by J. A. Lang
The local pensioners were out in force.
It seemed there was nothing like a bit of murder to get the nearby villages’ older population out into the fresh air. Some of the more enterprising senior sleuths had even brought along magnifying glasses, while the others were relying on their spare pairs of varifocals. Walking sticks and plastic sandwich bags at the ready, the pensioners were busy in the woods, unearthing a variety of squashed cans and long-lost woollen gloves, and the odd piece of loose change. One old lady was diligently scraping some suspicious-looking red paint into a paper bag.
“Might be blood,” whispered her companion, looking around to check no one else had noticed their discovery.
Thankfully, the steep slopes, uneven ground, and lack of tea rooms and toilet facilities meant that the crowd hadn’t wandered too much further than shouting distance from the main road. Chef Maurice and Arthur struck out towards the depths of Farnley Woods, with Hamilton running ahead and Horace bringing up the rear guard.
A truffle-less forty minutes later, either by accident or unconscious design, they found themselves back at The Bear.
“Some people say the smell of truffles resembles the scent of male pigs, if you follow my meaning,” said Arthur, watching Hamilton sniff around the mossy rocks. “Maybe you should have got a female pig instead. Ouch,” he added, as Hamilton head-butted him on the ankle.
“It will take time,” said Chef Maurice, regarding his new colleague indulgently. “But he will prove himself. It is certain.”
There was a flash of neon yellow from between the trees on the far side of the clearing.
“Bonjour!” shouted Chef Maurice, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Is somebody there?”
Arthur, on the other hand, had ducked behind The Bear.
In the distance, there was the faint sound of snapping twigs, then silence.
“’Allo?” No answer. Chef Maurice picked up a large branch. “Stay here, mon ami, and guard Hamilton. Come, Horace.”
Horace looked up at him and decided he didn’t get enough dog biscuits for this. He lay down in the leaves and yawned theatrically.
Branch raised, Chef Maurice stepped quietly into the thick woods.
A strip of bright yellow peeked through some bushes up ahead.
“I can see you,” he shouted. “Come out!”
“Dammit,” a female voice whispered. “Alistair, I told you not to wear that thing up here.”
PC Lucy stepped out from behind a nearby tree, a smile of pleasant surprise plastered across her face.
“Mr Manchot, what a . . . pleasant surprise. Are you walking Hamilton again?”
PC Alistair crawled his way out of a bush. He was wearing a large high-visibility jacket and a sheepish look.
Chef Maurice looked past their shoulders with interest. A small flat area of trees had been cordoned off. Squirrels darted back and forth, acorns in paws, stopping here and there to dig frenetically. Horace would have had a field day.
“Ah, so you have discovered the location of Monsieur Ollie’s shooting?”
PC Lucy narrowed her eyes. “Please tell me that’s just a guess.”
Chef Maurice pointed at the clear plastic bag in PC Alistair’s hands, which contained a blood-and-mud-splattered grey cap, the type Ollie always used to wear. Too late, the young man tried to hide it behind his back.
“Honestly, Alistair!”
“Sorry, miss.”
“Good morning, officers,” said Arthur, struggling through the undergrowth, dragging Horace on his lead. “I thought I heard your voices. Sorry for the delay. I was just, um, tying a shoelace. Found anything interesting?”
“We have found the location where Monsieur Ollie was shot,” said Chef Maurice, beaming. PC Lucy rolled her eyes.
“Ah, capital work. So you were right, old chap. He was dragged into that gully. But the question is why?”
PC Alistair opened his mouth, then clamped it shut again, with a sideways look at PC Lucy.
“You can tell them,” she said wearily. “It’s all speculation at this point anyway.”
“We reckon we’re too near the road here, sir.”
“Road?”
“The A323 runs just along up there.” Alistair pointed behind him. “You can’t see it but you can hear the lorries go by if you listen. We reckon whoever shot Ollie was worried someone might have heard and come to investigate. And Crinklewood Lodge is only half a mile over that way, and Laithwaites Manor backs onto the woods not far up there.”
