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

by J. A. Lang

  Chef Maurice picked up the remote control from beside Ariane’s motionless hand and pressed a button. The picture of Bourne Hall was replaced by grainy footage of the interior of the wine cellar, shot from high up in one corner.

  A hidden camera! thought Arthur. All this time . . .

  The rolling shot showed Sir William’s back as he stood before a set of shelves, holding a bottle in one hand and carefully wiping down its sides with a polishing cloth.

  From this angle, Arthur noticed that Sir William had a burgeoning bald spot on the top of his head that Arthur had never noticed before. He shook himself. Now was not the time for such thoughts.

  In the corner of the screen, a pair of black patent leather shoes appeared from behind the wine crates. They stepped towards Sir William with quiet, deadly purpose—

  “Enough!” shouted a strangled voice. A figure jumped up from the table and started tearing madly at the hanging screen. Then he stood panting, staring at them all, as the screen ribboned down behind him onto the floor.

  “Ah, monsieur,” said Chef Maurice. “You do not wish that I continue this film?”

  He smiled at the figure at the front of the room, flickering in the light of the still-rolling projector. It was Charles Resnick.

  Chapter 18

  The kitchens of Bourne Hall had run out of chairs, even with the departure of many of the guests. The four wine critics had headed back to London to write up their impressions of the startling evening, and FBI Agent Mack had accompanied Charles Resnick away in a car sent by the Metropolitan Police Art Fraud department. Everyone else had retired to the kitchens in search of a comforting cup of tea, and Mrs Bates currently had three kettles on the boil. Waffles weaved in and out of the many legs around the table, biding her time until she could catch the milk jug unawares.

  Arthur was the first to voice his objections.

  “But that was cheating! If you knew there was a CCTV camera all along—”

  “Ah, but, mon ami, you do not see—”

  “—and, worse still, how could our own police have missed it in the first place?” Arthur turned to PC Lucy, who had arrived towards the end of the night’s proceedings, just in time to witness Resnick’s monumental breakdown.

  “There was no CCTV,” said PC Lucy hotly. “We checked all over. Double-checked, triple-checked, even.”

  “Then how—”

  “Think, mon ami,” said Chef Maurice, who was sat at the end of the table with Hamilton in his lap.

  Once again, Arthur fought the urge to thump his friend on the top of his conceited head.

  “It was a fake video, it must have been,” said PC Lucy. “The quality was far too good, for one. And that wasn’t Sir William, was it?”

  “Aha!” said Chef Maurice, looking pleased.

  “I have to admit my team might have had a hand in that,” said Paloni, unleashing a dazzling smile in PC Lucy’s direction. “After Mr Maurice here talked me into his little scheme.”

  “Damnation, so that’s what you were up to,” said Arthur, slapping the table and sending a plate of biscuits flying. “The actor chap you had wandering around the grounds . . . ”

  Paloni nodded. “I was sure glad that Resnick fella tore down the screen at that point. Else you’d have seen that those black leather shoes were me, and I sure as hell don’t look a thing like him. You might have even thought to arrest me,” he added, with a wink at PC Lucy, who narrowed her eyes at him.

  “I still don’t get it,” said Bertie, who was sharing a chair with Ariane, one arm around her waist. “So he was stealing wine from Uncle William’s cellar and replacing them with fakes? And what, selling the real bottles on after?”

  “Non, non, even better than that. There were no real bottles to start with. Monsieur Resnick would buy empty bottles, and even sometimes manufacture the labels himself. Then he would fill them and sell them to collectors. Sometimes even at his own auctions. He would claim to have bought them from those secretly wishing to cash in their cellars, but who did not want to have it known. And in this way, he never had need to reveal his sources.”

  “And none of his clients ever suspected? Apart from Sir William?” said Arthur.

  “Many didn’t. Or perhaps they chose to stay silent,” said Chef Maurice. “But there was one collector in America who became suspicious, which is how Monsieur Mack became involved. He tells me that most of the wines found to be fake could be traced back to Monsieur Resnick and his company. But they needed to find a collector in Britain to also make a case, so that Monsieur Resnick could be put on trial here too. It was at this time that Sir William first contacted the police in London. It had taken him much time to have suspicions of someone he had known and trusted for so long . . . ”

  “But how did Resnick find out about the Met investigation?” said Arthur.

