Murder Under The Kissing Bough: (Auguste Didier Mystery 6) (15 page)

Now for the ingredients, so important in a recipe. The least mistake, and the whole recipe was thrown out. Suppose no chillis were included, or no cayenne, would that not alter the whole? And here there were a lady reporter, a story, a planned assassination, a group of people – some of whom had something to hide, of that he was sure. The Baroness, Dalmaine, Rosanna . . . However innocent, there were secrets here that needed revealing.

He had argued that this was the plan of an intelligent person, whether conceived before he came to Cranton’s or when he saw Nancy serving supper. No, it must be the former, for how otherwise would he recognise her? And that meant he had been close to her in the fog; yet if he had seen her, she had seen him. Did she not know the girl had been murdered? Yes, she must have known. Why, then, not be on her guard when serving tea? This would suggest either that she was murdered by one of those to whom she did not take tea – Bessie’s rooms – or Mademoiselle Gonnet. Or, he had a happy thought, there were two people involved. Ah yes! Much more likely. Two people to support the body, to lift it into the chest.

He took another piece of meat for this splendid curry he was concocting. If this was an intelligent murderer, why the clumsy attempt to make them believe the murder took place on Boxing morning by replacing the dagger? Only a fool would think this undetectable? True, as he had pointed out, it was an ideal place to hide a weapon, but suppose this meat should be cut
across the grain, not along it? Why, after all, had the dagger to be taken out in the first place? There was but one answer. Unlike the chest with its convex lid, wherever the body remained during the Christmas Day festivities, it would not allow room for a knife.

Ah yes. And now this meat must be chopped even finer:
where
was the body while the rooms were cleaned? And when and why was it moved? It would be heavy, there would be the risk of observation. The hiding place could not be far from the room.

Now the vegetables, whose appearance, like the meat, would all be subtly changed by the spices, the hidden threads at work behind the scenes. The Baroness lived in Berlin, though she spent much time in Paris. Was her reason for being here the true one? Bella was Hungarian, with a French diplomatist for husband. Why should they be here? And Thomas Harbottle and his German wife – why not stay with his family? Colonel Carruthers and Dalmaine were unmistakably English; Dalmaine had come back from the South African War, Carruthers had been widowed, Maisie told him. The Pembrey girls were English with parents in Africa. Mr Bowman and Miss Guessings were English. All had reasons to be here at Christmas – and Miss Guessings had confessed to knowing Nancy before. And there was one other vegetable in his curry: Danny Nash, who still obstinately clung to his story that he was here merely to protect a colleague. And the staff? Egbert had ruled them out. Mrs Pomfret and the other maids could enjoy no such immunity, but Twitch had been busy checking their backgrounds. None seemed a likely candidate for stabbing either Nancy Watkins or the Prince of Wales.

And mixing the curry, if two worked together? The Baroness, perhaps on behalf of her husband and acting with her companion. Possible. Bowman and Gladys
Guessings? Motive? None yet. The Harbottles? The same applied to them. Dalmaine could possibly have been suborned while in South Africa, but it seemed unlikely. None of the three girls could be imagined villains of the deepest dye – not in the sense of murder anyway, he thought bitterly. Sir John Harnet and the Marquis were respected diplomats. Of them all, Miss Guessings was the only one with a known link to Nancy.

Pall Mall Pudding indeed. He wondered idly what might be the recipe. He would visit Gwynne’s and ask Emma. Yet, he reminded himself, for him not the pudding, but the Pall Mall was all-important.

His master chef’s instinct told him this curry he had invented had an indefinable quality that was entirely Didier. But what was it? If his hand had put the final touch, had created a whole from the mass of separate facts and suspicions, he could not yet discern what it might be. The art of a master chef, perhaps, but less than useful for a detective.

