The Proof in the Pudding

Book 0: Prudence Bulstrode

by Rosemary Shrager

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Cozy Mystery; Culinary Cozy Mysteries; Female Sleuths

Synopsis

'Rosie can write and Prudence Bulstrode is here to stay' Miriam Margolyes

'Witty, warm and so enjoyable' Jo Brand

The next irresistible cosy crime novel from celebrity TV chef Rosemary Shrager!

Preparing a midwinter's feast for all hundred residents of the little Yorkshire village of Scrafton Busk is exactly the kind of challenge Prudence Bulstrode adores. A chance to show off her muffin-topped winter stew, lamb shank hotpot and Scarborough woof - and, of course, her famous figgy pudding - is just the thing to shake off the winter blues.

But on the night of the feast, local vagabond Terry Chandler is found dead - his body entombed in the pristine snowman standing pride of place on the village green. Who could have wanted Chandler dead? Why would they stow his body in such strange circumstances? And what is the meaning of his last enigmatic message, directing his brother to Mystery Hills, a place of which no one has ever heard?

Crime and cookery continue to collide as Prudence and her granddaughter Suki get drawn into another mystifying murder . . .

Praise for The Proof in the Pudding

'Warm and witty' Yours

'Fans of Christie. . . to Beaton, should tuck in' Peterborough Telegraph

'A killer combo of crime and cooking' Woman's Own

Praise for Rosemary Shrager

'A great yarn - Shrager knows her food and she's cooked up a storm. Murder is the main course but the side dishes fascinate. A fascinating conclusion - Rosie can write and Prudence Bulstrode is here to stay. I look forward to more in this series.' Miriam Margolyes

'I've long admired Rosemary as a woman of many talents. I just hadn't realized that writing is one of them. The Last Supper has pace and style and a very interesting cast of characters' Richard Vines

'Rosemary Shrager has created a welcome addition to the ranks of female amateur sleuths. The Last Supper is a witty, light-hearted mystery, in which the author has served up a tasty treat' Simon Brett

'The Last Supper is a charming, hugely entertaining book. Retired chef Prudence Bulstrode is cranky, stubborn and insightful; an utterly brilliant creation. I can't wait to see what she gets up to next' M W Craven

'Discover how a Michelin-starred Miss Marple displays the skills of a bloodhound as she sniffs out the scent of a killer in this thriller that rises to a conclusion like a perfect souffle.' Nick Ferrari

'A light-hearted, fun mystery, combining cookery and crime - what's not to love?' Woman's Weekly

'Shrager, herself a kitchen whizz on TV, has a natural talent and deft touch for exactly this kind of gentle fun' The Sun

Release date: February 23, 2023

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 80000

Sample

‘Well, Mrs Bulstrode, there you have it, just like you left them – one hundred of your finest figgy puddings, all in a row.’

One hundred and ten, thought Prudence as she perambulated up and down the shelves in the walk-in larder. A good cook always knew to make 10 per cent more than she’d actually need. Well, you could always count on there being a waiter who’d trip over his own shoelaces, or somebody else who’d ‘accidentally’ drop one on the kitchen floor, just so he’d have something to sneak home after shift. In a lifetime of working in kitchens, Prudence had seen it all.

She’d rarely seen a walk-in larder as palatial as this one though. This was the sort of larder that suggested there might be a new world hidden at its end. She’d worked in grand kitchens smaller than this larder, which felt – she reflected now – more like a wine cellar, with different crannies for spices and condiments, an alcove dedicated to baking ingredients, a shelf full of glass jars where various starters bubbled and frothed, and corners where strings of onions, parsnips and game birds were hanging. Prudence loved larders like these. There was a sense of exploration that came with poring over their shelves. Her figgy puddings, no matter how many of them there were, were the least remarkable thing of the lot.

‘How are they looking, Mrs Bulstrode?’

