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

by Myers, Amy

‘It wasn’t me,’ she sobbed.

  ‘What happened to the fake cross?’ Egbert continued inexorably.

  ‘I don’t know. Miguel said that man in the bowler hat took it after Will died.’

  ‘That man in the bowler hat gave it back to your husband. Where is it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she shouted.

  Egbert seemed to believe her. ‘Tell me about Max Hill.’

  ‘He’s an impersonator.’

  ‘We know he’s more than that, ma’am. Don’t waste time.’

  ‘He went with Miguel to the Castle,’ she said sulkily, ‘and he pretended to be Horace Brodie while he handed the cross to Frederick.’

  ‘Why Brodie?’

  ‘Why not? Max doesn’t like him, that’s all.’

  ‘Why do you think he’s disappeared? Do you think he murdered your husband?’

  ‘Oh no.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Though Max did get very upset when Will died. Perhaps he thought Miguel had done it. I did myself sometimes.’

  ‘Only sometimes.’

  ‘He was a very jealous man . . .’ She tweaked a strand of her red hair that was easily pulled free from its artificial fashionable moorings. Now she could afford to have Mrs Thing come in and do it as often as she wanted. Oh, the joys of being nearly rich.

  The funeral of Will Lamb, organised by Nettie, was a still calm centre in a whirlpool. The whirlpool consisted of newspapermen, the theatrical world and devoted admirers. Its centre was small, of those that loved him for himself, as well as for his art. And it was Nettie led that small band.

  That evening Auguste and Egbert donned tails and white waistcoat, and Tatiana and Edith their prettiest dresses, and sat in the fauteuils of the Old King Cole. Here Will had begun, here he had finished. In music hall had lain his life. What better place for them to remember him?

  Chapter Ten

  Inspector Stitch smarted. He had a distinct feeling that the Chief had known all the time that he was on a wild-goose chase, and furthermore he was aggrieved that he was late on duty through no fault of his own. Mrs Stitch had taken a different view. His head felt like a bowl with lots of nasty things swimming around not nearly as innocent as goldfish. With powers worthy of his position of CID inspector, he had deduced that the ginger beer which had been pressed upon him in the famous Long Bar at the Canterbury Music Hall last night, had not been so innocuous as he had thought. Why should anyone want to lace the drink of a complete stranger? It beat him. No one could have deduced he was a police officer, thanks to the curly moustache that he had carefully gummed on and the top-hat pulled well down over his forehead, not to mention the knitted scarf Mrs Stitch had made him for last Christmas, which he had drawn closely round his chin.

  Stitch rapped on the Chief’s door, happier now that they were back in civilisation, in other words not at the Old King Cole, but in the familiar surroundings of the Yard. Normally the Chief’s door was open, but this morning it was not. Anyone other than Stitch, who remained blissfully confident the Chief would be eager to see him at any time, would have taken this as a warning.

  ‘No one turned up, sir.’

  ‘I take it,’ Rose said not bothering to glance up, ‘you’re referring to our vanishing impersonator?’

  ‘Old Hill, sir. Yes. I was there the whole blooming evening, and not a whisker. He wasn’t performing, he wasn’t watching, he wasn’t drinking.’

  ‘He might have been in disguise.’ There was irony in Rose’s voice.

  ‘Couldn’t fool me, sir,’ Stitch said, ignoring it. ‘My own disguise was impenetrable.’

  ‘Someone warn him, do you think?’

  ‘Might have,’ Stitch agreed dubiously. ‘But the fellows in the bar didn’t look his sort, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Toffs and mashers?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I don’t see Max in those surroundings.’

  ‘No more do I, Stitch. No more than I believed Max’s shouting out to Bishop exactly where he was going. Still, we had to cover it.’

  Stitch, with some effort, remained silent. In theory the Chief was right, but in practice he noticed it was always him that did the covering. Still, it showed how reliable he was, he supposed, and cheered up.

  Rose grinned at him; if Stitch had been a connoisseur of grins, he would have termed it shark-like. ‘No one I can trust like you, Stitch,’ reading his thoughts perfectly.

  Stitch glowed, though only for a moment. The sudden appearance of Special Branch removed all satisfaction. ‘Where is he?’ Cherry demanded without preamble. ‘He wasn’t at the Canterbury.’

