by Myers, Amy
‘I do. My parents are employing you as motorcar driver and engineer to drive them to Deauville, stay there, and drive back. I shall be there too,’ she added carelessly. ‘What do you say?’
Nothing apparently. He was speechless.
‘You don’t even have to kiss me if you don’t want to,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Only it would be nice once in a while.’
Leo found his voice. ‘Like now?’ He led her out of sight of his superiors and proceeded to demonstrate great mechanical and artistic skill in a field even more enjoyable than motor repairs.
Everyone had gone. Tatiana was conferring with the porter over last-minute details, Egbert and Edith had gone home to Highbury. Auguste felt an odd reluctance to return to the kitchen; he had bidden his farewells to it before dinner and therefore the soul had gone from it; it would remain an empty shell until life was breathed into it once more in September. Nevertheless he found himself automatically going there to check all was well.
‘Goodnight, Mr Didier. See you in September.’ Annie Parsons was leaving, all but the last to do so.
The kitchen looked desolate; all signs of dinner were gone, copper pans replaced on their hooks, plates stacked away, utensils back in their drawers instead of lying invitingly by the side of chopping boards. Only a basket full of food open on the table suggested signs of life. He felt a great longing for Eastbourne, as far away as ever. He would have to stay with Egbert until the case was over. Did he not bear an equal responsibility in these closing stages? There might be some snippet of information, some detail he might remember that could tip the scales of justice as far as Francis and Smythe were concerned. Francis had not yet been caught; suppose Egbert followed his inclination and charged Smythe? How would he feel then? The answer was simple: Egbert would be making a mistake, and therefore he, Auguste, had to remain.
He eyed the basket of food on the table, left over from dinner. After Eastbourne, he and Tatiana would travel to France for two weeks, a different land, a different cuisine. It would inspire him anew for the autumn. The best food in the world could be found in England, but the inspiration for cooking it was found only in France. If only the two countries could get together in the interests of the estomac. Perhaps that was what His Majesty had had in mind when he proposed the Entente Cordiale.
Take a saupiquet for instance, a dish he had discovered while travelling to eastern France – for thus he thought of Alsace-Lorraine, not as part of Germany as they had been since the war thirty-odd years ago. The most delicate sauce was needed, and not too strong a ham. On the other hand the sauce must be piquant; the reduced vinegar, and the meat stock, must be strong enough to complement but not clash with the ham. It was all a question of emphasis.
A question of emphasis . . . The brain left to simmer behind the scenes suddenly reasserted itself. The bells rang, and this time were answered. Auguste turned and ran through the corridors to the main entrance, fearing to find it in darkness. Had he missed her? The porter’s lodge was dark but there was an electric light still burning in the lobby. He rushed to Tatiana’s office and found her still occupied at her desk in the process of last-minute clearing.
‘I need another fifteen minutes, chéri,’ she pleaded as he burst in.
‘Tatiana, tell me everything you heard when you took the cocoa over to Hester Hart.’
‘But it’s all in the notes, and Auguste, we are leaving on holiday tomorrow.’
‘The pot is still on the boil, ma mie. Please tell me. Exactly as it sounded.’
Tatiana obliged. It was the quickest way. ‘I couldn’t hear all they were saying on the first occasion, but I heard Hester, of course, and Roderick’s voice quite distinctly. They were quarrelling, but I couldn’t make out what about. On the second occasion I did hear because Hester was shouting. “Marry you, you fool. As if I ever would.”’
‘And what did Roderick reply?’
‘I didn’t hear. I came away.’
‘Then how do you know it was Roderick she was speaking to?’
‘Because she was talking about marrying him, of course,’ Tatiana said patiently.
‘Try to remember, ma mie. Did she say “marry you” or “marry you”, or “marry you” with equal emphasis?’
‘Is there a difference?’
‘Yes. A vital one.’
