A Sinister Establishment

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A Sinister Establishment Page 7

by Lynn Messina


  Bea, who was impressed by the clever reframing, hoped Marlow bestowed it, although how the footman would ever know escaped her.

  “So the conversation between Mrs. Wallace and Monsieur Alphonse happened yesterday?” she asked, drawing attention away from the sensitive subject of her own arrival. She was no more comfortable hearing about it than Joseph was describing it.

  “It did, yes, your grace,” he said, “at approximately three-thirty in the afternoon.”

  “Three-thirty,” she repeated thoughtfully. “And you said he was in the middle of preparing food for a small dinner party?”

  He replied promptly in the affirmative.

  “Did Monsieur Alphonse happen to mention how small?” Bea asked.

  “Eight guests to dine in addition to Mrs. Mayhew and himself,” Joseph said, proving himself to be a very helpful bystander.

  As she had yet to be a duchess for a full day and her family rarely extended invitations to dine, Bea truly could not say if the chef’s behavior was strange or not. But it struck her as quite odd to leave the kitchen whilst preparing for a large—in no universe would she allow the prospect of hosting eight for dinner to be considered small—party to pay a romantical call on a neighbor. Mrs. Wallace had turned down his kind offer, but what if she had consented to be his wife? They would have in effect become betrothed, and she had a difficult time imagining a newly engaged man ceasing his expressions of joy to check on the progress of the quails.

  Would not the more practical plan have been to wait until the next morning to make his proposal, when there would be fewer demands on his time? As he had already handed in his notice, he would be free from commitments and welcome to press his suit at leisure.

  Ah, but what lovesick swain ever paused to contemplate the pragmatism of his actions? If the idea to make an offer had come upon him in a burst of excitement, then he might have been no more able to restrain himself than he could hold water in his hands.

  And yet, Bea thought, the two pieces didn’t quite fit together—the spontaneous proposal and the patisserie in Paris. If he had known for a while that he was leaving, then why dash out in the middle of dinner preparations to make an offer? Had it truly not occurred to him earlier that he might want her to accompany him on his new venture?

  Yes, it definitely seemed strange to her that a man who had decided to establish a business in a foreign country hadn’t realized until less than a week before he left that he might want the woman he loved to come with him.

  If nothing else, it was egregiously poor planning on his part.

  Maybe she was examining the question from the wrong perspective, she thought and considered the possibility that something happened to alter his plans. Conceivably, an event of some significance might have made him discover he could not live without her or it could have caused him to change his departure date, forcing him to return to Paris earlier than he’d intended.

  In both instances, a hurried, impulsive proposal was not entirely out of order.

  But what could that event be, she wondered.

  Decidedly, the list could not be very long, for the most accomplished chef in all of Europe was not subject to the same vagaries of fate as an ordinary servant. He would never be turned out for squabbling with the other members of the household because he was thoroughly irreplaceable while footmen and scullery maids were interchangeable. Even his employers had to earn his approval: The quality of James Van der Straeten’s kitchen had been so underwhelming, Mr. Réjane left the well-known banker’s service without preparing a single meal—and then included a lengthy description of the inferiority of the gentleman’s Castrol stove in his memoir.

  Only something deeply significant or hugely troubling could have changed his plans.

  A decisive quarrel, Bea thought, and one that occurred during the preparations for the dinner party. Tempers were frequently frayed by the anticipation of guests, and if Mr. Mayhew had made an outlandish request while Mr. Réjane was struggling to create the perfect meal, the chef might have responded without restraint. A vicious row ensued, ending with Mr. Réjane’s resolution to leave.

  The fact that Mr. Mayhew had made increasingly generous offers to convince him to stay suggested that the gentleman had realized his misstep at once and sought to fix it.

  How had he felt when his attempts at reconciliation were roundly rebuffed? An intractable servant might be infuriating to a man accustomed to a pliant domestic staff.

