Murder Under The Kissing Bough: (Auguste Didier Mystery 6)

by Myers, Amy

  ‘Barbarians,’ muttered Thérèse.

  ‘Dear lady,’ boomed Alfred Bowman, appearing suddenly behind Gladys as she gazed disconsolately at an English longbow recovered from the wreck of the Mary Rose, ‘where have you been hiding?’

  ‘Nowhere,’ replied Gladys rather crossly. On the contrary, she had been hunting and had given up the search. One might almost think Alfred had lost interest in her. Surely it could not be so.

  As if in affirmation of her confidence, he slipped a possessive arm through hers. ‘Take a look at these breechloaders, Gladys. Don’t see many of those today. Or your Brown Besses. No, we’ve moved on a bit. The lads in South Africa are better equipped. Fine guns Krupp produces.’

  ‘Aren’t they what the Boers have?’ said Gladys, frowning.

  Alfred did not seem to hear her. Her arm had been returned to her and he was busy admiring a damascened suit of armour of the seventeenth century.

  ‘Marlborough,’ declared Gladys loudly as they reached the foot of the staircase leaving the White Tower where Maisie was waiting.

  Bowman jumped. ‘What?’ he said quite rudely.

  ‘Marlborough,’ repeated Gladys crossly. Really, Alfred didn’t seem to be listening at all. If this was what marriage was like . . . ‘I said, there are some pieces of the old State barge, with the arms of the Duke of Marlborough.’

  ‘Oudenarde, Ramillies, Waterloo,’ muttered Bowman. ‘Good for Belgium, eh? It’s getting its own back now.’

  ‘Ah, there you are,’ said Carruthers gruffly, striding up to Dalmaine, trying not to appear too eager.

  Dalmaine was surveying a showcase of early nineteenth-century helmets and swords. Colonel Carruthers surveyed it with him. ‘Great days!’ he said at last. ‘Great days!’

  ‘I’m prepared to admit,’ Dalmaine offered magnanimously in a spirit to accord with their new-found comradeship, ‘that Napoleon was remiss in not following up the Prussian retreat.’

  Carruthers glowed. ‘And that the Duke’s strategy was flawless?’ he pressed eagerly.

  This was going too far. ‘By no means,’ said Dalmaine, genuinely amazed. ‘His troops were far too widely disposed in view of the fact that Napoleon’s intentions were not foreseeable.’

  ‘If you’d walked the battlefields as I have, young man,’ Carruthers began.

  ‘I have,’ retorted Dalmaine. ‘I visited them with my brother last year.’

  ‘Stayed in Brussels, I’ll be bound.’

  ‘Yes,’ retorted Dalmaine. ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Aha,’ said Carruthers triumphantly. ‘I’d had enough of that place after a day. No, out in the fields, camping, like me – then you’d understand.’

  ‘In a tent?’

  A laugh. ‘Might as well have been. Stayed in one of the Belgian so-called hotels. No decent port.’

  Dalmaine had the tactlessness to laugh. ‘Brussels was good enough for the Duke and good enough for me.’

  ‘Dammit, sir—’ The Colonel broke off as Maisie approached. ‘Come to my club, young man, and we’ll settle this matter of the Duke’s dispositions over a whisky.’

  ‘I’d be glad to, sir,’ Dalmaine retorted, with no sign of gladness at all. ‘Er, which one?’

  Colonel Carruthers glared. ‘The Rag, my dear sir. What other club is there?’

  ‘The Duke was Constable of the Tower for many years, wasn’t he?’ contributed Maisie brightly, wondering why the whole world seemed intent on discussing Brussels this afternoon.

  ‘He was, madam. He was,’ agreed Carruthers. ‘He had the right idea. Get rid of its zoo, get rid of the sightseers, and arm the place to the teeth. He knew an enemy when he saw one. Never trusted the French, you know. Quite right. What do you think is going to happen when the old Queen goes? God bless ’er. This young Prince of Wales is going to be hobnobbing with the enemy all the time. Folies Bergères.’ He snarled in disgust. ‘He’ll have us part of France again before you can say Wellington. England could breathe easy if that son of his were on the throne. He’s no army man, mind you, but at least in the Navy he’ll have got some idea of what the Channel’s there for. Eh?’ He glared at his silent audience. ‘What are you staring for?’ He was quite surprised. What the devil had he been saying to make them look like stunned trout?

