Chef Maurice and the Bunny-Boiler Bake Off (Chef Maurice Cotswold Mysteries Book 3) Read online

  Chef Maurice and the Bunny-Boiler Bake Off

  A Chef Maurice Mystery

  J.A. Lang

  About the Book

  They say all’s Fayre in love and baking . . .

  Spring has sprung, the bunting is up, and for the residents of the little Cotswold village of Beakley, this can only mean one thing: it’s time for the Beakley Spring Fayre.

  Drawing the crowds this year is stiletto-strutting celebrity chef Miranda Matthews, a woman for whom making enemies is a piece of (shop-bought) cake. And one of them is lurking around the Fayre, ready to make sure Miranda hangs up her apron—for good.

  Faced with a murderer with a possible penchant for top(ping) chefs, Chef Maurice must sift through the clues and weigh up the suspects—not to mention contending with a sous-chef with mummy issues, a food critic on a diet, and a bulletproof pudding—as he finds himself on the trail of a killer who’s not cooking by the rules . . .

  Note to the Reader

  British English is used throughout this book, which is set and published in the UK. Please note that some spelling, grammar and word usage will vary from US English.

  Chapter 1

  The dead body lay stretched out across the table, next to a tub of coarse sea salt and cracked black pepper and a large bowl of freshly chopped sage and thyme.

  Chef Maurice, proprietor and head chef of Le Cochon Rouge, the only restaurant in the little village of Beakley, stood with his arms folded, staring down critically at the kitchen’s newest visitor.

  “He is not very big. You told them, non, that we required the largest of their cochons for tomorrow?” He shot a questioning glance at Patrick, his sous-chef.

  “Oui, chef. They promised me that this is their largest. And come on, look at it. We’re barely going to be able to get it into the spit roaster. Plus we’ll need to adjust the overnight cooking times for the extra weight. I did some calculations. I reckon we’ll need to start the roast at least an hour and a half earlier now.”

  They stood in silence, contemplating the fine-looking specimen laid out before them: eighty kilos of Gloucestershire Old Spot, purchased from a rare breed pig farmer over near Cirencester.

  “Bof, he will do,” said Chef Maurice grudgingly. He grabbed a fistful of salt and pepper and got to work rubbing the seasoning all over one meaty shoulder. “Alf, the apples. They are ready for the making of the sauce?”

  Alf, Le Cochon Rouge’s commis chef, was a gangly young lad who had embarked upon a culinary career under the mistaken belief that being a chef involved a lot of flaming pans, flashing knives, and, he had hoped, the chance to meet a perky young waitress or two.

  Unfortunately, as the lowliest member of the Cochon Rouge kitchen crew, he had thus far only managed to encounter a copious amount of vegetables requiring peeling, endless giant pots of slowly simmering stock, and Dorothy, the restaurant’s long-time head waitress, who was roughly the same age as his own mother and had views on the perkiness of today’s young women. (It was, she claimed, mostly the fault of overzealous engineering on the part of today’s lingerie manufacturers.)

  “Almost done, chef,” he called, from his station over by the walk-in fridge. He was standing beside a jumbo-sized pot filled with chopped apples and surrounded by a snake’s nest of peelings.

  “Dearie me, he’s a big ’un, isn’t he?” said Dorothy, appearing through from the dining room, a stack of finished dessert plates in each hand.

  In other restaurants, lunch was often treated as a light, fleeting affair, but Chef Maurice had a typical Frenchman’s opinion on the correct length and quantity of a proper déjeuner, and was quite willing to unleash a slew of complimentary desserts on any new diners who thought they could get away with only a main dish and a glass of water for their midday meal.

  (Secretaries in the Oxfordshire area now made sure to book a two-hour post-lunch slot of ‘meetings’ into their bosses’ calendars following any appointment involving ‘lunch at C. Rouge, Beakley’—along with the provision of pillows on their desk, a Do Not Disturb sign for the door, and a fizzing glass of Alka-Seltzer, just in case.)

