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

by J. A. Lang

  “Looks like it,” said PC Lucy, notepad out.

  “Hallo, what’s this?” said Arthur, bending over Waffles, who was pawing at something just inside the archway. It was a white handkerchief, now grey with dust.

  “It must be from the murderer!” Chef Maurice grabbed the handkerchief. “Perhaps we can trace the parfum or cologne—” He stuck the cloth to his nose, inhaled deeply, then exploded into a fit of sneezes.

  “Wait!” PC Lucy grabbed the handkerchief before Chef Maurice could blow his nose on a key piece of evidence. Arthur, sighing, proffered his own blue-checked handkerchief to his friend.

  She turned the handkerchief over in her hands. It was made of stiff cotton, of very good quality. In one corner, embroidered in light grey thread, was an initial.

  A curly letter ‘A’.

  Chapter 11

  The next morning, Arthur and Chef Maurice caught the 7.34 a.m. train from Beakley, changing at Oxford, to London Paddington. Arthur found himself a seat wedged in amongst the morning commuters, who drooped over their newspapers like rows of thirsty sunflowers. To his left, a young man in a navy blue suit was dozing with his head against the window; to his right, a middle-aged woman in purple tweed was ferociously consuming the day’s financial pages, throwing the occasional scathing look at the large picnic hamper on Arthur’s lap.

  He tried to avoid her gaze and buried his nose in the recently released autobiography of Keith Savage, often dubbed ‘the angriest chef in Britain’. This was his second book to date, titled Seared, Scarred and Savaged: Tales from the World’s Best, Greatest and Most Awesome Kitchen.

  (The editor who’d tentatively suggested to Savage that the book’s subtitle wasn’t entirely accurate, and possibly open to litigious challenge, was later found hiding on the ledge outside his office window, and had to be coaxed back down under the promise of never having to work with celebrity chefs again. He was also given carte blanche to commission a series of books on cupcakes.)

  “Excusez-moi, excusez-moi, ooops, pardon, madame . . . ”

  Arthur watched Chef Maurice squeeze and elbow his way back down the carriage, accompanied by a series of yelps and discontented muttering.

  “Any luck finding the sandwich trolley?”

  “Non, but I did see Mademoiselle Lucy with one of her collègues. But do not worry, I make sure that they did not see me.”

  Arthur looked up at his friend’s large pork-pie hat (which he liked to wear on days out), giant moustache and big heavy winter coat.

  “We can but hope.”

  “But to be sure we reach Madame Ariane before they do, perhaps we should command a taxi to her hotel?”

  “Not a bad idea.”

  PC Lucy had expressly forbidden them to engage in any amateur investigations of their own. Which, as Chef Maurice had pointed out, meant they’d simply have to get on with their investigating in a more covert manner.

  The lid of the picnic hamper swung up, and a little pink snout poked out.

  The woman on Arthur’s right gave a shriek. “What is that?”

  “He is a micro-pig, madame,” said Chef Maurice, extracting a handful of sow nuts from his pocket and offering them to the snout, which snuffled them up greedily. “His name is Hamilton.”

  “I . . . I refuse to sit here next to someone carrying livestock!” The woman struggled to her feet and pushed her way down the aisle.

  Chef Maurice sat down in the newly vacated seat and made himself comfortable. Hamilton had now fully pushed back the hamper lid, and was staring around the train carriage with great interest.

  “Are you sure we should have brought Hamilton with us?” said Arthur, handing the picnic hamper over to Chef Maurice and jiggling his leaden legs. Hamilton might be a micro-pig, but he had definitely put on weight since Chef Maurice had adopted him a few months ago.

  “They say it is important for animals to have a variety of stimulation,” said Chef Maurice firmly.

  Hamilton, for his part, having ascertained that none of the dozy humans around him were going to give him any more sow nuts, ducked back inside the hamper to carry on with his morning nap.

  In her suite at The Belvedere, Piccadilly, Ariane Lafoute greeted them with perfumed kisses and led them over to the low seats by the windows. She did not seem overly concerned by the presence of her tiny third guest, and even poured some Evian into a bowl for Hamilton to lap up.

