Chef Maurice and the Wrath of Grapes (Chef Maurice Culinary Mysteries Book 2)

by J. A. Lang

  He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Stop right where you are!”

  The man turned, gave them one look, and took off down a side street.

  Chef Maurice swore, fixed his grip on the trolley’s handle, and accelerated forwards along the pavement.

  As has been noted previously, chefs are not generally built for long-distance running, and their quarry had a good thirty-metre head start.

  Arthur would later point out that their progress also hadn’t been helped by bringing along several kilos of frozen goose.

  Eventually they came to a stop down a blind alleyway, panting and wheezing.

  “He has disappeared!” said Chef Maurice indignantly.

  “Maybe he . . . went over . . . the wall,” breathed Arthur, though he cast a doubtful look at the barbed wire over the brickwork. “Are you . . . sure . . . he came down here?”

  “I am most certain.”

  “Well, then maybe . . . ” Arthur’s gaze settled on the back door of the red-brick building to their right. It sat just half an inch open, the latch not having caught fully. Beside the door, a keypad gave a little beep of distress.

  “But probably best not to—” he began, but Chef Maurice was already barrelling through the door, goose first.

  A few moments later, alarms blaring and red lights flashing, they were surrounded by serious-looking men in dark uniforms.

  They later agreed that entering the building might have been a bit of a mistake.

  If so, that would have made it the third one of the day.

  PC Lucy sat down at the end of the train carriage, with Hamilton in his hamper on the seat beside her, and tried not to make eye contact with the other passengers. Apparently her police uniform made her the general face of Authority in these parts, and so far she’d been subjected to twelve complaints about the rising rail fares, nine gripes about delays and cancellations, two requests that she arrest the Minister of Transport and make him ride ‘his own effing trains’, and one plea to locate a child’s toy bunny that had been left on the 10.46 to Brighton last year and had never been returned, despite several strongly worded letters.

  Then she’d tried to give up her seat to the wizened old lady who’d got on at Reading, bent double by the weight of half a dozen shopping bags. The woman had looked mortally offended, and now stood swaying in the aisle, throwing PC Lucy the occasional dirty look.

  Somewhat surprisingly, Hamilton’s presence on the train had caused no more than the occasional surreptitious glance from behind the rows of newspapers. Commuters were clearly a hardened bunch, for whom it would take a lot more than a snuffling pink snout to cause comment.

  Her phone buzzed, and several commuters narrowed their eyes at her as she dared to pick it up.

  “Hello?” she whispered. “PC Gavistone here. I’m on a train.”

  She listened for a while to the gabbled voice at the other end of the line.

  “Sorry, Arthur, I didn’t quite catch that, you broke in where?”

  More gabbling.

  “Why on earth would you break into the Metropolitan Police Art Fraud departme— Ah. Well, that explains . . . well, not very much. No! Don’t pass me over. I don’t want to speak to him.”

  She wondered briefly if there was a way to arrest Chef Maurice for being a Bloody Public Nuisance.

  “Okay, fine, I’ll speak to the Superintendent.”

  A short conversation with the Superintendent of the Art Fraud Unit ensued, in which she confirmed that she did indeed know of a certain Mr Manchot and Mr Wordington-Smythe and, no, they were not known to be art criminals of any description. She considered asking the Superintendent to keep them there overnight as punishment, but decided against it, if only for Patrick’s and Alf’s sakes. December was a busy enough period for the restaurant, without their head chef being temporarily behind bars.

  She hung up and let out a big sigh. Today had not been the most fruitful of days. Paloni had been closeted away somewhere by his PR team, doing interviews for his new film, while Resnick’s secretary had refused point blank to give out any information, only stating that his boss was out of the office ‘on business’. She’d had PC Sara look into Resnick’s financials for any motives hidden there, but the wine critic had come out clean as a whistle. Auction records indicated he’d been earning a hefty sum each year through the commission on Sir William’s various purchases, a trend that had showed no signs of abating. If anything, the man would have had a strong motive for keeping Sir William alive and wine collecting for as many years as possible.

