by J. A. Lang
“I heard that . . . ” came a weak voice from the other room.
“Don’t worry,” said Arthur. “Chances are, she’ll have forgotten this whole evening by tomorrow.”
“In that case,” said Chef Maurice, rummaging in the cupboards for two more wine glasses, “we must make sure this fine bottle does not go to waste . . . ”
Chapter 16
The next morning, Arthur and Chef Maurice took a drive over to Gloucestershire, a paper bag full of mushrooms carefully balanced on Chef Maurice’s knee.
Miss Fey opened the door as they pulled up in front of her cottage.
“Good morning, gentlemen. Do come in. I have to say, I was quite intrigued when you called me. I’ve just put the kettle on. Can I tempt you with a cup of tea?”
Arthur and Chef Maurice agreed that they could indeed be tempted.
“Is it me, or is there something different about her today?” said Arthur to Chef Maurice, as they settled themselves into the same chintz armchairs.
Chef Maurice, whose sometimes keen observational powers did not extend to sartorial matters, shrugged.
The hair, that had definitely changed, thought Arthur. Gone was the messy plait, replaced by a neat and complicated bun arrangement that probably took four mirrors and step-by-step diagrams to assemble. The flowery dress had been cast aside in favour of freshly pressed brown trousers, a blue blouse and, oddly enough, a white lab coat.
Miss Fey caught Arthur staring and gave him a small knowing smile.
“I’ll bet you’re thinking, what happened to that crotchety old biddy we met the other day?”
“Well . . . ”
“She’s just a figment of the imagination, I’m afraid, though I’d appreciate it if you’d go ahead and write about her all the same.” She sighed. “I’m afraid that when it comes to our countryside, the reading public still favour the idea of the nice little old lady, poking about the hedgerows and mossy banks. Foraging is all the rage currently, while sadly the serious study of mycology is a closed book to most.”
“Mike who?” asked Chef Maurice, as he sipped his tea and pulled the Victoria sponge cake a little closer.
“Mycology,” said Arthur. “The study of mushrooms and other fungi.”
“Very good,” said Miss Fey. “It’s a truly fascinating subject. Do you know in this country we’ve been using mushrooms for centuries, not just as a foodstuff, but for medicinal properties, for kindling fires, even as part of religious rituals?”
“Medicinal? Really?”
“Oh yes, many mushrooms are well known for their antibacterial and antiviral properties, as well as other health benefits. In fact, my lab is close to patenting a cholesterol-lowering serum based on the enoki mushroom.”
“Your lab?” said Arthur, struggling to keep up.
“We’re part of the Oxford Department of Plant Pathology, but they don’t like to talk about us much. I’m afraid mycological funding is terribly hard to come by. You could say my little mushroom-selling business is a key part of the lab.”
“Keeps you in the test tubes, eh?”
“Something like that, yes.” Miss Fey manoeuvred a lump of sugar into her tea. “Now tell me about this mushroom your friend ingested yesterday.”
Chef Maurice handed over the paper bag. PC Lucy had kept back most of the sample to send over to the county forensics lab, but it could be weeks before they got an answer, she’d said. So in the meantime, she’d reluctantly allowed Chef Maurice and Arthur to take away a few specimens to show their ‘mushroom expert’.
Miss Fey peered into the bag and sniffed. “Yes, definitely one of the psilocybe family, though it’s hard to say much more when they’re cut and dried like this. Psychedelic mushrooms, we used to call them back in my day. You don’t have any fresh specimens, do you?”
Arthur started to shake his head, but Chef Maurice coughed and produced a smaller paper bag from his jacket.
“I found these in an unsorted bag of mushrooms I took from Monsieur Ollie’s fridge.” He tipped a handful of black spindly mushrooms into his hand.
“You broke into his cottage again?”
Chef Maurice looked hurt. “I do not break in anywhere. And these are from the first time, when I was attacked, you remember?”
Arthur gave up. Chef Maurice had been known to sneak entire layered cheesecakes out of the walk-in fridge without anyone noticing. A bag of mushrooms was probably child’s play.
