Gourmet Detective

by Peter King

  “He wasn’t really hiding out, he says. He was doing a photographic assignment at the docks at Ipswich. I think he saw the news about IJ and took the first opportunity to duck so that he wouldn’t be mixed up in it.”

  “Does he have anything to hide?”

  Winnie sipped the Lillet. “This is delicious. Less lethal than a Martini, more original than gin and tonic… Scarponi admitted he worked occasionally for IJ. Says he was hired to take pictures of staff going in and out of Le Trouquet d’Or.”

  That surprised me. “Staff? Going in and out?”

  “That’s all he’ll admit to.”

  “Sounds as if IJ had some strong suspicion of someone there.”

  Winnie nodded and her blonde curls danced gently.

  “We’re interrogating him again. We’ll try for more this time.”

  “Thumb-screws and the rack?”

  She smiled. “You know better than that. The inspector’ll get something, don’t worry.”

  I refilled her glass.

  “Did you find anything in IJ’s possessions that might correspond to any photos Scarponi could have taken?”

  “No,” Winnie said. “But I want to ask you a question. What did you think was in IJ’s pocket when he was supposed to be dead?”

  I drank some Lillet to cover my confusion. She was watching me carefully and laughed gently.

  “The inspector knows too, of course. He never misses a thing like that. You couldn’t have known there was nothing in IJ’s pocket except by feeling in it—and you were the only person near him when he came back to life.”

  I explained what I had seen earlier. “It was the satisfied look on IJ’s face that convinced me it was something important. Until then, he hadn’t shown much emotion.”

  “St Leger denies knowing what it was too,” said Winnie. “Says he merely handed it over. The interesting point is that Scarponi was the man who handed the envelope to St Leger.”

  “Then Scarponi knows what was in it!”

  “He says it was photos of the staff of Le Trouquet d’Or.”

  “All of them?” I was astonished.

  “So he says. But he must be lying if it was important enough for someone to beat you to it and take it out of IJ’s pocket.”

  “I learned a lesson,” I told Winnie. “Never try to hide anything from the police.”

  She pouted prettily. “Very wise,” she said and smiled.

  The CD player moved on to Saint-Saëns’ Sonatas for Cello and Piano and the two instruments blended beautifully. I had taken the centre section out of the table to make it a suitable size for two. I lit the candles but left the lights on—still avoiding clichés. Continuing in the same vein, I pulled the cork on a bottle of Sancerre, the Millet Frères, a complex blending of tastes both dry and rich but still crisp.

  With Winnie seated at the table, I brought out a bubbling sizzling tray of oysters. Her eyes widened.

  “Are those Oysters Rockefeller?”

  “They certainly are.”

  Her face glowed with anticipation. “Wonderful! Tell me, is it true about the original recipe being such a closely guarded secret?”

  As we ate, I told her that the dish had originated at Antoine’s in New Orleans. It had been made with snails then but as Antoine Alciatore, the owner, became aware of the fine Gulf oysters available locally, he began to use them instead. It was said there were 18 ingredients in the sauce.

  “And it must have been John D. Rockefeller’s favourite dish.”

  “Actually, no. John D. Rockefeller was at that time the richest man in the U.S.A. and the dish was named in his honour because it was so rich.”

  “Pity,” said Winnie in between oysters. “He couldn’t have done other than find it wonderful if it was anything like this. It must be a lot of work.”

  “A few of the ingredients are hard to find and I had to substitute,” I told her. “Herbsaint—a cordial containing anise—is difficult to get, for instance.”

  “Presumably they used absinthe back in Alciatore’s day.”

  “Right.”

  I poured more of the Sancerre which was perhaps a touch fruitier than I would have preferred. Maybe a dry Chilean Riesling would have been better …

  As we sat savouring the wine—which maybe was a good choice after all, being formidable enough not to be overwhelmed by the chervil, Tabasco and shallots in the oyster sauce—Winnie said:

  “I forgot. There is one more question. You must answer it as you were there. How long elapsed between eating the fish and IJ’s collapse?”

