Chef Maurice and the Bunny-Boiler Bake Off (Chef Maurice Cotswold Mysteries Book 3) by J.A. Lang Page A

course. But I was thinking more about Miranda’s jewellery. And her photography equipment. She took all those herself, you know,” she said, gesturing at the wildlife prints around the walls. “She won an award a few years ago, for her work photographing endangered species. She was always keen on photography, even back when we were in school. Of course, it was all messing around with chemicals and darkrooms in those days.”
    “Aha, then that is one mystery already solved.” Chef Maurice filled them in on PC Alistair’s muddy discovery last Saturday. “Perhaps Mademoiselle Miranda took her camera to go photograph the birds and animals of Warren’s Creek?”
    “I suppose she might have,” said Angie, a trifle doubtful.
    Arthur tried to picture Miranda Matthews stalking through the English woodlands with her neon nails and cream-coloured jeans. It was a picture that didn’t quite fit.
    “Bof,” said Chef Maurice eventually. “Come, we cannot sit here drinking tea like the English ladies. Let us continue!”
    Thus galvanised, they headed through to the master bedroom, which was decorated in tasteful greys and dominated by a king-sized bed, the satin sheets still rumpled. The wardrobes were bulging with assorted designer items, crammed in with no thought to any seasonal or functional arrangement, or so it seemed to Arthur, while a wide chest of drawers was dedicated entirely to high-heeled shoes in a variety of garish colours.
    “What exactly are we looking for?” said Angie to Arthur, as Chef Maurice dived in, banging open cupboards and riffling through drawers.
    “I suspect we’ll know it when we see it,” said Arthur, opening a drawer filled with neatly arranged bras of all colours, and closing it again hastily.
    “Aha! Cherchez l’homme! ” Chef Maurice had zoned in on the bedside table drawer, and now held up a framed black-and-white photo of a good-looking, if somewhat brooding, man in his early forties.
    “That’s Adam Monroe, Miranda’s ex-boyfriend,” said Angie. “I never met him. I think they broke up before she moved here.”
    “Could he have been the cause of her moving here, even?” suggested Arthur.
    “I don’t know, I didn’t ask. He was a rotten sort anyway, from what I heard. It was all over the papers.” She gave a little sniff. “Certain papers, anyway. He cheated on her, you know?”
    Arthur, who confined his morning reading to the England Observer and a few other broadsheets, and Chef Maurice, who preferred to receive his news in accordance with the time-honoured principle that if it was important enough, someone would tell him, both shook their heads.
    “Miranda always said that karma got him in the end, though. Two weeks later, he got fired off that soap opera of his. They had his character go bungee-jumping with a faulty cord. And to think he tried to blame it all on Miranda. As if she could have had anything to do with it.”
    “Him being fired, you mean?”
    “Exactly. A spiteful idea on his part.”
    Arthur looked down at Adam Monroe’s square-jawed profile. A ladykiller, for sure, but in how many senses of the word?
    “Hmm. We could be looking at a case of a disgruntled ex.”
    “ C’est possible ,” murmured Chef Maurice, still holding the photo. Then, with a sudden ‘Aha!’, he jumped up and scuttled back out into the kitchen.
    “It is him . And her !” He jabbed a finger at the redhead in the magazine cover shoot. “They were together, at the Fayre. They made a most big distraction in the queue for my hog roast!”
    Arthur grabbed the photo from Chef Maurice’s waving hand. The chef was right. Slap a pair of dark sunglasses onto the surly lothario in the frame, and add a few decades onto the flame-haired girl, and you had the couple who’d been participating in the extended smoochfest in the hog roast queue.
    “By George, you’re right. It’s definitely them!”
    “Adam Monroe was at the Fayre, with Gaby ?” Angie looked thoroughly confused.