by J. A. Lang
“You do realise you’re disturbing a potential crime scene?”
“Bah, I would not have the need to disturb if the intruder had not attacked me with the table. I will simply liberate these delicious champignons to make use of before they go bad.”
“But why would anyone—apart from a nut like you, Maurice—want to break in here?” Arthur thought about what his friend had said about the broken lock. “Twice, even, assuming Friday’s break-in was the same person?”
Chef Maurice nodded. “That seems correct. Yet it is most strange that nothing was taken.”
Arthur wandered into the cottage’s other ground-floor room, a study-cum-living-room littered with books on plants and herbs, as well as partially labelled dried specimens and scraps of paper with scrawled notes and drawings.
He found Horace attempting to take a nap in a battered dog basket four times too small for him.
Nothing looked particularly valuable, although it was hard to tell amongst all this—
“Aha! Regarde, mon ami!” shouted a voice from the kitchen.
Arthur hurried back through to find Chef Maurice with his head wedged into the bottom of the fridge.
“There was a certain smell when I was here before,” he said, voice muffled by the fridge’s contents, “and this nose, it never lies!” In his hand, he waved what looked like a small lumpy potato.
“Um. Very good.” Arthur wondered how one was meant to test for concussion, and, more importantly, how to avoid explaining to the doctor exactly how one’s friend had come to be hit on the head by someone else’s kitchen table.
“Now, Maurice,” he said carefully, “put down that potato and let’s—”
“Potato?” Chef Maurice backed out of the fridge and gave the lump an appreciative sniff. “This is no potato! Regarde.”
Arthur opened his mouth to suggest rapid medical treatment, but stopped. A familiar, alluring, pungently earthy yet not unpleasant scent filled the air.
“Wait a minute, is that . . . a . . . ”
Chef Maurice gently scratched the surface of the lump and the wafting aroma got stronger. “You are correct, mon ami. If I am not mistaken, this is a very good, and very expensive, white Alba truffle. And look!”
He pulled a rough sack out of the fridge and held it open. Inside was a heap of fat, pristine white truffles. Altogether, they must have been worth tens of thousands of pounds.
Arthur had a bad feeling about this. But feelings could be dealt with later, once they got out of here.
First, he had to get Chef Maurice to let go of the sack of truffles.
* * *
Back in the moonlit kitchens of Le Cochon Rouge, Chef Maurice brushed the last specks of soil off his newly acquired prize, with all the love and care of an archaeologist in a hitherto undiscovered royal tomb.
It was only a single truffle, Arthur having forcibly restrained him from ‘liberating’ more than one sample, but it was a beauty, nonetheless. He lined a small wooden crate with straw, tucked the truffle in and surrounded it with eggs to keep it company.
Balancing on an upturned bucket, he placed the box reverentially onto the highest shelf in the walk-in fridge, then went to bed.
Perhaps if he’d known just how much trouble these truffles were going to cause in the very near future, he might not have drifted off so easily.
But as things were, sleep engulfed him like autumn fog the minute his head hit the pillow.
That night, he dreamed of truffles.
* * *
Hamilton was dreaming too. But his was not a good dream.
In the silence of his cell, his sleep-propelled legs kicked uselessly against the straw and shredded paper that littered the concrete floor.
It was a nightmare about bacon.
Again.
Chapter 4
The next morning, Patrick and Alf, Le Cochon Rouge’s gangly commis chef, arrived at work to find Chef Maurice bustling round the kitchens, humming to himself.
“Everything all right, chef?” said Patrick. His boss was not, by any definition, a morning person. In fact, there were probably sloths deep in the Amazon jungle that could be considered more morning people than Chef Maurice. That said, sloths weren’t generally known for indulging in a large glass of cognac most evenings, which presumably helped their morning routine.
“Everything is very right. Voilà, regarde ça!” He held up a straw-lined box, filled with eggs and a lumpy beige object. “Which of you can tell me what this is?”
“Er. A potato?” said Alf, scratching his ear.
Patrick leaned in closer. It looked a lot like a dusty potato, true, but there was something about the smell . . .
