Chef Maurice and the Bunny-Boiler Bake Off (Chef Maurice Cotswold Mysteries Book 3) (16 page)

“I suppose then,” said Arthur, “your feelings on the matter have mellowed since those days, what with Miranda being involved with the Beakley Spring Fayre?”

“Not at all. It was Angela who suggested that Miranda play a role this year. She came to me one day in the staff room, telling me that Miranda was
insistent
on doing some form of demonstration at the Fayre. And wanted to sit on the Bake Off panel. In the end, I relented, if only for Angela’s sake—I understood they were planning to set up some little cookery school business together, and the Fayre would be good for their publicity, make Miranda more of a local presence. Oh, don’t look so shocked,” she added, seeing Arthur’s face. “I wouldn’t be sitting where I am today if I didn’t have a pretty good idea of what my staff are up to. Angela’s a good teacher, of course, but I never thought that she’d stay forever. She has more ambition than one might think. I think she’ll do very well, going into business.”

“Did Mademoiselle Miranda have any other friends from the school in this area?” said Chef Maurice.

“I don’t believe so. In those days, most of the girls were boarders like her, so very few settled down locally after they left us. Angela was one of our few day pupils. Her parents ran a farm over near Winchcombe. Now, if that’s all”—Miss Caruthers placed her hands on her desk and stood—“I’m afraid I’ll have to end our little interview here. I have meetings this afternoon I must prepare for. If you would take my advice, you’d best to leave this matter well alone. You’ll find that old debts have a way of being paid in the end, and Miranda Matthews had more than her fair share, I’m sure.”

With that, she led them to the door and firmly ushered them out.

“Madame Caruthers, she knows something,” said Chef Maurice, as they wandered back to the car.

“Indeed. But any idea what?”

Chef Maurice shook his head. “But, it makes me think of a particular mustard . . .”

“Maurice?”

“
Oui?
”

“Is there
anything
that doesn’t make you think about food?”

The Cochon Rouge dinner rush was dialling down when PC Lucy arrived that evening. Chef Maurice, declaring the kitchen safe in his team’s capable hands, was in the process of retiring upstairs with a plate of rhubarb crumble and a large jug of custard, to ‘contemplate on the case of Mademoiselle Miranda’. After a while, various snores of deep contemplation could be heard through the kitchen ceiling above.

PC Lucy took a seat at the big oak table, a forkful of lemon tart in one hand and a pen in the other.

“Come on, then,” she said to Patrick, who was plating up a quartet of marmalade-and-chocolate fondants. “It’s not that hard. We’ve already got the pros written down. So what are the cons of moving jobs?”

Patrick pushed the finished plates towards Dorothy, who scooped them onto a tray and hustled them out into the dining room. “Okay, let’s see. The restaurant in the Lake District will probably have less of a local customer base, at least to start with. More tourists, so I’d have to keep the menu a bit more traditional.”

“Definitely a con,” said PC Lucy, noting this down. Chef Maurice might have been a staunch believer that the only cuisine worth cooking was the one of his native France, but he also possessed the boredom threshold of a sugar-crazed chimpanzee and was tolerant of the occasional bout of experimental or international cuisine onto his menu—as long, of course, as a suitably francophone name for the dish could be concocted. The
porc tiré à la Texane
(pulled pork in a barbeque sauce) had long been a favourite on the lunch specials menu, as well as the
gâteau le meutre par le chocolat
(murder being, according to Chef Maurice, a far more suitable description of the near deadly amount of cocoa in that particular cake).

“Another con, there’d need to be three shifts, to include the hotel breakfast as well. That’d definitely be a pain. And it’ll be harder to recruit up there, I reckon.”

PC Lucy nodded and added this to the list. “Anything else?”

Patrick rubbed his nose, leaving a tantalising smudge of chocolate across one cheek. “No, I think that’s it.”

“You sure?”

“I think so.”

He turned to check on some dehydrating olives in the oven behind him, while PC Lucy gripped her pen and held back the urge to throw it at his (admittedly rather fine) blue-and-white-checked behind.

The cheek! To not even include ‘my girlfriend lives right here in the Cotswolds’ as a disadvantage of moving several hundred miles north? She knew Patrick set great store by his career, and painful experiences with certain exes had taught her to never get in the way of a man and his métier—but, really! Just the other week, he’d been dropping hints about the prospect of them moving in together.

At least, that’s what she’d thought at the time, when the subject of his flat’s rent coming up for renewal had floated across their conversational path. He’d made a passing comment about how he might prefer not to renew and to look for another, bigger, place instead.

Now, though, she wondered if Mrs Merland hadn’t already had a quiet word in her son’s ear, and if the whole rent discussion had been his subtle way of preparing PC Lucy for news of his imminent relocation . . .

Patrick was still crouched down by the oven. She shoved the list across the table. “Here you go. It’s all down here. I’m sure it won’t be a very hard decision.”

With as much calm as she could muster, she stalked out of the back door and down into the village.

Back to her flat. Alone.

Patrick watched, puzzled, as PC Lucy disappeared out of the back door.

