Chef Maurice and the Bunny-Boiler Bake Off (Chef Maurice Cotswold Mysteries Book 3)

by J. A. Lang

  “The idea for the cookery school, this came from you or Mademoiselle Miranda?”

  “Oh, it was all Miranda. At least at the start. She said she wanted to do something more hands-on, that she was getting bored of all the TV shows. But, frankly, I don’t think the project would have got off the ground without me on board.”

  Angie spoke without pride, in simple matter-of-fact tones like she was talking about a recipe for chocolate cake. It struck Arthur that here was a woman who knew her worth, and not an ounce more or less.

  “I really don’t think Miranda realised how much work it takes to make something like this happen,” she continued. “I used to help out with Rory’s furniture business in my spare time, so at least I had some idea of how things should be run. But we were getting there. It was all panning out . . .”

  They stared down at the plans and flyers before them; the remains of a business, stillborn.

  Angie seemed to wake from her reverie. “Did you say the police left the front door unlocked? I suppose I should have words with them, if so. It’s really quite irresponsible of them.”

  “Ah.” Chef Maurice gave a little cough. “I am afraid that we must make a confession to you. It was we—”

  “And by ‘we’, he means him, I might add—”

  “—who ensured the door would be unlocked after the police went away. We are making, you see, an investigation into the murder of Mademoiselle Miranda.”

  “You are? Thank goodness!” Angie clasped her hands together.

  Arthur and Chef Maurice exchanged a puzzled look. This was not how things usually went.

  “I read in the local paper all about how you helped figure out those two horrible murders last winter, and I thought it was all so clever of you.”

  “Ah, you are too kind, madame,” said Chef Maurice, standing up a little straighter even so.

  “And, well, I didn’t really know what I could say to you, to— to—”

  “Make us take up the enquiry, perhaps?”

  Angie nodded.

  “In fact, this is what you wished to speak to us of, the day of the Fayre, n’est-ce pas?”

  Angie nodded again. “I’ll help with whatever I can, of course. And if we find out anything, we’ll be sure to tell the police straight away, it won’t be like we’re going behind their backs. I’m sure they won’t mind, really—”

  “Hah,” muttered Arthur.

  “You know,” she sighed, “even just saying this, I feel such a whole lot better. Being able to do something about it all, instead of just sitting around waiting to hear of any more news.”

  Chef Maurice placed a hand on Angie’s arm. “Come, madame, you must tell us more,” he said, leading them back into the living room. “If Arthur will make us some tea—”

  “Pot wash and tea lady,” grumbled Arthur.

  “—you must tell us all you can of Mademoiselle Miranda. You have been, how do they say, firm friends for a long time?”

  “Oh, yes. We were in the same class at Lady Eleanor, from the first year all the way up to Sixth Form. But then we mostly lost touch when I went to do my teacher training down in Bournemouth, and Miranda got sent off to Paris to study at Le Cordon Bleu. We exchanged a few letters at the start, but I hadn’t seen her for years until she moved back to these parts.”

  “When was this?” asked Arthur, from over by the kettle.

  “About six months ago. She quite surprised me. I mean, I’d seen her on all her cookery shows, of course, but I never got round to getting in touch properly. I thought she’d be much too busy with all her shows and cookbooks and all.”

  “Do you know what brought her back to the area?” asked Arthur. “Does she have family nearby?”

  Angie shook her head. “It’s quite sad, but I don’t think she had much family to begin with. She lived with her aunt after her parents died when she was little—a boating accident, I think—then she got sent here to Lady Eleanor. I suppose her aunt thought it was best for her to spend time around other children, instead of living up in the middle of nowhere. I think Miranda just liked this area. She had good memories here, I suppose. She said the Cotswolds were so peaceful, after all her years in London and Paris.”

  “And Mademoiselle Miranda was happy here in Cowton? She made no mention of any trouble in her life?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” said Angie, absent-mindedly arranging the coasters on the coffee table. “She never said anything, but I could tell something was bothering her. I tried asking her about it a few times, but she said I’d be better off not knowing, that she’d tell me once it was all ‘sorted’.” Angie bit her lip. “If only I’d managed to get it out of her.”

