Healthy Place to Die (2 page)

As to why a technician at a movie studio should be asking me a question like this, well, I operate my business under the name of “The Gourmet Detective.” I’m not a detective at all, you understand. I seek out rare spices and food ingredients that are hard to locate. I advise on cooking methods and foods from past eras. I recommend substitutes for rare and expensive ingredients. On a few occasions, such investigations have led me into some dangerous situations and even violence—something I eschew.

I was concluding with a draft of a letter accepting an invitation to be on a wine-tasting panel (a responsibility I never shirk) when the phone rang.

It was Carver Armitage, an acquaintance for some years. Carver is a journalist who, after spending some years in the city reporting on financial matters, had decided that food was a fast-growing subject of reader interest and a more lucrative subject than bearer bonds. This had coincided with Carver’s becoming intrigued with cooking. Instead of picking up frozen dinners at Safeway, he was now actually buying the components of a meal and cooking them.

He called me a couple of times that period, both times to ask why a foolproof dish had gone wrong, refusing to accept the obvious answer. I had partly lost touch with him after that, although I often saw his name in newspapers and magazines as his star rose in the world of cuisine. He appeared on TV, talking about food, introducing famous chefs, and even cooking meals and explaining them step by step.

He was calling now from St. Giles’s Hospital, he told me. “Not something you ate, I hope,” I said, a little unkindly. He chuckled. It was hollow but still a chuckle.

“I’m only in for some tests and observation,” he explained.

“Anything serious?” I asked, wanting to make up for my opening gaffe.

“No, just one those male things,” he said airily, and I recalled that St. Giles’s was said to have the best male-impotence clinic in the country. All of the witty retorts that suggested themselves were resolutely thrust from my mind, and I merely said, “Anything I can do?”

“As a matter of fact, there is. It’s the reason for my call. See, there’s an event coming up next week in Switzerland. It’s at a spa. Lectures, talks, cooking classes, you know the kind of thing. Well, I’m booked as one of the speakers and demonstrators. I thought this visit here to St. Giles was going to be a couple of days or so. Now they tell me I have to stay here another week. So I need a substitute.”

“Try Jim Dillard,” I said. “Right up his street.”

“I did. He’s in Australia. Won’t be back in time.”

“What about Jean-Marc Separdel, the chef at Antonio’s? A real comer, folks love that accent. He’s inventive. …”

“He’s in Bangkok, opening a branch restaurant there.”

“Louis Ibenido—he has a few offbeat ideas, I know, but he’s a great talker and can whip up a soufflé faster than you can say Paul Bocuse.”

“He can’t do it—he’s knee-deep in preparing a TV series, and they’re behind schedule.”

I produced a few other names, but Carver said he had already tried them without success. I was pondering other possibilities when he said, “I don’t suppose you’d be interested in doing it?”

I truly had not even considered it. His call had been a surprise and so had his inquiry, which I had taken literally to mean that he wanted me to recommend someone.

“Me?” I said.

“Sure. You’ve done this stuff before.”

“Only a few times …”

“You’re an expert.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“You’re familiar with various cooking styles.”

“Some,” I admitted modestly, and from then on I was increasingly committed. Finally, I said yes upon his adding, “You can, of course, have the whole of my fee.”

Julia listened to a highly condensed version of this good reason why I did not call myself Armitage. She smiled pleasantly. “Well, you are very welcome here, even if you are a substitute.” I hadn’t listed for her the names of all those earlier choices, who, for one reason or another, had been unable to be present. I looked at Julia; I looked around at the impossibly white peaks of the Alps, and I reflected that being a substitute was not too bad, after all.

I gave her my order for lunch—pear endive, and blue cheese salad with lemon-thyme vinaigrette followed by pan-seared wild salmon with a Burgundy-citrus coulis. “We recommend these without any accompaniments,” said Julia sweetly. “As we do most lunch dishes. You are, of course, quite free to—”

“No, no,” I concurred, trying to avoid sounding too goody-goody. “That’s fine.”