  It was a crisp December day outside, and from their vantage point, they could look down and watch the tiny muffled-up passers-by hurry along Lower Regent Street.

  “A coffee?” said Ariane, waving her hand at the silver coffee pot. She was wearing a tight black turtleneck, a discreet string of pearls, and well-cut grey tailored trousers.

  “With three sugars, merci. You have recovered, madame, from the terrible events of the last Saturday?”

  Ariane gave a little shrug, as if to suggest that the murder of one’s host happened all the time back where she came from. “Bertie is most upset, of course. He and Sir William were very close. But for me, I cannot say I knew him well.”

  This was a stark change from the trembling young woman they had last encountered a few days before. Ariane appeared to have regained full control of her icy poise, and the tilt of her head discouraged further enquiries into her well-being.

  The coffee table was strewn with papers, including the architectural plans they had seen in the Lafoutes’ room at Bourne Hall.

  “May I?” said Arthur, indicating the building drawings. Ariane nodded vaguely, then resumed staring out of the window, chin rested on delicate wrist.

  Chef Maurice wiggled a detailed sketch of a wine label out of the pile. The label read: La Fleur de Lafoute.

  “Ah, you plan, madame, to make a second wine?”

  Ariane gave him a curt nod. “It is time. All the best chateaux make not just one, but two or even three wines. My grand-mère, she has insisted for a long time that all our grapes go into the one wine, Chateau Lafoute. But with modern techniques, our winemaking can now be done with much greater precision. Especially”—she shifted the papers to show a detailed cross-section of the new proposed winery building—“if we can install these smaller fermentation tanks, to allow each parcel of land to ferment and mature separately, we will be allowed more control in the final blending. And by separating our production into two wines, we can achieve even greater quality for our first wine.”

  A change had come over Ariane. There was a sparkle in her eyes and a fiery warmth in her voice that Arthur had not heard before.

  Chef Maurice had noticed it too. “I see you are most passionate about your wines, madame.”

  “If I am not, who will be?” replied Ariane, with some vehemence. “My grand-mère, she is ninety-two. Soon it will come a time that I must lead the chateau.”

  “And your husband?”

  She waved a hand. “Before we were married, he saw it all as a game, a ‘hobby’,” she said, deploying the word with distaste. “But now I have made him come to see, it is not play, it is work. Hard work! It is not simply a job. To make good wine, it must consume your life.”

  Arthur flipped over another sheet. It was a colour sketch of rows and rows of gleaming fermentation tanks and a new maturation room with oak barrels, piled three high, stretching as far as the artist’s eye could see.

  “Very attractive. I hope the investor meetings are going well?” said Arthur, remembering what Bertie had said about the couple’s purpose for being in London.

  Ariane’s lip curled. “These business people, they have no vision. They want to see a return in two years, five years. But a great wine may not show its beauty for decades. The replanting of vines can take ten, twenty years to be truly ready. They are too impatient. They have no understanding.”

  “And Sir William?” asked Chef Maurice. “Did he offer his support?”

  Ariane looked up sharply. “For a long time, I have asked my husband to speak with him. Sir William has been an admirer of the chateau for year
s. I was sure that he would have . . . ” Her voice trailed off. “But my husband, he would act strange, very proud in this matter. He refused to even approach him with the subject.”

  Arthur thought about the note they’d found in Sir William’s pocket. Perhaps it was at this point that Ariane had decided to explore other modes of persuasion.

  “But it does not matter now,” finished Ariane with another wave of her hand.

  “You have more meetings?” said Chef Maurice.

  Ariane paused, then nodded, slightly uncertain. “There are a few . . . that I have hopes for.”

  There was the distant ping of the lift in the hallway, and familiar voices could be heard approaching the suite’s double doors.

  “—seen a hotel like this, miss. Look, they even have sweets left out on the little tables, that’s fancy—”

  “Alistair, this is a police investigation, not Disneyland.”

  “Yes, miss. But do you think we might have time to see Les Misérables afterwards—”

  “Shhh! Now if you could try acting like a police officer, and not like a kid on a school trip . . . ”

  There was an official-sounding rat-a-tat-tat on the door.

