Murder At The Music Hall: (Auguste Didier Mystery 8)

by Myers, Amy

‘Yes, sir. As I said, he was a casual, a villain by the name of Jack Knight, place of loitering the Three Tars in Limehouse. Employment putting away as many pints of porter as he could. Time of death between three and four.’

  ‘Far off his usual beat, wasn’t he?’

  ‘They take what’s offered, that sort.’

  Rose knew. That sort of casual (as opposed to those of their more energetic brothers who stormed the dock gates daily hoping for the odd day’s work) loafed in pubs waiting for work to come to them. Never sought it out. They fetched and carried merchandise, legal or illegal, to the ships, and never asked questions. For that reason, most were ‘safe’. Yet this one got murdered, and not on his usual beat.

  As if reading his thoughts, Grey told him: ‘We’ve checked the pubs round Nightingale Lane, if you’re thinking he might have got into a fight after spending his dosh.’

  ‘Nice job, carrying jewels,’ Rose said thoughtfully. ‘Must have paid him well.’

  ‘Might have been Auntie Maisie’s engagement ring. Or Uncle Sam Fence’s runner. We’re working on that.’

  ‘Family?’

  ‘Casuals don’t have ’em.’

  ‘They don’t come out of nowhere. He didn’t look like he slept out at nights, so he laid his weary head somewhere. Even if it’s only Medland Hall.’ He thought of the nearby lodging house for the destitute, and the long dreary queues that formed there waiting hopefully and hopelessly for the seven o’clock opening time.

  ‘No one’s come forward. I don’t waste my men’s time. I’ve got witnesses he was given a job around two-thirty. Someone remembers him buying a pie to take with him. That any help? If you need to know the name of his board school teacher, let me know.’

  If Grey meant this sarcastically, he was disappointed. Rose thanked him cordially, and hung the receiver up. He was a happy man. He could still smell something fishy, and he knew the fish was distinctly off.

  ‘Corpse in Nightingale Lane, Ma,’ he said now.

  ‘What’s a nice Chief Inspector from Scotland Yard doing in the likes of Nightingale Lane?’

  ‘Ship called the Lisboa sailed on Saturday. A silver cross with garnets belonging to Prince Henry the Navigator. Either of them mean anything to you?’

  ‘Not a tin farthing.’

  Ma could not read, and however heated, the discussion of the newspapers, society or intelligentsia passed her by. Ask her whether Jimmy Longtooth had been up to his old tricks, or another Charlie Peace or Kate Webster appeared in her territory, and she was as informed on her subject as Mycroft Holmes himself.

  ‘The cross was stolen from Windsor Castle Saturday morning, and I was tipped off it was leaving on the Lisboa. The Lisboa left two hours early and before I got there. There was a corpse in Nightingale Alley.’

  ‘As dirty as a dock casual’s long johns.’

  ‘They don’t wear ’em, do they?’

  ‘Not often.’

  He took her point and considered it. Then he shook his head. ‘Just because the King’s involved, that don’t mean I’m smelling rats where there’s only pure roses, Ma. There was a small garnet lying by the corpse.’

  She looked at him sharply. ‘Think this cross was pinched from him, do you?’

  ‘Yes. Why kill him if he’d already delivered the cross?’

  ‘Stop him from talking?’

  ‘Then why employ him in the first place? He came from Limehouse, so someone took care over this. I don’t like it, Ma. Could you ask around – urgently?’

  ‘With the afternoon collection. Now, give me that laundry of yours. It’ll be at your desk seven prompt.’

  The battered suitcase having been duly ticketed took its place amidst its even humbler fellows.

  Rose stared out from his high, small office overlooking the river below. By rights he should have surrendered this office to Twitch on his promotion and moved into the more accessible room on the first floor. He’d refused to. Accessibility was not one of his objectives. If people needed him, they’d come; if they couldn’t be bothered to climb a few stairs, they could stay away and solve their own problems. A simple method but it worked, and he still had his view of the Thames. It helped him. The Thames flowed into London, it flowed out again to the sea. It didn’t care whether it was passing the House of Lords or Limehouse Basin; it carried its corpses and secrets on regardless.

  The only snag about retaining his old room was that Twitch had magnanimously decided to make the same gesture and did not accept the room elsewhere to which his promotion to Inspector entitled him. He was still next door, the faithful terrier that waited for bones. Rose had found his loyalty, somewhat to his surprise, strangely moving. He firmly buried such emotion and replaced it for daily use with his usual sharp irritation.

