The Grave Gourmet by Alexander Campion

Author:Alexander Campion
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9780758246691
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2010-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

That afternoon she received a call from Fleuret. “I’ve just had your juge d’instruction on the phone, a very irate and unpleasant woman, but a very well-informed one nonetheless. She spent some time quoting to me from legal texts. She’s very knowledgeable about the niceties of the attorney-client privilege, and she succeeded in convincing me that if I don’t make a fully detailed deposition I face a risk of immediate incarceration. I know it’s an imposition, but I wonder if I could ask you to come back to the hospital. I’m sorry, but I’m afraid it’s impossible for me to get to you.”

Madame d’Agremont’s stock rose significantly in Capucine’s books.

Fleuret’s story was straightforward. Matra, the automobile, communication, and weapons conglomerate, had negotiated with the Taiwanese government for the sale of a large number of multihead missiles to be used with their 47 French Mirage 2000 fighter jets. Everything had been arranged, even the tricky negotiation of the extension of the existing missile maintenance agreement to the new weapons. All that had been left to resolve was the relatively simple agreement on the price of the missiles themselves. The meeting in the garage had been with the secretary to the Taiwanese minister of defense and, of course, the inevitable bodyguards. The secretary had not wanted to be seen in public, hence the underground venue. Fleuret knew the Taiwanese would be greatly disappointed at the loss of the deal—after all, a Mirage 2000 loaded with French-made multihead missiles would be a big step up from the Russian Su27, which was the top of the current Chinese fleet—but he had hardly expected the violence of their reaction.

“But why did you change your mind so close to the end of the transaction?”

“That’s a bit complicated. I think, when all is said and done, it was to honor the memory of Jean-Louis Delage. You see, it was my idea to have dinner that night, but generous soul that he was, he insisted on paying. I wanted Jean-Louis to approve my participating in the deal. Most of my weapons practice had come from his contacts and I wanted to make sure he would not object. It was a sort of moral obligation, if you can understand that.”

“Why wouldn’t he approve if he had encouraged you to do this sort of work in the first place?”

“Oh, you just don’t understand Jean-Louis. He was first and foremost a statesman, not an industrialist. He saw the success of Renault, and France itself for that matter, as coming from skillfully concocted international alliances. As you probably know, Matra manufactures a good number of components for Renault and the links between the two companies are well known abroad. Over dinner he told me he was certain that this transaction would put Renault on the Chinese blacklist along with Matra. He thought it was a criminally stupid thing to do just as China’s industrial star was rising. In fact, he was almost irrationally hostile to the whole thing. So hostile that I

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