  Chef Maurice shrugged. “Monsieur Resnick will tell the police, I am sure. It is possible he realised the suspicions when he saw the yellow stickers that Sir William and Monsieur Mack used to mark those bottles that they had doubts on.

  “But for me, I think Sir William was a gentleman, to the very end. Remember, he spoke to Monsieur Resnick in his office, earlier that day of the tasting. It is my thought that he told Monsieur Resnick of the investigation, to give him the sporting chance, as you say, to go himself to the police. Monsieur Resnick, he pretends to agree, begs to stay for the dinner to keep up appearances, but in truth, he has other plans. He cuts the phone line, so that there is no chance for Sir William to ring to the police, and then that evening, he takes his steps to silence him altogether.”

  “An evil man,” said Ariane with a shiver.

  “So how does this Agent Mack fellow fit in all this?” said Arthur. “What was he doing down at Le Cochon Rouge on the night of the murder?”

  “He was waiting, he tells me, for a call from Monsieur Gilles who, under Sir William’s instruction, had prepared further important bottles to give to Monsieur Mack to take to London for investigation. But with the phone lines cut, Monsieur Gilles had no way to contact him. So, after waiting for long, Monsieur Mack telephones to his supérieurs, who instruct him to go to Bourne Hall, to collect the wines.”

  “And get chased away by you and your frying pan,” said Arthur.

  Chef Maurice coughed. “That was, I think, unfortunate.”

  “But how did you figure out who he actually was? And get him here tonight?”

  “Ah, his role, I had made a guess of this when we followed him to the Department of Art Fraud in London. Remember, where the Superintendent was most rude to us, and insisted that no such man had come inside?

  “And then, just last night, I find this man in the restaurant’s cellar! He searches, he tells me, within the bottles Sir William left there, as he cannot return to Bourne Hall, now with Monsieur Bertie in residence and Monsieur Gilles not there.”

  “Speaking of Gilles, what’s happened to that fellow anyway? Resnick didn’t, um, deal with him too, did he?”

  “Non. Agent Mack did not want to take chances. He did not know if Monsieur Resnick knew of how Monsieur Gilles had assisted Sir William with the investigation. So he sends him to hide in a bed and breakfast in Brighton, he tells me.”

  “So really, solving this case was all this Mack fellow’s doing then?”

  “Not at all!” said Chef Maurice, bristling. “Oui, it was Monsieur Mack who supplied the fine details, but I had already many suspicions of Monsieur Resnick, and of the existence of the fake wines. Much before the help of Monsieur Mack.”

  “Codswallop,” said Arthur. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Here, I show you.” Chef Maurice picked up a copy of the list of Lafoute vintages that would have been served that night. “Madame Lafoute, regarde. Think, think deeply, about the history of your family, of the chateau, and tell me what you see.”

  Ariane bit her lip and ran her eyes up and down the list. After a long silence, she gave a sudden gasp. “Imbecile, I am! My grand-mère, she would be asham
ed of me not to see this. A 1928 magnum? C’est ridicule! Monsieur Manchot, you are magnificent.”

  “He is?” said Arthur.

  “Madame Ariane is too kind,” said Chef Maurice, but he looked excessively pleased with himself, as he pulled out the wine book he’d borrowed off Alf again.

  “You still do not see, mon ami? Listen to this. ‘Chateau Lafoute, founded in 1779, was long-time considered one of the more minor Bordeaux chateaux until its rise to prominence in the wake of the Second World War, with 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.’”

  Chef Maurice closed the book. “So you see? A rise to prominence after the Second World War. Remember, to produce the magnum size of bottle was an expensive task, only done by the bigger chateaux. For Chateau Lafoute to have produced magnums in 1928, pffffft! Impossible!”

  “So Resnick slipped up?” said Arthur. “He went and faked a wine that didn’t actually exist?”

