Gourmet Detective (12 page)

A man bustled in. He was round and tubby and his short legs moved in quick jerky steps. He wore an old black suit with a waistcoat that barely buttoned. The black bag he carried meant he must be the police surgeon.

Hemingway saw and hurried to greet him.

“Dr Pepperdine, glad you're here. This way please.”

The little man hurried over, looking curiously at the room and its occupants. He appeared irritated at having to be here.

“All right,” he snapped. “Where's the body?”

There was a pause. “I am,” said IJ. His voice was firm but he did not seem to see the doctor.

“Don't be absurd,” barked Dr Pepperdine. He glared at the inspector. “What's all this tomfoolery, Hemingway? Why are you wasting my time? You said there was a dead man!”

The inspector had probably never been at a loss for words in his life but he came very close to it now.

“Mr Jenkinson was pronounced dead,” he said finally, choosing his words with care.

Dr Pepperdine peered at the figure in the armchair.

“Jenkinson? Aren't you that TV chappie?”

The question was lost on IJ whose gaze wandered as if he were trying to locate the source of the voice.

“Yes, he is,” supplied Hemingway.

“You say he was pronounced dead? Pronounced by whom, may I ask?”

Goodwin Harper took a hesitant step forward.

“I thought he was dead—”

“Thought!” snorted the bristly little doctor. “You thought he was dead? Ha!” The last exclamation came out like a gunshot and IJ's attention finally turned in the doctor's direction. He studied him as if finding him curious.

“I examined him too,” Hemingway said. “Cursorily but I did check his pulse, wrist and throat, his eyes and his respiration. Can't blame Mr Harper—I agreed with him. Mr Jenkinson did seem to be dead.”

Dr Pepperdine was opening his black bag and taking out his stethoscope. He unravelled the cord and clamped the plugs in his ears. “This chap
thought
he was dead—you say he
seemed
to be dead,” he barked at Hemingway. “Doesn't look dead to me.”

He pulled open IJ's shirt and was about to place the probe on his chest. That close, he looked into IJ's pallid features. A tiny portion of the doctor's bluster ebbed away. “On the other hand …” he muttered. He listened for a moment. IJ was impassive again as if he were unaware of the presence of the doctor or his stethoscope.

“Irregular heart beat,” the doctor said in a low tone. He took a small torch from his bag and looked into IJ's pupils. The eyes still stared, unaffected by the beam.

The doctor tossed his instruments into the bag and zipped it. “Get him to a hospital as quickly as possible,” he ordered. He wasn't quite as testy now.

“The ambulance should be here any minute,” said Hemingway even as a constable came hurrying over. “Ambulance outside, sir.”

“Something I don't like here,” Pepperdine said to the inspector. “Have the ambulance bring him to St Cyril's Hospital in Marylebone. They have some special equipment there I'll need. I'll be there by the time the ambulance arrives. Tell them to make it fast.”

He picked up his bag and was out of the room with his short jerky steps before Hemingway could reply.

Attention returned to IJ. He looked very slightly more normal. His flaccid skin had taken on a tinge of translucency and there was a hint of expression in the eyes that had been absent before.

I was delighted—for my sake as much as his. My first assignment as a private eye—it would have been unthinkable to have a corpse on my hands.

Inspector Hemingway evidently noticed the improvement too.

“Feeling better, Mr Jenkinson?” he asked. I felt he could be excused the cliché question after the ordeal he had been through.

“It's the Courvoisier,” explained Bill Keating. “It's a wonderful remedy.”

“I thought he got Cognac,” said Benjamin Breakspear.

It was hard to tell if IJ heard the inspector's question. He seemed to be trying to speak but then gave up.

The drama was over. Feet were shuffling. It was an anti-climax and the guests wanted to go home.

Then IJ's head turned and he tried to look over his shoulder. Was he trying to see someone? Slowly, he stood up and it was like watching Frankenstein's monster rise from the grave. I expected him to creak.

