by Myers, Amy
‘’Aven’t you finished that puff paste yet, Auguste?’ Emma shouted impatiently. ‘Gaylord wants to see us.’
She led the way up the stairs from the basement through the ground-floor entrance hall, hung with portraits of Macready and Kemble, and a reproduction of Kean, and largest of all, Erskine as Petruchio. A portrait of him as d’ Artagnan had been placed less ostentatiously. It was felt that Her Majesty might not fully approve of such light-hearted employment. Beside him to the left, the huge drawing room was rapidly being transformed into a ballroom, its doors opening to the garden where oil lamps were being placed for the benefit of those who might wish to take the air late in the evening. Huge pots of flowers were advancing through the front door, presumably borne by somebody underneath, though little could be seen of them. Emma led the way up the ornate staircase, flanked by theatrical portraits suitably brown with age, with a modest number of Erskine thrown in. She turned along the corridor towards the study, and Auguste stared over the balustrade on one side down into the well of the entrance hall. It was a theatrical house, built to present a view to the world of the maitre artiste, he decided, and this balcony suited it. He cast a scathing eye at the ostentatious telephone cabinet at the end of the corridor filling the alcove of the window. Typical of Erskine to have a telephone installed already. In fact, all the decorations were lush, as if to proclaim actor I might be, but nevertheless a pillar of society. The thought of Emma being this man’s mistress . . . Auguste clenched his fists.
‘Ah, Em – Mrs Pryde,’ greeted Gaylord Erskine, unwinding himself gracefully from the armchair. ‘And Mr Didier, is it not? I recall dining at the Maison de Provence in Paris where I ate your exquisite tapenade after a performance at the Comédie Française. Exquisite, quite superb.’
Auguste’s opinion of Gaylord Erskine abruptly changed as he perceived in him signs of intelligence.
‘Your preparations are ready? Everything is to your satisfaction?’
‘Quite, Mr Erskine,’ Emma replied meekly, her cheeks pink, which promptly inclined Auguste to his former opinion.
‘I must confess –’ he glanced at Auguste – ‘I have forebodings about this evening’s performance.’
‘Not about my food, you needn’t ‘ave,’ retorted Emma indignantly.
‘Never that. But other things . . .’ A hand was passed over his brow. ‘Yet if it be not now, ’twill be to come.’
‘Don’t be so pessimistic, Gaylord,’ snarled Emma. ‘You arranged it, you’ve got Scotland Yard ’ere; what more do you want? Anyway, the attacks on you ’ave stopped, ’aven’t they?’
‘Always so . . . down to earth, dear Emma. Such a comfort. I had to bring it to a head. As artistes yourselves,’ he bowed gravely towards Auguste, ‘you will know that one cannot work one’s best while uncertainty and confusion reign. So it must end. Even if it means that I have to be the bait. But I have the inestimable privilege of a police constable on the door who will check all arrivals, in addition to Inspector Rose. So if I am to be murdered, he will at least have the advantage of knowing it is by one of my friends.’
Liveried footmen placed the buffet ready on the tables, the grosses pièces on their stands, Pithiviers pies, galantines, hams aspicked and parsleyed. Round the side on silver plates (Emma insisted on this) were the entrées, the plovers’ eggs, salmis of partridges, the lobster salads, the bowls of chicken fricassée Emma, potted pheasant and trout à la Vertpré, to the side the entremets of pastry, the tartlets, the nougats, the Mecca loaves, the petits-choux with pistachios, while the puddings stood waiting in the kitchens.
Auguste flew hither and thither at Emma’s beck and call, which was far from stinted.
‘I tell you, Emma,’ he said grimly, as he rushed by her with a plate of chicken in aspic, with which he would dearly have loved to adorn her face, ‘I for one hope this evening brings forth something to help me solve this case, otherwise Plum’s kitchens seem to me infinitely preferable.’
He was not to be disappointed.
Plum’s was almost deserted that evening. Only a few country visitors, who had not heard the news that Auguste Didier was absent, strayed in and wondered why their dinner, though excellent, had not that magic touch that sent them home to the far-flung posts of the provinces extolling the wonders of the capital.