  It was true, Bea thought, and yet she could not imagine the gentleman chopping off the head of his chef in a surge of fury simply because the man refused to remain in his employ.

  At the same time, she could not dismiss it either, for she knew nothing of Mr. Mayhew’s petit bourgeois character and couldn’t say how he would react when thwarted by an upstart Frenchman with ideas beneath his station. That Mr. Réjane could actually prefer drudging in a sweltering kitchen in a benighted Parisian alleyway to working in the gracious splendor of Berkeley Square might have been an insult beyond bearing.

  All things considered, it was a minor offense and hardly the sort of thing that should drive a gentleman to strike, let alone kill, one of his subordinates. But Bea did not consider it within her purview as an investigator to make sense of her suspects’ motivations. It was her task to discover whether they had the opportunity and wherewithal to commit the crime.

  Could Mr. Mayhew have sliced Monsieur Alphonse’s neck in half?

  To make that determination, she would have to meet him. Without question, how he handled her interest would provide meaningful insight into his disposition, for he could not relish being interrogated by a random stranger, but it was not only intangibles that interested her. The death had been a physically violent one, and possibly Mr. Mayhew lacked the strength to sever a head.

  The answer would depend, she supposed, on the type and condition of the weapon used. If its blade was unduly sharp, then the job might be done neatly and quickly.

  “Regarding the cut that ended Monsieur Alphonse’s life,” she said matter-of-factly, “was it done in one masterful stroke or did it require quite a lot of hacking?”

  The color drained from Joseph’s face, and Bea immediately remembered Mrs. Norton’s expression when she had insisted on examining the corpse of Mr. Hobson. Without pausing to consider her words, she had once again revealed her ghoulish soul by not acting with appropriate squeamishness. How appalled the society matron had been at Bea’s cool appraisal of the slain actor’s wounds, the bloody hole violently gashed into his stomach by fireplace tongs.

  A lady of proper feeling would have turned away in horror!

  Given that her archnemesis had been party to arranging the terrible scene, Bea cared nothing of her opinion, good or otherwise, but Joseph was a different matter. He was a member of the duke’s household, which meant he was a member of her household now, and she would have liked to have made a slightly better impression than appearing coldly indifferent to the lurid details of a decapitation.

  Fleetingly, she recalled wondering only a short time ago what kind of duchess the staff would prefer to serve and realized it was too late to worry about the answer. Her true nature had been exposed in a moment of unvarnished honesty, and there was no point in wringing her hands over it now.

  It was actually for the best, she decided, for it spared her the obligation of trying to meet their expectations, an effort that would have inevitably ended in failure. Unlike the many young ladies with whom she’d shared a first season—and five unsuccessful subsequent ones—she had not been raised from infancy to bear the weight of a duchy. No one had anticipated anything grander for Beatrice Hyde-Clare than a second or a third son, a clergyman, perhaps, with a rectory where she would comfort the parishioners with tepid tea and familiar platitudes such as “Good things come to those who wait” and “Everything happens for a reason.”

  Whatever heights of gracious dignity she might have aspired to—or even briefly achieved—it was all a matter of hopeless speculat
ion now.

  Her disgrace assured, Bea did nothing to mitigate it, choosing instead to apologize to Joseph for speaking so plainly. “I should have shown more consideration for your sensibilities,” she said, stopping just short of begging his forgiveness, for that, too, would have displayed an unacceptable lack of decorum. “Just because I am accustomed to the ghastliness that accompanies brutal death does not mean everyone else is. But do please tell me what you know about”—she paused momentarily as she tried to think of a gentler description and settled on euphemism—“how Monsieur Alphonse met his unfortunate end. Maybe you can start with the implement that was used. Was it sharp? Very heavy? Perhaps you can describe how large it was.”

  Although his cheeks were still pale, the footman spoke calmly, displaying no anxiety as he explained that he could tell her nothing in particular about the instrument, as he had never seen the le peu guillotine.

