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

by Myers, Amy

  Mariella was beginning to get very tired of those words. She wondered how many more denials would be needed before she could have the cup of tea she was longing for. She made a major effort to suppress irritation, as the quickest way to her objectives. ‘Just think of all we can do with this money. And there’ll be an income too from his books and songs and—’

  ‘Who knew?’ he demanded suddenly. ‘Who knew Will Lamb was leaving all this to you?’

  She shrugged. ‘Will and I referred to it a few days ago in the Old King Cole. That awful child might have realised what we were talking about.’

  ‘Emmeline? Then everyone might have heard,’ he said thoughtfully, glad he hadn’t wasted money on a bust improver.

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Will Lamb is dead, so of course it matters.’ He frowned, then laughed. ‘Me, I shall be your manager,’ he crowed. ‘You think I am just your pimp, but now I shall manage you.’

  ‘For my money, yes, not lovers—’ she shouted crossly, tired of the same old merry-go-round of accusations.

  ‘So you do have lovers.’

  This had not been a good idea, Mariella belatedly realised. She had gone astray and every sacrifice had to be made, even if it came before cups of tea. ‘Only you, my beloved.’ She threw off her cape, ripped off her blouse (Mrs Whatever-her-name-was could sew the buttons on again, she didn’t charge much), tore off her skirt, petticoats, and posed invitingly in stays and drawers, then her hands went to the bebe blue ribbon that supported the latter, pushed them down, stepped neatly out of them, and seeing she had gained his attention, slowly undid the corset and daintily lifted the long chemise.

  Now she had his full attention. He was hardly able to blurt out, ‘Where’s your mermaid’s tail, Mariella?’ and join in her merry laughter before the cup of tea was inevitably postponed for at least ten minutes.

  The day’s dramas had not ended for Mariella. Miguel, secure in the afterglow of possession, had for once left her alone in the theatre while he pursued some mission of his own. Mariella went out to the shed behind the Old King Cole where her little doggies were left during the performance. (Jamrach’s animal trainer who also had his turn in the second half insisted on it.) Conscientiously she counted the doggies as they dutifully hopped out of their baskets and crept into the somewhat larger baskets that were their temporary home. Tonight something else awaited them, or rather their mistress, as Mariella opened the door and went into the dark shed. The doggies were delighted to find extra company but she was not, particularly since it took the large angry form of Fernando. He, too, had heard the news of her fortune.

  ‘He leave you all his money?’

  ‘Some of it. You are pleased for me, Fernando?’ Mariella tried to say brightly, but aware from the grip of his hand on her wrist that he was far from pleased.

  ‘You were going to run away with him.’

  ‘No.’ Exasperation seized her. ‘How many times do I have to say it?’

  ‘Everybody tell me. I do not believe them. They think me stupid. You too.’

  ‘Of course not. I’m very fond of you,’ she said wearily.

  This was usually a guarantee of arousing Fernando’s ecstatic devotion, but not, she realised to her alarm, tonight. Even in the dark, his eyes held more savagery than devotion. She was uncomfortably aware of his angry face and his enormous strength.

  ‘You fond of your husband.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you fond of Will Lamb.’

  ‘Yes.’ Cautiously now.

  ‘And you very fond of me.’

  ‘Of course.’ She began to be frightened.

  The doggies yapped delightedly, as he seized her in a bear hug with both arms, though not precisely where a bear would traditionally clutch. His intentions were made all too obvious by his tugging at the second blouse which was going to need the attentions of Mrs Whatever-her-name-was, and the large hand was questing around her skirt in places no self-respecting bear would pick as his first mouthful. Fernando’s mouth, clumsily over hers, stopped any hope of her screaming for help.

  Fortunately, Auguste, hearing a noise in the shed and suspecting Lizzie and Joe of yet more philandering when the eels remained uncollared, interrupted them, much to his own surprise. Mariella’s wildly flapping hands made him instantly realise that this was not another of her own seduction attempts.

  ‘That’s enough, Fernando,’ he said firmly and pleasantly.

