by Myers, Amy
‘Auguste,’ she murmured happily, ‘how nice.’
One small cry of anguish escaped him before his battered body tried politely to cope with this emergency.
Tried, but ignominiously failed.
‘I am delighted you have seen the error of your ways.’ Madame Lepont swept through the doors of Cranton’s Hotel on the morning of 5 January.
‘Not all error, ma’am,’ Rose pointed out. ‘There’s still the matter of the false identity.’
‘My little ruse to investigate the running of a luxury hotel,’ she smiled. ‘Poor Marie-Paul. She did so enjoy being the companion of a baroness. You are very cruel, Inspector.’ She paused. ‘As for myself, I shall not complain. You had reason, I suppose. And the reason for my release?’
‘The murder of Mr Alfred Bowman, ma’am.’
Shock flashed through her eyes. ‘Another murder, Mr Didier? You provide your guests with very unexpected fare. Might I ask who has been arrested for this murder, and why he was murdered?’
‘No arrests yet, ma’am.’
‘But even Mr Didier cannot accuse me of it, I imagine,’ she said lightly. ‘I am, I confess, disappointed in you, Mr Didier. I had thought us friends, and to conspire to arrest me is hardly an amicable action.’
‘I shall make it up to you this evening, madame,’ Auguste told her fervently. ‘For the grand banquet this evening, I shall create a timbale Thérèse. The Maître Escoffier sometimes claims he creates all his best dishes for women. And his former apprentice shall do the same. It will be an honour to name this dish for you.’
‘I accept your peace offering, monsieur,’ she said gravely. ‘On condition you grant me the recipe in order that it may have pride of place in my own hotel.’
‘Splendid,’ said Albert Edward cordially to Inspector Rose. He meant it. One assassin probably dead, the other under lock and key, having now confessed, poor fellow. Couldn’t be better. He waved aside all advice of caution in case this conclusion was premature. Rose took the hint and retired, wondering if this operation should be undertaken backwards as he was before his future monarch. Compromising on a half-shuffle sideways, he almost tripped up when royalty addressed him again.
‘By the way,’ asked the Prince of Wales, ‘who caught the fellow?’
‘Monsieur Auguste Didier.’
‘That cook fellow?’ Albert Edward was astounded. That fellow got everywhere. Name popped up all over the place. He thought of the letter in his writing desk still unanswered. He supposed he’d better agree. If Mama had no objection, that is.
Auguste looked round his regained kingdom and shuddered. John had clearly not been trained at the Didier School of Cuisine, judging by the disorder that had now crept into the kitchen. Creativity and inspiration must be ruled by order to be given full rein. What use to create a superb pièce montée if one ran out of almond paste? If the meringue were not yet baked? Tonight, Twelfth Night, was the last banquet. Tomorrow night the greenery and decorations would have vanished, and had not Inspector Rose requested their presence for another evening, so would the guests.
John in the midst of his own created chaos created his own order. On the blackboard he had duly listed the dishes still requiring his attention, but omitted those already prepared. Thus, Auguste frowned, one was unable to gain the whole picture, to carry in one’s mind those last-minute garnishes still to be added. Perhaps he would have a word with John – after the banquet.
John saw him gazing at him and smiled happily, putting a thumb through a pie crust with a careless jerky movement, and covering it with an exquisitely executed pastry rose.
He must concentrate on the new dish to be created for Thérèse, Auguste remembered. Perhaps a timbale Thérèse de caneton aux truffes? Perhaps too rich. Non! This was after all the Twelfth Night banquet, signifying a glorious end to festivity. A strange festivity it had been. Tonight, however, he would do his best as host to give an evening of entertainment such as they would remember. Cranton’s at Christmas would not be synonymous solely with murder. True, after the banquet, the entertainment was being organised by Maisie, but with the help of the twins. Rose had asked to be present, and was by no means pleased to be informed by Evelyn that he too must contribute. Auguste himself had reluctantly put aside his original intention of reading from the philosophical works of Monsieur Brillat-Savarin in favour of the gentleman who had committed the unforgivable at Monte Carlo.
