The Case of the Missing Coq au Vin

Merle had a moment in the kitchen alone and found himself going through his usual rushing motions in order to prepare a garden nicoise salad for everybody, plucking what he could find from the 'ice

box' set oddly in a corner at the border of the kitchen and dining room.  He set a quick pot of water and dash of kosher salt to boil for the eggs.  Asparagus would work fine as a substitute for haricot verts (green beans), potatoes, little pearl onions.  Yes, and the tomatoes from the neighbors' own

garden. Realizing he was alone, he looked outside and could see his neighbors now, Mme. and Mssr. Felicite, who had owned these two properties since the end of WWII.  Mssr.  was an elderly, rotund man who still guarded 'his quarters,' as he had called these sixteen acres of Gers countryside, as he and his comrades had in Toulouse back in the days of the French Resistance against the occupation of the German Army.  "So few of us remaining," Mssr. had told the Trudeauxs upon their arrival, seemingly forgetting to sell them the features of the property, but using his time instead to serve up

a perfectly rhythmic lecture on the decline of American heritage since the grand days of The Liberation.  "I can still see the long strides of De Gaulle walking down the Champs, a man never dissuaded by the Anglican."  Merle and Sandy, in typical American fashion, they supposed, didn't expect, as customers of the property, to be criticized for their part in generational decline, but found it easy to bite their lips with extra pressure as they walked along the blooming garden and trellises already set for them around the contours of the aquamarine pool.  They shook their heads simultaneously.  Mme. Felicite, a true dear, with flowing and majestic gray hair, held, by turns, Provencial sunshine at the wings of her eyes.  She smiled as in anticipation the final

words of her husband's speech, and raised a basket of enormous tomatoes.  "We picked these just yesterday afternoon," she said in her lilting Gascony accent.  "These are the kings and queens of the les jardin," she slipped in, "and you will find a few in there in which the caps come off and brimming with vegetables, ham, mushrooms, and chicken.  Simply bake these for fifteen minutes and voila!, Gascony in a dish!  Tomorrow, we will introduce you to your own garden."  She made her two fingers to scissors as if to suggest the cutting of weeds.  They smiled again.  Mssr. used this parting moment to give a brief run down of the area's most relished figure, "the very soul of the southern Frenchman who, it turned out was born in this very area near Lupiec in 1611, Charles Ogier de Batz de Castelmore, Comte d'Artagnan, the son of a nobleman."

Mssr. Felicite's eyes began to bulge some and his round body fully outmatched by his miniature mustache which moved as quickly as if to be flying by itself.  "Oui, the Muskateers, not everybody knows, were quite real my friends.  When he was taken at the Siege of Maastricht the Sun King himself had cried the woe of his loss: "I have lost d'Artagnan, whom I entirely trusted and who was loved by all.  From this very point, if we walked up onto the foothills of the Pyrenees," he said, "we could see outlines of the

Chateau at Lupiec.  Before you leave, we would fully recommend Les Ecuries d'Armagnac, a horseride through the Gascon countryside."