Murder in The Smokehouse: (Auguste Didier Mystery 7) (16 page)

‘I gather you’ve had some financial worries, sir?’ Rose suggested blandly, when the inquisition was over.

Alfred twiddled his brandy glass. ‘Yes,’ he agreed, after some consideration and without much surprise.

‘Serious?’

‘Not in the least.’

‘Then you won’t mind showing me your accounts.’

The brandy glass was abruptly put down on the table. ‘Yes, I damned well would.’

‘I could ask your mother.’

Alfred considered this prospect for a moment. ‘The fellows were threatening to sue,’ he said sullenly. ‘It was only roulette and cards, dammit. I hadn’t robbed a bank.’

‘Did they come here to see you?’

‘
No
!’

‘So what happens if they sue?’ enquired Rose.

Alfred beamed at him. ‘I’ve paid them. I had a win, as it happens, and could pay them off.’

‘That’s most fortunate, sir. One could say too fortunate.’

Tatiana shot in the front door at eleven-twenty-nine beaming at Priscilla who stood, key in hand, ready to execute summary justice at eleven-thirty. Auguste blushed at the odd sight it must present to Lady Tabor to see himself passing through on his way from Egbert’s room to bed and his wife clearly returned from a nocturnal excursion. Had she seen Gregorin, was his immediate fear.

‘Where have you been?’ he hissed as soon as they were out of earshot.

‘I have been to see that very nice man called Walter Tompkins,’ she told him with dignity.

‘
Who
?’

‘The Tabors’ driver. He and his wife live over the
motor stable. I drank something interesting called Stout.’

‘What for?’ Auguste was relieved to hear, for the sake of the last shreds of Tatiana’s reputation with the Tabors, that at least Mrs Tompkins appeared to have been present.

‘I wanted to know how motorcars work, of course,’ explained Tatiana, surprised he should have to ask. ‘Did you know, for example, that there is something called a sparking plug? Or that one may experience a backfire on the arm due to premature ignition? I shall ask Alexander if I can take the De Dion Bouton out again to give close study to the petrol-engine.’

‘Why not the Daimler?’ asked Auguste irritably.

‘George was not very pleased that it was just a little dented where I unfortunately hit the milestone when I went backwards so expertly.’ She broke off. ‘Where are you going?’

‘To play billiards and have a brandy,’ announced her husband grimly. His arm was not going to experience any backfires. He would ensure that.

‘Evening, Didier.’ Oliver examined his cue carefully. ‘I am not on good terms with Laura – I am also rather drunk.’

Auguste eyed him warily, and agreed that Oliver appeared to be correct in his self-diagnosis. ‘The devil of it is,’ Oliver laid down the cue and searched for his glass, ‘I’m beginning to realise I really do want to marry her, but she won’t believe me.’

‘If she is in love with this archaeologist—’

‘Poppycock, taradiddle and bull,’ shouted Oliver. ‘How could she be in love with a sack of old bones when there is me?’

‘It is unlikely,’ Auguste hastily conceded. ‘Nevertheless I have often noticed that women have long memories, and if she is still in touch with him—’

‘I don’t believe it,’ declared Oliver robustly, though slurring his words slightly. ‘But that detective friend of yours thinks I shot that chap in the smokehouse thinking it Mariot.
Me
!’

‘Did you?’ Auguste asked incautiously.

‘Of course not,’ Oliver replied with dignified control. ‘Fellow isn’t a gentleman, dammit,’ he pontificated in weak imitation of their host.

‘What makes a gentleman?’ Auguste enquired, the brandy beginning to relax him from more pressing problems of murder. (Even his own.) ‘Am I one, would you say?’

Oliver thought about this. ‘By whose standards? If I say it’s a fellow who can hold his brandy, for instance, I’m lost, reduced to the ranks.’ He took another one to test his theory. He finished it. ‘As one gentleman to another, Didier, let’s have another.’

What did a gentleman consist of, Auguste considered gravely, none the wiser after the passage of an hour and two more brandies, as Oliver fell asleep in an armchair. He sank into one of the leather chairs and considered the matter once more. A gentleman was more than his appearance, he told himself. He stood up and bowed deeply to his reflection in the mirror. This suit, exquisitely tailored by Redfern, proclaimed he was a gentleman. But if he transgressed the code of conduct, he would not be one, though he would still be in the suit. He bowed deeply once more in a manner befitting a gentleman. He smoothed down an errant wave of his hair, examined his shirt and black tie and waistcoat – he wasn’t quite sure now for whom Tatiana said they were in mourning. The King’s mother, sister? McKinley? Someone anyway. Perhaps himself.

