by Amy Myers
“Thank you,” Auguste murmured humbly.
“Tinned, wasn’t it?”
“Nettle soup. With almonds,” Auguste replied, oblivious to any olive branch in view of this slur. “Quite safe. The levels of cyanide are very low.”
Twitch, to Auguste’s satisfaction, was silenced before he took revenge as soon as the rector left them. “All set for tomorrow, Chief?”
“Yes,” Egbert replied shortly.
“Chief’s come up with an idea, Didier,” Twitch said smugly. “Can’t tell you, I’m afraid.”
“Naturally not,” Auguste replied with dignity. “Fortunately I have had an idea of my own.”
Twitch sniggered. “To do with you not being guilty?”
“No. To do with who is.”
“Tell me, Auguste,” Egbert said quietly.
“It seems to me we have been thinking of the grand sirloin in this case too much, and not the humbler foods of life. We have thought too much of His Majesty and not of the baser, everyday emotions that turn the wheels of life.”
“Yes.” Egbert regarded him thoughtfully. “Those are the lines I’ve been thinking along too. That’s why,” he shot a glance at Twitch, “my plan’s to bring Bessie Wickman back tomorrow, for a prime seat at the festivities.”
*
Whit Monday kindly blessed the village of Frimhurst with a fine day, with the sun shining on small groups of villagers feverishly attaching flowers to hats and bells to legs, helping dress their co-conspirators in smocks, white stockings and dresses, and arranging hair to fall simply down milkmaids’ backs.
“Bally flowers,” snorted Alf, struggling with decorating his hat with roses that persisted in having thorns to mar his efforts.
“Hell’s bells,” Bert contributed, as a bell, incorrectly stitched on the coloured leather, fell off. Then he remembered Bessie would be back to watch him dance, and good humour was restored.
Adelaide, her fingers sore and bleeding from making her twenty garlands of flowers for village maidens to throw spontaneously over the swells’ necks, summed up the general feeling, “I’d like to strangle them with the bally bells.”
“No more murder, Adelaide,” Aggie giggled.
“They ain’t solved the last one yet,” Bert said defiantly, looking at his team. “Have they, Aggie?”
At twelve twenty-eight at Cranbrook station, the branch line train from Paddock Wood steamed in. Egbert was there to meet it, for Twitch had opted for the job of guarding the Frenchie. Rose, however, was not alone. Naseby had decided to attend to see justice done.
“I hope you know what you’re doing. We’ll have the French after us if Didier escapes.”
“We’ll have the king on to us if the French hang him for murder,” Rose pointed out, glad that Auguste was not present. “I’d say it was worth clearing his name.”
Naseby looked as though he disagreed, but at that moment the doors opened and Bessie, with a broad smile and handcuffed to an extremely good-looking constable, descended, swinging her hips like a latter-day Carmen.
Rose went to meet her. “All ready, Mrs Wickman?”
She eyed him speculatively. “For anything, inspector,” she drawled.
*
Lunch at Farthing Court had been disappointing, it was generally agreed, though not in Mr Entwhistle’s hearing, chiefly because the suprême de volaille had been fried in batter and served with fried potatoes. How were the diners to know that Ethelred was doing his best to carry out Bluebell’s instructions on how to please his pending American masters? Bluebell was making her desperate last-minute bid to forestall the sale. She was running neck and neck with Louisa in her bid to make the sale go through, in order that her loss of the title of duchess could at least be replaced by her position as lady of the manor.
The walk in the fresh air towards the Great Meadow where the festivities were to take place removed the faint feelings of nausea felt by most of the guests. Were it not for some unease at attending a Whit festival so soon after the terrible happenings of May Day, it seemed as though the afternoon ahead would be a pleasant one as the guests strolled towards the chairs, rugs and cushions placed ready for them by the footmen.
Some people were already seated when the party from Farthing Court arrived. One in particular seated between Egbert Rose and Stitch attracted attention.
“What’s she doing here?” Gertrude demanded furiously of Rose as the guests realised who Bessie was. “And, what are you doing, Jeanne?” Even in America maids were not honoured guests at entertainment laid on for their mistresses.
