Read Murder Under The Kissing Bough: (Auguste Didier Mystery 6) Online
Authors: Amy Myers
The three days Auguste had spent at Cranton’s were a time of great anxiety as well as hard work. As manager he had naturally taken a personal interest in the re-equipment of the kitchens. No matter how good these new gas stoves, they would not replace the taste of spit-roasted meat. He cast an approving eye at the new cake mixer and chopping device, the Lovelock sausage machine and tinplate pudding moulds. How right Maître Escoffier was to devote time to inventions to take unnecessary work away. He had himself been doubtful earlier in his career, seeing routine chores as part of a chefs work. But
le maître
had proved to him that to use a fruit cutter or mechanical spit freed the chef for more important tasks. He recalled the day when
le maître
had shown him a small cube, which he had told him had all the strength of a complete stockpot, or a court-bouillon. A miracle indeed if it were true, he had marvelled. Why, one could produce a
soupe
in hours rather than days. It could revolutionise
la cuisine
.
Auguste still had doubts about his chef at Cranton’s. He was after all Italian, and Italian food in his view consisted of spaghetti, macaroni,
les tomates
and no finesse. Could a goose be entrusted to such a person, let alone a plum pudding?
He had been somewhat mollified when Signor Fancelli,
who had a definite look of independence in his eye, told him he had been brought up in England, when his parents came to work in the kitchens of the Café Royal, and that accordingly he held a true cosmopolitan outlook on cuisine. However, these last three days had shown that he had a distinct leaning towards Parmesan cheese with everything. Indeed, he was as addicted to it as Mrs Marshall was towards her coralline pepper. Fancelli could only be in his late twenties, Auguste told himself tolerantly. There was time for him to learn – but not before Christmas. An eye would have to be kept on him, Auguste thought with pleasure.
All had gone well at first. Fancelli had displayed a proper deference towards him. Fire flashed, however, over the matter of the forcemeat for the goose, after Fancelli had yielded over the wild boar.
‘I am the chef, Monsieur Didier,’ Fancelli said, his plump, short figure quivering with passion.
‘And I am the manager,’ pointed out Auguste.
Signor Fancelli folded his arms. ‘Duck,’ he said tersely.
‘Plum,’ said Auguste, equally tersely.
‘Prune,’ conceded Fancelli, as a gesture of compromise.
‘
Non
,’ said Auguste.
Antonio Fancelli unfolded his arms, removed his apron and donned his porkpie hat. ‘I go,’ he announced.
‘It is Christmas Eve,’ said Auguste, standing his ground. He was well used to recalcitrant staff.
‘No plum,’ said Fancelli.
‘Plum
and
duck,’ said Auguste. ‘With Armagnac.’
Fancelli stood indecisively for a moment. Then: ‘It is so,’ he declared reluctantly.
Henceforth Fancelli was allowed to rule his kitchen,
but Auguste was permitted an honorary tour once every two hours, a privilege he had managed not to abuse. Fancelli watched him warily on each occasion, singing snatches of the works of Signor Verdi or Herr Mozart irritatingly well throughout.
At twelve o’clock on Christmas Eve, Auguste pronounced himself ready and summoned his staff together. He beamed at them happily, caught by a sudden headiness at the arrival of Christmas. It was going to be a wonderful time. Here in this cocoon of warmth and welcome, his greatest dream – or nearly his greatest – would flicker into reality.
‘
Eh bien, mes enfants
,’ he announced. ‘Follow me, for the ceremony of the hanging of the kissing bough.’ He led the way into the huge drawing room, his staff crowding behind him. Greenery and tinsel adorned every picture, every nook and cranny. A large, decorated Christmas tree stood in one corner, with a present carefully chosen for each one of the fourteen guests, plus one for each member of staff and sundry accompanying maids and valets. Auguste looked at the glittering tree approvingly. It was not the French way of Christmas – imagine this in his native Provence – but for an English Christmas, it was
magnifique
.
Taking the kissing bough from the footman, he climbed the ladder to suspend the bough from the ceiling, to denote the beginning of Christmas. He glanced down at the smiling upturned faces of his staff. This was a proud moment indeed. What a symbol. Two hoops at right-angles made a sphere of holly, mistletoe and other greenery, and from it were suspended small candles, gifts and tinsel, the latter catching the light as the bough twisted and turned in the slight draught from the fire. Mistletoe – that most ancient of mystical plants, the destroyer, the healer and, some said, the peacemaker of quarrels. Perhaps it would heal the
breach between himself and Egbert, he thought wistfully.
