Page 40 of Monstrous Travels as Wicked as Sin

I know. Believe me, I know.

You’re only going to use brown onions. DO NOT think you can add an expression of artistic intrigue here. Brown onions or nothing. If you use red onions, shallots (god forbid), any mixture of onions, you are going to sink the thing before you even start. Brown onions only. Yes, I know, you call them yellow onions. I’m not going to fight with you about this again.

You will fry your brown onions in butter and olive oil, and I swear, Aubrey, if a pinch of sugar so much as approaches that pot, I will know, and I will never give you my risi e bisi recipe. It goes without saying that I got it from the best and wisest of all Venetian nonnas (yet here I am saying it) and I will not betray her trust to a person who puts sugar in her onions.

Your sweetness, of course, will come from an appropriate cooking time. Slowly, slowly, in butter, oil and salt, you will fry your onions for at least six hours. Eight is better. Don’t you dare tell me you have more important things to do. This is not a soup you can rush and if you turn it off one minute too soon, I will know. The veil is very thin here in Scotland, so don’t think I won’t smell it.

Watch your onions religiously, adjust the heat appropriately, scrape the pot over and over. This makes your soup rich in flavour and colour. This is the key. If you fail to give your soupthe appropriate care during this time, it will be an embarrassing failure no one will ever forget. No one worth mentioning, anyway.

When AT LEAST five hours have elapsed (and I know you’re watching the heat carefully), you’re going to add some garlic. Here is a small flourish of your choice. I like to slice them lengthways, paper thin, but you do as you see fit.

Yes, I know, but fuck the purists. Those bastards would have the leeches on you trying to suck the impurity from your soul. It clearly didn’t work on me, because here I am telling you to put garlic in the soup. Everyone will say, what is it that sets your soup apart, Aubrey? Flavour, Aubrey.

When you add your garlic, you will also add a few sprigs of thyme. I know you want to put a bay leaf in, but this isn’t fucking cottage pie. Constrain yourself.

You will cook it for AT LEAST another hour. Then (and here is the most important thing) add your Armagnac. No, not wine, not even beer, not anything else. Believe me, I have tested every possible ingredient myself, and this is the final word. DO NOT cut corners here. Make sure you get a good Armagnac. If you wouldn’t serve it to me, then don’t put it in your soup. And don’t use a thimble-full either; you’re entertaining. Use a good glug and completely clean the pan with it. Make sure every speck of brown that was coating your pan is incorporated seamlessly into your onions.

By now it should be looking rich, glistening, sticky—all the things a good onion soup should be. Now you may add your hot stock, stir, and walk away while it simmers, knowing you have done a good thing.

When you return an hour later, longer if you like, you can finish the soup. Take it off the heat and add another glug of Armagnac. Just do it. A big one.

I know you bought that baguette the day before and it’s a little stale. You’re still going to toast it. Make your slices thick and slice them on a bias. After you toast them, add butter and yes, rub more garlic over the top. It’s fine.

Grate the cheese. Comté or go home. Buy three times as much as you think you will need and then grate it all. Don’t think about it, don’t look back. No one is going to tell you there’s too much cheese, and if they do,you have my permission to stab them in the eyeyou won’t be inviting them back.

Then everything can sit and wait until you’re almost ready to serve. This is a good time to shower. No one wants you to smell of onions.

Reheat the soup. Cover the top with your toasted baguette slices, then cover those in Comté. I don’t want to see even a hint of bread or soup through the cheese. Just pile it on there. Then the whole thing goes in the oven. Keep the lid off, and I know you will know when it’s ready. Golden! Completely melted! Bubbling. You must get it to the table exactly like this, with thebrown liquid forcing its way up through the few tiny holes you didn’t realise you left in the molten cheese.

You can thank me later.

It’s been impossible to sleep here as the inn is quite cursed and the screaming skull… Well, it’s exactly as one would imagine, so I am sleep deprived and if I’ve forgotten anything, I apologise in advance. Give the recipe and the method a good study and see what you think, but I’ve done this a thousand times and I’m quite sure that’s everything.

Say hello to Candide for me, and

I’m going to ask you to keep this letter to yourself just for now. If that would be all right with you. It’s rare I would let you claim the glory for a soup such as this, but consider that my gift to you. You may not be able to keep the truth of my having made contact from Candide, but I trust her to let that lie. The fact is, other than a postcard here and there, I haven’t written to Eve or Anna at all, as I promised I would, and you know things area little complicateddifficult right nowsomewhat touchynot in need of any explanation. Let’s just make this our little secret, seeing as you owe me for saving your dinner party.

We might have a lot of killing to do this evening, so I best be getting on. If nothing horrifying pops up between tonight and next week, Joe and I are planning a small break, at which time I will sit down and write you a real letter. There is so much totell from the last few weeks I could make a novel of it. Or a series of short stories, at the very least.

As I said above, please do not stop writing. Your letters sometimes take a while to reach me, but I will make sure this gets to you in time.

I miss you. I honestly don’t know when I’ll be back. I do want to see you all again soon.

Enjoy your dinner party. I know you’ll be amazing because you always are.

Percy.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

BARMISTON HALL

Percy and Joe kept to the pebbly edge of the long lake, boots crunching, water lapping, as Barmiston Hall menaced larger and larger against the granite morning sky.

Joe wondered if Percy felt half as nervous as he did. Quiet by his side, the shoulders of his black coat paling with the fine mist of fog sweeping over the lake, he looked the same as he always did. Bold, confident, alert, aware, and in control. Ready for anything.

The first grave appeared on their left. A small, old, oval-shaped stone, fallen face-down in a tuft of tough grass. Another, a little further along, overgrown except for a few blackening and illegible letters etched at the top. Then more and more, dotted here and there, unvisited and unloved. Forgotten dead, mouldering damp in the ground.

Percy’s path meandered to the left and away from the lake. Joe followed him up a green incline, hard by a wall, until they rounded the corner into the closest thing the island had to woods. Small but dense, a folly of sorts, Percy wandered, sure-footed, over roots, fallen branches, and a carpet of bluebells which he crushed underfoot, until somewhere around the centreof the plantation he held back the drooping, ponderous branches of a great willow tree.

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