Each figgy pudding was wrapped in muslin cloth, tied off with Prudence’s signature crimson ribbon. They’d been maturing here for six weeks, ever since that Halloween weekend when Prudence had first driven her camper van up to the tiny Yorkshire village of Scrafton Busk and entered these hallowed kitchens. She prodded one with a finger now, then lifted it to test its weight – and, peeling back the muslin just a whisper, drew in its heady aroma of nutmeg, cinnamon and sultanas. The scent of the rum was enough to get a woman sozzled, thought Prudence – and that was precisely as it should have been.

‘Oh,’ Prudence smiled, with some satisfaction, ‘I think they’ll do.’ There was a twinkle in her eye as she turned around. In the larder doors, the steadfast figure of Francesca Thomas was standing as statuesque as a soldier. Francesca the Fantastic, they called her on the ‘events management’ circuit. (In Prudence’s heyday, ‘events management’ hadn’t been nearly as grand as it was nowadays – there’d been a time when anyone with a healthy dose of common sense and commitment could organise an event; now you had to hire a professional.) Francesca was willowy and blonde, but had the focus, precision and attitude of a Roman legate leading his legion to conquer an untamed land. She had a clipboard and everything. ‘Have the rest of my ingredients arrived?’

Francesca checked her wristwatch and Prudence heard her counting the seconds, from one to ten, beneath her breath. Then, on her waist, a little pager started buzzing. ‘That will be them now, Mrs Bulstrode. But your kitchen assistant is attending – so perhaps we ought to take a tour of the dining hall?’

Kitchen assistant, thought Prudence. Well, that was what she was. But she also happened to be Prudence’s grand-daughter. There was a time when the thought of Suki taking charge of a delivery would have frightened Prudence to her very soul; the words ‘wayward’, ‘errant’, ‘short-sighted’ and ‘contrary’ had been invented for girls like Suki. But she’d aided and abetted Prudence on five jobs now and, with each one, she was growing a little more skilled. Yes, Prudence thought, Suki could easily handle a delivery. ‘Lead on!’ she said to Francesca, and marched out of the larder, leaving the figgy puddings behind.

A barrel load of turnips cascaded over Suki’s head.

‘Ouch!’ she cried, hopping from foot to foot. ‘Ouch! Get … these … ouch!’

Suki’s actual words were much more fragrant than these. The word that exploded out of her mouth when the last turnip – a brute of a vegetable, surely fit to be used as the weapon in a very bloody murder – cracked her on the side of the head was so fragrant it sent one of Scrafton Grange’s front-of-house staff scuttling away in horror. Evidently, they didn’t have the very worst kinds of swearwords in the remote Yorkshire Dales.

‘I’m sorry, Miss,’ said the lorry driver, standing on the platform at the back of his vehicle. He’d been angling one of the pallets on to the elevator platform when the barrel slipped free. ‘I normally deliver furniture, you see. It’s difficult to spill a four-poster bed, or a garden bench. We’re not trained in turnips and winter greens.’ Scratching his head (and finding some not inconsiderable flakes of dandruff, which he proceeded to flick away), he looked back at the crammed interior of his lorry and said, ‘What are you doing, battening down for winter? There’s enough food in here to feed an army.’

‘The whole village,’ Suki replied, rubbing the bump on her head where the turnip had tried to end her short life.

‘What?’

‘I said the whole village. We’re cooking for them all.’

‘The whole village? What, expecting to be cut off, are you? I’ll tell you – I’ve had a devil getting this lorry up those snaking roads. A bit more snowfall and I’ll have to spend the winter here myself.’ It was here that the lorry driver, as dashingly handsome as a naked mole rat, decided to chance his arm. ‘Hey, you could keep me warm with some turnip soup!’

Ice cold, Suki said, ‘No thank you. Just help me get this lot into the Grange, would you? Time’s ticking on.’