  ‘Darling!’ Rosanna threw herself into her beloved’s arms. ‘Where have you been? I thought you’d never come,’ she complained. ‘I’ve been counting ravens—’

  ‘The raven himself is hoarse,’ quoted Danny Nash absently, returning her embrace without much enthusiasm.

  ‘Which one?’ asked Rosanna. ‘I can’t tell one from the other.’

  ‘It’s a quotation from Macbeth,’ her beloved informed her.

  ‘Isn’t that the play it’s unlucky to quote from?’ asked Rosanna in a rare sign of erudition.

  ‘What could possibly be unlucky about our meeting?’

  ‘We are in the Bloody Tower,’ Rosanna said soberly.

  ‘That’s all in the past. It’s the present I need to know about,’ said Danny impatiently. ‘Now, did you find out anything about Brussels?’

  Rosanna pouted. ‘You’re more interested in your old story than me.’

  ‘Nonsense. But you know how important it is.’

  ‘Do I?’ she said carelessly, breaking away, just as Maisie entered with such of her flock as could be rounded up to admire the Bloody Tower, restored to its former self now that its stucco covering had been stripped. ‘Bother Brussels,’ she said pouting, to Maisie’s great interest.

  Danny was forced to wait impatiently as the Beefeater worked his way through the history of the Bloody Tower and after the oohs and aahs had died down taken the party out again.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘tell me.’

  ‘Well—’ Rosanna broke off with a scream as a wailing sound came from above, approaching. Whatever it was was coming nearer. She clutched at Danny as a particularly loud wail sounded outside the door, a black stockinged leg appeared round it, and a voice quavered: ‘We are the ghosts of the poor little Princes.’

  ‘And you know what happened to them, don’t you?’ shouted Rosanna in exasperation at her two younger sisters.

  ‘They were murdered!’ answered Evelyn and Ethel dolefully.

  Egbert Rose stood for a few moments watching Auguste at work, the friend in him amused, the detective in him irritated. Precious moments were ticking by whilst Auguste was completely engrossed in garnishing a raised game pie.

  ‘I see you’re back home, Auguste,’ he commented wrily.

  Auguste’s head shot up, forced out of his all-engrossing world like icing out of an icing bag. Even so, at the back of his mind he was running for the umpteenth time through the last-minute tasks for the all-important evening ahead, the last meal of the old century, together with a few delicacies for a late supper, which would no doubt be the first of the new: Mrs de Salis’s stuffed anchovies, some lobster in aspic, oyster soufflé, tartines au pâté de fois gras – was that sufficient? – with the usual cold meats, salads and so forth. And naturally dessert. He decided it might be sufficient considering the magnificence of the banquet à la Didier that would have preceded it. He dwelt lovingly on the banquet for a moment. There was one problem—

  ‘And if we don’t get to the bottom of my problem soon, the next King is going to be the Duke of York,’ said Rose with asperity as Auguste voiced his concern aloud.

  ‘You are right, Egbert. Some things are certainly more important than food. I have been wrong,’ he acknowledged. ‘It has not been a good day.’

  ‘I thought you said you were going to the Tower,’ said Rose grimly, leading the way out of the kitchens.

  ‘Maisie has gone in my place,’ Auguste told him shamefacedly. ‘She is adept at gathering information.’

  Rose eyed him. ‘You are taking this little matter of murder and assassination seriously, Auguste? Sure you haven’t more important things to do?’

  Auguste raised doleful eyes to him. ‘I found a
corpse in November, cher Egbert,’ he said hesitantly.

  Rose sighed. He took the point. They’d maybe wasted weeks because of that, and he was cavilling over one afternoon. He rubbed his eyes. ‘Only two days, Auguste. It’s getting on top of me.’

  ‘Will you stay and eat tonight, Egbert?’ Auguste asked gently.

  Rose thought of Highbury, of Edith waiting for him to return and of the probability that he would not get home in time, even if he left here now. He thought of the feast that awaited him here. Could he call this duty? He could. ‘Duty calls, Auguste, duty calls,’ he said cordially, rubbing his hands as he read the menu.

  ‘My lips are sealed,’ declared Danny defiantly, legs cockily apart, arms akimbo. He had declined the rickety chair.

  ‘They’re not when it comes to spreading the word on matters the Yard want kept to themselves,’ Rose said shortly. ‘You’ve been playing fun and games, young man. You sleep here at night all right, but we don’t see hair nor hide of you in the day.’