  Rose glanced at him speculatively. This was not the Old King Cole, but his office at the Yard, and he didn’t like unannounced visitors, particularly these two.

  Twitch, however, also had a grudge. ‘You bribed that fellow to stand me that drink,’ he cried indignantly. ‘What did you do it for?’

  ‘In vino veritas,’ Black piped up proudly.

  There was precious little veritas in Stitch’s head, whatever that might be. But he was full of something. Stitch thought savagely – a burning desire for revenge.

  ‘You tipped him the wink, didn’t you?’ Cherry said heavily.

  ‘I never tip winks.’ Stitch recovered his equilibrium.

  ‘Just a minute. I’d like a hand in this,’ Rose interrupted sarcastically. ‘I’m feeling left out. Who are you talking about, Cherry?’

  ‘Max Hill. We want him.’

  ‘Got the hounds of Buckingham Palace after you, have you? How’s getting hold of Max going to help you?’

  ‘Never you mind. The cross affair is ours.’

  ‘I’m investigating a trifling matter of three murders, which may or may not be connected with your blasted cross.’

  ‘You think Max Hill did them?’

  ‘He’s involved,’ Rose answered shortly.

  Cherry thought about this, and decided to play heavy. ‘We want him more.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  Rose’s voice was mild enough, but even so one look at his face and Cherry decided co-operation might get him further than a lone hand. ‘He’s got the cross.’

  ‘Has he? How do you know that?’

  ‘Fairly obvious, ain’t it?’ Cherry asked complacently. ‘So where is he?’

  ‘Not the least idea. Could be anywhere in England.’

  ‘Not too good for the CID. Better consult Sherlock Holmes, eh?’ At this witticism, Cherry burst into roars of laughter.

  Rose was not going to be guffawed at by Special Branch, and he decided to play his ace. Edith had often remarked on his excellent timing in a hand of whist. ‘I thought His Majesty had it? You found it in the Thames, didn’t you? He hasn’t lost it again, has he?’

  Cherry’s eyes bulged viciously, as he flushed the colour of his name. ‘He says it’s a fake.’

  Egbert seized his opportunity to laugh. ‘Fake, eh?’

  ‘That’s why we want Max Hill. Before you get him.’ Cherry did not take humiliation lightly.

  ‘I’ll try to remember that.’

  Good humour restored, Egbert Rose shortly made his way across Horse Guards’ Parade and St James’s Park where he stopped to watch bread being thrown to the ducks. With the tip of his umbrella he rooted up a mushroom which had evaded the eyes of an army of His Majesty’s public servants on their morning march to work, and proceeded to Queen Anne’s Gate.

  He found Auguste at work in his second favourite room. The first was the kitchen, but he was banished from this all too often, and Egbert found him in his second-floor study. Two walls were lined with an impressive array of books, and the other two with prints. They all had a common theme: food. Egbert had looked at the books once. Grimod de La Reyniere’s Almanach des Gourmands, Brillat-Savarin, Mrs Glasse – he remembered seeing an old copy of that on his mother’s shelves. Belonged to her grandmother. Or great-grandmother. He couldn’t remember which. The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelm Digby, Knight, Opened – nothing like blowing your own trumpet. The Cook’s
Oracle and even, he grinned to himself, Alexis Soyer’s The Gastronomic Regenerator.

  ‘I see Soyer isn’t giving you much inspiration today,’ he remarked, seeing Auguste listlessly staring at a blank sheet of paper.

  ‘There is a large gap, mon ami, between this pile of blank paper and those shelves of bound books,’ Auguste remarked sagely and sadly. In his imagination, all ten volumes of his Dining with Didier already resided on those shelves where they would remain for centuries to come, a monument to his achievements in the culinary field. Unfortunately even Volume I was far from completion. All because of John.

  ‘I am barred from my own kitchen,’ he declared passionately. ‘How am I to ensure all these recipes are at the peak of perfection if I am excluded from my own kitchen?’

  Privately, Egbert sympathised. ‘Ask him to test them for you?’ he suggested, with a straight face.

  ‘Ask John to test a chaudfroid of chicken? He could not judge a plate of bubble and squeak. My reputation would be lost for ever. Look at this delightful recipe for marrow. How can I tell whether thyme or marjoram should predominate without testing it now? I am a Johnson in need of a Boswell, mon ami.’

