Murder In The Motor Stable: (Auguste Didier Mystery 9)

by Myers, Amy

  By eight o’clock he had finished his duty by tonight’s menu and hurried to the water closet and lavatory stand to prepare himself for the journey ahead. He passed the larders and scullery on the way but resisted the temptation to check that no other forgotten treasures lay within. He refused to nurse a ham in his arms all the way to Martyr House. He was halfway through the call of nature, however, when it struck him that it was remarkably quiet. Although the club would not yet be open, he would have expected to hear some kind of activity from the motor stable across the yard, even though Fred and Leo were going straight to join the cavalcade in case of mishaps. The Dolly Dobbs must have left while he was in the kitchen – after all, it ran silently, and the sound of voices in the rear yard would not have carried to the kitchen with so much noise going on. Would it?

  Auguste found himself running up the steps to the rear yard instead of back to the security of the kitchen, just to reassure himself. He found the stable closed and deserted. Dolly had left for her maiden voyage. Nevertheless he walked quickly over to the motor house, just as Harold Dobbs came rushing round into the yard, shouting bitterly and wildly of the inefficiency of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway.

  ‘Where is it?’ he cried querulously, breaking off from his diatribe.

  ‘What?’ Auguste asked fatuously. What else, after all, could Harold Dobbs be interested in?

  ‘The Dolly Dobbs. Has it left already? Without me? Is that woman planning to drive her alone? Is she bent on ruining my debut?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ One answer sufficed for all questions.

  Harold threw himself at the door and rattled it in vain.

  ‘It’s padlocked,’ Auguste pointed out helpfully. ‘I expect they all are,’ he added as Harold worked his way down the row with the same negative results.

  ‘Get the key,’ Harold howled.

  ‘I don’t have one.’ Auguste might be cook as well as gentleman, but he was not a motor mechanician.

  ‘You must. Its Motor Club trial begins in twenty minutes.’ Harold was as white as a floured pastry board. He rushed back to the Dolly Dobbs door and, bending over, applied his eye to the keyhole. Auguste regarded his plumpish bottom with intense dislike. Motor designers were worse than motorcars. Harold stood up, trembling.

  ‘She’s in there,’ he whispered.

  ‘Who?’ Alarm now shot through Auguste like a wave of nausea.

  ‘Dolly Dobbs, of course,’ Harold moaned. ‘But there’s something wrong with it. Are Miss Hart and Thomas Bailey conspiring against me?’

  All Auguste’s former forebodings, superseded by the demands of the banquet, swept back. ‘Why should Miss Hart—’

  ‘I see it all,’ Harold interrupted, following his own thoughts. ‘That’s why she—’ He stopped short.

  ‘Why she?’ Auguste prompted sharply.

  ‘Wanted to drive it,’ Harold finished unconvincingly.

  ‘Then where is she?’ Presumably she and Roderick would have needed to take it in turns to return home to change, but they were leaving it very late to join the run. Auguste knew from bitter experience just how long it took to check a motorcar before one set out on a journey, and even if the battery had been changed earlier this morning, twenty minutes would not be enough for the final check. All thoughts of Hyde Park Corner and the run vanished, as, commanding Harold to stay where he was, Auguste rushed back into the kitchen shouting for a screwdriver. The two kitchen maids and the underchef gazed at him blankly, wondering what marvellous new dish might require a screwdriver to achieve perfection. Fortunately the solid figure of Charlie Jolly ambled into the kitchen, for once as welcome a sight as his mother. ‘Padlock,’ Auguste shouted. ‘Need screwdriver.’

  Charlie’s brain worked a great deal faster than his body, so when he moved it was with agonising slowness.

  ‘Hurry, Charlie, hurry.’

  This word always disagreed with Charlie. Nevertheless he flourished a screwdriver within moments and followed Auguste back to the stable.

  ‘There.’ Auguste pointed to the door hinges. ‘Off with them.’

  Charlie had the feet and hands of an artist, and he worked deftly and swiftly. One of Charlie’s great qualities was that he never asked why. Mrs Jolly never wasted time asking why steak and kidney pie was demanded in July; she just provided it. Charlie took after her. Even so, Auguste danced up and down with impatience, while Harold, apparently in a state of collapse, moaned softly to himself, at intervals inspecting his pocket watch like Mr Carroll’s White Rabbit. At last the door of the motor house swung free and Auguste pushed past Charlie. ‘Keep Mr Dobbs away,’ he instructed him.