  ‘I’m following up the story,’ said Danny defiantly. ‘It’s my job. To avenge Nancy.’

  ‘So you say. How do we know you didn’t come here specially to murder her? Playing you up, was she?’

  Danny gaped. ‘Nancy? No, I’ve told you, it’s the story.’

  ‘Very gallant of you to sleep in a cellar all over Christmas, ain’t it?’

  Danny flushed. ‘I had another reason to be here,’ he muttered.

  ‘I thought so,’ Rose announced with satisfaction. ‘Suspected her of having another bloke?’

  ‘Darling! I’m here to save you.’ Rosanna thrust herself into the room and threw her arms round him. ‘He was here to see me, Inspector. We are in love.’

  ‘This true, Mr Nash?’

  ‘Yes – I—’

  ‘Poor Danny couldn’t have killed Nancy. I was with him.’

  Danny turned red.

  ‘When and where was that, miss?’

  She hesitated. ‘As soon as I had my tea I went down to see him,’ she announced, ‘to give him my present. And I stayed there until breakfast time. At least nine fifteen,’ she concluded triumphantly.

  ‘Chesnais’ belief is that this plot was hatched in Brussels, probably by the anti-British group that gave Sipido the idea of shooting the Prince when Dr Leyds, who’s Kruger’s agent on the Continent, addressed them. Apparently Sipido got it into his head he had to kill the Prince because he was, Leyds said, “an accomplice of Chamberlain in killing the Boers”. And he was very nearly successful. One shot right in the cushions beside the Prince and Princess, by all accounts. That’s why I asked you to keep an ear open for any Belgian connections, Auguste.’

  ‘It seems to me,’ said Maisie, rocking to and fro on the rickety chair in Auguste’s erstwhile office, ‘that the whole world knows Brussels and they’re all blooming well at Cranton’s.’ She massaged her feet lovingly if inelegantly.

  Auguste looked hastily away. How well he remembered performing that function for her under more intimate circumstances. Où sont les neiges d’antan? His eyes misted over, as Maisie recited the results of the afternoon’s work. They quickly cleared, however, when Rose said: ‘There’s Mr Fancelli too.’

  Auguste looked at him sharply.

  ‘Twitch found out this stuff about his parents working at the Café Royal is a load of tripes de Caen, if you get my meaning, so I got Chesnais to do some checking. Fancelli worked in Brussels at a hotel called the Midi before he came here six months ago. Since when he don’t seem to have surfaced in the working market. Italian name, Brussels background. Who does that remind you of?’

  ‘Sipido,’ said Auguste immediately. ‘But he was acting alone, not with a group.’

  ‘So they thought. But as he got the idea at a pro-Boer gathering, I’m pretty sure Sipido wasn’t acting alone. Suppose someone decided to do the job properly now?’

  ‘But Fancelli would not have the brains,’ Auguste said scathingly, ‘to think such a plan out on his own.’ He might have known. No true chef would have left guests to starve for the Réveillon. No true maître chef made use of curry powder, and coralline pepper – though, true, the Baroness had used it. An odd recollection flitted through his mind and vanished again, in his fury about Fancelli. He pulled himself back to the path of logic. ‘It will be no ordinary train that pulls into Paddington on the third. The assassin must realise that police will be guarding it. This is not Brussels,’ he added gratuitously.

  ‘Fancelli could be at Cranton’s,’ said Rose, ‘to meet the brains and have a base for operations. So why don’t we persuade our friend Fancelli nice and gentle to have a chat with us and tell us who it is? Why don’t we call him in now?’ asked Rose lovingly.

  Auguste’s face sank. ‘We cannot, Egbert.’

  ‘Banquets are all very well, Auguste,’ said Rose, his face losing some of its good humour, ‘but this is priority. See?’

  ‘But Egbert, I cannot call him,’ cried Auguste in misery. ‘I dismissed him this morning.’

  It was almost twelve o’clock. Auguste snapped his fingers at the footmen to ensure all glasses were filled; the bowl had on this occasion been guarded by a particularly stalwart elderly footman, proof against any incursions from the twins.

