Healthy Place to Die (13 page)

Which female? Millicent Manners came to mind at once as the least abstruse of those present, and she was a good place to start. I recalled her saying that she did an hour of aerobics each morning before breakfast, and with the superbly equipped gym here, that was where she would be.

She was there, under a monstrous machine that she was heaving into the air with arms and legs. Other equipment surrounded her, all of it looking complicated and muscle jarring. Dials and panels showed how much effort she was expending and how many more agonizing moments of this torture remained. Millicent was not quite alone in her dedication to physical fitness, but almost. An elderly man was struggling with some ropes that he appeared to be trying to pull out of the wall, and a woman nearly his age was pedaling a bicycle that was not moving an inch. Otherwise, the gym was empty.

I waited until Millicent stopped for a rest. I didn’t want to interrupt her, as from the effort she was expending it looked as if the machine might fall on her when she ceased pushing. It didn’t, though, and she crawled out, reached for a towel, and headed for the water cooler to replenish her body fluids.

She was still breathing hard and I wanted her in top tittle-tattle shape, so I waited a little longer. She hadn’t noticed me, and when she finished her third cup she turned abruptly and went into the shower and changing rooms. That was even better. When she came out, she would be full of self-righteous health and energy.

She did have a glow, I had to admit, and I told her so as we walked out of the gym together. “I haven’t seen you in there before,” she said.

“I like to keep a low profile when I exercise,” I told her.

“You didn’t even raise a sweat,” she said with a twitch of her lips.

“I have a high threshold,” I told her. “We don’t have many exercisers, do we? Or maybe people like to come in later in the day. Kathleen Evans was telling me she liked to exercise before dinner.”

“Kathleen Evans?” she frowned. “Oh, the food columnist. I haven’t talked to her.”

It was not an encouraging start. Maybe she was too wrapped up in herself and her career, I thought, but as I quested further I found that she was a brighter woman than I had at first believed. She told me of the changes she had proposed in the scripts and of the studio’s willingness to go along with her on them. She had to insist on this week at the spa so that she could get a better understanding of food and cooking, and since the shooting of the first scenes had been delayed, they had agreed.

“Anyway,” she added, “I needed a break like this. I’ve been shooting for fifteen months on
Tell Me You Love
Me.”

As for Kathleen Evans, though, when I brought up her name casually, Millicent had nothing to say. She hadn’t talked to her and commented that she hadn’t seen her in the last couple of days. As we reached the dining room, I was prepared to drop that line of investigation and find another prospective informant.

Marta Giannini was my next choice. She didn’t qualify as your typical, motor-mouthed busybody, but she was friendly and talkative, happy to chat with everyone. She was gregarious and lively; she got around and might have spotted signs or observed liaisons that a mere male would miss. Besides, I liked talking to her, though to do so I had to dawdle over my breakfast of fresh fruit, muesli, and coffee, as she was evidently sleeping late this morning.

When she finally came in, I waved and she joined me. “Just coffee,” she ordered. “Nothing else.” Feeling some hunger pangs after her second cup, she managed to devour a couple of pear Danish, which the Swiss call Viennese, and then she had a slice of pumpernickel toast with blackberry jam. She looked refreshed and sparkling, and though she wore little makeup in the mornings, I noticed that she never neglected her eyes, which she rightfully considered her outstanding feature.

“I need a walk after that.” She sighed, adding that now that she had more or less retired from acting, she could afford to indulge in a few occasional carbohydrates. On the lawn, we stopped to watch an impromptu volleyball game, which, as it was being played without a net or lines, was causing much good-natured argument about the score. Marta was clapping her hands and crying out in delight like a schoolgirl at every outstanding play.

“You’re a sports enthusiast,” I said. “I should have known from that movie where you trained your pet horse to run and then won the Kentucky Derby with it.”

“I was terrified of that horse. It was so
big.
I kept asking for a smaller one.”

“So now you’ve gone from horse racing to volleyball.”

“Oh, is that what this is?” she asked, wide-eyed.

“In a way. I think I saw that food columnist playing it the other day. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen her around since that day, have you?”

