Death Devil's Bridge Read Online Free

weekend house party where the Prince of Wales was also a guest, and their hostess, the Countess of Warwick, a chief suspect. Together, Sir Charles and Kate had brought the inquiry to a successful conclusion, to the grateful relief of His Highness and the countess.
    With a flourish, Mudd opened the double doors to the stately dining room and stepped through. “Dinner is served,” he announced.
    Charles turned to Kate, a smile crinkling the corners of his sherry-brown eyes. “Well, my dear,” he asked, “shall we see what surprises from the kitchen await us this evening?”
    The vicar raised his shaggy white eyebrows. “I do hope you have not lost your cook,” he said earnestly. “Sarah Pratt is among the finest in the county.”
    â€œMrs. Pratt is still with us,” Kate replied. “Charles has presented her with a new challenge, however, and she has not quite mastered it. Last night’s dinner,” she added to the vicar, in a low voice, “was a culinary catastrophe. I hope we fare better tonight.”
    â€œA new challenge?” the vicar asked, and chuckled. “You cannot be suggesting that there is something in the line of cookery that confounds Mrs. Pratt.”
    Kate gestured at the gaslight that illuminated the drawing room. “You noticed, perhaps, that we are modernizing Bishop’s Keep. Charles has piped water to the kitchen and installed a gas cooker. The water is welcome, but Mrs. Pratt is in mortal fear of a gas explosion.”
    She glanced down the mahogany table, which was covered with damask and decorated with clusters of green smilax interwoven with stephanotis and rosy-pink lapageria. The silver gleamed, the crystal epergnes sparkled, and the new gas wall sconces cast a golden glow over the room. But Kate shook her head with all the apprehension of a hostess who has good reason to fear the worst.
    â€œI do hope,” she said prayerfully, “that things are going well in the kitchen.”

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    God sends meat and the devil sends cooks.
    â€”THOMAS DELONEY
Works, 1600
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    B ut in the kitchen, things were not going well at all.
    Sarah Pratt was rushing to assemble the lobster bouchées —cooked lobster and mushrooms stirred into a Mornay sauce and piled into delicate pastry cases. The sauce had scorched, in consequence of the gas jet being turned too high. Worse, Mrs. Pratt’s hand was trembling so violently from nerves (the gas, after all, might explode at any moment) that she had snipped a great deal too much fennel into it. And there was Harriet the kitchen maid, standing beside the cooker, weeping, her finger in her mouth. She had carelessly stuck it in the gas flame when she attempted to remove the kettle.
    â€œI don’t care tuppence fer yer finger, Harriet,” Sarah Pratt snapped. “The soup’s already gone up an’ the lobster must follow without delay. Put these pastries into that miserable oven to brown. Five minutes only, not a minute more.”
    Sarah spoke with greater certainty than she felt. Five minutes would have been quite adequate in her steady, predictable coal range with the capacious oven, which had been a fixture in her kitchen for over two decades. But the new gas cooker, which Sir Charles had installed in place of the dependable iron range, was of an unknown temper. Perhaps the cases should be browned for seven minutes, or ten, or even more.
    â€œWatch,” she commanded. “Don’t let’em bum on their bottoms!”
    â€œYes, mum,” Harriet said, eyeing the cooker as if it were the devil. Sarah turned to the next task, preparing the hollandaise sauce that would go up with the salmon, after the joint. Then there were the carrots to cream and the peas to be cooked with lettuce and tiny onions, and the sweet to send up—a gooseberry fool, ready and waiting in the galvanized box under the ice tray. And then the savory—ham croquettes