  Reluctantly Fernando disengaged, sank on to the floor and began to cry. Mariella threw herself into Auguste’s arms. While soothing her and helping her to straighten her clothes, Miguel arrived in search of his wife and misunderstood the situation. Taken by surprise from the rear, Auguste found himself yanked by the collar and sent spinning across the yard to collapse in a painful heap by the fence. He scrambled to his feet, and faced with a maniacal Portuguese outraged husband hastily reacted in his own defence. Mariella’s shriek of ‘It was Fernando, Miguel,’ bought a quick response, which unfortunately left Auguste’s punch without a home. He was precipitated off balance and into another heap on the ground.

  ‘Mariella, Fernando is dangerous,’ Miguel roared, administering a kick to the sobbing strong man. ‘Please remember that. Especially now. Remember the mermaid’s tail.’

  Whatever he might mean by these incomprehensible words, Mariella appeared to understand them, Auguste observed, painfully picking himself up. Sobbing, she promised she would.

  By the interval, the Saturday performance bade fair to be a lacklustre anti-climax. There were no catastrophes, but fire and sparkle were noticeably absent. It affected all performers as though each one caught the mood on arrival, and left dissatisfied and petulant. In compensation, barracking too was merely half-hearted, a fact which gave Jowitt great pleasure. Only Nettie’s caustic comments reduced the situation to its true perspective.

  The malaise even reached Lizzie, whose beaming smile had been replaced by a scowl. What, Auguste asked her anxiously, was amiss?

  ‘Love,’ she replied curtly, slapping an innocent herring down on the gridiron with unnecessary force. Auguste winced. ‘Men,’ Lizzie amplified, following suit with the next one.

  ‘Here you are dedicated to your work, Lizzie. You must put other matters aside if you are to be a true cook.’

  ‘Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart,’ Lizzie intoned dolorously. ‘’Tis woman’s whole existence.’

  Auguste looked at her in astonishment. ‘When did you become acquainted with the works of Lord Byron, Lizzie?’

  ‘It was written on a picture me ma had. Daft, innit?’

  ‘Apparently not, if you continue treating God’s gifts of food in such an abominable manner,’ Auguste retorted crossly. ‘Kindly take care with that pie. You have flaked off one corner of the pastry.’

  ‘Pies!’ she cried scornfully, and burst into tears.

  ‘What is the matter now, Lizzie?’ he asked in exasperation.

  ‘I told Joe off for pinching me pie last night. Now he’s not ’ere no more.’

  ‘Was it by any chance one of Mrs Jolly’s pies?’

  ‘You don’t think I’d eat Mrs Mount’s stuff, do you?’

  ‘So, you have quarrelled with Joe?’ he deduced guiltily, though it took no great detective skill. The situation was serious, not least because there was no one to pick up the pies from Mrs Jolly’s. He instantly considered the choices for relief pieman. There could, in the circumstances, be only one. Himself.

  ‘Do not cry, Lizzie,’ he said with relief. ‘I will collect the pies myself.’

  Oddly, Lizzie howled the louder. ‘I don’t care who gets the bloomin’ pies. I wants Joe.’

  Mariella’s tribulations were not over. Violet and Marigold seized the opportunity of being left in the dressing-room alone with her, after Dolly declared her intention of ‘having it out with Horace’.

  ‘Dear Will, how you will miss him,’ Violet cooed.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Mariella replied mechanically, still shake
n from her encounter with Fernando.

  ‘Marigold and I are so pleased for you over your good fortune, and do share your grief.’

  ‘Thank you. What for?’ asked Mariella absently, still worrying lest Fernando crash in.

  ‘His death,’ Marigold said, shocked. ‘He was. . . he was going to help us, you know.’

  ‘Who? Fernando?’

  ‘No. Will!’ Violet tried to keep impatience at bay with a bright understanding smile. ‘Marigold has a little problem, you see.’

  ‘We all do,’ Mariella replied dismissively.

  ‘A little foreigner,’ Marigold dispensed with subtlety.

  ‘Little what?’

  ‘Baby!’ Violet followed suit.

  Mariella was suddenly all attention, studying Marigold’s outline carefully. ‘You’ve been put up the spout?’

  ‘He promised us money – so that we could live. He said he might come to live with us and the baby.’

  ‘What on earth can I do about it? He’s dead.’ Mariella was frantically wondering whether the will could be overturned if the baby were Will’s. Surely not for a bastard. A sudden alarming thought. Will hadn’t been so foolish as to marry the girl, had he? ‘How sad,’ Mariella said brightly. ‘Your baby’s father dead.’

