Chapter 29
Early the next Saturday morning Capucine bundled a very testy Alexandre into the Clio for the forty-five-minute ride to the town of Versailles to attend the baptism of one of her cousins’ first child.
“I don’t understand why anyone would choose to live in Versailles,” Alexandre whined, “and if they absolutely must, why do they find it necessary to baptize their scrofulous little urchins at the crack of dawn?”
“They live in Versailles because Marie-Chantal is a bit of a snob and Aurélien doesn’t make very much money in his job selling insurance. It’s less expensive than Paris and Marie-Chantal feels it’s just as chic as the Sixteenth Arrondissement. And I hardly think eleven o’clock counts as the crack of dawn.”
Capucine was enchanted with the church, a small but delightfully proportioned example of early French baroque architecture complete with an inverted-bowl cupola, delicately carved oak paneling, and a lavishly gilded baptismal font. To her utter amazement Cousin Jacques was standing by the basin, proprietarily resplendent in a Prince of Wales check suit, clearly unwilling to relinquish any of the godparental limelight as he unabashedly upstaged the horse-faced godmother. Dimly Capucine recalled that Jacques had been at boarding school with Aurélien but she had had no idea the unlikely friendship had survived into adulthood.
As tiny Marie-Aymone’s head was dipped in the chilly holy water, she burst into muted wails that politely ceased the instant Jacques wrapped her in a white lace baptismal shawl that had been in the family for generations. Capucine’s throat caught and her eyes misted as she realized that she had been baptized in the selfsame shawl. Biting her lip was no help at all, and she was forced to conjure up an image of Rivière smirking disdainfully at her before she could regain her tough-girl flic’s demeanor.
After the ceremony, the forty or so guests were gently herded into the enclosed garden of Marie-Chantal and Loïc’s small stone house. Over the phone Marie-Chantal had explained to Capucine with a titter that the house—which she insisted had been built by one of Louis the XIV’s foremen during the construction of the château—was just too bijou for so many guests and so they were going to have a garden party even though the garden, so sadly, was hardly at its summer best. A small table placed in a corner held two crested silver dishes that offered a meager pile of finger sandwiches, and a rococo silver wine cooler abstemiously proffered four bottles of champagne.
Alexandre was aghast. “Here I am, hauled all the way out to the very marchland of French culture and when I arrive it turns out I’m to be denied even basic human sustenance.” With alarm Capucine recognized this as the preamble to one of Alexandre’s lectures and could easily imagine him searching out the priest to make wittily acerbic comments about Jesus’ self-proliferating loaves and fishes for the multitude. Still, she fully shared his dismay. Two or three miniscule sandwiches and a few sips of champagne did seem well beyond parsimonious under the circumstances, particularly as her stomach was beginning to growl.
From behind Capucine heard a familiar mocking voice directed at Alexandre. “Fear not, dear cousin. I took the liberty of booking a table for the three of us at a lovely restaurant with a charming view of the chateau’s famed royal vegetable gardens. Since this little hostelry sports a Michelin star, your day may yet be saved,” Jacques said.
Capucine cringed again. Alexandre had always been—completely foolishly, of course—a little jealous of Jacques, but, to her surprise, Alexandre warmly grasped Jacques’ hand and, without even a trace of irony, said, “Cousin, you are a ray of sunshine in my bleak day.”
“Well, then,” said Jacques, “let’s not stand on the order of our going; let’s just get rolling. If I hear one more iteration of ‘Jaaaaaques’ in that god-awful Neuilly-Auteuil-Passy lockjaw or have to kiss one more wrinkled, geriatric hand I may find myself teaching this branch of the family a few words they don’t know,” Jacques said, leaning back languidly against an ancient wooden door in the stone wall, which gave way under his weight with a loud cinematic creak. The three slipped out and made for the Clio.
The Relais du Potager du Roi’s long suit was its panoramic view of the royal kitchen gardens, which had been painstakingly restored to the original ornate checkerboard and populated with fruits and vegetables guaranteed to be identical to those present in Louis XV’s day. Happily, despite the restaurant’s pronounced vegetarian bent, in deference to the French veneration of protein, game held pride of place on the menu. Capucine opted for partridge, Jacques for pheasant, and Alexandre for French grouse, which he delightedly explained was now almost impossible to find.
