Murder Under The Kissing Bough: (Auguste Didier Mystery 6) (2 page)

Torn by conflicting emotions, Auguste dithered at the door to the kitchens. How could he entrust the important matter of the duck forcemeat to a new untried chef? Yet how could he superintend the work without offering the greatest insult one chef could offer another – lack of trust? Perhaps in this case he might plead justification as he did not know Signor Fancelli’s work. . .

No. Auguste’s hand removed itself reluctantly from the knob of the door as its owner reminded himself that he was both
maître d’hôtel
and host. And Mine Host, he told himself regretfully, did not involve himself in the cooking, however great the temptation. The merest eye on the kitchen and tables would be all that was called for, save that he had reserved for himself the task of final preparation of the boar’s head, and moreover intended to head the procession bearing the boar’s head in for Christmas luncheon. He deserved it, Auguste told himself defiantly. After all, what was the point of being the host if other people had all the exciting duties?

The kitchen door flew open from the other side and Auguste blushed lest he be thought to be loitering at the door. But Antonio Fancelli did not seem to notice.

‘Monsieur Didier, the pudding,’ he said accusingly. ‘You wished to stir him. You ’ave no come.’

‘Ah.’ Auguste’s chest swelled. Maître Escoffier, after all, would not allow anything important to escape his
eagle eye, not even the dreaded but so important plum pudding. The stirring was but a pretext to ensure proper attention had been paid to it. His mind flew back a few years to stirring the Christmas pudding with Maisie, the ritual so beloved of the English in honour of the Three Kings. Dear Maisie. He smiled a little ruefully. How could he have refused her request? And after all, there was no certainty that some villainy was to take place at Cranton’s. He carefully refrained from thinking of murder. He had had quite enough of murder. . .

No one had believed him. Not even Inspector Egbert Rose of Scotland Yard.

‘But there
was
a body,’ Auguste had shouted endlessly, only to be faced with politely disbelieving faces.

Rose was convinced that it had been his imagination. Auguste’s ‘body’ had become quite a joke at the Factory. Twitch, or Sergeant Stitch to give him his correct title (something Rose frequently forgot to do), had seen to that. Twitch was no admirer of Auguste Didier’s gifts as a detective and was delighted to see that Frenchie brought down more than a peg, ‘a whole clothes line’, as he smugly put it. Rose told Auguste as tactfully as possible that he must have been overworking. His men had crawled over every inch of the roads surrounding Cranton’s Hotel; there was no body, not a trace of blood.

‘Naturally,’ Auguste had retorted crossly, ‘the murderess had time to get rid of it.’

By the time he had managed to persuade a shopkeeper that he was not a madman and that a telephone call to Scotland Yard was all he required, there would have been time to move twenty bodies.

‘How?’ Rose asked him bluntly. ‘Dead bodies weigh
heavy. Your murderess couldn’t just heave her over a shoulder and walk off.’

‘Perhaps she lives nearby,’ countered Auguste defiantly.

‘Young ladies don’t live alone,’ grunted Rose. ‘And it might occasion comment if she walked into the family parlour with a corpse.’

‘Then someone else moved it,’ glared Auguste.

‘Why?’ asked Rose, kindly enough.

‘I do not know,’ shouted Auguste. ‘This is
your
job.’

‘Not without a body it isn’t,’ said Rose shortly, avoiding Auguste’s reproachful look. ‘No girl’s even been reported missing.’

‘Surely this is not unusual in London?’ retorted Auguste. ‘Even nowadays, many, many girls leave their homes for the streets, and no one notices if they disappear.’

‘The aim of the white slavers is to keep the girls alive, not kill ’em off,’ observed Rose drily.

Egbert Rose was tired, and he’d wasted more than a week on and off in a fruitless search for Auguste’s ‘body’, a fact Twitch was making great play with at the Factory. It was a week he could ill afford, for there were grave matters on hand that if proved to have substance would far outweigh the disappearance of one girl. Matters that could not be discussed with Auguste.

‘You’ve had a touch of influenza, I expect. Does funny things to you. Makes you see things.’ Rose made an effort to break the uncomfortable silence.

‘It is true I had some opium-based medicine. But so little that—’

‘’Allucinations,’ proclaimed Twitch happily from the doorway.

