Chef Maurice and the Wrath of Grapes (Chef Maurice Culinary Mysteries Book 2) (8 page)

If Gilles or Bertie were surprised to find a police officer already at the Hall when they returned from their trek, they were too polite to make any comment.

Gilles thanked PC Lucy for her prompt arrival, while Bertie made a beeline for the kitchen’s wood-burning stove.

The cellar key was produced and Gilles led PC Lucy down the stone steps. They were followed by Chef Maurice, still
avec
trusty frying pan, ready to protect PC Lucy should any more intruders be found; Arthur, ready to protect Chef Maurice should PC Lucy lose her temper and attempt to strangle him; and lastly Patrick, who felt, as PC Lucy’s not-quite-boyfriend, he should not be seen to be upstaged by his boss in this protection racket.

PC Lucy crouched down next to the body, trying to maintain a mask of professional blankness while her insides did somersaults.

“What do you think happened?” said Patrick, next to her.

PC Lucy leaned closer to the body, careful not to disturb anything.

“We’ll have to wait for the forensics report to be certain, but it looks like he was hit on the back of the head with something heavy, probably a wine bottle, given these cuts. Then they went for the throat . . . ” She glanced down at the dark pool which had spread across the flagstones.

“With that, you think?” Patrick pointed at the remains of a wine bottle, the cork and neck still intact, but the body smashed in to leave a jagged, razor-sharp edge.

PC Lucy nodded.

“Any chance of fingerprints?”

“I doubt it.” She had noticed a soft, slightly grubby cloth lying nearby, presumably used by Sir William or Gilles to wipe dust from the bottles. It was now splattered with bloodstains. “But we’ll send it off to the lab anyhow. You never know.”

Chef Maurice, bending over the body, shuffled around to PC Lucy’s side.

“His arm like that, perhaps this has some meaning?”

Sir William’s left arm lay flung out to one side, his head tilted in the same direction.

They all looked up at the display cabinet opposite, which housed a collection of very large old bottles of wine in a temperature-controlled environment. There were roughly thirty in total, with a few of the stands still empty.

“Why are they so big?” asked PC Lucy.

“They’re magnums,” said Patrick. “Double the size of a normal bottle, so one and a half litres each.”

“Magnum?” said PC Lucy. “Like the gun? And the ice cream?”

“That’s right. Though I’m not sure there’s much of a connection there . . . ”

“Funny, I’ve never seen them in a restaurant,” said PC Lucy, still staring at the cabinet. “Are they common?”

“
Non
, it is usual for only the chateaux with great prestige to produce magnums and bigger,” said Chef Maurice. “Especially for the old vintages like the ones here. The making of magnums, it is expensive, you see.”

PC Lucy ran her gaze along the display cabinet once more, then shook her head. If Sir William had been shot, or possibly stabbed with an ice cream stick, the collection of magnums might just have been a clue. As such, she moved on with her search.

She slid a careful hand into Sir William’s dinner jacket pocket but, as she expected, there was nothing there. Sir William didn’t seem the kind of man who would ruin the line of his tailoring by carrying around unnecessary items, especially not in his own home.

However, the other pocket revealed a folded piece of lilac notepaper.

Darling, wait up for me tonight, I will slip out as soon as I can. I cannot wait to have you. A.

The handwriting was curly, expansive, passionate, even. A woman’s handwriting.

Chef Maurice, reading over her shoulder, clicked his tongue. “
Oh là là
, the poor Monsieur Bertie.”

“A is for . . . ?” PC Lucy had been hurriedly introduced to the guests upstairs, but hadn’t had time to take down names.

“Ariane Lafoute,” said Arthur. He was standing in a corner as far away as possible, staring at a wall stacked with wine crates. Dead bodies were not his forte, as he had discovered only a few months previously. “Married to Bertie, the young chap who came in with Gilles. But, well, it’s a bit hard to believe, isn’t it? I mean, Sir William is, was, hardly the type of fellow to fool around with another man’s wife. And Bertie’s practically family to him. You saw the way he talked.”

