Chef Maurice and the Bunny-Boiler Bake Off (Chef Maurice Cotswold Mysteries Book 3) (9 page)

“Mr Wordington-Smythe! What on earth are you doing with that bookcase?”

“Delivery for the kitchen,” announced Dorothy, moving aside to allow through a blue-overalled man wheeling a waist-high cardboard box.

“Sign here, sir.” A weathered clipboard was thrust under Patrick’s nose.

Once the man was gone, Patrick and Alf circled the box warily, looking for any hint as to its contents. One could never tell what odd ingredient or item might have last caught their head chef’s eye. Last month it had been a pair of life-sized stone pigs, which now stood guard outside the front door of Le Cochon Rouge, one of them wearing a flowerpot on its head.

Unfortunately, this box was simply labelled as for the attention of ‘Le Cochon Rouge, Beakley’, with a return address of some Lincolnshire business park.

Alf tapped a wooden spoon against the side, ears cocked.

“I don’t think it’s going to bite you, luv,” said Dorothy, watching the antics of the two chefs, hands on hips.

“That’s what chef said about those spider crabs last week,” said Alf. The crustaceans that passed through their kitchens seemed to always have a bit of a soft spot for the young commis chef—or at least an unerring ability to find his soft spots, and pinch down hard on them.

“Better get this open, then. Might be something perishable.” Patrick grabbed a paring knife and slit open the top of the box. A shiny leaflet fluttered down at his feet.

The logo looked tantalisingly familiar.

Surely it couldn’t be . . .

He quickly cut away the rest of the cardboard.

“Cor!” said Alf, mouth agape in wonderment. Then he looked at Patrick. “So what is it?”

Their kitchen newcomer was a large, gleaming contraption, made of stainless steel, adorned with a row of dials with complicated-looking pictograms, and rather resembling the result of an illicit encounter between a food blender and a galactic spacecraft.

“It’s a brand-new TM5000 Deluxe Professional ThermoMash,” said Patrick, in awed tones. “It can do practically
anything
. It chops, stews, mashes, makes ice cream, stocks, bread, cheese. Apparently you can set it to make a perfect hollandaise in ten seconds flat.”

“Humph, don’t see what’s so impressive about
that
,” said Alf, crossing his arms and glaring at the machine with the look of a man whose job prospects are suddenly under threat.

“I’ve been on at chef to get us one of these for
months
. I wonder what made him suddenly—” Patrick stopped.

Dorothy, who hadn’t worked this many years alongside chefs without developing an acute sense of self-preservation, chose this moment to nip away into the dining room, mumbling something about the napkins needing another ironing.

“Alf?” said Patrick.

“Er, yes?”

“When exactly did chef put in this order?”

“Um . . . Might have been after you left last night. I might have showed him how to order one on the Internet.”

“
Might
have?”

“Um . . .”

Despite his escalating feelings of exasperation, Patrick had to admit he was also rather impressed. Chef Maurice must
really
want him to stay, to have been willing to set foot within two metres of a computer monitor.

(It wasn’t that the head chef was I.T.-illiterate; one could consider him as more techno-embattled, waging a constant war with the electronic devices in his life. The attempted use of an electronic alarm clock had resulted in several mornings of unintentional 3 a.m. starts—which had been accompanied by a series of predawn phone calls to the rest of his kitchen staff, demanding to know why they had yet to turn up to work. His ancient mobile phone appeared only able to dial the Croatian talking clock, and the robotic vacuum cleaner, bought for him one Christmas by an optimistic Meryl, had managed on its first day to get into his chest of drawers and consume all his socks.)

However, even in the face of his head chef’s technological efforts, Patrick was determined to be a man unswayed by such means of persuasion.

“We’re sending it back,” he said firmly.

“We are?” said Alf, in hopeful tones.

“I’m not having chef think he can bribe me into staying. It’s my decision, and I’m perfectly capable of making it without the help of a TM Professional—”

“—Deluxe Professional—”

“—
Deluxe
Professional ThermoMash. With the extra pasta-rolling attachment, too,” sighed Patrick, tucking the leaflet back in amongst the stainless steel rotors.

Despite his claims to the contrary, he was aware that he was still no closer to making any decision than he’d been last night, when his mother had dropped her manor-house-sized bombshell on them all.

He’d been back and forth with himself on the merits of the new venture—his first head chef position, the chance to make a name for himself—and the downsides—starting life yet again in another village, and the prospect of Chef Maurice chasing him all around Beakley with a frying pan if he handed in his resignation. And then, of course, there was Lucy to think about. The Lake District was by no means an easy commute from the Cotswolds, and what with them both working long shifts and irregular hours . . .

Still, Patrick was looking forward to being able to discuss the whole matter with someone more sane than his current kitchen compatriots. Of course, he fully expected his girlfriend to drop the occasional heavy hint that she wanted him to stay—that was only natural.

But PC Lucy had a sound, level head, and he had a feeling she’d be infinitely more helpful when it came to thinking through his decision than a crazed French chef with a suddenly very large budget for culinary equipment.

Back at Miranda Matthews’ flat, it took a while to persuade Angie Gifford that the
England Observer
’s food critic had not, in fact, been attempting to steal Miranda’s solid-walnut bookcase, but instead had merely been trying to conceal himself behind said item in case she, Angie Gifford, had turned out to be a lead-pipe-wielding attacker.

