A Sinister Establishment

by Lynn Messina

  “Very good. While you’re informing Mr. Mayhew that the Duchess of Kesgrave is here—that is, K-E-S-G-R-A-V-E—I will examine the room where Monsieur Alphonse’s body was found,” she said. “If you would indicate the correct direction?”

  It was a tactical mistake, she could see that right away, for a real duchess would demand an escort, not wander around a strange and possibly sinister establishment on her own.

  The footman’s expression lost some of its awe, replaced by confusion as he struggled to respond to the unusual request. “I don’t know…”

  Bea allowed him no time to gather his wits. “That’s all right, my good man, I do know and very well, for, as I said previously, this is my milieu. You have no reason to be anxious. Mr. Mayhew will be grateful to have the Duchess of Kesgrave’s help; I am sure of it. You don’t need me to spell my name again, do you? It’s so very vexing not having my cards yet.”

  It was a rhetorical question, but he answered as if she were waiting with bated breath for his response. “No, your grace, that is not necessary.”

  She dipped her head with the same imperious condescension she had seen Kesgrave employ countless times and said, “I am ready to go now or do you intend to keep me waiting in this hallway for another fifteen minutes?”

  At this question, he jumped slightly.

  Oh, yes, the poor footman startled as if stung by a wasp, and Bea felt again the exhilarating thrill of power. In truth, fifteen minutes had not actually passed. It could not have been more than five since she’d stepped into the hallway. But with a single word she had manipulated time to suit her purposes. Effortlessly, she had altered his reality.

  It was only a minor modification, she thought, more like the exaggeration of a small child waiting to open a present on Christmas morning than an iniquitous falsification, but she had made a servant recoil and that did not sit comfortably with her. Determinedly, she opened her mouth to offer an apology and immediately found herself at a loss as to what to say. This Beatrice, Duchess of Kesgrave, was not herself. No, she was merely another character she had assumed in the pursuit of an investigation, an autocrat as domineering as Mr. Wright was obsequious, and she did not know her well enough to imagine how she would express contrition.

  More likely, she would not.

  The footman apparently agreed, for, regaining his composure, he promptly offered his own apology and instructed her to follow him. They had barely taken a dozen steps, however, before a slender man with prominent cheekbones and wide gray eyes stepped forcefully into the corridor and warned them not to take another step forward.

  It was Parsons the butler, and he was not pleased by her presence.

  Chapter Six

  Despite the aggression of his pose, Parsons’s tone was conciliatory as he explained that the house was not accepting callers. “We had a mild domestic disturbance this morning that has created some confusion, and we are not entertaining visitors at this time.”

  Although Bea knew few things were worse than suffering the thorough separation of one’s head from one’s body, she thought having such a circumstance reduced to a mild domestic disturbance was especially demeaning.

  Poor Mr. Réjane, victimized again!

  Before the footman could explain that the morning’s confusing events were what had brought the visitor to their door, Bea congratulated Parsons on being exactly the person she had hoped to see.

  He tilted his head down and, as if examining her over the protuberance of his cheekbones, ignored her statement entirely. “If you would entrust me with your card, I would personally ensure that Mr. Mayhew receives it.”

  How crushingly he spoke, his tone sharp and dismissive with a hint of impatience as he glared at her with studied disinterest, as if not entirely sure she was worth the effort of removing from the premises.

  Bea marveled at the ease with which London butlers could adopt intimidating poses, helped along, she did not doubt, by their curious physiognomy—Marlow with his pulsating eyebrows and Parsons with his piercing cheekbones.

  “The Duchess of Kesgrave does not yet have calling cards as she was only recently wed,” the footman explained quickly. “But you must not worry. I refused her marriage lines for obvious reasons.”

  Upon hearing these words, Parsons inevitably appeared somewhat worried, for neither the introduction of a duchess nor her marriage lines was an auspicious development. Observing the hint of alarm that rose in his gray eyes, Bea wondered what had unsettled him: her reputation as an investigator of suspicious deaths or the general oddness of the footman’s declaration.