  Chef Maurice nodded. “He sold it to Sir William many years ago, not expecting that Sir William would develop a great interest in the wines of Chateau Lafoute. After all, if Monsieur Bertie here had not met la belle Ariane . . . ”

  “So that was all?” pressed Arthur. “Just one fake wine? That’s all you had to go on?”

  “Non, non, my suspicions of Monsieur Resnick, they had been there from the very start.”

  “Oh, come on now.”

  “Ah, but think. That evening when we sat in the drawing room, which of the guests had the most reason to go upstairs? To have the chance to enter the secret passageway and descend to the cellar?”

  Chef Maurice reached down and, with one hand, lifted up a grumpy-looking Waffles, who had yet to score a saucer of milk. “The man, of course, who found himself covered in the hair of a cat!”

  Waffles meowed plaintively, and Chef Maurice placed her back down onto the warm tiles.

  “Remember, Monsieur Resnick had been many times to this house. He would surely know that the cat would ruin his clothes if she came too close. Yet he lets her sit in his lap, perhaps entices her even—remember the jar of the potted mackerel in his room?—to have an excuse to go upstairs when Sir William was down in the cellar. So he goes to the bookcase, which he has discovered on a visit before, goes down the stairs, makes certain Sir William is alone, then he makes his move . . . ”

  “A risky endeavour,” said Arthur.

  “He planned it pretty well, though,” said PC Lucy, hands cupped around a mug of tea. “The business with the broken storeroom window, if he hadn’t had the bad luck that it snowed heavily that evening, we might have taken the whole outside burglary idea more seriously. It was only the lack of footprints that focussed our attentions on the guests themselves.”

  “So do you think they’ll be able to trace all the fakes back to Resnick?” said Arthur.

  “It looks likely,” said PC Lucy. “I had a quick chat with Agent Mack. He seems to have got hold of Sir William’s old cellar book. Says it’s a key piece of evidence.”

  “So that was what Gilles handed over to him, that day in London,” said Arthur.

  Chef Maurice nodded.

  “What will happen to Charles now?” said Bertie.

  “He’ll stand trial for murder, of course,” said PC Lucy. “And as for the wine forgery, it sounds like they have a pretty tight case. Frankly, his career was over the minute those bigwig critics tasted those fakes, and he knows it. They can’t not write about it, because the other three will rat them out if they don’t. So everyone is bound to hear all about this.”

  “So Resnick pretty much invited the world’s four biggest wine critics to his own downfall,” said Arthur. “Bit of a mistake, I’ll say.”

  “Non, non,” said Chef Maurice, dropping three sugars into his teacup. “His mistake, I think, was for him to commit a crime on a night that I, Maurice Manchot, was present.”

  There was a resounding groan from all around the table.

  Chapter 19

  It was the Saturday morning, the week after. Fluffy white smoke trailed out of the chimney of The Goat and Gavotte, a friendly pub in the nearby village of Little Bottom.

  Patrick walked, with some trepidation, down the frosty path towards the front door, where a blond head under a pink knitted hat was waiting for him.

  “Finally! It’s freezing out here, you know.” Sally looked him up and down with a critical eye. “Good, you’ve shaved. That shows that you care. And you brought flowers”—she leaned in closer to inspect the bunch of roses in his hand—“hmmm, not very imaginative, but fairly swanky. Not bad at all, I had you down as the yellow carnation type.” She wrinkled her nose at this thought. “Right, you better get in there, or I’m going to start getting calls asking where I am. Oh, and take this.”

  She shoved a box of chocolates, topped by a big satin bow, into his hands. This was followed by a piece of lined paper.

  “That’s what you’re going to say.”

  Patrick looked over his script. It said, in essence, everything he had been planning to say anyway. That he was sorry for trying to make Lucy jealous, it had all been a stupid mistake, and she was the only girl he had eyes for. Except that Sally, a recipient of many such speeches in her lifetime and so able to select from the choicest of available phrasings, had wrapped the whole thing up in verbal flowers, rainbows, kittens and everything else an actual man would never say in a million years.

  This was pure dating gold.