Its more regular members were busy preparing for Gaylord Erskine’s party. Ordinarily most of them would not have attended. But for various reasons, perhaps with an unconscious feeling that the saga of Plum’s was not yet over, this was an evening not to be missed.
Even General Fredericks was adjusting his white tie with resignation. Alice seemed determined to go. Juanita Salt was tugging at her hardworked corset even harder than usual; Peregrine Salt wore the agonised expression of one forced to face the battle with full tribal war cry; Sylvia Preston was determined to make one last dramatic appearance on the scene before she married that – what was his name? Mary and Samuel Preston girded their loins in grim silence. Gertie Briton was not dressing in silence; she was chattering nineteen to the dozen while Charlie Briton got crosser and crosser, until he remembered Emma Pryde would be present. Jeremiah Atkins, cursing his tie, was thinking about the 24th Foot, and Sir Rafael Jones set off with real pleasure at the prospect of what the evening would bring forth.
Everyone’s hopes were doomed to be disappointed.
The small orchestra, squeezed into one corner of the room, struck up valiantly, all too valiantly, overwhelming even the dulcet tones of Gaylord and Amelia Erskine as they welcomed their guests.
Silken dresses rustled and swished agreeably through the early August evening, moreen petticoats rustled enticingly, fans flirted, eyes daringly provoked. Gertie Briton’s bust-improver caught everyone’s eye except Gaylord’s; Juanita, whose bust did not need improving, had an equal lack of success. For Gaylord Erskine was preoccupied. His eyes darted everywhere; he had little faith in that fellow on the door, for all he was checking invitations so rigorously.
In the dining room made larger by the opening of the connecting door to the morning room, Auguste was stage-managing the supper, at once an actor and major architect of this presentation. Emma had decided that he could be allotted this position while she mingled with the guests. He was pleased with this accolade, though not with its reason. But he did not wish it to be thought that he was responsible for that disastrous galantine. Now had it had a garnish of sorrel, this might possibly have redeemed it.
He added a scallop of truffle here, a garnish there, replaced the rose that had fallen from the boar’s head, adjusted the arrangement of the shrimps in the lobster salad –
Eh bien, he could hear the announcement of supper, the first sounds of hesitant people emerging from the drawing room to enter the dining room, then more and more, and the avalanche was upon them. The liveried servants, who had hitherto distanced themselves to prove their superiority to this mere matter of food, suddenly galvanised themselves into action, whisking amongst the black of the men and the multi-coloured hues of the ladies. Auguste stood back from the throng marvelling once more at the look of fascination in people’s eyes when they gazed on a banquet. A glow of pleasure at the dining table he took as a jewel to his art; but this frenzied enthusiasm was not appreciation; it was greed. For this reason he did not consider ball suppers had any place in the art of food. Plates once emptied were refilled by the footmen, were emptied again. The buzz of contented conversation filled the room, and at one end of it Gaylord Erskine dominated the conversation as usual.
‘Don’t you fellows have any work on during August?’ queried Atkins, in between huge bites of galantine.
Erskine smiled. ‘The closed season, my dear sir, as you would say. I rehearse for a new production opening in September, The Tempest.’
Atkins looked blank. ‘Never had much time for those old plays myself. Macbeth, though, now there’s a play.’
‘Have you never wished to play Macbeth, Gaylord?’ enquired Sir Rafael, eyeing the young maid bringi
ng in the puddings. ‘Is this a dagger I see before me? Stirring stuff.’
Erskine looked at his erstwhile sponsor coldly.
‘Dear Gaylord is at his best in Dickens. So twagic, so moving. “’Tis a far far better thing –” I thought he was lovely,’ Juanita offered.
‘I am grateful, dear Juanita, but I think once you have seen my Prospero, you will not be disappointed.’ And his beautifully modulated voice rang out over the room:
‘This rough magic
I here abjure; and, when I have requir’d
Some heavenly music, – which even now I do, –
To work mine end upon their senses, that
This airy charm is for, I’ll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth . . .’
Auguste stopped in the midst of serving the pudding à la Prince of Wales, spellbound. The poetry of the man. There was no doubt of his ability. His expressive hands, beautifully timbred voice; almost in the same class as Irving.