  Despite his discomfort, he remained determined to treat her as any other visitor to the house, with polite interest, and assured her Mr. Mayhew would be honored by the visit. “Is there a particular message you wish me to convey, your grace?”

  Bea admired his unwavering commitment to the fiction that she was paying a social call on his employer despite the fact that she’d announced with utter clarity that she was there to speak to him. “There is no particular message I wish you to convey, as you will accompany me to the kitchens posthaste to describe the situation in which you found Monsieur Alphonse. But this footman here—” She broke off to ask his name.

  “Henry, your grace,” he immediately supplied.

  “Ah, yes, Henry. He may convey to Mr. Mayhew that I am here to investigate the murder of Auguste Alphonse Réjane and look forward to discussing the matter with him as soon as he is ready to accept callers. I am entirely at his disposal,” she said, speaking quickly to allow neither man the opportunity to object, although each would be perfectly within his rights. Marching into another person’s home and demanding access to his kitchens and staff was a tremendously audacious thing to do, especially for an insignificant spinster who stammered incoherently in response to the most benign social queries.

  Oh, but she was not a spinster anymore.

  The footman voiced no objection but neither did he jump to do her bidding, standing in the hallway with an expression of stunned indecision on his face as he looked to Parsons for some indication of how he should proceed. The butler appeared to be in the same situation—baffled and uncertain—but having no superior present, he stared at the silver tray on the table next to the door, as if willing her calling card to appear.

  “Thank you, Henry, for your prompt delivery of my message,” she said firmly, “for I am positive Mr. Mayhew will be very interested in my presence.”

  As if startled from a reverie, the footman suddenly straightened his shoulders and turned his head toward Bea. “Yes, yes, of course, your grace,” he said, then scampered off down the corridor at a slight run.

  Parsons opened his mouth to protest but no sound came out, and Bea, realizing her advantage, slipped past his narrow frame. Presumably, she could locate the stairwell to the kitchens easily enough on her own, as all London townhouses had the same general layout with a few modifications. If she just continued down this hallway and looked for a doorway to her right…

  Mr. Parsons was appalled by this display of self-sufficiency and trotted after her. “Your grace, I cannot allow you to—”

  Without question, he meant that he could not permit her to sally forth to the servants’ quarters and insert herself into the Mayhews’ private matters, but Bea intentionally misunderstood him. “No, no, of course you cannot allow the Duchess of Kesgrave to find her own way around the house,” she said, interrupting. “Do lead the way.”

  There, she did it again—stood on her consequence. It was remarkably easy to do when the advantage to be gained was marked so clearly.

  As improper as it was to allow a duchess to investigate the horrible death of one’s French chef, it was somehow more egregious to stand in the hallway and argue with her about investigating the horrible death of one’s French chef. Consequently, Parsons bowed his head and, submitting to what must have felt like an irresistible force, said, “Right this way, your grace.”

  As she had supposed, the stairs were located at the
end of the hallway to the right, in the same general vicinity as in Portman Square, only a few feet farther from the front door.

  Taking the first step, Parsons inquired after her comfort and asked if she would perhaps like a cup of tea as she examined the scene of Monsieur Alphonse’s horrendous accident.

  In fact, she did not require anything other than truthful answers and the freedom to pursue them, but she thought having a task might put the servants at greater ease and acquiesced to his suggestion.

  “Very good, your grace,” he murmured smoothly, regaining some of his composure with the assumption of a rudimentary chore.

  Alas, it slipped again only a few seconds later when they arrived in the kitchen and the protocol for serving tea to a duchess in the servants’ quarters escaped him. Fortunately, the slight awkwardness was overcome a moment later when Bea asked him to show her the precise spot where he had discovered the body. His eyes practically popped out of his head at the request.

