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IT is a story of madeleines, macaroons, petit fours and, if the police are right, murder.
It is a story of a patisserie chef, a nightclub owner, a body found in a wood,
The key role is that of Xavier Philippe, the apparently unremarkable 50-year-old owner of L’Avion Delices, one of
Philippe is currently charged with murder – a charge he strongly denies.
“Xavier Philippe is innocent and we will prove it,” said his lawyer, Frederique Baulieu.
Apparently unremarkable apart from burns on his courteous face, and well liked by the well-heeled clientele and the tourists who throng outside his shop, Philippe, all agree, is an unlikely killer.
The second role is that of Christophe Belle, Philippe’s assistant. It was Belle’s job to open the patisserie in the small hours of the morning to warm up the ovens.
His body was found on May 17, 2005, with two bullets in the head and a packet of an unidentified powder beside it in a wood in a Parisien suburb.
No one knows how he got there but he left a last message on his boss’ mobile phone at 2.56am saying: “I’ll be there in five or 10 minutes.’”
Was Belle, whose speciality was choux pastry and nougat ‘horns of plenty’, a secret coke addict? Did he have a second life hidden behind the piles of religieuses and eclairs that his family knew nothing about?
Not according to his sister. “The only thing that interested him was cakes, ice cream and delicately worked sugar,’” she told Le Monde. “He only ever spoke about that.’”
Also, bizarrely, his boss was the beneficiary of a life insurance policy in Belle’s name. “He must have made a mistake,’” Philippe is said to have told police during questioning.
The Marais district’s favourite manufacturer of pain de campagne and brioche, police discovered, did not exactly have a clean police record.
There were the three years served in prison for car theft, fights and possession of firearms; a former girlfriend’s allegations of threats of violence; her allegation that he had drowned a former associate and the accusation that he had burnt down a disco belonging to his mother to get the insurance after a shooting.
Philippe will be tried in the coming weeks, nearly 18 months after being arrested. Belle’s sister hopes the mystery of his death will be solved.
Outside L’Avion Delices last weekend the crowds overflowed on to the pavement. But there is more to this patisserie than pastry.