“Do you think she looked a bit annoyed about something?” he asked Alf, who was podding a bowl of just-blanched broad beans for the next day’s lunch menu.

“Dunno,” said Alf, who was of the private opinion that Patrick’s girlfriend lived her life on a tide of barely concealed rage, and the less directed at him, Alf, the better.

“She was pretty insistent on me doing that list. Do you think it’s something I said?”

He looked down at the piece of paper, which was divided into two columns, each filled with PC Lucy’s neat handwriting. To his surprise, the ‘pros’ column, in favour of relocating, was rather longer than he remembered.

Dorothy, returning with a tray of rattling crockery, glanced over his shoulder.

“Oooo, dearie me! You’re in trouble now,” was her pronouncement.

“What? Why?”

“You’ve gone and left our Lucy right off the list. I imagine she took off pretty fast after that.” She elbowed Patrick in the ribs. “Am I right?”

“She said something before about an early start tomorrow. And I didn’t put her on the list
on purpose
.”

Dorothy folded her arms over her ample bosom and tilted her head with a ‘try me’ expression.

“See, I can’t let her think I’d choose to stay in Beakley because of her,” explained Patrick, “or else she might feel . . . well, obliged to carry on going out with me. I want her to feel free to end things whenever she wants, instead of feeling guilt-tripped into us staying together because I chose to turn down the head chef job.”

Alf nodded along to this display of proto-male reasoning at its finest.

“And what did she say about this little list of yours, then?” said Dorothy.

“She said it looked like an easy decision,” said Patrick slowly.

They all looked down at the lengthy ‘pros’ column.

“Cor!” said Alf. “Do you think she said that, because, like, she actually
wants
you to go?”

The two chefs stared at each other in horror.

Dorothy, eyes rolling, picked up her tray and dumped the contents in the sink.

It was true what they said. Behind every great man, you found an extremely perplexed woman, wondering what the heck had happened.

The next day dawned fine and clear across the rolling Cotswold hills. Down by Warren’s Creek, wisps of clouds reflected off the placid waters, and the weeping willows dappled the sunlight as it fell on the path running alongside the bank.

By co-conspiratorial agreement, Arthur, Chef Maurice and Angie had convened at this early hour to take another look at the scene of the crime.

“Pretty little spot, isn’t it?” said Arthur, standing on the jetty, hands in pockets. In accordance to the day’s watery theme, he was wearing navy-blue boat shoes and a striped linen jacket.

“You’re not the only one who thinks so,” said Angie, as she bent down to peep under a nearby bush. “In the summer, we get all kinds of people trespassing on the grounds here, coming to sit and have their picnics. That’s not so bad. It’s when we get couples who come here to . . . well . . .”

“Spoon?” suggested Arthur.

(Chef Maurice, sitting nearby, furrowed his brow. He was unsure what cutlery had to do with the current discussion.)

“Near enough. And it’s not as if they don’t know they’re on our grounds. Sometimes the girls come across them, and, well . . . let’s just say that Miss Pearce, our Biology teacher, says she gets quite a lot of questions afterwards.” Angie’s cheeks, Arthur noticed, had gone quite pink.

He glanced over at Chef Maurice, who was sitting at the edge of the clearing on a rickety moss-covered bench, his pork-pie hat across his face.

“Maurice, are you going to help us search, or just sit there having a kip?”

That hat was raised one inch. “I am not a kipper,
mon ami
. I simply reflect on the puzzle before us. It is clear that Mademoiselle Miranda was one who made both enemies and trouble quite easily. But who is the enemy this time? And what is their motive?”

“We haven’t looked much into the money angle, yet,” said Arthur, using a branch to poke through a patch of soft earth. “Miranda was quite high up in the last
England Observer
Rich List, if I recall correctly.”

“Ah, so again we look to the aunt of Mademoiselle Miranda?”

“Nonsense,” said Angie, appearing back out of the trees, a leaf stuck behind her ear. “Anyway, I managed to speak to Miranda’s solicitors yesterday. They said her aunt’s not even been in the country these last few weeks. She’s been on a Mediterranean cruise since the end of March. So I hope that puts paid to your theory. The thought of being suspicious of a nice little old lady like her!”

“Humph.” Chef Maurice disagreed with this notion. In his experience, little old ladies were perfectly placed for the execution of all manner of criminal activities, starting with being the most miserly tippers at the restaurant.

“
Un moment
. How is it that the solicitors, they spoke with you? They were most rude to me when I telephoned to them!” Lawyers, in his mind, had no right withholding information from his investigation, and he had told them as much. (Oddly enough, the line had cut out at that point, and no one had picked up for a good hour afterwards. He hoped nothing too untoward had happened at their offices, and had made a mental note to pop round to check next time he was in Cowton. And to continue his complaint in person, of course.)

“Oh, it was only because they had to speak with me. They told me Miranda left a small amount of money to the business, according to the way the agreement was drawn up. Rory insisted we had a proper contract, you see, so that if either of us pulled out, the other could continue the project. Of course, we never imagined a situation like this.”