by J. A. Lang
“Recall the first conversation we had with Monsieur Bertie. He claims to be a bad sleeper, yet he comes to London and he sleeps like un bébé? This cannot be! Those who cannot sleep at home, it is not likely that they sleep well in a new bed. And then we have the many sleeping medicines that Madame Ariane carries with her. Monsieur Bertie’s deep sleep, and the fact that Monsieur Paloni stays in the same hotel, this cannot be a coincidence.”
“So she was drugging her husband so she could sneak off to meet Paloni? Crafty,” said Arthur. “So assuming the note we found was meant for him, how on earth did it turn up in Sir William’s pocket? We can assume Ariane left it somewhere for Paloni to find, but I really can’t see Sir William being the type to go snooping around his guests’ bedrooms.”
“Non, he was not, but his belle-sœur, Lady Margaret, she is exactly the type to feel that she has the right to look into the rooms of the other guests. Especially the ones she does not like. Remember, she spoke of Monsieur Paloni being a man to wear ‘red silk underwear’. She is not the kind of woman to have the imagination for such detail, and yet, she makes such a claim. How? We know already from looking in his luggage that this is what he wears. So it was Lady Margaret, not Sir William, who looked around Monsieur Paloni’s room and found the note. She then insisted to speak with Sir William, most likely to show him the note and complain of the type of guests he invites into his house.”
Arthur leaned back in his chair, whistling. “Not bad, not bad at all. But where does this leave us with the identity of the murderer? If we believe Paloni, then it can’t have been him. He wouldn’t have had time before Ariane went up to see him to sneak down to the cellar. And according to him, it can’t be her either. Unless they were in it together . . . ”
“A possibility, oui.”
“They could have arranged the whole thing. The argument, the stomping upstairs. And then, icing on the cake, poor old Bertie is wheeled in to provide a suitable alibi to protect his now-penitent wife, not realising that there’s a chance she’s been up to something much more sinister . . . ”
“Very good, mon ami. But what if Monsieur Paloni, he tells us the truth? That he and Madame Ariane were in his room all the time?”
Arthur considered this. It seemed a much less dramatic option. Unless . . .
“What if Bertie’s not the wet dishcloth everyone thinks he is? He goes upstairs, finds Ariane gone, and decides to seize the opportunity. There’s every chance he was lying about having conveniently ‘forgotten’ about the secret passageway.”
“Oui, if it is Monsieur Paloni who speaks the truth, then things do not look very good for Monsieur Bertie,” said Chef Maurice gravely. “But non, it cannot be . . . ”
“You still think he’s innocent? Because it’s all piling up, motive, opportunity . . . Lucy’s going to have him down in the cells pretty soon when she hears about all this.”
“Then, we must think faster. There is much still about this case that disturbs me. And also, I have a feeling . . . a feeling that we run out of time . . . ”
Chapter 14
The next few days in Beakley proceeded at their usual leisurely pace.
General consensus amongst the villagers, as reported by Dorothy, was that Gilles the butler was undoubtedly the culprit, probably a covert recruit from an international ring of wine thieves, and had now gone into hiding across the Mexico border.
Patrick pointed out that the Mexico border would take a rather long time to reach from the Cotswolds, and Gilles would have been better off nipping onto a ferry across to France, but his views were pooh-poohed in favour of a more cinematic outcome.
Old Mrs Eldridge, just returned from a seaside stay in Brighton, claimed to have spotted the fugitive butler working incognito as a waiter in the bed and breakfast she was staying at, but given that last month she had telephoned the police at the sighting of a UFO hanging over the village green—which had turned out to be a particularly oddly shaped gibbous moon, half-hidden behind the clouds—this theory was not given much weight.
PC Lucy had made a show of taking down Chef Maurice and Arthur’s latest discoveries, with a promise to ‘look into matters in due course’, but no further developments seemed forthcoming from the Cowton and Beakley Constabulary.
Come Friday, though, the village was shaken out of its beds by the news that the young Lafoutes had temporarily moved themselves into Bourne Hall, supposedly to sort out the estate’s legal affairs before returning to Bordeaux.
