Read Murder on the Mediterranean (Capucine Culinary Mystery) for Free Online

dropped back a few feet, his camera poised.
    “Can you toss this and then serve, Angélique? It seems we have to eat it while the sauce it still hot.” The second Angélique’s implements touched the bowl, a bright flash and then two more dazed the diners. “Great shot,” Régis announced. “Now give me some action, Angélique. I want to see some real tossing. I need drama.”
    Turning to face Alexandre, who had removed his little rugby balls from the oven and was covering them with aluminum foil, Régis asked, “What do you call this again?”
    Alexandre pushed his way up the incline, smiling the proud grin of a three-star chef emerging from his kitchen. Capucine was sure he imagined himself in a foot-high, immaculate white chef’s toque.
    “ Bagna cauda. It’s a Niçois classic. Potatoes, baby beets, baby leeks, baby carrots, spring onions, radishes, bell peppers, endive, and many other things, but most importantly, properly trimmed baby artichokes. The sauce is made with anchovies and garlic in olive oil. But the point of the thing is that it has to be eaten hot. Hence the name.”
    As always, Alexandre’s food had a mesmerizing effect. No one spoke for thirty seconds. The anchovies gave the delicate baby vegetables a piquancy that elevated them to the ethereal. Dishes like this never surprised Capucine when Alexandre made them on his enormous La Cornue stove in their apartment, but the fact that he was able to pull it off on a tiny stove on a heaving sea impressed her. She hoped they might have a serious storm so he could attempt profiteroles.
    Capucine looked over at Inès to see how she was coping with her first in-cabin meal. She seemed to be relishing the bagna cauda.
    “So tell us, Serge,” Angélique said with exaggerated cheerfulness, “all about Bonifacio. What time are we going to get there, and what’s it going to look like?”
    Serge puffed out his chest like a carrier pigeon. “Bonifacio is one of the great natural harbors of the world. It’s at the end of a narrow gorge nearly half a mile long and cut into the rock. And high up on the rock, above the harbor, there’s a small town—”
    Florence cut him off. “There are places where you can have lunch and lean out the window as far as you can and still not see where the sea meets the bottom of the cliff. I always move my chair very carefully.”
    Serge jockeyed to regain the microphone. “We’ll arrive in the middle of the morning. We’re going to have a hard sail tonight, and so I’m going to tell you how I want to assign the crew—”
    “Voilà,” Alexandre said, arriving with a platter, leaning forward against the incline. Régis’s incessant flashes lit up the room like a nightclub.
    The main course was beautifully browned squid, bloated with a stuffing of crab, the squid’s chopped tentacles, onions, green peppers, red bell peppers, and a bit of garlic; seasoned with curry and hot mustard powder; and sprinkled with lime. It was accompanied by an elegant tian of thin slices of tomatoes and eggplant, topped with little pieces of fresh goat cheese, covered with the Midi’s ubiquitous herbes de Provence and a latticework of a truly excellent olive oil Alexandre had unearthed on his shopping foray. This all was served with an unctuous, round, honey-noted Ott rosé.
    There was another moment of silence as the first bites were tasted. From her seat Capucine could see Nathalie scowling at them from her position at the helm. Even though the sun had set nearly an hour before, the dusk was still rosy bright.
    Florence followed Capucine’s gaze.
    “Serge,” Florence said. “Whose head is Nathalie going to use?”
    “I, er, hadn’t—”
    “It’s going to take more than a bathroom to scrape the filth off that girl’s feet,” Angélique said. “Someone needs to put a pressure hose to her.”
    She glanced at Aude, hoping for an agreeing comment, but Aude just looked back, her porcelain face expressionless. Angélique smirked