Miss Fey was inspecting the underside of one sample.
“Hmmm, yes, the gill structure seems right . . . Interesting . . . ” She looked up at them. “I’ll need to take this out back to the lab. You’re welcome to follow.”
“Certainly,” said Arthur, collecting up his hat. “It’d be fascinating, I’m sure. Come on, Maurice.”
“You can bring the Victoria sponge cake too, as long as you stay away from my petri dishes,” said Miss Fey to Chef Maurice.
Miss Fey, thought Arthur, was turning out to be a pretty good judge of character.
At the end of the garden, Miss Fey’s shed-turned-mycology-lab bore more resemblance to Ollie’s ransacked kitchen than to a cutting-edge hub of scientific endeavour.
There were mushrooms everywhere. Fresh, dried, dissected, soaking in solution, arranged in labelled jars. The walls were covered in painstakingly drawn diagrams of mushroom cross-sections.
“What is this?” said Chef Maurice, prodding a giant black clam-shaped specimen, the size of a roast turkey.
“That’s a hoof fungus, also known as the tinder polypore. Completely inedible, I’m afraid, but very good for starting fires.”
“And this one?” Chef Maurice pointed to a fleshy grey-brown mushroom.
“That’s a birch bracket. It has some interesting anti-inflammatory properties as well as—” She stopped, as she saw Chef Maurice’s eyes glaze over. “It’s terribly bitter, you wouldn’t want to cook with it.”
“Ah, très bien.”
“I’m glad you gentlemen brought your coats, it gets a little nippy in here,” said Miss Fey, pulling a thick woollen scarf off a hook on the shed door, the colour combination of which was of such a level of hideousness it could only have been knitted by a much-cherished relative. “Now if you’ll just excuse me a few moments . . . ”
Thus followed several minutes of cutting, mixing, pipetting and staring down a large microscope.
Arthur heard Chef Maurice gasp. His friend was pointing with an urgent finger at the door, where, hanging from the same hook, was a black woollen balaclava.
Arthur spread his hands and shrugged. People were allowed to own balaclavas, especially if they spent their time roaming around the damp woods.
Chef Maurice waved his own hands, contriving to suggest, via the medium of mime, that they should tie up Miss Fey and conduct a thorough search of the premises for Hamilton right away.
Arthur twiddled his finger in the international hand gesture for ‘you’re a raving loony’.
“As I suspected,” said Miss Fey, still staring into her microscope and oblivious to the pantomime going on behind her, “this is an example of the psilocybe morticis, one of the strongest hallucinogens in the psilocybe family. You said that your friend suffered some ill effects after consuming the dried variety?”
“She was sick as a bitch,” said Chef Maurice.
Miss Fey gave him a disapproving look.
“Dog, Maurice,” whispered Arthur. “You mean ‘sick as a dog’.”
“But Mademoiselle Lucy is female.”
“The phrase does not alter.”
“Ah.”
“This particular species is rare in Britain and, unfortunately, quite valuable to a . . . certain section of the population. Such a shame that some people misuse the mushroom family for such purposes.”
“How valuable, would you say?” asked Arthur.
Miss Fey tilted her head. “Why do you ask?”
“Well, imagine that these mushrooms might have come from Ollie Meadows’ house. Not to
be overly dramatic, but are they valuable enough that someone might have put Ollie out of business—permanently—to get hold of his supply?”
Miss Fey gave a little shrug. “It’s possible.” She fixed Arthur with her level stare. “Some people will do just about anything for money.”
* * *
Hamilton buried his nose in his makeshift bed, which seemed to consist of a pile of old T-shirts.
He’d not been badly treated, it was true. The sow nuts kept coming, along with the occasional treat of cut-up pieces of carrot.
Even so, being kept in a crate in a room that smelt strongly of humans, or at least one particular human, did not fit well with what he viewed as his higher purpose.