“Kathleen Evans? No, I heard she’d gone back to the States.” She tossed out the comment, then groaned as the ball flew wide of what would have been the court.

This was a promising start. Marta was more alert to the movements of the present inhabitants of the spa than I had expected. “I heard that too,” I said, “that was why I asked. I thought she was supposed to be here for the whole week.”

“I thought she was too.” Marta’s enthusiasm for sport was waning before my eyes as she was finding a good gossip more exciting. “Perhaps she found a good story for her column here at the spa.”

“Surely not,” I said, trying to keep her going. “Not here at the spa?”

Marta pouted. “Are we so dull?”

“Kathleen writes a food column. It’s not society or film scandal.”

“The two might be combined.”

I flashed a glance at the profile that a couple of decades ago had appeared on film posters throughout the world. Her eyes were on the volleyball game but her thoughts weren’t.

“Come on, Marta, you know some juicy tidbit, I can tell.”

She laughed, a short throaty laugh that had at one time devastated me. It still had an effect even if it was a little diluted by time.

“I used to say to Hedda, ‘You tell me a story and I’ll tell you one.’”

“And did she?”

“Oh, yes. Hedda would do anything for a story, and swapping them satisfied us both.”

“Your stories were always about you?” I asked.

“Most of them.”

“Were they true?”

She shrugged. “Once in a while.”

“So your story on the spa—is it about you?”

“No.”

“Is it true?”

“Yes,” she said coyly. Few sophisticated women can be coy, but when they have appeared in fifty or so films, I suppose they have learned coyness along with all the other feigned emotions.

“So you’re not in this story,” I said. “That’s disappointing. I was picturing the scenario … I see you in a dirndl and a bonnet, running across an Alpine meadow, arms outstretched, and toward you comes a baron in lederhosen. In the background, I hear the sound of—”

“No, it’s not that one,” she said with an amused smile. “They already made it—mind you, I would have been much better in the part than Julie. But that’s okay, she is one of my friends now, so I won’t criticize her performance. No, there’s no music in this one—but I’ll make up for that and give you two stories.”

“Twice as good. Carry on.”

“I said they are not about me—they’re about Kathleen Evans.” She paused for dramatic effect, and there had been a time when no one in Hollywood could outdramatize Marta.

When she thought a long enough pause had elapsed, she said quietly, “Kathleen likes chefs.”

I nodded. “Probably collecting background material.” I said it dismissively and it worked.

“In the sauna?”

“Ah, that could be seen in a different perspective,” I conceded. “Still, journalists have to get their material wherever they can.”

She snorted. It was elegantly done, but it was still a snort.

“Which chef was she with?” I asked, trying to sound only semi-interested.

“I don’t mention names,” she said haughtily, but then she reverted to coy. “This chef, though, well, he had probably left his poor dear wife cleaning up in the kitchen.”

Leighton Vance. Well, that was not a complete surprise. “You said two stories. You also said ‘chefs’ so a chef is in the other story too?”

“Oh, good shot!” Marta called out, her eyes back on the game, but I knew it was only to provoke me as the ball had hit someone on the head and rocketed into the air. I looked at her until she turned to smile at me. “The other? Well, there aren’t that many chefs here, are there? What about you, for instance?”

For a fleeting moment, I thought she was referring to my assignation with Kathleen in the Seaweed Forest, but I confined my stuttering and stammering to the inside of my head.

“I’m not a chef anymore,” I said.

“What are you?” she wanted to know, and her tone was more serious.

I told her. I told her that I was called “the Gourmet Detective” and I explained what I did. I told her about Carver Armitage and how he had talked to me from his hospital bed and asked me to come to the spa to replace him.

“So you’re a detective,” Marta said pensively. She brightened. “I was in one of the
Pink Panther
films!”

“Wasn’t it the one where Colin Gordon was the murderer?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I never could follow those plots. Do you carry a gun?”

“Certainly not, and like I keep saying, I’m not really a detective.” I went through it again, stressing foods and spices, cooking methods, my love of the history of foods and avoiding all mention of corpses and crime, mystery and murder, deceit and death.

“You’re sure you’re not on a case?” she asked, her expression showing doubt.