  “One cannot think too much on the past. Now, I must ask a question of some delicacy,” said Chef Maurice, who personally had no qualms in such matters. “Who is it who benefits from the death of Mademoiselle Miranda? You said she has little family, non?”

  “Yes, just her aunt, as far as I know. I guess Miranda would have left everything to her.”

  “Ah, that is most interesting,” said Chef Maurice, with a significant look in Arthur’s direction.

  “Oh! But surely you can’t be implying her aunt has anything to do with all this?” Angie looked aghast. “She must be well into her eighties by now. And she lives up in the Inner Hebrides. I don’t know if the police have even been able to contact her yet. Miranda said she didn’t even have a phone line.”

  “Even so, one must leave no stone upside down.” Chef Maurice accepted the brimming cup of tea from Arthur and spooned in three sugars. “You said you came to check that the appartement was properly locked. There are, therefore, many items of value in here?”

  “Well, there’s the furniture, of course. But I was thinking more about Miranda’s jewellery. And her photography equipment. She took all those herself, you know,” she said, gesturing at the wildlife prints around the walls. “She won an award a few years ago, for her work photographing endangered species. She was always keen on photography, even back when we were in school. Of course, it was all messing around with chemicals and darkrooms in those days.”

  “Aha, then that is one mystery already solved.” Chef Maurice filled them in on PC Alistair’s muddy discovery last Saturday. “Perhaps Mademoiselle Miranda took her camera to go photograph the birds and animals of Warren’s Creek?”

  “I suppose she might have,” said Angie, a trifle doubtful.

  Arthur tried to picture Miranda Matthews stalking through the English woodlands with her neon nails and cream-coloured jeans. It was a picture that didn’t quite fit.

  “Bof,” said Chef Maurice eventually. “Come, we cannot sit here drinking tea like the English ladies. Let us continue!”

  Thus galvanised, they headed through to the master bedroom, which was decorated in tasteful greys and dominated by a king-sized bed, the satin sheets still rumpled. The wardrobes were bulging with assorted designer items, crammed in with no thought to any seasonal or functional arrangement, or so it seemed to Arthur, while a wide chest of drawers was dedicated entirely to high-heeled shoes in a variety of garish colours.

  “What exactly are we looking for?” said Angie to Arthur, as Chef Maurice dived in, banging open cupboards and riffling through drawers.

  “I suspect we’ll know it when we see it,” said Arthur, opening a drawer filled with neatly arranged bras of all colours, and closing it again hastily.

  “Aha! Cherchez l’homme!” Chef Maurice had zoned in on the bedside table drawer, and now held up a framed black-and-white photo of a good-looking, if somewhat brooding, man in his early forties.

  “That’s Adam Monroe, Miranda’s ex-boyfriend,” said Angie. “I never met him. I think they broke up before she moved here.”

  “Could he have been the cause of her moving here, even?” suggested Arthur.

  “I don’t know, I didn’t ask. He was a rotten sort anyway, from what I heard. It was all over the papers.” She gave a little sniff. “Certain papers, anyway.
He cheated on her, you know?”

  Arthur, who confined his morning reading to the England Observer and a few other broadsheets, and Chef Maurice, who preferred to receive his news in accordance with the time-honoured principle that if it was important enough, someone would tell him, both shook their heads.

  “Miranda always said that karma got him in the end, though. Two weeks later, he got fired off that soap opera of his. They had his character go bungee-jumping with a faulty cord. And to think he tried to blame it all on Miranda. As if she could have had anything to do with it.”

  “Him being fired, you mean?”

  “Exactly. A spiteful idea on his part.”

  Arthur looked down at Adam Monroe’s square-jawed profile. A ladykiller, for sure, but in how many senses of the word?

  “Hmm. We could be looking at a case of a disgruntled ex.”

  “C’est possible,” murmured Chef Maurice, still holding the photo. Then, with a sudden ‘Aha!’, he jumped up and scuttled back out into the kitchen.

