by J. A. Lang
“That is the day Monsieur Ollie’s cottage was first broken into!” said Chef Maurice.
Mrs Eldridge nodded. “Saw him here a few times that day, bold as brass, staring through the windows, banging on the door. Reckon he waited until dark, then . . . well, just as well Ollie was out that night. Off with a lady friend, he was, by my reckoning.”
“You think the murderer came for him that night?” said Arthur.
“It makes sense,” said Chef Maurice. “Nothing was taken on the Friday. Perhaps because it was not the intention.”
“You might be right about that,” said Mrs Eldridge. “And I saw him again, the same man, on the Sunday afternoon. Shouted something through the letter box, then drove off.”
“You have his car details?”
Mrs Eldridge tapped her notebook. “All in here.”
“But that doesn’t make sense,” said Arthur, drumming his fingers on his knee. “Ollie had already . . . disappeared by then. Why come back to the cottage?”
“Aha, perhaps he returns to create an alibi?”
“Damn funny alibi. And then there’s the break-in on Monday too. Why come back again, break in, and steal a worthless map? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Patience, mon ami. To solve a mystery, it is like clarifying the chicken stock. In time, it will become clear.” He turned to Mrs Eldridge. “This man, what did he look like?”
Mrs Eldridge peered down at her notebook. “He was tall, not old, not young, a big man, looked like he could heave a crate or two.”
“Hmm, the man I saw break in on the Monday night was a skinny chap,” said Arthur.
“He had a big dark beard—”
“The dog man!” cried Chef Maurice. “Mon ami, this must be the same man who collected the dog of Monsieur Ollie.”
“Our phantom truffle hunter?”
Chef Maurice nodded.
Mrs Eldridge, who sensed the limelight was fading away from her, rapped her pen against her notebook. “Then there’s that second fellow who’s been coming round.”
“A skinny chap?” said Arthur hopefully.
She shook her head. “Big fellow. All dressed up, businesslike. Blond hair. Tall.”
“Hmph, all these criminals, always tall,” muttered Chef Maurice.
“So what was suspicious about this chap, then?”
“Well, it was the Thursday night he came around. Ollie didn’t want to let him in at first, then he did. I could hear them shouting through the walls. Terrible the way sound carries through these walls. Had to turn the telly right down, I did.”
“What were they shouting about?”
“Well, it was mostly the blond fellow doing the shouting. Couldn’t make out most of it. Something about staying away from something.”
Chef Maurice thought about the note they’d found in Ollie’s house. Keep away from things that don’t belong to you. Or else.
“Not much to go on, I’m afraid,” said Arthur. “Frankly, my money’s on those kids and those packages. Drugs, most likely.”
Chef Maurice frowned. PC Lucy hadn’t mentioned finding any drugs. The good citizens of Beakley mostly confined themselves to the wholesomely legal highs of alcohol and gossip.
“What did these kids look like?” asked Arthur.
“Well, it wasn’t always the same ones. There was one boy, though, saw him a lot, always wearing a black jacket. Fancied himself as James Dean, I reckon. Girls sometimes too, wearing those ridiculous shoes they do nowadays. They never caused any trouble, mind you,” she added. “Except for the smoking. They’d stand out the back, waiting for Ollie. Like clockwork they was. Every Friday early evening, regular.”
“Every Friday?” Chef Maurice looked at Arthur. “That is today. Mon ami, are you thinking what I am thinking?”
Arthur sighed. “I highly doubt it.”
Chapter 13
They headed back to Le Cochon Rouge for lunch, plans thus arranged for later that afternoon. Arthur had fervent misgivings about the whole enterprise, but Chef Maurice was insistent: solving this murder was Hamilton’s only chance.
They found Patrick pacing up and down the kitchens and muttering to himself, his hair sticking out at odd angles. This was unusual; as chefs went, Patrick was as well balanced as a tightrope-walking accountant’s chequebook.
