Montmartre Mysteries Read online

  Benjamin checked his watch and found that he still had a little time before his meeting with the director of Bretonneau Hospital. He could fit in a visit to the Calvaire Cemetery, which was nestled against Saint Pierre Church. It was said to be the smallest cemetery in Paris. Or perhaps he would climb the Rue Lepic.

  At that moment, his cell phone vibrated. Virgile had just come out of the Montparnasse train station. Later in the day, they would be attending a Vouvray tasting Benjamin was hosting. Virgile’s southwestern French accent had an agreeable ring.

  “Geez, boss, you could have warned me that it was snowing in Paris. I would have brought my Moon Boots.”

  They arranged to meet in a few hours at the Hôtel de Crillon. Benjamin would leave him to his own devices until then.

  “Have a light lunch. Nothing too spicy or overly seasoned,” Benjamin cautioned. “And that, young man, should apply to other areas of your life, as well.”

  Benjamin smiled as he ended the call. He strolled along the uneven cobblestones of the Rue Lepic and thought of Elisabeth. How fortunate he was to have her as his wife, instead of Sheila.

  “Yes, I’ll bring Elisabeth here to Montmartre in May,” he said to himself. “We’ll have a nice spring weekend in Paris with no cell phones or other interruptions.”

  The clatter of broken glass jerked him out of his daydream. He had almost reached number 25, a wine shop called Le Chai de la Vigne-Rhône, in homage to Rhone Valley wines, and owned by his friend Arthur Solacroup.

  Benjamin saw a man in a ski mask emerge from the shop, look left and right, and hurry away from the store.

  Benjamin’s warning antenna went up. It was snowing, but it wasn’t cold enough to wear a ski mask. Benjamin followed the man with his eyes, trying to pick up any identifying details. All he could see was a navy blue jacket, fatigues, and heavy shoes that looked like combat boots.

  Benjamin hurried through the door, aware that a young man in a hoodie was right behind him.

  On the floor, with a terrified look on his face, quivering lips, and bloody left arm, the wine merchant was begging for help in a jumble of shattered bottles.

  On any other day, Benjamin Cooker would have recognized the characteristic aroma of syrah, the excellent grape varietal of Rhône Valley wines. He would have identified the notes of blackberry, cassis, and black olive. But now something more powerful was assaulting his nose. It was the sulfur-tinged smell of burned gunpowder.

  3

  “My god, Arthur! Are you okay? What happened here?” Benjamin swept some broken glass aside with the tip of his John Lobb and squatted down next to his friend.

  “Benjamin Cooker? Is that you? What are you doing here?” the wine merchant asked. His words were barely audible.

  “Don’t talk. Help will be here shortly.”

  As they waited for the paramedics, the young man in the hoodie paced the shop and watched. Benjamin stayed near Arthur.

  When they had met years earlier, Arthur Solacroup’s eyes struck Benjamin right away. They were hard—steely even. Maybe it was the twelve years spent with the Foreign Legion in the sands of Djibouti. Or was it the deserts of Ethiopia? Paradoxically, Arthur had a soft and relaxed voice and confident bearing that Benjamin—and doubtless his customers—found reassuring. His demeanor, coupled with his expertise, had been instrumental in the success of his modest shop in Montmartre. In addition to attracting Parisians from other arrondissements and tourists, he had established a solid following of regulars from the neighborhood who wouldn’t dream of doing business with anyone but Arthur Solacroup.

  Arthur, in fact, was the best-known wine merchant in Montmartre. Since his inclusion in the Cooker Guide, his shop had never gone without customers. His advice was always judicious. His prices were never steep, and wine lovers valued his carefully chosen bottles. Arthur could raise and lower the metal shutters whenever he felt like it.

  That said, Arthur was something of an iconoclast. He extolled exceptional but little-known selections and dismissed the crus classés praised by those who chose their wine according to label. At Le Chai de la Vigne-Rhône, a customer had to be willing to abandon his opinions and surrender to the advice of the shop’s owner.