‘Oh Gaylord, that’s beautiful,’ said Gertie, who didn’t understand a word.
‘And, by Gad, so’s this pudding,’ ejected Atkins.
If anything is calculated to set tongues loose and taste-buds going at a banquet it is the arrival of the puddings. Auguste had never subscribed to the theory that it was the ladies who delighted in puddings. In his experience gentlemen were the greediest. A sudden ‘ooh’ rang out at the sight of the jellies and creams, which kept the guests happily occupied. Even General Fredericks looked human when the King of Prussia’s favourite pudding appeared, sneaked in specially for him by Auguste, scared Emma should notice!
Inspector Rose, fighting his way through the crowd to reach Auguste, succeeded at last in claiming his attention.
‘Young PC Wilson on the door tells me someone slipped in as he was looking at another invitation,’ he said worriedly. ‘Middle-aged, and in evening dress. Have you seen anyone?’ Auguste gaped at him, staring at the vast swarm of black-coated men. ‘By heaven, I hope – What the—’
The sharp unmistakable sound of a gun.
Atkins was the first one through the door. ‘By Gad, a gunshot!’ he yelled. ‘Tally-ho! Upstairs!’
All thought of food left Auguste’s mind as he was out from behind the table and, following the Inspector, pushed his way through the crowd of people who were pushing up the staircase. Confusion was created when the ladies, afraid of what they might find, started retreating downwards again. PC Wilson, seeing Rose on his way up, kept the crowd at the bottom and it was thus only a group of a dozen or so who ran along the corridor to the study from where the shot had come.
‘Stay outside, madam.’ Rose, finding Amelia at his side, pushed her to the rear, as he rushed through the open door to find slumped on the floor of the study, face downwards, a silver-haired figure.
‘Non, madame,’ said Auguste, trying in vain to prevent Amelia and the crush of people around her rushing through the door and being swept in with them. In front of him, General Fredericks, Samuel Preston and Atkins were turning the body over. Peregrine Salt went over to help them.
A piercing scream from Amelia. All eyes turned to her – she sobbed, ‘Gaylord!’
‘My love, by your side.’ He fought his way through.
‘I thought it was you,’ she cried.
‘No doubt someone wished it was,’ said Gaylord grimly. ‘But who?’
In front of him, Auguste and Inspector Rose were staring silently at the dead body of Sir Rafael Jones.
Chapter Ten
‘Someone,’ he said forbiddingly to Auguste, ‘is still trying to make a monkey out of me, and I don’t like it.’ The room swarmed with doctors and policemen, as the inartistic remains of Rafael Jones were examined, noted and finally removed.
‘Shot,’ Rose went on. ‘Just like the Colonel. No signs of suicide. So, what have we? A second murder.’ He picked up the gun. ‘Doesn’t belong to Erskine. Doubt if Jones brought it here himself, and according to Atkins this, too, adorned the walls of Plum’s club.’
Auguste abruptly turned his thoughts from the look on Emma’s face as she realised she was being left to clear up while Auguste was summoned to help Inspector Rose.
‘From Plum’s? Then—’
‘Yes. It’s our friend again. We were wrong, Mr Didier. Jones wasn’t our man after all. Now it seems to me we’ve got to look for a man who wanted to get rid of both Worthington and Jones.’ The prospect did not seem to appeal. ‘Now Monsieur Didier, I need to use you as a second pair of eyes. Did you notice who was in the dining room and who wasn’t when the shot came?’
Auguste shook his head. ‘Earlier, yes, when Erskine was declaiming from Shakespeare, but after that the puddings arrived and the creams – my apologies, Inspector, for mentioning the matter of food – and naturally everyone was engrossed. With so many people moving around, it was impossible to tell who leaves the room, if anyone. But you, Inspector, did you not see?’
‘I left Mr Erskine happily reciting his part, and moved round the room a little, then came to have a word with you. Now I was ahead of you up the stairs. Who did you come up with?’