  There was one good thing about Inspector Stitch (Twitch was Rose’s not so private name for him); he delivered the goods. Unlike Grey, who let them sail down the river out of sight.

  ‘You wanted me, sir?’ Stitch was still under the impression he owed grateful thanks to Rose for not blocking his promotion. Correctly, in fact. Better the devil you knew was Rose’s guiding principle.

  ‘Yes. That post mortem on the docks’ corpse arrived yet?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I’ve just read it.’

  ‘Bring it in, there’s a good chap.’

  Pink in the cheeks at this unaccustomed courtesy, Twitch vanished and reappeared with the alacrity of the devil in a pantomime. Rose read through the brief report. ‘Late thirties, died between three and four as Grey said.’ Very helpful. That meant he might or might not have delivered his package. ‘Remains of undigested meal . . .’

  ‘What interests you, sir?’

  ‘Probably nothing, if His Majesty wasn’t mixed up with it – in a manner of speaking.’

  ‘If this chap came from Limehouse to London Docks to deliver a package, why should the body turn up in Nightingale Lane?’ Stitch asked portentously.

  ‘Perhaps he had a notion to choose his own execution place,’ Rose said scathingly.

  ‘Perhaps that’s where he handed the package over, sir. If it was a secret mission, he wouldn’t want to go up to the ship.’

  ‘A rendezvous, eh? Sometimes, Stitch, you excel yourself.’

  ‘I know, sir,’ Stitch murmured, flustered. ‘And then,’ driven to new heights of endeavour, ‘the captain or contact on the ship murdered him as per instructions.’

  Rose looked at him. ‘No reason why not, I suppose,’ he grunted. ‘Or he was murdered on the way to the ship and the cross was stolen? In the fight a garnet dropped out.’

  ‘Why go by Nightingale Lane? That’s the far side of the docks from Limehouse.’

  ‘Perhaps he came by railway, Stitch,’ Rose suggested mildly.

  Twitch looked crestfallen, and relenting Rose added: ‘If the cross was stolen before it reached the Lisboa it’s still in this country.’

  ‘Why, sir?’

  Rose stared at him. ‘Because—’ He stopped. ‘I’m going off it, Stitch. We need to go back to our muttons. If it’s straight theft, why plan to steal a cross that isn’t worth much in its materials and gems? It’s what it is that makes it special.’

  ‘Your laundry from Stepney, sir.’ An impassive sergeant, puffing reproachfully, entered to hand over the battered suitcase.

  Rose’s eyes gleamed. ‘Did you pay him?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Six shillings.’

  Rose calmly counted out this fortune, while Stitch watched, dumbfounded. He made a mental note to tell the Chief about Postlethwaites of Clapham who’d do it for tuppence.

  Still the Chief had his idiosyncrasies and if a Chinese laundry was one of them, it was harmless enough. Catch his Martha asking any Chinese men to do his laundry. She’d wash it all again. He tried to imagine Martha married to Egbert Rose and shuddered on her behalf. Thank goodness she had him, Alfred Stitch.

  Once the glory that was Twitch had departed, Rose opened the suitcase. Inside was the same pair of socks he had sent, now washed, a
nd with one other benefit. Tucked inside one of them was a piece of paper, which he eagerly extracted. It was an advance programme for a music hall, the Old King Cole. He ran his eye down it: Nettie Turner and her Donkey Song, Will Lamb plays Macbeth, Our Pickles sings . . . All at the Old King Cole.

  He grinned. He remembered it, for it was one of the halls on his old beat. He picked up the telephone, and shouted amiably at the operator. A few moments later Inspector Grey’s querulous voice was all attention. ‘Ah, Grey,’ Rose told him agreeably, ‘I expect you remember that ship which unfortunately left early. I need to make a few more inquiries. No objection, have you?’

  Grey had not, especially if they did not rebound on his head.

