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

by J. A. Lang

  “And Bonvivant, did he too make threats to Mademoiselle Miranda?”

  “I didn’t hear about any,” replied Angie, to Chef Maurice’s disappointment.

  “Ah, still, we cannot leave him from our investigation. It is in his interest that you and Mademoiselle Miranda did not continue this project.” He stooped down to retrieve a long-trampled flyer from the ground.

  Cauliflowers and Cupcakes presents the Competent Chef Cookery Course! Cook like a pro in only ten weeks! Every Monday, 7-9pm.

  “Bah! Ten weeks? Three months, it was, before Alf could make un bon mousse au chocolat! How dare they make these claims? It is no wonder that they closed!”

  “I heard it was because the last owners won the lottery and moved to Barbados,” said Arthur.

  “Humph!”

  “You really think that the murder might have something to do with the cookery school?” said Angie, as they wandered back out through the main classroom.

  “One must consider all the boulevards,” was Chef Maurice’s gnomic reply.

  Angie left Arthur and Chef Maurice outside on the pavement, to run over to return the keys before she drove over to the Lady Eleanor School to teach her afternoon classes. She promised to quiz her mayoral husband later on the subject of any other competitors to her and Miranda in the bid for the cookery school site.

  “And we’ve still got that suspicious appearance by Miranda’s ex-boyfriend to look into,” said Arthur, flipping through the notes he’d made at Miranda’s flat. “So what’s the plan now?”

  Chef Maurice jabbed a thumb at the sign hanging above them, which depicted a green cartoon tree, its branches draped with spaghetti.

  “We start with the suspect we find the nearest,” he said. “And also, it is now time for lunch. The solving of crime, it creates a big appetite, do you not think?”

  Chapter 7

  Like that of many Italian restaurants of a certain age, The Spaghetti Tree’s decor was firmly mired in the Eighties, complete with plastic red-and-white-check tablecloths, rickety wooden chairs, and faded photos in black frames showing Signor Gallo pressing the flesh with various celebrities and dignitaries who, from the uncertain grins on their faces, most likely had no idea what they were doing in Cowton and would be hard-pressed now to locate the town, even with the help of a large-scale road map helpfully opened to ‘C’.

  “Look, I know you’re keen to speak to Gallo about this whole cookery school business,” said Arthur, from somewhere behind a tall and somewhat sticky laminated menu, “but did we really have to eat here too? I’m not exactly the staff’s favourite person at the moment.”

  “Ah, oui? The Spaghetti Tree did not survive well under your pen?”

  The life of a restaurant critic was one spent doling out various measures of praise and censure—often in unequal amounts, as there was nothing the readers of the England Observer liked better than the good and thorough roasting of a highfalutin restaurant that had got a little too big for its boots and required Arthur’s rapier pen to deliver some much needed ego-deflation.

  This also had the result of Arthur becoming a persona non grata in many dining rooms up and down the country, but this was not something that often caused him any bother, up until now.

  “Hmm. I do recall comparing their mozzarella to eating a white bathing cap filled with old skimmed milk . . .”

  “Ah. And?” Arthur’s reviews never went easy once he had descended for the kill.

  “And I might have made some comment about the home-made meatballs tasting like something you’d find in a service station microwave meal.”

  “Yet everyone says that the recipe was given to him by his dear old nonna.”

  Arthur snorted. “Unlikely, for a man who was born Bob Higgins, and only changed his name to Roberto Gallo when he opened up this place. And that fake accent of his, it borders on the ridiculous!”

  Chef Maurice had to agree, though personally he had always been rather impressed by the restaurateur’s dedication to his hastily adopted new culture. The man knew no half measures; every time he announced his pasta arrabiata, diners would wince and hide behind their menus to avoid the extraneous spittle.

  “Still, mon ami, it is important that we speak with Monsieur Gallo. And it is not right to run in here shouting our questions. We must make an approach diplomatique.”

  Their discussion was halted by a compact but well-rounded stomach floating into view at the side of the table. It was attached to Signor Gallo himself, dressed, as usual, like a down-on-his-luck opera singer.

