Chef Maurice and the Bunny-Boiler Bake Off (Chef Maurice Cotswold Mysteries Book 3) (19 page)

“Sorry I can’t stay for dinner. I’m sure Angie has cooked up a feast, as she always does. Has she been showing off all her new gadgets? Not that anyone knows what half these buttons do, least of all the lady of the house.” Mayor Gifford planted a kiss on his wife’s cheek, then headed for the door. “Don’t forget, Go With Gifford!”

“I must congratulate you on a most pleasing kitchen,” said Chef Maurice, looking around in approval at the solid beech countertops and pastel-blue cupboards. From out in the hallway, they heard the front door bang shut.

“Actually, it was all Rory’s choice,” said Angie, pulling a pan off the stove to check on the new potatoes. “I quite fancied one of those modern-style kitchens, they’re so practical and easy to clean, but Rory insisted we go rustic. Said it would go down better with the voters, when the papers come to take pictures in here. Still,” she said, patting the front of the stainless steel oven set high in the wall, “I got my way when it came to this one.”

“Ah,
quelle merveille
!” Chef Maurice got up to peer in admiration at the range of shiny controls. “It does the injection of the steam,
oui
?”

“That’s right. And has the temperature probe function for roasting. I even made baguettes in it the other day, using the stone base, you can just about see it in there. It’s all a matter of the right humidity levels . . .”

Chef Maurice nodded along politely as Angie expounded her theories about crust-to-crumb ratios and bread baking temperatures. For the sake of their upcoming plans to raid Mayor Gifford’s study, he was on his best behaviour, managing to avoid any comment on the peculiar English obsession with home breadmaking, when every Frenchman knew that the best way to obtain a perfectly made baguette was to simply pop down to the local boulangerie.

Arthur, leaning back in his chair, glanced out into the dark garden beside him, accessible through a set of mock-Tudor bi-fold doors. Dusk had fallen, and the only light source came from the kitchen, flooding a pale glow across the patio and grass. A set of nightmare-esque shapes at the back of the lawn caught his eye. He blinked, and the strange objects reconciled themselves into a paint-splattered ladder, various lengths of sawn-off timber, an old cast-iron Victorian stove, parts strewn all around, and a cluster of garden gnomes—all of whom were, oddly enough, blond.

“Oh, don’t look at that mess,” said Angie, waving an oven glove towards the garden. “It’s all the rubbish from the old kitchen. The builders keep saying they’ll be back to pick it up, but the way things are going, it’ll be Christmas by the time they come.”

Over a dinner of olive-oil-poached sea trout with garlic-and-dill-infused crème fraîche sauce, Angie filled them in on her own investigations. She’d returned to Miranda’s flat that afternoon in search of further clues, but to her dismay, the police had been there since, this time conducting a far more thorough clear-out.

“I mean, they already took her computer the first time, but this time they took all her paper files, all the Little Cowton Kitchen documents, even her photography equipment. I do hope they’ll be careful with it all.”

“Sounds like the police might be finally taking a look at the cookery school angle,” said Arthur.

“If they do, they only follow behind in our steps,” huffed Chef Maurice. He turned to Angie. “Tell me, did Mademoiselle Miranda come often to your house here? She and Monsieur Gifford, they were also on the good terms?”

“Miranda and Rory? I’m afraid they didn’t really get along. I mean, they were perfectly nice to each other in company. I thought Miranda, especially, was making a big effort to try and get to know him, but Rory didn’t really take it the right way. He’d say things like, ‘Why does she want to know where I play golf at, and what restaurants I go to?’ I tried to tell him she was just being friendly, but it wasn’t much good. I think he never really approved of me being friends with ‘a celebrity’ like Miranda.” Angie’s cheeks turned pink. “He said she didn’t get the right sort of press, and he didn’t like us—I mean, me and Miranda—being seen together in public. I know this next election is a huge stepping stone in Rory’s career, but I still don’t think he needed to be so serious about it all. In the end, we mostly met at Miranda’s flat to work on the cookery school. Less fuss all round, that way.”

