Cooking the Books

Kerry Greenwood

• Publisher: Allen & Unwin
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781925576030
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

Corinna Chapman, talented baker and reluctant investigator, is trying very hard to do nothing at all on her holidays. Her gorgeous Daniel is only intermittently at her side (he's roaming the streets tracking down a multi-thousand dollar corporate theft). Jason, her baking offsider, has gone off to learn how to surf. And Kylie and Goss are fulfilling their lives' ambition auditioning for a soap. It should be a time of quiet reflection for Corinna but quiet reflection doesn't seem to suit her - she's bored. Scenting a whiff of danger, Corinna accepts an offer from a caterer friend to do the baking for the film set of a new soap called 'Kiss the Bride'. The soap in which Kylie and Goss have parts. Twists and turns and complications that could only happen to Corinna ensue involving, bizarrely, nursery rhymes and a tiger called Tabitha. While on the other side of town, a young woman is being unmercifully bullied by her corporate employers - employers who spend a lot of time cooking the books.

I was supposed to be on holiday. So what, you may ask—in fact, Daniel was actually asking—was I doing in the bakery? Apart from, self-evidently, baking?

‘Bosworth Jumbles,’ I explained.

He smiled at me. My heart did a complete flip-flop with pike. Beautiful Daniel, my Sabra turned private detective, who out of all women in the city picked me, an ample size 20 who worked too hard making bread at my bakery, Earthly Delights. Since the advent of Daniel I have become susceptible to the idea that miracles might really happen. He is tall, dark and gorgeous with a faint whiff of mystery. I am short and mousy and smell mostly of flour and honest labour. Not seductive.

‘Why jumbles and why Bosworth?’ he asked.

My apprentice, Jason, a recovering heroin addict, had taken his holiday pay and gone surfing. My shop was closed until the end of January and my two assistants had gone to an audition for a soap of some sort. I should have been relaxing, but I didn’t seem to have the knack.

‘The cook died rather than disclose the recipe,’ I said. ‘Mrs Dawson is giving an afternoon tea and she wanted some traditional English munchies. And as she is a famous retired society hostess I like to think that the fact that she chose me as her baker is a great compliment.’

‘How do you mean, died?’ Daniel sounded intrigued.

‘Was executed. He deserves to be remembered. He was Richard the Third’s confectioner, a highly paid position,’ I told him, forming the jumbles into little heaps on my baking sheet. ‘He went with Richard to the battle of Bosworth Field, where the King was defeated and the cook was captured. Henry VII offered him his life if he would give him the recipe for these sugary little treats. He refused, and after a week Henry VII had him executed. But the cook gave the recipe to one of his jailers and the local bakers made them for centuries, all through the Tudor period. Just to remind the rulers that there had been a good king who was usurped and murdered.’

‘Sedition by cookery. Impressive,’ he murmured. ‘What else do we have here? Isn’t that fruit mince?’

‘For Eccles cakes,’ I agreed. ‘When the parliamentarians banned Christmas, the bakers of Eccles made these little mince tarts instead of Christmas pudding. I don’t know if it was just because they had a stockpile of the main ingredient, or because they wanted to bring a little joy into people’s hearts in those joyless times.’

‘Possibly both. And these?’

‘You can have one. Or two,’ I conceded. ‘They’re singing hinnies. Like the song.’

‘She can cook an Irish stew, aye, and singing hinnies too,’ he sang, a pleasant tenor somewhat obscured by crumbs.

‘And otherwise there are some Bath buns and a sand cake.’

‘Sand cake,’ he said flatly. ‘Even for a superlative baker, sand is not a good ingredient. I recall those childhood beach picnics. It grits the teeth. Love the singing hinnies, though.’

‘Sand cake is not made of sand,’ I informed him, opening the oven to insert the jumbles and remove the cake. ‘It’s made with cornflour so it’s sandy in texture, but no real sand is used in the construction, I promise. Otherwise she has potted shrimps, which I made yesterday, to eat with brown bread, and cucumber sandwiches, which also contain—’

‘No sand. I understand now,’ he assured me. ‘How much longer will these historical sweeties detain you?’

‘Just have to get the jumbles out of the oven—ten minutes or so. Can’t ice the cake until it’s cold.’

‘I notice that none of the feline contingent have descended from the sun porch to supervise your labour,’ he observed.

‘Lazy creatures have been taking non-stop naps,’ I said, wiping flour off my forearms onto my strong green apron. ‘Though the Mouse Police are still catching rats down here at night. But they probably think that is sport, not work.’

‘Cats don’t do the “w” word,’ he agreed solemnly. ‘Even the maître d’hôtel Horatio only supervises.’

Horatio is my tabby and white gentleman and he does, indeed, oversee the moral and aesthetic standards of Earthly Delights. I sometimes feel that I cannot live up to him. He is an aristocat.

‘Have you heard from Jason?’ he asked, leaning a hip against a mixing tub.

