Bedfordshire Clanger Calamity Read online

  Bedfordshire

  Clanger Calamity

  Albert Smith’s Culinary Capers

  Recipe 4

  Steve Higgs

  Text Copyright © 2020 Steven J Higgs

  Publisher: Steve Higgs

  The right of Steve Higgs to be identified as author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved.

  The book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  ‘Bedfordshire Clanger Calamity’ is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living, dead or undead, events or locations is entirely coincidental.

  Dedication

  To the makers of traditional British dishes wherever they may be.

  Table of Contents:

  Hi, I’m the Bad Guy

  The Clanger Café

  Motive for Murder

  In the Shadows

  Mushy Peas

  Dodgy Accounting

  Disappointment

  Bookkeeping

  Revelations

  A Cunning Plan

  Cell Block

  Eggs

  Hell Hath No Fury

  Accusation

  Where There’s Smoke …

  Kate’s Place

  Dead in the Gutter

  What a Mess

  Too Much Coincidence

  Rex and Hans

  Meat and Two Veg

  Reunited

  Side-tracked

  Fatal Error

  Observation

  Nonsensical

  Clanger Lover

  Bluff

  Ambush

  Cryptic Secrets

  The Power of Dog

  Evidence

  April

  Epilogue

  Author Note

  History of the Bedfordshire Clanger

  Recipe

  Books with Patricia Fisher

  Cozy Mystery by Steve Higgs

  More Books by Steve Higgs

  Free Books and More

  Hi, I’m the Bad Guy

  Earl Hubert Bacon stared down at the man kneeling before him. ‘What do you mean, you can’t bake?’ he enquired, already bored that he had to speak with the man at all. He didn’t wish to converse with those he saved; they were here to perform tasks in exchange for surviving the coming apocalypse.

  ‘I’m just the owner,’ the kneeling man managed to stammer, somehow making the words sound like an apology.

  The earl continued to stare down, anger making his nostrils flare. ‘You expect me to believe that you own the Biggleswade Clanger Café and you cannot make the dish for which your business is famous. Utter poppycock, man! I have no time for this nonsense. Go into the kitchen and make me a perfect clanger right now and I shall put this unnecessary distraction down to the stress of travel.’

  ‘Travel!’ the man almost choked. ‘You had me kidnapped!’

  The earl raised one eyebrow. ‘I saved you from the coming apocalypse, dear fellow. You should be thanking me, not messing me around by pretending you cannot bake.’

  ‘He can’t bake, boss.’ The comment came from the man standing just behind and to the right of the man on his knees. He wore combat fatigues because he was ex-Army and thought it added a menacing look that his partner’s choice of shirt, tie, and jacket failed to evoke.

  The earl shifted his gaze up to look at the man who spoke and eyed him sceptically. ‘Which one are you again?’

  ‘Francis,’ said Francis, sighing internally and questioning whether their boss refused to remember their names on purpose. ‘He can’t bake. We’ve been in the kitchen with him for the last hour. He didn’t even know there were different types of flour.’ The earl’s eyes flared in disbelief as he switched from looking at his henchman – he liked to think of them as henchmen – to the face looking up at him from the carpet. ‘Eugene can bake better than this guy,’ he referred to his well-dressed partner, secretly throwing some banter his way because Eugene’s kitchen skills stopped at making a sandwich.

  ‘Hey!’ complained Eugene, standing to the left of the man on his knees.

  Earl Bacon raised a hand to silence them both. They were chattering fools, amusing themselves with banalities and worthless pursuits. However, he had no stomach for violence and refused to leave the bunker unless it was absolutely necessary. His proclivities made the henchmen indispensable. When they fell silent, he pursed his lips and once again stared down at the man kneeling by his feet.

  ‘You really cannot bake?’ he asked, his voice filled with disappointment.

  Sensing his ordeal might be about to come to an end, the man snatched at what he thought was the lifeline he’d been thrown. ‘No. Not one bit. Can I go now?’

  ‘Go?’ Earl Bacon thought it an odd request. ‘Well, I suppose I have no further use for you. Tell me though, before my employees escort you out, who is it that I should have rescued in your stead? Who at the Biggleswade Clanger Café can bake me a perfect clanger?’

  Wondering if he might be safe to get to his feet, Joel Clement, the owner of the Clanger Café, slid a foot around to get it under his body and watched to see if anyone would stop him. Wary enough to keep his hands open and out in a submissive surrender pose, he stood up. ‘There are four chefs that know the recipe. They have all worked for me for years now. Any one of them could show you how to do it. We run a class twice a week. I could arrange a special VIP event just for you and your … friends?’ he suggested hopefully. The moment he got away from these lunatics and found out where they’d taken him, he was going to call the police, but he was going to say anything he could think of to keep them calm until then.

  The earl gasped at the ridiculous suggestion. ‘No, no, no, that won’t do at all. Everyone on the surface will be dead soon. I have explained this to you already. Travel is unthinkable. Who is your best chef? I want that person.’