By the time the birds were nearly consumed—the shot delicately removed from mouths and placed on the sides of plates with a satisfying little ping—and a second bottle of Nuits-Saint-Georges was uncorked, Capucine felt the day might turn out to be a success after all.
Jacques put his hand under the table and squeezed Capucine’s leg just above the knee. Alexandre’s face tightened.
“So, cousin,” Jacques asked with a knowing smile, “how goes your famous case? I read your report on the Trag agent who was impersonating one of our people. What a jolly time you must have had catching him.”
“All in a day’s work,” Capucine said, removing Jacques’ hand. “Actually, we have a suspect, but I can’t make myself believe he had anything to do with the murder. Other than that, I’m dry.”
Jacques produced his little Cheshire grin and put his hand back on Capucine’s leg. “I would have thought you’d be up to your eyeballs in international intrigue by now.”
The bubble of Capucine’s contentment burst. “Jacques, are you keeping something back from me? Tell me right now!”
Jacques giggled and pinched Capucine’s kneecap, making her squirm and Alexandre frown. “Little cousin, you love to think I’m hiding secrets from you. I think it’s because your id is begging you to offer me sexual favors for them.” Capucine was obliged to calm Alexandre with one of her most severe looks.
“Actually,” Jacques continued, “there are no secrets, just pure logic. Didn’t you ever ask yourself how Trag just happened to know about Project Typhon?”
“Of course. It seems they just guessed Renault would be working on improving gas mileage and used Delage’s death as an opportunity to plant a spy.”
“That’s exactly what they did. But you never stopped to think there might be other Trags at work, did you?”
“There can’t possibly be other firms like Trag, can there?”
“Good Lord, there are any number of private firms, most much smaller, of course. And then there are all the national intelligence services who can be even better than Trag and twice as unscrupulous even though their employees earn far less. I’m willing to bet Renault is like a big steaming cow pie alive with industrious little beetles tunneling in and out.”
“But Typhon is top secret. How could it attract that many people?”
“Project Typhon may be a secret but the fact that Renault is working on gas catalysis is an obvious truism. You see, technological leaps invariably turn out to be a race between a number of competitors and Renault is such a strong technical player it will obviously be in the race.”
“I don’t get it,” Capucine said.
“I see his point,” Alexandre said. “Let me try to explain. When most major scientific and technological discoveries are made it always seems that any number of different people in different places are working on exactly the same thing at the same time. For example, we like to think that only Santos Dumont and the Wright brothers had a monopoly on cooking up the airplane. But no one ever talks about Karl Jatho or Traian Vuia or Jacob Ellehammer, who all flew airplanes in different countries at about the same time. The point is that when technology is ready to pop, it pops all over the place like ripe pieces of fruit dropping off a tree.”
“I still don’t get it,” Capucine said.
“Look, cousine, it’s the same thing with this gasoline catalyst,” Jacques said, “people are working on it all over the world. It’s ready to drop off the tree, as dear cousin Alexandre says. Its time has come.”
“And what does all this theorizing about the nature of technological discovery have to do with the case?” Capucine asked.
“Remember my cow-dung heap?”
“How could I forget? Such a charming metaphor to use at lunch.”
“You see, it’s not just the number of beetles crawling in and out, it’s the fact that there are different kinds.”
“I suspected the metaphor would get even more delightful. Let’s hear it.”
“Industrial spies come in two basic types: moles and hackers. Moles look like trusted employees and spirit information out. Hackers burrow in from the outside and bleed information out of your computer systems. You were confronted with such a rare type it’s almost never seen: a scam artist. They’re so unusual you should have pickled the one you caught in formaldehyde and put him on your desk.”
“That’s exactly what Commissaire Principal Tallon wanted to do.”
Capucine removed Jacques’ hand from her leg and placed it firmly on the table with a loud thunk. “It took a while, but the penny finally dropped.”