  ‘How about Tatiana?’

  ‘And ask her to forfeit her own interests?’

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘At the School, in the motor-garage. A particularly interesting 40 hp Panhard is arriving today. She had to be there, just as I have to be present at the first tasting of the season’s claret, or the first arrival in Covent Garden of the new season’s potatoes. I must look elsewhere for my Boswell.’

  ‘No use looking at me,’ Egbert replied quickly. ‘I’ve got crosses on my mind. In fact, I had more in mind you helping me out.’

  Auguste brightened at the prospect of a valid excuse for abandoning the dispiriting task in front of him. ‘How?’ he asked hopefully.

  ‘Special Branch are after our friend Max.’

  ‘There is no sign of him?’

  ‘Not at the old Canterbury.’

  ‘Then let us try the other one.’

  ‘I’m not following you.’

  ‘Perhaps Max was trying to convey to Clarence Bishop where he would be, without stating it. In other words he has gone to the city of Canterbury.’

  Egbert stared at him. ‘Auguste, you’re wasted messing around with suet and ox-liver.’

  ‘They are not my favourite working materials, but the true artiste can create from the poorest base provided he suits the end to the means, and does not try to create—’

  ‘A silk purse out of a pig’s ear?’

  ‘A pig’s ear has its uses also, mon ami,’ Auguste told him seriously. ‘Take a boar’s head, for instance—’

  ‘It’s an old English saying, Auguste.’

  ‘Oh.’ Auguste regarded him doubtfully, wondering whether the sacred name of cuisine was being treated too lightly. He decided to ignore the slight, intended or not.

  ‘I’ll give you more than a pig’s ear to chew on if you come to Canterbury with me.’

  ‘Very well.’ Auguste brightened at the thought of luncheon. Would they reach Canterbury in time, though? It was already eleven o’clock. He firmly dismissed such thoughts, telling himself that Egbert’s mission must take precedence.

  Robbin’s Music Hall, a run-down establishment on the northern outskirts of Canterbury, had almost as few pretensions as the Old King Cole. Its paint was peeling and the man in the box office was picking his teeth with a programme, hastily put down at the appearance of two gentlemen, as he saw a prospect of selling two expensive fauteuils, rarely patronised by the local soldiery.

  It had proved a fruitless afternoon for Auguste and Egbert, save for an excellent luncheon of roast duck and cucumbers at the Fleur de Lys hotel near the Cathedral. No hotel, boarding house or music hall had heard of Max Hill, leading them to the depressing realisation that either Max was not in the city at all, or that he had changed his name. They were now combing the halls for the second time, and the Robbin’s programme did not look promising. Written out in chalk on a board was a list of twenty-odd names, ranging from Tom Wilkins, the Amazing Wizard, to Fred Fox and his Dancing Fleas.

  ‘Scratching the end of the barrel, you might say,’ Egbert guffawed.

  ‘But this is not, Egbert. Look – the Magnificient Mount.’

  ‘What of it? Our chap’s an impersonator, not a lion comique.’

  ‘But Mount, Hill – they are very similar. It is worth staying to make sure.’

  Picturing Edith’s doleful face, if they failed to return that night, Egbert wasn’t so convinced. It took three-quarters of an hour of bad jokes and worse songs before the familiar strains of ‘Don’t Wait Up’ from a top-hatted bushy-bearded lion comique put the question beyond doubt.

  ‘Magnificent Max becomes the Great Brodie, eh?’ he said grimly. ‘I thought there was a little matter of ownership over these songs.’

  ‘Only, as in so many other things, when there is a risk of discovery.’

  ‘He’s about to be discovered now.’ Egbert got up, ignoring the protest of the young lovers next to him, and with Auguste following, made his way to the exit. ‘No need to announce our arrival, I think.’ There wasn’t, for news had travelled quickly.

  No sooner had they reached the main entrance than they saw their prey run into the street from the side of the building and half walk, half run, towards the city. Somewhere a cat yowled, perhaps in protest at being disturbed by pounding feet in its night-time contemplation of the starry heavens.