  I thought. Finally I said: “Fifteen to twenty minutes.”

  “H’m.” Winnie looked pensive.

  “Why? Has something come up?”

  “Well,” said Winnie, “the inspector has spent more time with the poisons experts in Forensic. The quantity of the botulin that IJ received has now been estimated to take at least an hour to cause death.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. Do the experts have a margin for error?”

  “Yes, it’s a considered opinion, no more. The files are not that full of lamprey poisoning cases.”

  She smiled. “Anyway, back to eating. Enough of poisons!”

  I rose and took the oyster trays.

  “Next course coming right away.”

  I had bought boned squabs from the butcher and had him halve them. I had cooked some bacon in butter and then put in the squabs, browned and removed them. I cooked onions, shallots and carrots and removed them too. I sprinkled in some flour, added white wine and boiled till thick. Then I added chicken stock, Madeira, fennel, thyme, basil, oregano and marjoram. I simmered this, added the squabs and the vegetables and cooked till it thickened.

  I had boiled olives and sautéed some mushrooms in butter. I had removed the squabs, strained the sauce and added the mushroom liquid.

  Tonight, all I had to do was heat the sauce, add the squabs, the bacon, the olives and the mushroom liquid. It was slightly thick so I added some more Madeira. I served it with lemon slices and a couple of tiny potato pancakes.

  It was a huge success. With it, we had a bottle of Pomerol.

  “Not a very common wine,” commented Winnie.

  “It’s still a subject of debate. It’s the best of the Bordeaux reds but does that have anything to do with the fact that Pomerol is the smallest district in Bordeaux? Disagreement continues.”

  “But not about the wine itself. It’s marvellous.”

  The CD player moved on to Scarlatti. Played on ancient instruments, his music is tender and affectionate. The strawberries with kirsch went well with it. I did the flambé work in the kitchen—still avoiding clichés. Michael refers to all flambéed dishes as “food you can read by”.

  I sat beside Winnie on the couch as we drank coffee. The food and wine had brought the faintest of flushes to her cheeks and her eyes were merry. I put down my coffee cup. Our hands touched.

  The phone rang.

  “I should have pulled the plug,” I said.

  It continued to ring.

  “Maybe they’ll go away,” said Winnie.

  It rang and rang.

  Winnie sighed. “They can sound so insistent, can’t they?”

  I picked it up.

  I couldn’t understand a word at first. The voice was husky and rasping. I could hear breathing.

  “Who is this?” I asked impatiently.

  “This is Larry Leopold.”

  I wouldn’t have recognised his voice at all.

  “Are you all right? You sound strange,” I said. “This is a dreadful line.”

  “Listen carefully. I don’t have much time.” It wasn’t the line, it was him. He sounded terrible.

  “I couldn’t go on any longer. Those were awful things I did. It all went wrong—I didn’t mean for IJ to die but he—anyway I’ve ended it all now.”

  “What do you mean, you’ve ended it?”

  I caught the look of alarm on Winnie’s face as she heard my words.

  “I’v
e killed myself. It was the only thing to do.”

  There was a throaty noise and a click as the connection was severed.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  WINNIE HAD HER HAND on the phone before I had finished telling her of the conversation. While she was being put through to Inspector Hemingway, I was looking through the phone book for Larry Leopold’s address. It was a mews house behind the Victoria and Albert Museum. Winnie relayed it to the inspector.

  “He’ll meet us there,” she said. “I came here by taxi. Can we—”

  “I’ll call Gupta,” I said and did so. “He runs a 24 hour service,” I explained to Winnie. “Often does emergency runs for me. He’ll have a car downstairs by the time we get there.”

  The driver was one of Gupta’s best. He dodged around the late night traffic at Hammersmith Broadway and raced through Brook Green. He slipped over to Cromwell Road and we shuddered to a stop at the entrance to Brompton Mews.

  A constable was standing in front of a mews house down the narrow cobbled thoroughfare.