Auguste shut his eyes to remember the scene. ‘Everyone was still, then I pushed towards the door after you. A group of us ran up the stairs, then some turned back. I went on after you and heard the police constable ordering no one else. But who was there –’ He shrugged. ‘I recall you running along the corridor, a woman – Mrs Erskine – then me and many behind me.’
Rose walked outside into the corridor. ‘There’s a problem, Mr Auguste,’ he said at last. ‘There’s only the one door into this study – at least, there’s another, leading through to the day room on the other side, but that’s bolted on the inside. So our murderer had to come out of the study door to escape. So why didn’t we see him?’ He stared along the corridor to the window alcove at the far end, half filled by the telephone cabinet by the study door. ‘He had to get along this corridor somehow,’ he said slowly.
‘He would have been seen from the bottom of the stairs, monsieur. The moment one is outside the dining room one has a clear view up to the first floor and this passage. We were all looking up – he would have been seen.’
‘You can’t see the door of the study,’ called out Rose, experimenting from below.
‘No, but then he would have been seen as we came up the stairs. He would have been trapped. There is only that antique chest which is not big enough.’
‘Hide inside the telephone cabinet?’ flashed Rose, racing upstairs again.
‘No door.’
‘Behind it?’
‘It is flush with the wall.’
‘Secret passage,’ offered Rose without much hope.
Auguste laughed. ‘An outside wall, Inspector.’
‘Then he must have been hiding in the room.’
‘Unless it were suicide.’
‘Wouldn’t commit suicide in someone else’s house,’ said Rose, ‘or come to a party with a gun in his pocket. Let’s look at this window.’
On the busy thoroughfare of Curzon Street, Sergeant Stitch was staring up at them.
‘I think, Inspector, he would be noticed hanging from a drainpipe.’
Rose grunted. ‘He’d have to be a monkey anyway.’ His eyes roamed round the room. ‘Then there’s only one answer. He was in here all the time. Risky, but possible. There’s room in that cupboard for instance. Even behind the desk. Jones was lying well away from it. Who was there with you in the room? I have to admit my eyes were on the corpse.’
Auguste always prided himself on his eye for detail. He could remember every detail of a banquet. Let him treat this test like the dinner he gave at the home of the Princess Tatiana for her twentieth birthday. He shut his eyes. Ah, Tatiana . . . He abruptly recalled himself.
‘Peregrine Salt was by my side, Madame Erskine behind me screaming, her husband, too. Mrs Preston and Mrs Salt stood together, Mr Atkins and Samuel Preston were turning over the body. Salt went over to help. The
General was there, too. Not his wife. I remember another woman crying out hysterically – Mrs Briton’s voice, I think. Then Mrs Briton heard Erskine and had hysterics all over again, and then somebody shouted that it was Jones. As you know, everyone assumed it was Erskine, with the grey hair, and it being his house.’
‘I tell you, Mr Didier, it’s very careless if someone did shoot Jones instead of Erskine. In fact, Erskine is everywhere in this case.’
‘As someone intends, perhaps,’ said Auguste. ‘For if he were our murderer, he would be foolish indeed. Why should he stage a murder in his own house? Very dangerous. Besides, he cannot have done so because he and his wife were both behind me in the doorway of the study. No one person could do these murders. I think we are certain now it is a husband and wife team. Like Lord and Lady Macbeth. One to lure, one to kill Worthington. One to kill Jones, the other to camouflage his temporary absence and reappearance in the room.’
‘Macbeth,’ said Rose resignedly. ‘That’s all we need. Now what’s put him in your mind?’
‘They spoke of Macbeth in the dining room downstairs, I think,’ he replied, frowning. A hazy memory, a picture etched on his mind, like that occasion in Plum’s when Rafael Jones had said the clue to Worthington’s murder lay in the past. He had told Rose at the time, and now reminded him.
‘Might have been nothing. Might have been something. Do you see him as a blackmailer? Didn’t seem to need money.’
‘There are other reasons for blackmailing apart from money. For security.’
‘Protection against someone who knew about Rosie, you mean,’ said Rose thoughtfully. ‘That brings us back to Worthington and Erskine, and they’re both out of it. Worthington’s dead and Erskine couldn’t have done it. No, I reckon he was killed because he knew who killed Worthington, and the killer knew he knew.’