She thought back, reliving it in her mind, disentangling it from the overlay of repetition. ‘I’m almost sure she said “marry you”. You mean the second time it was Hugh Francis, don’t you?’ Tatiana was suddenly excited, as she thought about it. ‘It could have been, I suppose. Yet the first time was definitely Roderick. He would have to have left and Hugh to have arrived all in the course of twenty minutes or so. It’s possible, but why should Hugh Francis need to marry her if he would inherit anyway?’
‘That, ma mie, is the question.’
Auguste returned slowly to the kitchen. Was he hallucinating, overtired, seeing sour milk where there was only pure cream? Should he not leave it to Egbert? No, for tonight the club closed, and holidays began tomorrow. Holidays for everyone.
Pierre looked up as he came in. ‘I am sorry, monsieur. I was not here earlier. I was clearing the larders.’
Auguste looked at him first subjectively, the man who cooked so wonderfully that even he could rarely fault him, who had run this kitchen almost as well as he could have done himself, who had good-temperedly and patiently put up with intrusions into what he must see as his own domain and become temporarily loyal servant, not master. Not servant, junior partner was a better term. Then Auguste saw him objectively: an Arab brought up in a Western land, who had travelled much in the East. What was he doing here, in a club in St James’s? Did loyalty to Hester Hart really answer that question, when the man’s heart lay Eastwards? Auguste was too tired to prevaricate.
‘It was you, wasn’t it? You thought you’d marry her and when she rebuffed you, you killed her.’
Pierre’s face hardly changed. He might have been discussing the best way of cooking lamb. ‘No, monsieur, she wanted to marry me, then she changed her mind.’
‘Why should she?’ Auguste found it hard to believe. ‘You were a hired servant to her.’
Pierre sighed. ‘I will explain – if you have the time,’ he added politely.
How unreal to be sitting at this kitchen table with a double murderer who asked if you could spare the time to listen, Auguste reflected. Now that his question had been answered, he felt even more tired, as anticlimax set in. He could not have moved even had he wished to. He felt as bound to his chair as the Ancient Mariner’s unwilling listener.
‘Out there everything is different.’ Pierre seemed not so much to be talking to him as to his own past. ‘It is the land of the Arab, not the Westerner, and their ways are the paths of right for them, just as your Bible and law are for you. They, too, have slaves of course, but all freemen have an equality you could not imagine here or in France. There are rich men, there are poor men, there are bad and good, and they are judged by that, not by their parentage. Rich men, and those of ancient families, as the world over, demand respect, but that has nothing to do with worth as a man. In London and Paris that is not the case. Society is a caste that does not admit outsiders, so Miss Hart told me, and I see it for myself. I was her dragoman for six years; she travelled as a wealthy English lady and I as her hired servant, but we were equal in the respect paid to us. The Arab values a man or woman who knows their own trade well; we were partners in an adventure. It is always so in the desert; brothers need one another’s support, for, as I told you, not all Arabs are of good will to travellers.
‘We talked much during those years; our outlook on life was the same. You saw only the worst Hester Hart; I saw the real woman stripped of the shackles of Western society. She was brave, strong, light-hearted – and happy. Of course we must marry, she said; we had been through too much together not to. It was at Palmyra she said this, a place of destiny.’
Auguste had to say it. He must be objectiv
e, not swayed by his liking for the man. ‘And you realised if she married you, you would be a rich man.’
Pierre smiled. ‘Would you believe me if I replied simply that I do not think that way, though I understand the temptation because I was brought up in France. The English traveller Richard Burton when he travelled in the East commented that the difference between the Arab and the Westerner is that the aim of the Arab is to be, that of the Westerner is to have. The splendour and the squalor. That, he said, is the Arab life, and one finds it in the desert. It was my privilege to share it with Miss Hart.’
‘You asked her to marry you?’
‘No. She suggested it. She wore my ring, and we exchanged copies of the Rubáiyát, a poem of which Hester was very fond.’
‘That was her copy in her handbag? Why did you leave it there?’
‘Because I had given that copy to her. I have hers to me. She always carried it, so I knew it would be there. I needed to remove the title page for her own reputation, as well as my protection, for I had written in it. When I saw the pistol in her bag I removed that too. I took it away because it was so familiar to me. Part of my life. I was going to shoot her, but instead it was more fitting to stab her with our dagger.’