‘The holly and the ivy,’ carolled one irrepressible member of staff enthusiastically, while another rushed to the piano, only yesterday tuned by Messrs Steinway after years of disuse.
‘For all the trees that are in the wood. . .’
Auguste felt his eyes misting over. Why had he worried? This was Christmas; he could imagine he was running his very own hotel. He could forget the fogs of November in the joys of December. Yes, suddenly, excitingly, he was looking forward to Christmas.
‘
Mes amis
,’ he beamed, ‘now we await only our guests. . .’
Major Frederick Dalmaine of the Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment climbed slowly down from the express at London’s Paddington railway station, somewhat annoyed that he had actually to seek a porter. Everyone else seemed to have porters gravitating to their side, yet what he thought of as his innate authority appeared to have deserted him. He hoped that his slowness of gait would immediately suggest a wounded combatant of the South African War. It was in fact true, and he had no objection to everyone knowing it.
He was more than somewhat aggrieved. His brother, with whom he normally spent Christmas, was very much elsewhere. (His letter, received on arrival at his Southampton home, still burned a hole in his pocket. What the devil was he to do about that?) His brother being abroad, he had naturally counted on spending the festive season with his sister Evelyn and her family, only to be informed by telegram at Southampton that they were going to Scotland, and that consequently she had arranged for him to spend a real old-fashioned English Christmas at a London hotel. He was going to
love every minute, the telegram assured him. Dalmaine had no intention of loving every minute. He had looked forward to being the centre of an admiring circle of small boys and their grown-up counterparts demanding every detail of the relief of Kimberley and Roberts’s victorious advance, not to mention his own face to face encounter with Jan Smuts.
Instead he was going to be one of a party of strangers who wouldn’t be in the least interested in his leg wound even if Field Marshal Roberts himself dropped in to chat about it. He pursed his lips, and remembered that one of his objects in returning to England before deciding on his future was to seek a wife. At thirty-five it was high time, and quite apart from his war career, he had not been idle in his years in Africa. There had been opportunities for civilians with foresight out there, and he was going to seize them, now his army career seemed over. Even if it meant acting on that letter. . .
‘Young ladies who have been launched in Society,’ shouted Sir John Harnet, goaded to a loss of control that his colleagues longed to provoke but failed, for his phlegmatic calm was legendary in the Colonial Office, ‘do not place jumping beans in a feller’s riding boots.’
‘Why not?’ enquired the Honourable Evelyn Pembrey, an expression of great interest in her blue eyes.
‘They are considerate of the feelings of others,’ her guardian replied stiltedly, wondering why on earth he had offered to take the job on, and when Clarence and Bertha could reasonably be expected to settle back in England to take responsibility for their offspring. True, twenty-one years ago he had fervently sworn to Bertha he would devote his life to her service despite her obstinate preference for knuckle-headed Clarence as a husband, but there was service and service. And he was
beginning to feel that the joys of sponsoring the coming-out season of the Pembrey twins and trying to control the waywardness of a beautiful twenty-year-old were outside the boundary.
‘Oh,’ offered the Honourable Miss Ethel, stealing a glance at her twin sister. ‘In that case,’ she continued politely, ‘would you like us to remove the live frog from your muffler too?’
A stifled exclamation from Sir John abandoned plans of taking the muffler from the butler. The butler’s eyes dilated slightly, his fingers distinctly trembling as he backed hastily from the room and disposed of the livestock in language that formed an odd contrast to that generally heard from his lips above stairs.
‘How,’ enquired Sir John sternly, ‘do you expect to find husbands prepared to take you two hoydens on?’
‘I thought they were supposed to find us,’ remarked Evelyn innocently. ‘It always is so in Ouida’s novels.’
Her sister giggled. ‘Mrs Toombs says it isn’t ladylike to ogle men,’ producing the oracle of their long-suffering chaperone.
‘It’s time you two girls learned you have a responsibility to society once you have been received at court. Childhood is over, and you have to be prepared to play your part as future wives and mothers in this great nation of ours, and forget these rubbishy romances. On the noble tradition of British womanhood a great empire has been built, in which you, too, must play your part now you are Out.’
