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

of opening a dog-grooming parlour.
    “Well—” started Arthur, but further comment was curtailed by the sound of the door clicking shut downstairs and the thump of rising footsteps.
    “Quick, mon ami ! This could be the murderer, returning to destroy the evidence. We must hide and observe.” With that, Chef Maurice launched himself into the nearby closet.
    Arthur looked around frantically. Miranda’s office did not appear to offer many choices when it came to bodily concealment. Hiding under a glass desk definitely wouldn’t win him the ‘Camouflage of the Year’ award. There would have been the standing-behind-the-door option, except that Miranda had installed sliding doors throughout the flat. As for the wardrobe, the clatter of hangers from inside indicated that Chef Maurice was already more than fully occupying the space within.
    The footsteps had now reached the living room.
    Chef Maurice stuck his head out of the wardrobe. “Why do you not hide? We must not be discovered!”
    “Easy for you to say,” hissed Arthur, eying up the bookcase in the corner. Perhaps if he shifted it forward a tad . . .
    He had just managed to wedge half a hip and an entire leg behind the thing, when he heard a sharp intake of breath behind him.
    “Mr Wordington-Smythe! What on earth are you doing with that bookcase?”

    “Delivery for the kitchen,” announced Dorothy, moving aside to allow through a blue-overalled man wheeling a waist-high cardboard box.
    “Sign here, sir.” A weathered clipboard was thrust under Patrick’s nose.
    Once the man was gone, Patrick and Alf circled the box warily, looking for any hint as to its contents. One could never tell what odd ingredient or item might have last caught their head chef’s eye. Last month it had been a pair of life-sized stone pigs, which now stood guard outside the front door of Le Cochon Rouge, one of them wearing a flowerpot on its head.
    Unfortunately, this box was simply labelled as for the attention of ‘Le Cochon Rouge, Beakley’, with a return address of some Lincolnshire business park.
    Alf tapped a wooden spoon against the side, ears cocked.
    “I don’t think it’s going to bite you, luv,” said Dorothy, watching the antics of the two chefs, hands on hips.
    “That’s what chef said about those spider crabs last week,” said Alf. The crustaceans that passed through their kitchens seemed to always have a bit of a soft spot for the young commis chef—or at least an unerring ability to find his soft spots, and pinch down hard on them.
    “Better get this open, then. Might be something perishable.” Patrick grabbed a paring knife and slit open the top of the box. A shiny leaflet fluttered down at his feet.
    The logo looked tantalisingly familiar.
    Surely it couldn’t be . . .
    He quickly cut away the rest of the cardboard.
    “Cor!” said Alf, mouth agape in wonderment. Then he looked at Patrick. “So what is it?”
    Their kitchen newcomer was a large, gleaming contraption, made of stainless steel, adorned with a row of dials with complicated-looking pictograms, and rather resembling the result of an illicit encounter between a food blender and a galactic spacecraft.
    “It’s a brand-new TM5000 Deluxe Professional ThermoMash,” said Patrick, in awed tones. “It can do practically anything . It chops, stews, mashes, makes ice cream, stocks, bread, cheese. Apparently you can set it to make a perfect hollandaise in ten seconds flat.”
    “Humph, don’t see what’s so impressive about that ,” said Alf, crossing his arms and glaring at the machine with the look of a man whose job prospects are suddenly under threat.
    “I’ve been on at chef to get us one of these for months . I wonder what made him suddenly—” Patrick stopped.
    Dorothy, who hadn’t worked this many years alongside chefs without developing an acute sense of self-preservation, chose this moment to nip away into the dining room, mumbling something about the napkins needing