‘Can blood be a hallucination?’ Auguste demanded passionately. There had been a smear of blood on the
sleeve of his overcoat, which had left them unimpressed.

‘Come from a red herring,’ snorted Twitch and sniggered in surprise at having made a joke.

Auguste’s eyes travelled to Rose. Rose said nothing, but the corners of his mouth quivered. Auguste departed with what dignity he could muster and had not seen his friend since.

The shock he received two days later was therefore all the more unpleasant. He had called at her request to take tea with dear Maisie, who had vanished both from his arms and from the Galaxy Theatre to marry into the ranks of the aristocracy. Maisie, her plump curves encased in a flowing blue robe that looked a cross between a Lily Langtry jersey dress and a
peignoir
, was as at ease in Eaton Square as in the green room of the Galaxy. He had seen very little of her since her marriage, and the summons came as a most delightful surprise. He suppressed the thought that her husband might be proving inferior to himself in intimate matters, knowing full well that if this was indeed the case Maisie would have no hesitation in making her wishes known. His hopes, if hopes they were, were doomed. Maisie had business, not love, on her mind.

‘Cranton’s?’ Auguste repeated blankly. ‘
Cranton’s
?’ wondering whether this were some elaborate conspiracy.

‘Nothing wrong with Cranton’s that a bit of spit and polish won’t put right,’ Maisie said cheerfully. ‘Now what’s wrong? I thought you’d be pleased, but you look as if you’ve dropped a bad egg into the Christmas pudding.’

‘I do not wish to know anything,
anything at all
,’ Auguste said vehemently, ‘about Cranton’s.’

Maisie was taken aback at this unexpected response. But she knew Auguste. ‘Very well.’ She sighed heavily.
‘I’ll have to ask someone else. Perhaps Mrs Marshall,’ she added thoughtfully. ‘Or Nicholas Soyer. He’s a descendant of Alexis, isn’t he? He’s got a good reputation. Perhaps he’d like the job.’

‘No!’ thundered Auguste, roused by the sound of hated rival names.

They eyed each other for a moment.

‘Tell me more about it,’ he said resignedly.

‘I run a travel business, you know,’ said Maisie with some pride. ‘I must say, Auguste, this seed cake is not half bad. I pinched the recipe from the Ritz.’

‘I am sure its chef would be delighted to hear your recommendation,’ announced Auguste through gritted teeth. ‘Now, kindly tell me about Cranton’s and about
why
you are running a business. Does your husband not provide for you? Ah, Maisie, I warned you—’

‘Don’t be so old-fashioned, Auguste.’ Maisie licked her fingers. ‘Now, I couldn’t do
that
with George here,’ she announced in satisfaction.

‘I am honoured,’ murmured Auguste.

‘George and I have an understanding,’ Maisie told him briskly. ‘At least, I have an understanding and he accepts it. I’ve provided the son and heir, and a daughter. Now I’m having a year or two off and doing what I want to do. I have to have a manager, of course, while I do some countessing in between, but I keep an eye on ’im. You know what men are. No attention to detail.’

‘Now, Maisie, you know very well—’ Auguste stopped as he saw her twinkling at him. Ah, how he remembered that look.

‘I provide a sort of Cook’s Tours for Coronets,’ explained Maisie happily. ‘Lady Gincrack’s Holidays for Gentlefolk. Like it?’

‘Who is this terrible lady?’ he asked blankly.

‘Me of course. It’s a spare title of George’s family that isn’t used much.’

‘I can understand why.’

‘But it’s splendid for me,’ enthused Maisie. ‘At this time of year I specialise in folks from the colonies who remember their Christmases and come back to Europe without any ancestral mansions to go to, and in folks left alone here who want to escape from their own families and find another one for a few days. There’s quite a few of them. So I’ve hired Cranton’s for a Twelve Days of Christmas party. A grand old English Christmas, wassails and warbling, that sort of thing.’

‘
At Cranton’s. Christmas
.’ That voice floated through his mind.

‘
Non
,’ he told her firmly. ‘
Absolument pas
.’

This Christmas he must consider the future of the cooking school. He would not go anywhere that held the slightest whiff of any crime, let alone murder. The nightmare of November was with him still. ‘I could not get the staff in time,’ he pleaded, unwilling to tell her what had happened, ‘train them to produce forcemeat, and puddings to the required standard. And the dinner, and mince pies,
le réveillon
for the new century . . . There would be too much to plan for in the time. Yet,’ he was suddenly abstracted, ‘we could have, I suppose, all roasted fowl, with lighter desserts. And I have always wished to try punch sauce with plum pudding. The boar’s head of course would be borne in by me, as
maître chef
.’