  The réveillon had been a success. One of the superb banquets of his career. He had turned each of the humdrum dishes planned by that man, for he would not call him cook, into a masterpiece, he told himself modestly, by adding ‘un peu de Didier’ and naming each of the twenty dishes in honour of one of the guests. It was a master stroke. It would go down in culinary history. Velouté Rosanna, concombres au curry Carruthers, suprème de dinde Dalmaine, poularde Marie-Paul, pêches Bella, homard au gratin de Castillon, mousse glacée Gladys, boeuf Bowman, soufflé surprise aux Dames Pembrey, haricots Harnet and terrine de poisson Thérèse accompagnée de crevettes roses enrobées d’un fin velouté au poivre de baies rose, a compliment the latter acknowledged gracefully.

  ‘So much more gentle than your paprika, Baroness,’ he murmured.

  A moment’s stillness as though this were an impertinence, then she smiled. ‘You are the true maître, Monsieur Didier. I must accept your judgment with the same pleasure as your terrine Thérèse.’

  He bowed, relaxing at last in a glass of the wine, thinking muddledly that had he not also provided an englefin Egbert, the sauce au paprika rose might equally well compliment him. Rose and the Baroness. He smiled. What worlds apart – and yet a similarity. He could not place it, and indeed for the moment had no desire to think.

  The dancing and the energetic games organised by the twins banished sleepiness, as once again he found himself in Bella’s all too loving arms.

  ‘Now I know you are not entirely devoted to your distant love, Auguste, I feel there is hope yet. Do you not?’

  Auguste did not. Reflection in the cold light of morning had convinced him that however many Bella’s charms, the drawbacks would always outweigh them. With dear Maisie, the current was clear; with Bella the waters were uncharted, and instinct told him that perilous reefs might well lie hidden for unwary vessels.

  ‘We need a dark stranger,’ shrieked Evelyn. ‘You’ll do, Inspector.’

  The luckless Rose was pushed outside to shiver on Cranton’s steps as the new century approached. At least this would have been Oswald’s task had he been at home, he grumbled to himself, drawing his coat collar closer.

  The door of Cranton’s was flung open as on the wings of the wind came the sound of Big Ben chiming in the twentieth century. Maisie kissed Auguste on the cheek. ‘Happy next hundred years, Auguste.’

  ‘And you, Maisie, and you.’ His eyes blurred. What would they hold, for him, for Tatiana, for mankind?

  After the chimes ceased, the sound of cheering, and of thousands of voices singing God Save Our Gracious Queen filled the air, as Rose came through the door of Cranton’s Hotel.

  Before him, resplendent to greet the new century, were Thérèse von Bechlein in maroon lace over silk, a bert
ha at her neck, Marie-Paul Gonnet, a gawkish bird of paradise for once in bright green taffeta that did nothing for her sallow complexion, the Pembrey girls in blue and white, Gladys Guessings in a pink taffeta dress with feathers, Colonel Carruthers, Major Dalmaine, Gaston de Castillon, Sir John Harnet and Thomas Harbottle immaculately penguined in tails; Eva Harbottle stood close to her husband in bright yellow as though determined now to be noticed. Bella, her red hair piled high in curls upon her head, and wearing a simple primrose-coloured gown by Worth, overshadowed them all.

  Rose’s eye ran briefly over the faces that greeted the first dark stranger of the twentieth century. One was a murderer, and would-be assassin.

  God save the Queen. And God save her son, thought Auguste soberly. Pray God he would have more than two and a half days to live.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘This Fancelli,’ Rose wasted no time in recriminations, ‘did he seem eager or reluctant to go? You see my drift?’

  Auguste did. If Fancelli were indeed the murderer and assassin, and was acting on his own, he would no doubt be eager at this stage to seize any opportunity of removing himself from police scrutiny. On the other hand, if he were a lone operator, why should he come to Cranton’s in the first place? Why not stay well away from any scrutiny? Yet if he had an accomplice in the hotel, one of the guests, surely he would not wish to depart before the crime and be out of touch with his mentor. Or would he? Auguste thought back carefully. A sudden and unpleasant thought.

  Could it have been that Fancelli had been deliberately provoking him throughout, intentionally using tactics – not to mention ingredients – that would induce an outburst so that he could leave without arousing suspicion? That his use of Mrs Marshall’s coralline pepper was merely, like the Duchess in Mr Carroll’s story of Alice, to annoy? Worse, to mock? Auguste’s self-esteem received a severe buffet. He, Auguste Didier, maître chef, had been mocked? Had it come to this? He braced himself to face facts. Even the greatest of cooks must one day lay down their ladle. The secret was to know when. He tried to reply to Rose’s question with dignity.