  Decked out in his black apron, Arthur would typically size up his thirsty customer and listen without saying a word. Then he would turn around and scan the wine racks, where bottles awaited deflowering. With one sure and efficient sweep of his arm, he would grab the perfect bottle and bring it to the counter for the customer’s inspection.

  “At this price you won’t find anything better,” he would say.

  The wine merchant, with a shaved head and an accent that betrayed his southern roots but not his precise origins, had made a clean break from his past. Benjamin knew very little about his previous life. He didn’t even know how old he was. Benjamin suspected that he had enjoyed some amorous adventures and had probably overindulged at one or more points in his life. But Arthur wasn’t one to tell stories or give explanations. Why, for example, was he so passionate about wines from the Rhône Valley?

  Arriving within minutes, the police asked Benjamin and the young man in the hoodie some questions. They both described what they could about the person they had seen leaving but neither had anything further to add. Finally, the officers told them they were no longer needed. The paramedics got Arthur on the gurney and into the ambulance.

  Benjamin and the young man left the store together and watched the flashing lights of the ambulance disappear down the Rue Lepic. Shaking his head, Benjamin turned to his companion, who was clearly distraught. His hands were shaking, and his face was ghost white. Benjamin expected him to take off, but he didn’t.

  “Have you known Arthur long?” Benjamin ventured, hoping the young man could provide even a shred of information that would explain why someone would want to shoot the wine merchant.

  Getting no response, he pressed on.

  “Why don’t we find a café and sit down for a few minutes. I’m freezing. Aren’t you? Let me buy you a cup of coffee or tea.”

  The boy shoved his hands into his shallow pockets and nodded. “I could use some coffee. My name’s Karim.”

  ~ ~ ~

  The front window of the café was foggy with condensation, and the small room was warm and cozy. Benjamin chose a booth in the back where they could talk privately. They placed their orders, and the winemaker watched as Karim began to relax.

  “So you’re Benjamin Cooker,” Karim said. “The famous Benjamin Cooker. Arthur talked about you all the time. He was so proud of being in your guide. He said you were one of the few people he trusted.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” Benjamin said. “I’ve been acquainted with Arthur for a while now. What about you?”

  “I can’t say I’ve known him that long, but I probably know him better than most folks around here.”

  “How is that?”

  He gave Benjamin a nervous look, eying him carefully, and said, “You can blame my hookah for that.”

  Benjamin put on his most nonjudgmental expression and sipped his tea, hoping to keep his new friend relaxed.

  “Oh? And why would I blame the hookah?”

  “Arthur and I met last summer. He was visiting a friend who has an apartment down the hall in the building where I live. It was late and hot. I was hanging out by myself outside the building. Arthur was leaving, and he recognized me. I work part time at a shop in the neighborhood and run errands for some other shop owners, and he’d seen me around. Anyway, we started talking. Who’d have thought we’d have so much in common? We hit it off, probably because I’m from the part of the world where Arthur spent so much time. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry to get home. After a while I asked him if he wanted to come inside for a smoke.”

  Benjamin imagined Karim leading Arthur to a small attic apartment, pulling out a hookah, and dropping a small lump of hashish in the bowl. He envisioned the two of them sharing memories of an incandescent Africa, where the desert sizzled und
er the glare of the sun, and in the towns, the aromas of turmeric, cumin, cinnamon, and cloves wafted through the air.

  “He told me he joined the Foreign Legion when he was teenager. He lied about his age to get in. I don’t know why anyone would do that.”

  “Son, people have a romantic vision of the French Foreign Legion. Recruits take on a new name when they join, so it’s like starting over again.”

  “Yeah, he said he did something stupid he wanted to forget. He didn’t tell me what it was. Do you think he did something bad?”

  “The legion does have a reputation for taking crooks and fugitives, but I understand they now do detailed background checks via Interpol, for what that’s worth. I don’t know Arthur all that well, but he seems like an upright fellow.”

  “In any case, he told me a lot about his time as a soldier.”