The Grange: it sat in the heart of Scrafton Busk like an imposing castle – which, in a sense, it was. Constructed five hundred years ago, at the behest of some minor pretender to the throne – whose family had decimated itself in the Wars of the Roses, a big barney designed to prove whether Lancashire or Yorkshire was best – it even retained the turrets of its former fortifications. It had, the history books said (Suki’s friend Numbers had been only too eager to do the research), been a singularly useless castle – positioned badly, protecting a dale which few people knew about and over which even fewer cared, it had been more vanity project than impregnable fortress. In all its days it had seen not one siege; no armies had met in glorious battle on the pastures of Scrafton Busk, no king had lost his head in its courtyard and no runaway princess been taken into its tower for protection.

Just as well, then, that the National Trust had turned the Grange into one of the most glorious visitor attractions in the whole of the county. A building that had proven pointless as a seat of power was, hundreds of years later, very much in demand as an arena for concerts, festivals, one or two party political conferences – and tonight a feast, the like of which Scrafton Busk had never known.

‘Here,’ said the lorry driver, ‘I’ve got five sacks of King Edward’s, ten tubs of marmalade – I didn’t know the stuff comes in tubs! – and a case of malt whisky. Hey, you don’t think I could have a bottle, do you? A tip, for all this hard graft?’

Suki barely listened. She was gazing out over the snowy pastures of Scrafton Busk. In front of the Grange, the village green was an expanse of pristine white. At its heart stood the snowman the village children had made – somebody had evidently offloaded an unwanted scarf, because the poor creature was wearing a knitted monstrosity of the most lurid pink – and, arrayed around the green’s edges, were all the picture postcard houses and shops of the village, every one of them strung up in twinkling Christmas lights. By the time evening came around, Scrafton Busk would be lit up in glorious reds, greens and blues. There’d be wassailing on the green, no doubt, and sleigh bells jangling in anticipation of Christmas.

Suki’s eyes did not deceive her: a red-breasted robin had landed on the snowman’s top hat, and there he stood, trilling a merry tune.

Was ever a sight as perfect as this? she thought. It might as well have been taken directly from a chocolate box.

She didn’t suppose anything terrible ever happened in a place as picture perfect as Scrafton Busk.

Somebody was calling her name. She turned around – just in time to get slapped in the face by a crate of iced scallops as the driver lifted it from the lorry – and saw her grandmother halloing her from the doors of the Grange.

‘Just bring it all through,’ said Suki. ‘If we’re not in the kitchens and prepping in an hour, the evening’s already lost.’

‘I’ll have burger and fries!’ the lorry driver said, cackling. ‘I say – burger and fries for me!’ he repeated, but Suki was already gone.

Prudence was waiting for her at the doors to the Grange. ‘I want to show you something,’ she began, and soon Suki was following her into the heart of the building.

‘This place used to be the Great Hall,’ said Prudence at last. They had come to the doors of the Grange’s most palatial room, a hall ten times as big as the village hall back home in Chelwood Ghyll. It was a quarter the size of a football field. Ostentatious chandeliers hung from the rafters. Christmas lights and wreaths garlanded every window in every wall. And, across its length and breadth, grand oak tables were currently being expertly laid by the Grange’s silver-service staff.

Suki was quite taken aback. She’d been on various assignments with her grandmother, but nothing quite like this.

‘Well, Suki, dear,’ Prudence said with a smile; the twinkle in her eyes told Suki that her grandmother was relishing the challenge, ‘do you think you’re ready for this? One hundred villagers, all invited to the Midwinter Feast. Every man, woman and child from Scrafton Busk will be here under this roof, tonight. They’ll be eating our muffin-topped winter stew. Our winter root crumble – for the vegetarians, of course. Our lamb shank hotpot and Scarborough woof. Squidgy chocolate pears.’

‘Your figgy pudding, Grandma.’

‘My figgy pudding indeed. Suki, this isn’t going to be easy. It’s you and me against a hundred ravenous stomachs. They’ve been waiting all year for this. And our bosses are counting on us to give them exactly what they need. You know what’s at stake …’

Actually, Suki wasn’t quite sure. The Forward Reach Energy Corporation, who were sponsoring the event, seemed to have some vague idea about winning over the villagers by romancing their stomachs. Suki didn’t quite know what for and, right now, she didn’t care to ask. All that she cared about was that the clock was ticking, the lorry driver was still out there cracking jokes to himself while he spilled and bruised all their prize ingredients, and she was still – despite her grandmother’s best efforts – a novice with her knife skills.