  ‘That’s all we need.’ Rose took off like an elderly greyhound with a new lease of life, with Max’s fleeing figure periodically bobbing into sight in the yellow pools of the gas lamps. They ran past the Archbishop’s Palace, and then skirted the Cathedral itself, a dark mass looming above them. Auguste yelped as his foot slipped on the cobbles of Sun Street, thinking sympathetically of pilgrims approaching on their knees.

  ‘He’s gone,’ Egbert cursed.

  ‘Into the Cathedral?’ panted Auguste. ‘There are many exits to it, and he could double back the way he came.’

  The Cathedral, dimly lit for late worshippers, was quiet. No movement, little sound. Before them rose the piers and arches of the graceful nave, ahead of them stretching into infinity, the choir, altar and Trinity Chapel, around them the heavy silence of the centuries. Worshippers seemed as still as the monuments that surrounded them.

  ‘There.’ Auguste clutched Egbert’s arm, pointing to the south aisle.

  ‘Making for that exit on the right,’ Egbert said. ‘Remember?’ They had walked round the Cathedral that afternoon, slightly conscience-stricken in that it could not be classed as ‘work’. Now unexpectedly, work it had become. They walked, as quickly as they dared, trying to keep their eye on the figure that half-merged with the shadows.

  ‘He’s not going out. He’s going up the steps,’ Egbert hissed, and rushed on towards the Trinity Chapel. Murmuring an apology to le bon Seigneur, Auguste hurried to the far side to await Max’s arrival. He waited in vain, for only Egbert rounded the far corner of the chapel and came down to join him.

  ‘He must be hiding somewhere. He can’t have slipped out.’

  The silence seemed even heavier here, where the lighting was dimmer than in the nave. Auguste forced himself to concentrate. He brought to his aid the skills his father had taught him while hunting in the Cannes hills: to be still, to listen, and to understand what the prey was doing, thinking and feeling.

  Somewhere he knew Max was waiting, probably watching them. Or was it Max? Here, in this vast place, it was all too easy to imagine that not Max, but Pyotr Gregorin might slink round a pillar, pounce like the animal of prey he was and fell him regardless of place. Auguste shivered. Just so had Thomas a Becket died at the hands of four murderers, only a few steps from where they were now standing.

  ‘There he is!’

  Max suddenly shot out of a side chapel, running back up to the steps to disappear into the Cathedral precin
cts, and as they followed him outside an indignant cry floated back to them: ‘I’m too old for this sort of lark.’

  The receding footsteps in the night air left little doubt which way he had gone or that they would not now catch up with him. In the darkness the remains of the old monastery surrounded them, and a left turn took them the way that Max had undoubtedly gone – down an arcaded passageway with one dim light. Beyond was a large open space, with buildings all round.

  ‘He could be anywhere,’ Egbert said in disgust. ‘We’re as like to see him again as Old Nell the cook.’

  ‘Who is this lady?’ Auguste asked, puzzled. As he had good reason to know, Edith, with the help of their one maid, was in charge of cooking at Highbury.

  ‘One of the Ingoldsby legends. Learnt it by heart at school. That passage we’ve just come down is the Dark Entry, and that house on the corner is where the Canon lived. His cook was the jealous sort and killed him with a game pie.’

  ‘This woman was no true cook,’ Auguste declared indignantly. ‘No true cook could poison what should be a work of art.’

  ‘She seemed to have agreed with you, for she poisoned herself with a bit too, and her skeleton was found underneath here tucked up with the remains. She comes back on Friday nights from time to time.’

  Auguste glanced at the cold, dark, suddenly inhospitable passageway. Today was Wednesday, but suppose she was making an exception tonight? The splendours of Mrs Jolly faded as pies loomed before him in all their most unappetising forms. His footsteps quickened.

  Only the wondrous invention of the telephone had soothed Egbert’s annoyance at Max Hill’s escape. Baiting Auguste was hardly compensation. But the telephone had enabled him to have Thomas Yapp waiting for him in his office by the time he arrived. Even so, he was not in good spirits. Edith was an exacting mistress where ironing was concerned, and the lack of a fresh shirt sorely affected his temper. Overnight sprees were for sergeants, not chief inspectors.

  Thomas Yapp was seemingly unsurprised at his summons. ‘It is rather sudden, Inspector,’ he began pleasantly. ‘Not that I mind, of course.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ snarled Rose, sitting at his desk peremptorily pointing Auguste to a corner.