Murder At Plums

by Myers, Amy

  He regarded her suspiciously.

  ‘I’m the chief parrot in the house. You’re my assistant. Now, what do you say?’ Swiftly, Emma-like, she had turned the tables.

  Auguste was torn. Undoubtedly he wished to be present. But to be ordered around by Emma? True, she had an excellent knowledge of cuisine, but suppose they differed over the correct garnish for a chartreuse de légumes? Could he, in honour, be associated with a buffet that served potted Yarmouth bloaters, for example? Ah, he was being ridiculous. Of course he wished to be there. And, after all, bloaters could be excellent. Food, when all was said and done, was not everything. The occasional principle might be sacrificed.

  ‘Emma,’ he cried enthusiastically, seizing her in his arms and whirling her round the parlour, ‘we will make this a buffet to end all buffets. We will make this a buffet to rival Grimod’s famous banquet for his mistress, Soyer’s for Ibrahim Pasha, his diner Lucullusian d la Sampayo, Francatelli’s for—’

  ‘Just a moment. I seem to remember Eugenie telling me that Grimod’s famous banquet was held with a coffin in the middle of the room. And I tell you, Auguste, I don’t much fancy being in the dark with a murderer around.’

  ‘Murderer?’ he repeated blankly. For a moment he had quite forgotten.

  Mrs Jackson was a large woman, with a face as round as the currant buns she automatically produced for her visitor. Even if that visitor was Egbert Rose of Scotland Yard. For the third time. Her face bore traces of tears, as she invited the Inspector to sit himself down at the oak table.

  ‘I don’t care what no one says; he was a good master. On the quiet side, save when I overdoes the mustard, he don’t – didn’t like that. But a good man. Quiet. He did like his pipe.’ The tears threatened to make themselves apparent, and the jaw was stuck out pugnaciously to halt this sign of weakness. The late Colonel Worthington was genuinely mourned here, if nowhere else.

  ‘Are you certain you noticed no signs of distress that day? No unusual visitors?’

  ‘Didn’t have many visitors anyway,’ she said. ‘He was just his usual self. No visitors – well, except—’

  ‘Except?’ enquired Rose gently. This was at least a new proviso.

  ‘No one except our Rosie, that is. Fond of our Rosie he was. My niece she is. He did seem upset. She should have had more sense. Telling a gentleman like him a thing like that.’

  ‘What did she tell him, Mrs Jackson?’ Rose bit diplomatically into one of the buns and decided even Mrs Rose might have done better.

  ‘That she’s a model, for one of them painters.’

  No more than they had guessed already, of course. But Rosie’s cousin worked for Erskine, he recalled. Interesting, very interesting. Still, it was tenuous.

  ‘No other visitors at all, then?’ Rose continued doggedly. ‘You’re a regular bloodhound,’ Mrs Rose said to him admiringly sometimes. And bloodhounds keep on going.

  She racked her brains. ‘There was one elderly gentleman. A general I think, sir. I don’t recall the name. A week or so ago. And a relation, but that was some weeks ago. A Mr Salt, he said. I remember that because I thought he looked more like a Mr Pepper.’

  With this rare sally into humour, at which the Inspector managed to laugh heartily, she became more forthcoming. ‘I heard them shouting, sir – not very family-like, was it?’ Mrs Jackson was disapproving. Her own family never had the energy to fight. They needed it all to keep alive in the slum conditions of St Giles Rookery.

  ‘What were they shouting about?’

  ‘It isn’t my place to listen, sir.’ She shot a look at him. ‘But I did hear they was arguing about money. Quite rich was the Colonel, though he lived simple. And fat come into it.’

  ‘Fat?’ repeated Rose blankly.

  ‘Bless you, no, I’m wrong. Grease, that was it. Grease.’

  ‘I used to come down here as a boy,’ reminisced Egbert Rose, picking his way carefully down Ship Tavern Passage, shouting to Auguste to make himself heard over the barks, yelps, crows and clucks from all around. They were the oldest people in the passage save for the shop tradesmen. The rest seemed all to be under the age of ten, some earnest shoppers, most just come to gaze on the wicker baskets and cages.

  ‘Used to buy silkworm eggs by the pint here. Supposed to hatch out. Never did though. I remember my father saying the collection box was the place for pennies, not Leadenhall Market. All turnip seed, he’d say, not a real worm amongst them. Did I ever tell you my father was a vicar, Mr Auguste?’

