Chef Maurice and a Spot of Truffle (Chef Maurice Mysteries Book 1)

by J. A. Lang

  As for Chef Maurice, Ollie was his wild herb and mushroom supplier, which seemed all above board. No, there hadn’t been any bad feeling between the two, and anyway Chef Maurice pointed out most emphatically that a chef could not go around shooting his suppliers, even when they annoyed him; you’d soon run out of suppliers. Yes, Ollie had failed to make his most recent delivery, but this was now completely understandable in the light of today’s findings.

  “So you and Mr Wordington-Smythe are now free to go.” She put emphasis on those last two words, but they fell on uninterested ears.

  Chef Maurice squatted down next to Alistair.

  “Was there anything of interest in his pockets?”

  “Not that we’ve found, sir. He had a phone, of course—”

  “Alistair!”

  “Sorry, miss.”

  “And these marks here on Monsieur Ollie’s jacket—”

  PC Lucy had had enough. “Mr Manchot! The police are more than capable of handling this investigation. If you’ll please step outside the cordoned area, we cannot have members of the public contaminating the crime scene. Especially not those carrying livestock!”

  Chef Maurice retreated under the cordon. Hamilton, from under his arm, gave her a reproachful grunt.

  PC Lucy folded her arms and watched PC Alistair prepare a stretcher for the body.

  This was going to be her first real homicide investigation. They didn’t get many of those in these parts. Her superiors would be watching her closely.

  She really hoped she wasn’t going to make a pig’s ear of it.

  * * *

  Arthur sat on a rock outside the cordoned area, facing away from the gully and looking as green as the moss he was sat on.

  Chef Maurice bounded up, Hamilton trotting at his feet. “Mon ami, you must come see, it is most interesting what they do!”

  “I assure you, I’m perfectly happy where I am, thank you very much,” said Arthur, staring fixedly at the tree straight in front of him.

  “They say he has been there for a number of days.”

  “Lovely.”

  “Which seems correct. Both Madame Eldridge and Mademoiselle Lucy spoke to him on Saturday morning, after the first break-in. Then he was not seen again. It is therefore likely that he was shot on Saturday.”

  “Fancy that.”

  “The state of Monsieur Ollie’s jacket, I found it most odd.”

  “Covered in blood, you mean?” Arthur turned a little more grey. “No, forget I said that.”

  “Non, non, we are not interested in blood.”

  “We aren’t? Thank goodness for that,” said Arthur weakly.

  “Non, you see, the long scratches on the jacket, all on the back, none on the front, it is suggesting to me that Monsieur Ollie was dragged a certain distance to this place.”

  “So?”

  “Why did they not simply bury him?”

  Arthur pushed his heel into the ground. The soil was rock hard, once you got through the thin layer of mud. “Perhaps they forgot their shovel.”

  Chef Maurice appeared to look at his friend for the first time. “You do not look well, mon ami. Come, we must find you a drink.”

  Arthur allowed himself to be heaved to his feet. “I think I saw a pub back down in Farnley,” he volunteered.

  “Pah! Why drink beer when we have the finest aged cognac?”

  They trudged on, skidding occasionally as they descended.

  “You’ve got cognac in your car?”

  “But of course!”

  “Maurice, do drink-driving laws mean nothing to you?”

  “I am shocked. I have never thought to drink and drive!”

  “Oh, really?”

  “One must always pull over. And it is just a little sip, just to warm the body on a cold day . . . ”

  Arthur let this one go. Given Chef Maurice’s somewhat ballistic driving skills, a nip of brandy was the least of his concerns.

  “I’ll get my car tomorrow morning,” he said, as he climbed into Chef Maurice’s passenger seat after having applied a generous dose of cognac to his frazzled nerves. Behind him, Hamilton shot him a baleful glare, having been relegated to his basket in the back. “Onwards to Beakley?”

  “Un moment.”

  Chef Maurice leaned over, flipped open the glove compartment and extracted a box of crackers, a small wheel of something that looked like Camembert but smelt like a bag of rugby players’ socks, a wooden-handled knife and a large red-and-white-checked handkerchief.