“That’s not . . . an Alba truffle, is it?” Patrick had only seen one once, during a short stint at one of Paris’s top restaurants, and even then it hadn’t been as big as this one. They cost more than . . . well, more than he and Alf were getting paid, that was for certain.
“Très bien.” Chef Maurice picked up the truffle and waved it under his nose like a glass of single malt whisky. “And so, this morning, we will enjoy une belle omelette aux truffes! That is, after I can find the truffle grater . . . ”
As Chef Maurice conducted a whirlwind search around the kitchen, banging open cupboards and drawers and cursing loudly to the God of Lost Kitchen Implements, Alf sidled up to Patrick.
“I thought truffles were made of chocolate,” said the commis chef, out of the corner of his mouth. “How come chef wants to make a chocolate omelette?”
“It’s not a chocolate truffle, Alf. It’s a truffle truffle.”
Alf looked up at him blankly. Patrick sought another approach.
“It’s a type of mushroom. It grows underground.”
“So . . . like a potato, then?”
“No! Not like a potato. They grow on the roots of trees, it’s a sort of symbiotic relationship. They work together,” he added, seeing Alf’s forehead wrinkle. “The tree and the truffle.”
“Aaah, gotcha. So how come chef’s all excited about a mushroom?”
There was the sound of tumbling boxes from deep inside the storeroom.
“Well, for one thing, they’re really expensive,” said Patrick. “A truffle like that, from Alba—that’s in the north in Italy—can fetch up to a couple of thousand pounds per kilo, you know. They call it the King of Truffles.”
“Bah!” shouted an indistinct voice from the storeroom. “The white truffles of Alba, they cannot compare to the black truffle of Périgord. La truffe noire, she is the Queen of Truffles! The texture, the aromas . . . ”
“Black truffles cost less, though,” said Patrick to Alf. He raised his voice. “So you’re saying a queen is better than a king, chef?”
“Absolument!” Chef Maurice was a feminist, it seemed, at least when it came to truffles. “Aha! Now we can begin.” He emerged triumphantly, waving a small metal slicer.
“So, these truffles,” said Alf, as if trying out a new idea. “These expensive truffles. They just grow in the ground, yeah, like, in the woods?”
“If only,” said Patrick. “We don’t get this type around here in England. We only get the cheaper types, like summer truffles, and even then they’re nearly impossible to find.”
“Bah,” said Chef Maurice, “the English truffle. It is like the English wine. It cannot compare! Now, observe.”
He slid the truffle across the grater. Thin, almost translucent slivers fell to the plate, beigy-brown marbled by a network of thin white veins. An intense aroma of forest floor mixed with garlic drifted through the kitchen.
“So are we thinking of doing a truffle menu, chef?” said Patrick, picking up a slice and holding it up to the light.
“Eh?” Chef Maurice looked up from his slicing. “Non, non, this truffle is . . . a sample. From a supplier.”
“Ollie’s started dealing in truffles?” Patrick was surprised. Ollie was perennially strapped for cash, as he was wont to tell anyone he met. Brokering truffles was far beyond
his usual cash flow capabilities.
“Non, non, a new supplier,” said Chef Maurice hastily. “But enough questions. Now we eat!”
He threw a large knob of butter into a pan, cracked half a dozen eggs into a bowl, and a minute later the three chefs stood around the table in silent anticipation, forks in hand, admiring a perfectly made wobbly omelette topped with slivers of the finest white truffle.
They dove in.
“But if we did have these truffles around these parts,” said Alf a while later, not being one to let a good idea go, “you mean anyone could just go around and pick them up?”
“It’s not that easy,” said Patrick. “You can’t see them from above ground. You need a special truffle dog, one that’s trained to sniff them out from under the earth. In fact, I heard in France they still use pigs to hunt truffles.”
“Pah, you do not want a pig,” said Chef Maurice, mouth full of truffled omelette. “They are big trouble. Always, it is better to have a dog.”
“How come, chef?” asked Alf.
Chef Maurice held up a finger. “With a dog, you can train the dog to give you the truffle after he has found it. With a pig, the pig also wants to eat the truffle. And you do not want to fight a pig for a truffle. I know truffle hunters who have lost more than one finger to a pig who is mad for truffles.”