‘You haven’t changed, Auguste.’ Maisie was amused. ‘Don’t you ever think of anything but food? I don’t want you to be the cook.’

‘What?’ His face blanched. ‘Not the chef? Then who? Ah, Maisie, you were not serious about Soyer? You would not wish me to work
under
someone?’

‘No, no,’ said Maisie patiently. ‘I want you to be the
host, the manager, the
maître d’hôtel
for the holiday. I plan to drop in myself from time to time. George is going to Switzerland with his dear Mama, and it’s understood that where dear Mama goes, I don’t. I’ll divide my time between you and the children.’

But Auguste was scarcely listening. ‘The host?’ All those unattainable dreams of his own hotel, for how could he ever afford to buy his own hotel? Now he was being offered a chance to pretend. . .

‘I’d get you a wonderful chef,’ promised Maisie gleefully, seeing sudden indecision on his face.

He regarded her doubtfully. ‘He must be one who can both cook a baron of beef to perfection as well as the most delicate chanterelles, who loves both the raised pie and the paté de foie gras, the English crayfish and the. . .’

‘Yes, yes, I’ll make sure,’ Maisie said hastily. ‘You are free, aren’t you?’

Auguste stiffened, his pride under attack. ‘As it happens,’ he said loftily, ‘I am.’ His current pupils would leave in a week’s time, two weeks before Christmas, and so far he had no new clients. It was tempting – but impossible. ‘But I cannot do it,’ he announced.

‘Why not?’ she said indignantly.

‘Because of murder,’ he blurted out, unable to dissemble any longer.

‘You’re planning one?’ she asked with interest.

‘I fear one,’ he said darkly. ‘I
saw
one.’

She began to laugh. ‘If you could see my list of guests, Auguste, you’d know there was nothing to worry about. Stuffy as an embalmed crocodile, this party is. You’ll see.’

‘No, I will not see,’ he said sadly. ‘Hard though it is to refuse you anything, dear Maisie, this I cannot do.’ He rose to his feet in dignity, then remembered he had
not yet tasted that most interesting looking confection, and sat down again.

‘What a pity,’ Maisie smiled sweetly. ‘And the owner of Cranton’s is a friend of Princess Tatiana too! How disappointed your Tatiana will be.’

Auguste stiffened. He had no idea Maisie knew Tatiana. Now he had no choice. If the owner of Cranton’s was a friend of Tatiana’s, then to Cranton’s he must go. Otherwise news of his churlishness might reach her ears. Hopeless his love for her might be, but his honour at least must be kept brightly burnished in her eyes. So to Cranton’s he must go and forget this nonsense, his wild fancy of murder. After all, Egbert had told him there was no body, so no body existed. It had been his imagination. And as for what he
thought
he had heard, had he not just seen the legend Cranton’s Hotel above the doorway? Probably the words, if words there had indeed been, were Bantams at Christmas, phantoms at Christmas, Canton at Christmas – some reference to the Boxer trouble in China, perhaps. Certainly nothing to worry him. . .

Auguste stood on the wide wooden staircase in the grand entrance hall of Cranton’s Hotel and sniffed appreciatively; for once not at food but at the smell of beeswax polish. All around him shone the ornate wood panelling, installed earlier that century, when the original Adam houses had been converted for use as a hotel. Their uniform high windows on three storeys surmounted by a smaller row in the attics, presented a majestic front – and rear – to the citizens of London. Old, comfortable furniture invited use, new Sommier Elastique Portatif spring mattresses from Heal’s awaited occupants, log fires burned already on the hearths; suddenly Cranton’s was alive again.

Ah, what a Christmas they would have. They would
see the century out in style. He had planned menus – this much Maisie had permitted – such as would grace the Prince of Wales’s own table. His anxiety over the standard of the chef had been calmed by a surreptitious visit to his current establishment, devoted to Italian cuisine. He had been somewhat shamefaced when Maisie herself arrived with her husband, finding Auguste the only other diner, engrossed in determining the quality of a soufflé. He had not met the chef, he mentioned innocently. Who was it?