  “You should have seen us earlier,” said Patrick, as he firmly massaged a handful of sage-and-thyme rub onto the porky haunch before him. “Took all three of us to get it out of the van.” He didn’t mention that it had been mostly himself and Alf doing the lifting, as Chef Maurice hovered around, continuing to lament the size of his purchase.

  “You brought that thing in through the backyard?” said Dorothy, with a disapproving look.

  “Non, non, do not worry about le petit Hamilton,” said Chef Maurice. “He did not see us. Of this, I made certain.”

  Hamilton, the restaurant’s resident micro-pig, had been adopted last autumn by Chef Maurice as part of a series of events that had ended in the arrest of a pignapping murderer. Since then, the little pig had settled happily into his home in the scrubby field behind the restaurant, which bordered on Le Cochon Rouge’s backyard.

  “Are you sure he didn’t see you? Sight like that could traumatise the little dear for life.” Like the other members of staff, Dorothy had a special place in her heart for the newest curly-tailed addition to the Cochon Rouge family.

  “Oui, I made sure that he would take his afternoon nap a little early today. He now sleeps like un bébé.”

  “He went and put a shot of cognac in Hamilton’s water bowl,” said Patrick, shaking his head.

  “Well, I suppose it won’t do ’im too much harm, long as he doesn’t get a taste for the stuff.” Dorothy lowered the stacks of dishes into the sink. “Everyone’s been askin’ me if we’re doing the hog roast again this year. I told ’em they best get to the front of the queue when lunchtime starts. You know, they say this year’s Fayre’s going to be the biggest we’ve had so far. Reckon it must be ’cause of all those celebrity posters they’ve been putting up. And of course, the Great Beakley Bake Off always brings ’em in, too.”

  “Bah! I say again, what need do we have of celebrities at our Fayre?”

  “It’s only one celebrity, chef,” said Patrick.

  “Hah! That even you should call her a ‘celebrity chef’—”

  “What? I didn’t—”

  “—just as they do on the television and the newspapers. A chef is not the same as a cook! And she cannot even do that!” Chef Maurice pounded a fist on the table, causing the bowl of herb rub to dance dangerously close to the edge. “You have seen how she makes her spaghetti carbonara with the double cream?”

  Chef Maurice may have been French, but he stood in solid support of his Italian colleagues in the argument that a proper carbonara sauce should be made with eggs and pancetta and parmesan and nothing else.

  “I thought you didn’t watch her show, chef,” said Alf, sweeping up the apple peelings into a bowl for Hamilton’s dinner.

  Chef Maurice harrumphed. “Sometimes, it cannot be helped. When the television is already on . . .”

  “Sure, chef,” said Patrick with a grin. He was fully aware that, like the little old lady who watches the all-day music channels in order to complain in righteous horror about the state of today’s youth and their gyrating buttocks (the youths’, that was), Chef Maurice had never been known to miss an episode of Miranda Matthews’ cookery show, not since she had made her screen debut over twenty years ago in the dubiously named sensation: Cook It Right!

  Nowadays, her cookbooks sold in their millions every Christmas, and reruns of her various series were a staple of weekday evening television. An enthusiastic trav
eller, Miranda Matthews had tried her hand at nearly every major world cuisine, though rumours were that the Japanese government had ordered her deportation after her attempt to film a show on their shores involving recipes such as pan-fried sushi and green-tea-flavoured sausages. The older male population of Britain also harboured rather fond memories of one of her earlier shows, entitled Beach Bites, in which she’d conducted the entirety of the filming wearing only a bikini and high heels and slicked in so much suntan oil that standing next to an open flame constituted a serious fire hazard.

  “—and for the committee to allow such a woman onto the Bake Off judging panel, it is surely a crime of the highest nature!” continued Chef Maurice.

  His staff offered their various conciliatory mutterings. They all knew very well that their head chef’s main bone of contention was not that Miranda Matthews had been given a seat on the Bake Off judging panel, but that she had been given his seat.

  One that his somewhat expansive buttocks had been warming for several years previously.

  “But,” he said finally, “I have now devised a plan to regain my position.”

  “A legal one?” said Patrick, suspiciously.

