The Food Detective

by Judith Cutler

  Today, all my efforts to catch young Al Tope’s eye were in vain. So in vain I thought maybe someone waiting had complained about my queue jumping and would berate him, not me, if I did it again. I did the obvious thing: I picked up a basket and worked my way along the narrow aisles, coincidentally finding a couple of things I needed and remembering others. But as I reached for the Thai fish sauce, someone stepped in front of it. And stayed there, big impregnable back towards me, ignoring a firm but polite tap on the arm and a clear, ‘Excuse me.’ Bar applying a shoulder and heaving there was nothing I could do.

  The same thing happened by the cheese and again by the vegetables. If the first man was a stranger, the other two weren’t – one was Reg Bulcombe’s brother, the other an occasional crony of Wally Hall, the regular drinker. If I dodged sideways, so did they. Well, well, well. If they thought that was going to upset me – OK, they were right. But they’d never get a hint of it. The people who’d really suffer would be Jem and Molly, because I always made a point of buying as much as I could from them, no matter how much cheaper the supermarkets might be. Damn it, I had a contract with Molly’s sister-in-law to supply daily fresh vegetables.

  What if they extended the Coventry treatment to the bar itself? What if they boycotted it? Well, that’d be their loss, because there wasn’t another boozer for six or seven miles; with the last bus running at six on the days, of course, that it deigned to run, they’d be on detox pretty fast, unless they could find someone to drive them. As for me, I’d lose a steady but not major source of income. Most of the profitable food trade was from passing motorists and walkers, apart from people who came every Sunday from miles around for the lunches Tom Dearborn and I cooked. Well, just me, now, by the look of it.

  I joined the queue, not attempting to engage in conversation and risk a snub. When my turn came, I simply asked for the paper and reminded him it was pre-paid.

  Al stretched a hand for it. Wally Hall’s mate coughed loudly. ‘Don’t know anything about that,’ Al said, flushing and addressing the till.

  Et tu, Brute! ‘’Course you do. Every Thursday for the last twelve weeks you’ve known about it. But if you want to make an issue, take this – and pop the change in the Air Ambulance tin.’ I dropped a tenner on the counter.

  Exit, pursued by barely concealed hostility.

  The answerphone was flashing when I got in. It could bloody well wait until I’d had a good strong coffee – and not the beans I use in the bar, either. Some I had in mind to go with liqueurs when the restaurant was open. A real gourmet glug. And all that nice caffeine to brace my shoulders.

  Which, irritatingly, needed a good brace. And even more after I took the call. Nick. It seems that the Food Standards bosses had heard he wasn’t hard-pressed down here and wanted his assistance with a really nasty case in the South East. He might as well stay there until it was done, given the warmth of his welcome here, hadn’t he? But he’d pay for the room, the same as if he were occupying it.

  Would he indeed! Patronizing bastard. Thinking I needed his money to keep my head above water – though perhaps that wasn’t the best of images, in all the circumstances. And, of course, it wouldn’t be his money but the anonymous insurance company that paid – a nice victimless bit of fraud.

  Possibly. But I wasn’t worrying about insurance premiums right now.

  Maybe he was just reserving it, so if a coachload of stranded tourists turned up, I wouldn’t be able to oblige them. As if I could, with no cook and no bar staff.

  So what about his company? Now the natives were restless, would I have preferred the presence of a man about the place? Or was it Nick they wanted to be rid of, not me at all? Was all that hostility meant to make me get rid of him? Did I put it around that he’d left or keep very mum indeed? Maybe a visit to Sue might be in order. If anyone had her finger on the pulse of village life, she did.

  She was out. I left a message.

  I shrugged. She probably regarded anything Nick said as in the Confessional anyway.

  As for Nick, what on earth did I make of him? Talk about Jekyll and Hyde – not that I could ever remember which was which, and he certainly didn’t sprout fangs and do dastardly deeds. Quite the reverse. In an off moment, he could make a mouse look manly. Other times he was passive aggressive. And sometimes he was a decent man I was sorry I’d ever cursed. Well, I could un-curse him. Maybe it’d be better in church.