Chef Maurice perked up at the mention of Laithwaites Manor. “Have you spoken to those who live there yet? If not, I could perhaps—”
“Enquiries are proceeding, Mr Manchot.”
“Please, you must call me Maurice.”
“As you wish. Now if you gentlemen will excuse us . . . ”
PC Lucy and Alistair continued combing the ground. Chef Maurice and Arthur stood and watched for a while, but no further discoveries seemed forthcoming.
“Do you think the killer meant for the body to be found?” said Arthur, as they meandered back down the sloping woods, taking a different path to their ascent in the hope of covering more potential truffle ground.
“It is possible. But perhaps Monsieur Ollie was only to be found after a time. Consider, it is likely he was shot on the Saturday, when Madame Eldridge saw him the last time. But the body was hidden, perhaps in hope that the rain would wash away some clues.”
“Then what about the break-in on Monday?”
“Ah. Now that confuses me. Why does the murderer, if it is he, wait until Monday evening to break in to steal the map? What if Monsieur Ollie had been found before?”
“Tricky one. Maybe the murderer didn’t twig about the map until later?”
“That assumes, mon ami, a particularly unintelligent murderer.”
“Not every criminal can be an evil mastermind.”
“That is true,” said Chef Maurice, nodding. “Still, this map, it is a puzzle. Why did he not steal the map on the Friday before, at the first break-in?”
Arthur rubbed his forehead. “Maybe it wasn’t the same person, then.”
Chef Maurice gave him a condescending look. “Two burglaries in the one week? That is most unlikely.”
They arrived back at the car. Truffles found: nil. Dead bodies: likewise. The pensioners had decamped to their cars for mid-morning packed lunches and, from the general level of chatter, they hadn’t fared much better in their search.
Horace heaved himself into the back seat and keeled over for a long-overdue snooze. Hamilton sat in his basket, head hung, embarrassed to have failed once again in his truffle-hunting duties.
“Do not worry, mon petit,” said Chef Maurice, patting him on the head. He produced a handful of sow nuts, which Hamilton gobbled up. “This afternoon, we will go to look for a map. Then the truffles, they will hide from us no more.”
* * *
Laithwaites Manor occupied the crest of a small grassy hill over on the other side of Farnley Woods. The gravel crunched genteelly as Arthur rolled his Aston Martin up the wide drive. Hamilton, perched on Chef Maurice’s lap, stuck his snout against the window and stared.
“Handsome old pile, isn’t it?” said Arthur.
Chef Maurice regarded the manor, which was built from huge slabs of pale limestone, with tall sash windows and a majestic entrance flanked by columns.
“Cold,” he replied. “The stone buildings, they are too cold.”
“Le Cochon’s a stone cottage, isn’t it?”
“Exactement. I know the cold of stone. Why do you think we serve the twenty-four-hour roast lamb?”
Chef Maurice’s bedroom was above the kitchens and, through trial and error, over the years he had managed to manoeuvre his bed to the spot directly over the ovens.
“Well, that explains a lot. I did always think you had an excessive amount of flambéed items on your winter menu.”
Chef Maurice nodded. Dorothy might complain about the odd burning napki
n incident, but you couldn’t deny that flambéed sauces, pancakes and other desserts added theatre to the dining room, in addition to keeping the heating bill down.
They pulled on the bell pull. After a while, the old oak door swung back to reveal, in place of the creaky old butler Chef Maurice had half-expected, Brenda Laithwaites herself, chicly attired in well-pressed trousers, a cream silk blouse and a soft cardigan thrown over her shoulders.
“Bonjour, Madame Laithwaites. Do you enjoy lemons?” Chef Maurice proffered the tarte au citron that he’d liberated earlier from the restaurant’s pantry.
“Oh, how lovely! And please, do call me Brenda. And Arthur too, how delightful to see you! Do come in.”
Up close, Chef Maurice noticed that Brenda was wearing rather more make-up and perfume than he felt entirely comfortable with. There had also been the slight inflection in her voice on the phone that had him wondering if there was a Mr Laithwaites. Still, he hoped she hadn’t misread his reasons for paying a visit; his intentions were of a strictly cartographical nature.