Patrick tried to clear his mind of the mental image of Chef Maurice wrestling a pig for a truffle.
Chef Maurice held the truffle to his nose again, a thoughtful look on his face. Their impromptu breakfast had barely made a dent in it.
“So you’re definitely sure we don’t have these truffles here in Beakley?” said Alf, running a finger around the plate, then licking it.
Patrick expected some form of emphatic denial from his boss, perhaps along with some slur on the incapacity of England’s green and pleasant lands to produce a worthwhile crop of truffles. Instead, Chef Maurice murmured, “It does not appear to be so . . . ”
The head chef stared into the distance for a moment, then shook his head.
“Bon,” he said, slapping the table. “Enough of talk, today we make a terrine of pork with the spiced Bramley apple chutney—Patrick, you know the recipe—and Alf, potatoes and the usual mélange of vegetables for the ox cheek stew. We will put it on tonight’s menu. Allez-y!”
He picked up the rest of the truffle, wrapped it carefully in his handkerchief and pocketed it.
“Now, I must go see a man about a dog.”
Patrick tilted his head to one side. There was something about the smell still lingering in the air, and the way his boss had said it . . .
“Not a pig, chef?”
Chef Maurice gave him a long look. “Non. A dog, Patrick. Definitely a dog.”
* * *
PC Lucy Gavistone surveyed the crime scene with a grim look on her face. She was hoping this gave her a look of stern authority, something she felt she sorely lacked in her dealings with the residents of Beakley.
That was the problem with policing in a small village. It wasn’t that the residents of Beakley didn’t respect the law; they had great respect for it, and therefore liked to turn up en masse to make sure it got done properly.
Hence the ragtag audience currently following her as she made her way round Ollie Meadows’ cottage. Okay, she could deal with Arthur Wordington-Smythe, who lived up the top of the village and had been the one to report last night’s break-in. Unfortunately he hadn’t seen much, just an intruder dressed in dark clothes, tall and thin, most likely male.
This ruled out the possibility of the intruder having been one of her other two spectators.
She wasn’t too sure why Chef Maurice, who ran Le Cochon Rouge up at the top of Beakley, was also here. He’d dropped by—as if dropping by a police investigation was a normal morning activity—wanting to speak to Arthur about Arthur’s dog, or something along those lines, then had been distracted by the mess in Ollie’s kitchen.
She’d have turfed him out if she could, on the grounds of obstructing the course of justice in general, and that of PC Lucy in particular, but that would have meant also getting rid of old Mrs Eldridge from next door, who was immovable to the crowbars of unsubtle hints and pointed suggestions.
Mrs Eldridge was currently rummaging through the drawers in Ollie’s desk, “looking for those clue things,” as she put it. PC Lucy felt the need to point out that burglars hardly left their calling cards when they made their rounds.
Unfortunately, burglars were also meant to take things, and this was the second time someone had been here at Ollie’s, apparently to do nothing more than stroll around and perhaps make themselves a cup of tea. This vexed her. This wasn’t how things were meant to go.
“If only I’d been here last night,” sighed Mrs Eldridge. “Of all the nights to go over to Ethel’s—her back’s playing up again, poor dear—when I could have been here, apprehending criminals and whatnot. Makes you question fate, it does . . . ”
No, kicking Mrs Eldridge out at this point would only cause an almighty fuss; plus manhandling members of the public, especially those old enough to be your granny, was generally frowned upon in the force.
“Hmm, now this is rather odd,” said Arthur, who was also standing by Ollie’s desk. Like much of the rest of the house, it was covered in bits of dried leaves and twigs and was sticky to the touch.
“What’s odd?” She followed Arthur’s gaze to the large corkboard above the desk. It was bare, apart from a wide rectangular patch of lighter-coloured cork where something had been pinned up.
And torn down. Recently, too.
The four remaining pins each held a corner scrap of paper, grubby and curled at the edges. The many holes in each piece suggested that whatever had been pinned there had been taken down and put back up with some regularity.