B
EFORE LUNCHEON ON MY
first day here, I had introduced myself to the white-haired man at the nearby table. He was Tim Reynolds, and as soon as he told me his name, I recognized him as one of the golf greats of the past.

“Come here every year,” he told me. “Fine place. None of that diet nonsense. Wonderful food, perfect service. Your first time?”

He had put on weight since his glory days, and his face was showing a slight puffiness that suggested not only good food and drink but plenty of it. He was affable and friendly, though, and he showed interest when I explained how I came to be there.

“Carver Armitage? Oh, yes, seen his column. So you’re replacing him? Demonstrations start tomorrow, I believe.”

“Yes. Are you going to be there? Wouldn’t have had you pegged as wanting to learn how to cook.”

“Coincidence more than anything. I come here once a year, and this year it just happens to be at the same time as this cooking festival. Don’t do much cooking myself, but I need a new interest and thought this might be it, so I signed up.” He gave me a wink. “Got a job on your hands, trying to teach me to cook.”

“Anybody can learn,” I assured him. “Still play any golf?”

“There’s a nine-hole course over there.” He waved past the main building. “Not too hard, but it keeps me loosened up.” He gave me an appraising look, as if trying to decide whether to confide in me. In a lowered tone, he said with a conspiratorial air, “There’s just one thing I don’t like about this place.”

“Really? What’s that?”

“It deprives me of the satisfaction of being able to smuggle booze in.” He broke into a laugh, and I joined him.

“Had a lot of experience at that, have you?”

“You’d better believe it. I guess I’m something of a spa buff. I really like these places, been to lots of them all over the world. Trouble with so many of them is that they behave like missionaries—want to reform your body, help you lose weight, tinker with your health. The way they all start is by saying ‘no alcohol.’”

He lowered his voice again, this time to a confidential level. “Not that I’m a drunk. Oh, I’ve been close to it many a time—even when I was on the circuit. But I like to come to a place like this to enjoy myself, not be preached at and monitored. Certainly not to be a teetotaler.”

“I don’t have that much experience of spas,” I said, “but I find this place unusual in that regard too. No alcohol is the first rule in many of them, I understand, and as for smokers, most places would refer them to Devil’s Island rather than accept them.”

“They’re smart—Caroline de Witt and Leighton Vance. They know that people like to be pampered. That’s what they do here. Best spa I know.”

I had left him after lunch to take part in a briefing session. About a dozen of us were there in a state-of-the-art conference room, where Caroline de Witt, the striking dark-haired director of the spa, introduced everyone.

Marta Giannini was a face I knew at once, for she had been a longtime movie heartthrob of mine. I gallantly refused to calculate how old she was, for she had not been on the screen in some time. She told us in her delightful accent and quite without rancor that for purely financial reasons, she was going to undertake a series of television commercials featuring a major food product. The producers had asked her to attend the classes here at the spa in order to develop a familiarity with kitchens and their equipment.

“How could I refuse?” she asked with a lovely smile. “The food here is so good. The atmosphere is wonderfully relaxing. Besides, I know nothing about cooking.”

Gunther Probst, a reserved, quiet Austrian, was a computer genius, it seemed. He had plans for putting recipes on software and wanted to get some firsthand immersion in food and cooking. Millicent Manners was a fluffy blonde who appeared convinced that every eye was on her. (It was true that many were.) She was going to star in a TV soap opera series set in a restaurant and said she “wanted to soak up the atmosphere.”

The presenters, demonstrators, and speakers were introduced in turn. Michel Leblanc was short and roly-poly, a TV chef of renown in France. Bradley Thompson was a fast-food millionaire from Canada and intended to shed a new and more favorable light on fast foods, he said. Kathleen Evans was a slim, fair-haired young woman who wrote a food column syndicated in several countries. Helmut Helberg from Stuttgart was the owner of a supermarket chain. He was big and jolly and said his mission was to improve the bond between the sellers of good food and its consumers.

Axel Vorstahl had a well-known restaurant in Copenhagen and had been responsible for many of the kitchens on Scandinavian cruise ships. Oriana Frascati was a New Yorker but with all the looks and characteristics of an Italian background. She was editor of Kitchen Press, a prominent publisher of cookbooks. I completed the lineup and had to endure being addressed as “Armitage” a few more times.