“What a little darling!” said Brenda, scooping Hamilton up into her arms. So far starved of female attention, he nuzzled her elbows and squeaked contentedly. “Shall we go along to the kitchen? Let’s find this little cutie something to eat.”
“Your phone call was most opportune, madame,” said Chef Maurice as she led them through a gloomy, maroon-carpeted hall. “We were intending to call you just today, in fact.”
Above them, various stuffed animal heads hung from the walls. The collection included the obligatory constipated-looking moose, as well as a cross-eyed tiger and a trio of bears in descending size order.
“My grandfather was quite the big game hunter,” said Brenda, following their gazes. “Though he nearly lost his arm to that chap up there.” She pointed to a shaggy lion on the far wall.
“Do you hunt?” said Arthur, searching for something polite to say about the monstrosities above them. “I hear there are some good pheasant grounds near here.”
Brenda shook her head. “That gene didn’t pass my way, I’m afraid. Can’t stand the noise those big guns make. Frankly, I’d sell off these awful specimens, except they’re one of the few things we have left to remember Grandfather by.”
The manor kitchen was smaller than Chef Maurice had envisaged, given the sprawling size of the building itself. The floor was tiled in squares of alternate black and white, spotlessly mopped, and the appliances, while not new, had clearly been carefully maintained and shone with elbow grease. He nodded approvingly.
They left Hamilton with a bowl of pre-chopped carrots and apples, watched over suspiciously by Missy the poodle, and followed Brenda in the direction of the private library. On the way, they passed several imposing oak doors, which, judging by the dust on the floor and door handles, hadn’t been touched for some time.
The library, in contrast, was a light, high-ceilinged room with an impressive view over the lawns at the back of the house. Leather-bound books from bygone eras, spines worn with age, lined the walls and tall cabinets. In the corner, a smaller bookcase held a few rows of pastel-coloured novels, of the soppy sort that Dorothy pretended not to read during the occasional lull in service. There was also a small collection of cookbooks, though whoever had been purchasing them had stopped doing so sometime during the era of the Black Forest gâteau.
“Magnificent,” said Arthur, roaming the shelves with the dreamy look of a true booklover.
“So kind of you to say,” said Brenda, fussing with a bunch of lilies on the central table. “It’s one of the few rooms I still keep open. Maintaining this old place costs a small fortune, just to keep it from crumbling. Still, we manage. Always have, always will, I’m sure.”
Chef Maurice noticed an electric guitar, an expensive one by the looks of it, on a stand by the window. Next to all the books and the plump leather armchairs, it looked somewhat out of place. He reached over and plucked a string; it rang out dull and faded quickly.
“You are musical, madame?”
Brenda turned around and smiled fondly at the guitar. “It’s Peter’s, my son’s. It’s just him and me now, since Henry passed away five years ago.”
Ah, so no Mr Laithwaites. Chef Maurice inched further out of the perfume radius and endeavoured to look less charming.
“It must be a comfort to have your son so close.”
“When he’s not holed up in his room,” said Brenda with a smile. “He’s off gallivanting with his friends in Spain at the moment. That’s young people for you nowadays, globetrotters by the age of eighteen. He’s seen more of the world than I have.”
Arthur had now migrated over to the tall windows and was peering out at the checkerboard lawn and harmoniously spaced flowerbeds and shrubbery.
“I’m afraid I can’t take credit for all this,” said Brenda, stepping up beside him. “My father was simply mad about gardening. This was all his. I mean, he had help back in those days—I remember one point when we had three full-time garden staff, just to keep things tidy. He just loved to see things grow. He’s the one who planted the apple and plum orchards round the west side of the house too.”
Chef Maurice’s ears pricked up. A free supply of apples and plums was not something to be sneezed at.
Brenda pointed at the tall treetops in the distance, the leaves now just turning golden. “You can just about see Farnley Woods from here.” She paused. “I suppose you heard about the shooting?”
“Yes, we did,” said Arthur quickly, before Chef Maurice could launch into a no-doubt-dramatic retelling. “Tragic, really.”