She carefully removed the pin from the yellowed scrap nearest to her.
“ . . . Civil Parish of Farnl . . . 1957 . . . ” she read.
“There was a map there,” volunteered Mrs Eldridge. “One of those maps with geography on it, fields and woods and things. It was old, too. Told Ollie he shouldn’t be drawing on a nice old map like that.”
“Do you think it was valuable?” said Arthur to PC Lucy.
“Perhaps. Though Ollie doesn’t strike me as the map-collecting type.” PC Lucy dropped the scrap, along with the other three corners, into a plastic bag and sealed it.
“Was the map here after the first break-in?” asked Arthur.
“Oh, yes,” said Mrs Eldridge, before PC Lucy could reply. “I’d have noticed a thing like that, I would.”
“Plus, Ollie didn’t report anything missing. And I’m pretty sure he’d have noticed this”—PC Lucy waved at the bright empty rectangle of cork—“if it hadn’t been there then.”
There was a loud thunk from inside the kitchen, followed by swearing and the sound of several objects thumping and rolling to the ground.
When PC Lucy got there, Chef Maurice was shuffling around on his knees, picking up grubby-looking potatoes and stuffing them into a sack.
“I told you, Mr Manchot, that it is imperative that you do not remove any items from a crime scene!” She looked at the sack. “And they’re just potatoes, for goodness’ sake. Surely you have bags of them up at the restaurant.”
Was it her imagination, or did Chef Maurice and Arthur exchange an odd look at that point?
“So put them back where you found them, and if you’re going to be here, at least stick with the rest of us.”
Chef Maurice reluctantly opened the fridge and placed the sack inside, muttering something unflattering about policemen and their lack of appreciation for cuisine that wasn’t round and filled with jam.
PC Lucy headed upstairs, where a quick tour produced a vignette of life as the common-variety bachelor, all piles of unwashed socks and rumpled linen, though a half-used tube of lipstick and some eyeshadow in the bathroom cupboard suggested that Ollie did manage the occasional bout of female company. In
fact, word round the village was that the forager was something of a ladies’ man, though so far not a single lady (unattached or otherwise) had been willing to come forward to corroborate this statement.
Chef Maurice tutted at the state of the youth today, while Mrs Eldridge used her walking cane to examine a particularly large pile of laundry.
“You never know who might be hiding in there,” she explained.
In the bedroom, unaired and musty, with overtones of muddy boots, PC Lucy gave the room a brisk once-over while her audience stood at the door, offering a range of helpful suggestions, which she dutifully ignored.
At the back of the wardrobe, she discovered Ollie’s idea of sound monetary practice: a brown envelope stuffed with just over two thousand pounds in small notes. Not bad for a man constantly complaining about being on the brink of financial ruin. Some of the clothes hanging above looked suspiciously new too.
She hunkered down near the bed and had a brief look under—nothing but dust bunnies and an old empty suitcase—then started picking through the litter bin.
“Ooo, I was just going to suggest that,” said Mrs Eldridge.
Bingo. The first crumpled note bore a message in neat bold capitals. The spectators crowded into the room.
“‘Keep away from things that don’t belong to you. Or else’,” read Arthur over her shoulder. “Charming.”
Mrs Eldridge was now poking her cane into Ollie’s wardrobe, while Chef Maurice settled himself into the old armchair in the corner.
“There’s another.” PC Lucy smoothed out the second piece of paper. The writing was thinner, more scrawled, but the message no less threatening.
HAVE COME TO COLLECT MY LOAN. DON’T GIVE ME ANY MORE LIES IF YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOOD FOR YOU.
“Do you reckon they’re from the same person?” asked Arthur.
“I don’t know. It’s not the same handwriting, or at least someone’s tried to make it look that way. But don’t worry, I’ll get to the bottom of it,” said PC Lucy, straightening up. She gave the room another sweeping gaze, pondering her next move.
Things weren’t looking so good for Ollie. She might have believed he’d done a runner, probably from someone he owed money to, if it wasn’t for the big wodge of cash he’d left in his wardrobe. But if he hadn’t taken off of his own accord . . .