He had his eyes half-closed and was gesturing with one hand. “Delicious!” he muttered. “That was really . . . delicious . . . ”
“I don’t think he’s quite got the vocabulary to be a restaurant critic,” said Arthur, sotto voce, to Chef Maurice.
Chef Maurice wandered over to Alf, who was pushing a steaming pile of potatoes through a ricer.
“What is the matter with Patrick?”
“He’s got a date. With a girl,” said Alf with a smirk. “She’s going to cook him dinner.”
“Ah, jolly good,” said Arthur. “So who’s the lucky lady?”
“It’s that blonde policewoman,” said Alf. “Never knew Patrick had a thing for uniforms . . . ”
Patrick stopped pacing and threw his hands open at his audience. “What am I going to do?”
They stared at him.
Arthur cleared his throat. “Exactly which part of the evening are you referring to?” he said carefully.
“She said she’s going to cook! What if I don’t like her cooking?”
Arthur looked sideways at the assembled company. Alf was still at the age where girls presented both a fascination and a terror incognita. As for Chef Maurice, while he could muster a certain brisk variety of charm when matters required, a prolonged but not unhappy bachelorhood had now led to the stage where an evening with a well-curated cheeseboard held more attraction to the chef than the perils of female companionship.
Which left Arthur, who, despite several years of joyous marriage, rather regarded this feat like a man who has accidentally solved a Rubik’s Cube—he was damned if he knew how it all worked, let alone in a position to advise someone else on its mechanics.
“What if she’s an awful cook? Should I lie?”
“Never,” said Chef Maurice, who lied all the time.
“Absolutely,” said Arthur, the happily married man. “Make sure to have second helpings too. The way to a woman’s heart is through your stomach.”
Patrick looked pained. “Can I at least offer constructive criticism?”
“Not if you don’t want her to retaliate,” said Arthur, patting him on the shoulder. “Especially at a point in the evening when you least expect it.” He winced. “So when is this date?”
“Tonight.” Patrick looked glum.
“Cheer up, she might turn out to be an excellent cook,” said Arthur. He’d once seen PC Lucy judo-tackle a would-be bicycle thief on the village green. Pacifying a rack of lamb would surely be no trouble. That said, there had been that roast chicken question the other day . . .
“You could skip lunch,” volunteered Alf. “That way you’ll be raving hungry.”
“And what are we even going to talk about?”
“Films, books, music? The joys of village life?” Arthur racked his brain. It had been many decades since he’d had to make ulteriorly motivated small talk.
“Whether she has found mon Hamilton?”
“Not that,” said Arthur. “Keep work out of the equation.”
As he headed for the dining room and his reserved lunchtime table, he heard Chef Maurice offer up one more tip from his personal dating philosophy.
“And do not forget to check her fridge. You can tell much about a lady by the cheese that she eats.”
Bachelorhood, thought Arthur, was a strange world, indeed.
* * *
It would probably go down as one of history’s best-catered stake-outs.
They sat in the lay-by in Chef Maurice’s car—Arthur had taken one look at the overflowing picnic hamper and vetoed taking his Aston—surrounded by four types of cheese, two cold game pies, a roast artichoke quiche, a fruit platter, and an extra-large thermos of ho
t chocolate.
The late afternoon sun was just setting behind the trees. Over the ridge in front of them, unkempt fields led down the hill to the lower part of Beakley village and, in particular, to the back door of Ollie Meadows’ old cottage.
“It’s been an hour already,” said Arthur, jiggling his knees. “Do you think she got the day wrong?”
“Madame Eldridge is a most conscientious lady.”
Arthur tested his seat to see if it could go any lower. Not that it mattered too much—he was already confident that from the road, a casual passer-by could hardly see him.
Chef Maurice, on the other hand, had simply donned the large pork-pie hat that he saved for special occasions.
“It is a good disguise, non?” he said, noticing Arthur’s stare.
Arthur was about to point out that, hat or no hat, it wasn’t hard to recognise the only man in Beakley with a moustache large enough to warrant its own postcode, when a VW Beetle roared into the lay-by and pulled up in front of them.