  Chef Maurice ignored his sous-chef. “At tonight’s committee meeting, I will present a most urgent reason why I should return to the panel. Alf, you have completed the preparations?”

  “Oui, chef,” said Alf, pulling out a thick folder of photocopied newspaper clippings.

  “Bien, I will take it with me tonight. Now, Alf, continue here with the rubbing of the spices. I must start the making of the special mustard.”

  Le Cochon Rouge’s secret mustard sauce was famous throughout the county as an accompaniment to a good slab of chargrilled steak, used in the glaze for the restaurant’s honey-and-mustard roast chicken, and, of course, slathered thickly onto a warm hog roast roll. No one except Chef Maurice knew the recipe, but there was speculation that the ingredients included two bottles of the finest amontillado sherry, a type of molasses only available in two American states, and, according to some sources, a variety of bay leaf only grown on the windier slopes of the Greek island of Meganisi.

  When questioned, Chef Maurice would only stroke his large moustache and admit that, oui, the speaker might be correct. But then again, they might not.

  “I do hope chef’s not plannin’ anything too drastic,” said Dorothy, as she watched Patrick and Alf continue on with the hog roast preparations.

  “You never know, when it comes to chef,” said Patrick darkly.

  However, it would turn out that someone else had also been making plans regarding certain members of the Bake Off judging panel. But unlike those of Chef Maurice, their plans would turn out to have some rather more deadly consequences.

  Chapter 2

  Like many organisations of dubious national significance, the Beakley Spring Fayre Committee applied itself to its duties with a seriousness directly proportional to the committee’s view of its own importance.

  That is to say, they took things very seriously indeed.

  This was particularly true in the case of Miss Edith Caruthers—the Spring Fayre Committee Chair, as well as the long-standing doyenne of the Beakley Ladies’ Institute—who regarded their purpose as nothing less than internationally vital to the success of county and country. Visitors came from miles around to attend the Beakley Spring Fayre, a highlight of the Cotswolds social calendar, and it was imperative that everything tomorrow run as smoothly as butter across a hot pan.

  Parking arrangements had been discussed and debated, the capacity of the temporary toilet facilities had been double-checked against visitor number projections, and a subtle yet significant last-minute alteration to the layout of the stands had been made such that the blown-glass and fine china stall was no longer next to the archery butts.

  Finally, with the schedule for the cookery demonstration tent now honed to military precision, there was only one more problem left to tackle.

  “Mr Manchot,” said Miss Caruthers, glaring over her glasses at Chef Maurice, “for the last time, I can assure you that every single risk and danger to our Bake Off judges has been thoroughly considered and mitigated as part of our Health and Safety assessment. It will therefore be perfectly safe and healthy for all of them to take part in the judging of the cake contest.”

  “Ah, you may think this is so, but I have the evidence to prove that this is incorrect,” said Chef Maurice. He pulled out the stack of newspaper clippings that Alf had collected for him.

  “One may think there is no danger, but when you look carefully, voilà, the truth appears. In Scotland, there were three judges made most ill at this year’s Annual Haggis Championship, and last year, there was found an explosive hidden in a giant scone at the Devon Clotted Cream Festival! And we must not forget the incident not far from here involving a most fatal quiche . . .”

  He threw the pile of Fayre-related fatalities onto the table. “It is clear. Tomorrow, Madame Caruthers, the Bake Off judges face a grave danger!”

  Miss Caruthers gave him a severe look—though whether this was due to the topic of conversation, or her having been upgraded to ‘madame’ due to her advanced age in the French chef’s eyes, one could not be certain.

  “And I suppose, Mr Manchot, that your solution to this imminent peril is that you should be allowed back onto the judging panel?”

  “Exactement!” Chef Maurice beamed, pleased that the Committee Chair was, for once, showing some good sense.

  “Rather daring of you, don’t you think, in the face of all this evidence?”

  “Ah, but non, madame. For the nose of a chef, it is most delicate, like that of a foxhound.” He tapped his own, large, example. “I will place myself as the first to taste each baking entry, and so will be ready to make an alert in the case of any danger. It is, you see, a matter of duty!”

