Recipes for Love and Murder Read online

  Sally Andrew lives in a mud-brick house on a nature reserve near Ladismith in the Klein Karoo (South Africa). She has published a number of non-fiction books and educational articles. Recipes for Love and Murder is her first novel.

  @TannieSall

  www.sallyandrew.com

  textpublishing.com.au

  The Text Publishing Company

  Swann House

  22 William Street

  Melbourne Victoria 3000

  Australia

  Copyright © 2015 by Sally Andrew

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  The recipes contained in this book are for entertainment purposes only. The author and publisher make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the recipes contained here for any purpose.

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  First published in Australia by The Text Publishing Company, 2015

  Typeset in Sabon LT Std by Palimpsest Book Production Ltd, Falkirk, Stirlingshire

  Cover design by Allison Saltzman and Sara Wood

  Cover image of ShweShwe cloth © by Da Gama Company Ltd.

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

  Creator: Andrew, Sally, author.

  Title: Recipes for love and murder : a Tannie Maria mystery / by Sally Andrew.

  ISBN: 9781925240092 (paperback)

  9781925095913 (ebook)

  Series: Andrew, Sally. Tannie Maria mystery.

  Subjects: Detective and mystery stories.

  Love stories.

  Cooking—Fiction.

  Dewey Number: A823.4

  This book is dedicated to my amazing parents, Bosky and Paul Andrew

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER EIGHTY

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-SIX

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-NINE

  CHAPTER NINETY

  CHAPTER NINETY-ONE

  TANNIE MARIA’S RECIPES

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  Isn’t life funny? You know, how one thing leads to another in a way you just don’t expect.

  That Sunday morning, I was in my kitchen stirring my apricot jam in the cast-iron pot. It was another dry summer’s day in the Klein Karoo, and I was glad for the breeze coming in the window.

  ‘You smell lovely,’ I told the appelkooskonfyt.

  When I call it apricot ‘jam’ it sounds like something in a tin from the Spar, but when it’s konfyt, you know it’s made in a kitchen. My mother was Afrikaans and my father was English and the languages are mixed up inside me. I taste in Afrikaans and argue in English, but if I swear I go back to Afrikaans again.

  The apricot konfyt was just coming right, getting thick and clear, when I heard the car. I added some apricot kernels and a stick of cinnamon to the jam; I did not know that the car was bringing the first ingredient in a recipe for love and murder.

  But maybe life is like a river that can’t be stopped, always winding towards or away from death and love. Back and forth. Still, even though life moves like that river, lots of people go their whole lives without swimming. I thought I was one of those people.

  The Karoo is one of the quietest places in South Africa, so you can hear an engine a long way off. I turned off the gas flame and put the lid on the pot. I still had time to wash my hands, take off my blue apron, check my hair in the mirror and put on the kettle.

  Then I heard a screech of brakes and a bump and I guessed it was Hattie. She’s a terrible driver. I peeked out and saw her white Toyota Etios snuggled up to a eucalyptus tree in my driveway. I was glad to see she had missed my old Nissan bakkie. I took out the melktert from the fridge. Harriet Christie is my friend and the editor of the Klein Karoo Gazette where I write my recipe page. I am not a journalist; I am just a tannie who likes to cook a lot and write a little. My father was a journalist and my ma a great cook. They did not have a lot in common, so in a funny way I like to think I bring them together with my recipe page.

  Hattie was in her fancy church clothes, a pinkish skirt and jacket. Her high heels wobbled a bit on the peach pips in my walkway, but when she stayed on the paving stones she was okay. I still feel a bit ashamed when I see people coming straight from church, because I haven’t been since my husband Fanie died. All those years sitting nice and pretty next to him on those wooden pews and listening to the preacher going on and on and then driving home and Fanie still dondering me, kind of put me off church. Being beaten like that put me off believing in anything m
uch. God, faith, love went out the window in my years with Fanie.

  I’ve left the windows open since then, but they haven’t come back in.

  So there was Hattie, at my door. She didn’t have to knock because it’s always open. I love the fresh air, the smell of the veld with its wild bushes and dry earth, and the little sounds my chickens make when they scratch in the compost heap.

  ‘Come in, come in, my skat,’ I said to her.

