Murder At Plums (15 page)

‘Keep the ladies out,’ was Nollins’ first stray thought. ‘He wouldn’t have wanted that. And,’ more sensibly to one of the stewards, remembering one member who could assist despite his august status as physician to royalty, ‘fetch Dr Hasleton. I think he’s still here. Then get some light in here.’

Inspector Rose bent over the dead man, then straightened. ‘Get Peeps to telephone my office, will you, Mr Nollins? Ask for Sergeant Stitch.’

‘Suicide surely,’ faltered Nollins, a slow dread creeping over him.

‘Good God,’ said Bulstrode, astonished. ‘Poor old Worthington. Knew he was boring, but never thought he’d take it to heart like that. Suicide, eh?’

‘Perhaps, sir,’ said Rose, meeting Auguste’s eye. ‘Or murder.’

‘Murder?’ cried Erskine indignantly. ‘But it was I who should have been murdered!’

Nollins’ normally cherubic face displayed a combination of emotions: horror, terror, disbelief, and pathetic hope – this last a plea – that his own predicament would somehow be understood. He was conscious that he should be thinking of the sadness of sudden death, the unpredictability of life, of the virtues of the late Colonel Worthington. In fact his thoughts were occupied exclusively with how the members would react to the exiting of the corpse and the news of the reason for it, whether he would have to attend the funeral, and how it would affect the reputation of Plum’s Club for Gentlemen. A suicide perhaps. That was to be expected, if frowned upon, on club premises. But the unthinkable – a murder?

Why, a murder implied that . . . no, that thought he resolutely pushed from his mind. Why, oh why, had this torment come upon him? He felt like the Lady of Shalott. And goodness knows what Jessie would say to him when – or rather if, for it looked like being a long night – he returned home. That’s if – with a start he remembered that his wife must still be here, waiting placidly to be taken home.

He would take this monstrous bull by its horns: ‘No one, Inspector, would wish to murder Colonel Worthington. I regret to say he was not, perhaps, our most popular member, but he was part of Plum’s. Murder is out of the question.’ His tone of voice was the one with which he had with considerable bravado quelled the incipient mutiny over the rise in the luncheon prices.

Inspector Rose was not easily quelled. ‘No letter, Mr Nollins. Usually there’s a letter of some sort. Besides, he is hardly likely to come here to shoot himself, is he? Unsporting, wouldn’t you call it?’

Nollins definitely would. But less unsporting than murder. ‘Does this mean you’ll want to keep everyone here, Inspector?’ he enquired, spirits plummeting even further.

‘Police Constable Peek will take the names and addresses of those who want to leave,’ said Rose. ‘But not yet. Not till after my lads have been. Your members and their good ladies will have to stay where they are for the time being.’

At that moment ‘the lads’ arrived. Nollins shrank back at the panoply of bowler hats, helmets and large black boots. It was as though Plum’s had succumbed to enemy occupation. The word ‘lad’ did not precisely fit Sergeant Stitch.

‘Evening, Twitch – er, Stitch,’ Rose greeted him morosely.

Stitch’s eyes gleamed as he took this well-worn bon mot on the chin. Only his nose twitched slightly in acknowledgement. One day . . . But not yet. He had his career all mapped out – in his mind, at least.

‘Good evening, Inspector.’

‘Make a few notes, Stitch.’

Stitch produced a large notebook, a thick pencil and adopted the pose of keen sergeant awaiting promotion, as the doctor examined the body.

‘Deceased,’ he announced formally, if unnecessarily. No one had doubted it for an instant after seeing the sprawled body, the red mess that used to be Colonel Worthington’s evening wear, and the staring eyes.

‘This the weapon?’ Rose enquired equally formally.

The doctor glanced at the old Webley revolver in Rose’s hands. ‘You found it here?’

‘By his side.’

‘It certainly could have been,’ said the doctor cautiously.

‘Then it must be suicide,’ broke in Nollins with relief. ‘That’s the Webley young James used at Rorke’s Drift – it hangs on the wall of the smoking room.’ He almost ran to check this vital point and with relief reported his theory correct. There was a gap amongst the hundred or so weapons from assegais to rifles adorning the smoking-room walls.

‘I doubt this is a suicide,’ remarked the doctor. ‘No powder burns visible. I’d say he was shot from a few yards
away.’ Their eyes travelled to the end of the Folly, cast in darkness now, to where the head of Captain Plum gazed down in indignation at this desecration of his life’s achievement.