“But there are no other A’s present here in the house. Except for you,
mon ami
,” pointed out Chef Maurice.

Three faces turned to Arthur, who spluttered:

“Well,
I
certainly didn’t write that note. If you ask me, it looks a lot like Maurice’s handwriting. Very French, I can see even from here.”

“Bah! I object! How could I—”

“Okay, gentlemen, enough,” said PC Lucy, holding up a hand. “And it goes without saying, you are
not
to mention this note to anyone, understand?”

There were vigorous nods all around, which meant, she knew from experience, exactly nothing.

She placed the lilac-coloured note in a plastic bag for safekeeping, and reached gingerly into Sir William’s nearest trouser pocket. Her fingers closed around something heavy and metallic.

It was a large brass key, hung on a thick woven cord.

She looked over at Chef Maurice.

“I thought you said the intruder locked the door behind him. Or her,” she added. Crime, after all, was an equal opportunities employer. “From the
outside
.”

“But it is true! It was most definitely locked when Madame Bates came for us. Unless . . . 
Un moment
. Let us not jump on conclusions.” Chef Maurice grabbed the key and hurried up the stairs. A moment later, there was a whirring noise and a click.

“
Oui
, this is the correct key,” he said, as he returned down the stairs.

“Then how . . . ?” PC Lucy looked around the room. The cellar was big by normal standards, but bottles and small wine crates lined every available wall. There was nowhere for anyone to hide. “What about a second key?”

Chef Maurice shook his head. “It was in wax. We saw Monsieur Gilles break it open before us. It could not have been used before.”

PC Lucy checked the other trouser pocket, but found only a clean white handkerchief. She pushed it back in.

“Right, let’s get back upstairs,” she said.

Chef Maurice remained squatted down for a moment, then reached out and laid a gentle hand on Sir William’s shoulder.

“Do not worry,
mon ami
. We will find who did this. It is my promise.”

Uh oh, thought PC Lucy, who’d experienced Chef Maurice’s first attempts at impromptu sleuthing earlier that year.

He just said ‘we’.

Back in the Bourne Hall kitchens, Mrs Bates was serving up cold beef sandwiches from the remains of what would have been the evening’s dinner.

Chef Maurice would have preferred the slices a little pinker, but he allowed that Mrs Bates had suffered quite a shock today, and in her defence, the horseradish cream was both excellent and liberally applied.

PC Lucy entered the kitchen with a small police radio in her hand.

“My colleagues will be here shortly,” she said. “In the meantime, if you wouldn’t mind, Mr Gilles, I’d like to ask you some questions about Sir William?”

“Of course, madam,” said Gilles, who’d been standing by the door, holding a cup of tea in the awkward manner of a man unaccustomed to social gatherings. He seemed quite relieved as he led PC Lucy down the hallway into Sir William’s study.

It was a good-sized room, decorated to male tastes, with old oil paintings on the walls depicting historic battles, an abundance of oak panelling, and several firm, leather-studded armchairs.

“Are you certain you wouldn’t prefer this interview to be conducted in private?” said PC Lucy, throwing an exasperated glance at Chef Maurice and Arthur, who’d followed them in and had settled themselves into the two armchairs by the small fireplace.

Gilles folded his hands neatly before him. “If the gentlemen wish to be present, I certainly have no objection. There is nothing I can tell you that would be in any way inappropriate.”

“As you wish,” said PC Lucy. “So walk me through the events of this evening.”

Gilles cleared his throat. “From which point in the evening would you like me to start?”

“How about when you last saw Sir William?”

“I last saw Sir William at around seven o’clock, when he was entertaining the guests in the main drawing room. I poured the Champagne, then stepped into the dining room to check on the table arrangements. I heard Sir William leave the drawing room to go collect the final wines from the cellar, accompanied by Mr Paloni. I remained in the drawing room, where I was joined by Mr Wordington-Smythe and Mr Manchot. It was here that Mrs Bates found us and informed us that Sir William was apparently locked in the cellar and not responding. We then proceeded at once to the cellar entrance to lend assistance.”