  “Welcome, signori, to The Spaghetti—” He stopped as he looked down and noticed Arthur for the first time. His mouth opened and closed soundlessly, while his face tried on a range of hues, from beetroot purple to white with hints of rage, until settling for an alarming shade of maroon.

  “Bonjour, Monsieur Gallo,” said Chef Maurice. “You have met my friend, Monsieur Wordington-Smythe?”

  Signor Gallo had now managed to force his features into a rictus of a smile. “Signor Wordington-Smythe, how kind of you to choose to dine with us again. I will be sure to let our head chef know.”

  No mafia boss pronouncement could have sounded quite as chilling as that last particular statement.

  “Oh, er, capital. Maurice, were you ready to order?”

  Chef Maurice nodded, selecting the bruschetta with tomatoes and olive tapenade, followed by a mushroom-and-taleggio-cheese polenta, and put in a reservation for a portion of the allegedly ‘home-made’ tiramisu.

  Arthur, with a fearful glance towards the kitchens, declared himself to be oddly full still from breakfast, and ordered a double espresso.

  “You are sure, signor, that you are not hungry?” said Signor Gallo with a leer, as Arthur’s stomach gave a traitorous little rumble.

  “Not at all, I assure you. Another time, perhaps.”

  “Verrrry well. Then you will not be needing these.” With an oily smile, Signor Gallo snatched the breadsticks off the table and traipsed away towards the kitchen.

  “Tch, now you have lost us our pre-starter,” grumbled Chef Maurice, who was partial to bread in any form.

  “They taste like compressed sawdust, believe me.”

  Thankfully for the nearby tables, whose main courses were now being subjected to some longing stares, Chef Maurice’s starter turned up not long after. Arthur stared at it in amazement.

  The tomato was expertly diced into bright red little jewels, a far cry from the usual anaemic-looking specimens found in the British supermarkets. The tapenade glistened, the bread was toasted golden, and the whole dish was garnished with torn basil and what smelt like freshly pressed olive oil.

  “You are sure you do not wish to order?” said Chef Maurice, tucking into his dish with gusto. “The ingredients, they are most pleasingly fresh.”

  “He’s doing this on purpose.” Arthur threw a dark look at Signor Gallo, who was now charming a table of lunching ladies with tales from his ersatz Italian childhood. “I had that same dish when I came. It was nothing like that. He must have a secret stash of olive oil hidden out the back . . .”

  Chef Maurice shrugged, and ordered a large glass of chilled Vermentino to accompany his meal.

  Signor Gallo soon returned with the main dish, a generous portion of polenta, with the scent of tangy taleggio wafting up from the warmed plate.

  “I thought Signor Wordington-Smythe might be now feeling hungry, so I asked my head chef to prepare him a special dish.” A silver-domed platter was placed before Arthur.

  The dome was whisked away, to reveal a bulging white bathing cap.

  “Hilarious,” muttered Arthur, while his stomach gave another little growl.

  It was halfway through the superlative tiramisu—“I’ll bet you anything they popped out and bought it from the patisserie across the road”—when Chef Maurice decided it was time to broach the topic of Miranda Matthews with their good host, who was fussing around nearby, placing new baskets of breadsticks on all the tables
around them.

  “Is what I hear true, Monsieur Gallo, that you plan to open a cookery school in the shop next to here?”

  “Sì! It has been an idea of mine and Maria’s for a long time. We will enlarge our space, and Maria will teach pasta-making classes for the children.” He waved a hand at Maria, née Mary, who ran the front of house and, unlike her husband, had been unwilling to surrender her native Yorkshire accent.

  “But there is some competition, I understand, for the site?”

  Signor Gallo gave him a suspicious look. “Where did you hear that?”

  “We were speaking earlier to Madame Angie—”

  “Ah, the mayor’s wife? Sì. I told Maria, the council should not have let that woman apply! A clear case of conflicting interests. But never mind,” he added, with a shrug, “without her business partner, she cannot continue now. I hear she has no money of her own.”

  “Ah, oui? But Madame Angie has given hint that this may no longer be the case,” said Chef Maurice, who generally liked to stir things up.