  “One does not know when one may miss a meal,” said Chef Maurice, spreading a lump of cheese across a cracker. He waved the knife at Arthur. “You are hungry?”

  “Not in the slightest,” squeaked Arthur. He wound down the window and stuck his head out. “Though I think I could manage a little more cognac . . . ”

  One box of crackers and three-quarters of the cheese later, Chef Maurice swung out of the car park and pointed the car in the opposite direction to Beakley.

  “Where are we going now?” It was only mid-morning still, but Arthur felt like days had passed since he’d last been in bed. A nap at this point would not go amiss.

  “To the Helpful Paws animal house.”

  “See, I told you getting a micro-pig was a damn silly idea.” There was a high-pitched squeal from behind. “They don’t do returns, you know.”

  Chef Maurice gave him a puzzled look. “Returns? I have no wish to return Hamilton. I go to enquire about a dog.”

  Arthur leant back in his seat and closed his eyes. “Go on. Tell me why a dog.”

  “It is not obvious?”

  “No, it is not obvious.”

  “Think about it, mon ami. We know that Monsieur Ollie found truffles. Now we ask: did he get down on his knees and dig for them? Non! He must have a dog. Or a pig. But I think most likely a dog, as we would hear if he had a pig. Do you see now?”

  When Arthur remained silent, Chef Maurice continued, “We found Monsieur Ollie, but we have not found his dog. Therefore, we go to find his dog. Think, mon ami. A trained truffle dog! Think what treasures we will find with this dog!”

  There was another indignant squeal from the back of the car.

  “And we can use le chien to train Hamilton, of course.”

  “Hmm,” said Arthur. “If you’re right, the police are bound to be looking for Ollie’s dog too. Evidence and whatnot. Might have got a good bite out of the murderer, you never know.”

  “Ah.” Chef Maurice looked momentarily deflated. “Perhaps they will then allow me to borrow the dog?”

  “I don’t think you’re on their list of favourites at the moment, especially not with PC Gavistone.”

  “I made some most helpful suggestions.”

  “No doubt.”

  They left Hamilton in the car with the windows cracked open and a handful of sow nuts to keep him busy. He turned up his nose and gave a meaningful stare towards the glove compartment.

  The spotty-faced youth from yesterday was mending a fence in the outdoor kennel yard.

  “Can I help?” he said, eyes fixed on the task.

  “We are looking for a truffle dog,” said Chef Maurice importantly.

  The youth looked up. “Look, I already told you, dogs and chocolate don’t—”

  Arthur decided it was time to employ some tact—otherwise known as stopping Chef Maurice from talking.

  “What my friend means,” he said hurriedly, “is that we’re looking for a dog called Truffles. He belongs to a friend. He went missing”—it was Wednesday today, and Ollie had last been seen on Saturday—“at least seventy-two hours ago.”

  The youth frowned. “That’s two days ago, right?”

  “Um, possibly more like three . . . ”

  “Right. What kind of dog is it?”

  “Um.” Arthur hadn’t thought this far. He shot a look at Chef Maurice, who shrugged. He recalled seeing Ollie out and about in the village with a dog. And there’d been a dog basket in the cottage. But it had clearly b
een a particularly nondescript dog.

  “Not a big dog,” he hazarded. “But not too small either. Medium, perhaps.”

  “Right. And colour?”

  “Um. Brown?”

  “O-kay, a medium maybe-brown dog,” said the youth, giving him an odd look. “In the last three days. I’ll go see what I can do.”

  “It might be black, actually,” called Arthur, as the door swung closed.

  In the kennel opposite them, an old basset hound gave them an unimpressed look.

  Eventually, Tara appeared through the doors, a broad smile on her face as she bore down on them.

  “How lovely to see you both again! How’s Hamilton settling into his new home?”

  “Very well, madame,” said Chef Maurice. “But it is not about Hamilton we come to speak to you today. Your collègue has mentioned our friend’s missing dog?”

  “Yes, but I’m afraid your friend has stolen a march on you. I’m surprised he didn’t already tell you, really. He turned up on Sunday, poor little thing—the dog, I mean. He’d been lost in the woods, absolutely covered in mud, and a nice couple found him and brought him in. We’d just got him cleaned up when your friend turned up.”