  The Old King Cole was not quite the Empire. Auguste looked round aghast at his new, thankfully temporary, domain. And its ‘restaurant’ moreover was far from Escoffier’s Carlton. He tried to remind himself he should be grateful for the opportunity to be able to cook at all, but his first sight suggested some prices were too high to pay. He had chosen to walk from the Tower of London to the theatre in order to acquaint himself with the area, and counted himself lucky to arrive. True, no snarling bandits had leapt out on him, but despite the most valiant efforts of the local council to improve the image of the road, the high dockland warehouses on his right, and the rows of uninviting-looking shops, and pubs, with the ill-smelling alleyways and lanes leading off, suggested the efforts had merely resulted in the tide of murky humanity being swept back off the main thoroughfare and forcibly held there, while it bided its time to leap out on the unsuspecting. Like Auguste Didier. Groups of sailors and dockers huddled outside the pubs, watching him curiously, and he was glad to reach the music hall.

  The Old King Cole, not far from St George’s-in-the-East church, had once been a humble pub, a wayside inn outside Shadwell, and no better, no worse than its fellows. Then an ambitious publican in the mid-nineteenth century had coincided with the decision to improve the murky image of the Ratcliffe Highway by renaming it. What better improvement than to expand his old ale-house of dubious reputation into a music hall? Consequently he built out to the rear an ornate and, he vowed, high-class music hall with a circle, gallery, fauteuils and sedate atmosphere. Unfortunately, he forgot to mention this desire for social betterment to his clientele, which remained identical to that which had provided his ale-house with its reputation. When LCC regulations first discouraged, then banished, the serving of food and drink in the auditorium, he gave up the struggle for respectability. The new owner, Percy Jowitt, also had ambitions, and turned the long bar on the ground floor into a grill-room, which degenerated quickly into a common eating house. Nevertheless little by little, by raising the prices, his clientele did improve to the point where respectable loving husbands were able to bring wives, even daughters. Jowitt glowed with satisfaction – though not for long. Wives and daughters, he discovered, rarely drank as much as their menfolk, and his ownership of the Old King Cole had degenerated into a constant struggle to retain such brilliant newcomers as he discovered, and to persuade his regulars to support his ageing regular turns which he shared with half a dozen or so similar institutions within a radius of three miles. Jowitt was now in his sixties, a dapper, dark-haired, anxious man, ever torn between stark reality and a Micawber-like hopefulness of the infinite possibilities of the future.

  Auguste stood at the doorway and surveyed the smoky, smelly hell which he had fondly imagined a paradise. He summoned his strength. If Alexis Soyer could cook on the top of Pyramids, or in the Crimea, surely he, Auguste Didier, could transform this den into something approaching a place fit for food. The smell of stale food and plates wafted towards him, increasing the nearer he approached to the bar.

  ‘Most of the cooking is done downstairs on the gridirons and ovens,’ Jowitt told him reassuringly. ‘You keep it hot up here, and the potato cans are outside.’

  This largely passed over Auguste’s head, as he peered into a foul-smelling hot dish.

  ‘Faggots and mustard pickle,’ Jowitt told him proudly.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘That’s the Monday Special. You heat it up for the evening crowd. Penny hot, three-farthings cold. And in the evenings you have the whole splendid range. Herrings, saveloys, pease pudding, currant pudding, lobscouse—’

  Auguste pricked up his ears, and his spirits cautiously halted awhile in their downward progress. Lobscouse? He had never heard of the dish, but no doubt it had to do with lobster. Some local dialect word, perhaps. He could produce lobscouse thermidor, lobscouse salad—

  ‘And eels,’ Jowitt was saying.

  ‘A matelote a la Parisienne?’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘In a delicious casserole with white wine, oysters, crayfish butter and a little nutmeg?’

  Percy evidently decided this was a joke, and after the required roar of laughter, amplified kindly: ‘Collared or jellied.’

  Auguste gazed at him nonplussed.

  Jowitt did not notice. ‘Mostly they take the ha’porth and ha’porth though.’

  Auguste searched his vast store of culinary knowledge, but could not recollect such a dish. ‘Is this a local name for fish?’ he asked doubtfully.

  Percy blinked. ‘Fish and potatoes. Ha’porth of fish, ha’porth of spuds.’ He began to wonder if this cook knew his onions.

  ‘À la lyonnaise?’ Auguste stopped, in quiet desperation. There was no common ground. He was on his own. ‘I cannot cook and serve all by myself,’ he said firmly. ‘And serve the drink as well.’

  ‘Of course not, my dear fellow,’ Percy reassured him hastily, glad there was something he could answer. ‘Wouldn’t expect it. Full staff at your beck and call. There’s the girl.’