  But Signor Gallo would not be drawn. “Whatever the case, if that woman wins, I will make my protests to the council. Did you know, they made attempts to make me withdraw my case by threatening and harassing me?”

  “Angie Gifford?” said Arthur. “Harassing you? I can hardly believe that.”

  Chef Maurice agreed. It was easier to imagine a duckling, perhaps one in the throes of an identity crisis, taking down a fully grown swan than to picture Angela Gifford even mildly taking anyone to task.

  “Ah, no, not that one. But the tall one, with the ridiculous big hair. Everywhere I go, she follows me! I take Maria out for dinner, and she is there. I go for my Pilates class, and she is there!” Signor Gallo ran a hand through his greasy black hair. “I thought at first she was trying to seduce me—”

  Chef Maurice choked on a mouthful of tiramisu.

  “—and so I tell her, signorina, I am sorry but I am a one-woman man. And yet, she continues. Sometimes she tries to hide away, but I still see her!”

  “Did you contact the police, then?” asked Arthur.

  Signor Gallo looked uncomfortable. “I did not wish to make a fuss. And now, there is no need. She brought her fate down onto her, with her wickedness,” he added, with some satisfaction.

  “You were at the Fayre, perhaps,” said Chef Maurice, “when the finding of the body was made? I do not remember seeing you at that time.”

  “No, I had returned here after my pasta-making demonstration to open up the restaurant. Maria, she stayed at the Fayre. She tells me two married women were taken by the police for questioning. The wives whose husbands were entrapped by the dangerous signorina, I am sure, and who therefore took their revenge.”

  Satisfied with his solution to the crime, Signor Gallo left them to join in a rousing chorus of ‘buon compleanno!’, directed at a timid five-year-old wearing a party hat and a fearful expression.

  “So what do you make of that?” said Arthur, leaning over the table. “Do you believe his alibi, about coming back here after his demo?”

  “Hmm, it will be difficult to check. His staff, they will make lies for him, of course.”

  “What about the customers?”

  “Ah, that is true. We will ask questions around. But remember, his wife, Maria, she was also at the Fayre, and could have been the one to commit the crime. And he was fast to admit that without Madame Angie and Mademoiselle Miranda in the run, they have now a much greater chance to gain the cookery school site.”

  “As does Bonvivant, don’t forget. Though I have to say, clobbering someone over the head with a drainpipe doesn’t really seem to fit his style.”

  “Oui, that is true.” If Gustave Bonvivant was going to murder someone, one would expect it to involve a lot of well-tailored black and stiletto knives in the dark.

  But still, there was no harm in making some gentle enquiries . . .

  They paid the bill and headed for Chef Maurice’s car, stopping along the way for Arthur to pick up a jumbo sausage roll and a cream bun from the local bakery.

  “If Meryl asks, you did not see me eat this,” he said, waving the bun.

  Thus provisioned, they motored out into the Oxfordshire countryside, windows down, leaving a trail of flaky pastry in their wake.

  As one of the county’s few fine dining establishments of note, L’Epicure boasted a reservations diary that filled up several months in advance, leaving the area’s more unorganised husbands in a panicked flurry every time Valentine’s Day and various anniversaries came unexpectedly around. It was easier, they complained, to become Prime Minister than it was to get a Saturday evening table at short notice at Chef Bonvivant’s restaurant.

  However, as impenetrable as the dining room of L’Epicure might have been, when it came to gaining access to its kitchens, this was a simple matter of walking around the back of the building until one came across a likely-looking set of swinging doors. The handful of lanky chefs and off-duty waiters hanging around, puffing on dog-eared cigarettes, was also a handy giveaway.

  Chef Maurice and Arthur received a few questioning glances as they ambled through the sprawling kitchens, but all of Bonvivant’s chefs and waitstaff had been trained to recognise the country’s key food critics—in fact, their pictures, cut out from various magazines, were enlarged and tacked above the main door leading to the dining rooms—and so assumed that if the restaurant critic from the England Observer was wandering around in their midst, then he was clearly meant to be there and it would be best not to disturb him. In fact, he was probably being shown around by that PR chap with the huge moustache.

