Crime Fraiche Read Online Free PDF

an exceptionally heavy-looking skeet gun with superimposed barrels.
    “I wonder if he got that cannon at a pawnshop,” Alexandre said under his breath. “You know, there’s something really not quite right about that citizen. Seems more like a used car salesman than an investment banker.”
    “Do you think he’s even half the shot he would have us believe?” Capucine asked absently, fingering the shotgun shells in the leather bag that hung from her shoulder.
    The sound of the beaters’ gentle tapping on the trees became audible. The idea was to dose the noise level carefully to encourage the birds to run away from the beaters but not to panic them into flying off in all directions prematurely. That way when they reached the edge of the wood, they would have no alternative but to fly up over the line of guns. Capucine lifted her gun to port position across her chest.
    There was a metallic whir like a small electrical appliance. A pheasant lifted almost straight up from the wood, rising steeply over Bellanger’s position. As mechanically as an automaton, he raised his heavy gun, fired once, and lowered it instantly. The action was so rapid it looked like a circus trick. The bird retracted into a small ball and fell like a stone, hitting the ground with a slight bounce.
    “Does that answer your question?” Alexandre asked.
    The wood erupted with pheasants. Capucine fired incessantly until the barrel of her gun became too hot to touch and her shoulder began to throb. She cursed herself. She had spent so much time holding her breath, pointing, and squeezing on the pistol range that she had lost the bird shooters’ golf-stroke rhythm. All at once, it was over. The beaters emerged from the wood, smiling, most with motley mongrels held by frayed bits of old rope. They walked straight through the line of guns and began the search for fallen birds in the wood behind.
    Capucine seemed crestfallen. “I think I only got two. Three at the most. But, bon sang, it felt good.”
    The next two drives were repetitions of the first. Bellanger became a whispered cause célèbre. He showed no enthusiasm, nor even any real interest for shooting, yet every time his gun went up, a bird fell out of the sky. He made no friends that morning.
    Alexandre’s level of boredom grew exponentially. As Capucine’s rhythm returned, she became an increasingly effective shot, totally absorbed, and relegated Alexandre to the role of a fixture propped up on his stick, a character she well knew he was not likely to play for long.
    Just when Capucine thought Alexandre might be on the verge of something rash, the ancient Estafette puttered up with lunch. Folding tables were laid end to end and decked out with plates of charcuterie and cheese, bottles of red wine, carafes of ubiquitous Calvados. Beaters and guns congregated at opposite ends of the long counter, leaving an empty no-man’s-land in the middle. As narrow-necked bottles of Touraine circulated, the jubilation of both groups escalated measurably to the background theme music of the pack of dogs running back and forth under the table with happy abandon, wrestling joyously while foraging for table scraps.
    Alexandre smiled beatifically at a monstrously thick sandwich spilling over with cooked country ham and Livarot cheese pungent with the odor of the barnyard. “When all is said and done,” he said, “haute cuisine is nothing more than an imitation of moments like this.”
    Faithful to the habits of her childhood, Capucine gravitated to the beater end of the table. Even though she recognized none, she was recognized by all and greeted warmly with a ma p’tite ’demoiselle Capucine, as if she were still a child . An old man braced an enormous loaf of pain de campagne against his chest and cut slices with his pocketknife. More powerful than even Proust’s tasteless madeleines, the sight of the knife brought back the paysans of her childhood, who would announce the start of the family meal by