  ‘Why?’ Harold cried, hurling himself at Charlie. Charlie was the stronger, but Harold was the taller and could see past him to his beloved Dolly Dobbs. ‘What’s that?’

  The first thing Auguste saw was that something large and heavy now adorned Dolly’s steering and driving area. As he ran forward it was immediately obvious that Dolly would be driving nowhere today and probably never again. The huge iron block and tackle equipment had been swung with sickening force across Dolly’s bows, destroying steering pillar and wheel, levers and voltmeter, damaging both far hood and windmill, and smashing the nearside hood, windmill and dynamo, up against the remains of which the iron block now rested. Behind him, Charlie, with eyes for more than the Dolly Dobbs, gripped Harold firmly in an armlock, as with the strength of ten he tried to hurl himself on Dolly’s corpse.

  But Auguste had no time to waste in sympathy for a motorcar. He was concerned with what lay sprawled on the ground behind it. Nausea welled up in him as with sickening fear all his premonitions proved justified. It was an inert body, the body of a woman.

  ‘Silence, s’il vous plaît,’ Auguste shouted with such force that even Harold was hushed. Would there be life in that still body? Would it be smashed like the motorcar? Heart in mouth, Auguste walked closer, trying to still his pounding heart so that his eyes could take in all he needed. There were, to his relief, no smashed brains or pulped flesh, only blood round the body. And, he now noticed, splashes of dried blood on the walls and the floor by the doorway. Alive? How could she be? Hoping against hope that he was wrong, he knelt down gingerly to touch the body. It was already cooling but not yet cold, and as far as he could tell from looking at the face and jaw, rigor mortis was just setting in.

  Hester Hart had not gone home to change, she was lying dead, face down, still in the warm walking skirt she had obviously donned for her vigil.

  Now that the nightmare had proved reality, Auguste desperately tried to call all the instincts of the detective to his aid and not those of the man. Had Hester died by a glancing blow from the iron block? Out of the question from the position of the body. He dared not move the body to search for other cause of death. Egbert would not be pleased. Then with fresh horror he remembered: Egbert was not sitting in his office at Scotland Yard but with Tatiana in the Bollée, waiting patiently for Auguste to arrive at Hyde Park Corner. There was no possible way he could now reach Hyde Park Corner in time, Auguste realised, feverishly hauling out his pocket watch; it was twenty-five minutes past eight already. Thoughts raced chaotically through his mind like meat through a mincer, and like minced meat had to be organised for use.

  ‘Charlie, go into the club and telephone for Inspector Stitch at Scotland Yard to come here immediately. Tell him I am trying to reach Inspector Rose.’ Egbert would be travelling the Dover Road on a fruitless errand, for there was no longer a Dolly Dobbs or Hester Hart to guard.

  What about Harold Dobbs? He should not be left alone with the body while Charlie was absent. Impatient though he was, Auguste knew he must stay here. Then rescue appeared as the meat chef made an incautious appearance in the yard. He was promptly summoned to Auguste’s side and ordered to guard Harold until Charlie returned. It was almost irrelevant. Harold, sitting on the ground sobbing convulsively, looked as incapable of action as Dolly herself.

  The motorcars at Hyde Park Corner were as
sembling at an hour not normally acknowledged by fashionable ladies, had not the presence of His Majesty at Martyr House persuaded them to rise in what many considered the middle of the night. There had been much to be decided. Not only had ball dresses and morning dresses for the return drive tomorrow to be packed but a decision made on whether mourning garments should be included on the off chance that some member of the royal family might pass away during the day, thus forcing the entire assembly into deepest black. Furthermore, the essential despatch of maids by railway train to be in Kent to minister to their needs on arrival had had the unfortunate result of depriving their mistresses of their services in the vital hour before their own departure. In consequence, as the motorcars took their places, lined up in double rank on Constitution Hill, the atmosphere was not nearly as clubbable as Tatiana might have wished, though she hardly noticed in her own anxiety.

