Eat, Drink, and Be Buried

by Peter King

  We heard footsteps and a muffled exchange of words outside before the long arm of the law entered.

  "Inspector Devlin, Hertfordshire Police." Sir Gerald greeted the inspector and introduced me. Sir Gerald invited us to sit and we did so. Inspector Devlin had a long, gaunt face. It was the face of one who has witnessed many crimes and misdemeanors, not to mention all of the sins to which flesh is said to be heir. The head of unabashed gray hair verged on the untidy. The eyes suggested that their owner was not going to believe a single word you said. The tall, ungainly body sat in the comfortable chair uneasily, restlessly, as if eager to be out of there, solving crimes and bringing villains to book.

  She was a very daunting figure.

  She started in a minor key. Her voice grated and she spoke in long bursts, swiftly as if wanting to get the whole interview over with, but it seemed likely that that was a false impression. She was probably a bulldog when she got her teeth into something. I hoped it wouldn't be me.

  "I am aware, Sir Gerald, that you were not directly involved in this distressing event. I will be talking to those who were"she didn't glance in my direction so I didn't know if she was aware that included me-"but I wanted to speak to you first."

  "I appreciate that, Inspector." Sir Gerald put a slight additional polish on his already formidable facade. He managed to amplify his position as master of the manor merely by the lordly way he sat relaxed behind his large desk. "If there is anything that can be done to facilitate your task here, please be assured that every effort will be made to do it. I hope you will not hesitate to come to me if you have any problem, no matter what it is."

  "I won't hesitate," said Inspector Devlin, and her gritty tone emphasized her intention to do just that. "Now perhaps you can outline for me just what happened as you know it."

  Sir Gerald did so, briefly and succinctly. The inspector nodded sharply and her eyes swiveled to me. "And this gentleman?"

  "We have been very successful here, I'm pleased to say." Sir Gerald sounded like the chairman of the board presenting the annual report. "The tours, the exhibits, the entertainments-all have been expanded and improved since we first opened nearly ten years ago. Recently, however, we decided that we have been remiss in one area. People today have become much more aware of food than they used to be, cookbooks are being written by the hundred, food critics are treated like gurus, and television channels devote much attention to the subject. We decided that we needed to present meals that are more in keeping with our theme of the Middle Ages. That is why we called in this gentleman to advise."

  He leaned forward to push a card across the desk. The inspector picked it up. It was mine, the one I had presented on arrival. The inspector's eyes glinted. They went from me to the card. I knew what was coming. It had come on previous occasions.

  "You're a detective." The inspector might have been accusing me of one of the more beastly of a myriad perversions.

  "It's a nickname," I hastened to explain. "The Gourmet Detective. You see, I look for unusual foods, rare spices, exotic recipes, that kind of thing. I advise on specialty foods and cooking methods. Here, it's a matter of bringing the food served in line with the Middle Ages. Well, as far as we can, anyway."

  "You have a license?" The voice was still condemning.

  "I'm not a private investigator. I'm a sort of food-finder, only in food. Not a detective at all, well, not really." I stopped there. Anything more would make it worse.

  She put my card back on Sir Gerald's desk. She did it quickly as if wanting to get rid of it before she became contaminated. "I'll talk to you later," she said. Perhaps the menace in her voice was purely in my imagination.

  To Sir Gerald, she said, "I understand that the man who died was a stuntman."

  "That's correct."

  "In your permanent employ?"

  "Yes."

  "But he didn't play this role every performance?"

  "No. They rotated."

  "How many of them?"

  "Three. Kenny Bryce, the man who died, Frank Morgan, another stuntman, and my son, Richard."

  The inspector digested that for second. Not allowing tact to stand in her way, she said, "You permitted your son to participate in this-contest?"

  "It's quite safe." Sir Gerald's tone tightened. "We take every precaution. No one has ever been hurt."

  "Until now."

  "This didn't happen during the contest. It was-something else."

  "But your son was supposed to play Sir Harry at this performance, wasn't he?"