‘Our dagger?’
‘The one we shared in the desert. We exchanged vows over it, it cut our meat there, we defended ourselves with it. We had bought it together in Damascus and decided it was a symbol of our unity. To use that was the fitting end for a traitor.’
‘Traitor? She just changed her mind.’
‘More than that, monsieur. She put her own pursuit of vengeance first when she came here. She was a different person to my beloved Miss Hart. She asked me to take this job to help her in her plans. I knew how important they were to her, so I agreed. She would pretend not to know me, she said, and that, too, I understood. Therefore I must not come to her house; I would meet her in the Zoological Gardens.’
‘Ah, the Zoo. Now I see.’
‘Yes, where I killed that dog Luigi,’ Pierre replied matter-of-factly. ‘She changed. She spoke no more of marriage, she treated me as a servant is treated here, and you yourself know how that can be. The gulf between society and servants is a river as wide as the Euphrates, and none shall cross it.’
‘And that is the reason she cried “Marry you?” with such scorn, when you went to her that night?’
‘It had not always been like that, monsieur. I knew I had to kill her when she announced her betrothal to Roderick Smythe.’
‘Why had to? Murder is a matter of the individual will.’
‘Not for the Arab, monsieur. My wife had betrayed me, so she had to die. She was an adulteress. The woman to the stone, says Muhammad.’
‘Wife?’
Pierre took no notice. ‘That evening I heard you say that she was not going to marry Mr Smythe after all. I assumed immediately that saying she would was all part of her plans, and that she still intended to marry me. I hid in the storerooms, after you thought I had left that evening. I kept the dagger with me so that we could renew our vows. I was very upset to see Roderick Smythe arrive, and relieved when he left not long afterwards. I rushed to her immediately. She laughed at my love. She was not my Hester. She was an English lady after all, who would not marry a servant. So I killed her.’ He shuddered. ‘I killed my Hester. Up till then I had not thought of myself, but then I realised I must for I was in a Western country which would not look on my deed in the same way. So I smashed Dolly Dobbs in the hope you would think that the motorcar was the reason for the murder.’
‘And Luigi?’ Auguste was determined not to be swayed. ‘Was it right by your standards that he should die?’
‘When you are among brigands, defence is not a crime. That dog realised, when you talked to him, that I had killed Hester, and was surprised that I had confessed to you that I was her dragoman. Why should I not, after all? It was the truth. Nevertheless he realised I had killed her for he saw me cross the yard from his serving room window. If I had to die for Hester’s death, I was determined not to do so while that dog lived. So I agreed to his demand for money and suggested we met in the Zoo for me to hand the money over. I left the pistol as a sign to Hester that she was avenged. She would have been glad that it was where we used to meet.’
‘You said “wife” earlier,’ Auguste said. ‘Were you already married?’
He still did not reply.
‘Very well. Then perhaps it is recorded in her diaries.’
‘You have the diaries,’ he said shortly.
‘Not all of them, Pierre.’
He stood up swiftly. ‘What are you going to do now, Monsieur Didier?’
‘I must tell Inspector Rose.’ Auguste spoke without thinking. When he saw Pierre slip his hand under the apron, he knew he had made a mistake. Could he reach a door? No, none of them. His only chance was to talk his way out. This was no Gregorin, after all. This was Pierre, his loyal assistant. Pierre, holding a dagger with a carved handle, a digger that had killed Hester Hart and killed Luigi Peroni.
‘I have three choices,’ Pierre said calmly. ‘I can kill you, I can kill myself, or I could tell the inspector I am guilty. Which shall I do, do you think?’
‘You respect me, Pierre. You will not kill me. That isn’t in the Arab soul.’ Auguste tried to keep his voice steady, tried to sound as if he believed what he said.
‘I was brought up in Marseille.’ Pierre studied the dagger. ‘I could easily kill you, if that is ordained.’
‘Pierre, it is not.’ Almost with compassion, Auguste spoke quietly for he could see what Pierre could not – Egbert creeping into the kitchen, followed by two police constables. All the tiredness and tension of the last few days rose up and overwhelmed Auguste. He collapsed.
