Murder At Plums (26 page)

Samuel breathed a sigh of satisfaction. Tonight the announcement of Sylvia’s engagement and forthcoming (speedy) wedding would be given. Everything had worked out after all. Sylvia was happy, and had quite given up her wild talk of revenge.

Gaylord and Amelia Erskine were at a rehearsal. Locks
dishevelled, Gaylord gave orders from the stalls, hands flailing wildly, and rushed on to the stage; once on the stage he was at one moment shouting directions at an imbecilic Caliban who appeared and disappeared like the demon king from a star trap, the next in full rhetorical flow as Prospero. A nervous Ariel flitted around the stage, failing dismally to be in the right place at the right time, and looking all too unspritelike.

Amelia Erskine sat in the empty stalls as she had done countless times before over the years. She believed in giving full support to her husband, and brought no distractions in the form of sewing or reading. After all, she had to keep an eagle eye on the ladies in the cast. She recalled their talk at breakfast time.

Even now she could not bear to go into Erskine’s study. Why did it have to happen in their home? Well, she knew, of course. Everyone was gathered together, so it was the perfect opportunity for someone with murder in mind, and the victim would be off guard, being in a crowd. She hadn’t liked Rafael Jones after all. Always wanting to paint Gaylord. Never her.

Across the Strand, Charlie and Gertie Briton were dining at Romano’s. She was perhaps the only wife there, and she had demanded to come, as her price exacted from a penitent Charlie. A sign that all was right between them, that trouble had been eradicated. Fascinated, she gazed at the Gaiety Girls, dining with their escorts after the show. It was still risqué for a respectable wife to dine out even with her husband, and how she envied those lovely, beautifully dressed girls, chattering and laughing, dominating the restaurant with their extravagance. She watched enviously. Gaylord had had his pick of all those girls. She wondered briefly whether Charlie had, too, then dismissed the thought. Charlie was utterly devoted to her.

‘Charlie, have they discovered who that murderer is yet?’ she asked artlessly. ‘They don’t still suspect you, do they?’

Charlie looked at her, and could not resist it. She was not yet completely forgiven. ‘Both of us, I believe,’ he said
carelessly. ‘Husband and wife acting together, they think. That’s what a friend of mine told me.’

Philip Paxton greeted them warily. What did this inspector want this time? Then he quailed as he saw Retribution entering after him, in the form of Auguste Didier.

Auguste looked round the small room littered with an itinerant performer’s paraphernalia: a top hat, posters of forgotten shows, a magician’s dress-coat, the
profondes
in the tails, a photograph of Mr Paxton in clown’s costume, well-thumbed song sheets scattered over a table.

Paxton blenched. ‘I only went to be near him,’ he said reverently in answer to Rose’s curt question as regarded his presence at Plum’s.

‘Like him, do you?’ Rose shot at him.

‘
Like
, Inspector?’ said Paxton, amazed. Clearly the very word was
lèse majesté.
‘He is a god amongst mortals.’

‘Yet this god gave you the order of the sack a few years back.’

Paxton looked as if he were about to cry. ‘You don’t understand, Inspector. It was his noble nature. He knew I was not capable of giving the part of the butler the finesse, the power that it demanded, and agonising though it was for him – so he told me – he had to let me go. I am much better on the music-hall stage,’ he added a little wistfully. ‘I just want to be near him occasionally.’

‘Um,’ said Rose. ‘And how near were you that night, Mr Paxton?’

‘I came in as a waiter,’ he replied unhappily, avoiding Auguste’s eye. ‘I had no intention of it, believe me, but seeing all those gentlemen arrive in dress suits I thought, well, I look just the same as they do. I was dressed ready for my performance later that evening at eleven thirty at the Alhambra music hall. So I – I joined the queue,’ he said bravely.

‘And then—’ Rose broke in quickly, lest Auguste explode with his pent-up fury.

‘Then I – er – waited.’

Auguste groaned. ‘And what terrible things happened with this man as a waiter?’ he demanded of the gods.

‘I was good at it,’ Paxton said defiantly. ‘It’s my job, being dexterous, juggling plates. I even thought I might take it up as a profession – when needed,’ he added.

Not if Auguste Didier had anything to do with it.

‘And you were there all evening?’

‘No, the extra waiters started to leave after the meal had been served and that procession started. And I had to get away, to get to my show at the Alhambra. I left by the garden door, so that I didn’t have to go through the kitchens again, and started walking to the gate into York Street. Then I saw it.’