“Despicable!” was Dorothy’s pronouncement on the situation. “Sir William’s hardly cold in his grave and they’re probably selling off the furniture and putting in a swimming pool.”
Chef Maurice glanced out of the window. The trees were bare and there was a light coating of frost on the hedgerows. Swimming pools, he was sure, could not possibly be on anyone’s mind in the current climate.
Still, the return of the Lafoutes now gave him a reason to go back up to Bourne Hall for another look around, especially in the wake of Gilles’s disappearance.
It was clear that there were still many missing pieces in this puzzle, and it was high time to start searching under the metaphorical sofa.
Or something like that, anyway.
“Still refusing to believe good old Bertie is involved in all this?” said Arthur, as they pulled up the long driveway. The snow had melted down to a thin mottled blanket, and tufts of green were poking out here and there in the weak winter sunlight.
“There is no guilt without proof,” replied Chef Maurice, staring out over the empty lawn.
“And what about Gilles? No cunning explanation about his disappearance yet?”
“Non, but it is possible that he too has become a victim of the murderer.”
Arthur rolled his eyes. “So, I take it you’ll just be spouting more ominous nonsense in the meantime, until you figure it all out?”
Chef Maurice patted his friend’s arm. “It warms me, mon ami, that you too are confident that I will, as you say, figure this out.”
Arthur sighed, and wondered what life would feel like with an ego as large and impervious as the one owned by Chef Maurice.
There was a shiny Mercedes parked beside the front door, presumably hired by the newly minted Lafoutes.
The bell was eventually answered by a highly flustered Mrs Bates, her hair flying out of its bun and a notepad in one hand.
“Mister Maurice, just who I needed to see! And Mister Arthur too, do come along in.” She grabbed them each by an elbow and hurried them down the hallway towards the kitchen. “Dinner for ten, and only a day’s notice! Sir William, he always made sure to give me at least five days’ warning, four at the very least. It’s not like I can conjure up a multi-course dinner out of an empty larder, what with no one having been here the last week, and not knowing what would happen to this place. I wasn’t going to go wasting money filling the pantry for no one to eat it up.”
“They’re having visitors already?” said Arthur.
“Not just visitors. A whole wine-tasting dinner! Inviting up all those fancy critics from London. Such bad taste, like dancing on the poor master’s grave, I said. But Mister Bertie was insistent. Though I’d bet he’s been put up to it by that French missus of his. She was talking about how it would raise the status of the chateau, having all those la-di-da wine snobs come up here to taste their wines. And so I said, what do you want to serve, and you know what she said? I should decide! The master, at least he always had one or two ideas, and of course I knew his tastes like they were my own. But for these two . . . ”
The kitchen table was a mess of cookbooks, handwritten recipes, and menu cards from past dinners thrown by Sir William over the years.
“And what with poor Gilles gone and disappeared like that, heaven knows what terrible things have happened to him . . . ”
“So you don’t share the opinion that Gilles was involved in some way with it all?”
Mrs Bates looked ready to ding Arthur across the head with a copp
er pan. “How dare you! Gilles has been nothing but devoted to Sir William, from the moment he set foot in the Hall. Always keeping an eye out for him. And Sir William, he trusted him more than any other soul in the world.”
“My apologies. So was it a shock to you, when you heard Sir William had left everything to young Bertie?” asked Arthur, keen to steer the conversation away from the contentious butler issue.
“Could have knocked me down with a goose feather, you could’ve!”
“Ah, so it was expected that Sir William would leave everything to Lady Margaret, or perhaps her son?” asked Chef Maurice.
Mrs Bates cocked her head. “That boy of hers, Timothy? Well, he isn’t a real Burton-Trent, I expect you know that, and in my opinion, Sir William didn’t think much of him and the crowd he ran with. Was quite pleased when he went off to America, I think. Not a gentleman, in my mind.