  For the short time she had been here, Inspector Devlin had gathered a lot of facts.

  "Yes, he was," Sir Gerald admitted.

  "And why didn't he?"

  Sir Gerald was keeping up his front well. Even the formidable inspector didn't faze him. "He had an appointment with a person in the village."

  "Who?"

  "Jean Arkwright."

  "Girlfriend?"

  Sir Gerald thought about that for a second but simply said, "Yes."

  "It must have been a sudden appointment. Didn't your son know that he was in the joust last night?"

  "He knew. We have a schedule. I don't know the circumstances. You'll have to ask him."

  "Oh, I will," the inspector said with certainty. "The stuntman, Bryce-any reason that you know of for anyone to want to kill him?"

  "Kill him!" Sir Gerald looked alarmed, as if this was a new thought to him. "No, certainly not. Are you saying he was killed?"

  "We hope to know very soon," the inspector said imperturbably.

  "Was it poison?" Sir Gerald demanded.

  The inspector's rawboned face didn't change. "What makes you think that?"

  "Well, I ..." Sir Gerald wasn't used to this kind of frontal encounter. I took pity on him.

  "I said he had the symptoms of being poisoned," I interjected.

  "Seen a lot of poisonings, have you?"

  "One or two. They sort of come with the business I'm in."

  "The detective business?"

  "No, the food business."

  Sir Gerald was striving to get his composure back and regain his normal mien of nobility. He seized the opportunity of this little contretemps. "Is there anything else I can help you with, Inspector? As I said, I'm always at your disposal. I want to see this affair cleared up as quickly as possible."

  "Bad for trade, is it?"

  Sir Gerald would have flushed if he had been a commoner, but breeding told. "I want to see justice done and the law carried out."

  "As do we all." The inspector got to her feet. "Well, that will be enough for the moment, Sir Gerald." She turned to me. "I'll talk to you later. You'd better stay on here at the castle-whether that's your intention or not," she added flatly.

  "I'll be here for a few days," I assured her.

  She went out without a further word.

  Leaving Sir Gerald, I wanted to get on with my job-my original one, namely, the revision of the menus.

  The head chef, Victor Gontier, had a French name and looked French, but he told me he had been in Britain since he was twenty years old. He had a sound reputation in the trade and spoke English with no trace of an accent. He was plump and bespectacled, with a smooth, round face.

  His assistant head chef, Madeleine Bristow, had come from the prestigious restaurant of Prue Leith in London. Madeleine looked like a jolly farm girl. She had red cheeks and a full face and retained a little of a Lancashire accent. She had attended a cooking school in Manchester, she told me, and that had started her on her career.

  There was some obvious friction between the two of them, though it was covered over by the professionalism of both. We sat in the offices belonging to the kitchen. A bookshelf was filled with cookbooks and binders full of recipes. Certificates and diplomas adorned the walls and a large colored photograph showed Victor Gontier in a tall white hat with the other members of the Maitre Cuisiniers de France.

  I was aware that I had to employ an increased amount of tact on this assignment. No chef
likes an outsider coming in to his kitchen to tell him anything. Most well-informed chefs know a little of food in earlier days but it is only a little. Such knowledge as they may have gathered during their studies has been forgotten by the time they reach any level of recognition. Cooking in a top restaurant is a highly competitive occupation today and staying abreast of changing trends and shifting customer demands all their time. Few chefs have much inclination toward history.

  "Goose is not a popular bird," Victor said dubiously in response to my opening suggestion. "You seldom see it on a menu these days. One reason is that many people are aware that it has a lot of fat."

  "I'm suggesting the Embden. goose from Germany. They are not raised for the production of foie gras and they do not have that large fold of skin that the industrial goose has. As you know, that is where they store the fat produced by the force-feeding that is necessary for the swollen livers of foie gras. Consequently, the Embden goose is ideal for eating and has only a small amount of fat."

  Victor looked skeptical. Madeleine said sweetly, "Why don't we come back to that? Cover a few other possibilities first."