‘What?’ asked Rose and Auguste with one voice.

‘I saw an old man with a silly hat come rushing into the conservatory, then stop, cry out, and go back inside again. Then everybody came rushing into the room he was in.’

‘And who else was in the conservatory when he rushed out?’ Rose held his breath.

‘That was the funny thing.’ said Paxton, surprised. ‘There wasn’t anyone there at all.’

Rose took a deep breath. ‘I don’t believe you, laddie.’

‘Believe me or not,’ said Paxton huffily. ‘That’s what happened.’

‘Then he must have caught sight of you in the garden and called out because he thought you were a burglar.’

‘Then why stop and go back?’ asked Paxton. ‘I didn’t move.’

‘We’ve only got your word for it you were in the garden,’ said Rose sourly. He wasn’t going to have his witnesses play detective. ‘Maybe you were in the conservatory.’

‘No,’ said Paxton, alarmed. ‘Anyway, why shout and yell even if he did see me? I was in evening dress. I could have been anyone. Member of Plum’s, even.’

‘Very well,’ said Rose resignedly. ‘What happened then? When he came out again?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t see him. I had left for my performance. They don’t like you to cut it fine at the Alhambra.’

‘I had left,’ repeated Rose gloomily after their departure. ‘Just our luck, eh, Mr Didier? Prime witness – if we believe
him – and he departed before the murder itself. Do we believe him?’

‘I do not yet know. It could be that he crept into the Folly, saw Worthington in the armchair, thought it was Erskine, and shot him there.’

‘Two things wrong with that,’ said Rose sharply. ‘Why drag him into the Folly and why shoot Erskine? Seems devoted to the fellow.’

‘It was Erskine who was responsible for his sacking. And don’t forget he’s an actor,’ said Auguste quietly.

‘I don’t, Mr Didier. Perhaps he was acting when he said there was nobody in the Folly,’ said Rose disgustedly. ‘That’s all we need. There goes our husband and wife theory.’

‘We only have his word for it,’ Auguste pointed out. ‘And we have evidence from my chief waiter John that a woman’s voice called out from the Folly.’

‘Then why didn’t Paxton hear it?’ demanded Rose.

‘The sound going the wrong way, perhaps?’ Auguste said weakly.

‘No one could have passed into the house without his seeing them, anyway. So it looks like either he’s our villain or he’s telling the truth.’

‘Perhaps they were accomplices?’ said Auguste brightly.

‘General Fredericks, his wife and nephew, eh?’ said Rose slowly. ‘It bears thinking about.’

Luncheon at Plum’s was comparatively animated again. Rafael Jones’ murder was, after all, a game fought on foreign soil. Nothing to do with Plum’s. Furthermore, it transpired that no one had liked the fellow much. Of course the Queen, God bless her, had liked him, but all the same, if rumour was correct he had some strange habits. So, sauced with Auguste’s excellent capon pie and salmagundi, tongues wagged. Even Bulstrode was disposed to be chatty, while wading happily through a superb treacle pudding. Auguste kept an anxious eye on it. Had hemade sufficient?

‘Must have been a woman,’ Bulstrode bellowed. ‘Worthington didn’t like women. Nor did that Jones fellow. Funny creatures, women. Waiter, more pudding,’ he roared at Auguste.

‘I can’t see a woman taking down that revolver from the wall,’ objected Preston. ‘How would she know it was there?’

‘Easy,’ snorted Bulstrode. ‘We took them through the smoking room during the procession. Easy enough to see it, run back and let loose with it. Maddened with passion, I’d say. French, probably.’

There was a silence following this piece of logic, except from Auguste who gave a muted cry of protest.

‘Sooner face a tiger myself than a woman thwarted,’ said Salt. ‘Good soup, Didier,’ he flung at Auguste, who bowed towards the conferrer of this honour. ‘Prefer your
crécy
, though,’ he added. Auguste met this in silence. The
potage de crécy
was Gladys’ domain.

‘The female of the species, eh?’ Preston said in between mouthfuls of apricot charlotte.

‘Only one way to handle a woman,’ said Briton cheerfully, digressing from murder. ‘Bite on the bullet, old man, and don’t let them see you’re afraid.’

Auguste was appalled. Gentlemen’s clubs! Not one of these men would face up to their wives when they got home; only together were they strong. Divided, they fell. Why, in France women were reverenced. Strange, these Englishmen. It was at times like these he found it hardest to remember that he was half-English.

