Silhouette in Scarlet - Elizabeth Peters [52]
Blue-and-white-checked curtains swayed at the windows, and sunlight streaked the flagstone floor. Except for a few homey touches of that nature, the working end of the kitchen was a model of modern efficiency, and every appliance was the best procurable – refrigerator, stove, two wall ovens, and a couple of kilometres of counter space and cupboards.
I started opening cupboard doors. Mrs Andersson might be a traditional, old-fashioned lady, but she had a sneaking fascination for the latest in cooking gadgets. I had never seen such things, except in gourmet-kitchen shops – the latest-model Cuisinart, with every attachment known to man or woman, an electric pasta maker, an ice-cream machine – not the Italian model with which I was familiar, which retails at a mere four hundred dollars, but the aristocrat of ice-cream makers, a Minigel. There were an American milkshake mixer, a German coffeemaker with a built-in digital clock timer, a Danish waffle iron . . .
I was raised by a Swedish cook – two of them, in fact, for when my grandmother came to visit, she kicked Morn out of the kitchen and took over. Being a normal child, I had fought the effort of these ladies to turn me into another of the same breed, but they had moulded me better than they, or I, had realized. Mrs Andersson’s kitchen brought old instincts to reluctant life.
Drawers and more cupboards . . . Baking pans of every variety, for quiches, for tarts, for madeleines, for popovers. Rosette irons, woks, fish poachers, larding skewers, artichoke steamers, poachette rings . . . What the poor, frustrated woman did with all of it I could not imagine. If Gus was as antisocial as he claimed, she didn’t often get the chance to cook an elaborate meal. Maybe she played with her toys during the long winter evenings and stuffed the housemaid and the gardener with chocolate shakes, poached eggs, and apricot flan.
As I continued to explore, I saw there was one conspicuous omission in the collection. No knives, no cleavers, nothing with a sharp edge. The knife we had used at lunch was on the table, its surface dulled by smears of cheese and sausage. The message was as clear as print: Don’t try it – my absence will be duly noted. Besides, it was a foot and a half long, not the sort of weapon a girl can conceal in her bra.
Next to the kitchen was a pantry, its shelves filled with canned and packaged and bottled goods. A deep freeze muttered and clicked in one corner. We wouldn’t starve, at any rate. No, we wouldn’t starve . . .
The deep freeze was packed to the brim. Thoughtfully I hefted a ten-pound roast, and those suppressed impulses stirred anew. They weren’t violent impulses – I was not contemplating a murderous assault on Max with a frozen rump roast. I didn’t need to resort to esoteric blunt instruments; the house and grounds abounded in large, hard, lumpy objects. I had no intention of getting that close to Max or any of his boys.
I put the roast back into the freezer and opened the fridge. The signs of clumsy foraging were only too evident; the food was all jumbled around, and some oaf had tipped over a jar of jam, which had leaked over two shelves before forming a sticky puddle on the bottom. Ancestral urges won. I cleaned up the mess. When I started to straighten the shelves, the first thing I found was a large fish. The layers of plastic wrap encasing it did not dull the hostile gleam of its bulging eyes. Pikes are not your ordinary placid fish – they are predators, and look as mean as they act.
The fish had been cleaned and scaled, and the gills removed, so I assumed it was supposed to be served with the head intact. I had never eaten pike, but my grandmother used to bake