“No, we always thought, Gilles and I, that it’d all go to the charities. The master was always giving donations to this one and that. Of course, there’s annuities for me and Gilles, that was only right. In fact, Mrs Lafoute, shows she’s not all that bad”—she frowned, as if at pains to admit this fact—“wanted to increase my pension, and get me to stay on here a few more years. But what would I do, just me in a big house like this? It’s not like they’ll be here much, what with their fancy French chateau and all.”
Chef Maurice nodded while he leafed through the various menus strewn across the table. “Did Monsieur Bertie say which wines he wished to serve?”
“Mrs Lafoute, more like it,” said Mrs Bates, pulling a sheet out of the pile. “They’re starting with two whites, then it’s all the way up through the reds. And all Chateau Lafoute, of course.”
She handed Chef Maurice the piece of paper, which bore the now familiar curly hand of Ariane.
1848 (“Mon dieu!” exclaimed Chef Maurice.)
1901
1913
1928, in magnum
1945
1961, in magnum (“Oui, a very good year.”)
1966, in magnum
1985
. . . and so on, fifteen wines in all.
“Like drinking a piece of history,” said Arthur, with a certain amount of envy.
Chef Maurice stared at the list with an intense look of concentration, his lips moving. After a while, his hand shot out.
“Pen!”
He spent a while scribbling on the back of a menu, with the occasional emphatic crossing out, and mutterings on the line of “non, too much lamb, perhaps a fish with the strong flesh, oui, that will go.” Eventually, he handed the finished product over for Mrs Bates’ inspection.
She ran an appraising eye down the list. “Very nice,” she said, nodding. “These three dishes, I can pre-prep them, so no problems there, good mix of flavours but nothing too overpowering. The timing’s good as well, no fighting for oven space. Still,” she added, drawing out the word as she gazed around the kitchen, “it’s a mighty big task to get it all done tomorrow by myself, by the time I get the deliveries in and all . . . ”
Chef Maurice, always highly attuned to a cook’s way of thinking, took the hint. He was faultlessly generous with his time when it came to those in need.
He was, also, faultlessly generous with everyone else’s.
“I will send to you my commis chef,” he said grandiosely. “En tout cas, Le Cochon Rouge is closed tomorrow. My sous-chef has asked for the evening off,” he added with a dark look.
“I see you didn’t volunteer your own services,” said Arthur, as they headed down into the wine cellar in search of the new master of the house.
“I would, mon ami, but I expect to be occupied tomorrow evening.”
“Really? With what?”
“The dinner, of course. It is most important that I attend. An idea comes to me . . . I think we become nearer to the solving of the crime. But there are things I must make certain first.”
“Like whether or not you’re invited?”
“Mon ami, one does not wait to be invited. I will arrange my own invitation.”
“Of course,” muttered Arthur. “So you think you’re on to something?”
“Ah, perhaps I speak too soon,” said Chef Maurice, rubbing his moustache. “But when I have made an arrangement of my ideas, I may require your help.”
Arthur groaned. “I had a feeling you might say that.” He turned his thoughts to more solvable mysteries. “It’s not like Patrick to ask for a day off. I wonder what he’s up to tomorrow?”
Patrick sat at the little desk in the cramped office of Le Cochon Rouge, pen and squared paper at the ready.
He’d been back and forth with himself about this part of the plan, but so far a better alternative had yet to present itself.
Still, he was loath to commit pen to paper and part with a recipe he’d been working on for several years. It had won him first place in the Regional Young Chef of the Year when he was first starting out, and he occasionally managed to persuade Chef Maurice to put it onto the specials menu, to unanimous rave reviews from their regular diners.
Many of his fellow chefs had begged for this recipe, made attempts to borrow his technique, or, in one particular case, resorted to a bungled attempt at theft—only to find that Patrick had never written it down—but he’d never had a reason to give in to their pleas.
Until now.
Because if he was going to win over the heart of a particular blonde policewoman, he needed all the help he could get.
With a heartfelt sigh, he picked up the pen.
Some ten minutes later, deed done, he folded the paper and slipped it into an envelope. Then he picked up his phone and typed:
It’s all yours. See you tomorrow.