  “This was Sunday too?” Chef Maurice looked in confusion at Arthur.

  “Yes, I remember because we didn’t even have time to set up a file for him. We took a picture, though.” She held up a Polaroid of a medium-sized scruffy brown dog of indeterminate breed. “Is this him?”

  Arthur nodded. That was definitely Ollie’s dog. He remembered the mutt now, a well-behaved little fellow by all accounts. But Ollie hadn’t been seen since Saturday morning. And here he was, apparently picking up his lost dog on Sunday at the Pet Sanctuary. What had he been doing in the time in between? And more importantly, what had happened after?

  “And the dog’s owner— I mean, our friend,” said Arthur. “Just to check, was he a tall, young fellow, with a bit of stubble, likes wearing hiking-type gear, generally looks a bit worse for wear?”

  Tara tilted her head. “Sorry, I don’t quite follow . . . ”

  “The man who came on Sunday?” said Chef Maurice. “For the dog?”

  “Yes, I know, but he was nothing like your friend you just described. Tall, yes, but definitely not young. In his fifties, I’d say, big dark beard, had a bit of an accent though I couldn’t quite place it . . . ”

  Arthur and Chef Maurice looked at each other in horror. Someone had beaten them to it.

  “That man, madame, was not the owner of the dog.”

  “Oh, he definitely was,” said Tara confidently. “He had all the paperwork, the dog passport, pictures of the two of them together. We take a lot of care about this kind of thing—” She noticed them staring at her. “Is something wrong?”

  Chapter 8

  They motored back to Beakley in a confused silence. Hamilton, apparently satisfied that they had not adopted a dog, or worse, a second pig, dozed happily in the back.

  “This is very bad, mon ami.”

  “It is? I still haven’t the foggiest what’s going on.”

  “We are not the only ones to know about Monsieur Ollie and the truffles. Why else would someone steal his truffle dog?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t call it—”

  “Snatched from below our noses!”

  “It was three days ago, Maurice. Our noses weren’t even out of bed. What I can’t figure out is how the chap put together all the paperwork.”

  “There are ways,” said Chef Maurice darkly. “But that is not the worst. Think, how would this man know to look for Monsieur Ollie’s dog?”

  Arthur drummed his fingers on the dashboard. “Well, maybe—”

  “Non, not maybe. It is évident, mon ami. Who would know that Monsieur Ollie’s dog was lost in the woods? The man who shot Monsieur Ollie in the first place!”

  Arthur turned to look at him. “You honestly think someone would bump off Ollie just to steal his dog?”

  “And his patch of truffles, remember. A most valuable combination.”

  “Seems a bit far-fetched to me. This is the Cotswolds, not Sicily, Maurice.”

  “Ah, but the man, he had an accent, non? That is suspicious.”

  “Pot, kettle . . . ” muttered Arthur.

  There were a couple of police cars parked outside Ollie’s cottage and a police cordon across the front door. A small crowd had gathered on the sidelines, just in case it turned out there was something worth seeing. Chef Maurice spotted Mrs Eldridge up at the front, arms crossed and foot tapping, peeved to have been denied inside access this time around.

  He dropped Arthur off at the Wordington-Smythe cottage and headed back to Le Cochon Rouge. Hamilton jumped out of the car and ran back to his pen, presumably to catch the cows up on today’s adventures. In the kitchens, lunch service had been successfully concluded and dinner prep was quietly getting underway.

  Chef Maurice rummaged around in the walk-in fridge and returned with a bag of apples, a large tarte normande and a small jug of cream.

  He tossed the bag of apples at Alf. “Peeled, cored, thinly sliced. Patrick, a pâte sucrée for the base is needed. We will need a new tarte normande this evening.”

  “I thought we already had—” started Patrick, then noticed the apple tart in Chef Maurice’s hand. “Oui, chef. One tarte normande.”

  Chef Maurice doused his impromptu late lunch with cream, then wandered over to the hobs. He stuck his nose over a pot of reducing stock, sniffed, then turned down the flame one notch.

  The kitchen door burst open.

  “You’ll never guess what!”

  It was Dorothy, cheeks flushed from the heat of gossip hot off the press.