Two girls in their late teens, who had apparently dressed in expectation of a day at the beach, rather than a chilly autumn evening, jumped out and tottered off down the slope.
Arthur and Chef Maurice scrambled out of the car and hurried over to the ridge. They could see the top of the girls’ heads as they picked their way down the zigzag path towards the cottages.
“We must get close enough to observe their conversation,” whispered Chef Maurice. He took a step forward and a branch cracked loudly underfoot.
“Quick! Get down!” He grabbed Arthur’s leg and dragged him into the long grass.
“Ouch! Maurice, you really didn’t have to—”
But Chef Maurice was already creeping away down the slope, bent double and using his hands as paddles to part a way through the grassy wilderness.
They could hear the girls’ voices raised in complaint.
“—almost snapped my heel. Beats me why PJ makes us come round this way. It’s not like there’s much going on in this place.”
“Ow, I think I’ve got a stone in my shoe. Yeah, well, he can come next week, now that he’s back, and save us all this faff.”
Arthur, concentrating on the conversation, almost tripped over Chef Maurice, who was lying flat on the ground in a small clearing in the grass. A few metres in front of him was a very plump brown rabbit. It twitched its nose at them.
“Come here, little lapin,” whispered Chef Maurice, inching forward on his elbows, his hat raised in one hand.
“Maurice, what do you think you’re—”
“Did you hear that?” One of the girls stopped walking.
“What?”
“I thought I heard something. Coming from over there?”
“You sure?”
There was a rustle as one of them took a tentative step into the tall grass.
Arthur gave Chef Maurice a ‘what do we do now?’ look.
Chef Maurice sighed, replaced his hat and picked up a nearby stick. He gave the rabbit a gentle prod in the direction of the voices.
The rabbit wrinkled its nose and gave him a reproachful look.
“I think I just saw something—”
“Allez-y!” whispered Chef Maurice, and gave the rabbit a harder prod. This time it took the hint, and lopped off in the direction of the cottages.
A few moments later, one of the girls squealed.
“Aww!”
“Just a rabbit,” said the other.
“But isn’t it cute?”
“Chrissy, come on . . . ”
The girls finished their descent, adjusted their clothing and rapped on Ollie’s back door.
No answer.
“What’s all this yellow tape for?”
“Dunno, maybe he’s doing building work?”
“Do you think he’s forgotten we’re coming?”
“He’s not like that. Maybe PJ changed the day. Told you we should have called him when we landed.”
“I told you, my phone’s out of juice. What did you do with yours?”
“It’s back at the bottom of the hotel pool— Don’t look at me like that. It slipped.”
“Funny how you managed to hold onto your tenth cocktail pretty fine. So what do we do now?”
“Let’s go meet the others. Maybe PJ’s already been and didn’t tell us.”
Bickering half-heartedly, the two girls traipsed back up the hill.
Arthur nudged Chef Maurice.
“Eh?”
Arthur stabbed his finger towards the lay-by, and made the frantic ‘driving along holding the steering wheel’ motion that people make when pretending to drive a car, and which would lead to severe pile-ups if they ever tried it in a real vehicle.
“Ah! A chase!”
“Shhh!”
They clambered back up the hill, taking a straight path through the overgrowth. Up ahead, there was the sound of slamming doors and wheels on gravel.
“Hurry up before we lose them!”
Arthur ran the rest of the way up the hill, his knees sending out fiery sparks of protest, and wrenched open the passenger door. He turned around, but Chef Maurice was nowhere to be seen.
“Maurice!”
Chef Maurice appeared, puffing, over the crest of the hill, carrying his upturned hat in both hands. In the hat sat a very plump brown rabbit, its feet upturned, twitching its nose at the surroundings.
“Maurice, come on! We’re on a stake-out, not an animal rescue mission.”
“I thought he would make a good friend for Hamilton.”
“When we get Hamilton back, we can go get a rabbit. Now put that one back where you found it, heaven knows where it’s been!”