  ‘What girl?’

  ‘The girl.’

  ‘Her name?’

  ‘Can’t bring it to mind. I expect she has one,’ Percy told him somewhat apologetically, smoothing down suspiciously black hair. ‘And old Jacob does the drink. You don’t have to lift a finger there.’

  ‘You must remember I am here for another reason too,’ Auguste said firmly, unconvinced.

  ‘Keeping the bailiffs away. I know. Very good of you.’

  ‘Quoi?’ This was no time for politeness.

  ‘When Nettie offered me your services, I was truly grateful, my dear man. They mean to get me this time.’

  ‘But—’ Auguste broke off. What was the point? He fulminated against women, not so much for their deviousness, but for their blithe disregard of minor details . . . like informing those most concerned of what was going on.

  ‘Might I ask if you are expecting many bailiffs at the moment?’

  ‘You never expect bailiffs,’ Percy explained reasonably. ‘If they came when they were expected, you’d make yourself and your goods scarce, wouldn’t you?’

  Auguste had never been in the unfortunate position of discovering the truth of this statement, though in his apprentice days he had come close to it. He could see the logic of Jowitt’s argument. Nevertheless it seemed he was expected to cook for numberless hordes, help quench their never-ending need for beer, keep the bailiffs from troubling Mr Jowitt, and, as a mere extra, prevent a possible foul murder by being a constant shadow to Will Lamb. Fortunately it was only for a week.

  ‘Imeretrelpyer.’

  ‘Je m’excuse?’ Startled, Auguste glanced down at the source of this squeak.

  Roughly level with his chest was the dirtiest white cap he’d ever seen, crammed over long unkempt greasy hair, atop a broomhandle, or, on second glance, the skinniest girl he’d ever seen. Her boots were cracked, her too-short skirts revealed bony bare ankles, her print gown was covered by a dirty white apron. The latter was unnecessary since the dress was dirty enough in its own right. The face stared confidingly and gap-toothed up at him, then cracked in a large grin.

  ‘I’m Lizzie.’

  ‘You’re a waitress, Miss Eliza?’ he asked faintly.

  ‘Nah. I’m yer cook.’

&nb
sp; If ever there was a time to prove Auguste Didier was a man of resolution, this was it. He took out his pocket watch. Three-thirty. Happily providence had brought him here early. Will Lamb would not be arriving at the Old King Cole in the care of Nettie Turner until this evening and whatever culinary fate might be in store for the lucky diners tonight was presumably already stacked up, probably in some verminous outhouse. Meanwhile, garnish could do much to disguise even the worst of culinary disasters, he told himself.

  ‘Lizzie, kindly call a cab for us.’

  ‘You’re not leaving?’ wailed Jowitt.

  ‘And taking this young lady with me. Merely for an hour, Mr Jowitt. Should any bailiffs call, kindly lock them in the cellar.’

  Lizzie looked scared. ‘There ain’t no cabs round here.’

  ‘An omnibus then, Lizzie. Any mode of transport.’

  ‘Ma don’t like me going out with strange men.’

  ‘How old are you, Lizzie?’

  ‘Sixteen.’

  Auguste choked. He’d put her down as ten, and promptly abandoned his original instinct to remove her to the nearest tin bath, strip her and immerse her in a bath of disinfectant. He executed all his considerable charm. ‘Lizzie, please take me to the nearest outfitters.’

  ‘Commercial Road’s the best,’ Lizzie said doubtfully.

  Bond Street it was not, and there were none of the new horseless buses here, but they had emerged an hour later from an outfitters of sorts, a large parcel tucked firmly under Lizzie’s arm, from which she would not be parted.

  ‘For me?’ Lizzie asked in wonder for the twentieth time.

  ‘Only after a visit to the Public Baths, ma fille?

  He handed Lizzie plus parcel, twopence, and a threepenny tip over to the attendant. Half an hour later a Lizzie of totally different hue shyly emerged. She was bright red from the scrubbing, and much of her hair had vanished. What there was left made her look like a hopeful hedgehog.

  ‘My dad will take a strap to me, looking like a tart.’

  ‘The only tart you resemble, Lizzie, is a strawberry one.’

  She eyed him doubtfully. ‘I don’t look like a tart, then?’