Auguste opened his eyes. The sun was streaming through the window. The bed was empty apart from himself. Tatiana was humming in the dressing room. They were going on holiday. Then he remembered.
‘Egbert wants to see you downstairs, if you feel well enough.’ Tatiana came anxiously into the bedroom. ‘Do you?’
‘Are we still going on holiday?’
‘Yes. All of us.’
He sat up in bed. The world looked wonderful. He swung his feet to the floor. ‘Has he breakfasted?’ First things first.
‘Mrs Jolly and Egbert have reached an understanding. She is preparing one of her special crêpes with kidneys.’
He could already smell it in his nostrils. Soon he would smell the sea. ‘I will be with him in fifteen minutes.’
Egbert greeted him cordially, almost as though he had not been up all night. ‘Thought you might like to see these before you go. We found them when we searched his lodgings.’ He planted fourteen familiar volumes on the morning-room table.
‘Ah!’ Auguste pounced. ‘The diaries. The private ones for the years Pierre spent with her.’
‘Yes. And previous years. Pierre wasn’t the first dragoman to be her lover. She entrusted the lot to him. Seemed odd, and I asked him why if they were no longer on chummy terms. Because he was a servant, he said bitterly, who would naturally obey her commands.’
Auguste picked one up and opened it at random. ‘“Last night Pierre taught me the Oriental upavishta, the sitting posture, so difficult for Westerners, but I mastered it. That makes the thirty-third position in all. He is a man of many parts, and one of them, the most important, the most sizeable I have ever met. I measured it—”’ Auguste dropped the book, but curiosity proved stronger than distaste. ‘“I love him, I love him! I shall marry him. Like Jane Digby and her Sheikh we shall live in our Desert of Beauty for ever.”’ He closed the book and looked at Egbert, who nodded.
‘No wonder he thought of her as his wife. Then when she got back here, she changed. It’s odd that Miss Hart, who had suffered in her youth from being treated as an inferior on account of her birth, never gave a thought to treating Pierre in the same way.’
‘As Edith said, Hester Hart was not a nice lady.’
‘That reminds me,’ Egbert said, ‘you haven’t asked me how I turned up so conveniently last night. Not that I think he’d have killed you. He likes you.’
‘How did you?’ Auguste put the disquieting thought of Pierre and their relationship aside.
‘I went back to the yard to charge Roderick Smythe. You were right, incidentally. He wasn’t the clubman, it was Hugh Francis. Anyway, Smythe was sitting there as bold as you like in his cell drinking – he wasn’t under arrest and he knew I’d have to charge or release him. He banked on the latter. “Another glass of wine, if you please,” he demanded, as cool as you like. And I remembered Edith at dinner spouting from that poem in Hester Hart’s handbag. “A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and Thou beside me singing in the wilderness”. Now I don’t usually have poetical turns of thought, it must have been your lobster Edith turning my stomach over, but I suddenly thought that fitted our Pierre like a glove, so I thought I’d just check if he was still around at the club. Tatiana told me you were, so I strolled down to see you and heard what was going on.’
‘It is Edith who solved this crime then?’
‘It is.’
‘Tonight I shall cook her a soufflé Edith, better than all her beloved Mrs Marshall’s recipes put together.’
‘We’re going on holiday. You won’t be near a kitchen.’
Auguste’s face fell, then he brightened up. ‘I can eat, however.’
Epilogue
Auguste was happy. The breeze out on Eastbourne pier tugged impatiently at his Panama and blew gently at his blazer neck. Edith held on to her new seaside hat, and Tatiana tied her scarf round her boater as though she was in a motorcar. She only lacked the goggles. Egbert took off his lounge suit jacket and allowed his shirt sleeves to enjoy the sunshine.
They had just eaten crevettes grises from a stall on the pier, fresh and smelling of the sea. Their holidays had begun. They had travelled here by train.
‘Egbert says,’ Edith announced happily, ‘we are to purchase a motorcar.’