Caroline de Witt then introduced Leighton Vance. He was to lead the demonstrations of cooking techniques. He should be on TV, I thought. He was in his early forties, with movie-star good looks and a genial personality. His wife, Mallory, was one of the sous-chefs. Demure and pretty, a few years younger than her husband, she seemed to be very much in his shadow.

The audience was largely amateur as far as practical cooking was concerned. A few worked in the trade in other capacities and others had tangential interest in food, for instance Marta Giannini, Millicent Manners, and Gunther Probst. Schedules were presented, timetables agreed upon and some guidelines indicated. Caroline asked each presenter to describe in brief detail the substance of their presentation in order to avoid duplication.

As we broke up, I sought out Marta Giannini. Her luminous, wide-set eyes brightened as I told her how much I had enjoyed her films. She still looked good up close with her high cheekbones and generous mouth, and her figure was still eyecatching despite a few added pounds. “I enjoy my films too,” she told me with an intimate smile. “I watch them any time they are on television. I saw
Stolen Love
last night.”

“The ending’s too sad for me,” I said. “You think Victor is dead and you go into a convent. He comes looking for you, can’t find you, and thinks
you
are dead. He goes on one last dangerous mission and is killed. His body is brought to your convent.”

“It was sad,” she agreed. “But we had so much fun making it!”

“I was astounded when you said you knew nothing about cooking. You wrote a cookbook some years ago.”

“Pooh! That was written for me. They just paid me to use my name on the cover and put photographs of me all through the book.”

“Photographs in kitchens,” I reminded her.

She shook her head, still smiling. “No, they were studio photographs. They superimposed them on photos of kitchens.”

We chatted further. Her memory was extraordinary when it came to her films. She remembered every person with whom she had ever worked, every twist of every plot, and had a fund of stories about happenings on the set.

I tore myself away reluctantly. I could have basked in the light of those gorgeous eyes all morning, but I wanted to talk to as many people as possible. Helmut Helberg was looking round the room with something of the same purpose in mind, so we coincided.

He was almost the stereotypical German—but his voice was not the deep booming projection that I expected. He spoke in a normal tone and his English was excellent. “Ah, Mr. Armitage,” he greeted me. “I have been wanting to meet you for a long time.”

After I had straightened him out on that misapprehension, he told me of his desire to improve the supermarket system. “We have let it get out of control,” he was saying, and his sincerity made up for his lack of volume. “The supermarket has become too impersonal, too cold.”

“The very factors that cause people to long for the days of the small corner shop where the owner knew all his customers and they got personalized service.”

“Exactly. What we must do is combine the size and efficiency of today’s supermarket with those characteristics.”

“A difficult task,” I commiserated.

“That is what I am going to be talking about. How difficult it is and what we must do to achieve it.”

“I’ll be listening,” I promised.

Kathleen Evans was a slim young career woman. I had read her column on occasion and knew her to be provocative and caustic. At first I thought she belied that persona, but a few minutes’ conversation with her convinced me that she was just as tough as her column. Her fair hair stopped just short of being blond and her eyes, though blue, were unrelenting. Perhaps that was because her initial reaction to me was one of deep suspicion.

“Who are you? You’re not Carver Armitage!”

“It’s true,” I admitted. “I am not now, nor have I ever been, Carver Armitage.” I explained who I was and why I was there. She was not mollified. “Where is Carver?”

“He’s in St. Giles’s Hospital in London.”

“What’s he doing there?”

“Having treatment for a minor ailment.”

Her hostility did not abate. “He was perfectly well the last time I saw him.”

“Yes, well, his ailment did not prevent him from carrying out normal duties.”

Her eyes glinted like blue rock. “So he sent you to replace him.” Her voice indicated what an impossible task she thought that to be.

“As best I can,” I said lightly.

She studied me for a moment and I prepared further a defense, but it was not needed. She switched subjects. “Leighton Vance is one of the most underrated chefs I know,” she declared. “Maybe this conference will help to raise him up where he belongs.”