  Or maybe I was being fey, and it was nothing to do with me, but a result of something in his police days, something Nesta should have reported on by now. It must be a week since I’d asked her to check on Brum’s headline news. It was all very well of her to say she’d got a new man and was too busy – you have to get out of bed now and then, even with the best bloke. I poked the numbers on the pad as if I were driving in nails.

  Nesta – technophobe Nesta, who hadn’t even been able to retrieve her messages till I’d shown her how – had only gone and recorded a new message for her answerphone. ‘I’m sorry I can’t be with you at the moment – I’m on holiday in Madeira with the sexiest guy in the world!’

  Stupid cow, giving tempting information like that over the phone! I’d bloody well stood over her to make sure her original out-going message didn’t say anything about being out – and now she was telling all and sundry her house was empty. What kept her ears apart? Certainly not brains.

  Lunchtime was terrific. I could have done with two bar staff and a couple of helpers in the kitchen. The media were in town! Well, three of them. The reporter, whose face I knew, of course, Nicola Rodway, her soundman, Chaz, and Wills, her cameraman. They’d come from Exeter to film the floods, and now they needed liquid refreshment. And some decent food. So I had another newsworthy story for them – floods prevent staff getting to work, but heroic landlady does all herself! And so she did. Thank God for microwaves and extendable lunch hours. Raiding my own collection, not the official cellar, I produced loads of wine on the house to compensate for their having to wait a little: that might have helped. I abstained totally, not wanting to present a cheery Santa Claus face to the camera, and talked solemnly about the harm to the tourist industry, not to mention the poor farmers, at this very moment struggling heroically to rescue their livestock. And what about the poor folk who’d lost their mobile homes? Their treasured possessions? Their memories? Then we all drank some of my connoisseur coffee and had a liqueur or two and they stowed their gear and went off into what might have been a sunset had there been anything other in the sky than bulging, rain-filled cloud.

  But it wasn’t raining yet, and since when had I been a fair-weather walker? It wasn’t as if calories took any notice of the weather. As I laced the boots, I’d no idea where I was heading. My feet took me back towards the village shop. Not into it, though. Not after this morning’s treatment. In any case, there was something, now I came to think of it, that I wanted to check. I came to a halt on the bridge. There was plenty of water in the stream now. Enough to have brought out one or two sandbags by old doors well below modern street level. It was turbulent, swift-running water too, laden with detritus that snagged and tore at the banks, sometimes sticking, sometimes dislodging more. And it was muddy brown. No, not a sign of any pink. So what had happened to floods in the campsite? If my calculations were correct, the water should be going down nicely now. I’d love to check.

  It was quite a step, however, and darkness was definitely falling – after all, I’d set out well over an hour past my usual time. For all I was used to moving briskly, today I felt vulnerable, and the car beckoned. Sure I’d eventually drunk a little with the media team, but not enough to turn a breathalyser the palest shade of green. And first, of course, find your breathalyser. If the rural police weren’t up to tracking down Fred Tregothnan, I didn’t expect them to be lurking in a lay by on the off chance of nailing me. Nor were they.

  No, any lurking was the province of none other than Reg Bulcombe, whose lacy curtains twitched into action as soon as I parked. Ideally I’d hav
e snook into the site unnoticed, but, caught in the act, I positively beamed at him, waving my fingers in an irritating little twiddle as I strolled up to his door.

  I could hear his footsteps: I could almost hear his brains trying to work out what I was up to and debating if he cared enough to find out. Curiosity won in the end, and he poked his head round the door.

  He could have warmed himself on my smile. ‘’Afternoon, Reg. How are you? I was just passing and thought I’d collect any mail for Mr Thomas.’

  ‘Ah. They said he’d shacked up with you.’

  ‘That’s what pubs are for, Reg – to accommodate people washed out of their homes when the floods come. Has the water started to drop yet?’ Playing ditzy, I set off for the field, Bulcombe padding after me in grey tweed carpet slippers. ‘Oh, it’s not so bad now, is it?’ I cooed. ‘But you’ll have such a lot to do salvaging all those caravans, you poor man. Such a shame. I hope you can make the insurance folk dance to your tune, because you’ll be losing such a lot of money until people can come back. Oh, I’m so sorry.’