  As for the Lafoutes, the news of Bertie’s inheritance certainly threw a new light onto the case, but it was going to take more than one dusty handkerchief to convince her that wobbly-chinned Bertie Lafoute was capable of cold-blooded murder. Now his wife, on the other hand . . .

  Her phone buzzed again, and she groaned when she recognised the number.

  “Hi, how’s it going? . . . Yes, of course we’re still on for Sunday. Did Fred confirm he can make it too? . . . Okay, great— No, don’t come round, I’m absolutely knackered, I’ve been up in London all day . . . Yes. Okay, see you then. Love you too.”

  She shut her phone and closed her eyes.

  “Why does life have to be so complicated?” she asked the world in general.

  Hamilton, tearing himself away from a staring match with the five-year-old girl in the seat opposite, gave her a look that said she’d brought this all upon herself, didn’t she know that?

  I know, she thought. But not for much longer. She’d sort out everything on Sunday; then there’d be no more lies. All she had to do was avoid Patrick until their date next Tuesday. With the hours he worked, and the Sir William case keeping her busy, how hard could that possibly be?

  Chapter 13

  The next morning was not a morning for good news.

  Patrick, having been apprised of Chef Maurice’s recent poultry expenditure, disappeared into the restaurant’s little back office and came out half an hour later with dark pronouncements about cash flow tightening, reduced profitability, and, putting this all into terms that his boss might understand, the potential slashing of January’s cheese budget.

  This was followed by a call put through to Bourne Hall, which revealed an even more alarming discovery. Gilles had vanished, along with several extremely valuable bottles from Sir William’s cellar.

  “Well, I guess that’s it, then,” said Dorothy, who was at the kitchen table polishing the cutlery. “It was the butler who done it. Funny job, when you think about it, being cooped up in that big house all year, ’xcept when Sir William took off to France for his holidays.”

  “A paid-for annual holiday to France sounds all right to me,” said Patrick.

  “But it does not make sense!” said Chef Maurice, who was occupying the other end of the table, taste-testing three venison dishes that Patrick was trying to get onto the menu. “If Monsieur Gilles was the one to attack Sir William, why does he choose a night when there are many guests who might witness the crime?”

  “He might have been trying to spread the suspicion around,” suggested Patrick.

  “And also, it is impossible! Monsieur Gilles was all the time with me and Arthur.”

  “But he had an accomplice, right?” said Alf, who was flipping through his new wine book. “The American hitman who was here, the one you chased through London yesterday?”

  “But that man, he did not come to Bourne Hall until after the crime,” said Chef Maurice, stabbing another slice of venison with his fork. “So he also cannot be the murderer.”

  “Then why was he there?” said Patrick.

  “Perhaps to meet Monsieur Gilles? It is clear they are in a co-operation of some type.”

  “Did Mrs Bates say which wines he stole?” asked Alf, ready to put his newly acquired wine knowledge into action.

  Chef Maurice shook his head. “She says they cannot know. He stole the cellar book also.”

  “Shameful,” said Dorothy, shaking her head at th
e butler’s audacity.

  “Tell me, how on earth does a guy like him get a girl like that?” said Patrick, leaning over Alf as the commis chef flipped past the entry on Chateau Lafoute. In the bottom corner, there was a photo of Bertie and Ariane holding up wine glasses as they posed in front of a barrel.

  “Forget about getting her, luv. Keeping her, now that’s the problem. See the way he’s looking at her, but she’s looking off somewhere else? Roving eye, she has, I’ll put a bet on it,” said Dorothy, who had a postgraduate in Body Language Studies gleaned from a lifetime of reading the women’s weeklies. “That being said, guess he’s not going to have a problem keeping her now, not with him inheriting all those millions. Wonder if she knew all along. Wouldn’t put it past a savvy-looking girl like that to do her research . . . ”

  “Chateau Lafoute,” read Alf, “founded in 1779, was for a long time considered one of the more minor Bordeaux chateaux, until its rise to prominence in the wake of the Second World War, followed by a later surge of interest in the 1980s when Bob Barker, renowned American wine critic, anointed the 1986 vintage with a perfect 314 out of 314 on his now iconic wine-rating scale. The chateau, which has been in the Lafoute family since the mid-nineteenth century, is currently owned by Madame Thérèse Lafoute, while day-to-day operations are overseen by her granddaughter Ariane Lafoute, who heads the winemaking team. The long-term cellarmaster—”

  “Aha!” Chef Maurice banged the table, sending Dorothy’s neatly laid-out cutlery dancing. “Dorothy, what did you say?”