In the old days, he told a dress-suited Auguste in the mirror, a maître chef’s clothes suggested he was a cook. Doubtless a Yorkshire clogger’s clothes told the
casual bypasser that he was a clogger. Thus by the same token must a suit by Redfern proclaim he was an English gentleman. And yet he was not. He was half-French, and only half a gentleman. He frowned. It was an extremely complicated matter. If he walked out of his suit, who was he then? If stripped like that corpse . . .

He ordered his train of thought to stop immediately. He had said something of immense significance. No, of great simplicity. If one took the dead man’s clothes off, would he remain a gentleman? That was the question.

Auguste peered anxiously in the mirror. Then rising excitement drove the befuddled sensation of too much brandy from him; it was the victory of a point well argued. His detection powers were not extinct, they were at their height, he told himself immodestly. They had assumed the dead man to be a gentleman because of his clothes. Suppose he were not. Just suppose that they
were
good quality hand-me-downs?

Or even suppose they were not his at all.

‘Why?’

Rose regarded Auguste sourly over a plate of sautéed kidneys. He had avoided the battered anchovies in view of last night’s overindulgence in venison
à la St George
, but even the kidneys were looking triumphant at the prospect of final victory over his stomach. A wistfulness came over him for the familiar things of home: the porridge you could count on to have just a hint of burnt smokiness, the egg that mysteriously broke itself en route from kitchen to table, the tea that conquered all in its strong sweetness. That was the trouble with this job, you got the worst of being away from home but not the best. The worst, for instance, was Auguste eagerly bursting in before one’s eyes were fully open, like a bouncy puppy wanting to be off and doing. Or, in this case, telling.

‘Why what?’ Auguste was somewhat taken aback at Egbert’s chilly reception of his brilliant detective work.

‘Why bother to dress up in good-quality dinner clothes if he was a tramp?’ Rose continued his breakfast.

‘So many reasons,’ Auguste explained eagerly. ‘He might have been a burglar, trying to avoid notice, as I believe was suggested. Or a prospective assassin,’ he added firmly, ‘as we first thought. He could come over the fells with impunity after dark.’ Like Pyotr Gregorin, he was disagreeably reminded.

‘No mud on his shoes. He’d have had to have carried
them,
and
the suit. And where’s his overcoat?’ Rose was not convinced. Far from it.

‘He could have walked from Malham, or even from Kirkby Malham. Cobbold’s men only made enquiries about gentlemen.’ Auguste heard himself saying this with alarm. He who had always believed that gentlemen could be found in pig-sties and villains in marbled halls!

‘Cobbold’s men haven’t found any trace of anyone missing around here that could fit our party, gent or no gent. No carriers report any passengers that evening.’

‘Perhaps he has not yet been missed because there is no one to miss him,’ shouted Auguste, goaded by Egbert’s dismissive tone.

‘A local assassin, then. Unusual for a man to decide to pop out and kill the King because he’s staying next door, ain’t it?’

‘That is ridiculous, of course.’ Auguste glared. ‘But my theory opens up possibilities,’ he insisted, although his certainty was rapidly fading. He strolled to the window to try to think, undisturbed by Egbert’s ironic eye. There in the distance beyond formal rosebeds he could just see the walls of the vegetable garden. Somewhere among those hills was Gregorin, somewhere in a remote village or a hamlet; hidden in a deserted house, even in a cave, was the hunter, biding his time for his quarry to break cover in his direction. And there was nothing the quarry could do about it. The hunter had all the choices. And the gun. He tore his mind quickly away.

‘There is a lump in this sauce that we are discussing,’ he told Rose regretfully.

‘It’s your sauce.’

‘If you don clothes as a disguise, you put on the trousers, the jacket, the waistcoat, the tie, the shirt,
perhaps gloves, but not necessarily the underwear. Especially if you are an assassin. But on this corpse,
mon ami, all
the clothes were good, and hardly available to a Yorkshire shepherd.’

‘Hand-me-downs.’

‘Would he dress
completely
in hand-me-downs? His socks, his suspenders, his underpants?’

‘Unlikely, I’ll admit.’

‘He had a sunburnt complexion, rough hands,’ Auguste reasoned, seeing he had Egbert’s attention, ‘not because he had been in Babylon, or Colorado, but because he was a working man, or at least a man used to being in the open air much of the time.’

‘His hair was neat.’