  He shifted awkwardly, his slippers glooping in the mud. ‘Well, I’ll just have to pull my belt a notch tighter,’ he muttered.

  ‘What about other folk? Have they been as badly hit?’

  ‘Reckon no one’s escaped,’ he said, doom-laden as if the plague had struck and Kings Duncombe were a latter-day Eyam. He sucked his teeth.

  My headshake was a mirror image of his, my sigh gusty enough to shift a cloudbank. I hated myself for ingratiating myself with him, as I’d done countrywide with the TV performance, but I had to live. By which I don’t mean make a living. Fred Tregothnan, a strapping man, had disappeared. I didn’t want to join him wherever he’d gone.

  At least I could excuse my involuntary shiver. ‘This damp makes it feel so cold, doesn’t it – and you’ll catch you death if you’re not careful in those slippers of yours.’ I turned. Halfway back to the car, I asked casually, ‘Did you say if there was any post for Mr Thomas?’

  As if there wasn’t enough wetness around, he spat, copiously. ‘I suppose I’d better go and see.’ He didn’t invite me in, despite spiteful little slashes of rain.

  I could hear him chuntering away to himself, no doubt trailing mud from his slippers wherever he went. Hell, the man would know if there was any post for his only winter tenant – it wasn’t the sort of thing you’d forget, now, was it? He came back empty-handed, however. ‘No. But I’ll bear it in mind, Mrs Welford. If I get any, like. Be staying with you long, will he?’

  ‘He’ll be wanting his own place as soon as maybe, I’m sure,’ I said. ‘Maybe not even in the village.’

  ‘You mean he’s pulling out already?’

  ‘He’s said nothing to me either way,’ I said. ‘So long as he pays his bills, what is it to me? Mind you, they’ll need another bell ringer if he does go. You ever thought of joining in, Reg? A big man like you would take to it like a duck to water.’

  The washing up regarded me balefully the moment I ventured from my accommodation into the pub kitchen. Yes, all that and what I suspected might be something of an ordeal tonight – not that I’d let on by so much as a smudge of my mascara. Assuming anyone turned up to make it an ordeal, of course. Even as I donned rubbed gloves and apron I stripped them off again. I had a phone call to make. If anyone in the village were woman enough to brave public opinion, it was Lucy Gay.

  As I dialled, there was a noise in the bar. I froze. What were they up to now? Grabbing a bottle as a weapon, I tiptoed through.

  Lucy was placidly raking the ashes and adding wood to the fire.

  It would have been easy to get very emotional. Instead, I tried to be breezy. ‘You’re nice and early!’

  She shrugged. ‘Don’t know how you’ll manage if I don’t come,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘And that’s what I told my dad when he said I shouldn’t. He knows about all what you send pretending it’s left-overs, though his pride tells him to say nothing. Knows when he’s on to a good thing, my dad. But truly, Mrs Welford, what I get here is the only decent food the kids get to eat. All this good fresh produce in the fields round here, and the school meals are just junk. I don’t know what they think they’re doing.’

  I let her gabble on, pretending not to see how embarrassed she was. But sooner or later we both knew I’d put a simple question to her. It might as well be now.

  ‘Why doesn’t your dad want you to work here any more?’

  She stood – God, I wish I were that lithe these days – wiping her hands on a tea towel she’d tucked into her waistband.

  ‘Well? The whole village is sending me to Coventry – not speaking to me.’ Funny she hadn’t recognised the idiom. ‘Any idea why I’m suddenly so unpopular?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not exactly. They know I like you so they don’t spell it out, not when I’m around. But they say you’re too nosy for your own good, sneaking round people’s property even when it’s raining.’

  So it wasn’t a particular problem about sneaking into Tregothnan’s house. ‘I’ve always gone for walks on my own in the rain. They didn’t mind before.’

  ‘They’ve always minded. But then you brought your boyfriend down and he’s a sly old bugger too. Never stops asking questions.’

  ‘Boyfriend! I haven’t got a boyfriend!’ I was surprised my squeak didn’t crack the glasses.