  ‘Non, monsieur, you did not. I should like to hear of it. And I will tell you of la belle Provence, the flower markets of Grasse, the fields of lavender and rosemary.’

  ‘Very colourful it sounds, Mr Auguste, very colourful.’ They picked their way past the live animals in search of Auguste’s destination. ‘The whole place used to be like this, before they did away with the old market in 1880. Now most of the animals here are dead ones,’ commented Rose, regretful for his lost childhood.

  ‘And that, Inspector, is what I am here for, and as you wished to accompany me . . .’ Auguste let his voice trail off, as a slight hint that he too was at the top of his trade, with preoccupations of his own.

  ‘Beats me how you choose one from the other,’ said Rose, staring at the rows and rows of geese and turkeys, hung up ready for purchase.

  ‘A good chef knows and must choose his own. Besides I wish to see this shopkeeper; he sent me some last week not in the peak of condition. Fit merely for the casserole. I intend to seek a discussion of the matter.’

  The discussion took some time, while Inspector Rose fretted impatiently. At last Auguste emerged triumphant, talking of geese, of salmis, of fricassées, of capilotade à l’ Italienne, until Rose interrupted finally:

  ‘It seems to me, Mr Didier, we’ve got the link we’re looking for, a reason to get rid of both Worthington and Erskine. Worthington threatening to expose him, Erskine, too, perhaps. Rather more than modelling involved, it seems. Though whether that would lead him to murder two people . . .’

  ‘Ah but, Inspector, Sir Rafael is much appreciated in court circles, he is an intimate of the Palace, he is fond of telling us, a guest of the Queen. It seems to me unlikely that Her Majesty would sustain this association if it were known that his favourite form of art was not respectable matrons, but young unclothed girls. Now if Worthington knew, and Erskine found out that Jones had killed Worthington, Erskine might be blackmailing Jones over the murder.’

  ‘You forget the campaign against Erskine,’ Rose said complacently. ‘More likely that Erskine was blackmailing Jones about his odd tastes, hence the campaign against Erskine carried out by Jones as a warning. Then Worthington pops up and has to be disposed of, thus frightening Erskine into silence.’

  ‘It’s possible, Inspector, yes. It is certainly possible,’ Auguste conceded.

  ‘You’re more than kind, Mr Auguste,’ murmured Rose, dexterously avoiding the turkey under Auguste’s arm as he swung towards him in Gallic enthusiasm.

  After a few weeks Plum’s began to inch back to normal. No more untoward happenings disturbed its calm placidness. The funeral and inquest over, the unfortunate affair of the fiftieth Plum’s Passing became relegated to the same degree of interest as the winner of the Derby. So, too, did the admission of women to the premises. Masculinity took over once more. The dining rooms might never have been sullied by petticoats to hear the members’ conversation. They, like murder, had simply been obliterated from the club consciousness. Lord Bulstrode rampaged, arguments broke out once more over the inordinate cost of luncheon. Oliver Nollins determinedly turned his attention to vital matters of members’ complaints, and tried to forget that twelve good men and true had decided that a murder by persons unknown had taken place on Plum’s premises. Even the newspapers had ceased to take an interest, cricket being a much more immediate topic than the passing of an old colonel.

  And more than one person breathed a sigh of relief that the police seemed no nearer reaching any
conclusion whatsoever, right or wrong.

  The Chief Constable was not one of them. Scotland Yard was beginning to recover its status after all the squalls and scandals of the seventies and eighties and he had no intention of losing it again by a mere unsolved murder.

  ‘Sure it wasn’t suicide? Suppose he were in love with this girl himself. Might shoot himself, eh? Dishonourable conduct.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Rose stolidly. ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘No evidence against anyone? Anyone at all? Thought you were supposed to be keeping watch on these fellows.’

  ‘A watch on Erskine, sir.’

  ‘You can rule him out as the murderer at any rate,’ he grunted. ‘You had him under your eye.’

  Rose did not disillusion him that as there were over two hundred people in the room, he could not even guarantee this.

  The Chief Constable still eyed him disparagingly. ‘Not like you, Rose. You’ve generally got an idea before now. Falling down on this case, are you?’

  ‘We know he thought he saw someone he knew in the Folly, and that he had a shock.’