Plus, life in a crate was all extremely boring. He’d been quite taken with his recent adventures; the fat man with the abundant sow nuts, the truffle-hunting endeavours, and the big field, all to himself. And before that, life with his previous owners hadn’t been too bad either (before that dark day in the woods, of course). They’d been a pleasant enough, if unexciting, family, giving him the run of the small garden, buying him a squeaky ball, and feeding him the odd tidbits off their plentiful dinner table. It was from them that he’d first had a taste of heavenly truffle.
There was the creak of footsteps outside the room and the sound of raised voices.
“—meant to do with it?”
“I told you before, just put the creature out of its misery.”
“Unlike some people I know, I don’t think killing things is always the answer!”
There was a sharp intake of breath. “I’ve told you not to talk about that . . . that incident. If it hadn’t been for you and your big mouth, Meadows would never have started poking around up here in the first place.”
“Aren’t you worried that they’ll trace the shotgun—”
“No, I’m not! As long as you don’t get any big ideas about letting that pig out of here. You keep it, or get rid of it properly.”
Hamilton wasn’t too sure what was going on—it was all Human to him—but he was pretty certain he didn’t like the tone of the voices, especially that of the second speaker.
He’d waited long enough now for his new owner to come and rescue him. It was time to take things into his own trotters and start planning an escape.
Else, it sounded like he was heading for the terminal Pig Sleep.
* * *
Driving back into Beakley, they were hailed down by Mrs Eldridge, who was crouched behind the hedge in her front garden, waving a handkerchief that had seen better days.
Arthur pulled over onto the grassy verge and they got out.
“Is everything all right?”
“Shhhh!” She grabbed them each by an elbow and pulled them down into the shrubbery. “You need to call the police, right now!”
“Why, what’s happened?”
“There’s a strange man in Ollie’s cottage. I saw him sneak round the back just now. If I hadn’t just been passing by the window . . . ”
“It is the same man you saw before, madame?”
“That’s right, the one who was skulking around here the other day. Now he’s robbing a dead man’s cottage. Some people have no respect. Just look at him, wandering around like he owns the place.”
Three pairs of eyes peered over the window ledge into the front room.
Sure enough, a tall, thick-set man with a dark beard was strolling around the living room, riffling through papers and looking in the desk drawers. He seemed fairly relaxed, as far as burglars went.
“Is it normal for them to smoke a pipe when on a job?” said Arthur. The man had now exited the room, presumably to continue his leisurely perusal upstairs. “He doesn’t seem to be stealing anything.”
“Still, we must call Mademoiselle Lucy at once! This could be the man that pignapped le pauvre Hamilton.”
“Now wait, Maurice, no need to go jumping to—”
There was a click behind them.
“Hands up where I can see them,” growled a voice from behind. Arthur turned around and stood up, banging his head on the window ledge, and found himself staring down the barrel of a shotgun.
Chapter 17
Patrick stood at the stove, listlessly stirring a pan of pomme purée.
“Cheer up, luv,” said Dorothy, who was busying herself at the sink, trimming a bunch of wild flowers for the little vases in the dining room. “It’s only been a few hours. She’ll be calling you back by the end of the day, I’m sure of it.”
Patrick was less sure. He’d heard that women could get a bit funny about you seeing them without their make-up on, or in sports clothes, or under whatever criteria they deemed as looking less than their best.
Helping them hold their hair back as they projectile vomited into a bucket probably counted somewhere in that category.
“Did you at least get in a kiss?”
“Well. Sort of . . . ”
“There’s no ‘sort of’ in these matters, luv.”
“She was a bit, well, intoxicated.”
“Patrick Merland! I would have thought better of you than that, taking advantage of a lady—”
“I didn’t! She’s the one who started it.”
And finished it rather abruptly too, he thought.
He could hear Alf sniggering from somewhere behind a mountain of potatoes.
“Well,” said Dorothy, considering this new information, “that’s probably all right, then.”
Patrick wasn’t so sure about this either. At least he hadn’t had the chance to really mess things up, he thought, given the circumstances. The doctor had finally turned up around midnight and announced that PC Lucy seemed to have got rid of most of the mushroom toxins of her own accord, and sent her to bed.