  Ariane raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow at Arthur. “Your police, they are like the hunting dogs. They sniff and sniff,” she said, uncrossing her legs and drifting over to the door.

  “Mrs Lafoute? I’m PC Gavistone, we spoke yesterday afternoon on the phone? I hope I’m not disturbing you—” PC Lucy stopped as she noticed Arthur and Chef Maurice sitting there with coffee cups in their hands.

  “No, not at all, please join us,” said Ariane.

  PC Lucy took a seat at the end of the sofa, while PC Alistair sat down on the footrest, gazing around the suite with wide-eyed amazement. Hamilton, knowing a soft touch when he saw one, head-butted the freckled young man on the ankle and gave a pointed look at the pile of apples in the carved fruit bowl.

  “I won’t keep you long, Mrs Lafoute, seeing as you have guests,” said PC Lucy, glaring at Chef Maurice and Arthur.

  “By all means, please,” said Ariane. “Your work is important, and the sooner you have discovered who could have committed such a grave crime . . . ”

  There was a wet crunch-crunch-crunch sound from under the table. PC Alistair looked up guiltily, an apple core in his hand.

  “This may sound odd,” said PC Lucy, with another glare at Chef Maurice, “but what do you know about a concealed passageway between the wine cellar and the upper floor of Bourne Hall?”

  “Passageway?” Ariane looked confused. “I had not heard of such a thing.”

  “The entrance was hidden behind the bookcase, the one on the landing between Sir William’s bedroom and the guest rooms.”

  “The English, they are so strange,” said Ariane, with a little sigh. “To have a cellar and install such security, then to have a secret entrance hidden behind some books? It is madness.”

  “So you didn’t know anything about it?”

  “Not at all. But why do you a—” Ariane stopped. The implication of a secret way down to the cellars, the scene of the horrific crime, had clearly just sunk in. She looked, thought Arthur, suddenly scared.

  “You think that is how . . . ” she started.

  PC Lucy pulled a clear plastic bag out of her jacket. It was the white handkerchief from yesterday. “Do you recognise this?” she said, placing the bag on the table. “It was found in the entrance to the passageway.”

  Ariane stared at it, mesmerised, her hand stretched out to pick it up. For a moment, an odd expression—confusion? anger?—flitted across her face, then she nodded slowly.

  “I cannot be sure, but this appears to belong to my husband,” she said.

  “But why then is there the ‘A’?” said Chef Maurice, before PC Lucy could jump in.

  “For Albert, of course. You did not think his parents would have named him Bertie?” Ariane sniffed. “I much prefer to call him Albert, too. Bertie, it is a silly name.”

  PC Lucy carefully picked up the bag. “Is Mr Lafoute also here at the hotel?”

  “No. He left early this morning. He is probably at his club, The Hansdowne. On Graham Street.”

  PC Lucy made a note of this. “Thank you for your time, Mrs Lafoute. We’ll be in touch if there are any more questions. In the meantime, if you have anything you’d like to discuss with us”—such as why your husband’s handkerchief was found near the scene of the crime, was the unspoken message—“do give us a call.”

  After the two police officers had departed, Ariane collapsed back down on the couch. She looked suddenly weary, as if the last five minutes’ conversation had drained a decade from her.

  “Should we give Bertie a call?” said Arthur, determined to play the concerned acquaintance. “Give him a heads-up, so to speak?”

  Ariane shook her head. “They do not pass on messages from outside at his club. And they forbid them to use their phones. I think that is why the men go there,” she added, with a wan smile.

  “Did Monsieur Bertie ever speak of any secret passageways in Bourne Hall?” said Chef Maurice.

  “No, certainly not.”

  “What about that night at Bourne Hall,” said Arthur, “when you were upstairs? Did you hear anything unusual? Notice anything out of the ordinary?”

  “Someone slipping from behind a bookcase, you mean?” said Ariane, raising an eyebrow. “No. I remember hearing noises, the banging, from downstairs. I heard someone, I think it must have been Chuck, running past outside. Bertie, he went first to see what the noise was. I stayed a moment, I was . . . tired, then when the noise did not stop, I followed.”