  The rest of the committee turned, as one, back to Miss Caruthers, who deployed a thin smile in Chef Maurice’s direction.

  “Very gallant of you, Mr Manchot. But even so, I’m afraid I will have to ask the judges to take their chances. As we’ve discussed previously, there is simply no space on the judging table for another taster this year.”

  “Then one must be replaced!”

  There was an intake of breath around the table.

  “Impossible,” said Miss Caruthers calmly. “I’m sure you’ll agree that, as Chair of this committee, as well as Head Judge of the Beakley Ladies’ Annual Cake Challenge, I am obligated to sit on the panel. And of course, there’s no question of replacing Mayor Gifford, who’s kindly agreed to come over from Cowton to open the Fayre—”

  And who was, incidentally, the husband of Mrs Angie Gifford, the mousy-haired Secretary of the Beakley Ladies’ Institute. Angie was currently engaged in nibbling on a Rich Tea biscuit and watching the proceedings with a certain amount of alarm.

  “—and I assume you can’t object to Chef Elizabeth’s inclusion, a lady whose, ahem, nose you cannot possibly disparage—”

  Chef Maurice frowned. Chef Elizabeth was one of Britain’s top pastry chefs—though, in his opinion, pastry chefs as a bunch were generally far more concerned with the look of their creations than the aroma. Still, the woman was travelling down from her restaurant specially for the Fayre, and plus, he had other reasons for not wanting to unduly displease Chef Elizabeth.

  “—nor can you possibly expect to ask that Miranda Matthews step down—”

  “An insult to our profession,” muttered Chef Maurice, but even he knew it would be a futile task to try and bump a celebrity chef off the judging panel, especially as it was her face that had been put on all the Bake Off posters and plastered up and down the Cotswolds.

  “—and lastly, there’s Mr Wordington-Smythe—”

  “Who will face any ill-mannered icing and perilous pastry with a brave countenance and an iron constitution,” said Arthur Wordington-Smythe, Chef Maurice’s best friend and esteemed food critic for the England Observer.

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p; The latter was a role that had lately been taking somewhat of a toll on his usually trim waistline, causing his wife Meryl to institute a new dietary regime within the Wordington-Smythe household. Under such circumstances, Arthur was not about to give up a chance to spend an afternoon partaking in the unfettered consumption of home-baked desserts and pastries—all in the name of the civic good, of course.

  “Nice try though, old chap,” said Arthur, as they filed out of the village hall into the cool, still air of a Beakley springtime evening.

  “Humph. Madame Caruthers, she will regret to have ignored my warnings.”

  “I still don’t see why you’re so desperate to get back onto the tasting panel. You complained all the way through last year’s competition, may I remind you.”

  “That is not the point, mon ami. It is the principle! Madame Caruthers dares to suggest I do not have the tasting skills to be a judge.”

  “I don’t think,” said Arthur carefully, “that it was your taste buds per se that were being called into question.”

  “Then what?”

  “Let’s just say that the committee didn’t agree on the acceptability of telling a five-year-old that her jam roly-poly ‘tastes and looks like a badger sat on it’.”

  “But I only intended—”

  “And then you went on to describe Mr Evans’ red velvet cake as ‘a tragedy with the flavour of crayons and the look of blood-soaked murder’.”

  “It is not proper, for a cake to be so red.” Chef Maurice gave a little shudder. “So they do not enjoy my opinions? Perhaps that is true. But it is still”—he waved the newspaper clippings—“a grand mistake to leave me from the judging panel. You will see.”

  Arthur rolled his eyes heavenwards as they continued their stroll up past the village green. “Maurice, I assure you, no one is going to die during the Great Beakley Bake Off.”

  Le Cochon Rouge sat at the top of Beakley, occupying an old stone cottage which had started life as the village pub, and still bore the original thick oak beams, low stone-arched doorway (treacherous to the occasional over-inebriated diner) and uneven flagstones (ditto) worn smooth by centuries of hungry travellers and thirsty Beakley locals.