  “The inspector had the nearest man on the beat come over here,” said Winnie and even as she spoke, an unmarked car pulled up behind us and Inspector Hemingway jumped out.

  The constable was a fresh-faced young man with a West Country accent. He saluted Hemingway smartly.

  “Arrived here four minutes after your call, sir,” he reported. “Door was unlocked. I went in. Body of a man. Dead, sir. Constable MacAvoy arrived five minutes later. He’s been covering the back door and I’ve remained here ever since.”

  “Right, constable.” Hemingway was crisp and efficient—though I’d not seen him any other way. “Stay here. We’re going inside.”

  The inside of the mews house was a surprise after the old, cobbled road outside. Deep brown leather couches flanked an enormous glass coffee table with mechanisms of ancient clocks embedded in the thick glass. The hard-wood floor was waxed to a mellow sheen and a large fireplace was set in a stone wall, between deep bookcases.

  A heavy table of hewn wood had been converted from one-time kitchen duty to serve as a desk and had a typewriter and papers and books strewn over it. Close by were two deep armchairs in the same deep brown leather as the couches. Larry Leopold sat in one of them.

  His face was chalky-white but otherwise he looked the same in death as in life. His reddish beard stuck out at a jaunty angle and I stayed out of range of his hands. I hadn’t forgotten my terror when Ivor Jenkinson had reached out from beyond death and grabbed my wrist.

  Inspector Hemingway was checking Leopold cautiously too but his caution was professional. Winnie, meanwhile, was prowling around the room, looking at everything but touching nothing.

  “Is he really dead?” I asked. I was a little hoarse.

  “You haven’t forgotten IJ, have you?” Hemingway said. “Well, we’ll have a more extensive examination very soon but as far as I can tell—yes, he’s dead.”

  “So was IJ,” I said, not taking my eyes off Leopold.

  Hemingway straightened up and his glance swept across the room.

  “Anything, sergeant?” he asked Winnie.

  “There’s a message in the typewriter,” she said.

  The inspector and I read it.

  I can’t go on. I must end it. I didn’t plan it this way. It started with a dream and it would have worked—it would have been the most powerful organisation on the British food scene.

  I had promises of financing but I needed seed capital. François had said that he would give me first option on buying Le Trouquet d’Or but he loved the business too much to give it up.

  I did all those things to get him discredited so that he would sell out to me. Then Jenkinson started probing the food business and caught on to me.

  I cultured the botulin. I decided that making guests ill at the Circle dinner would be the last straw. IJ came early, told me what he had planned for his programme.

  I panicked, put the extra botulin in his drink.

  Now I’ve put it in mine.

  We read it again. Near the typewriter was a glass, empty but used. The inspector sniffed it cautiously and looked inquiringly at Winnie. She nodded.

  “The botulin has little odour but I think it was in there with the Scotch.”

  The two of them continued to prowl through the room. I tried to do the same thing but I didn’t know what I was looking for.

  There was a knock at the door and the young constable admitted two men in plain-clothes who were evidently known to Inspector Hemingway. While they were talking, there was another knock and a few minutes later another.

  I tried to count but they were all moving round too much. I did establish that there were three ambulance attendants, two technicians from the Mobile Crime Squad, a woman from the Photo Unit, a man and a woman from Forensic, a poisons specialist, an officer from the Metropolitan Police, one from the Records Department and two more constables. The dazzle of electronic flashes, the interchanges of unintelligibly technical conversation and the scurrying to and fro were making me dizzy.

  I sought out the inspector.

  “You’ve probably got more experts coming,” I said. “If I leave, it will make a little more room for them.”

  He nodded. “You can go. Be in my office at two o’clock this afternoon. We’ll run through the whole scene to date.”

  I waved to Winnie and battled through the crowd.

  In the Middle Ages, students took lemon balm to help them in exams. Ergot, a fungus growing on rye, is the basis of a new miracle drug that improves intelligence and learning ability. Lecithin and choline have similar effects and rosemary has recommended by many including Shakespeare for improving the memory.