‘Ah, Auguste.’ Maisie swept in. ‘I hear you landed on your backside. Hurt yourself? What’s this?’ she swept on, sticking her finger in a bowl without too much concern for his backside.
‘That is ginger syllabub,’ said Auguste, ‘for the Pall Mall Pudding à la Guessings, and I would prefer it to appear without the shape of your fingers in it, Maisie,’ he added mildly.
‘I’m your employer,’ she told him serenely, ‘I can do what I like.’
‘Not after tomorrow,’ Auguste told her with regret at how this opportunity had slipped by ungrasped.
‘Come on now, Auguste,’ she said sturdily. ‘It’s not your fault you’ve had three murders on your plate instead of stuffed oysters.’
‘Three murders that I have not solved,’ he pointed out bitterly. ‘Maisie, three of them. What has happened to me, that I cannot see the solution?’
‘You always used to say that the food would show you the way,’ she said more cheerfully than she felt. Murder after all was no great inducement to join a ‘Lady Gincrack’s Tour for Gentlefolk’.
‘But in this disorder?’ he began until he saw John’s reproachful face.
‘Go back to the beginning, you always used to say,’ she told him. ‘Go back to the recipe and the ingredients.’
‘The recipe is a plot to assassinate the Prince.’
‘Or the girl in the fog.’
‘True. We still have no explanation for poor Mary White. Where did she come from? She gave Nancy information about Cranton’s. But how did she hear it?’
‘From her master and mistress?’ said Maisie valiantly, picking out an almond spike from the Hedgehog Pudding.
‘We assumed she was a housemaid because of her print—Maisie, please,’ he broke off anguished, as another spike followed the first.
Maisie hastily replaced her hands in her lap, and looked attentive.
‘Now as to ingredients, clues, we have “Marlborough”, we have—’
‘The reference to the definite article, and—’
‘We have Pall – the Pall Mall Pudding!’ he shrieked. ‘My custard.’ He flew to the gas oven and removed the dish from its water jacket. Truly, some god of cuisine looked after him today. Well done, but not yet ruined. The delicate taste of honey, subtly blended with spice, would still shine through the custard. He set it to cool before moving it carefully onto its shortbread base. Then and then only could he add the syllabub, and the final garnish of fresh and crystallised fruit. Miss Guessings would remember this evening for ever.
‘Pall Mall Pudding. Oh, Mr Didier.’ Gladys so far forgot herself as to clasp her hands in excitement. The most delightful banquet and this to top it all. It was too much. She had reason to be gleeful, arguing that such favour shown by Mr Didier proved she was not under suspicion of Another’s death. Everyone had professed enthusiasm for Auguste’s creations; Dame Nellie herself was not more enthusiastic at the creation of her pêches melba by le maître Escoffier than were Madame Lepont and Miss Guessings at the honour done them, thought Auguste happily.
‘It is Madame Emma Pryde’s recipe, Miss Guessings. Naturally, it has been adapted by Auguste Didier specially for you,’ as Gladys enthusiastically partook of his offering.
‘What have you got in there, Auguste?’ enquired Maisie gulping. ‘Neat whisky?’
‘Mais non,’ said Auguste, hurt at the very idea that such crudeness could enter his creation. ‘It is for Miss Guessings. Ginger wine, brandy—’
A shriek from Gladys. ‘Mr Didier, you’ve done it on purpose, you know my secret,’ and she relapsed in
to hysterics.
So startled was he, he was incapable of movement for a moment, then proceeded to act with commendable efficiency born of years of experience of such emergencies. It was not usual, it was true, for a hotelier to slap a paying guest round the face, but it was on occasion necessary – and effective. Edith Rose, dressed in her Christmas best, glided into position as second-in-command, bearing Gladys back to her room, leaving a bemused company to pick up their spoons and resume their attack on the Pall Mall Pudding.
Edith returned half an hour later, and took her place once more at the table, by which time the puddings had been replaced by savouries. She decorously concluded her meal, oblivious of all curious looks. Eventually she satisfied them. ‘Mr Didier,’ she began severely, ‘had put alcohol in the pudding.’
‘It is usual,’ said Auguste defensively.