He took a hesitant step and one hand raised as he tried to point. His mouth opened but nothing came out. His knees sagged and he crumpled and fell forward on his face.

The unfortunate Goodwin Harper was nearby and he was first at IJ's side. He examined the prone man then shook his head and looked up at us in bewilderment.

“He's dead,” Goodwin Harper said. “He's dead again!”

S
COTLAND YARD WAS VERY
disappointing. All right, perhaps I didn't really expect squad-rooms, drunks, huge pistols and badges with haunted-looking detectives wolfing down massive sandwiches and swilling hot coffee by the bucketful while others lounged by the water-cooler, arguing over 401s, 622s, citizen's rights and the Miranda-Escobedo law.

Even so, we are all brainwashed to some degree by this American television view of crime-fighting. It nags persistently at the memory despite being surrounded by the calm and orderly lobby of Scotland Yard as I was now. I looked it over casually, not wanting it to be too obvious that I had never been here before. It was much like another lobby I had been in recently only that had belonged to a cereal manufacturer.

A very polite young lady took my name and asked me to be seated. I barely had time to glance at the headlines of the
Daily Telegraph
when she called my name.

“Sergeant Fletcher will be with you in a moment, sir.”

Oh dear! I hoped he wasn't going to be another Sergeant Nevins—a beer-drinking, rugby-playing bully with no imagination and a dislike of security men.

I returned to the
Telegraph.
At least Hemingway seemed like a reasonable fellow, aside from his icy efficiency. I went over in my mind the latter part of the previous evening. When Dr Pepperdine had returned to Le Trouquet d'Or, he had been madder than a wet hen. “What's the matter with you, Hemingway?” he bellowed. “How many more times are you going to get me back here to look at the same corpse?”

The inspector displayed admirable self-control. “You'd better examine him very carefully, Doctor—”

“Examine him carefully! Of course I will! D'ye think I didn't before?”

“This time,” said Hemingway, remaining remarkably unruffled “I am sure you'll agree that Mr Jenkinson is indeed dead.”

The scrappy little doctor went to work, using several instruments I didn't recognise. Despite his testy words, his examination lasted considerably longer than before. Finally, he sighed. “Poor chap's dead and no mistake.”

The doctor had IJ's body loaded into the ambulance then he climbed in himself. “Not taking any chances,” he growled. The inspector spent a little time speeding up Sergeant Nevins and the constables in their task of recording the particulars of all the guests. He came over to me. “No need for you to wait any longer. Come and see me at the Yard tomorrow morning at ten.” So here I was.

The story hadn't made this edition of the
Telegraph.
I wondered if Nelda Darvey had been able to hold the presses or whatever it was they did and get the story on the streets in her paper. Before I could scan the other journals on the table, my name was called.

I turned to see as toothsome a little blonde as I had ever set eyes on. Slightly under medium height, hair trimmed short and curling slightly, her bright blue eyes sparkled and her full lips parted in a smile as if she was glad to see me.

“I'm Sergeant Fletcher,” she introduced herself in a warm, friendly voice.

“I'm very glad to meet you,” I said and I really meant it. Her uniform fitted her trim figure beautifully. Was it half a size too small though? Or did Scotland Yard have better tailors than I would have expected? Further speculation was cut short as Sergeant Fletcher asked solicitously, “No trouble parking, I hope?”

“No,” I assured her, still astounded at the improvement over Sergeant Nevins. “I came by tube.”

“Good.” She smiled as if genuinely relieved by this news. “We have a large group of police officers from Korea visiting today, studying our methods and they all came by limousine. The parking area is chaos.”

“I'm sure that you can teach them a lot.”

“This way.” She led me out through a door that clicked open and then shut on seemingly invisible commands. We went along a corridor and I followed with pleasure, admiring the sway of her shapely rear in the tight black skirt and the twinkling black-clad ankles. We entered a lift, went up two floors and at a glass-panelled door, the comely sergeant knocked and led me in.