  I could have used all of them when I prepared breakfast the next morning but instead I made some Mexican eggs. The green peppers and the chilli powder stimulated my taste buds but I didn’t notice any sharpening of my mental faculties. I was still baffled.

  Baffled and disappointed. Larry Leopold of all people! He had certainly seemed a dynamic and ambitious individual but I wouldn’t have thought he would stoop to the dirty tricks with which he had tried to damage the reputation of Le Trouquet d’Or.

  Ivor Jenkinson had certainly lived up to his reputation as master investigator but his professional skills had then proved to be the death of him.

  The questions remaining were—what had been happening at Raymond’s and who was the other person? I still placed a lot of store in IJ’s dying remark that “The two of them are in it together”. My money was still on Roger St Leger.

  I went to the office but couldn’t concentrate. Sage was supposed to help that. One of these days, I would have to look into this subject in depth.

  I went to Bookery Cooks where Michael and Molly were agog to hear the story so far.

  “So it’s over,” said Molly. “What a relief for you.”

  “Scotland Yard will soon find the accomplice—if there was one,” Michael said.

  “If the events that happened at Raymond’s were deliberate,” I said, “then there was one.”

  Michael looked thoughtful. “Even the best restaurants have lapses—”

  “True,” I agreed. “But there was the statement by IJ that two of them were in it.”

  “IJ was under the influence of a powerful toxin,” said Michael. “Why did anything he said have to make sense?”

  I had to agree that sounded reasonable.

  “And,” Michael went on, “if there was another involved, it seems to me more likely that it’s someone outside the restaurant business.”

  “That leaves several choices,” put in Molly. “The book business, the frozen food business, the market business, the banking business and the television business.”

  “A busy lot of businesses,” commented Michael.

  “Well, thanks for the ideas,” I said. I sniffed. “That smells good? What is it?”

  “Very well, Mr Gourmet Detective,” said Molly. “What does it smell like?”

  I sniffed
again. The aromas coming from the kitchen were not at all strong so I presumed that Marita and Dorothy were cooking dishes traditionally more delicately flavoured.

  I could just detect soya sauce and certainly there was a smell of frying scallions and vinegar.

  “I’ll guess at Japanese or Korean,” I said.

  Dorothy heard me and nodded and her pony-tail bounced up and down.

  “It’s Japanese today. A lot of dishes are the same though.”

  There was Sashimi—cooked so as to convert even the most sceptical eater of uncooked fish; Nori Maki, rice rolls in seaweed; Kushi Dango, meatballs in soya sauce and ginger; tender strips of Teriyaki chicken; and specially tasty sardines, marinated and barbecued.

  I sampled all and complimented Dorothy and Marita. I declined sake so they poured me some Campo de Borja, a recent DO wine from Aragon and an excellent and inexpensive white deserving wider distribution.

  The sardines were so good that I had two more. Molly was on the phone arguing with a transport company and Michael was trying to find a book on the herbal value of garlic that a professor from the University of Michigan wanted. I waved goodbye to both of them and walked up Kensington Park Road towards Notting Hill Gate tube station and my rendezvous at Scotland Yard.

  Inspector Hemingway closed the file he was studying. He looked as dapper and competent as ever. His small moustache was trimmed to the last hair and his eyes penetrated me like sharpened skewers. He leaned back in his chair.

  Winnie had brought me in from the lobby but we had exchanged only pleasantries on the way. She sat now in the same seat as before, demure in a way that contrasted delightfully with her severe uniform.

  “You know,” Hemingway said, “you’re beginning to resemble the albatross at the feast.”

  “Daniel Webster, the University of Oxford and the Smithsonian Library would all dispute the existence of such a metaphor,” I told him. I felt more comfortable in his presence now. Well, somewhat more comfortable anyway. “Nevertheless,” I said, “I can sympathise with your view.”

  Hemingway nodded. “I’m glad. You understand then that I see you in the form of a sort of lightning-conductor, attracting bizarre events though not responsible for them.”