  The head waitress looked confused. “I didn’t say nothing, chef—”

  But Chef Maurice was already pulling on his jacket. “Patrick, slice the gravlax for today’s lunch menu, and prepare all the breasts of duck for dinner. The fridge is much too full now that we have Gérard—”

  “Oh great, now we’ve named that goose—”

  “—and Alf, assemble two game terrines, wrapped with the dry cure bacon. We will press them overnight.”

  He paused at the back door. “Does no one ask me where I go?” he said, in a rather hurt voice.

  His three members of staff looked up from their duties.

  “Where are you off to, chef?” asked Patrick, always one to oblige.

  “I go,” said Chef Maurice, “to discover the murderer of Sir William!” He paused. “I will return in time for staff dinner.”

  The door banged shut.

  “Well, I think it’s sweet,” said Dorothy, gathering up the cutlery in her apron.

  “What is?” said Patrick.

  “Him having a hobby and all.”

  “Solving murders is now chef’s hobby?” said Alf.

  “Well, as long as he doesn’t start causing any, that’s fine by me,” said Patrick. “I just hope he knows what he’s getting himself into . . . ”

  Lady Margaret lived a twenty-minute drive north of Bourne Hall in an eighteenth-century manor house known as Cleethorpe Park.

  “I think I’m starting to suffer from the status anxiety of living in a cottage,” said Arthur, as they stood on the front doorstep, admiring the stone carvings. “All these Halls and Parks and Manors. Meryl will soon start insisting we upsize to a castle.”

  “Is there not a Wordington-Smythe Manor in your family?” asked Chef Maurice.

  “Well, there was something of the sort, a few generations back. But my great-uncle had to sell it off to pay some racing debts.”

  “Ah, the horses. It is sad, n’est-ce pas?”

  “Horse racing would have been fine. It was the giraffe racing out in South Africa that got Great-Uncle Harry into a pickle. The upkeep of a racing herd can be ruinous, plus they’re a devil to steer, always running off the course and getting injured.”

  The door was answered by a sour-faced housekeeper, who grudgingly let them inside. Cleethorpe Park bore a passing resemblance to Bourne Hall, but was smaller and in far worse repair. The air smelt stale and undisturbed, though Lady Margaret would no doubt have described it as ‘antique’.

  They found the lady of the house sat in a high-backed armchair by the fire, if such a name could be given to the dull embers in the grate, which looked as if a sudden sneeze might be the death of it all.

  “Mr Wordington-Smythe, Mr Manchot, so good of you to come visit. It’s criminal these days, how the younger generations neglect their social duties to their elders.”

  “It is our pleasure, madame. It must be hard, non, for a lady to live alone like this?” said Chef Maurice, laying on the Gallic charm in thick spreads.

  “It certainly is,” said Lady Margaret appreciatively. “And getting help these days is quite a nightmare. Everything has become so dear. Now Mrs Pollock, she’s been with me for over thirty years now, and still, every year like clockwork, bowing and scraping for a wage increase. I said to her, all this inflation is very well and good but I’m not having any in my house, understand?”

  “You have a most acute financial mind, madame.” Chef Maurice coughed. “I wonder if you have had news of the inheritance of Sir William’s estate?”

  Two red circles blossomed on Lady Margaret’s cheeks. “Indeed I have! I’ve been ringing up that lawyer for days on end. He kept telling me these matters take time to settle, poppycock I told him, and then finally he comes out and tells me it’s all gone to Lady Annabel’s boy, Bertie!”

  Arthur and Chef Maurice managed to feign gasps of indignation. “You were not included in the will?” said Chef Maurice.

