Death in Disguise: Inspector Barnaby #3 (Inspector Barnaby Mysteries) (Volume 3)

by Caroline Graham

Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby was cooking Moules à I’Indienne, pounding away at some cardamom seeds in a stone pestle. He wore a long cotton tablier of the sort favoured by waiters in speakeasy-type dives and had a glass of Frog’s Leap Chardonnay to hand. It had dawned on Tom the hard way, and over many years, that Joyce, his beloved prop and mainstay, was not going to (indeed saw no reason to) improve her cooking.

Barnaby had long ago decided that she suffered from the gastronomic equivalent to being tone deaf.

There was a text on the otherwise bare walls: God Is A Circle Whose Centre Is Everywhere And Circumference Nowhere.

She plugged in their long, rackety toaster. This was very old but most efficient, hurling zebra-striped squares of bread into the air the moment they were crisp. When the machine was full a dozen would fly up together, somersaulting gracefully in the air.

The soup looked rather pale. May dwelt on the possibility of adding a pinch of saffron. Brother Athelstan’s Herbal assured her that it ‘makyth a man merry’ but added a cautionary postscript telling of the Norwegian mystic Nils Skatredt who, after a heavy night on the pistils in 1462, OD’d on the stuff and died laughing. May replaced the tiny box and took down a jar of bay leaves.