  Also, the majority of the kitchen crew were currently oblivious to their surroundings, completely engrossed as they were with their peas.

  They all stood around a large shiny prep station, heads bowed over two stainless steel bowls each, one containing a big heap of dried black-eyed peas. The Herculean task at hand appeared to be to move the pile of peas from one bowl to the other, using a set of very long, very pointy chopsticks.

  There were various pings as escaping peas popped from tense chopstick grips, accompanied by the kind of heated swearing usually associated with the worst type of sailors.

  “Maurice, Arthur! What a pleasant surprise to see you here. You have come to view my new training program?”

  Chef Bonvivant, spotless as always in chef’s whites and a tall white toque, appeared through the swinging dining room doors, trailed by his ever-present assistant.

  “Looks like you’ve quite revolutionised the transport of dried peas,” commented Arthur.

  “Ha ha. No, not exactly. I spent the whole of last month in Japan, visiting the kitchens of some of their most prestigious establishments. Did you know, some of them don’t even allow reservations from the public—to eat there, one must be introduced by another diner. If only one might introduce such a concept in this country,” he added with a sigh, perhaps at the thought of his own woefully mixed bag of clientele.

  “And the dishes they create,” he continued, “I have never seen such exquisiteness. And everything done with chopsticks! So much more delicate, finessed, when you plate a dish without the need for these.” He wiggled his own elegantly tapered fingers.

  “So how do you find the using of the chopsticks, jeune homme?” said Chef Maurice to a young man with a ginger crew cut who was bent over his bowl, his tongue poked out in ferocious concentration.

  The young chef hesitated, with a quick look over at Chef Bonvivant’s face. “Not as fast as I’d like to be, sir, but I’m practicing lots.”

  “I keep finding peas all over my station,” complained a voice down the end of the bench.

  “Plus it’s slower than watching a sloth take a sh—” began yet another, before Chef Bonvivant hurriedly cut in.

  “Yes, we’re still in the adoption phase, of course, but I am certain we will get there with the necessary application and mindset,” he said, glaring at the third chef. “So do I take it that you have
come to visit to watch my staff count beans? Or perhaps you are looking for a new sous-chef.” He gave Chef Maurice a brief, sharklike smile.

  “You are wrong in both ways. We come to speak to you about Mademoiselle Miranda Matthews,” said Chef Maurice, making a mental note to berate Dorothy for her gossipy tendencies.

  “Oh? Don’t tell me, Maurice, that you’re getting yourself involved in yet another murder investigation? Too much time out from the kitchen will surely be bad for your staff’s morale.”

  “I heard Patrick say they get more done without him, actually,” chipped in Arthur.

  “Hah, the mutterings of a traitor,” said Chef Maurice darkly. He turned back to Chef Bonvivant. “You were there at the Fayre, n’est-ce pas, when the attack happened?”

  “Yes, but I’m afraid I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

  “Mademoiselle Miranda and Madame Gifford were intending to open a cookery school. A site which, I hear, you are most interested in, too.”

  “My team have put in a bid for the Cowton site, yes,” said Chef Bonvivant, leaning over and using a pair of chopsticks to pick up the peas that had escaped across the table, in a series of deft little movements. All around him, the pea-transportation efforts doubled at this sight.

  “Ah, so you admit that the murder of Mademoiselle Miranda has been of benefit to you and your business.”

  “I do not think so. I do not expect that the council would have granted those two the lease, no matter the circumstance. A TV chef and a school teacher? Much better to place the site in experienced hands such as ours. Anyway, from my point of view, the whole ordeal has probably been more trouble than it’s worth.”

  “Ah, oui?”

  “It might amuse you to know that, far from me having anything to do with that dreadful woman, it was her who came poking around here. I found her sneaking about in my kitchens a few weeks ago, using her feminine wiles on my staff.” He narrowed his eyes at the group around the table and a dozen young men blushed furiously. “I asked her what she was doing here, and she said she came to warn me. She dared to suggest something ‘unfortunate’ might happen if I did not drop the application. I told her I was sure she was used to getting her own way in the world of television cookery”—a sneer was here inserted—“but that the real world did not work quite like that. She left here in quite a temper.”