  “A collection of silver tea trays, Mr Cranshaw told me. And nothing for my boy Timothy, not a single penny! Not a blood relation, he tried telling me. Well, of course I know that, Timothy was from my first husband, rest his soul, but I made sure he took the Burton-Trent name, and Henry treated him like his own son. And at the end of the day, a nephew is a nephew, I say!”

  “It must have come as quite a shock,” said Arthur.

  “A complete scandal, if there wasn’t scandal enough! I was laid up in bed all day, Mrs Pollock will tell you that”—she gestured at her housekeeper, who had stomped in that moment with a tray of tea and biscuits—“I could hardly eat a thing, just cold tea and plain toast was all I could manage. I mean, that little French minx had been hinting at it, but of course I thought she was lying. She looked just the type.”

  Chef Maurice coughed again politely. “You speak, perhaps, of Madame Lafoute?”

  “Of course I am! You know, now I think about it, she must have known all along. I was admiring the Turner that William has hanging in one of the corridors, saying how Timothy has always had a passion for art, and how he’d make sure these masterpieces were displayed in the proper manner, not tucked down some dark hallway like William does with them. And that little madam, she looks at me and gives me this smile, like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, saying I shouldn’t necessarily count on everything one day going to Timothy.”

  Arthur and Chef Maurice shared a look. “So you think it likely that Madame Ariane knew in advance about the will?”

  “Knew about it?” said Lady Margaret. “She had a hand in it, mark my words! Coercing a poor old man like William into leaving everything to that lily-livered excuse for a husband of hers. Her and that butler fellow, wouldn’t be surprised if he was all mixed up in it somehow. You’ve heard he’s gone into hiding?”

  They nodded.

  “Never trust a man who walks too quietly, I always told William. And now there he’s gone, pilfering who knows what from the cellar—William’s pride and joy!—and running off, probably out of the country already, I’m sure. Disgraceful, the way the police are dealing with the whole thing.”

  Apparently having exhausted this particular vein of ire, Lady Margaret picked up a teacup and stirred in a lump of sugar with studied fury.

  “Madame is an excellent judge of character,” said Chef Maurice, in such solicitous tones that Arthur looked up in surprise. “Tell me, what are your impressions of the other guests that evening?”

  Lady Margaret shuffled herself up str
aighter in her chair, clearly flattered. “Well, let’s see. Charles Resnick, he’s a little too fond of his wine and big words, I’d say, but there’s no harm in him as long as you keep your chequebook close. I do remember some years back, there was some funny business in the papers, someone accusing him of selling some wine he didn’t actually own—though how you can do that, I have no idea—but nothing much came of it. A case of sour grapes, no doubt.”

  She allowed herself a little chuckle at her own cleverness.

  “Though, him and all those fancy bottles, I dare say he egged William on a fair bit. But at the end of the day, you can’t make a man spend money on something he doesn’t want to spend it on.”

  “Quite,” said Arthur, with visions of his new four-wheel drive.

  “And Monsieur Paloni?”

  Lady Margaret leaned forward. “Distinctly not a gentleman. I told William as much, the minute I laid eyes on that man.”

  “You had made his acquaintance before?”

  “Oh no, if I’d known I would be dining in company like that, I might not have even attended. These movie people, they’re not really our sort, I told William. It was obvious the man was simply out to get William’s money, getting him to invest in some vineyard out in America. I said to Timothy—he lives out in San Francisco, you know—how do you know the land even exists? Napa Valley, sounds like a made-up place, don’t you think?

  “And clearly a ladies’ man. You just had to look at him, probably goes for all those hair implants and injecting poison into his face and whatnot. The type to wear red silk underwear, and dark glasses in the middle of winter, I’m sure. I told William I was frankly shocked that he should have a man like that staying under his own roof.”

  “This conversation, this took place in the study of Sir William? Monsieur Gilles made mention that you had wished to discuss something with Sir William that day, something most important?”

  Lady Margaret gave him a cold look. “I don’t quite see, Mr Manchot, why my private conversations should be any business of yours. And I certainly don’t approve of William’s butler going around reporting who spoke to whom and all that.”