  In a flood of words, Karim recounted Arthur’s stories of the Legion as if they were his own: the daytime heat, the nights, the prostitutes infected with AIDS, his too-brief leave at a Red Sea resort, and the training camp on a Gulf of Aden island surrounded by great white sharks.

  “He told me the chief warrant officer was a guy named Boulard, and the captain of the camp was a tough dude named Kyriel. Arthur liked him.”

  Benjamin pictured Arthur and Karim watching the bubbles dance in the water as they smoked.

  “More coffee?” he asked Karim, signaling to the waiter. “Did he talk about his life before the Legion?”

  “He told me he liked to pull the legs off insects. He’d done it ever since he started walking. He liked the way it annoyed his mom, who used to hover over his baby brother. Grasshoppers and spiders were his favorites. He told me about chasing rats just to cut off their tails. He cut up lizards and snakes too. Then he asked if I did it too, like mutilating animals was the most normal thing in the world.”

  “How did you answer?” Benjamin asked, feeling a bit odd getting so much information about Arthur, but curious just the same.

  Karim grinned. “Oh, I said yes, but really I never even thought about doing things like that.”

  “I guess the military was a good fit for Arthur,” Benjamin said.

  “That’s what he thought. I never could have survived it: training in the sand, the fist fights and knife brawls, his warrant officer’s humiliations, the scorpions in the bunkers, the filthy dives in Djibouti, the fornicating with one woman after another... He always called it fornicating, not screwing, or banging, or fucking.”

  Benjamin tried to imagine the Arthur he knew talking about fornication, and a smile crossed his lips.

  “Did you know he has a seahorse tattoo on his left arm?” Karim asked.

  “No, I’ll admit I didn’t.”

  “You may have guessed by now that he’s quite the lady’s man. The chicks love his eyes, especially the way they’re two different colors.”

  Karim stopped talking and played with his spoon.

  “Is there something you want to tell me?” Benjamin asked.

  Karim drank the last drops of coffee from the cup and didn’t say anything.

  “Did he tell you why he left the Foreign Legion?” Benjamin asked.

  “When I asked him, I remember he sat straight up and said, ‘I left the day Boulard blew his brains out. They blamed Kyriel. The Legion’s just a bunch of batshit crazy guys. I had to get out of there and fast!’”

  Benjamin wondered how much of the tale was true and how much was fiction. He looked at his watch. “Karim, did you see Arthur earlier today?”

  “The day started out normal. I was supposed to run some errands for him and he showed up late, like usual. When he did get in, he took a delivery from the Chapoutier estate in Tain l’Hermitage. He’s been teaching me about wines.”

  “That is a fine wine. A family business—seven generations of vintners. And now, all their wines are biodynamic. But I’m getting off the point. Did anything else happen?”

  “Just when Arthur stamped the receipt from the delivery man, a couple of tourists came in.”

  “How did you know they were tourists?”

  “They were weighed down with Vuitton bags and had a portrait sketched at the Place du Tertre. They wanted a bottle of Saint-Amour wine. “

  “Yes, one of the ten Beaujolais crus.”

  “Well, of course, Arthur gave them something else. He pulled out a 2000 white Châteauneuf-du-Pape and told them to try it. He said they’d like the aromas of citrus, spice, jasmine, and honey. His words exactly. They also bought a 1999 Cheval Blanc from Saint Émilion, and didn’t even blink at the price of that grand cru classé.”

  “That was a good year. A keeper. Did they leave then?”

  “Arthur rang up the sale, but instead of turning around and leaving the shop, they leaned over the counter, as if they were asking him to divulge a secret, and asked where they could find Henri Désiré Landru’s residence.”

  “Whose?”

  “You know—Bluebeard. They also wanted to know where Buffalo Bill performed and the names of the cafés where Edith Piaf sang.”

  “Oh,” Benjamin said, disappointed. They were after Montmartre tourist lore, nothing that could explain why Arthur was shot. “And then?”

  “It was funny. Arthur pointed them in the wrong direction. I know more about this neighborhood than he does, and I’m from Morocco.”

