Chef Maurice and the Bunny-Boiler Bake Off (Chef Maurice Cotswold Mysteries Book 3) (8 page)

“Reckon she had it with her when she was attacked and dropped it?” said PC Sara to PC Lucy. “Or threw it in herself?”

“Hmm. If she wanted to get rid of the contents, surely it would have been easier to just wipe the memory card. I’d put my money on the first idea. Might even be that this is what her attacker was after.” She pushed the plastic bag back towards PC Alistair. “Find someone who can get the pictures off this thing. And then”—she wrinkled her nose—“go home and shower. Please.”

“Right you are, miss!”

As Alistair squelched back out of the door, PC Lucy realised they’d not heard a peep out of Chef Maurice in the last few minutes.

Sure enough, she turned around to find him sat in PC Sara’s chair, index finger jabbing at the keyboard as he scrolled through the photos from the Fayre.

“Ah, this is a thing of beauty, is it not?” He crossed his arms over his chest, beaming with pride at a close-up shot of a mustard-slathered hog roast roll.

PC Lucy finally managed to dislodge the chef, after promising to contact the photographer and get him a copy of the photo, and also agreeing to speak to Patrick regarding his future career choice.

“Just as a sounding board,” she warned. “It’s still his decision, I’m not going to go taking sides.”

After all, common wisdom dictated that the best way to make a man do what you wanted was to appear utterly indifferent to whichever option he chose.

Plus, she had a high-profile murder investigation to be getting on with. She thought about PC Alistair’s latest find. She was no expert, but that camera looked like a piece of pro equipment. What had Miranda been doing with it? Why had she taken it with her on her walk along Warren’s Creek?

And, should they manage to salvage its contents, what might the photographs show?

The next day brought the usual horde of Sunday lunchers to the low-slung oak-beamed dining room of Le Cochon Rouge, and Chef Maurice and his team had their hands full rushing out plates of roast sirloin beef served with fluffy Yorkshire puddings, accompanied by pots of home-made horseradish sauce and an armada of gravy boats.

In the kitchens, head chef, sous-chef and commis chef moved fast and furiously in the quasi-choreographed synchrony of a well-tuned kitchen. But if one watched carefully, it was just possible to detect a touch of frost in the air between the head chef and his sous.

“Where’s the salt got to?” Patrick glanced around, his tea-towelled hand gripping a griddle pan of pork chops, boldly criss-crossed with sizzling char marks. “Chef, can you pass the salt?”

“
Comment?
” Chef Maurice looked up from slicing yet another joint of sirloin. A perfectly even tranche of moist, just-pink beef fell to the chopping board as he spoke. “Hah, you think you are ready to be a head chef—that you are, as they say, worth the salt! And yet, you cannot even find it?”

Patrick sighed, walked over and grabbed the stainless steel tub from beside his boss’s elbow.

Chef Maurice tut-tutted. “Alf, the roast potatoes. They are in?”

“
Oui
, chef!” Alf, tipped a pot of boiled potatoes into a sizzling tray of goose fat, shoved it back into the oven and slammed the door. “How comes people always say someone is ‘worth their salt’, anyway?”

“Humph,” said Chef Maurice, now tonging a generous three slices of beef onto each waiting plate. “It is because of the English and their idiots.”

“You mean idioms,” said Patrick. “It’s not the English who have idiots.” This last part was muttered under his breath.

“Aha, I have the answer.” Chef Maurice jabbed his tongs in the air, like an orchestra conductor struck with a good idea. “It is because salt brings out the best flavour in a dish, but it cannot improve a dish that is already bad. So a man who is worth his salt, is one who already has worth!”

At that thought, he grabbed the salt tub back off Patrick.

“A more common theory,” said Patrick, “is that it comes from how the Romans used to pay their soldiers in salt, because it was so valuable back then. It’s where the word ‘salary’ comes from, too.”

“Cor,” said Alf, giving the tub of salt a look of newfound respect. Then he frowned. “So what did they do when it rained and their salt got all wet? Wouldn’t it just disappear?”

“Good question,” said Patrick, with the faintly worried look of a man who has suddenly had his long-held beliefs put to the test.

“The Roman soldiers,” said Chef Maurice, slicing away, “also had the most grave punishments for those who deserted their armies.”

He moved off to check on the latest batch of Yorkshire puddings, and that was the end of that discussion.

Aside from the busy reservations diary, Chef Maurice had another reason for putting his nascent murder case on a brief hold. The important thing about crime investigation, he knew, especially the bits requiring the somewhat illegal entering of a property that did not belong to you, was to always make sure to take along a friend. Ideally one who could not run as fast as you.

Arthur, currently up in London at a food writing symposium, fitted this role abundantly well, so it wasn’t until the Monday morning after that the two friends could be found loitering across the street from the doorway leading up to Miranda Matthews’ flat, which occupied the space above a milliner’s shop on Cowton’s High Street.

The door was open, but the yellow-and-blue-checked police car pulled up on the curb outside was currently deterring any move on their part.

“So what exactly are we planning to do once the police finish their business up there?” said Arthur. “It’s not like they’re going to hand us the keys as they leave.”

“Ah, do not worry. When you were away just now to buy the coffee, I went to make some preparations.” Chef Maurice adjusted his pork-pie hat, the one he kept for special outings, and blew on his styrofoam cup of black coffee. “Now, we simply wait.”

Arthur decided it was best not to ask his friend what these preparations had entailed. When one spent any length of time around Chef Maurice, one soon learnt that plausible deniability was a good position to be able to maintain.