“I asked them both, Lady Montfoy. And all the upper and visiting servants,” Egbert said. “I wanted to know where they all were, as they’re helping us with our inquiries.”
“Into what?”
“Two murders, Lady Montfoy.”
“Two?”
“I imagine, Gertrude,” Thomas observed gravely, “the second is that of Mr Didier’s victim in Paris, a gentleman called Pyotr Gregorin.”
“What’s that got to do with us?” Horace demanded angrily. “And what,” he almost exploded, “are all those antlers doing there?” He pointed to the table set up behind the dancing area, where the dancers’ props were kept. “And isn’t that the deer’s head again?”
“First, the two murders are connected,” Egbert replied. “I believe they were committed by the same hand. The death of your husband, Lady Montfoy, was an accident. The murderer believed it was a Russian agent named Gregorin. And second, they are for the Horn Dance. It’s not the same head, I gather.”
“This is quite ridiculous,” Gertrude declared. “What can Bessie here know of a Russian agent?”
“Nothing, Lady Montfoy. That is the point. Now, I believe Mr Wickman is anxious to begin the afternoon’s dancing.”
Reluctantly Gertrude, a sombre figure in her unrelieved black, took her place next to her father and Richard Waites and Bert, a fatuously pleased smile on his face, as he beheld his beloved wife once more, began.
Auguste began to feel a reluctant admiration for Englishmen who could dance in bells, wearing flowery hats. He tried to imagine the same scene in France and failed completely. French fetes and fairs were solemn affairs devoted to the passionate appraisal of who had grown the best garlic in the year, or the sweetest violets. Now if murder occurred at a French fete, he would be less surprised, but here, following a wedding on an afternoon on a summer lawn, was still to his mind extraordinary.
The fiddler struck up, and Jacob took his place as his hour of importance arrived. Six dancers, staves in their hands, began mysterious movements with clashes of staves on high and twisting down low. Jacob coughed, and declaimed:
O mother elder, bless our seed
Keep it free from bird and weed.
The standard of verse was going down and Bert hit Alf’s stave viciously.
Next came the Handkerchief Dance and the Pipe Dance. What did Egbert have in mind? There was no sign of any plan yet, and Auguste shifted uneasily in his seat. On the other side of Egbert, Bessie, maintaining a bland smile, seemed to be doing her best to seduce Twitch, so far as Auguste could judge. Now that was a plan, and as the dances continued without much variation so far as Auguste could tell, it took his mind off his own worries wonderfully. Finally Bert, aware the denouement must be near, glanced at Egbert. “The Horn Dance,” he announced.
Seeing all the deer’s heads and antlers advance, Horace stood up angrily. “I won’t have it. Haven’t you any sense of tact in this country?”
“We’ve a sense of murder,” Egbert pointed out.
“It’s all right, Pa,” Gertrude said bravely. “If it’s the tradition, I’ll stay with it.”
“Dat it is,” Jacob replied, doffing his ancient top hat, dusted off and bedecked with flowers for this grand occasion.
The six men donned their antlers, and Bert, their leader, the deer’s head. The slow dance began, a weird but stately twining and intertwining of the six without the vigorous shouting and noise of
the previous dances. Periodically they would unite, present themselves to their leader, and retreat again into dance formation.
“Old Herne do walk by night, To give our maidens a fair fright,” Jacob began, and Aggie, selected as a maiden fair, quavered to Bert, “Oh sir, who are you with those horns … I must know before day dawns.”
Horace began to show signs of renewed impatience. “I guess our native Indians do better than that,” he snarled. Gertrude laid her hand comfortingly — or warningly? Auguste wondered — on his arm.
“Where’s Clown?” called Bessie.
“No Clown, my lady. Not today,” her husband’s muffled voice announced. “We’re having a Hoodening.”
The Hooden horse leapt out onto the lawn, his head covered in a cloth in which nose-holes had been made, and large wooden jaws attached which opened and snapped shut to great effect, mainly to terrify several small children who had been dragooned into coming to signify ‘village life’. On his feet were Harry’s best postman’s boots, and corduroy trousers. Behind this elegant horse came ‘Mollie’ wielding a broom. Bert, against the rules, removed the deer’s head to watch.