‘Miss Guessings is a member of the Band of Hope,’ said Edith, her look in the cause of feminine solidarity daring her husband to enquire further. But when the ladies withdrew to the drawing room, Rose followed her out.
‘Edith,’ he said meaningfully, preventing her escape into this temporary feminine sanctum, ‘what’s so secret about the Band of Hope?’
‘Apparently, Egbert,’ she replied with dignity, ‘and I tell you this in case you suspect that dear lady of involvement in deeper doings, she has been known to break her vows and take a small sherry before luncheon on occasion. Nancy Watkins mocked her about it, it appears.’
Rose gave a guffaw. ‘Fond of her tipple, is she?’
‘Really, Egbert,’ said his wife, shocked. ‘Language, if you please.’
Auguste’s rendering of ‘The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo’ had been received well; he was gratified to remember just how well he could sing. True, his forte was to sing de l’amour and, better still, to a beloved. But music hall songs were amusing, and he had, Maisie informed him gravely, a natural flair for comedy. He looked at her suspiciously, but her face appeared guileless. Only one more performer now remained. A most reluctant one, but one prepared to do his duty by Twelfth Night.
Inspector Egbert Rose cleared his throat, donned spectacles and took up the leatherbound copy of Charles Dickens’ Christmas Stories that had graced their bookshelves ever since Edith’s uncle Cyril, who had been awarded it as a school prize, passed on.
‘I’m going to be reading extracts from Mugby Junction,’ he declared. A sigh of satisfaction from the English members of his audience, and resignation from the foreign members.
‘Chapter IV. No. 1 Branch Line: The Signalman. “Halloa! Below there! . . .”’
Twenty minutes later Rose was working up to a tremendous peroration. ‘I said, “Below there! Look out! Look out! For God’s sake, clear the way!”’
‘Very nice, Egbert!’ beamed Edith approvingly, when at last he finished. ‘I do like a nice piece of Dickens.’
But Auguste did not hear her comment. His mind was still racing rapidly through the awful possibilities that Egbert’s reading had raised, coupled with his own offering. It all came together, suddenly, completely, like a brandade de morue.
Music hall songs, Dan Leno, the role of Alfred Bowman and now, all important, ‘No. 1 Branch Line’. Perhaps the recipe from which they started had different interpretations, and he and Egbert had puffed and steamed their way down the Branch Line, and reached its terminus. They had hoped the matter over, trusting somehow that Fancelli could be proved to have carried out Bowman’s murder. Yet the main line still awaited them – if only they could find the points.
Chapter Eleven
Auguste rose at 6 a.m. the following morning, to attend early Mass. One of the privileges of being a hotelier was that you did not necessarily have to be present at breakfast, let alone cook it. John, having been given now some guidance by a master chef, was perfectly capable of providing a breakfast of which even the Colonel would have no complaints. Auguste returned to the hotel, however, as the first glimpses of morning light illuminated the dark and misty streets. He sniffed at the dampness of English winter, so unlike the warm winds of Provence, or the penetrating biting cold of the Mistral. He pulled his overcoat more closely round him, as he approached the back door of the hotel. This was where it had all begun, only six weeks before, in the fog. Was this the junction of the branch line? He heard again Nancy’s cry: ‘At Cranton’s? Christmas?’ Saw again the girl lying dead at his feet; reconstructed carefully what they knew of her. Conclusion: could he have made false deductions? Like Miss Guessings and her big secret, exposed by a pudding. The pudding, the Pall Mall Pudding à la Didier.
A small boy delivering newspapers passed whistling on a bicycle. A familiar tune, given to the world by Signor Verdi, and adored by one of his countrymen, Fancelli. But suppose Fancelli, too, were merely a station on the branch line? The Pall Mall Pudding, the definite article, and the fact that Nancy was a lady journalist. He stopped suddenly, remembering that as a hotelier he should enter the front door of the hotel, not the back. He walked round slowly, so slowly that a crossing sweeper brightened, seeing trade at last. Absentmindedly Auguste tossed him a penny, then jubilantly threw another after it. For he knew now where the junction was.
He walked into a warm and welcoming hotel, full of Christmas decorations. It was the last day this cocoon of Christmas could hold them all. Later today the trappings of Christmas must go. The kissing bough taken down. The Father Christmas decoration on the tree removed. Ah, but his brain worked well now! Auguste Didier was himself again. Truly a maître, truly a great detective. Why had it taken so long?