  ‘Where is Auguste?’ She turned worriedly to Egbert, sitting shrouded at her side in the clothes Edith had ordered as suitable for the perils to health of a July drive: his winter full-length mackintosh, her Great-Uncle William’s deerstalker, a knitted scarf that usually saw duty when winter necessitated a draught from the sash window being blocked off, and goggles carefully smoked over a candle lest the rays of the sun affect his eyes. He also had a hot water bottle, despite his reassurance that cars were provided with footwarmers nowadays.

  ‘Surely he could not have forgotten and gone by train,’ she continued.

  ‘Easily. If he had his mind on carbonades and not carburettors.’ He was rather enjoying himself, despite his garb. He couldn’t see anything very terrible happening in this procession of London society, it was a day in the country even if the King was at the end of it, and he could partake of at least one Auguste Didier banquet. Moreover, he could enliven Edith’s weekend with a description of the outlandish clothes these women dolled themselves up in, which far outstripped his own. He could hear her now: ‘Tell me about the hats, Egbert . . .’

  ‘Good morning, Tatiana.’

  Maud Bullinger loomed up beside Egbert, giving him the fright of his life. This one looked like the close-up of a beetle’s face in the nature study book he’d bought his niece for Christmas, what with her enormous goggles and hat secured by a black chiffon veil, at present thrown back.

  ‘Good morning, Maud.’ Tatiana climbed down and walked round to the pathway to greet her, thankful that at least one participant seemed in good humour.

  ‘Are the Motor Club men here yet?’

  ‘Yes. They’re over there,’ Tatiana indicated the opposite side of the road, ‘waiting to measure the first mile. There will be two more just outside Chatham, to measure a mile at Gad’s Hill, and the last two will be on Barham Downs.’

  ‘Ha,’ Maud commented cryptically. ‘Madam not here yet, I see.’

  ‘No. I’m concerned.’ Tatiana frowned. ‘We depart in five minutes.’

  Lady Bullinger gave a short, jolly laugh. ‘Knowing Miss Hart, she’ll leave it till the last possible moment to make a spectacular entry.’

  Tatiana looked down the line of cars at the club she had founded with such excitement only months ago. Why had she imagined peace and harmony where all were devoted to the cause of motorcars? The long line of limousines, tourers, two-seaters, voiturettes, landaulets and broughams stretched into the distance. Petrol, steam, or electrically-powered, at the wheel of each of them sat one of her members. She saw that wheels gleamed, satin dust coats shone, paintwork on cars and ladies alike was brightly polished. Her sun shone again. ‘Don’t they look wonderful?’ she breathed.

  It was all worth it, Hester Hart or no Hester Hart, Dolly Dobbs or no— Where was Hester? And where was Auguste? Her worries returned. One latecomer arrived but proved to be Isabel with Hugh beside her. Only three more to go. Phyllis, the Duchess – and Hester. The first drove by to join the line with a happy squeak of the hooter.

  ‘No wonder she sounds so happy,’ Tatiana commented to Egbert. ‘Look who’s with her.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Of course, you don’t know. That’s Roderick Smythe.’

  ‘The racing driver?’ Even Egbert had heard of him.

  ‘Yes. Whatever has happened? Hester won’t like this one little bit. He was going to drive his new Crossley at the end of the procession but he’s with Phyllis in her Fiat.’

  ‘She looks a very pretty lady to be with.’

  ‘Indeed she is. There’s only one problem.’

  ‘And that is?’

  ‘He’s engaged to Hester Hart.’

  As she ran down the line to greet Phyllis, Egbert watched her go, admiring her enthusiasm. Privately he could understand Auguste’s views on motorcars, but he could also see they were useful. Leaping into a hansom did not achieve the same immediate results, particularly when their drivers had to be haggled with as to whether their book of distances covered the journey in question. He wondered whether he might get a motorcar if they ever became cheaper. At the moment they were the toys of the rich. He tried to imagine Edith perched on top of one of these shining monsters, swathed in chiffon like a Hallowe’en phantom. So far she had not been enthusiastic. Dusty, dirty contraptions had been her verdict after a trip in her sister’s husband’s brother’s de Dion, hence her concern for him today. In his view, travelling by foot, omnibus and railway train taught you more than a box on four wheels. You were in the middle of life, not shut away from it. But times changed. It was nearly forty years since he was a crusher on the beat on the Ratcliffe Highway. Villains had changed, transport had changed, the century had changed, and now he was a chief inspector with Twitch, his private name for Inspector Stitch, still faithfully plodding behind him despite his persistent attempts to dislodge him from the trail.