  As Beatrice herself was unfamiliar with a device called the little guillotine and she had read several compendiums on cooking, she could not fault his ignorance. “Le peu guillotine?”

  “An invention of Monsieur Alphonse,” Joseph explained, “to make chopping meat and vegetables more efficient. As I understand it, it worked like the original it was modeled after, with a blade that dropped a goodly distance to create a clean cut. But of course the le peu is much smaller.”

  With this description it was easy enough to picture the device, to visualize a diminutive version of the apparatus that had stood in the Place de la Revolution and dealt death to thousands, and Bea felt a shiver pass through her at the thought of Europe’s greatest chef meeting his end like a joint of mutton.

  Ah, so she was not so ghoulish after all.

  “How little is it?” she asked.

  “I cannot say,” Joseph replied, reminding her that he possessed no direct knowledge of the instrument. “But based on the description I was given, I did not imagine it was large enough to fit a human head.”

  Although Bea appreciated the specificity of his answer, for it anticipated her next question, Marlow found it in bad taste and drew his brows closer together. The footman, shrinking under the glare of his disapproval, apologized to the duchess for speaking so freely.

  As she was the one who had used the word hacking only a few minutes ago, she thought this display of sensibility was both highly unnecessary and faintly ridiculous. Nevertheless, she thanked Joseph for his consideration and observed that the machine was clearly larger than its name indicated. “If it could chop off a human head, then it cannot differ greatly from its template. What a very distressing thing to keep in the middle of one’s kitchen.”

  Joseph agreed. “Parsons said the truly shocking thing is that nobody had hurt themselves on it before.”

  “Parsons?” Bea asked.

  “The butler at number forty-four,” the footman replied. “It was he who told us about the accident. He call on us this morning, very distressed about the whole thing. He is usually quiet and rarely says a word, but this morning he was talkative.”

  Although a chatty butler was in itself a novelty worthy of further exploration, the fact that he claimed the decapitation was an accident interested her more. “That was how he described the incident? As an accident?”

  “Yes,” Joseph said firmly, his whole demeanor changing as he darted a look at Marlow that was equal parts smug and relieved as the comment seemed to validate his concern. “He said it was an accident. He said that Monsieur Alphonse must have been fiddling with the blade, which sometimes becomes stuck on its hinge, and it came loose at an inopportune moment and sliced off his…that is, sliced forcefully.”

  Bea could not tell if the amendment was for her benefit or his own. Despite demonstrating a convincing lack of sensibility, she was nevertheless a female of high rank and required a delicate touch. “But you don’t think that’s what happened.”

  Joseph’s expression turned doubtful as he explained that he didn’t know what to think. “I suppose it is possible. From its description, I know the device has a sharp blade and can do significant damage to a cut of meat. But it was Monsieur Alphonse’s own invention and he had been using it for years. It just seems to me that he would know how it works. If it got stuck frequently, as Parsons said, then Monsieur Alphonse would know how to repair it without endangering himself.”

  It was, Bea thought, a reasonable argument and one she herself would have made if prompted. “And that is why you sought my assistance?”

  Joseph nodded. “It’s just that the matter was settled so quickly. Parsons discovered the body and decided it was an accident. Mr. Mayhew accepted his explanation and called the constable, who also agreed. That was the extent of the investigation, and I think it’s horribly unfair not to at least consider the possibility that he didn’t cause his own death in such a clownish way.”

  Naturally, yes, the greatest chef of Europe deserved a little consideration before being dismissed as a buffoon, and she wondered why the butler would be determined to deny it to him. The obvious answer, of course, was that he was hiding his own guilt. “As far as you are aware, did Parsons have a reason to wish Monsieur Alphonse ill?”