  ‘No, he’s not.’ Marigold was bewildered.

  Mariella stared at her. ‘But, Will—’

  ‘Will wasn’t the father. He was a friend,’ Marigold said, shocked.

  Mariella relaxed. No need to be polite any longer.

  ‘Who was it – or don’t you know?’ she sneered.

  Violet looked meaningfully at Marigold. ‘I think we should tell people. He hasn’t been very nice to us.’

  ‘It wasn’t Miguel, was it?’ Mariella asked in sudden hope. She would have a real excuse for leaving then.

  Marigold looked aghast. ‘No. Surely you didn’t think we were telling little tales on him—’

  ‘Or trying to blackmail you into giving us money,’ Violet finished for her, smiling brightly.

  ‘No,’ Mariella replied curtly, disappointing them, ‘It was Horace.’

  Mariella grinned. ‘The old lecher. Does Dolly know?’

  ‘Dolly?’

  ‘You don’t think she really is an innocent maid up from the country, do you?’

  ‘We have no idea,’ Violet said coldly, returning briskly to the matter in hand. ‘So you do see our predicament? We need money, and Will didn’t have time to give us any before he was murdered. We thought you might help.’

  ‘Then you’re as crazy as he was.’

  ‘There’s no need to be rude.’

  ‘Go away, dear. Bring the little bastard up to sing “Never go as far as Flo”,’ Mariella giggled.

  ‘I shouldn’t laugh too much. We know who gave Will the cross.’ Violet was quietly indignant as she and Marigold prepared to wipe the dust of the Old King Cole off their feet. Will had told them of ‘Auntie’s jewellery’ and they could not resist a tiny peep when he wasn’t watching.

  Did they indeed? Mariella sat thinking for some time after they had gone.

  Dolly too left, hot in pursuit of Horace at his next engagement at the Lyle. He found her waiting for him as he came offstage.

  ‘You’re off to the bright lights then, Horace?’

  ‘I am. Look after yourself, my dear.’

  ‘Is that all you can say to me?’ she cried.

  He considered. ‘I believe so.’

  ‘That wasn’t what you said to me that night at the Britannia.’

  ‘You’re a lovely girl, my dear.’

  He still had power over her. She blenched. ‘I can come and see you sometimes, Horace?’

  ‘Of course,’ he agreed generously.

  ‘You heard Will left you twenty-five pounds?’ Dolly was anxious to keep the conversation going.

  ‘I did. I heard all about it to the point of boredom.’

  ‘Did you expect more?’ she asked, slightly maliciously.

  ‘That my dear, is one of the sadnesses of life. We always expect more.’ He patted her cheek and walked away laughing.

  Harry Pickles was not laughing. He was one of those who had expected more – anything, in fact. He was an old friend of Will’s, wasn’t he? Everyone had been left something but him. There was only one bright spot.

  He threw open the door of Nettie’s dressing-room without bothering to knock. ‘I hear your old pal only left you a pittance. One in the eye for you.’

  ‘At least you’ll stop this nonsense of thinking Will and I were lovers, Harry.’ Nettie, affected by the general malaise, dropped her guard to speak quite naturally to him.

  He took full advantage. ‘He obviously didn’t think much of you, gal, but that don’t mean you didn’t fancy him, eh? Perhaps you found out he’d left the lot to Mariella and old Yapp?’

  ‘Perhaps I did, Harry. Perhaps I did,’ she said quietly.

  When he had gone, disappointed in her reaction, she leaned her head in her hands. The game had to go on. Night after night, while she could still totter on to a stage. That’s what the halls did to you. Took you over, wore you out and demanded your life. And what for? For a few minutes of knowing you’d lit a flame inside yourself so strong it felt like you were burning up. The flames flared as the music stopped and you heard the roar of your audience, or even during the song, as you hit a note that reached its heart as well as its ears. But how often would it flare now, now that Will had gone, and taken the best of her with him?

  Evangeline for once had given herself time to think. At the end of the performance she barred the way as her husband went to follow the audience to the bar. ‘Thomas,’ she said quietly, in the now silent auditorium, ‘he left me nothing. He left it all to you. Why?’

