Chef Maurice and the Wrath of Grapes (Chef Maurice Culinary Mysteries Book 2) (5 page)

She stood up, the light from the fire flickering off her silken dress.

“So you’ve known Sir William a long time then,” said Arthur to Bertie.

“What? Oh, yes, for yonks,” said Bertie, watching his wife sashay out of the room. “Used to come here all the time as a boy. Spent my summers here too when I was up at Oxford.” He rubbed his eyes. “Makes you wonder where the years go . . . ”

“Come on, now you’re talking like us oldies,” said Arthur, while Chef Maurice gave a short harrumph to indicate he did not consider himself one of their number either. “What are you, barely thirty, I’d bet?”

“Just turned thirty, actually.”

“There you go. And running one of the finest vineyards in the world. Not a bad show.”

“Well, they’re not exactly mine,” said Bertie, though he managed a wistful smile. He glanced towards the door. “If you’ll excuse me a moment, I’ll just go and make sure Ariane is feeling okay.”

“Is it us? Did I forget to wear cologne?” said Arthur, as he and Chef Maurice sat there holding their Champagne glasses, the room now empty save for the genteel snores coming from Lady Margaret’s chair.

Chef Maurice, who usually slapped on the cologne like it was water, clicked his tongue.

“
Mon ami
, do not tell me you are wearing cologne? For a wine tasting, one’s senses must be sharp and the air pure, free from scents and
les parfums
.”

“Who’s the sudden wine buff now?” said Arthur, gazing towards the dining room door, which was ajar from when Waffles had made her escape. “Come on, let’s go see how Gilles is getting on. We might even get a sneak peek of the wines for tonight.”

In the dining room—a long, handsome room dominated by a glittering chandelier overhead—they found Gilles not, as expected, buffing the cutlery for the tenth time, but instead staring out of one of the tall windows that gave onto the Bourne Hall lawns, now iced with a thick layer of snowfall.

He started as they entered, then smoothly drew the curtains.

“How’s the snow looking?” said Arthur.

“At least a foot deep now, sir,” said Gilles, moving over to the table to straighten an errant fish knife. Arthur made an attempt to tally up the wine glasses on the table, but happily gave up after losing count twice.

“The lake will most certainly be frozen over. Do either of you gentlemen skate?”

“Not since I was a little boy. Nowadays, though, the thought of falling over, and those flashing blades . . . ” Arthur gave a little shudder.

“I, myself, am an excellent skater,” said Chef Maurice.

“You are?” Arthur looked his friend up and down. If you were the kind of person to describe body shapes via the medium of vegetables, Chef Maurice would most likely be an extra-large turnip. It was hard to imagine him doing anything as aerodynamic as ice-skating. Though, perhaps, he could be useful as an early warning system for detecting patches of thin ice . . .

“You have not seen me do the skating?” said Chef Maurice with surprise. “Perhaps then we will ask Sir William if he will allow us onto his lake later this week.”

Gilles, having probably shared the same vision as Arthur, looked visibly alarmed. “I hear that this cold weather is unlikely to last long. In which case I am not sure if the lake will freeze to a sufficient extent for skating. Perhaps for safety’s sake, it would be better to wait for a more opportune climate.”

Like the next ice age, thought Arthur.

“Have you been with Sir William a long time, Gilles?” he asked.

“Fifteen years this January, sir.”

“Golly, that long, eh? Still enjoying it? The butlering?”

“Very much so, sir,” said Gilles, pulling one of the chairs a millimetre further out from the tablecloth. Down the centre of the table was a long row of wine bottles, each covered with a smart black cotton bag with a numeral sewn on. A few places were empty, presumably ready for the bottles Sir William had gone to fetch.

“We’ve been especially busy this year with the expansion of the wine cellar, which brings the whole collection together in one place for the first time. Sir William has also had me assisting him with the update of the cataloguing system.”

“Ah, a database and whatnot?”

Gilles wrinkled his nose. “I’m afraid we’re not quite that modern, sir. It’s a simple cellar book. Name, producer, vintage, source, date acquired, that kind of thing.” He noticed Arthur’s expression. “It’s a significant improvement on what we had before, I assure you.”

“Ah, and what was that?” said Chef Maurice.

Gilles smiled faintly. “Scraps of paper, the odd receipt. One does marvel at the miraculous filing properties of an old shoebox.”

“Indeed. So any chance of a hint about tonight’s wi—”

Arthur stopped, as a huffing sound from the drawing room grew louder and a middle-aged woman in a blue gingham apron burst in. If Chef Maurice was turnip-shaped, then she was possibly a medium-sized radish. Her face, at least, was currently the right colour.

“Gilles . . . the cellar . . . Sir William . . . ”

“Breathe, Mrs Bates, breathe,” said Gilles, quickly sitting the panting cook down into a nearby chair. “Now tell me, what has happened?”

She stared up into his concerned face.

“He won’t unlock the cellar door! Oh, Gilles, I think something terrible’s happened to Sir William!”

The residents of Beakley were all tucked up warm in their cottages, though some of the older kids had taken the opportunity to start building snowmen and other icy sculptures on the village green.

PC Lucy was particularly impressed with the life-sized Vauxhall Astra, which she’d tried to take down the number plate of—it was illegally parked in the middle of the green, after all—until she realised it was entirely made of snow.

She hoped no one had seen her. The local kids would never let her live
that
one down.

Policing duty done, she was looking forward to a nice glass of mulled wine in front of Le Cochon Rouge’s big stone fireplace.

And seeing Patrick, of course. But currently, with her fingers numb and her toes having cut off communications several hours ago, she was mostly looking forward to the fire.

