The Crowded Grave

for mineral water, saying she’d have to drive back, so two glasses of wine with dinner would be her limit for the evening. Well, that seemed to define the evening ahead, thought Bruno. As he poured himself a glass of wine Isabelle turned the conversation to business.
    “What did you make of Carlos’s little speech?” she asked.
    “It was plausible.” He shrugged. “We know how the politicians are and I can see his minister trying to keep this summit from being overwhelmed by another GAL scandal. But I was surprised he hadn’t told us before about this prospect of an ETA cease-fire.”
    “There’s a lot he hasn’t told us,” she said, stroking Gigi’s ears as he gazed up at her in adoration. “Maybe I’ve been lucky, liaising mainly with the British so far. They do share and they tell us when they can’t.”
    “You’ve spent more time with him. What do you think of Carlos?”
    “He thinks of himself as a ladies’ man, holds doors open and sends flowers, but he’s too sure of himself and there are little flashes of the predator beneath the good manners. The more I see him, the less I like him, and I think he could bea very accomplished liar. That’s why I wasn’t altogether convinced by his speech today.”
    “You noticed the way he put his hand on his heart?”
    She nodded, grinning at the memory. “Quite the actor, our Spanish colleague.” She paused and bent down to attend to Gigi, who had rolled onto his back with his paws in the air, his eyes beseeching for a tummy rub. “What’s for dinner?”
    “We’re starting with a
soupe de poisson
, followed by
navarin d’agneau
with fresh spring vegetables and then a mâche salad with cheese, and I’d better get started on the rouille. Come into the kitchen with me while I do it.”
    He began by setting a pot with salted water on the stove to boil for the vegetables, put a spoon of duck fat into his frying pan and tore some of the bread he sliced that morning into generously large croutons. Then he grated the rest into bread crumbs, sliced and squashed some garlic and began blending it into a paste with some olive oil and the defrosted red peppers. The croutons were fried until they were golden, and he placed them inside the oven for the interiors to dry fully.
    “I like watching you cook,” she said, adding a small splash of Bergerac Sec to her Perrier. “You never seem to pause, one movement flows into the other.”
    “It’s just practice,” he said, adding the
navets
and carrots and spring onions to the boiling water and beginning to grate a block of Parmesan cheese. He set his timer to five minutes. “What do you eat in Paris?”
    “I wake up with orange juice, have a croissant for breakfast in a café, a bowl of soup or salad at lunch or sometimes just some fruit if I’m working through,” she said. “In the evenings, restaurants or dinner parties two or three nights a week and the rest is omelettes, pizzas and takeout Chinese or Vietnamese. My refrigerator would break your heart, just milk, eggs and orange juice and frozen pizzas in the freezer.”
    “What about those things you learned to cook with me?”
    “Once a month, I try to give a dinner party, usually all women, and spend a day attempting to read my handwriting from that notebook where I wrote down your recipes.” He turned to her, pleased at the thought of her cooking his dishes. She shrugged in return. “You’d be surprised how few women still cook in Paris, at least the ones I know, with jobs like mine. When I go to a dinner, it’s usually catered or bought in from a
traiteur
. It’s the way we live now.”
    “Reminds me of that Prévert poem in the book you sent me, ‘Déjeuner du matin.’ ”
    “I know it, about the guy who sits and stirs his coffee and says nothing and has his cigarette and says nothing and puts on his hat and goes and the girl is left crying.”
    “It hardly sounds like France,” he said.
    “Paris never was France,” she said. “Sunday brunches are fashionable now, champagne and orange juice and eggs Florentine and bagels with smoked salmon. Waffles with maple syrup are suddenly all the rage. When I got back to the office from the convalescent home, they’d bought me a waffle maker as a welcome-back present.”
    She held out her glass for more Bergerac Sec. It was mainly wine now. He took the rouille and grated cheese and croutons to the table and began making the
beurre manié
, whisking butter and flour together to make a