  As she waited for him to regain his poise, she examined the room, which also bore a resemblance to the primary cooking area at Portman Square, with its modest proportions, wooden floor, Rumford stove and long, narrow table scattered with mixing bowls, serving platters and a plate of parsley. Outside, in the courtyard leading to the chicken shed, there was a tidy little garden, which appeared to be in transition, as its assortment of rosebushes had recently been dug up, perhaps due to an infestation of beetles or thrips.

  The space varied from the Hyde-Clare kitchen in its ruthless organization, with every pot, pan, bowl, skillet, trivet, kettle, bellows, poker, porringer, roasting rack, pan stand and hook slotted into its proper place. Hanging neatly along the walls were utensils in varying sizes: measuring spoons, grill skewers, knives, ladles, trammels, spatulas, hearth forks, cleavers, skimmers and food choppers.

  Mrs. Emerson did not allow Cook to run a chaotic kitchen but neither did she demand such perfection, which was understandable, as food preparation was rarely a tidy pursuit.

  At once, Bea wondered if the room always looked like this or if its pristine appearance was an attempt to scrub away the gruesomeness of Mr. Réjane’s death. To be sure, the inhabitants of the kitchen were accustomed to blood and viscera, but the head of a fish was a very different matter from the head of a human, particularly one belonging to a French chef you had worked alongside for years.

  While she was examining the room, two women entered from the scullery, and Parsons, clearly flummoxed, fell back on the demands of decorum as he understood them and announced with intimidating assurance that the Duchess of Kesgrave required a fresh pot of tea.

  Although Bea assumed his intention in speaking with such confidence was to awe the servants into behaving with instinctive propriety, the situation was far too strange for either one to do anything except stare blankly. It seemed inconceivable that the duchess had come belowstairs to fetch her own tea, and yet was that not the implication?

  But what else could Parsons do? Presenting her to the kitchen staff was plainly beyond all bounds of decency. As wretched as that morning’s discovery had been, its handling had followed established protocols: alert the master, send for the constable, scrub every surface, proceed with life as if nothing untoward had occurred.

  Subsequently, Bea had no choice but to step forward and introduce herself. It was, moreover, the most practical option because it allowed her to explain her purpose with clarity and simplicity.

  “Good afternoon. As highly unusual as it may seem, I am indeed the Duchess of Kesgrave and I am here to investigate Monsieur Alphonse’s death,” she said, more than a little astonished that she could utter such an outlandish statement with ease when she had spent six years stuttering her own name with unintelligible confusion. “And to whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?”

  The older woman, who was a stout creature with a square face and thin lips that twisted down in the corners, responded for the both of them, dropping a curtsey and identifying herself as Gertrude Vickers. “I am the kitchen maid, your grace. And this”—she gestured to the girl who stood next to her and was, at eighteen or nineteen, more than a dozen years her junior—“is Esther Simon, scullery maid.”

  Esther, whose blunt features were offset by a willowy frame, looked down at her feet as she mumbled an acknowledgment.

  Bea nodded with approval, for she had intended to seek out the kitchen staff for interrogation. “As you worked closely with Monsieur Alphonse, I am sure you have information vital to my investigation. First, I would like to discover what Parsons knows and to examine the device known as le peu guillotine for evidence of what happened.”

  As she spoke, she looked around the room and realized what she had missed in her initial inspection: the absence of the supposedly lethal apparatus.

  “Where is le peu guillotine?” Bea said.

  Esther kept her gaze studiously focused on the floor while Gertrude looked expectantly at Parsons. The butler coughed slightly and explained that Mr. Mayhew ordered the removal of the instrument. “He thought it was too dangerous to keep on the counter. It is currently in a heap at the bottom of the Thames.”

  Now that wasn’t the last bit suspicious, was it, Bea thought sardonically.

  Unable to scrutinize the implement itself, she sought out the space it used to occupy. “Where on the counter did it sit?”

  Parsons pointed to a square table beneath a trio of hanging baskets near the arch to the hallway. It was a smallish surface, indicating that it propped up a smallish device.