“Don’t you think we should have started off talking to people who knew Miranda? Instead of indulging in a light spot of breaking and entering?”

“Bah. People, they can lie. But to see a person’s home, it is like stepping into the soul of the owner. The house, it is an Englishman’s castle, is it not?”

“Yes, and that’s why we don’t go around mounting attacks on those belonging to other people.” Across the street, the police were filing out down the narrow staircase. Thankfully for Arthur and Chef Maurice, PC Lucy was not amongst their number—she would certainly have questioned their motive for standing around drinking takeaway coffee in the High Street at ten in the morning—but they did catch a glimpse of PC Alistair, struggling down the steps carrying an overflowing box of papers and a laptop.

The door thudded shut behind the policemen, who then climbed into their car and made a quick departure, accompanied by a spurt of sirens.

“
Allons-y!
The investigation, it begins.” Chef Maurice lost no time in hurrying across the road, narrowly missing an altercation with one of the trundling local buses. At Miranda’s front door, he looked around carefully, then drew a teaspoon out from his jacket and jabbed it into the gap between the doorframe and lock. The door popped open.

“How the—?”

Arthur leaned in closer. A wine cork (stamped, he noticed, with the name of one of the more exclusive Burgundian
domaines
) had been wedged into the rectangular metal opening where the lock catch would normally sit.

“Where the heck did you learn to do that?” he asked, as they shuffled quickly into the cramped hallway and closed the door behind them.

“Ah, I saw it in a detective programme last year. It was fortunate that the lock here was of a similar construction.”

The narrow staircase leading up to Miranda Matthews’ flat was dark and slightly dingy, a complete contrast to the architectural marvel above. It was a bright, airy space, spanning the width of the two shops below, with a line of sash windows facing the street and letting in the warm spring sunshine. The floors were washed oak, resembling the pale grey of an upmarket beach hut, and the walls were painted a subtle yet luxurious shade of off-white. The furniture was modern but comfortable, all soft curves and polished wood surfaces.

“Bit of a fan of wildlife photography, it seems,” said Arthur, admiring a series of framed black-and-white prints, each featuring a dramatic close-up animal portrait. A pensive gorilla knitted his brows at the camera, a toothy lioness yawned in the dusty shade, and a giraffe stood staring regally out across a sunset plain. “Isn’t that a Western lowland gorilla?” he added, having recently watched a documentary on the subject. “Of the genus
gorilla
, species
gorilla
, subspecies
gorilla
?”

Chef Maurice, who usually confined his interest in the animal kingdom to the more edible species, rubbed his moustache. “The
Gorilla gorilla gorilla
?”

“Afraid so.”

“
Interessant
.”

In the open-plan kitchen, which was of course kitted out with all the latest culinary mod-cons, Arthur’s gaze was drawn to the blown-up magazine cover shoot hung up by the window. It showed a twenty-something-year-old Miranda, arms linked cheerfully with a young woman with flame-red wavy hair. They both wore pastel-coloured aprons and flirty smiles aimed at the camera.

“Gosh, that brings back memories.
Cook It Right!
Prime Saturday night TV—I remember Meryl making us watch it every week. Always wondered what happened to that other girl. What was her name, Gaby something-or-other?”

Chef Maurice, who was busy rummaging through the kitchen cupboards, shrugged.

“She got booted off the show pretty early, I recall. Got mixed up in some kind of scandal.”

“Scandal?” Chef Maurice looked up from sniffing a jar of artichokes that he’d found in the fridge. He shook his head sadly at the rest of its contents, which consisted of several bottles of sparkling water, a jar of pasta sauce, and a brown-edged lettuce. A chef’s fridge it was not.

“Yes, I think it might have been to do with drugs. Or something shady going on with one of the producers. I’m sure we could find out, if we need.”

“Hmm, we will see.” The lettuce was duly consigned to the rubbish chute, and they migrated into one of the bedrooms, which had been converted into a spacious home office. A glass-topped desk was covered in stacks of folders and papers, all showing the hand-sketched logo of a little thatched roof and the words below: ‘The Little Cowton Kitchen’. There were also printouts of kitchen layouts, equipment purchase lists and class timing plans.

“Mademoiselle Miranda was to open a school of
cookery
?” said Chef Maurice, in the same manner as one just informed that Cruella de Vil was toying with the idea of opening a dog-grooming parlour.

“Well—” started Arthur, but further comment was curtailed by the sound of the door clicking shut downstairs and the thump of rising footsteps.

“Quick,
mon ami
! This could be the murderer, returning to destroy the evidence. We must hide and observe.” With that, Chef Maurice launched himself into the nearby closet.

Arthur looked around frantically. Miranda’s office did not appear to offer many choices when it came to bodily concealment. Hiding under a glass desk definitely wouldn’t win him the ‘Camouflage of the Year’ award. There would have been the standing-behind-the-door option, except that Miranda had installed sliding doors throughout the flat. As for the wardrobe, the clatter of hangers from inside indicated that Chef Maurice was already more than fully occupying the space within.

The footsteps had now reached the living room.

Chef Maurice stuck his head out of the wardrobe. “Why do you not hide? We must not be discovered!”

“Easy for you to say,” hissed Arthur, eying up the bookcase in the corner. Perhaps if he shifted it forward a tad . . .

He had just managed to wedge half a hip and an entire leg behind the thing, when he heard a sharp intake of breath behind him.