‘To the kitchens, Suki!’ Prudence declared, with a flourishing smile. ‘We’ve got quite a battle ahead!’

Though no pitched battles between lords and kings had ever been fought in the hills of Scrafton Busk, a war was surely being waged in the kitchens of the old castle today. Prudence had been granted several of the Grange’s kitchen staff to work as underlings – surely a prerequisite when you were tasked with feeding an entire village – but somehow it didn’t seem to make things any easier. Having an army in your employ simply transformed the job, so that Prudence found herself imitating a military general as she directed them in the assembly of an infinite number of individual winter stews, each to be topped with the muffin mix Suki was making. Lighter than a traditional dumpling, it had just the right level of refinement for an event like this. What’s more, it was easy. Some of the girls (thankfully not Suki, who – in one of the few ways she took after her grandmother – had better sense) kept chirruping on about how this whole endeavour was like one of those ghastly ‘mass catering challenges’ on the new-fangled television cookery shows. ‘We should have cooked up a big cauldron of chilli!’ one of the girls shrieked, to gales of quite unwarranted laughter. ‘Spag bol!’ crowed another, and Prudence shuddered; she had never been able to hear this abbreviation without a quiver of outrage running through her body.

Still, the girls were adept at doing what they were told – and, in a twist of events Prudence had not seen coming, Suki turned out to have an expertise in translating Prudence’s more specific instructions to the chattering assistants. There was mess aplenty, but by mid-afternoon – when darkness was beginning to creep over the dales, and the first Christmas lights were lighting up the houses that bordered the village green – Prudence was growing ever more confident that tonight’s feast would be a success. Content for a moment to step outside of the chaos, and gather her thoughts while she worked through a spot of washing up, she stood with a nice cup of chamomile in the kitchen window and gazed out at the green.

She’d been to some idyllic places in this country. Her old career had seen her whisked off to some of the most idyllic locations in the world as well – cooking for a competition winner on one of the Maldives’ most sun-kissed beaches sprang to mind – but Prudence wasn’t sure if the sight from any other kitchen window had ever given her this kind of satisfaction. The snow had gently started falling again, dancing in beautiful patterns over the snowman in the middle of the green. She’d stood in this exact spot every morning since she arrived in Scrafton Busk, fortifying herself with tea and crumpets for the day ahead – and, in those dreamy moments, had remembered being a girl herself, building a snowman outside the greengrocer’s her father used to run, or with the other girls at St Marianne’s, prepping for snowball fights on the hockey pitch.

Winter had a way of making you wistful, Prudence reflected, but what a joy it was to get lost in dreams of childhood again.

She was still enjoying this moment when there came an almighty crash behind her, and the kitchen assistants started turning in circles like panicked pigeons.

Prudence turned around. Around thirty ramekin dishes filled with their tender braised chuck had crashed from the kitchen countertop to the tiled floor, an avalanche of beautifully cooked beef, carrot and heady, luscious gravy.

‘Should have just done spag bol!’ one of the kitchen hands sobbed.

Prudence took one last look at the snowman, drew one last peaceful breath, and rolled up her sleeves again. The battle wasn’t yet lost, but it was surely slipping away. ‘Suki, a mop,’ she declared. ‘This isn’t over yet.’