She knocked on Le Cochon Rouge’s back door and stepped inside to be met with a rather odd scene.

Alf was crouched under the main kitchen workbench, clutching a tea towel, while Patrick paced back and forth. He always looked so good, thought PC Lucy, when he had that darkly serious, knitted-brow look going on . . .

“Is something wrong?”

Alf pointed an unsteady finger towards the dining room. “He’s got a gun. A gun! You gotta go save chef!”

PC Lucy peered under the table for a moment into Alf’s unfocused eyes, then looked up at Patrick.

“Has he been drinking?”

“All night. He’s been testing the mulled wine recipes.”

“Ah, well that explains that. He’s drunk as a skunk. What’s this about a gun?”

Alf clutched at her leg. “He’s gonna shoot chef!”

PC Lucy looked at Patrick again. “Is he?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t see any gun. Alf went looking through one of the customers’ briefcase when he went outside to take a call. Yes, I know,” he added, seeing her appalled expression, “but anyway, I stalled the guy at the door and got Alf back here to the kitchen.”

“And what’s all this about shooting Maurice? I know he rubs people up the wrong way sometimes, but it’s a bit of an overreaction, no matter what he’s done this time.”

“I don’t think he’s done anything,” said Patrick, rubbing his forehead. “And the guy did seem weirdly interested when we tried to give chef a call up at Bourne Hall.”

“He wanted to talk to him?”

“I don’t know, the line was down. We told him that, and he dashed out to make a call.”

“Hmm. Odd.”

PC Lucy stuck her head into the main dining room to get a look at the lone visitor. If he was going for the hired-killer look he was doing a good job of it, she thought. Black jacket, black polo neck, black jeans, black boots. Close-cropped white-blond hair. He was staring intently at his watch, as if waiting for it to explode.

He looked up at her, and she ducked back into the kitchens.

“Well, he’s not doing anything particularly suspicious. Apart from sitting in a restaurant on the coldest night of the year with a snowstorm blowing outside. Is he stuck here?”

Patrick shook his head. “He kept refusing to let me call him a taxi. Can you at least, uh, go out and search his briefcase?”

“Patrick, I can’t just randomly search members of the public for no good reason. Not without ‘reasonable grounds’, and I’m afraid Alf really doesn’t qualify at this point.”

Alf tugged on her trouser leg. “But what about chef?”

PC Lucy sighed. “Okay, I’ll go have a word with your mysterious stranger, find out what he’s waiting for, make sure he’s got a home to go to. Maybe he’s been stood up for a date or something.”

Unlikely, she added to herself. Who’d stand up a man with a jawline like that?

She shrugged out of her parka and pulled off the bobble hat—not a good look when aiming to command authority—and headed into the dining room.

It was empty.

“He’s gone,” she said, returning to the kitchens.

“What?” said Patrick and Alf in unison.

Rather than relief, both their faces registered sudden alarm.

Alf scrambled out from under the table. “He’s gone after chef!”

“Do you
really
think he’s gone to look for Maurice?” said PC Lucy to Patrick.

“I got the impression he was more interested in Bourne Hall. Like he was trying to get hold of someone there and couldn’t.”

Alf had run out into the backyard and was pointing into the distance. PC Lucy and Patrick followed him, trudging through the knee-deep snow. In the field behind the restaurant, picked out by the faint moonlight, was a tall dark figure trekking steadily across the whiteness.

“We’ve gotta follow him! That’s the way to Bourne Hall!”

PC Lucy and Patrick shared a look, then grabbed Alf by the shoulders and dragged him back inside.

“You’ve gotta believe me. I’m not stupid, I know a gun when I see one!”

PC Lucy looked over Alf’s head at Patrick. “So what do we do now?”

“Well, if we set off right this minute, he won’t be hard to follow, what with the tracks in the snow—”

“I
meant
about Alf.”

But Patrick was already pulling on his coat and gloves.

“Wait, you’re not seriously going after that guy, are you?”

“He’s up to something, I’m sure of it. And why not?”

He’s got a gun, thought PC Lucy, then shook herself. People didn’t just carry guns around, not here in England. There had to be another explanation. Plus the police made sure people didn’t just go around carrying illegal weapons.

She looked down at her badge.

Dammit.

“Fine. But we’re not approaching him, okay? We’ll just see where he’s going.”

They left Alf wrapped in a blanket in the corner of the kitchen, with strict instructions to lock the door behind them.

“One moment.” Patrick stopped, strode over to the hob, grabbed a large stockpot and poured the contents down the sink.

“Oooooaawwww,” said Alf, at the sound of his night’s work sloshing down the plughole.

“Right, now we can go.”

The Bourne Hall wine cellar door was located behind the main staircase in the hallway. It was seven feet tall, made of solid oak and carved with a tasteful border of grapes and vines.

“I was just getting the canapés ready and thought I’d ask Sir William if he wanted the little Yorkshire puds first or last, you know how they’re his favourite, so I came out”—Mrs Bates waved at the kitchen door, which faced the cellar from across the corridor—“to check with him, but the cellar door was all closed and wouldn’t budge. I knocked and knocked, but the master, he ain’t answering!”

Gilles tried the doorknob.

“Locked,” he said gravely. He gave a loud rap on the door. “Sir? Sir William? Is there a problem?”

“’Course there’s a problem,” sobbed Mrs Bates. “It’s not like him not to answer, especially not with guests and everyone waiting for him.”

She hammered on the door with her fists.

“Does he usually lock the door when he’s down there?” said Arthur.