  Perceiving the implication at once, for the question was hardly subtle, the footman shook his head emphatically and said he knew of no resentments against him. “As I said, he loved to experiment with new dishes, so he kept the staff at forty-four very well fed. Honestly, your grace, I think Mayhew’s servants eat better than the prince regent. And he was amiable and good-natured and rarely took a pet about anything. I remember once he brought us wonderful little rolls shaped like crescents, and Cook was critical of them. She said it was the crumbliest kipferl she had ever had because a bit of pastry fell into her lap when she took a bite. Monsieur Alphonse was quite disdainful of her opinion and said she did not understand pastries or dough. And, furthermore, it wasn’t kipferl at all, but a variation on the Viennese classic. He went on for quite a while, scorning all of Cook’s opinions, but then he asked for her own kipferl recipe and left eager to give it a try, and all was forgotten.”

  Having read the victim’s memoir, Un Humble Chef Confie Ses Trésors au Monde et Partage Ses Expériences avec les Grandes Maisons d’Europe, Bea was not surprised by this description of affable good humor, for it perfectly matched the tone of his book. Whereas for many cooks, the tyranny of unreliable outcomes—will the bread rise, will the roux thicken—and the need to perform with precision upon command justified a tyrannical temperament, Mr. Réjane considered the unpredictability of his avocation to be part of its appeal. It was a game to him, never quite knowing if his soufflé would maintain its height or fall.

  It was strange, she thought, to contemplate how close she had come to living so near to the distinguished chef whose work she had admired from afar for years. She would have very much liked to have tried his flaky kipferl and his croquantes and any of the dozens of superb dishes he chronicled in his tome.

  ’Twas a shame, a very great shame, that such a talent was gone from the world.

  Sighing lightly, she returned to the matter of Parsons and asked what other details he had supplied.

  “He revealed nothing else of note,” Joseph replied. “The exchange we had was hurried and disjointed. He had come to our door looking for smelling salts, you see, for Mrs. Mayhew had fainted dead away when she heard that Monsieur Alphonse’s head was lying in a different room from his body and the maid could find none among her mistress’s things. Parsons came dashing over here to borrow ours, but I think he really just wanted an excuse to be away from the house for a few minutes. He said several times the accident was horrible, but it was only when he was leaving—after Mrs. Wallace had given him her own smelling salts—that he actually said what happened. It was all so distressing, and not just because Monsieur Alphonse’s head had been decapitated, although that is too horrifying to contemplate. But also because the thing was deemed an accident. I tried to ask Parsons how they could be so sure, but he insisted it was the only possib
le explanation. Then he raised the salts to his own nose because he must have felt a little faint himself and left.”

  By any account, it was deeply suspicious behavior, the man who had found the body insisting that his explanation was the only viable one. “What time did Parsons call?”

  “A little after ten,” he said. “I was returning the breakfast tray to the kitchen when he arrived at the door. Dolly immediately went to look for smelling salts, and I stood with him in the entryway, tray in hand, while he waited. He was quiet at first, but then he started talking and he couldn’t seem to stop. That was when Mr. Marlow invited him to sit down, but he refused. He said he could not stay that long.”

  That the butler had also heard the tale firsthand came as a surprise to Bea, who had assumed from his stony silence that he had been in a different part of the house. “Tell me, Marlow, does Parsons’s story sound plausible to you? Do you think it is possible that Monsieur Alphonse inadvertently sliced off his own head with his chopping implement?”

  Although she readily recalled the contempt with which Marlow had ordered his underling never to speak of the death again, Bea did not ask the question out of an impulse to embarrass him in front of a subordinate by requiring him to violate his own rule. The anger that had spurred the discussion had long since been supplanted by a desire to do right by the talented chef. The murder of any man was a tragedy, to be sure, but there was something about cutting this man down in his prime that felt especially calamitous to her.

  Marlow’s reply was simple. “No, your grace, I do not.”

  Bea nodded solemnly and considered the next step in her investigation—a deliberation that was not at all necessary, as there was only one reasonable prospect and that was to interview Mrs. Wallace.

 

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