  ‘Can’t be a member of the club then. Wouldn’t get a shock seeing them.’

  ‘Unless it was a woman, sir.’

  ‘Women don’t pull guns,’ snorted his superior. ‘Crime passionnel – not like an Englishwoman.’ The Chief Constable sighed. ‘Motive? Anyone got a motive?’

  ‘Oh yes, plenty of motives. Too many, in fact.’

  ‘One will do, Rose, just one.’

  ‘Sir Rafael Jones supports Erskine’s nomination to Plum’s then, because Erskine knows about Rosie and is putting pressure on Jones. Nothing so common as blackmailing . . . my, this is a fine bit of fish, Mr Auguste.’

  ‘Not a bit of fish, Inspector,’ said Auguste, scandalised. ‘You are eating a turbot braised in champagne. Why, the Romans valued le turbot so highly that the Emperor Domitian summoned the Senate to agree on a sauce for it. It awaited Monsieur Duglèré to provide the perfect sauce at the Café Anglais. And was it not Talleyrand who—’

  ‘As I was saying, Mr Auguste, he starts this campaign against Erskine to let him know he won’t stand for any further blackmailing, however gentlemanly. Do you follow me, Mr Didier?’ noticing Auguste’s eyes straying.

  ‘Like a receipt of the good Mrs Marshall,’ murmured Auguste.

  Rose eyed him suspiciously, but continued: ‘Then he finds out that Worthington knows, too, and has no intention of keeping quiet about it. He gets rid of him – and that’s an extra warning to Erskine.’

  ‘It makes sense,’ said Auguste. ‘But there is no proof. Like Mrs Marshall’s recipe, it is good plain cooking.’

  ‘Nothing wrong with good plain cooking,’ said Rose a trifle grimly.

  ‘Indeed not,’ said Auguste hastily, ‘but I think in this crime we have an artist at work, monsieur. Not the good plain cook.’

  ‘Too many cooks, if you ask me. Now this tart, that is something. I wonder if I might trouble you for the recipe, Mr Didier. Mrs Rose would be glad to have it, I’m sure.’

  Auguste smiled inwardly at the thought of the fanchonnettes skilfully concocted from coffee, liqueur, chocolate and orange-flower, fashioned under the hand of Mrs Rose, but obediently wrote the recipe out for the Inspector.

  ‘A fine copperplate you have, Mr Didier.’

  ‘The local cure was my teacher.’ He was instantly transported back to the hot, dusty street of his village, the gentle, tired curé in his ramshackle cottage. ‘He used to say, monsieur, that one must pursue a road to the end to know whether your destination lies there. And I think, monsieur, we have not yet pursued this double motive far enough. Sir Rafael, yes. He is a candidate. But what of Mr Salt or General Fredericks?’

  Juanita Salt decided reluctantly she was not a New Woman. There was no way that her curves would fit into the neatly tailored two-pieces that looked so elegant on the young ladies of today. Her corsets would not stand for it. Indeed her corsets were standing for less and less.

  Oh for the days of the aesthetic dresses of the eighties, the flowing robes, the Liberty prints that concealed so much. She remembered him saying how he loved her curves, her softness. ‘My Carmen,’ he had called her. ‘My wild gypsy.’ Of course she had been slimmer then. Almost as slim as when she married Pewegwine.

  What a beauty she had been. Was still, indeed. She gazed defiantly at her underclothed figure in the mirror, as her couturiere moved around on her knees pinning the dark satin on to a band. Only one side so far. On the other her Kingsonia Fulcrum Belted Corset for the support of embonpoint cried for mercy over her full petticoat with its rosettes matching those on her pale pink lamé combinations. She recalled him seeing her in similar pale pink frilled combinations in days of old, and, more than seeing them, promptly removing them. Ah, those ecstatic days. What had happened since? That brought back many disagreeable memories. And she was not thinking of Pewegwine.

  Luncheon at Plum’s was almost pleasant again. Late July, the dog days, the Glorious Twelfth to look forward to. Ah, life was good.

  Atkins’ nose twitched in a way normally only occasioned by Didier’s food or hunting. Now it was some indefinable sense of well-being.

  ‘Off to the country then? Spot of hunting, now that old Worthington’s gone?’ Bulstrode’s tact, never strong, seemed to have deserted him altogether. Not that Atkins noticed.