  “It is him. And her!” He jabbed a finger at the redhead in the magazine cover shoot. “They were together, at the Fayre. They made a most big distraction in the queue for my hog roast!”

  Arthur grabbed the photo from Chef Maurice’s waving hand. The chef was right. Slap a pair of dark sunglasses onto the surly lothario in the frame, and add a few decades onto the flame-haired girl, and you had the couple who’d been participating in the extended smoochfest in the hog roast queue.

  “By George, you’re right. It’s definitely them!”

  “Adam Monroe was at the Fayre, with Gaby?” Angie looked thoroughly confused. “What could he have been doing here? I thought he lived in London. And with her?”

  “When exactly did he and Miranda break up?” asked Arthur.

  “I don’t quite know. I got the impression it was on and off for quite a while, but him being caught with that blonde motoring show presenter was the last straw.”

  “Could it be just a coincidence? Him being at the Fayre?” asked Arthur, though rather doubtfully.

  “The ex-boyfriend and the ex-collègue of Mademoiselle Miranda, together on the day of her murder? Mon ami, that is too much. Non, there must be a reason . . .”

  Angie looked down at her wristwatch and gave a little gasp. “My goodness, how time flies! I’m meant to be having a viewing of the cookery school site right now. It’s just down the road from here, and I didn’t have the heart to cancel. I suppose part of me wanted to have a look for the last time. It really was the perfect site.”

  “We will accompany you,” said Chef Maurice. “The school was an important plan of Mademoiselle Miranda, and it is important that we learn as much of her as possible.”

  “I’m sorry we didn’t find out much here,” said Angie, as she locked up the flat.

  “Non, non, you must not say that. We only make a beginning. And it will not be over, I promise you, until the fat lady sings a song.”

  Or, at least until one amply fed head chef got to the bottom of who was responsible for the murder of Miranda Matthews.

  Because even if her cooking methods stretched the definition of ‘chef’ to its outer limits (and then some), she could still be placed on some outlying branch of the great cheffing family tree.

  And chefs, as Chef Maurice had declared at the start of that day, should not go around getting murdered.

  Mr Hathaway, of Cowton Country Property Lettings Ltd., was a self-satisfied young man in his thirties, consummate in the ability to deploy such choice phrases as: ‘benefiting from extensive renovation’, to describe a dilapidated Victorian mid-terrace where the toilet was now actually situated within the house; ‘brimming with character’, in relation to an alleged barn conversion that had yet to rehouse its previous bleating, woolly occupants; and ‘ideally located for the London commuter trains’, to depict the location of a farmhouse so remote that its inhabitants had developed their own regional dialect.

  “Mrs Gifford, what a pleasant surprise,” he said, stepping forward to meet them under the faded awning of the now-defunct Cauliflowers and Cupcakes Cookery School. “I wasn’t sure if you’d still be coming, what with the dreadful news about poor Miss Matthews. My deepest condolences.”

  “Thank you,” said Angie, as Mr Hathaway clasped her hands awkwardly in his own. It looked like a gesture he’d picked up from a much older man, and completely failed to suit. “I’d like to introduce to you Mr Manchot and Mr Wordington-Smythe, both part of the Beakley Spring Fayre Committee. You don’t mind if I show them around the site, do you?”

  “Not at all,” replied Mr Hathaway, contriving to smile with the corners of his mouth alone. He produced a big bunch of keys, and they stepped inside.

  The front room of the shop was set out with rows of worn-looking kitchen worktops, all facing the back of the room, which was a mess of plumbing and electrical wiring.

  “That’s where we’d set up the demo station,” said Angie, waving towards the back wall, “and we’d replace all these benches, of course. There’d be a row of fridges over on the side there, for the pastry classes. And pantry cupboards back here, for the ingredients for the day. Of course, most of the bulk supplies would have to be stored out the back.” She looked over to Mr Hathaway, who was standing by the door with the look of a man who’d heard this spiel a dozen times already. “Do you mind if we go through to the other rooms?”