PC Lucy nodded as she scribbled in her notebook. “So the other guests were still in the drawing room?”

“No. Only Lady Margaret, who I believe was resting by the fire. The other guests had retired upstairs at that point.”

“And then?”

“On finding the door to the cellar locked, as per Mrs Bates’ description, and not being able to rouse a response from Sir William, I came here to the study to procure the spare key from the safe.” He gestured towards the wall by the desk, where a small iron safe was embedded at chest height.

“May I see inside?”

“Of course.” Gilles walked over to the safe and twiddled the dial. The little door swung open.

The safe was mostly empty, save for a bottle of forty-year-old single malt whisky—“Worth a pretty penny!” whispered Arthur—and a small pile of papers.

“As you can see,” said Gilles, “Sir William was not in the habit of making much use of the safe.”

“But he kept the spare cellar key in here? Sealed in wax?”

“Yes, it was a practice he inherited from his father, I’m told, to ensure he knew exactly who had access to the cellar at any one time.”

“So the only cellar key that could have been used to lock him in was the one that Sir William carried himself?”

“So it appears.”

“Interesting. Carry on. So you went to fetch the spare key?”

“Yes. I then proceeded to unlock the cellar door, and descended first, followed by the guests, which in hindsight I am most regretful of. For the ladies and gentlemen to have to witness such a sight . . . ” Gilles shook his head.

“Was it normal for Sir William to lock the cellar door when he was down there?”

“No, I’d say not. On rare occasions when he did not wish to be disturbed, perhaps.”

“I understand that there had been some form of disagreement between him and Mr Paloni, just beforehand. Is it possible he locked the door after Mr Paloni had left him, to ensure he wouldn’t be disturbed further?”

“Possible, yes.”

“And what about the cellar itself? Is anything missing?”

“I would need to consult the cellar book and carry out a full audit to ascertain this. But the most valuable bottles in the collection are kept in a glass cabinet with a key code lock. I observed at the time that these bottles were undisturbed.”

PC Lucy scribbled this down in her notebook. “And then what happened after?”

“To ensure the safety of the guests, I conducted a preliminary search of the building, and soon after discovered a broken window in the storeroom beside the kitchen. We concluded that this was where the intruder had entered and exited the premises.”

“So this was before you called the police?”

“Yes. As our phone line has been non-functional since the afternoon, Mr Lafoute and I then walked to the main road to make the call.”

Chef Maurice leaned over to Arthur. “The phone line, I find this most suspicious,” he murmured. Arthur nodded his agreement.

“Have you worked for Sir William very long?”

“Fifteen years.”

“And to your knowledge, has Sir William ever received any threats? Notes, phone calls, that kind of thing?”

Gilles smiled faintly. “The local pro-fox-hunting lobby have been known to send the occasional sternly worded letter, but no, nothing of a genuinely threatening nature. As far as I am aware, of course.”

“What about past burglaries? I understand the wine collection is worth millions of pounds.”

“Most certainly. Especially with the additions to the collection over the last five years. But we have never had any trouble here. Our location is fairly remote, and Sir William had a new security door installed over the summer, though more for insurance purposes, I’m given to understand, than due to any real apprehension of theft.”

“And what about his . . . personal relationships?”

“Relationships?”

“Was there anyone Sir William was involved with? Romantically, I mean?”

Gilles appeared to blanch at this thought. “None whatsoever. Rightly or wrongly, I do believe Sir William regarded himself quite past the age of acquiring . . . a female companion, shall we say.”

Chef Maurice made a sudden harrumphing sound, causing PC Lucy to shoot him a warning look.

“And how would you describe the relationship between Sir William and Mrs Ariane Lafoute?”