Dickens should have called his amusing work Muggins Junction, not Mugby, for that is how he felt. A muggins. How could he have disappeared down that branch line so easily, lured by the garnish and not the essence of the dish?
At Highbury, Egbert Rose was enjoying a lie-in after their late night, luxuriating in his first Sunday off since Chesnais had summoned him in November. The royal welcome at Paddington having passed off without incident, and the villains being either dead or in custody, the Chief had given reluctant permission for a day off. Not that he would take it all. Tomorrow, Cranton’s guests would disperse, unless he could get first-class evidence of why any or all should be detained. But that would be later. Now, Edith’s appalling kippers were going to receive his full undivided attention for the first time in six weeks.
‘I believe, Egbert,’ said Edith blithely, as she placed a fragrant offering before him some half an hour later, ‘that looks like Auguste descending from a hansom cab. And, oh Egbert,’ her face suddenly fell, much as she liked Auguste, ‘I do believe he’s asking him to wait.’ That boded ill.
The smell of the kipper wafted tantalisingly under Rose’s nostrils, for not even Edith could entirely miscook a kipper. He picked up his silver fish knife and fork speedily as he heard ‘the girl’, as he always thought of her before breakfast restored him fully to the world, open the door. Two seconds later, Auguste entered, hat in hand. His face fell as he saw Egbert at table, belligerently clutching eating implements, but this was too important to wait.
‘Chère madame Edith, my apologies,’ he pleaded. ‘My sympathy, Egbert –’ Rose glared – ‘but this is so important.’
‘You can tell me while I eat this,’ replied Rose firmly as Edith beamed at him approvingly. ‘Kippers help me think.’
All the same, kipper progress grew slower as Auguste burst out excitedly: ‘The Pall Mall Gazette. Not Pall Mall the thoroughfare. Nancy was a journalist, but it was not her article to which she referred. But to the definite article “the” which made all the difference to the words Pall Mall.’
‘Maybe,’ said Rose grudgingly. ‘But what about it? You mean, the assassination won’t necessarily be at the Marlborough Club or the Carlton?’
‘My friend, it means more perhaps. That the assassination plot was nothing to do with these murders. That we are, like Edith’s good friend Mr Dickens, up a branch line.’
Rose took another mouthful of kipper. Auguste’s
ideas were good, but he was inclined to rise higher and quicker than one of his soufflés if he wasn’t watched. He thought it over, crunching through cold burnt toast.
‘That piece of paper Chesnais gave me was about the assassination plot,’ he announced, his tone brooking no denial.
‘But how do we know that had any connection with Nancy? Suppose it did indeed indicate that Paddington, not Pall Mall, was the place where Alfred Bowman and Fancelli planned, as you tell me he has now confessed, to kill the Prince. How do we know this was Nancy’s story? After all, mon ami, if she had wind of such a plot, she would surely inform the police?’
‘She did say “It’s all happening again”, too, remember,’ argued Egbert morosely, seeing Twelfth Day about to disappear after its eleven sisters. ‘Just like Sipido, she meant.’
‘Or something else,’ said Auguste firmly. French terrier against English bulldog. The bulldog thought for a moment, then with another loving bite of tough kipper turned into a bloodhound.
‘What about the Gazette anyway?’ he asked sharply. ‘An article? The management? Corruption?’
‘We must seek out the issues for November. “It’s all happening again” mean it connects with an old story,’ said Auguste, trying to contain his excitement and think logically.
‘How are we going to get at their files today?’ muttered Rose.
‘Babylon,’ said Edith brightly, coming into the room with some of her special coffee for dear Auguste. She went slightly pink as both men stared at her.
‘Modern Babylon,’ she said firmly. ‘I thought I heard you mention the Pall Mall Gazette. That poor editor, Mr Stead. Fancy being imprisoned after all he tried to do to help those poor girls.’
‘Blow me down with a kipper,’ said Rose slowly. ‘I don’t know about promoting Twitch. Seems to me you’re the one with the brains, Edith.’