  "All right." I was prepared for some resistance. "What about mutton? Not so long ago, everybody ate mutton. Properly prepared, it makes a very tasty meal. It's inexpensive and authentically a historical dish."

  "That's a possibility," Madeleine said.

  "I suppose we could consider it," admitted Victor.

  "Of course," I reminded them, "we're not talking about meals that are simply put in front of people. These would be a choice among several other choices."

  Victor nodded, a minuscule nod. Madeleine pursed her lips in thought.

  "Venison is a dish that surely would be popular." I knew I was on safe ground with this one. "Meat lovers like it and it has the true ring of a medieval dish."

  Even Victor perked up. "We have deer on the grounds. The herd is culled periodically and we serve venison then."

  "How do you prepare it?"

  "As steaks."

  "Good," I said. "If there's plenty of it when you cull, we could widen that usage. Stews, sausages, we could perhaps have a barbecue in a pit outside."

  This time, Madeleine inclined her head gently. Victor said, "Yes, that's possible."

  "Frumenty was the standard accompaniment for venison in the Middle Ages," I said.

  Victor looked thoughtful.

  "A modern way of making it would be to make a pudding of whole wheat grains with milk, sprinkle in some chopped almonds, and enrich with egg yolks and color with saffron," I suggested.

  "We could manage that," he said.

  I had assumed that he could. That was not only the way of making frumentry used in the Middle Ages, it was the modern way.

  "Then there's bear steaks, ever consider those?" I asked.

  "One of the most popular entertainments here is Daniel and his Dancing Bears," Madeleine said heavily. "The children love them, become very attached to them. I don't think we could ask any of the children to eat them."

  "They wouldn't be eating any dancing bears. These would be different bears and besides-"

  "I know," Madeleine said. "But would you want the job of explaining that to five-year-olds?"

  "That's a good point," I conceded. "We'll rule out bear meat. Gamebirds were prominent in medieval days," I went on. "What do you think of pheasant, partridge, and teal?"

  Both gave the question consideration. I knew what they were thinking-that such birds meant a lot of extra work in plucking and preparing. "They increase costs," Madeleine commented.

  "True," I agreed. "These birds are much less prevalent now than they were in those times. But we would be charging by individual dishes so these could be priced higher."

  "We don't want to increase total meal prices," Victor objected.

  "We could emphasize the luxury aspect of gamebirds," I said, "and we could offset these higher-priced items with some less expensive ones."

  "Such as?" Madeleine wanted to know.

  "Rissoles, for instance." I smiled at her. "Being from Lancashire, you'll know about those." Being too young to have had personal experience of rissoles, she would have heard of them at least, I reasoned. They had gone out of style in the past decades but they had been a major factor in Lancashire eating so she must have heard her parents mention them.

  She didn't respond at once. I didn't want to put her in a position of having to admit ignorance so I went on as smoothly as I could, "You're thinking how we could modernize them. I think the best way would be to roll out puff pastry very thin, cut rounds about three inches in diameter, put spiced ground meat into the center, double them over, and deep-fry quickly."

  "Like a samosa," said Victor in a voice of explaining the obvious.

  "Exactly. They are cheap, very tasty and-"

  "We could use beef, pork, or lamb," Madeleine said. She knew when to get on the bandwagon. "We could make variants on them, different shapes, different sizes."

  "Excellent idea," I said enthusiastically. "Perhaps even some designs."

  "They used to like to offer pastries and jellies in the shapes of animals, flowers, and so on, didn't they?" she asked.

  We soon had a few trial menus roughed out and a schedule for introducing them into the routine. When I left them, I felt I had made a good start. After another visit or two, they would be more cooperative. Both were too professional not to be challenged in the kitchen.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I was walking across the grass sward when a voice called and out of the corner of my eye I saw a hand waving. A young man and a young woman approached. I didn't need to guess who the man was. A younger version of his father, Lord Harlington, he had exactly the same facial features, although the eyes and the mouth were a little more haughty and verging on the supercilious. The trappings of aristocracy sat on his shoulders more blatantly than in his father's case, but he looked to be in his late thirties so perhaps age would temper the pride.