  A lot of the Afrikaans ladies stopped being my friends when I left the Dutch Reformed Church, but Hattie is English and goes to St Luke’s. There are more than forty churches in Ladismith. At St Luke’s coloureds and whites sit side by side quite happily. Hattie and I are both fifty-something but otherwise we are different in many ways. Hattie is long and thin with a neat blonde hairstyle and a pish-posh English way about her. I’m short and soft (a bit too soft in the wrong places) with short brown curls and untidy Afrikaans. She has eyes that are blue like a swimming pool, and mine are pond-green. Her favourite shoes are polished, with heels, but I prefer my veldskoene. Hattie doesn’t bother much with food (though she does like my milk tart); while for me cooking and eating are two of the best reasons to be alive. My mother gave me a love of cooking, but it was only when I discovered what bad company my husband was that I realised what good company food can be. Some might think food is too important to me, but let them think that. Without food, I would be very lonely. In fact, without food, I would be dead. Hattie is good company too, and we are always happy to see each other. You know how it is – some people you can just be yourself with.

  ‘Good morning, Tannie Maria,’ she said.

  I liked the way she sometimes called me Tannie, Auntie (even though she says it in her English way, as if it rhymes with ‘nanny’, when in fact it rhymes with ‘honey’). She leaned down to kiss my cheek, but she missed and kissed the dry Karoo air instead.

  ‘Coffee?’ I said. Then I looked at the clock. The English don’t like coffee after eleven o’clock. ‘Tea?’

  ‘That would be super,’ said Hattie, clapping her hands in that Mary Poppins way of hers.

  But she wasn’t looking so super herself. Her frown was wrinkled like the leaves on a gwarrie tree.

  ‘Are you okay, skat?’ I said, as I prepared the tea tray. ‘You look worried.’

  ‘I do love your house,’ she said, patting my wooden kitchen table. ‘All the Oregon and the thick mud walls. It’s so . . . authentic.’

  When Fanie died, I sold the house we had in town and got this one out here in the veld.

  ‘It’s a nice old farmhouse,’ I said. ‘What’s the matter, Hats?’

  She sucked in her cheeks, like the words were falling back down her throat too fast.

  ‘Let’s sit on the stoep,’ I said, carrying the tray to the table and chairs outside.

  From my stoep you can see the garden with its lawn and vegetables and all the different trees. And then on the other side of my low wooden fence is the long dirt road leading up to my house, and the dry veld with its bushes and old gwarrie trees. The nearest house is a few kilometres away, hidden behind a koppie, but the trees make good neighbours.

  Hattie smoothed her skirt under her as she sat down. I tried to catch her eye, but her gaze jumped all over the garden, like she was watching a bird flying about. One of my rust-brown hens came out from where she was resting under a geranium bush and helped herself to the buffet on the compost heap. But this wasn’t the bird Hattie was watching. Hers flew from the lemon tree to the vegetable patch then hopped from the lizard-tail bush to the honeybells and back again. I heard birds calling all around us, but could see nothing where she was looking.

  ‘Can you see something there in the veld plants?’ I asked.

  ‘Heavens above, it’s warm,’ she said.

  She took an envelope from her pocket and fanned her face with it.

  ‘Let me give you some milk tart.’

  I cut slices and put them on our plates.

  ‘It’s just got to rain soon,’ she said.

  Now she was following the invisible bird as if it was jumping all over the table. I pushed the plate towards her.

  ‘It’s your favourite,’ I said.

  I could tell Hattie had more to say than the weather report. Her face was red, as if there was a hot thing in her mouth, but the corners of her lips were tight where she was holding it in.

  Hattie was not one to be shy to speak, so I did not try and rush her. I poured our tea and looked out at the dry veld. It had been a long time since the rain. Across the veld were those low hills of the Klein Karoo, rolling up and dipping down like waves. On and on, like a still and stony sea. I picked up my melktert and bit off a mouthful. It was very good, the vanilla, milk and cinnamon working together to make that perfect comforting taste. The texture was just right too – the tart smooth and light, and the crust thin and crumbly.

  Hattie looked into her cup, as if her imaginary bird had jumped in there. I could see a real bird in the shadows of a gwarrie tree, too far away to see what kind. I love those old trees. Some of them are thousands of years old. They are all knobbly and twisted like elbows and knees, and their leaves are dark green and wrinkled.

  Hattie sat up straight and had a sip of her tea. She sighed. This is what stoeps are for. Drinking tea, and sighing and looking out at the veld. But Hattie was still looking inside her cup.