For dessert, Angie coaxed her new oven into producing a picture-perfect lemon soufflé, its edges sharp and crisp as a new twenty-pound note.

“Simply marvellous. Best dessert I’ve had in ages,” said Arthur, folding his napkin beside his empty ramekin, while Chef Maurice expressed his concerns about the whereabouts of the second portions.

“Oh, you flatter me, really!” said Angie, smiling as she collected up the empty dishes.

Chef Maurice furrowed his brow, and Arthur was required to ram his toe against the chef’s ankle before he opened his mouth to explain that he was not, in fact, joking about seconds.

“So nice to serve dinner to such a good pair of appetites,” Angie continued, from over by the sink. “That’s why I could never work as a chef like you, Maurice. I like to see the end results when it comes to my work. That’s the nice thing about teaching, you get to see the girls grow up over the years. I don’t think I could stand being cooped up in the kitchens, with no idea what was going on out front. I’d want to be out there too, standing and watching over the poor diners as they ate!”

As she filled the sink with hot soapy water, Arthur and Chef Maurice exchanged a silent nod. The covert operation portion of the evening had arrived.

Chef Maurice, claiming he could not live with himself to see Angie do all the washing up after producing such a fine meal, took the sponge from her hands and commandeered the sink area. Soon, soap suds were flying and Angie stood at the ready, tea towel in hand, as the onslaught of clean crockery began.

Chef Maurice had, correctly, deduced that Angie was the type of woman who knew the exact latitude and longitude for every piece of cookery equipment in her domain, and so he took great pains to conduct his washing up in as haphazard a manner as possible, such that Angie was forced to rush to and fro across the kitchen, stowing away each item with care before the next came shooting out from the sink.

Amidst this whirl of activity, Arthur backed quietly out of the room, mumbling something about a search for the bathroom, then tiptoed across the hallway into Mayor Gifford’s study. The mayor had apparently been taking classes from the Henry VIII school of interior design—there was copious wood-panelling, a fireplace fit for a roast hog, and all that was missing was tapestries on the walls and a stag’s head over the mantelpiece.

Donning a pair of leather gloves, Arthur hurried over to Mayor Gifford’s king-sized desk. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but a man’s desk drawers seemed a reasonable place to begin.

As he passed the bookcase, he stopped to examine one of the leather-bound volumes at random (you never knew what someone might be hiding in a hollowed-out hardback), only to find that the entire shelf was filled with cardboard replicas, of the type found adorning the cabinets in those cut-price furniture warehouses.

For Arthur, an inveterate bibliophile, this was reason enough to start harbouring deep suspicions about the moral fibre of Cowton’s mayor.

The top desk drawer was full of stationery odds and ends, while the middle one contained a thick folder of newspaper clippings, all featuring the desk’s owner in various commanding poses. So far, so unincriminating.

The bottom drawer, however, revealed a large brown envelope, hidden under a pile of magazines for the discerning gentleman. The envelope was addressed to one Mayor Gifford, with no address and no postmark.

Arthur eased the envelope open. It was empty, apart from a scrap of notepaper bearing the following missive:

Plenty more where these came from . . . I’ll be seeing you soon, lover boy . . .

The note was signed off with a curly M.M. and a red lipstick kiss.

In Chef Maurice’s opinion, the world of policing operated at a pace of mind-boggling slowness. His own customers, he told PC Lucy, would have been completely up in arms if
he
took that long to get tangible results onto a warm plate and out into the dining room.

However, this reasoning had held little sway with the policewoman, who had been roused from a quiet evening in bed with a good novel to be regaled with tales of his and Arthur’s high derring-do in the lair of the philandering Mayor Gifford.

She’d listened, bookmark in hand, then firmly instructed them to their respective beds, forbidding them on pain of pain from conducting any more undercover missions for the remainder of the night, and grudgingly promising to look into matters first thing the following morning.