  “Did you see anyone else in the corridor upstairs?”

  “Only Charles. He was just coming from his room. He asked me what was happening, but I said I did not know. So we came downstairs.”

  There was a thump from under the table, and Hamilton stuck his snout out to see if he had caused sufficient disruption to the fruit bowl. Chef Maurice waggled a finger at the little pig.

  “You will spoil your appetite,” he told Hamilton. He looked back up at Ariane. “When you were at Bourne Hall, Sir William wished to speak to you in private, n’est-ce pas? Was that usual?”

  “No. As I said, I hardly knew him.”

  “May I ask what you spoke about?”

  “He asked me many questions about Chateau Lafoute. The history, the changes my great-grandfather made, the stocks we have still of the older vintages, how the chateau operated during the wars. I told him he should speak to my grand-mère, not me.”

  “Any reason he’d have suddenly been so interested in the chateau’s history?” said Arthur, who harboured doubts as to how much of Ariane’s story was true. Despite his limited personal experience of such matters, he was pretty sure that clandestine lovers did not usually meet up merely to discuss the historical details of Bordeaux chateaux.

  Ariane shrugged. “I assumed he wanted to make an introduction of our wines for the night’s tasting. I thought also perhaps Bertie had discussed with him the new winery plans, but he says later he did not.”

  After a few more polite enquiries regarding the future winery, Arthur and Chef Maurice took their leave—though first they had to locate Hamilton, who had managed to trap himself in the bedroom wardrobe.

  “A most clever cochon,” said Chef Maurice, patting the hamper’s lid as they stood in the lift.

  Arthur raised a questioning eyebrow.

  “You did not see, mon ami? While we were in the bedroom, I had the chance to look at Monsieur Bertie’s clothing. Madame Ariane was not lying. I found many such handkerchiefs as the one that we found at Bourne Hall.”

  “She didn’t look too happy telling that to the police. I suppose she knew they’d find out anyway, best to come clean at the start. It’s not exactly binding evidence, after all.”

  “But it shows that Monsieur Bertie is definitely in knowledge of the passageway.”

  “So it seems. A cool customer
that one, I mean, Ariane. Hard to believe that she and Sir William were . . . you know . . . ”

  Chef Maurice looked at his friend curiously. “You still believe there was une liaison between them?”

  “You don’t?”

  Chef Maurice shook his head. “Madame Ariane, she is like the wines her family makes in Bordeaux. They are stern, powerful, strong beneath the silk, as you say. But Sir William, his preferred wines were the wines of Bourgogne. Fragile, subtle, wines of quiet beauty.”

  “So you’re telling me that just because Sir William preferred his Burgundy to his Bordeaux, he couldn’t possibly have been having an affair with Ariane Lafoute?”

  “Exactement!”

  “So how do you explain the note?”

  “Ah.” Chef Maurice rubbed his moustache. “That, I have not yet discovered.”

  The lift pinged, and they exited into the lobby. “So where do we go next? Fancy tackling our Mr Lafoute?”

  Chef Maurice nodded. “But first we must stop at Mulling Street. I have something important I must collect.”

  The door of Mingleberry & Judd, fine wine merchants of Mayfair, gave a polite tinkle, and the silence of hundreds of bottles of wine maturing slowly on the shelves was broken by the sound of two voices raised in argument.

  “—get over to The Hansdowne as quickly as possible, else Lucy and Alistair will have already cornered Bertie—”

  “Bah, you must have patience, mon ami. I tell you there is no need for rush, this will be just a small moment—”

  “You, in a wine shop? This I’d like to see.”

  “Then you will. Ah, bonjour, Monsieur Mingleberry.”

  Mr Mingleberry adjusted his tie and hurried across the room to welcome his visitors.

  “Mr Manchot, how good to see you. I assume you’re here to check upon your Christmas order? We were just about to start the packing and labelling today. Always good to miss the postal rush. I’m rather taken with the wrapping paper Mr Judd ordered this year. Midnight blue, thick weave, it’ll look quite fetching under the tree.”