Rose looked down at the revolver in his hands. According to that book he’d read, this piece of metal could give him all the answers. Fingerprints. But no one yet had devised a method to make use of them. It was an intriguing idea though. Meanwhile—

‘Murder,’ said Rose glumly. He had after all been on duty here, and he didn’t appreciate being made a fool of. ‘Murder without a doubt.’

‘You were right,
ma mie
, without a doubt,’ remarked Auguste soberly to Emma in the kitchen. A stalwart policeman guarded the door, while the staff, torn between duty and excitement (and fear of Auguste’s wrath), bustled around in the pretence of being busy, but in fact to coordinate themselves into an ever-changing series of groups discussing various facets of the evening’s proceedings.

Emma raised an eyebrow. Auguste, diverted for a moment as he speculated on whether the
nougat aux amandes
had really met his standards, did not notice it.

‘There
was
something wrong at Plum’s,
hein
? Something that led to murder,’ Auguste went on. He felt dejected as well as shocked. It had been his task to prevent this murder. He had suspected it might come – though not to this victim – and he had failed to prevent it.

‘You don’t know that,’ pointed out Emma. ‘It could be someone taking advantage of the joker’s tricks to carry out ’is own dirty work.’

Auguste forgot the
nougat
at this uninvited intrusion into his domain.
He
was the detective. His retort, however, was forestalled by Nollins appearing in the kitchen in person – a sign of the unusualness of the situation.

‘Mr Didier,’ he began unhappily, ‘most unfortunate I know, but ah, there are some signs of unrest’ (as usual, an understatement) ‘as no one is yet allowed to return home. I wondered, ah – I wondered whether a few light refreshments might not come . . .’ His voice trailed off as he saw
Auguste’s gaping face. ‘A few light refreshments,’ he repeated weakly, looking round at the carnage after the battle strewn around the kitchens. Only half of it had yet been cleared by the skivvies in the sculleries. Half-eaten
plats
lingered unappetisingly on every surface. Despite Auguste’s admonitions, sudden death had dented everyone’s zest for clearing up.

‘Come on, Auguste,’ said Emma cheerily. ‘Why not? You aren’t going to be beaten, are you? Remember they’re ’
ungry
, Auguste. You always say it is against your principles to allow folk to go ’ungry. ’Course,’ she added offhandedly, ‘I could always get something sent round from Gwynne’s—’

He glared at her and turned stiffly to Nollins. ‘It will be no trouble, sir,’ he said, ‘to arrange a little light supper – a salmagundi perhaps, cold meat and removes – devilled perhaps – pickles and walnut catsup and the setpieces I held in reserve . . .’

The arrival of food – and claret – diverted the attention briefly from the unfortunate events of Plum’s fiftieth parade. It was after all well into the small hours, and some of them had things to do in the morning. A visit to their tailors, for example.

At last Sergeant Stitch came in, full of his importance as an officer of the law and not over-impressed with the inside of a gentlemen’s club. It was a gloomy old place. Needed brightening up a little. Some nice flowered wallpaper now.

‘Silence,’ he bawled. Amazed, the members did as he asked. Pink in the face at his success, Stitch continued: ‘You’re free to leave now, ladies and gentlemen, but the constable here will be taking your names and addresses.’

‘What’s that young puppy doing here?’ roared Bulstrode to his neighbour. ‘Haven’t started electing barrow-boys, have we?’

Stung to the quick, his standing in doubt, Stitch pointed out indignantly that this was a case of possible murder.

The breathless hush as Grace stood poised to make his 2,000th run in ’95 was as nothing to that in the dining room of Plum’s Club for Gentlemen as this announcement sank
in. Hitherto the talk had been of what drove poor old Worthington to do it. For suicide, after all, was something that gentlemen were driven to do from time to time. Getting themselves murdered was not. It was obscurely felt that it was damned bad form.

‘Murder?’ repeated Salt, shocked, to a chorus of faint cries from the ladies. ‘Are you sure?’

Stitch dithered between his pride and his conscience. It was after all not yet
official.
Then he blew discretion to the winds.

‘Shot through the heart with the Webley from the smoking room,’ he announced with relish.

‘Young James’s Webley?’ roared Bulstrode. ‘One he held off the Zulus with at Rorke’s Drift? Gad, the fellow’s no gentleman.’