“Ain’t Christian, is it?” Jacob muttered, foxed by this departure from the script.
“That’s a man,” Bluebell yelled, unnecessarily since the trousers and hobnail boots would have denoted Mollie’s true sex.
“Now, Mrs Wickman.” Egbert Rose stood up. “Suppose you tell us what you saw the night Lord Montfoy died.”
Bessie stood up, leaning slightly backwards so that the splendid bosom could be seen to best advantage, and staring insolently at Lady Montfoy.
“I arranged to meet Arthur at the maypole. He wanted to give me a present to make up for the fact he was getting married — he always admired me, though me being a married woman, he had to admire in vain,” she explained hastily. “I wanted to make him look silly — wasn’t fair him creeping off to see me on his wedding night.”
Gertrude half rose from her seat in outrage, but Richard abruptly pulled her down again.
“So I tied him up. I pretended it was part of the old ritual. And I’d told Miss Bluebell what I was planning to do, so anyone who wanted to see him looking so mazed could come down. Miss Bluebell came, but I saw no one else, and Arthur was beginning to shout rude things, so I told Miss Bluebell to go home and I went off myself. Then I saw someone else, just like Miss Bluebell did, a man, in the trees.
“Well, me being a simple village woman and Miss Bluebell a young foreign lady, we were scared. We thought it was Old Herne the Hunter come to get us, so we ran. And that’s all. I reckon,” she said anticlimactically, “that man was the murderer.”
“And just what have we learned from Bessie’s so simple story?” Gertrude asked coldly.
“Not much from Bessie’s story, but a lot from the Horn Dance,” Rose said. “Harry, Mary — here.”
The Hoodener and Mollie came forward, and Mollie removed her heavy wig plaited of hay to reveal Harry Thatcher.
“Then who’s that?” asked Alf, bewildered, pointing to the Hoodener boots and trousers. He, like the rest of the village, thought Harry was the Hoodener.
The cloth was thrown off to reveal a grinning Mary Smith, elegantly clad in Harry’s corduroy and boots.
“Egbert!” Auguste exclaimed. At once he realised.
“Yes,” said Rose with satisfaction, “a little melodramatic, more your style really, to prove that appearances are deceptive. Miss Bluebell — Mrs Wickman, this figure in black — how did you know it was a man?”
“By the boots,” Bessie said smugly, glancing at Gertrude.
“I suppose I did too,” Bluebell agreed reluctantly. “And the trousers, of course.”
“You mean Bessie did it after all?” Bert got muddled in his fear.
“No. The murderer came from Farthing Court, convinced she was to murder Pyotr Gregorin, having borrowed his trousers and footwear previously.”
Belinda, Gertrude and Louisa sat very still. Jeanne Planchet screamed.
*
Egbert looked at Auguste complacently at breakfast the next day. A breakfast, needless to say, prepared by the master chef and not Annie. “Good news. I’ll be in touch with Chesnais and my guess is you’ll be able to go the royal wedding next week without a stain on your reputation. You can even cook for it, if you want to.”
“Inspector Chesnais has dropped the charges against me?”
“Yes. I told him we had our man. Or rather woman. Another French citizen, Jeanne Planchet.” Egbert waited for comment — perhaps even thanks — but none was forthcoming to his surprise, which was unlike Auguste.
“She has an alibi,” Auguste began slowly.
“So she told me. She was, she now claims, not with Lady Montfoy but with Gerald Montfoy.”
“He confirms it.”
“Of course. He had asked her to provide him with an alibi in case he were suspected of killing Arthur. He likes to have a trick up his sleeve in case of dangerous situations. So when her conveniently provided alibi from Lady Montfoy failed, what better than to fall back on the second one conveniently supplied?”
“But — ”
“So — ” Egbert accorded his friend the kind of look with which Auguste might have honoured a three-day-old herring — “Jeanne carried out both murders. She ran down to the maypole to attend to Gregorin — as she thought — and she followed Gregorin in Paris until an opportunity occurred to make sure of it the second time.” He paused. “What’s wrong with that, Auguste?”
“I don’t think she murdered them.” The words jerked miserably out of him. Oh, the bliss if he had been able to say: Egbert, that is undoubtedly right. But he couldn’t. Instead he said, “It’s a question of hats.”
