, and next to it a white pearl fountain pen, intricately worked in what looked like matte silver. It stood in an elegant desk stand. Enzo lifted it up and removed the cap to reveal the engravings on its silvered nib. “It’s a beautiful pen.”

“It’s a Dupont Taj Mahal. The workings are in palladium. It’s softer than platinum, and more beautifully colored, don’t you think? It was one of a limited edition of a thousand.”

Enzo raised an eyebrow. This was no ordinary pen. “Must have been expensive.”

“I think, monsieur, you could have dined at Chez Fraysse every evening for a week, and still had change. After he gained that third star, nothing was too good for Marc. Only the finest pen was good enough for writing on the finest paper.” She lifted up a sheet of stationery from the desk. “You only have to touch it to feel the quality. He had all our stationery watermarked with the MF logo.” She held it up to the light, and Enzo saw the pale graphic representation of the intertwined M and F subtly embedded in the fabric of the paper.

“He hand wrote each day’s menu himself, sitting here at his bureau.” She slid open the top drawer of the right-hand filing cabinet and extracted a sheet from one of a dozen or more suspension files. “He kept all the originals. A kind of archive.” She passed it to Enzo, and he was struck by the distinctively ornate flow of the handwriting, the light and heavy lines of the palladium nib, the flourish at the end of each word. Like the work of an artist: la tarte aux cepes de pays a l’huile de noix; rafraichie d’un bouquet parfume. A mere forty euros for this appetizer on the a la carte.

Enzo handed it back to her. “Makes me hungry just to read it.”

She smiled. “Don’t worry, Monsieur Macleod, we have a place set for you to eat with us tonight en famille in the kitchen.” And he found himself a little disappointed that he would be eating in the kitchen rather than the dining room. The fare would probably be somewhat different.

He turned back to the desk, fingering things, as if the touch of them might bring him somehow closer to the dead man. A paper punch, a ruler, an eraser. He lifted the lid of the laptop and noticed its power cable snaking away to some concealed power point behind the desk. “Did he use the computer much?”

“Oh, yes, he spent a lot of time on it. He loved his email. He was forever writing to somebody, and his inbox always seemed full. He used his browser to scour the web in search of ideas. Novel ingredients, novel recipes. And, of course, critiques of his food, articles about himself. He needed the reassurance of constant praise, you see. Sadly, it didn’t matter how many good critiques he received, one bad one would send him spiralling into a depression for days.”

Enzo closed the lid again and noticed that the laptop sat on a large blotter covered with scribbles, the idle doodling of a dead man. But here were words, too, and names. The initials JR, their contours inked over again and again till they were almost unreadable. A phone number that began with the digits 06. A cellphone number. The phrase, la nature parle et l’experience traduit, written in Marc Fraysse’s distinctive hand. Nature speaks, experience translates. A quote, Enzo knew, from Jean-Paul Sartre. His thoughts were interrupted by the door from the hall opening behind them. Both he and Madame Fraysse turned to be greeted by the grinning, florid face of a large man losing his hair.

“Ah, Guy. You’re just in time to meet Monsieur Macleod.”

“They told me you were up here.” Guy extended an enormous hand to crush Enzo’s. The sleeves of his voluminous khaki shirt were rolled up to the elbow, the tails of it out over well-worn denims, and he wore a pair of scuffed sneakers. Not the image Enzo had had in mind of one of the world’s most successful restauranteurs. “A pleasure to meet you, Monsieur Macleod. We have heard a great deal about you.” There was a twinkle in his blue eyes, and an openness that immediately drew Enzo. “Has Elisabeth been filling you in?”

“She has.”

“Good. Well, we’re both entirely at your disposal. We want to get to the bottom of this, Monsieur Macleod. It’s been too long, and there is still no closure.”

“Well, I hope I’ll be able to do that for you, Monsieur Fraysse. But there are no guarantees, I’m afraid.”

“No, of course not. And it’s Guy, by the way. You don’t mind if I call you… Enzo, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“I hate formalities. And I’m sure my sister-in-law would prefer you to call her Elisabeth.”

A glance at Elisabeth’s frozen smile told Enzo that perhaps she wouldn’t. He decided to stick with Madame Fraysse.

“At any rate, if you are finished here, I’m sure you would like to see the kitchen,” Guy said.

“Very much.”

“Good. It’s a bit special. I’ll take you down. But first I want to show you my pride and joy.”

Enzo heard Madame Fraysse’s barely audible sigh. “His wine cellar.”

Guy beamed. “Exactly. I have more than four thousand labels, Enzo, and nearly seventy thousand bottles. You couldn’t put a price on the collection. I have vintages down there that will never be drunk.”

Enzo frowned. “Why not?”

“Because they’re far too valuable to waste on a moment of fleeting pleasure.”

The cellar was accessed through a stout oak door off the reception area, just a few paces from the west-facing dining room. Guests were already assembling in the lounge to order aperitifs and await that day’s amuse-bouches, spoonfuls of flavour served on lacquer platters, whatever the chef might have dreamed up during the afternoon to whet the appetites of evening diners.

Guy flicked a light switch at the top of a flight of wooden steps leading down to the cellar. Lamps flickered and shed soft light on rows of wine racks stretching off into the chill gloom below them. The cellar was enormous, filling the footprint of the entire house, hacked out of the bedrock on which the foundations had been built. The floor was stone flagged, and the walls themselves bedrock rising to stone founds.

Guy’s voice boomed and echoed as he led Enzo down the steps. “The temperature down here never wavers,” he said. “Summer or winter. Better than any air-conditioning. A constant twelve degrees centigrade. Perfect to keep the wine in best condition.” He started off along a narrow passage between two towering rows of racks. “When success came we spent money on three things. The building itself, Marc’s kitchen, and my cellar. And I’m pretty sure I’ve assembled one of the best in France.” He stopped and turned to confront the following Enzo with a mask of incomprehension. He shook his head. “The strangest thing. Marc was possibly one of the best chefs this country has ever produced. He had an impeccable palate. Incredibly discerning. He should have revelled in the degustation, the tasting of the wines. But he didn’t drink. Only the odd glass. He had no interest in wine. None. Quite extraordinary.”