This was, tonight, regarded as an irrelevance by the company, shocked as much for themselves as for Worthington. Plum’s was definitely not Plum’s tonight. It had revealed itself as mortal, vulnerable to the forces of the outside world. No longer impregnable, it could offer them nothing as bulwark to their own fragility.

‘My dear Inspector.’

Rose looked up from his contemplation of the scene of the crime, annoyed.

Erskine swallowed hastily. In the Folly the remains of Colonel Worthington were being put on to a stretcher, ready for his last departure from Plum’s.

‘Forgive my intrusion, but your sergeant tells us this is possibly murder. Is that correct?’

‘Probably, sir, yes,’ replied Rose, mindful of the need to have a word with Stitch. Not often did Twitch put a foot wrong, but when he did . . . Rose liked to be the one to tell him.

‘Then I was the intended victim!’ cried Erskine dramatically.

‘Indeed?’ Rose saw a chasm yawning before him; though his face remained impassive.

Sensing he had Rose’s full attention, however, Erskine swept on: ‘Someone must have seen Colonel Worthington
in the Folly wearing his bicorne and mistaken him for me.’

‘Hardly likely, sir, is it? After all, if he thought it was you in the Folly there could have been the danger of his being spotted by Worthington from the smoking room, not to mention the matter of his having by coincidence a gun in his hand just at the moment he spotted you.’

‘Then,’ said Erskine, piqued, ‘pray forgive my intrusion, Inspector. I ask you to bear this in mind. I am somewhat – tired.’ So he was after his discussions with Charlie Briton and Samuel Preston. It had required a certain dexterity to convey to husband and father that suspicion might be one thing, proof another. For those in the public eye, he had murmured, these accusations were painful, hurtful – and, furthermore, unfounded. How fortunate, he congratulated himself, that he was always prepared for these encounters.

‘Well over two hundred, sir, and the staff. That’s nearly three hundred.’

‘And you’re not sure of the intended victim? That it?’

Rose slumped down in one of the armchairs in the smoking room, envisaging his meeting with the Chief Constable tomorrow. He was unduly depressed. After all, it didn’t look good, his being there while the murder took place. The gentlemen of the press would have sharp questions. Somebody had calculated that in the crowds present at Plum’s last night, Rose was no more threat to him than the Assistant Commissioner himself high in his office overlooking the Embankment. Correct, but not reassuring to Her Majesty’s subjects. And Rose took it as a personal affront.

Watching him somewhat hesitantly in the doorway was Auguste Didier who could guess what was in Rose’s mind, since it was written on every line of his lugubrious face.

Rose looked up and saw him. His expression did not change. ‘I thought you’d have prevented this, Didier.’

Auguste stiffened, and said nothing. He was mortified. There was a heavy silence. Then he said with difficulty: ‘One cannot prevent murder, Inspector, with a determined, careful murderer. But we will find him,
hein
? It is definitely not by his own hand?’

Rose looked at him sharply. ‘I shouldn’t have said that, Mr Didier. It was my job. I was there to guard against it. And I didn’t. Wrong of me to blame you.’

‘You were there to guard
Erskine
, monsieur,’ said Auguste, only a little mollified. ‘Not Worthington.’

‘I should have seen it. As to suicide, from what I hear of him, if Worthington committed suicide he’d want everyone to hear about it. If he didn’t make a speech about it beforehand, he’d certainly have left a forty-page letter.’

‘But who would wish to kill Colonel Worthington? You do not make a pie
aux truffes
out of the humble rabbit. One requires more exotic ingredients like Mr Erskine.’

‘Ah well, according to our Mr Erskine, this
was
an attempt to kill him. Confused the hats, he thinks. Can’t be, of course. Yet he certainly seems more likely to have been cut out to be murdered. After all, Worthington seems to have been an everyday sort of chap.’

‘Yet apparently, monsieur, this simple everyday chap had such a fright earlier last evening that everyone rushed in here to see what was wrong. Is that not so?’

‘By crikey. I’d almost forgotten that. The mysterious stranger – someone he knew, he said. You’re right. I came in myself. Looked quite pale. Mind you, I daresay that’s quite natural, after the richness of that meal,’ said Rose slyly, with a sidelong look at Auguste, who puffed up indignantly, but was inwardly relieved. Rose was himself again. ‘A touch too much lobster perhaps.’

‘Not
my
lobster,’ muttered Auguste fiercely, ‘He’d rushed into the conservatory. Was it to see someone who had lingered from the end of the parade?’