*
“Your hats, Your Grace.”
“Ah.” Louisa smiled beneficently at Auguste and Egbert. “They came back, thank you. I shan’t be making an official complaint.”
“Especially since the thief is now dead,” said Auguste.
“Dead?” The blue eyes opened in astonishment. “Poor Mr Entwhistle. I only saw him half an hour ago. What a tragedy.”
“Mr Entwhistle’s double. As I suspect you knew, Your Grace, from the interest you have taken in my affairs and those of His Majesty.”
“I have just informed dear Mr Pennyfather that I have decided not to marry him, eager though he is,” Louisa remarked apparently inconsequentially. “The demands of a career cannot be easily combined with marriage and I daresay Mr Roosevelt would object if I practised mine in the United States.”
“Career?” The only career Auguste associated with Louisa was mistress to the king, but Louisa did not seem to be referring to that. Egbert Rose grinned, however, having had the benefit of a talk with Special Branch.
“I had a most interesting life with my late husband — an army man. This gave him a taste for odd corners of the world, which was frequently of use to the War Office. When he died, they were kind enough to suggest I carried on his most interesting work, because I led — um — such an interesting life myself through my friendship with His Majesty. Otherwise I fear the War Office would not look kindly on ladies in their masculine world. I have greatly enjoyed my career — and have just had a special commendation from the War Office for my work in Paris. For which I have to thank, I understand, dear Mr Didier.”
Auguste reeled at this last revelation of how the fairies at Farthing Court had been mocking him. “I’m not clear — ”
“I’m an intelligence agent. For the British, of course. Not like Pyotr Gregorin.”
*
“It gives the duchess a motive for killing Gregorin.” There was a note of hope in Auguste’s voice.
Egbert sighed. “Forget her, Auguste. We both know who it is we’re looking for.”
They found her sitting in the conservatory. An apt place for such an exotic bloom as Eleonore. The late afternoon sun streamed in through the windows. A Sèvres china teacup remained full in front of her, untasted. Sh
e sat docilely, like a child, hands folded in the lap of her peach muslin dress.
‘Oh, don’t deceive me; Oh, never leave me … ran through his mind, as Auguste said to her gently, “Gregorin rejected you, Eleonore, and you could not bear it. If you could not have him, no one should. So you killed him, and by mistake killed Arthur too.”
“Did I?” She raised her dark eyes at last to his. “What do you think, Chief Inspector?”
“Oh, I know you did, too. I can’t prove it — yet — but I shall.”
She shrugged. “A political crime. My mother was Russian, one of the millions ground into dust by the Tsar’s autocracy.”
“No, Eleonore. Simple hatred of the man who didn’t want you any longer drove you on. You pretended not to mind, so that you could remain near him. You obediently remained his loyal servant in his political plans for His Majesty’s downfall, and he never suspected you at all; even when it occurred to him Arthur might have been mistaken for him, he assumed it was me who had designs on his life.”
“And how did you reach this interesting conclusion, Auguste?”
“Jacob Meadows’ rhymes.”
“Whose rhymes?”
“The villager who entertained us on the Saturday before the wedding.” Auguste quoted:
‘“Oh Herne,’ must Farthings’ lord cry, ‘pray spare/Your horn to hear my prayer … ’
“Most people there believed the lord of the manor to be Arthur, Lord Montfoy. Some like the Duchess of Wessex, the Pennyfathers, Mr Waites, Gerald and Belinda Montfoy knew the lord of the manor was now Entwhistle. But they would assume that Jacob was intending the rhymes to apply to the Montfoys. Certainly it would never occur to them that Jacob might be intending to summon Entwhistle to the maypole. Only you, as the mistress of Gregorin, who had doubtless been at his side while he planned the whole purchase of Farthing Court, would not only know he was lord of the manor of Frimhurst but be so used to thinking of him so that the alternative would not occur to you.”
“As ingenious as your timbale de crabe, Auguste. However, your twelve good men and true are likely to regard that as rather flimsy evidence. They would prefer me to have been found with the bow still quivering in my hands. Was that all that made you suspect me?”