‘I think I’ll go back In,’ pronounced Evelyn gravely.
‘Me, too,’ agreed Ethel.
‘You can’t,’ shouted Sir John, forgetting his resolution to impress them with quiet gravity. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve been received by Her Majesty.’
And what an experience that had been. Even though Mrs Toombs had faced the main burden, as the twins’
guardian in England he had had to be present to see the ostrich plumes so nearly tickling the Prince of Wales’s chin. Not that he seemed to object; he had even danced with Ethel at the Westminsters’ ball last week. The honour had not been fully appreciated by its recipient, judging by Ethel’s irreverent mentions of princely stomachs and unspritely gait.
Whatever had possessed him to book up for this Christmas in the hotel? Lack of options, he thought glumly. Mrs Toombs firmly excluded Christmas from their arrangement. His sister had flatly refused to have them at Chevenings, after the fiasco of their coming-out ball, so what was he, a bachelor, to do? And even if he’d had second thoughts, it had been made quite clear to him by his superiors that they were all in favour of this particular plan for the festive season, and listening to them he had been forced to agree. So it was Cranton’s for Christmas. After all, it was being arranged by a countess. Even if one with somewhat doubtful origins. He could only trust that the excitement of being in London would occupy the girls sufficiently not to terrorise the entire party. He had enough worries at the Colonial Office at the moment without having to act as a blasted prison warder to the Honourable Misses Pembrey. Bertha had a lot to answer for.
‘Uncle Grumps!’ It was the last straw. Sir John looked up at the golden-haired vision floating down the staircase in blue velvet.
‘I thought I told you never to call me that ridiculous name again, Rosanna,’ he thundered.
‘Oh, Guardian,’ Rosanna looked distressed, ‘don’t be grumpy. It is Christmas, after all.’ She smiled winningly, as she made the slightest adjustment to her blue felt hat perched on top of her curls. It was a Christmas for which she had her own plans.
Bella settled herself into their first-class compartment on the railway train for London, wearing her practical travelling dress and a decidedly impractical hat. She was determinedly ignoring the possibly rough crossing of the Channel that lay ahead by fixing her thoughts on Christmas at Cranton’s. An English Christmas after all these years – how welcome her friend’s suggestion of a free holiday at Cranton’s had been. Even Gaston had been almost enthusiastic. The estates swallowed a great deal of money.
She stole a glance at her stiffly upright husband, Gaston, Marquis de Castillon. If only he weren’t always so stiffly upright, always so conscious of his position both in French society and in France’s colonial ministry. She supposed he was very clever at his job, yet his nose was so very high in the air that he didn’t notice very much what was going on under his nose at home. She was very fond of him, in a kind of way . . . He was always there, a pillar of respectability. Which was why he had married her, the daughter of a Hungarian baron. If he had since discovered that pedigrees do not ensure conformity, he never revealed it, and Bella led her merry way through Parisian society unhindered.
True, she had been a little surprised by the ease with which Gaston had agreed to this visit, but she supposed that he was enticed by the prospect of a long, free holiday away from work, over which his brow had seemed more than usually furrowed recently.
Colonel Arthur Carruthers, late of the Buffs, was in excellent mood. Or as excellent as he could be in his aggrieved bereavement. He had retired from the army only to find that his wife died almost immediately afterwards. Wives were not supposed to die and leave husbands unattended, and he held it against her memory.
Carruthers Hall seemed a large, empty shell without her, and the prospect of a lonely Christmas in the West Country had filled him with gloom. A chance meeting had given him a greatly daring idea. Why not spend a real old-fashioned English Christmas, all too many of which he had missed while serving in such faraway places as Zululand, the Perak jungles and Chitral, where they didn’t understand roast turkey. As befitted a man of action, he made up his mind quickly and had the satisfaction of feeling that he was somewhat outwitting the unkind fates. Only now on his way to Cranton’s in a hansom did he suddenly have forebodings, as he realised belatedly that something would be expected of him. He would have to hobnob, as he put it, with a load of strangers. Crossly he rapped for the driver to pull up. His luggage having gone in advance, he could walk the rest of the way. Grimly he set out, marching against the winter winds, head held high before adversity, towards Cranton’s Hotel.