Prudence Dorothea Bulstrode had never lost a battle in her life – except, perhaps, the battle she was waging with the hedgehogs in her kitchen garden back home; in the end, she’d given up and started feeding them instead – and tonight was no exception. By the time 6 p.m. came around, and the first villagers were trekking around the green to step into the warm, welcoming grounds of the Grange, the braised chuck stews were waiting, their muffin tops ready to be browned in the oven; the winter root crumbles were happily baking; the Scarborough woof was about to be baked with its potato rostis; and Prudence had prepped the figgy puddings to be dealt with as soon as the main courses were served. By now, the various kitchen assistants had taken flight – off to change into their waiting uniforms – and Prudence and Suki were alone, restoring the kitchen to some sense of order. Occasionally, Francesca the Fantastic popped her head around the door to satisfy herself that everything was going according to schedule. Prudence could sense her trepidation, but tried not to begrudge her it. This event was, perhaps, the biggest, most elaborate event to have taken place in Scrafton Busk’s history – and Francesca, who ordinarily organised weddings, conferences and one or two soft-play parties for toddlers, had been drafted in from Harrogate, some miles to the south, to organise it. ‘Quite a change, Mrs Bulstrode, from ensuring you’ve enough balloons to go with the party bags, or that you’ve enough cheesy puff crisps to go round. But we’ve got there in the end, haven’t we?’

The waiting staff were lined up outside the kitchen doors, ready to load up their serving trolleys. Prudence looked back at the window, and the snowman, now only dimly visible in the gathering dark. Out there, the village was eerily empty, only a few last stragglers crossing the green and heading for the Grange. The Great Hall must have been full to bursting, one hundred and more ravenous stomachs awaiting this meal.

‘I think we have,’ Prudence answered Francesca. ‘Take it away!’

Prudence herself accompanied the waiters out of the kitchen and into the Grange’s grand reception area. There she stood, with some modicum of pride, as the waiters flocked into the Great Hall, marshalled by Francesca as they began to fill the tables. From here, Prudence could only catch glimpses of the crowded tables, but it was quite a sight to behold. How often, in modern times, did an entire village congregate like this? She wondered if it would ever have happened, even when the Grange was the local castle. Had the local lords ever been as generous as this?

She was about to return to the kitchens – there was still so much to do – when the front doors of the Grange opened up and an elegant lady with dark red hair, and a face almost as red from the burning cold, clattered through. Prudence recognised Meredith Goodman straightaway. Thirty years old, slender and lithe – and possessed of the kind of confidence only a public school education could cultivate (that being a confidence far beyond her actual merits) – Meredith had been the first representative of Forward Reach that Prudence met. Tonight, she was wearing a little black number, a faux-fur stole – and, for some reason Prudence could not quite understand, a great pair of Wellington boots, the kind a country girl might take out for a tramp in the fields, not the kind of footwear an elegant corporate go-getter wore to a banquet, even when she was out in the shires. Her eyes caught Prudence’s as she hurried through. No doubt she had seen the way Prudence had lingered over the unusual footwear. ‘Oh, I went and snapped a heel out there on the ice! It’s a wicked night, Mrs Bulstrode. Francesca, your shoes please.’

‘My shoes?’

But evidently Francesca knew her place, for she was already taking them off. A pair of gleaming black court shoes, Meredith accepted them with only a minor level of distaste, then slipped them on her feet and rolled her eyes dramatically at Prudence. ‘No rest for the wicked, Mrs Bulstrode!’ she said, laughing, with a slightly manic look in her eye. Then she peered through the flapping doors leading into the Great Hall. ‘Oh Lord, I’m the last one here. I promised Dr James I’d be first. But there’s just so much to get through before the contracts get signed this week – that is, of course, if they ever get signed at all. We’ve your figgy puddings to rely on for that. I must get on, Mrs Bulstrode – this is the night, the night we’ve been waiting for!’ She grasped Prudence’s hand. ‘I can’t thank you enough. With what you’re doing for us here, I’m sure the village will begin to understand – Forward Reach is for the people!’

Then she scurried through the doors, taking her seat at the head table where the other members of the Forward Reach board – including her employer, the white-whiskered Dr Michael James, a man who cared not for his receding hairline when he could replace it with the luscious waves falling over his shoulder – were gathered.

Prudence heaved a sigh. The first phase of this epic job was complete.

Now it was on to the second.

Francesca stood, shoeless, in the middle of the hall. ‘I suppose I’m wearing wellies for the night then, am I?’ She sighed.