  ‘Rather.’ His eyes gleamed.

  ‘You lived next door to him, didn’t you? His old place near Stratford?’

  ‘I say, Atkins, what exactly was the row between you and the Colonel about?’ enquired Preston, acquiring a new aggressiveness now that the problem of Sylvia seemed solved, thanks to the Labour Party.

  ‘Didn’t take your Purdey to him, did you?’ asked Bulstrode.

  Uncertain laughter, except from Atkins. His eyes bulged. ‘Dammit, sir, I did not. Ours was a quarrel between gentlemen. Goes back twenty years or more.’

  ‘Worthington was in the army then. I didn’t know you were an army man, Atkins.’

  ‘I was, sir.’

  ‘That’s where the quarrel started, was it?’

  But Atkins refused to answer, devoting himself somewhat carefully to Auguste Didier’s merlan en colère, and the anger of the whiting seemed to be rubbing off on him.

  ‘Are you going to Gaylord Erskine’s party?’ enquired General Fredericks, peace-making.

  ‘We’re all going to Erskine’s party, aren’t we? Wonder if anyone will try to polish him off once and for all?’ Briton laughed lightly, but this was felt to be going too far.

  ‘None of those damned odd things have been happening since Worthington’s death,’ trumpeted Bulstrode.

  ‘I believe you are wrong, Lord Bulstrode. Another letter has been received.’

  Bulstrode grunted. ‘Probably doing it himself. All the same, these actor fellows.’

  At the far end of the table Peregrine Salt quietly continued his luncheon, with no indication that the conversation was of more than special interest to him.

  ‘I understand you called on Colonel Worthington, sir, a day or two before his death. I understood you to say that you had intended to confront Colonel Worthington after the Passing parade; no mention of having already done it.’

  General Fredericks regarded the Inspector steadily. ‘You are, of course, correct.’ He paused. ‘Are you married, Inspector?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ replied Rose stolidly, inflexibly.

  The General smiled. ‘Then I am sure that you, as I, put your wife’s welfare above all things. My wife is very dear to me, Inspector. I would not distress her in any way. Any way, and much less over this question of our son’s death. I did not tell her about my meeting with Colonel Worthington that evening, and for that reason I could not tell you. It was not a pleasant one.’

  Rose waited.

  ‘Have you ever seen a man consumed by fear, Inspector?’

  Rose had. He’d seen Milsom, spilling the beans in the witness box, Meiklejohn of the CID when h
is treachery was revealed, Rum Bubber Bill –

  ‘The Colonel was paralysed with shock. I think he had successfully blotted that part of his career from his mind. To be confronted by it, and the results of his incompetence, was too much. I feel this lies as much behind his determination to remain aloof from the procession as his dislike of women.’

  ‘He could have stayed away altogether.’

  The General smiled. ‘You are not a clubbable man, Inspector.’ There was no note of query in his voice. ‘For a man like Worthington, his club is his life. Take it away, and you remove the fabric of his life, his self-esteem, his reason for living. If the clubs temporarily close down for redecoration or other reasons, and their members are forced to become guests of other clubs, you will see them wandering aimlessly about, souls caught in purgatory. No, it remained the last vestige of his pride that he should attend Plum’s Passing. He died as he would have wished, Inspector.’

  Rose looked at him sharply, and caught the faint smile that vanished from his face as his wife entered the room.

  ‘Emma, ma mie, I merely wish you to tell me whether this is Monsieur Soyer’s recipe for pheasant pie or your own. If your own, I make no more comment; if Monsieur Soyer’s, then I insist for my reputation’s sake that we include also one of Auguste Didier’s pheasant pies. Now, is this not reasonable?’

  ‘Quite reasonable, Auguste,’ snapped Emma, eyes flashing dangerously. ‘And I merely wish to point out that you are ’ere to assist me, not to stipulate the menu. In fact, it is Soyer’s recipe, improved by Emma Pryde.’

  ‘In that case,’ he replied with dignity, ‘I am satisfied.’

  ‘Good, then slop out this bucket.’ Auguste inspected the kitchens of Gaylord Erskine’s Mayfair domain while the resident staff sulkily gathered in their servants’ room determined not to emerge before absolutely necessary. He gave grudging approval. It was an imposing residence, to which Erskine had only recently moved, perhaps in anticipation of his coming magnificence.