  ‘No sign of Auguste?’ he asked as Tatiana hurried back. It was eight thirty.

  ‘No, nor the Duchess nor Hester. But we’ll have to go.’ She bent down to pick up the starting handle to hand to Egbert, and gave one last look down the line.

  ‘There’s Hester!’ she exclaimed with relief, signalling to the Motor Club officials. Joining the queue of cars was the familiar shape and bright red of the Dolly Dobbs. ‘Thank goodness. We’re only missing Agatha and Auguste now, and that –’ as the engine spluttered into life – ‘is just too bad.’

  Egbert Rose jumped up into the passenger seat again, relieved he still had his right arm. He wasn’t used to cranking motorcars and Edith had sombrely read out an article in her magazine about the dangers of allowing your husband to indulge in such occupations, lest he break his arm if the handle swung back. He had survived his first ordeal, and the Bollée swept off with a triumphant toot round Hyde Park Corner. As the wind caught his face he was suddenly grateful for the deerstalker, though he still felt like a fish out of water. Even Auguste Didier banquets lost their appeal as he realised over sixty windy, dusty, chalky miles lay ahead. Why hadn’t he sent Twitch?

  ‘Didier’s hopped it, has he?’

  Inspector Stitch was well-satisfied. He was no friend of Auguste’s, and deduced his absence from the scene of the crime meant he was involved in it up to his neck, or his name wasn’t Stitch. True, he found the image of Auguste as a murderer hard to reconcile with his being intimately connected to the royal family, of which both Stitches, Alfred and Martha, were unshakeable admirers, but he lived in hopes that there had been some terrible mistake and that Auguste and Tatiana’s marriage would be declared null and void, thus rendering Stitch’s world once again unsullied.

  ‘He wanted to catch Inspector Rose before he reached Canterbury, so he said,’ Charlie explained.

  ‘Why?’ Twitch bristled with suspicion.

  ‘Maybe so he could tell His Majesty himself,’ Charlie suggested helpfully.

  This was unwelcome news to Stitch. His name did not carry the weight it should have done with His Majesty, and devoted admirer though he was, if His Majesty was in the case, then the further out Stitch was the better.

  ‘Taking the Dover Road, a
re they?’

  ‘The very one.’

  ‘I’ll have them stopped, and get the Chief back here.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Leave it to the police, son.’ Stitch moved portentously into the motor house where the police doctor was examining the body, and proceeded to act like the competent and thorough policeman he was.

  Auguste attempted to organise his jumbled thoughts and emotions. Here he was, sitting in a railway train bound for a village he did not know, in the hope of stopping the cavalcade before it passed through. He had waited impatiently at Charing Cross while an army of bowler-hatted gentlemen had marched their way off Platform I towards their offices for the Saturday morning, hoping that his memory of poring over the road map of Kent with Tatiana was accurate, and that at Welling the railway station was almost on the Dover Road.

  As the station names passed by, New Cross, Blackheath, Well Hall, he realised with thankfulness that his thoughts were beginning to take shape. First he must consider how the iron block had swung with such sickening force on to the Dolly Dobbs’s vital innards. By accident? By Hester’s hand? By another’s? Was that why she now lay there dead? Motorcars raised dangerous passions – he remembered his last sight of Harold Dobbs who had hardly seemed to notice that a human being had lost her life, only that his beloved motorcar was ruined. He could build another motorcar; the life was lost for ever.

  How Hester had died would not be resolved until the police had inspected the body. Auguste had his own views though. She lay face down, the back of her body apparently uninjured, despite the dried blood he had noticed on her clothes and on the floor. A gun? Hadn’t Tatiana told him Hester carried one? Stabbed? He would soon know. And then came the question why? More people had reason to dislike her than Auguste could have believed possible, but how many of them felt strongly enough for murder was another matter. Perhaps it was an accident, he thought without great hope. He tried to keep his mind clear, for it could achieve nothing until he had more facts, yet against his will stray memories flitted in and out of his mind. Some were connected with Hester Hart, some were not, and they were all unwelcome.