Recipes for Love and Murder
Read Recipes for Love and Murder Online
Authors: Sally Andrew
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
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.
CookingâFiction.
Dewey Number: A823.4
This book is dedicated to my amazing parents, Bosky and Paul Andrew
CONTENTS
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.
âYou smell lovely,' I told the appelkooskonfyt.
When I call it apricot âjam' 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 much. 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.
âCome 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 â some people you can just be yourself with.
âGood 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 ânanny', when in fact it rhymes with âhoney'). She leaned down to kiss my cheek, but she missed and kissed the dry Karoo air instead.
âCoffee?' I said. Then I looked at the clock. The English don't like coffee after eleven o'clock. âTea?'
âThat 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.
âAre you okay, skat?' I said, as I prepared the tea tray. âYou look worried.'
âI do love your house,' she said, patting my wooden kitchen table. âAll 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.
âIt's a nice old farmhouse,' I said. âWhat's the matter, Hats?'
She sucked in her cheeks, like the words were falling back down her throat too fast.
âLet'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.