  His sister, Felicity, was two or three years younger, a smoothcomplexioned English beauty with corn gold hair. Not as lofty as her brother, there was an air of confidence about her that betrayed money and position.

  "Been wanting to meet you," said Richard after introductions were exchanged. "Father told me about your little chat with him. It's good to know you'll be staying on to help us." He shuddered. `Just came from our `interview' with that terrible inspector woman."

  Felicity smiled. It was partly a humorous smile but there was a touch of disdain in it too, which was reflected when she said to Richard, "Serves you right, running off into the village like that. You wanted to do this jousting thing. You argued and bullied and cajoled your way into it. Then what did you do? You went off to meet your girlfriend. And left poor Kenny to be killed."

  Richard flushed. "I didn't leave him to be killed at all. I knew nothing about any possible danger-how could I? I'm sick of being told Kenny's death was my fault."

  The family argument might shed a few clues if it went on but I didn't want them to get too heated. Better to keep them talking. So I intervened. "You had a regular schedule, didn't you, for when you played Sir Harry?"

  "Of course," he almost snapped.

  "Had this happened before? You were scheduled but Kenny took over?"

  "Two, three months ago," he said sullenly.

  "In this case, did anybody know about it?"

  He shook his head. "Only Eddie. I couldn't find Kenny, so I told Eddie to tell him he was to go on instead of me."

  "Richard obviously had no idea of what was to happen," Felicity cut in, apparently feeling it was the right moment to show some family solidarity. "He's right, he really wasn't to blame in any way."

  "Did you eat anything before going to the village?"

  He looked at me in surprise. "No. I usually ate a salad before jousting, but not that day."

  Felicity was regarding me intently. "You said something about Kenny being poisoned, I heard."

  She must have her ear to the gro
und-the castle grounds anyway. Richard was frowning. Maybe this was news to him.

  "I was with Don McCartney when he was told about Kenny feeling ill. I went with him to see Kenny," I explained. "I made a comment about his exhibiting symptoms of poisoning. Maybe I was out of line."

  "What did Dr. Emery say?" Richard asked. "He saw Kenny before he was taken to hospital."

  "The doctor didn't venture any opinions, and quite rightly. I should have done the same."

  "Expert on poisoning, are you?" Richard Harlington had a knack of sounding belligerent.

  "I'm not an expert," I said levelly, "but I have been involved in cases where poisons were used."

  "Anyway," said Felicity, smoothing the troubled waters, "we'll know in a day or two what was really the cause of Kenny's death."

  I returned to Richard. "So only Eddie knew that Kenny was to replace you?"

  "As it happened, yes. Eddie was the only one I spoke to and the only one who saw me-and he always helped me dress."

  "It only takes one to get you into that armor?"

  "It's mostly made of aluminum and very light. It's cleverly designed with clips and spring buckles. It's quite easy to put on."

  "Surely it's more important what happened before that," said Felicity. "If Kenny was poisoned, it could have happened earlier."

  "It depends on the poison," I said. "Some are nearly instantaneous; some take hours, others take days or even longer."

  "If it was poison," Richard said pointedly.

  "Yes," I agreed. "If it was."

  We parted. Richard looked glad to get away. Felicity gave me a delightful smile and a wave.

  The grass that stretched eastwards from the castle moat was crisp and fresh from the morning dew. Two young men in minstrel costumes passed and gave me a cheery "Good morning!" They were evidently on their way to a rehearsal and both looked resplendent and anachronistic in their dazzling colors. The tight saffron yellow jackets with a single row of wooden buttons had over them shoulder mantles of azure blue, which covered the upper part of the chest and hung to the hips in narrow strips. Cherry red pants ended in brown leather shoes, like slippers with upturned toes. Cloth hats in soft gray material had a large metal emblem, and around the waist, each wore a wide leather belt.