“The only reason I came here to the spa is to substitute for Carver Armitage. That’s the truth.” It was—as far as it went. This was not the time to consider sins of omission versus commission, and anyway the mysterious happenings had occurred after my arrival here.

She nodded in satisfaction. I felt ashamed of myself for misleading her and mentally promised that I would make amends—but not just now.

“So it’s all right for me to tell you about the other chef?” she asked.

“Go ahead.”

“I want you to know that I am not a scandalmonger—”

“I never thought you were. Tell me and stop teasing, Marta.”

She crinkled her eyes in a smile. It showed up the lines, but that didn’t matter. “I saw Kathleen talking to Michel Leblanc—twice.”

“Surely that’s not—”

“Once was in the Roman baths. They were in a very serious conversation. Another time was on the lawn. They were well away from everyone else, and Michel seemed to be shouting and waving a finger at her.”

Michel. Now that
was
a surprise. The mild-mannered Frenchman seemed much miscast in that role.

“I hope it helps,” Marta said.

“What do you mean?”

“In your investigation,” she said, turning her unseeing gaze back on the volleyball game.

“I told you I—”

“I know you did. If I can help any more, just ask me.” She tired of volleyball and began to walk away, but she tossed a final comment over her shoulder.

“I love mysteries, even if I can’t understand them.”

I
WAS ON DUTY
once more at ten o’clock in the morning. Again, I was obliged to follow the schedule set out by Carver Armitage, as the various presentations had been planned so that a wide range of foods and cooking styles could be covered without duplication. Carver had selected roast duck with orange as this morning’s dish.

The conference room, modified with portable equipment, was full, and I noticed Elaine Dunbar in the second row. Tim Reynolds was there, this time with a different lady, a statuesque redhead. Marta was there and so was Helmut Helberg. Karl Wengen was present, Gunther Probst came in, and Millicent Manners entered at the last minute. The indefatigable Caroline de Witt introduced me.

“This is one of the most famous dishes in the world,” I began, “and it can be eaten in a different version in every country. It’s a national dish in France, where they claim that the Rouen and the Nantais ducks are the best due to the crossing of domestic ducks with wild drake. Florentines point out that the duck is included in their cookbooks of the fifteenth century. In England, the Aylesbury duck is considered the best, whereas in the USA, the canvasback duck is popular but the Long Island duckling reigns supreme. It has a distinguished heritage, for in the nineteenth century one of the first Yankee Clippers brought nine Peking ducks from China. Millions of Long Island ducks are descended from that stock.”

On the bench in front of me was a fine bird. “This is a duck with Nantes ancestry, although it is from Alsace. It weighs four and a half pounds. Heavier than that, a duck begins to get tough.” I pulled the bird toward me and took a long, sharp knife. “First, I’m cutting off the head and the feet … now I’m plucking the feathers. I’m removing the wishbone, greasing inside with butter, sprinkling with salt, and pricking the skin so that some of the fat can escape.”

I put the bird into a roasting pan—“the smallest possible,” I advised. “Meanwhile, some butter has melted in this pan. I’m adding some sugar and pouring it over the bird. The oven is preheated to three hundred and fifty, and I’m putting the dish in. Some prefer to braise on top of the stove. Either way, it will take one and a half to two hours.”

I indicated the makings of the orange sauce: the peel boiled in a small amount of water, the juice with a little Curaçao, several slices, a few spoonfuls of bitter orange marmalade, some tarragon vinegar, roux, and chicken stock.

“The efficient staff prepared a similar bird and put it in the oven an hour and a half ago,” I said, “so let’s see how it is.” It was nicely browned, and I removed it while I added some meat stock, some flour, and some sherry to the juices in the pan. I heated for a few minutes, stirring constantly. I put the bird back in the pan and added the orange sauce, heated quickly, and put the bird on a large heated plate. I cut the duck into quarters, poured the sauce over them, and spread the slices of orange on top.

“I’ll cut these up so you can all have a taste,” I said. “The French insist that potatoes do not go with duck, but in England and Germany at least, roast potatoes are served with it. Peas, carrots, turnips, and glazed onions go very well.”