  ‘Delicious,’ I said, eating the last melktert crumbs on my plate.

  My bird flew closer and landed in a sweet-thorn tree. It was a shrike. Hunting.

  Hattie did not touch her milk tart, and I couldn’t sit still any longer.

  ‘What is it, Hattie, my skat?’

  She swallowed some air and put the envelope on the table.

  ‘Oh, gosh, Maria,’ she said. ‘It’s not good news.’

  I felt the tea and melktert do a small twist inside my belly.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Now I’m not one to rush into bad news, so I helped myself to more tea and milk tart. Hattie was still drinking her first cup of tea, looking miserable. The envelope just sat there, full of its bad news.

  ‘It’s from Head Office,’ she said, running her hand over a bump in her throat.

  Maybe the air she had swallowed had got stuck there.

  Hattie didn’t often hear from Head Office. But when she did it was to tell her what to do. The community gazettes are watchamacallit, syndicated. Each gazette is independent, and has to raise most of its own funds through advertising, but they must still follow the Head Office rules.

  The shrike dived from the branch of the sweet-thorn tree down onto the ground.

  ‘Maria, they say we absolutely must have an advice column,’ she said.

  I frowned at her. What was all the fuss about?

  ‘Like an agony aunt column,’ she said. ‘Advice about love and such. They say it increases sales.’

  ‘Ja. It might,’ I said.

  I was still waiting for the bad news.

  ‘We just don’t have the space. Or the funds to print the four extra pages that we’ll need to add one column.’ She held her hands like a book. I knew how it worked. Four pages were printed back to back on one big sheet. ‘I’ve tried to rework the layout. I’ve tried to see what we can leave out. But there’s nothing. Just nothing.’

  I shifted in my chair. The shrike flew back up to a branch with something it had caught.

  ‘I phoned them on Friday,’ said Hattie, ‘to tell them, Sorry we just can’t do it, not right now, I said.’ Her throat became all squeezed like a plastic straw. ‘They said we can cut out the recipe column.’

  Her voice sounded far away. I was watching the shrike; it had a lizard in its beak. It stabbed its meat onto a big white thorn.

  ‘Tannie Maria.’

  Was the lizard still alive, I wondered?

  ‘I argued, told them how much the readers adored your column. But they said the advice column was non-negotiable.’

  Was the butcher bird going to leave the
meat out to dry, and make biltong?

  ‘Tannie Maria.’

  I looked at her. Her face looked so tight and miserable – as if her life was going to pot, instead of mine. That recipe column was my life. Not just the money. Yes, I needed the extra food money; the pension I got after my husband’s death was small. But the column was how I shared what was most important to me: my cooking.

  My throat felt dry. I drank some tea.

  ‘But I’ve been thinking,’ Hattie said. ‘You could write the advice column. Give advice about love and such.’

  I snorted. It was not a pretty sound.

  ‘I know nothing about love,’ I said.

  Just then one of my chickens, the hen with the dark feathers around her neck, walked across the lawn, pecking at the ground, and I did feel a kind of love for her. I loved the taste of my melktert and the smell of rusks baking and the sound of the rain when it came after the long wait. And love was an ingredient in everything I cooked. But advice columns were not about melktert or chicken-love.

  ‘Not that kind of love, anyway,’ I said. ‘And I’m not one to give advice. You should ask someone like Tannie Gouws who works at CBL Hardware. She always has advice for everyone.’

  ‘One of the marvellous things about you, Maria, is you never give unsolicited advice. But you are a superb listener. You’re the one we come to when there’s anything important to discuss. Remember how you helped Jessie when she couldn’t decide whether to go and work in Cape Town?’

  ‘I remember giving her koeksisters . . .’

  ‘You listened to her and gave her excellent advice. Thanks to you, she is still here with us.’

  I shook my head and said, ‘I still think it was the koeksisters.’

  ‘I had another idea,’ Hattie said. ‘Why don’t you write a cookbook? Tannie Maria’s Recipes. Maybe I can help you find a publisher.’

  I heard a whirring sound and I looked up to see the shrike flying away. Leaving the lizard on the thorn.

  A book wasn’t a bad idea, really, but the words that came from my mouth were: ‘It’s lonely to write a book.’

  She reached out to take my hand. But my hand just lay there.

  ‘Oh, Tannie Maria,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  Hattie was a good friend. I didn’t want to make her suffer. I gave her hand a squeeze.