There was the squeal of brakes as the girls’ car reached the bottom of the hill.
“Get in the car!”
A moment later, after a precipitous U-turn that left Arthur clutching the dashboard with one hand and his stomach with the other, they were barrelling down the hill after the VW Beetle.
The chase was on.
Chapter 14
PC Lucy surveyed her troops. Two large onions. A bag of arborio rice. Chicken stock, shop-bought—but still, better than a stock cube, surely? A small wedge of parmesan, slivers of which she kept popping into her mouth. A large block of butter.
(She could hear her mother’s voice, saying one could never have enough butter when it came to dinnertime. Witnesses to Mrs Gavistone’s impressive bearing might have begged to differ.)
The gourmet food store in Cowton had only had one packet of dried mushrooms left on its shelves. PC Lucy snipped it open and tipped the whole lot into the pot. It didn’t look like much. And the last thing she wanted was for Patrick to think she’d skimped on ingredients. Still, it would have to do. Unless . . .
Her gaze slid across the room to a large clear plastic box containing the various bags of dried mushrooms she’d removed from Ollie’s lodgings, if only for the purpose of stopping Chef Maurice from getting at them. She’d been meaning to lug the box down to the station, though frankly the evidence room—which also served as the broom cupboard—was full enough as it was.
No. It would probably be unprofessional to start cooking the evidence from a murder case. She’d just have to manage with what she had.
Sara had written down her mother’s supposedly famous recipe for mushroom risotto.
“Isn’t your mum from Skegness?”
“So?”
PC Lucy had stared at the recipe. She was no culinary wizard, but she was fairly sure that risotto wasn’t usually made with beef suet. Nor was it fried. Or served with gravy.
So she’d had to make do with a recipe she’d found on the Internet. Forty-eight people had ‘liked’ it and there were only two complaints, one of which pointed out sniffily that the recipe was a little heavy on the carbs.
Still, there was one secret weapon in her arsenal, in the form of a heftily priced bottle of French wine that the man in the gourmet food shop had promised would set her dish dancing on the palate
. If Patrick liked wine even half as much as his boss did, hopefully she was in with a chance that he’d be sloshed enough to not notice her cooking too much . . .
She stuck a spoon into the cloggy mess at the bottom of the pot. It tasted like two-day-old rice pudding.
In desperation, she threw in the last wodge of parmesan, which just sat there, sinking slowly like a cheesy Titanic.
She wondered if Chef Maurice would still let her eat at Le Cochon Rouge after she served his sous-chef a dish of congealed cheese-and-rice-based sludge.
Her gaze wandered again to the box of concentrated mushroomy goodness sitting in the corner.
Surely no one would notice if just a handful went missing.
She lifted up the lid and the deep meaty fragrance of wild mushrooms hit her nostrils.
Just one handful. What harm could it do . . . ?
* * *
There are certain conventions best adhered to when one is tailing another vehicle. There’s the surreptitious hanging back, maintaining a safe twenty metres’ distance between you and your prey. In busy traffic, best to leave at least three cars as a buffer zone, just in case. Inconspicuous attire is also recommended.
There should not, on the other hand, be any tailgating, horning at the targeted car when you think it’s driving too slowly, nor subsequently trying to overtake when they don’t take the hint.
“Maurice,” said Arthur, gripping the side of the car as they took a hairpin bend at more than double the recommended speed, “I don’t think you’ve grasped the fundamental concept of tailing someone. Namely, that you stay behind.”
“But this way, they do not think we are following them.”
“We aren’t following them. We might have even lost them, there were a lot of turn-offs back there . . . ”
He craned his neck to see out of the back windscreen. In the distance, the girls’ car appeared round the bend.
“There they are. Pull over!”
“But they will—”
“Just pull over! And try to look inconspicuous.”
“Bah!” But he pulled over nonetheless. A few moments later, the VW Beetle puttered past them.
“Right, after them!” said Arthur, straightening up from his ducked position. Chef Maurice threw aside the newspaper he’d been pretending to read and stomped on the accelerator.