Angie looked less than convinced, too, at the explanation that the two of them had simply stepped inside the flat after noticing the front door left unlocked, and, being good Cotswolds neighbours, had wanted to check that nothing had been taken.

“We might ask you the question, Madame Gifford, why
you
also are found here in the flat of Mademoiselle Miranda,” said Chef Maurice sternly, having now left the confines of his wardrobe hideout. (A sudden appearance, it should be noted, that had not done much to soothe Angie Gifford’s already frazzled nerves.)

“Miranda left me a set of her keys when she first moved in, as I was the only person she knew around here. The police told me they were coming this morning, so I wanted to pop in and check they hadn’t made a mess of things. And pick up some of the paperwork for the cookery school.” She indicated the brochures on the desk.

“You knew of these plans of Mademoiselle Miranda?”

“Of course, it was our project together,” said Angie, oblivious to Chef Maurice’s look of moustache-quivering indignation. She ran a hand across a glossy flyer. “We weren’t going to tell anyone yet, seeing as we hadn’t secured the site. And I didn’t want anyone at Lady Eleanor to know I was thinking of leaving. I’m afraid some of the other teachers are a bit stuck in their ways. They treat it as a huge scandal whenever someone leaves to go to another school, let alone thinks about doing something like this.”

“Other teachers such as Madame Caruthers, for example?”

“Oh, yes, I dread to think what she’d have said to me. Not that she’ll even be around next year—she’s retiring this summer, you know—but teaching’s been her whole life. She simply can’t understand anyone wanting to do anything
different
.”

“But you’d still be teaching cookery, wouldn’t you?” said Arthur.

Angie gave a little sigh. “If only Edith would see it like that. But I can just imagine her, complaining that all we’d be doing is catering to pampered housewives. But we had all kinds of plans, running subsidised classes for young parents, setting up a Sunday charity kitchen, that sort of thing. It wasn’t all going to be cupcakes.”

“You speak,
madame
, as if your cookery school will no longer take place.”

Angie stared down at the brochure, open at a picture of herself and Miranda posing in front of an old-fashioned stove. “I don’t see how it can, now. You see, it was Miranda who was going to provide the financing for the first few years, until we turned a profit. I have a small amount of savings of my own, but not nearly enough—and Rory was dead set against putting any of our money into the business. Said it would be a conflict of interest, what with the council having the final say in who gets the site lease.”

“The idea for the cookery school, this came from you or Mademoiselle Miranda?”

“Oh, it was all Miranda. At least at the start. She said she wanted to do something more hands-on, that she was getting bored of all the TV shows. But, frankly, I don’t think the project would have got off the ground without me on board.”

Angie spoke without pride, in simple matter-of-fact tones like she was talking about a recipe for chocolate cake. It struck Arthur that here was a woman who knew her worth, and not an ounce more or less.

“I really don’t think Miranda realised how much
work
it takes to make something like this happen,” she continued. “I used to help out with Rory’s furniture business in my spare time, so at least I had some idea of how things should be run. But we were getting there. It was all panning out . . .”

They stared down at the plans and flyers before them; the remains of a business, stillborn.

Angie seemed to wake from her reverie. “Did you say the police left the front door unlocked? I suppose I should have words with them, if so. It’s really quite irresponsible of them.”

“Ah.” Chef Maurice gave a little cough. “I am afraid that we must make a confession to you. It was we—”

“And by ‘we’, he means
him
, I might add—”

“—who ensured the door would be unlocked after the police went away. We are making, you see, an investigation into the murder of Mademoiselle Miranda.”

“You are? Thank goodness!” Angie clasped her hands together.

Arthur and Chef Maurice exchanged a puzzled look. This was not how things usually went.

“I read in the local paper all about how you helped figure out those two horrible murders last winter, and I thought it was all so clever of you.”

“Ah, you are too kind,
madame
,” said Chef Maurice, standing up a little straighter even so.

“And, well, I didn’t really know what I could say to you, to— to—”

“Make us take up the enquiry, perhaps?”

Angie nodded.

“In fact, this is what you wished to speak to us of, the day of the Fayre,
n’est-ce pas
?”

Angie nodded again. “I’ll help with whatever I can, of course. And if we find out anything, we’ll be sure to tell the police straight away, it won’t be like we’re going behind their backs. I’m sure they won’t mind, really—”

“Hah,” muttered Arthur.

“You know,” she sighed, “even just saying this, I feel such a whole lot better. Being able to
do
something about it all, instead of just sitting around waiting to hear of any more news.”

Chef Maurice placed a hand on Angie’s arm. “Come,
madame
, you must tell us more,” he said, leading them back into the living room. “If Arthur will make us some tea—”

“Pot wash
and
tea lady,” grumbled Arthur.

“—you must tell us all you can of Mademoiselle Miranda. You have been, how do they say, firm friends for a long time?”

“Oh, yes. We were in the same class at Lady Eleanor, from the first year all the way up to Sixth Form. But then we mostly lost touch when I went to do my teacher training down in Bournemouth, and Miranda got sent off to Paris to study at Le Cordon Bleu. We exchanged a few letters at the start, but I hadn’t seen her for years until she moved back to these parts.”

“When was this?” asked Arthur, from over by the kettle.

“About six months ago. She quite surprised me. I mean, I’d seen her on all her cookery shows, of course, but I never got round to getting in touch properly. I thought she’d be much too busy with all her shows and cookbooks and all.”