Auguste dismissed this. ‘He might have cut it for the occasion, and put Rowland’s Macassar oil on it.’ A stray memory came back to him. ‘Tatiana found a few dark hairs on my ulster. I thought they were mine, but just suppose—’

Rose abandoned breakfast, his attention suddenly caught, and went over to his desk. ‘There were a couple on the floor of the smokehouse too,’ he said, reading through the medical laboratory report.

‘I must have picked up some as I lay on the floor the following day,’ Auguste remembered with distaste.

Egbert roared with laughter. ‘Our chap really has an evening out. Maybe he decided to use the smokehouse for a wash and brush-up, and cut his hair into the bargain. Probably trimmed his beard too.’

‘Suppose, Egbert—’ an idea began to blossom in Auguste’s mind, ‘suppose this murder is like a
soupe au pistou
.’

Rose had happy memories of
soupe au pistou
in Provence, but he could not see the precise resemblance.

‘Explain,’ he said resignedly. Cooking analogies tended to be more helpful to Auguste than himself.

Auguste struggled to concentrate his thought processes. ‘Instead of this vegetable soup following the normal pattern, where all the ingredients cook together, suppose these dress clothes are the
pistou
, the garlic, basil and pine nut mixture, which was stirred in at the last moment.’

‘I’m not sure I follow.’

‘The murder took place and the clothes were changed
afterwards
.’

‘Difficult for the corpse to manage, wasn’t it?’

‘By the murderer, Egbert,’ Auguste howled.

‘What about the blood?’ Rose asked promptly. ‘If the clothes were changed after death, what happened to the old clothes, and more importantly, how did these new clothes get covered in blood?’

‘Suppose the murderer added blood?’

‘Whose?’

‘An animal’s—’ Auguste broke off. ‘The missing blood from the larder.’ He was right, he
must
be. ‘Breckles could not find the blood for the black pudding the following day, Egbert – the mad carpenter?’

‘Eh?’ Rose looked startled, then caught up. ‘The new test.’ He thought it over. ‘I’ll get the shirt on its way to Cobbold’s pal. Mind you, I don’t know that I’m convinced. Still a few questions. Like my first one. Why?’

‘To obscure his identity,’ Auguste replied promptly.

Rose considered this, then shook his head. ‘That doesn’t add up. If he’s a local man, sooner or later he’d be identified. If he wasn’t, why bother to change the clothes?’

‘So that the murderer had time to leave the district,’ said Auguste, inspired.

‘His Majesty perhaps?’ enquired Rose drily.

‘There were guests in the house,’ Auguste replied with dignity. ‘And servants.’

‘With access to top-quality clothes?’

‘Valets,’ Auguste pressed on. ‘They often inherit clothes. And there’s Mr and Mrs Janes too.’

Rose shook his head, dissatisfied. ‘Makes it premeditated. Call your victim to a midnight rendezvous, have a spare set of clothes handy, take all that time to change his clothes, and cut his hair, when for all you know the shot might have alerted the household. No, there must have been some strong motive for changing them.
If
they were changed,’ he added cautiously.

‘Sometimes the dishes that look most complicated, turn out the simplest,’ observed Auguste. ‘Take for instance, a
brandade de morue
or possibly a
gratin dauphinois
—’

‘Not at the moment, thank you,’ Rose interrupted; memories of the venison welled up all too vividly. He hesitated. While disagreeable associations were on his mind, he might as well get it over. ‘Auguste, you realise that at this stage everyone’s a suspect, don’t you?’

‘Naturally.’ He was somewhat hurt. ‘I had as much opportunity to kill this man as anyone. Furthermore I was alone with him for some time, able to remove any incriminating evidence—’

‘I wasn’t thinking of you.’

Auguste stared at him, horrified, unbelieving – then remembering all Egbert’s odd silences. ‘But you cannot still think Tatiana was involved, Egbert?’ he asked slowly.

‘I have to consider everybody.’

‘But she did not recognise the corpse.’ Auguste tried to keep emotion from his voice, to speak rationally. Since Tatiana’s explanation, he had dismissed his own worries about her part in this death as the product of an over-active imagination working in fearful
circumstances. Why had he assumed that Egbert had done the same?

‘Ever occur to you the corpse might
be
Gregorin?’ Rose continued simply. ‘I’m only telling you because Twitch is down in London now checking with Special Branch.’

Auguste’s face turned black as thunder. ‘You asked him to check on
my wife
?’

‘I have to.’