  Joel swallowed nervously. Whoever he named would be their next victim. Who should he pick? The answer to the madman’s question was Victor Harris. He was easily the best chef. He made the clangers more neatly and more swiftly than anyone else. When Victor started eight years ago, he reorganised the entire kitchen, making it streamlined and efficient, which allowed Joel to naturally waste off two staff from the kitchen, saving him a packet. Victor also brought his sister along to work in the shop and it hadn’t taken Joel long to fall for her alluring looks and long legs. No, he couldn’t give them Victor’s name, Kate would never forgive him. How about April? She was his oldest member of staff and could be a vicious-tongued cow when she wanted to be.

  ‘I do not like to be made to wait,’ growled Earl Bacon, prompting Joel to spit out a name.

  ‘Maddie Hayes!’ he blurted, wondering where he got the name from at the last moment. It was completely made up, the idea to lie and give them a false name coming to him only when the words were forming on his lips.

  ‘Maddie Hayes,’ repeated Hubert slowly.

  ‘Yes. She’s easily my best,’ Joel nodded enthusiastically, selling the false name so he could finish this insane experience and escape.

  ‘Very well …’ The earl had been about to a
ddress the café owner by name but realised he hadn’t bothered to learn it. Other people held no interest for him. Unless they were one of the greats who had produced a food worthy of his attention, they were little more than ants scurrying about on the pavement beneath his feet. Not that he could see the pavement or his feet. Years of overindulgence had seen to that. Waist size was another trifling insignificance though; he lived to be well-fed, and only ate the finest foods, or those treats he felt worthy of his attention. The clanger was one such treat. He’d savoured his first one on an excursion with his father many years before. Back when his father was Earl Bacon, he would travel the country on hunting and fishing trips, the father taking the son most everywhere he went. A gurgle from his belly reminded him that he needed to wrap up this business. ‘Very well, you are of no further use. Please dispose of him,’ the final request was aimed at his henchmen, Eugene and Francis.

  The order jolted Joel. ‘Dispose? What do you mean dispose? You said I could go!’

  Eugene frowned in surprise. ‘Did I? Well, I suppose you can go, in a way. I can’t return you home though. You cannot bake therefore you have no purpose.’

  Joel could see the two men to his rear moving forward. The one in army dress had a short piece of rope in his hands! ‘Who are you?’ he squealed at the earl.

  It was a question he’d been asked before by the people he chose to save. He relished being asked it because it gave him a chance to deliver his favourite line. ‘Me? Why, I’m the bad guy.’

  The Clanger Café

  Albert was beginning to get the impression something was wrong. He couldn’t work out what it was, but the people working in the shop, the man who taught the class he attended, and the chefs working in the kitchen behind the counter, were all acting as if there was a massive elephant in the room. He could see them verbally stepping around it.

  His class, the first of his trip to pass without incident, had been a revelation. He didn’t even know you could make puff pastry; he thought a person had to buy it in blocks from the supermarket and that it was made in a giant machine somewhere. He’d rolled out, filled, closed, crimped, and baked his wonderful clanger and then sat down in the café to eat the whole thing. At almost eighteen inches long, it was more food than he needed but he wasn’t going to let a crumb go to waste.

  Customers in the class got to select their filling from the full range the shop offered. He chose pork with sage and cider for his savoury end and rhubarb with custard for the sweet end. Both halves were sublime but, truth be told, he preferred the savoury fillings, only making two-courses-in-one in the class because tradition demanded it.

  As he finished off the last few crumbs, Albert lifted the empty plate to show his dog, Rex Harrison. Rex, a former police dog, fired for his terrible attitude towards his human handlers and their malfunctioning noses, narrowed his eyes disapprovingly at the plate.

  Albert rolled his eyes. ‘You already ate yours,’ he pointed out. ‘You didn’t need mine as well.’

  Rex had been waiting patiently for his human to offer him whatever was left on his plate. Cleaning plates was one of his specialities and a service he provided regularly because his human’s appetite rarely extended to encompass everything he’d been served. His own clanger barely touched the sides on its way down.

  To show his thoughts on the matter, since his human was terrible at understanding what Rex had to say, he flopped heavily to the cool floor tile with a grumpy harrumph. That was until a sniggering sound drew his attention. From a gap beneath a waist-high swing door in the counter, a nose protruded.

  Rex had caught the scent of the other dog the moment they entered the establishment, but this was the first time he’d seen him. It was a dachshund, an odd-shaped dog in Rex’s opinion. He was indifferent to it, much as he was most dogs, but his neutral opinion shifted gear because it seemed to be taking pleasure in seeing Rex denied his human’s meal.

  ‘What’s your problem?’ he growled quietly, lifting his head to give the small dog a warning glare.

  A hand touched his head, his human stroking his fur. ‘Settle down, Rex,’ Albert chided. Albert hadn’t spotted the sausage dog behind the counter, nor could he decipher its smell over all the other scents in the café. Not that he used his nose to gather information. Like all humans, he relied on sight and sound and was unaware that ignoring his most informative sense annoyed his dog. His attention wasn’t on Rex and whatever he might be growling at, it was on the young lady working behind the counter.