  “Now, go get her, chef boy.” Sally crossed her arms. “And don’t screw it up. Else you’ll have me to deal with.”

  Patrick had no desire to find out what exactly this entailed. Sally, underneath her girly-girl exterior, was turning out to be every bit as ferocious as her older sister.

  He found PC Lucy sitting in a snug alcove by the pub’s fireplace, wearing a soft green turtleneck jumper and jeans. Patrick thought he’d never seen her looking so good.

  She didn’t appear particularly surprised to see him.

  “I thought she’d pull something like this,” she said. “You usually can’t get that girl out of bed before two on a weekend, not even using a first-class ticket to Paris. I saw some poor guy try. He ended up having to go by himself.”

  “Er, may I?” Patrick waved at the seat opposite her. PC Lucy shrugged.

  He sat down and squared his shoulders. “Lucy. I know I well and truly messed up. I should have never doubted—”

  “Wait.” She held out her hand. “Give me the piece of paper.”

  Sheepishly, Patrick reached into his pocket and handed over Sally’s instructions. “How did you know—”

  “Oh, she’s great at these. She even writes Fred’s apologies to her, whenever he does something that pisses her off. I told her she should set up a speechwriting business.”

  She looked over the lines, then nodded.

  “Okay, so tell me what you were actually going to say.”

  “Er. I’m sorry about, uh, following you to the restaurant the other night. And, uh, sorry for thinking you were dating that other guy. Though to be absolutely fair, Alf is a little bit to blame for that too. I thought about bringing him along. He wanted to apologise himself, but Sally said that wasn’t a good idea”—PC Lucy gave him another nod—“so I didn’t. And uh, sorry about the whole Isabella thing.”

  “So she has a name, does she?” said PC Lucy, with a certain amount of venom in her voice.

  “Er. Yes?” Patrick couldn’t help being a little surprised. “So, you mean, it worked? You were jealous?”

  “Ugh, I knew I shouldn’t have let you improvise!” PC Lucy shook her head. “Of course I was! Who wouldn’t be jealous?”

  “Well . . . In all honesty, I’ve always thought she looks a bit like a horse. She’s got that horsey type of nose, and she’s . . . well, a bit bony looking. But, I mean, she was the only girl I could think of who’s even half as beautiful as you. Um, not that it’s all about looks, of
course. She’s not funny like you are. Or as scary. In a good way, I mean. Though I did see her once pin a commis chef to the door with his jacket and a pair of fish skewers, because he burnt ten litres of veal stock . . . ”

  PC Lucy was now looking at him with a strange expression.

  “Did my sister put you up to that, too?”

  “Er, up to what?”

  “That stuff you just said, about me being twice as . . . pretty . . . ”

  “No. That just . . . came out. Was it okay?”

  She looked at him, that strange expression still on her face. “It’ll do. For the moment. And I’d like my chocolates now, please.”

  Patrick pulled out the box Sally had given him.

  “How did you—”

  “Oh, it’s another part of her standard procedure.” PC Lucy lifted up the lid. “Oh good, they’ve brought back the sea salt caramels.”

  “I can make you those, if you like them.” He essayed a tentative grin. “So, um, are we good?”

  “After you called me more beautiful than that leggy giraffe girl? Yeah, I think we’ll be fine.” For the first time that morning, she smiled. Her fingers reached for his own. “Maybe even more than fine. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Sally earlier. Would have saved you all that effort going shopping. Though I like the new coat, by the way.”

  Their make-up kiss was interrupted by the frantic tapping on the window pane next to them. Sally’s face appeared, followed by a big thumbs up.

  PC Lucy pulled the blind down.

  “Wait. Sally didn’t make a move on you, did she?”

  “Nope. She did ask me how much chefs earned—I think she kind of lost interest after that. She’s not my type anyway. She’s too . . . fluffy.” He cupped her hands in his own. “Are you free tomorrow evening? So I can take you out and make it up to you?”

  “Will I have to look at any naked men?”

  “Well, I can only guarantee one . . . ”

  PC Lucy slapped his hands away, rolled her eyes, and went to get them drinks.