They found Bertie at the back of the wine cellar, with a spiral-bound notebook, a pen and a good quantity of dust in his hair.
“Oh, hallo,” he said, scrambling up from his knees. “Good of you to visit, didn’t realise news would get round so soon.”
Chef Maurice pointed to the notebook. “You make an inventory?”
“Afraid so. They tell me Gilles stole the cellar book too, though I can’t fathom why. I can’t say it was a thrilling read, but at least it was all in there. Location of each bottle, place it was bought, price paid, all that stuff. It’s going to be all guesswork now.”
“I’m sure the police are bound to catch him at some point,” said Arthur. “Damn hard to disappear in this day and age, what with all this CCTV and border control and whatnot.”
“I suppose so,” said Bertie, not sounding overly concerned. After all, thought Arthur, what was a few stolen bottles compared to the millions now awaiting the young man?
On an upturned barrel in the corner, various exalted vintages of Chateau Lafoute were standing to attention, ready for their debut at tomorrow’s big dinner.
“We took them out first thing when we arrived yesterday,” said Bertie, “but Charles says he’s not sure the sediment will have time to settle. It really should have been done days ago, but of course this was all rather last minute.”
“Charles? Charles Resnick?” said Arthur. Trust that man to waste no time insinuating himself into the company of the new master of Bourne Hall.
“Oh yes, this was all his doing,” said Bertie, with cheery enthusiasm. “Well, him and Ariane. There was meant to be a big gala dinner in London tomorrow, hosted by the Wine Bureau of Burgundy. But there was an awful fire at the venue, and they had to postpone to next week. So what with all these big-name wine writers in town, Ariane had the idea—or was it Charles, I don’t quite remember—anyway, we thought, why don’t we have them all up to the Hall for the biggest ever tasting of Chateau Lafoute?”
“Wine, it is meant to be drunk,” said Chef Maurice, nodding.
“Right. That’s just what Charles said.”
No doubt he would, thought Arthur, if it meant he got to be one of those doing the drinking.
“Ariane’s very excited. She says she’s never even taste
d some of these vintages before.”
Arthur glanced towards the magnum collection in the glass display case. There were now several more empty plinths, and on the barrel table, he saw that the ’28, ’61 and ’66 magnums of Chateau Lafoute had joined their smaller brethren in anticipation of tomorrow’s unveiling.
Chef Maurice was now pottering around the cellar, looking high and low at the bottles all around him. “The stickers!” he said, waving a hand at the shelves. “The yellow stickers. They are all gone!”
“Stickers?” said Bertie.
“There were many bottles marked with the little yellow stickers,” said Chef Maurice, his nose now pressed up against the glass of the magnum collection. “Perhaps one in twenty, or one in ten, even, had the mark. See there”—he pointed to a sticky smudge on the edge of a ’29 Cheval Blanc—“you can see it has been removed.”
“Maybe Gilles took them off, before he left,” suggested Arthur.
“Oui, perhaps. But why?”
“Maybe he was marking out the ones worth taking?”
“Non, non, the stickers, they were here on the night of Sir William’s murder. It is impossible that Sir William would not notice. So they must have been put on the bottles with his consent. Perhaps even put by him. Which— Aha! Yes, this fits very well . . . ”
Chef Maurice continued pacing up and down, a glazed look across his face, as if concentrating on some inner vista of thought.
Arthur shrugged, and turned to Bertie. “So, master of Bourne Hall, eh? Must have come as quite a shock. Though, you must have had some inkling . . . ?”
Arthur carefully watched Bertie’s face, but the young man showed every sign of flustered embarrassment. “Oh no, I didn’t have the slightest idea. I mean, looking back, perhaps I should have—I mean, Uncle William did used to say the odd thing or two, usually after he’d been at the Port, about how I was like the son he’d never had, that kind of thing. But I never thought . . . He was awfully keen on the idea of us young people making our own way in the world, not waiting for handouts and all that. And he had family still, at least, his brother’s family . . . ”