The next morning came, after a fitful night’s rest for Chef Maurice—his mind had been racing at such a pace that it had taken him a whole five minutes to fall asleep, even with the help of a dose of single malt whisky—but when he got down to the kitchens, he found himself facing a form of culinary conundrum that took his mind off the Miranda Matthews case altogether.

He sat at the kitchen table, staring down at a square white plate displaying a slab of sickly-looking mackerel, hacked into zigzag slices, sitting in a pool of what might have been its own congealed blood, but was more likely some form of raspberry or cherry coulis. Around the plate, dotted like remnants from the bottom of a fridge, were tiny cubes of orange jelly, a wrinkled black olive or two, and bright green blobs of what looked like cottage cheese that had just returned from a visit to a nuclear reactor.

He looked up into Alf’s hopeful face.

“This . . . dish, it is all your own creation?”

Alf nodded vigorously, while Patrick, face impassive, stood off to one side with his arms folded.

“It is, um,
très inventif
. The colours, the arrangement.
Oui
, I am . . . most impressed.”

Having run out of words with which to stall the inevitable, Chef Maurice picked up his fork and speared a slice of mackerel, an orange cube and an olive, then dragged the combination through the vivid red sauce. With a look to the heavens, he took a deep breath and shovelled the whole thing into his mouth.

“Mmmmph!”

“Is it okay, chef?”

Cheeks bulging, Chef Maurice gave his commis chef a desperate thumbs up.

“You sure, chef?”

There was a gulping noise, like a tennis ball being sucked down a pipe.

“Truly . . . excellent,” he coughed. “The cherry sauce, perhaps a little too sharp, you must use more sugar. But . . .
oui
,” he said, watching Patrick’s face out of the corner of his eye, “this is . . . very good. I am very happy with your work.”

At this moment, the crunch of gravel outside indicated a vehicle pulling up in the backyard.

“Ah, Patrick, that must be Monsieur Royston with our delivery of meat. If you will go to aid him . . .”

After Patrick had disappeared outside to help lug in the cold boxes, Chef Maurice whipped around to face his commis chef.

“Tell me. It was Patrick,
n’est-ce pas
, who made the recipe for this dish?”

“Er . . .”

“Bah! Come. It is not possible for anyone without a great talent to invent a dish of such”—Chef Maurice shuddered—“unnatural joining of flavours. This is the work of one chef, and one chef only.”

“Well, he did give me a bit of a hand with the—”

“Hah! So, Patrick wishes to play a game of the culinary chicken? Then he will have his game!” He strode over to the shelves along the back wall, grabbed down a decanter of cognac and poured himself a large measure. “Ah, that is much better.”

“Morning,” said PC Lucy, ducking through the back door, closely followed by Patrick with a whole lamb carcass over one shoulder. “Maurice, are you and Arthur free this morning? I’ve got an interview with someone I thought you might want to meet.”

“Ah, so you have made the arrest of Monsieur le mayor?”

“No, I’ve got Sara and Alistair looking into that this morning. But guess who’s back in the country?”

Chef Maurice paused. Dorothy had been all atwitter about a member of the Royal Family who had cut short her trip to Australasia, raising speculation of yet another Royal Pregnancy, but something told him this was probably not who PC Lucy was referring to.

“Gaby Florence,” continued PC Lucy. “Remember Miranda’s ex-co-host? Apparently India didn’t agree with her, so she flew back in yesterday. She lives in Hertfordshire, so I was going to drive over for a little chat.”

Chef Maurice narrowed his eyes. “This invitation, it is
une ruse
, to keep us from the investigation of Monsieur le mayor. Hah, he has the police, how do you say, in his pyjamas!”

“In his pockets, chef,” murmured Patrick.

“As you wish.” PC Lucy shrugged. “I just figured you’d be interested in what she has to say. Plus this way, it saves petrol and all.”

Chef Maurice gave this idea its due consideration. Getting a lift to Hertfordshire with PC Lucy did hold a certain appeal. His trusty little Citroën had been making some odd noises of late, and Arthur’s idea of putting pedal to the metal was the liberal application of the footbrake whenever he came close to hitting the speed limit.