The Proof of the Pudding by Rhys Bowen

Author:Rhys Bowen [Bowen, Rhys]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2023-11-07T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

July 26

Back at Eynsleigh

I don’t know what to think. Who would poison people with no real motive?

I felt secretly glad that Darcy had suggested we should look into it together. That meant that he had come to value my investigative skills. He also hadn’t said that I should stay home and take it easy because of the impending birth of our child. I liked being treated as an equal. At the same time I didn’t see how we could find out who might have done this.

“Don’t you think the police will now be involved?” I asked. “Mr. Halliday’s death will have to be labeled as suspicious, won’t it?

“Possibly,” Darcy said. “If he died of a heart attack, for example, they are not likely to examine the contents of his stomach.” He turned back to Pierre, who had been sitting silently in the back seat. “Pierre, I don’t know how much you understood,” he said, switching to French (which was not as fluent as mine), “but one of the guests last night became sick and has died. This makes it very serious.”

“You think that I have something to do with a man’s death?” Pierre demanded. “You say that my food killed a man?” He waved his hands dramatically, almost rising from his seat. “But this is terrible news for me. If word gets out it will ruin my career. It will haunt me. Everywhere I go they will point at me and say, ‘This is the chef whose food killed a man.’ ”

“Calm yourself. Of course it wasn’t your food,” I said quickly. “We now know that somebody put those elderberries into some of the tarts. This man ate two of them, so he got a double dose. But let us start with you. Tell us exactly how those tarts were prepared.”

“I made the pâte sucrée shells in the morning,” Pierre said. “I left them on the table to cool. I went out to the garden and I picked the berries, as I have told you. I brought them in, gave them to the kitchen maid to wash and hull, then they were left in the colander until the time to assemble the tarts in the afternoon. I made the crème pâtissière to place inside the tarts and I completed one of them with a pleasing arrangement of berries. Then I showed this to Queenie and told her to complete the rest to look the same.”

“Did she do a good job?”

“She did, for once.”

“And nobody helped her? Mr. Henman didn’t help her?”

“That man claimed he was feeling ill. He stayed far away from me all day. He only came in to prepare his appetizers, groaning and complaining, then he went again. He was no help at all.”

“So who was in the kitchen, Pierre?” Darcy asked.

“Only me, Queenie, and the girl. She was not much use either. She is untrained with no idea how to do things.”

“You were there all day?” I asked. “Did anybody else come in at any time?”

“I told you that the old man came and went a few times.

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