  She looked reproachful. ‘You have that, Mrs Welford. Mr Thomas. One look at him and you can see he’s smelling of April and May. You can’t look me in the eye and tell me he didn’t come down here to be with you.’

  ‘I can and I will! It’s true I met him once before, but it was in most unfortunate circumstances and I certainly never wanted to see him ever again.’

  ‘First night he’s down here you’re out there at that caravan of his.’

  ‘Correction. First night he’s down here I recognise him and the following morning I go out to his caravan to tell him to shove off.’

  ‘So how come he’s living with you now?’

  Jesus, was it something in the water or was it all the inbreeding? ‘Come off it, Lucy,’ I said. ‘You know as well as I do he was flooded out. Damn it all, it was you who gave him the room! I’d have left him to fight his way through to a motel in Taunton.’

  She turned her eyes, huge in that underfed face of hers, full on me. ‘But seems to me he’s got his feet well and truly under your table. Doesn’t eat down here like any other guest.’

  For answer I took a deep, deep sniff. ‘Tell me honestly, Lucy – would you ask anyone to eat a meal in here?’

  ‘Well, it’s all according, isn’t it? Seems to me the food side of the business is really taking off.’

  ‘It is indeed. Anyway, Mr Thomas isn’t here any more. He’s working in another part of the country. I’ve no idea when he’ll be back. And as soon as he’s got that caravan of his sorted out, he’ll be out of here. Or go somewhere else if he can’t fix it. Got that?’

  Her nod was a bit on the perfunctory side, as if to please me rather than express conviction.

  ‘And you’ll tell the others.’ Damn, that sounded like pleading.

  ‘If I see them.’

  How noncommittal can you get?

  ‘Why’s Lindi not coming any more? And before you say I should ask her direct, I can’t get hold of her. And Tom, the chef, has done a bunk too. Next thing I know my builders’ll decide they don’t want the job.’

  Head on one side, she considered. ‘No. They’re a Taunton firm. No one from round here. Of course, you really ought to have asked Mr Barnes – that’s Mr Bulcombe’s cousin, on his wife’s side.’

  ‘George Barnes? I did. He said it was too big a job. And his nephew. He said it wasn’t big enough. But he quoted for it, just on the off-chance, and he was ten per cent higher than the firm that’s doing it.’

  ‘Ah. Deliberately pricing himself out of the market,’ she agreed. ‘Business Studies GCSE, Mrs Welford,’ she added as my eyebrows went up. ‘But I don’t know why
Tom Dearborn should do a flit. He was telling me how much he was looking forward to coming here full-time, ah, and that soft-headed girlfriend of his too. Getting herself in the family way at her age.’

  Marvelling how she could veer from a child to a middle-aged matron in the course of a paragraph, I patted her on the shoulder. ‘If you see young Tom, just talk to him, will you? Make him see a bit of sense?’

  ‘If I see him. Now, was there anything special you needed doing, like, or shall I just see to the kitchen – saw you on TV, I did,’ she added over her shoulder. ‘Reckon you could have done yourself a bit of good there.’

  I followed her, wincing at that damned washing up. ‘D’you reckon the other villagers will approve? I said nice things about them, after all.’

  Rolling her sleeves, she shook her head. ‘They all watch the other side, don’t they?’

  I was showing her how I cook one of my chicken and vegetable pies – and pointing out how many vegetables you could disguise so her family would eat it without whinging – when the door to the snug clicked open. So surprised I nearly dropped the pie funnel, a traditional blackbird that always made her smile, I wiped my hands, and smoothed my apron, for all the world like one of Lucy’s kitchen maid ancestors. Then I remembered it didn’t do to look too eager – too desperate, even – I strolled to greet my only customer so far.

  ‘Sue! What can I do for you on a night like this?’

  She shrugged expressively, looking round the empty room. ‘More like what I can do for you, I’d have thought. Provide you with a customer.’

  ‘Bless you. But it’s warmer in the kitchen – Lucy and I are working in there.’

  Lucy, a smudge of flour on her nose and the deepest triumph in her eyes, was surveying the pie she’d handsomely decorated with leaves cut from spare pastry as she prepared to pop it into the oven. She nodded shyly at Sue, who had the sense to talk bell ringing for a couple of moments.