  She was average height with light brown hair that looked like it couldn’t decide whether to be blond or brunette. Her face was a little pinched and her nose a little long. Basically, she was a little plain-looking but that wasn’t the dominant thing he noticed. Above all else, she looked sad. Or possibly worried, Albert thought. He knew nothing of her or her situation, so it could be that the tension he could perceive was nothing more than a workplace disagreement. Maybe she turned up late for work and was on her final warning. For what was probably the fifth time, he told himself to stop looking at her and mind his own business.

  Their accommodation was a short walk away along Hitching Road where Albert’s daughter Selina had booked him into Ye Old Leather Bottle, a public house with a restaurant that boasted a Michelin star. It was now late on a Tuesday afternoon on his second day in Biggleswade, a delightful small town in Bedfordshire. He arrived feeling wary for what unwelcome surprise the town might hold for him – the last three stops on his culinary tour of the British Isles had each presented murder and mayhem. He wanted a nice quiet couple of days in Bedfordshire to recover, but almost thirty hours after arriving, he was wondering if perhaps he might be feeling a little bored.

  Rex couldn’t decide whether to turn his back on the annoying dachshund, a demonstration of how unbothered he was by the tiny dog, or to just lunge forward and scare the laugh out of him. His lead was looped around the foot of his human’s chair, a needless precaution in Rex’s opinion because if he wanted to go, the chair leg would either snap, or just flip the chair over, and if he didn’t want to go, a simple request from his human would keep him in place. He’d demonstrated this to be true recently, throwing his human to the carpet in a bid to get to a piece of bacon. His human appeared to be upset by the event for many hours afterward, but Rex got the bacon and that was what counted.

  The dachshund looked set to say something else, but before he could, a human hand looped under his belly and the four tiny feet Rex could see under the bottom of the swing door, vanished from sight as he was lifted into the air. Appearing again in a female human’s arms, the dog acted as if being carried around was a privilege bestowed upon him and not an embarrassing indication of just how small he was. No human would try to carry Rex: he weighed the same as a large man.

  Albert looked up from checking his phone when someone approached his table. It was the lady from behind the counter, the one who looked sad. Was it his imagination? Or was it a brave smile she wore?

  ‘Are you all done here?’ she asked, glancing to his plate which quite clearly had nothing but crumbs remaining on it.

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ Albert replied. The dachshund was balanced along her left forearm with its butt end tucked under her armpit. It leaned forward to smell Albert. ‘Cute dachshund,’ he said, striking up a conversation. ‘What’s his name?’

  The woman smiled as she glanced down at her dog and back up. The smile reached her eyes for the first time since Albert had started observing her. ‘This is Hans. He’s my little bratwurst!’ she exclaimed in an over-excited manner while jiggling the dog to make his ears flap.

  Albert didn’t react or turn his head when the bell tinkled to signal that the café door had just opened. It was behind him, and he was still watching the woman’s face. It was because he was watching her face and not turning to look at whoever might be coming in that he saw the blood drain from the woman’s cheeks. Her smile fell away, and she staggered slightly, putting a hand out to grip the back of the chair opposite
Albert for support.

  Thinking she might fall – she really looked that close to passing out – Albert got to his feet. ‘Are you alright, my dear?’ he enquired, glancing across the shop where he spied two uniformed officers accompanying a man in a suit and coat. He knew a plain-clothes policeman when he saw one; they all looked the same somehow.

  ‘I’m … I.’ The woman couldn’t form a coherent sentence but managed to pull the spare chair out so she could collapse into it. The police went to the counter where they were met by a stern-looking woman. ‘It’s my Joel,’ the woman now sitting at Albert’s table sobbed quietly. ‘He went missing three days ago, and …’ she sobbed, tears filling her eyes, ‘and they found his body yesterday morning. It was in Wales. What on Earth was he doing in Wales? I filed the missing person report just before they found his body, but they said he’d been murdered.’ She gasped suddenly. ‘They must be here to tell me they caught the killer!’

  At the counter, the stern-faced woman nodded her head and narrowed her eyes before jutting out an arm. ‘That’s her sitting there,’ she told the plain-clothes police officer. Albert was looking her way but didn’t understand her expression: she looked pleased to be pointing the police to the woman at his table, but not in a good way.

  His natural instinct was to take the woman’s hand for support even though he didn’t know her. She looked wretched already, but he resisted temptation, curious to hear what the officer in charge might be about to say. He was approaching now, the two uniformed officers filing along behind.

  ‘Kate Harris?’ the lead officer sought to confirm, taking out his identification to show her.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied nervously.

  Rex lifted his head. There was something going on. His human talking to other humans was of little interest unless they were also preparing food, in which case he would watch them like a hawk ready for dropped ingredients – anything that touched the floor was his. However, he could smell the woman sitting at their table with the annoying little sausage dog was upset, and that made him curious. More than that though, there was a big piece of clanger under one of the tables by the window. If the police created a distraction, it was going to be his.