The Mysterious Mousse Mystery

“Damn, I could have had mousse!” David realized after he ate a day-old slice of chocolate cake for breakfast, rather than the now legendary chocolate mousse made by Simone the night before.

His anguished cry of regret (which still echoes in the ears of those who were there) was not merely from his missing out on a much better delicacy. It was because the cake was poisoned. David dropped dead face first in the chocolate ganache icing.

Murder was suspected.

A detective was called.

I’m Nick Drake, that detective.

The first thing I did was try the mousse. It was delicious.

The next thing I did was to round up the usual suspects - all family members and zealous chocolate mousse aficionados.

They were all wildly uncooperative. They couldn’t agree on anything - not what time the mousse was made, where the cake came from, why David would ever choose cake over mousse?

Then the questions came fast and hard. Not from me, from them: Who invited me here? Did I have ID? Have I ever tasted a better mousse? Power mixer or by hand?

“Hold on!” I yelled. “What’s all this about power mixer or by hand?”

They all clammed up. They looked at each other, daring someone to speak.

Finally, Simone, the matriarch, stepped forward.

She was French, tiny and angry. She scared me a little as she poked her finger in my chest.

“Listen up, flat shoes, while I give you a little background.”

“In this family chocolate mousse has always reigned supreme as the desert of choice, the ancient family recipe handed down for generations (or maybe just by our grandmother Mémé, who may have actually invented it, for all I know). Hand whipped with only the finest chocolate, some sort of liquor (kirsch perhaps?) then set out in the snow to chill before serving… all necessary machinations to instill the perfect mousse that we all cherished.”

“So?” I said.

“Sew buttons!” I think she replied, but spat it in French, and I don’t speak French. Then she turned and walked away.

This is when another suspect stepped forward. A teen who went by the name of Linda. Or so she said.

“So, here’s the thing,” she began. “That woman, Simone, my mother…” she jerked her finger towards the now woman eating mousse and glaring at me. “She did it!”

“What! Ces’t ne pas possible!” Simone rose angrily.

Linda held out her hand to stop her rage. “I don’t mean you killed David,” she turned to me, aside. “She loved him like a son.”

“Really?” I made a note.

“He was her son.”

“Oh.” I crossed out what I had written.

“No, what I meant was that she broke tradition. She changed the recipe! Instead of enlisting (i.e. forcing) us kids to hand turn the chocolate goodness in the bowl with a wooden spatula (as decreed by Mémé to be the only way to make a true chocolate mousse,) Simone said, “To Hell with tradition, I’m using an electric mixer!”

There were gasps around the room.

Simone nodded. “Oui. I said that. And I’m proud of it. And don’t gasp! You all knew I did it! Yet you all ate it!”

Ah. I had a motive at last!

“Except for David.” Another female teen stepped up. “Dave was a purist.”

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I’m Joan. Linda’s and David’s sister. And Simone’s oldest daughter.”

“It all keeps coming back to Simone,” I muttered.

“Well, yah, there’s only the five of us here, and one is dead and one is you.” Joan looked bemused.

“Astute! I like that.”

“Thank you.”

“What can you tell me about this Mémé person? She’s still a person of interest.”

“Well… she’s long dead,” Joan began, “although if she were alive this electric mixing business would have probably killed her.” Joan gave a side-long look at Simone, who would not look up from her mousse.

“Interesting…” I could think of nothing else to say.

“There is an interesting story of her finest mousse. Would that help?” Joan asked, eager to please.

“Sure. Let’s hear it.”

“The story takes place on her farm just outside of Paris in the early 1940s. She was living there with her three daughters, Simone being one of them. Earlier they had watched first- hand the horror of German invaders marching through their streets of Paris. My grandfather was in a Russian concentration camp, so it was just the four of them trying to get by.

Life was very hard, and food was scarce. Through some miracle, enough ingredients were made to scrape together a small chocolate mousse. It was snowing, so Mémé had put the mousse on the windowsill to chill and frost up, when she noticed a snowflake larger than all the others falling from the grey skies.

As it fell, she realized it wasn’t a snowflake at all, but a parachute. A wounded US airman landed just a few hundred yards from their farmhouse.

“Mémé didn’t hesitate. She ran over to him and brought him in and nursed him. She knew harboring an American fugitive in Nazi occupied France was a certain death sentence, but she could not allow this wounded GI to suffer or be captured. Insisting to her little girls to remain mum, she hid him in a hollowed out haystack until the FFI (the French Underground) could come and spirit him away. She never knew his name or what became of him. I don’t know if she offered him some of her mousse and if he could even eat, but if he had, I’m sure he had never forgotten the taste nor the woman who served it to him.”

Joan looked up at me expectantly.

“It’s a wonderful story, but I don’t see how it helps?” I replied. This was certainly the most baffling case I’d ever been on in my two-day career as a detective.

“Sure, it does,” Linda, who was pacing the room for me, stopped to explain. “Don’t you see it all comes down to tradition.”

Ah… Yes. Now I get it. Someone was so angry that Simone went against tradition by using a mixer instead of the old-fashioned way that decided to kill, rather than admit the alternative version was just as good.”

“Or better!”chimed Simone.

“But why kill David?” Joan asked.

“Why indeed… AHA! I now know how, why and who,” I exclaimed, as a brilliant piece of deductive reasoning struck me.

“Who?” Linda shouted

“WHY?” Joan cried

“Cachon!” Simone cursed.

“And this is the part, if you ever read or saw any Ellery Queen mysteries, where the detective turns to audience and says, ‘Can any of you at home solve this mystery? You have all the clues. I’ll just give you a minute or two before I reveal the answer.’”

“Are you talking to us?” Linda asked.

“Yes. May I have some more mousse while we wait.”

“No mousse left,” Simone said, bringing over a slice of chocolate cake. “Cake?”

“Don’t mind if I do.” I took a huge bite. “Hmm… Do I taste almonds?”