Murder on the Ile Sordou Read Online Free PDF

to make notes on the train back to Paris that evening; he would buy fruit in season and preserve it, as his grandmother had done. He’d make liqueurs from thyme and lavender. Fish would feature highly on the menu; he’d arrange with local fishermen to stop by the island on their way back to Marseille: Prosper wasn’t reliable enough and made it clear that he hated the Le Bons’ presence on what he claimed was
his
island. Émile knew he’d have to get up at some godforsaken hour to meet the fishermen, but at least he wouldn’t be breaking the snow off of the inner windowpane as he had done in Le Berry. Buying meat would be difficult, but he’d arrange to have Provençal lamb delivered, or send Hugo Sammut out to pick it up. Pasta would be his saving grace; he loved making it, and everyone liked eating it. Le Bon also agreed to invest in an Italian meat-carving machine that cost the same price as a small Citroën or Renault, but it was the most beautiful machine Villey had ever seen; brilliant red, its chrome glistening. Its mechanics were as precise as a telescope’s, and with a gentle turning of its wheel, a leg of Bellota or Pata Negra ham from Andalusia could be carved down to one-tenth of a millimeter. Extra legs could be hung from the rafters in the kitchen, Villey thought, or even in the bar.
    He looked out one of the
hublots
at the clients, drinking their celebratory glass of champagne, and he liked the look of them. This would be a good group to start off on; for the Le Bons had reported that they were a bit of everything: a rich film star, Parisians, an American couple, and some middle-class Aixois. Villey was especially intrigued by the mojito-drinking artist, or he thought she was an artist, with her punky clothes and multicolored bracelets up and down her thin but muscular arms. He liked her laugh and could hear her laughing with her friends—a man and a woman—who had just arrived. The movie star was there too, looking sullen, pretending to be busy with his iPhone even though there was no reception, and there was an unkempt elderly man sitting at a corner table busily writing in a notebook. A diary? Villey watched him carefully and decided that the stained Cuban shirt and shaggy beard might be a ruse and that he could be a restaurant critic. Or hotel critic. But so soon? He’d have Serge and Marie-Thérèse keep an eye on him.
    Ã‰mile Villey had decided to be a professional cook when he was twelve. He had helped his mother and aunt cook and serve for a party—his grandparents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary—and had rejoiced at the sounds of the happy diners while he worked away in the kitchen with a lazy, older cousin. Had he known just how difficult his years of training would be, he might have chosen a different field, but what were the choices for a nonbookish boy in the middle of France, whose father was a farmer? He had two older brothers who would split the family farm. The lazy cousin was now the worst electrician in France, and Émile was here, on a sun-soaked Mediterranean island, where the rich came to de-stress.
    And this morning had been a blessing; after his daily swim he had walked around the south side of the island and up over a rocky hill, through a small pine forest, where he came across a small, wild orchard. Someone years ago—when the hotel had been at its climax, no doubt—had planted fruit trees. The trees were in terrible shape; as a farmer’s son he knew that. But two of them were still laden with apricots, although it was late in the season, and Émile took one off the tree and, splitting it apart, ate its warm, juicy, sweet fruit. He put as many in his backpack as he could and rushed back to tell Maxime Le Bon the good news. There was also a huge, umbrella-shaped fig tree, covered in hard little figs. They would be ripe in late summer. He had been making both apricot and fig tarts since he was an