“The police came round earlier, asking me if I’d heard anything. Not a peep, I told them.” She shook her head. “Horrible business. Though I suppose poaching comes with its own dangers.”
“He was a forager, madame.”
“Poaching, foraging—it’s all the same, isn’t it?”
Chef Maurice and Arthur were too polite to correct her.
“Guns, honestly,” she continued, “they’re such horrible, dangerous things. But enough about that. You came to see me about the maps, didn’t you?”
She walked over to the shelves and pulled down a large leather-bound portfolio. Little puffs of dust rose up as she laid it on the big mahogany table and flipped it open.
“Now, here’s a map of the region from the eighteenth century. See how small Cowton was back in those days? And Farnley Woods was even bigger than it is now.” She turned a few crackly pages. “Here’s the Laithwaites Manor estate back in the 1920s. We owned a lot more land back in those days. See there”—she pointed to some faint lines—“that’s the part of Farnley Woods that used to be part of the estate. My father had to sell it off in the sixties to pay for the upkeep of the rest of this place. Nearly broke his heart.”
“These maps, they are expensive?” asked Chef Maurice, leaning in for a closer look.
“The older ones, maybe,” said Brenda, turning another page. “To the right collector. But I had them valued a few years ago, and it hardly seemed worth the effort to try and sell them. In fact, they told me the more recent ones, the ones from the mid-1900s, they’re just prints. I don’t know where the originals are, or if we even owned them.”
“Still, they’re a fascinating slice of history,” said Arthur, running a finger along the cracked leather.
“I’m glad you like them.” Brenda smiled. “I’ll just go see if the kettle’s boiled. Take your time with these.”
Chef Maurice carefully lifted another page over and frowned. All these maps appeared to be more concerned with land boundaries than botanical detail. Here and there, a squiggly marking suggested that trees might figure somewhere in it all, but there was no suggestion of what varieties, or the underlying soil types, let alone any mention of their truffle-producing potential.
“Hmmm, tough luck, old chap,” said Arthur, who’d come to the same conclusion. “Maybe we’ve been barking up the wrong tree. There’s no proof Ollie found those truffles near here. He
might have brought them in from Italy, trying to pass them off as English truffles, for some kind of rarity value. You know what he was like.”
Chef Maurice tapped his nose. “This, it does not lie. And also, why did Monsieur Ollie acquire a dog, if the truffles are not from here? I do not remember a dog last year.”
“Maybe he got lonely.”
“Bah! Then he should get a wife, not a dog.”
“I think you’ll find that wives,” said Arthur, with utter certainty, “are much more trouble than dogs.”
Chef Maurice shrugged. He’d never been particularly inclined to acquire either. Cheffing was a more-than-full-time commitment.
He turned another yellowed page.
“Wait, go back!” said Arthur. He flipped the page over and pointed to the corner of the map, which bore the description: Civil Parish of Farnley and Woodlands Thereof, 1957.
“Civil Parish of Farnley, 1957,” said Arthur, voice lowered. “Remember that scrap from the corkboard? I’ll bet you this is the same map Ollie had.”
“But it is merely a print,” said Chef Maurice. He ran a thick finger over the map. It was much the same as the one from the 1920s, showing the minuscule little squares of the Farnley cottages, as well as the main woodlands and the carefully demarcated estates of Laithwaites Manor and nearby Crinklewood Lodge. “Madame Brenda said it had no value. And it shows us nothing of interest.”
“But remember what Mrs Eldridge said? Ollie had been drawing on the map. Maybe he had worked out—”
Whatever Ollie might have done was cut off by a piercing scream from the other end of the house and the sound of crashing crockery. It wasn’t quite loud enough to curdle the blood, but it definitely set their pulses hammering.
Then another scream—this time higher, longer and squeakier.
It sounded like Hamilton.
Chapter 10
Patrick sat next to the telephone in the empty dining room of Le Cochon Rouge and stared at the card in his hand.
He prided himself on possessing a sound, logical mind. While cooking was a craft, and possibly even an art, it was definitely a science too. An egg didn’t boil because it felt inspired. It was all down to protein molecules and chemical bonds. Easy stuff.