‘Postcard,’ I said. I ducked my head at the missive on the counter, which boasted the single line: luv the beech but its hotte.

Daniel read it. ‘His spelling is very Middle English, isn’t it?’

‘The picture is of Lorne. Surely he can’t get into too much trouble in Lorne.’

‘I don’t know—can he swim?’ asked Daniel.

‘No idea,’ I replied.

‘And where are the girls?’

‘At an audition for a pilot episode of a soap called Kiss the Bride,’ I said. ‘This is their second call back so they might even get parts. I do hope so. Might even make them put on a little weight.’ The girls are fervent devotees of the Goddess Anorexia. I live to see a little more flesh on their bones.

The jumbles announced by scent that they were cooked. I took them out of the oven and tumbled them gently onto a cake cooler. Then I mixed and drizzled the lemon icing over my sand cake.

‘All finished. You want to help me carry them up?’

‘What about scones? Afternoon tea ought to have scones,’ he objected, taking up the large tin tray loaded with food.

‘She’s making her own, of course,’ I told him. ‘Up to the roof, Madame is entertaining in the garden.’

I can’t imagine how the roof garden at Insula escaped unscathed when the building was allowed to run down in the sixties. A lot of Melbourne was trashed at the time. The elevator goes right there so they can’t have missed it. Intervention of fate, I expect. Fate likes a good garden as much as anyone else. There is a statue of Ceres with her arms full of corn, copy of a Roman original, in the glassed-in temple, but there is also a rose bower, a lot of wisteria, and even Trudi’s linden tree. Mrs Dawson’s table was laid out under the wisteria. There were no blossoms on it, of course, it being January, but delightful pale green leaves and a lot of diffused light. She had lovely china, gold and blue, and a massive samovar which Trudi was even now wheeling up to the right of the hostess.

Trudi is Dutch and sixty and wears blue and is the only person whom the freight elevator obeys. Her appearance is only unusual in that she wears a ginger kitten of fiendish aspect on her shoulder. Meroe, our witch, says he is not really diabolical; only humans have the spiritual software to be devilish. He just has a small kink in his feline soul which renders him mischievous. That’s why he is called Lucifer. He’s getting bigger, which is a sobering prospect . . .

He made a wild dive for the cake—Lucifer will try to eat anything—and was hauled back by his harness. That harness has been the thwarting of a lot of potential adventures, especially those involving Lucifer and the fish pond in the atrium. For Insula is a Roman building, and what is a Roman building without its impluvium?

We don’t know much about the lunatic who built Insula like a Roman tenement. There was a fashion then for exotic buildings—Moorish, Arabic, Old English Gothick. It has some deco features but when Professor Dion ordered his apartment decorated after designs from Pompeii, they fitted beautifully. He is, for instance, the owner of the only Ancient Roman TV/DVD cabinet in the world. We are a jolly collection, except for Mrs Pemberthy, who is there to curdle the milk of human kindness and make one desire state-sponsored seclusion of everyone over eighty-five with a small rotten doggie called Traddles.

Mrs Dawson, urbane and elegant, was wearing what my grandmother would call a hostess gown in swirly shades of rust and apricot. She is an example to us all. She surveyed the provender as Daniel and I laid it out next to her cucumber sandwiches, the potted shrimps and their thin-sliced brown bread, and a mound of scones with concomitant jam and cream. Her scones looked very good. I would have guessed as much.

‘A feast,’ she told me. ‘Thank you so much, Corinna dear. The ladies ought to be arriving. I’ve stationed Dion in the atrium to welcome the early birds. I shall now descend and join him.’

She flung a cobweb-fine muslin cloth over the feast and departed in a flourish of skirts.

‘What a woman,’ sighed Daniel.

‘She is indeed. How about a tiny snack of our own?’ I asked, with deep political cunning. I hoped to decoy him into my apartment for a little afternoon delight. I don’t think I fooled him for a moment, but he fell in beside me willingly. In the interests of truth, I did intend to offer him tea. And cakes. As well.

All was going according to plan. He drank my Earl Grey, he ate a jumble and a slice of sand cake (I had made double, for my kitchen as well as Mrs D’s tea) and was about to kiss me with the kisses of his mouth in proper biblical fashion when the doorbell rang shrilly.

Damn.

The door was answered—however grudgingly—and Kylie and Goss danced into the room, waving bits of paper and laughing. I was not in the mood for la...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Imprint
• Dedication
• Also in the Corinna Chapman series
• Chapter one
• Chapter two
• Chapter three
• Chapter four
• Chapter five
• Chapter six
• Chapter seven
• Chapter eight
• Chapter nine
• Chapter ten
• Chapter eleven
• Chapter twelve
• Chapter thirteen
• Chapter fourteen
• Chapter fifteen
• Chapter sixteen
• Chapter seventeen
• Chapter eighteen
• Chapter nineteen
• Chapter twenty
• Epilogue
• Recipes