Auguste desperately sought to see things through Egbert’s eyes. Tatiana was the only one who
knew
Gregorin. Suppose she had lied about the corpse? Egbert was right, he had to concede. And yet something inside him rebelled. Egbert should as soon suspect Queen Alexandra herself.

Reason reasserted itself. ‘How,’ he asked, ‘could Gregorin have shot at me the following evening if he’d been murdered the night before?’

‘That’s simple. Young Alexander and . . .’ he hesitated before Auguste’s reproachful eye ‘the Princess could have shot Gregorin before he could do any damage here, either to you
or
His Majesty. You never know with European politics, and Gregorin has recently been at the Kaiser’s court. Suppose the King’s assassination was his mission, not to kill you at all? Then the next night Alexander could have taken a pot-shot at you but deliberately missed—’

‘Only just.’

‘Nevertheless, missed. He’s prepared an escape route up the fell, skirts round and down the slopes of Willy’s Brow into the house again. He’s now established Gregorin’s existence.
Then
they feel free to tell us about this notorious assassin. Or, I might remind you, Gregorin himself might have shot our corpse, who might have come for some innocent purpose and got in his way.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Auguste eagerly.

Rose regarded him dispassionately. ‘Then prove it quickly, Auguste, or I’m going to have to move if Stitch comes back with a report or photograph of Gregorin which in any way resembles our body.’

‘I can begin now,’ Auguste hurled at him. ‘If that pathologist’s report shows animal blood, then the corpse
can’t
be that of Gregorin. Why should Tatiana and Alexander bother to change his clothes?’

‘Good point. Gregorin might well change them though if he murdered a stranger,’ Rose came back instantly. ‘Twitch reported that Special Branch knows that Gregorin favours disguise. Suppose he murdered your tramp for the sake of swapping clothes?’

He wanted to agree. He wanted to agree so much. But he couldn’t. ‘Why go to the bother of cutting his hair?’

There was a long silence. ‘Well done, Auguste,’ Egbert said quietly.

A knock at the door, and Cobbold came in, escorted, in no way to his discomfiture, by an extremely tall Tabor-liveried footman. He nodded to Auguste before sitting himself carefully on the balloon-back chair opposite Rose, and announcing that every village in the dales now had a reconstructed drawing of what the corpse must have looked like pasted up in Post Office windows.

‘Mr Didier here,’ Rose told him, ‘has a notion our fellow ain’t such a gentleman as he appears. The clothes were changed after death. He reckons he might be a working man from round these parts after all. That possible?’

Cobbold considered. ‘I can’t rule it out. It’s a time of year when men are on the move, sheep-salving, winter log cutting, re-tiling, wall repairs, peat-cutting and so on. Could be away days at a time. I’ll check with the
cotton mill and the tannery.’ A resigned look came over his face. ‘So you’ll be wanting a search of the land round here for the clothes?’

‘Quickly. I’ll have to let the guests go home after the Coroner’s Enquiry,’ Rose told him regretfully. ‘I don’t want the royal telegraph wires tapping because Mrs Janes is unavoidably detained.’

‘This would naturally include myself and my wife?’ Auguste said stiffly.

‘Not yet, if you please.’ Egbert paused. ‘I need you.’ That note in his voice again, Auguste noted dismally.
Not yet. Not till I’m sure your wife isn’t a murderess
.

Even if he proved the clothes had been changed, the hands that changed them remained to be found, and he, Auguste, was going to have to find out whose they were. It would be a lone hunt now and lone hunts started on home ground.

‘There was one of them detectives on our door all day Friday and Saturday,’ Mrs Breckles supplied helpfully. ‘The shirtmaker came,’ she remembered. ‘Mrs Waites. She were quite put out that detective thought she might have a gun in her sewing bag. Very patriotic is Mrs Waites. But no one like that.’ She looked at Auguste’s carefully doctored picture, with longer hair, old jacket, scruffy necktie and beard. ‘Some of them—’ she looked scathingly at the picture, ‘call at the front entrance and Mr Richey sees them off.’

Caught in the midst of a quiet smoke, thus transgressing rules that even His Majesty had been forced to observe, Mr Richey had no option but to be gracious to Mr Didier. He gave a brief glance at the drawing.

‘Trade entrance, Mr Didier.’ His offhand tone implied Auguste would know that door well. Diplomacy was needed.

‘My senses, Mr Richey, specialise in taste. My sense of smell is very undeveloped,’ Auguste announced casually. It was not true of course – why, he could smell a sour stock at forty paces – but Mr Richey took the point that Auguste’s sense of smell might easily and swiftly improve. This time he studied the drawing carefully.