Inspector Hemingway's office was sparse and very functional. There were no files—they must be central. Against one wall was a glass-fronted cabinet full of bottles and jars. The inspector sat behind a tidy desk and behind him was a photograph of him with Edwina Currie in front of the House of Commons. There were two chairs for visitors. Sergeant Fletcher sat on the left and I faced the inspector.

The sergeant crossed her knees demurely and smiled gentle encouragement. I enjoyed the smile and the knees but hoped that it didn't mean I needed to be bolstered up for an ordeal. It started mildly enough.

The inspector greeted me briefly and opened a file in front of him. He studied it for a few seconds and said:

“Your father died when you were fourteen. You left school and went to work at Smithfield Market.”

I stared at him astonished.

“That's my file you have there?”

He nodded. I looked at the sergeant. She smiled again. I hoped I was still correct in reading encouragement into it.

“After a year in the market, you got a job as an apprentice chef at Kettner's. You worked and learned and were soon promoted.”

“Inspector, I can't believe this. You actually have my life story in that file?”

Hemingway leaned back in his chair. “You became the youngest sous-chef at Kettner's then you joined the White Funnel Line—on cruise ships.” He looked slightly quizzical. Perhaps every detail wasn't in my file after all.

“I wanted to see something of the world outside London,” I explained, “and I wanted the opportunity to create some original dishes and get experience of foreign food. Kettner's was one of the top restaurants in London but the scope was limited.”

Hemingway glanced over at the sergeant. She wasn't smiling at the moment, she was serious and official. She said:

“There are gaps between the cruises—between the dates. What were you doing then?”

“I took chef jobs at some of the places on the White Funnel routes—San Francisco, Santiago, Miami, Sydney, Lisbon. I wanted to practise my preparation of foreign foods.” I looked from her to the inspector. “Why? I'm not being interviewed for the Secret Service, am I?”

The sergeant's smile returned. “Just filling in the record.”

Hemingway took up my life story. He glanced only occasionally at my file. He must be familiar with it. Why was I that important? I wondered uneasily.

“You then went to work for Collis and Wood—in procurement, I believe?”

“Yes. I went on assignments, locating unusual products for their buyers to follow up on, tracking down new sources of exotic foods.”

“Then came World Wide Foods.”

I nodded. “It was a mistake. I couldn't know they were shaky financially. It seemed a similar type of activity to F and M but with more responsibility and opportunity for initiative. But when they folded, it opened my eyes to even better possibilities. I took a chance and started my own agency.”

“You became The Gourmet Detective.”

“Right. Oh, I'm not really a detective, you understand—” I added that quickly before either of them could get any wrong ideas. “I detect only in the sense of finding rare foods and recipes, giving advice on marketing and so on.”

Hemingway closed my file. I had been trying to see what else might be in there.

“I talked to Mr Dusquesne. He said he hired you after some peculiar happenings at his restaurant. I would say that makes you sound more like a private detective than a food detective.”

His tone had gone accusatory and his expression, which seldom changed much, was now bleaker than before. I didn't like the sound of this.

“I had no idea there'd be any violence,” I protested. “François asked me instead of a real private eye because he felt that a knowledge of food was more important.”

Hemingway drummed his fingers on my file. It was as if he were drumming on my head, I could feel the reverberations.

“He told me that too. What did he mean by it? What is he afraid of?”

“I don't know,” I confessed. “It's all happened too fast for me. All I know is that he told me someone was trying to put him out of business. He described some strange things that have been happening in his restaurant. I talked to some of his staff and it does sound as if he has reason to think that.”

“And your presence at the Circle of Careme banquet was part of that assignment.”

“Yes. Naturally he was concerned that nothing should happen on such a prestigious occasion.”

“But it did.” Hemingway had that bleak look again.

“Nobody regrets it more than I do. I feel guilty about letting it happen—and yet I don't know what I could have done to prevent it.”

“I asked you last night if you had any ideas that might throw any light on this case. It was immediately after it had occurred so perhaps you were still stunned.” He gave me that penetrating look again. “Anything further you can think of?”

“I mentioned Tarquin Warrington leaving early…”