‘Ah, a Kipling enthusiast, Mr Briton. I see you’ll be out East before long. Now there’s a writer,’ said General Fredericks. ‘
The Light that Failed.
What a book. He is an ornament to our culture, truly representative of the age. Not like these sick aesthetes, Dowson, Beardsley, Wilde. Kipling is a poet of the age and will be remembered long after the others are forgotten.’

Interesting how the subject of murder once raised was quickly put aside, thought Auguste as he served the General with his ginger souffle. The last time he had served such a soufflé was on the night of the Passing. Were they slowly, painfully, working their way towards a conclusion? Following the string into the centre of the maze that led to the Minotaur? Thus he remembered Salt and his plans for Crete, and glanced down the table towards where the man
was laying down the law to all around him, chin jutting out obstreperously. He certainly looked pleased with himself, and well he might with the fulfilment of his plans now in sight. Was that man so eagerly eating his
bavarois
responsible for the deaths of two men? Surely not. Yet, someone here was.

The conversation had turned back to the army, to the Jameson Raid, the Matabeland rising, and the latest doings of this fellow Baden-Powell, and then less interestedly, since it was felt to be the foreigners’ own business, to the Armenian massacres in Constantinople of which news was just coming in.

‘You know that part of the world, don’t you, Salt?’ asked Preston.

‘Certainly,’ said Salt, and prepared to hold forth about it.

‘Give us one of your magic-lantern shows about it, Salt,’ murmured Briton, wickedly and innocently.

A sudden burst of conversation drowned out Salt’s reply in case the suggestion were taken up for imminent execution. Juanita in Helen’s jewels, plus a few cloudy pictures of deep holes, had stifled Plum’s collective interest in archaeology for many a long year. Worthington’s role as club bore had a worthy and more active successor.

Auguste had watched one such show – he had to since he was on duty in the room – and thought not of archaeology but of the medium. What use would Erskine make of it, now that animated photographs were coming in? What lay ahead in the future?

‘I understand you’re off to Crete soon, Mr Salt?’ Sergeant Stitch, there to take notes, scribbled away as his chief interrogated the Salts for the third time.

He stiffened. ‘I hope so, Inspector,’ he said guardedly.

There was nothing guarded about Juanita. ‘Yes, he goes to make digs. More jewellewy for me.’

‘You’re going as well, are you, Mrs Salt?’

‘Not at first,’ she said regretfully. ‘Too many fightings against the Turks. I go out when Pewegwine has dug up Knossos.’

‘Knossos?’

‘The Minoan palace,’ said Salt reluctantly.

‘You have heard of the Minotaur? Of Jason and the Argonauts?’ his wife put in more eagerly.

‘Must cost a lot of money, a trip like that,’ said Rose heartily. ‘But now your sister—’

‘Mildred is very kind,’ murmured Salt, in command of himself. ‘I cannot pretend the money is not fortuitous.’

‘It is vewy nice,’ concurred Juanita wholeheartedly. ‘Now I go and Pewegwine can dig up Awiadne’s jewellewy and put it on me. You have seen pictures of me with Queen Helen’s necklace, Inspector?’

‘I haven’t had that pleasure, ma’am,’ Rose began unwisely, for Juanita, a pleased smile crossing her face, rose and billowed her way into an adjoining room. She emerged again bearing a packet of photographs. She had not taken long, but long enough for Rose to see that one wall of the adjoining room was lined with trophies and the guns with which some of them had been acquired.

‘Do you shoot, Mr Salt?’

‘Inspector, any traveller to parts such as I frequent needs to be able to shoot.’

‘And your wife?’

‘I – I believe she can use a gun.’

‘Pewegwine, I am a cwack shot,’ said Juanita proudly, handing round the photographs. ‘Why do you not say so?’

‘And you know Gaylord Erskine?’

Her face suddenly lost its smile. ‘Yes. I know Mr Erskine. He is a nasty man.’

Just how nasty she thought he was she did not elaborate upon. There seemed a conspiracy between them as they sat there, a harmony rare in their married lives.

‘They did it, all right,’ said Rose gloomily. ‘But how?’

‘But Paxton said there was no woman in the Folly—’

‘Emma, I am tired,’ Auguste pleaded. ‘All day I play detective, then I cook, then detective, then I am maître chef for the evening; now I come to you for my own supper, for consolation, for womanly compassion, and for some of your Sweetbreads Emma—’

‘Well,
I
want to ’ear what happened. There must be something you missed.’