  “By all means, take your time. In fact, if it’s all right with you, Mrs Gifford, I’ll just leave the keys here, and you can drop them back to Sandra in the office when you’re done. I’m afraid I have another viewing in ten minutes across town.”

  He dealt them all a quick nod, exchanged a few parting pleasantries, then he was gone.

  The door at the back of the room opened up into a narrow corridor. Off to the left were the remains of an office of sorts, and next door, an old walk-in fridge, suggesting the building had been used as a restaurant at some point in its life.

  “It’s not much to look at, at the moment,” said Angie, “but layout-wise, there’s very little structural change that need to be made. All it needs is a lick of paint, and all new equipment, of course. I’m always amazed what a little TLC can do for a place. I finally talked Rory into letting me do over our kitchen at home. We finally pulled out that dreadful old Victorian stove, which was just sitting there, and got rid of the linoleum. Now it feels like I’m walking into someone else’s house.”

  She ran a finger over a piece of peeling paint, which crumbled to the floor. “They really didn’t take much care of this place,” she murmured to herself.

  Yet there was something in the way she looked around them, something in her voice, that Chef Maurice noticed. She did not speak like a woman wandering through the remains of a now-vanquished dream. She spoke, instead, like one still on the edge of dreaming.

  “It seems, madame, that you have not yet completely given away the hope for this project, n’est-ce pas?”

  Angie looked momentarily flustered. “Well . . . I mean, it’s a silly thought, really, to think about going on with all this without Miranda. But I can’t help feeling . . .” She sighed. “We have the best proposal, I’m sure of it. And, I thought, if we somehow win the lease, I could at least get Rory to help me put together a loan application. It never hurts to try, I’ve always said.”

  “There are others, then, who also wish to win this site?” asked Chef Maurice. He pulled open the door to a broom cupboard, then stepped aside as a large spider made its dash for freedom.

  “Well, it’s not exactly public knowledge,” said Angie, twisting her fingers, “but these things seem to get around. Our biggest competition is probably Signor Gallo, who owns The Spaghetti Tree next door to here.”

  “Gallo?” said Arthur. “But what would he be wanting with a cookery school?”

  “He apparently wants to knock through from his restaurant and use half the space to enlarge the dining room, and the rest for a much smaller cookery school. He’s been qui
te aggressive about it all, I have to say. I went round to Miranda’s once, and he was up there, practically screaming at her. Telling her that the site should clearly go to him and that we should stay out of it.”

  “Interesting. And we know Gallo was definitely at the Fayre, doing that pasta demonstration of his,” said Arthur in low tones to Chef Maurice.

  Angie gave him a wide-eyed look. “You’re not suggesting that Signor Gallo had anything to do with . . . what happened? I mean, I know what I just said about him and Miranda, but it’s just the Latin spirit in him, I’m sure. He’s always been so charming when Rory and I go there for dinner.”

  “Madame Angie, you are too kind in the heart. In the search for a criminal, you must be willing to consider all who you meet,” said Chef Maurice, waggling a finger. “And you must not be fooled. Even the worst type of murderer, for example, may be a good man to his own dog.”

  “Was there anyone else?” said Arthur.

  “I only heard about one other application. From Mr Bonvivant.”

  “Eh?” Chef Maurice stopped in the process of inspecting the shelves in the back storeroom. “Bonvivant? That imbécile of a man, who calls himself a chef but spends more time looking in the mirror than at the plates he sends to his guests? What does he require this place for? He has already a cookery school at his restaurant. All made of glass, and with the ovens with too many buttons!”

  “Didn’t I see you looking at a brochure after that last time we visited him?” said Arthur, which earned him a frosty glare.

  “Miranda reckoned he didn’t want another cookery school setting up in this area,” explained Angie. “He said he was going to run it as an offshoot of his own school, but really, it’d just be to keep everyone else out of the market. There aren’t a lot of available sites in central Cowton, and the council’s ever so strict on having the right mix of shops and restaurants. Rory seems to spend half his time arguing with shop owners about what they can and can’t do with the properties. So if one of the other two gets the lease, there’s no chance of opening up another cookery school nearby.” She gave a sad little sigh.