‘Here,’ said Prudence, and handed her a key card for the quarters she’d been given in the Grange rooms above. ‘I always come prepared, and we look just about the same size. It’s the suitcase by the foot of the bed. See what takes your fancy.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Bulstrode. And …’ She faltered, uncertain if she should go on. ‘That woman has been the bane of this job for me. She’s treating me like her secretary. Having me open all the mail that gets sent for them, here at the Grange – well, there’s a lot comes from the protestors, and they want that sifting out. Sending me on errands. Running me like a dog who needs exhausting before bed. All I’ve ever wanted is to do a good job. For everything to go swimmingly. To perhaps – just perhaps – get a spot of recognition for it.’

After Francesca was gone, Prudence hurried back to the kitchen – where, as ever, she found Suki gazing with some kind of awe into her iPhone. Prudence only hoped she wasn’t looking at her own face in the camera.

She let out another deep exhalation, loud enough to make Suki fumble her phone, then quickly hide it away. ‘It makes me glad I never worked in a professional kitchen, Suki. Can you imagine this, every single night of your life? I’ve known enough chefs, my dear – professional despots, every one.’ She shook her head. ‘And only the most vainglorious of them ever go and present themselves to their customers like we’ll have to tonight.’

Prudence had always been doubtful about this particular part of the contract she’d signed – but, after much discussion (and various ‘emails’ that Suki had sent back and forth, Prudence herself refusing to entertain anything as dastardly as an email address), she had agreed that, as the main course came to its conclusion, she would parade herself in front of the villagers. ‘That’s what they’re paying you for, Grandma,’ Suki had said, with a roll of her eyes; the girl had been reading all sorts of business books, supplied to her by her dubious friend ‘Numbers’, and too often thought she had the whole world worked out. ‘There are plenty of cooks they could have employed for this – but they asked for you. Your face, Grandma, that’s what sets you apart. They’ll want the whole village to see the lengths they’ve gone to.’

‘I expect I shall feel like I’m at Crufts,’ Prudence had replied. It wasn’t that she was against a bit of publicity – Lord knows, her whole career had been built out of it, and she’d never shied away from a magazine shoot or a place on a chat-show sofa; in fact, she’d positively enjoyed them. Even in retirement, she liked a bit of the limelight here and there – a village fayre, a local fete, a cooking demo where she might indulge in one of her old favourites, the raspberry roulade that had first made her name, or even the figgy pudding which, she was quite certain, had first led to this particular approach. But there was something about this job that had never sat right with her. She had been eager for the chance to return to the hills and dales of Yorkshire – how many times had she cooked in Harrogate and Richmond? How often did she dream of her father’s old greengrocer’s, and the early years of her childhood, pottering up and down the Shambles in York, or picnicking on the moors over Masham? All of that had appealed to her enormously. It was the manner of her engagement that rankled. The Forward Reach Energy Corporation had been generous with the package they offered, but something about their desperation to secure Prudence’s services had set an alarm bell ringing. She supposed what she ought to have done was ask Suki and Numbers to go on to their ‘Internet’ and search them up – it was what Prudence’s agent would have done back in the day, calling it ‘due diligence’ and deducting 15 per cent for the privilege – but instead she’d agreed to the job and already made the Halloween trip to prepare the figgy puddings before she’d met their representative face to face and learned what they were about. Now being paraded around like she was their pet, and like she approved of everything they did, was making her feel decidedly conflicted.

‘Maybe I should fix your hair,’ said Suki. ‘I think you’ve got flour in it. And perhaps a clean apron?’

There was nothing Prudence approved of less than a cook with a clean apron. A stained apron was a loved apron; the very first thing Prudence did, upon buying a new one, was to christen it with hot chocolate and beetroot. ‘We have a little time, Suki. And there’s prep for tomorrow yet.’

Whenever Suki’s heart flagged, her shoulders dropped and her body sagged like a comedian’s impression of a tantrumming teenager. Prudence watched it, now, with an anthropologist’s detached interest. She’d been employing her grand-daughter as her kitchen assistant for several months and, over that time. . .