  Addressing the kitchen maid directly, Bea asked how high the machine stood. Gertrude raised a hand to her shoulder.

  “That is its elevation when it is on the table?” Bea said to make sure she understood its dimensions.

  “Yes, when it is on the table. It was always on that table or the center counter,” Gertrude explained.

  Noting the size of the table and the height of the machine, Bea thought it was very unlikely that le peu guillotine was large enough to remove the head of a grown man. To confirm her suspicion, she asked for a physical description of the victim and discovered he was a man of approximately fifty years of age, possessing modest height and girth.

  “He was several inches shorter than Parsons,” the kitchen maid said, “and had a narrower frame.”

  Bea nodded and asked Gertrude to list the items usually inserted into the appliance for dividing.

  “Joints of meat mostly,” she said. “Onions, bacon, coconuts.”

  All very modest, Bea thought. “What is the largest thing?”

  The other woman’s eyes widened in surprise but she other showed no reaction as she said pineapples. “Anything bigger and you have to use a cleaver,” she said, nodding to the collection of five heavy, broad blades that hung from the wall. “The le peu guillotine made a very precise cut, much neater and cleaner than a food chopper.”

  She continued to detail the benefits of the apparatus—it was, for example, particularly suited for cutting thin slices of ham—as Bea’s gaze lingered on the assortment of cleavers. There was something slightly off in their arrangement, she thought, observing how much larger the first one was than the second. Its blade was almost twice as wide as the one next to it, while the four others decreased gradually in size. It was almost as if one was missing.…

  Intrigued by the prospect, she walked over to where the kitchen tools dangled from neatly aligned nails and asked where the medium-large cleaver was.

  Startled, Gertrude suddenly stopped speaking and shifted her eyes to the wall. At once, she saw it, the same height disparity that Bea had observed, and her eyes narrowed in confusion. Her tone baffled, she admitted she had no idea where it had gone. “It must have been mislaid when we were cleaning up after dinner last night. Things are always chaotic after a dinner party, with so much bustling activity, and that can sometimes happen.”

  Thoughtfully, Bea examined the room and reconsidered her assumptions about its orderliness. “Is this how the kitchen looked last night?”r />
  “Oh, no, your grace, it was a frightful mess,” Gertrude said as the scullery maid nodded in agreement. “We always try to keep the worktables clean but once the guests start to arrive and the food is placed on serving platters, everything becomes a muddled jumble. And there was flour everywhere last night because Thomas—that’s the kitchen boy—didn’t realize there was a hole in the sack and trailed it everywhere.”

  “I meant after the party,” Bea clarified. “Is this how the room looked when you went to bed?”

  “Why, good gracious me, yes, of course,” Gertrude said fervently. “Go to sleep with flour all over the floor? And with dirty mixing bowls and egg shells scattered all over the counter? We would be run out of house and home by mice within the week. No matter how long it takes or how late the hour grows, we always restore the kitchen to order before we go to sleep, especially after a party, for that is when things are the messiest. If I myself were not so diligent about cleanliness, Mrs. Blewitt, the housekeeper, would insist on it.”

  “How late did the hour grow?” Bea asked.

  “Around one for me,” she said, “a little later for Esther. That is typical for a dinner party of that size because the last course is served around ten and the guests usually leave about an hour later. When I went up to bed Monsieur Alphonse was still in the garden smoking a cheroot. It was his habit to take the air after a long day of cooking.”

  Bea nodded and looked at the butler. “And what time did you go to sleep?”

  “After the last guest left, I oversaw the cleanup of the dining room,” he said, “and consulted with Mrs. Blewitt, who was in the pantry checking her stocks, to see if she required my help with anything. That was around midnight. She assured me everything was in order, so I checked that the house was secured, confirmed the cellar door was firmly locked and retired to my room. It was perhaps twelve-thirty by then, maybe twelve forty-five? I know I was in my bed by one o’clock. I, too, saw Monsieur Alphonse in the garden smoking a cheroot.”