  “So it was more or less a normal day. Nothing out of the ordinary happened?”

  “No, there was something. When the tourists left, the mailman dropped off a package. Arthur opened it and found a bottle in a cardboard box. It wasn’t just any bottle. It was embossed, like a Châteauneuf-du-Pape bottle, except there wasn’t any wine in it, just a folded piece of paper.”

  “How odd.”

  “Arthur pulled out the cork but couldn’t get the message out. He used a piece of wire he found in the backroom. I wanted to help, but he was going at it with his usual stubborn, do-it-yourself, I’m-a-soldier attitude. He grabbed the bottle by the neck and smashed it against the marble countertop. A glass shard nicked his right hand. He unfolded the paper, but then handed it to me to read.”

  “Well? What did it say?”

  You may be a filthy wine star

  But now I know where you are

  Soon the vine will bleed,

  And you too should take heed.

  4

  Benjamin would have to rush to make his appointment, but he still took time to stand on his toes to study the perfect alignment of tombstones in the Montmartre Cemetery. It was his small homage to Marie-Antoine Carême, the founding father of classical French cuisine, who was buried here.

  A pristine layer of white covered the graves, and now the snow was starting to pile up on him too. He cursed himself for having left his hat at the hotel, and rushed along the stone wall that separated the departed from the living. He turned onto the Rue Joseph de Maistre.

  By the time he reached his destination, he was shivering all over. It took all of Françoise Lacaze’s warmth to thaw him out. She welcomed him enthusiastically and gave him a tour of the hospital before turning to the real purpose of his visit: the patch of vineyard.

  The hospital director introduced Benjamin to the two maintenance workers in charge of the parks and gardens, and the three of them escorted the winemaker, wrapped tightly in his Loden, through the rows. Benjamin thought it best to question the two gardeners, because they were the ones directly responsible for the vines. Evidently, their training in horticulture did not include winegrowing. Over the course of several winters, prunings had been botched, and this battalion of gangly wine stocks was destined to die. They would have to pull up the moribund chasselas and replant.

  “Actually, you should consider making a wine capable of rejuvenating your patients,” Benjamin said.

  “That reminds me of a story, Mr. Cooker. You know, my uncle was a pharmacist in a village in Lot called Cazals. Have you heard of it?”

  The winemaker shook his head.

  “To be honest, i
t doesn’t matter where it was. One day, a little old man who had to be in his eighties comes tottering into the pharmacy. He says to my uncle, ‘I’d like a little bottle of mouse elixir. You have that, I hope.’ My uncle, who had the driest wit imaginable, answers, ‘If it’s rat poison, I’m afraid we don’t have any. But if you’re looking for Abbot Maus’s famous water of youth, here you go, my good man. Make good use of it.’ Slipping the bottle into a pocket of his jacket, the old man said, ‘What? You think I need it? It’s for my wife.’”

  Benjamin laughed, as did the two gardeners.

  “Back to the vines. Yes, we’ll pull them out, but what type of grape do you recommend, Mr. Cooker? Merlot?”

  “That’s one idea. In my opinion you should remain true to the spirit of the old vines of Montmartre. But, of course, that doesn’t mean you have to grow the same grapes.”

  “That is to say?” Mrs. Lacaze asked. Her cheeks were beginning to turn pink from the cold.

  “Clos Montmartre grows gamay and pinot noir. You could consider doing something different: Auxerrois, for example. Malbec is another option. It’s the favorite Cahors grape variety. That would make your uncle in Cazals happy,” Benjamin said, giving Mrs. Lacaze a wink.

  Mrs. Lacaze, a native of Gascony, seemed inspired by the malbec. “I like that idea. Cahors malbec is a wine that gets better with time. This should give our patients something to look forward to. But in practical terms, how do we go about this project?”

  Benjamin Cooker put a knowing hand on the director’s shoulder.

  “Don’t you worry about that part. A hundred plants will suffice. I’ll take care of finding you a producer from the Lot valley who will not only give them to you, but also organize the planting.”