Patrick had tried to get some sleep on the couch, which sagged and creaked torturously every time he moved a muscle. He had eventually given up and resorted to tidying the kitchen, throwing away the offending risotto, rearranging the pots and pans and sharpening the knives.
He’d gone through the fridge too, sorting the contents into three shelves: expiring food, expired food, and food that PC Lucy was presumably keeping for sentimental value, given the far-gone use-by dates.
He didn’t dare tell Chef Maurice about the sorry lump of hardened cheddar he’d found in the bottom of the fridge, and made a note to present PC Lucy with a wheel of brie de meaux next time he went round.
If there was going to be a next time.
* * *
The barrel of the gun lowered, as if the bearer had realised that any group consisting of Chef Maurice, Arthur and Mrs Eldridge could only pose a threat by pure accident.
“What are you lot doing peering into the windows of my house?” he boomed.
There was the twang of the Midlands in his accent, mixed in with a dash of pomodori and parmigiano.
“It’s not your house,” snapped Mrs Eldridge, advancing with her cane. “This house belongs to poor Ollie Meadows, God rest his soul wherever it is. So be off with you and all your sneaking around. Be sure to empty your pockets first, mind.”
The man grunted and reached into his jacket. For a moment, Arthur thought he was about to draw a gun, until he realised the man already had one in his hand.
An official-looking letter-headed paper was withdrawn and waved at them. “Ollie is my nephew. The contents of the house pass to my sister, Maria. But she is in Torino, so I have come to collect his belongings.”
Mrs Eldridge grabbed the paper and pulled out her reading glasses, while Chef Maurice peered over her shoulder.
“Hmmm, it all seems leg-git,” she pronounced after a while. She narrowed her eyes at the newcomer. “Welcome to Beakley, Mr Mannozzi. Don’t think I won’t be watching you.”
With that, she tottered back over to her half of the cottage and slammed the front door. A few moments later, they heard the window upstairs creak open.
“Luciano Mannozzi, pleased to meet you,” said the man, proffering a large calloused han
d.
“Arthur Wordington-Smythe.” He returned the handshake, while Chef Maurice stood there silently, regarding their visitor with arms folded. “Are you planning to stay here long?”
“No, the landlord has given me a few days to clear out the cottage. Then he will rent it out again, he says. Anyway, I must soon go back up to my business.”
“Your business?”
“I am an importer of foods from Italy,” said Luciano proudly. “Cheese, olive oil, aceto balsamico, the special pastas—”
“Do you supply to restaurants or to consumers?” asked Chef Maurice, in tones that indicated there was only one correct answer.
“Restaurants, for the most,” said Luciano, looking down at Chef Maurice’s steel-capped boots. “And the occasional deli.”
“Ah, très bien. I have been in need of a good supplier of Italian cheese. The burrata I last received from my current supplier was like a rubber ball—”
There was a bark, and a small, scruffy dog tore round the corner and came to a halt at Luciano’s feet.
“Ah, and who is this?”
“This is Tufo,” said Luciano.
“Lively-looking fellow,” said Arthur.
“Bonjour, petit chien.” Chef Maurice bent down and lifted the dog up to face him. Tufo hung there in his arms, turning his nose questioningly to his master.
“Well behaved, too,” said Arthur, thinking about what Horace would do if a stranger tried to pick him up. That said, in Horace’s case you’d probably need to hire a forklift truck first.
“Your friend, what is he doing?” asked Luciano, as Chef Maurice raised Tufo’s nose to his own and proceeded to sniff loudly.
“He’s, um, become quite interested in dogs lately.”
“I see,” said Luciano, folding his arms.
“A good dog,” said Chef Maurice, lowering Tufo to the ground and patting him on the head.
“I’m terribly sorry to hear about your nephew,” said Arthur. “He was well-liked in the village.” A stretch of the truth perhaps, but perfectly acceptable in these circumstances.
Luciano gave a gruff chuckle. “I doubt it, but it is kind of you to say so. He was always trouble, little Ollie. I told Maria, she should have kept him closer to home. Gets it from his father’s side, the English side—he was never well-behaved like a good Italian boy.”