  “Annie just dropped round with the linen, and she just heard it from Charlie, who heard from his brother over in Cowton. There’s been a murder up in Farnley Woods. A murder!”

  “Cor!” said Alf.

  “That’s awful,” said Patrick.

  Chef Maurice opened his mouth, then closed it. Dorothy would never forgive him if he stole her thunder now.

  “And you’ll never guess who it was. Ollie Meadows! I said to Annie, if anyone was going to be murdered around here, it’d be that scallywag Ollie, always sneaking around in people’s gardens. Not to speak ill of the dead, of course,” she added primly.

  “Blimey!” said Alf, absentmindedly biting into an apple. He’d moved to Beakley from the hamlet of Little Goving, population six. Life in the big village was currently exceeding all his expectations. “How’d it happen? Who did it?”

  “Well, of course they don’t know yet,” said Dorothy, in the tone of someone who has watched their fair share of murder mysteries and knows how these things go. “But they know he was shot, right in the chest, they say. Puts a chill up you, that does. We all thought he’d just run off with some girl, and then bam, he turns up dead as a doorknob. Makes you think of locking your doors and getting a big Rottweiler, it does. And think about the poor soul that found him . . . ”

  “Oui, it was most horrific,” said Chef Maurice, tipping the last of the cream over his plate. “Arthur, he was almost sick. I think he does not possess the constitution for le crime.”

  He looked up at his staff’s open mouths. “You do not know? It was we who found le pauvre Ollie, on our walk with Hamilton this morning.”

  Dorothy’s face was a battlefield of emotion. On one hand, her boss had completely upstaged her, but on the other hand, she now had access to a genuine crime scene witness, which was one up on Annie, who’d only heard about it because her boyfriend’s brother was a police constable over in Cowton, and he hadn’t even been there.

  In the end, the lure of premium-quality gossip won out.

  “Oh my, that must have been terrible,” she cried. “Sit down, chef, let me make you a cup of coffee, and you can tell us all about it. It’s a terrible burden to carry, I tell you, to keep it all in. Best get it out, I always say.”

  So the morning’s sorry tale was rehashed, with ext
ra dash and daring on Chef Maurice’s part, and some light embellishment of his conversation with PC Lucy.

  “Lucy?” said Patrick, looking up from prepping a tray of pork belly. “The policewoman who lives down near the green? Blonde? Er . . . ” He waved his hands. “Nice and . . . uh . . . ” His ears were going red.

  “That’s her,” said Dorothy, with a grin. “Comes here every week for the Sunday roast. Always has the lamb.”

  “She comes for dinner too, sometimes,” added Chef Maurice, who liked to get out into the dining room during service to shake hands with regulars, top up wine glasses and inject a little Gallic bonhomie into the room. And to make sure they all cleaned their plates, of course.

  “Does she, um, come along with anyone?” said Patrick with extreme nonchalance, eyes focussed on scoring the pork belly all over.

  “She’s often with a girlfriend, another police lady, I think,” said Dorothy, winking at Chef Maurice. “Not half as pretty, in my mind.”

  “Right.” Patrick bent over, salting the pork with a look of ferocious concentration.

  “So do the police know who did it?” said Dorothy, turning back to Witness Number One.

  Chef Maurice shook his head.

  “Of course, they’ll have to read his will,” said Dorothy, sudden criminal expert. “Find out who benefits the most, and that’s your murderer, nine times out of ten, I tell you.”

  “Cor, that’s clever,” said Alf. Beakley was turning out to be an education and a half.

  “Monsieur Ollie did not seem the type to have a will.”

  “Do you have a will, chef?”

  “Of course.” His was fairly simple. To Arthur, he’d leave his Citroën and cookbooks. Patrick would get Le Cochon Rouge, should he still be sous-chef.

  He wondered who should get Hamilton now.

  “I heard someone broke into his cottage, twice,” said Dorothy. “Might have been looking for that will. There’s always a surprise will. Leaving everything to the maid, or the like. Or sometimes it could be a forgery . . . ”

  Chef Maurice thought about Ollie’s stolen map. Surely Ollie wouldn’t have written his will on a map?