  ‘What?’ Yapp raised the glass that he, as Chairman, insisted on having by him. ‘Who? Left me what?’

  ‘My beloved Will. He left all his money – well, over half of it, thirty thousand pounds – to you. Why? When he loved me?’ Evangeline was by no means sure that her private interpretation of his motivation was correct. Thomas was very odd about Will Lamb and always had been.

  Thomas gazed at her, gazed at the glass, found life too much for him, and sat down. ‘How nice of him,’ he said vaguely.

  ‘I think,’ Evangeline found a solution to satisfy her, ‘that it was his form of revenge, because I would not, could not return his love. I was after all married to you.’

  ‘I daresay that was it, my love.’

  Thomas drained the glass. After all, he could afford all the whisky in the world. He need never work at the Old King Cole again. He could get as drunk as a lord. He almost was a lord, with that money. New horizons flashed temptingly in front of him. He could even leave Evangeline.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me he’d left it to you? You must have known.’

  ‘I don’t think I did, my love.’

  ‘I could have lived like a queen all these years,’ she wailed. A short pause. ‘I can do so now though.’ Another pause. ‘I won’t tell them, Thomas.’

  ‘Tell who what?’

  ‘The police.’

  ‘Tell them what?’

  ‘That it was you got Percy to ask Will Lamb to come here.’

  Auguste had spent, in contrast to most of those at the Old King Cole, a rewarding evening. He had a feeling that one of the great passions of his life had begun. Let Egbert continue his relationship with Ma Bisley. For himself, Mrs Jolly was the doorway to new and exciting fields. Or, more accurately, pies. He had set forth to Neptune Street, fearing to find another Mount’s Pie Emporium, for one pie was but flimsy evidence.

  Oh, how wrong he was. If smell alone had not seduced him, one look into her gas-lit windows would have made him her slave for life. One window was dressed in what he had learned was the traditional manner for an eel-pie shop: eels displayed on a huge bed of parsley surrounded by the products they were privileged to make. The other window contained not only the other traditional pastries associated with such s
hops, cranberry tarts, and apple tarts, but some of Mrs Jolly’s other specialities: beefsteak pies, hot apple fritters, meat puddings, mutton pies, fish pies— His eye could take in no more beauty, and Auguste marched inside.

  And met Mrs Jolly.

  Mrs Jolly was not a tall woman, hardly reaching Will Lamb’s height. Nor was she fat. Bustling was the word Auguste chose, not in an inquisitive, irritating sense, but with the decisive movements that spoke of a woman who knew where she was going. Her pink cheeks were full, her eyes bright like a robin’s, her hair swept back Queen Victoria style, under a spotless cap. She was not over-generous with her smiles, and her approval, or the opposite, he sensed, would be conveyed by those considering eyes.

  He took a deep breath. ‘I have come from the Old King Cole.’

  Mrs Jolly did not waste words. She entered a note in her record book, she bent down, extracted two large boxes, and handed over her produce.

  Auguste bowed, and took paradise within his arms.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘And very nice too.’ Egbert looked approvingly at the glass of champagne cup which Tatiana handed him. Sunday at the Yard was not so hard if it involved luncheon at Queen Anne’s Gate. This should by rights have been his fortnightly day off, but not on this case. A momentary twinge of remorse at the thought of Edith alone with Mr Pinpole’s tough beef was dispelled. ‘Where’s Auguste, if I might ask?’

  Tatiana pulled a face. ‘I regret to inform you, Egbert, he is in the kitchen. He claimed your presence at Sunday luncheon was sufficient reason for him to check what was going on in the kitchen. I rather fear it might not be going on so much as going out, so far as John, our chef, is concerned. Auguste is not—’ She broke off and laughed.

  ‘The soul of tact?’ Egbert finished blandly.

  ‘He says two artistes should be dedicated to the achievement of perfection and John will understand.’

  Auguste walked in, still wearing an apron, and a flushed expression that suggested the achievement of perfection had not been without difficulties.

  ‘Eh bien, chéri?’ Tatiana greeted him cautiously.

  ‘John,’ Auguste remarked airily to the room in general, ‘quite saw my point of view over the caper sauce.’