One of the problems of history, thought Auguste gloomily to himself after luncheon, regarding the itinerary Maisie had given him with trepidation, was that there was a lot of it. The morning had begun well, so the Baroness informed him on their return from a visit to Westminster Abbey, though it was true the most enthusiastic response seemed to be for the waxwork show of some of the Kings and Queens of England, taken from casts of their faces and in some cases clad in their actual clothes, which had been carried in their funeral processions and for many years had stood by the graves. Animated discussion had followed as to why Charles II’s head remained on his shoulders, so animated that Harbottle was unable to make himself heard to correct their historical knowledge. Consequently
he was out of sorts at luncheon, only reviving sufficiently when they reached the Post Office Station in the afternoon. A journey by the new Central London Underground Railway was voted a most pleasurable and unusual experience, and St Paul’s evoked equal new enthusiasm, especially with Harbottle. He cleared his throat.

‘I wonder if you are aware, Mr Didier, that the bells of St Paul’s if rung continually for twenty years would only then exhaust the number of changes.’

‘Indeed, monsieur.’ Auguste managed a look of great interest. Why could not the bells play tunes, he asked himself, and then the number would be limitless.

‘Thomas, let us go to the Whispering Gallery,’ demanded Eva, a suggestion taken up with enthusiasm by the rest of the party, now weary of stone tombs. Conscious of his role as leader of the party, Auguste followed his charges.

‘I’ll race you up, Evelyn.’ Ethel raised her skirts to show a shocking glimpse of shapely ankle, and sped to the stairs to the Gallery.

Behind them Marie-Paul turned to the Baroness. ‘May we?’ she asked, her usual low voice almost animated.

Thérèse shrugged. ‘We are in England. Of course we must go to the Gallery.’

‘Pray take care, Miss Pembrey. If I might offer you an arm?’

Rosanna looked up at Dalmaine and smiled. ‘How kind, Major Dalmaine.’ She had little else to do really. She had captured her beloved in Westminster Abbey this morning. There was no sense in wasting the rest of the day. Besides, this major had a certain stiff-necked charm. She accepted the arm.

In front, Alfred Bowman had Gladys’s arm firmly in his already. ‘Can’t have you falling, can we?’

Bella glanced at Auguste, dimpled and took the Colonel’s arm. ‘I wonder if I might cling to you, sir. I would feel so much safer.’

Colonel Carruthers stiffened. He could hardly say no; besides, the lady was deuced attractive. He straightened his shoulders.

‘Madam, I’d be honoured.’ He felt twenty years younger.

Behind them, jostling with a crowd of other tourists, Auguste stomped up the stairs alone. A cacophony of words were echoing round the Whispering Gallery as he came up. He was just in time to hear, as did everybody else, a hoarse, unrecognisable voice inform the echo: ‘I know how it was done. I know who did it.’

It had nothing to do with the murder. How could it? he argued. Yet it was undeniable that a marked silence fell on the party, especially on Rosanna, who seemed to find nothing at all to say to the gallant major.

Gray’s Inn was by no means a success. The party listened politely as Auguste explained the history from Maisie’s notes, but he could not help but feel that the information that ‘Gray’s Inn Road was, at its junction with Holborn, the toll-paying entrance to the City of London, and thus in earlier times called Portpool Lane (it being near a pond)’ was not received with much enthusiasm. Sir John caused a surprising stir by uncharacteristically informing the company that in earlier times the legal profession had to sleep two to a bed in the Inns of Court. Harbottle’s defiant ‘I wonder if you are aware that this catalpa tree was brought back by Raleigh, and Bacon planted it’ aroused less interest.

‘Bacon burnt a bit?’ grunted Carruthers, slightly deaf when he wanted to be. ‘I agree with you, sir. Charred to cinders. That cook of yours should be shot,’ a glare at Auguste.

Harbottle raised his voice. ‘I wonder if you are aware
that in 1622 on Twelfth Night, some young barristers here stole the cannon from Tower Hill and set it off. King James thought it another Gunpowder Plot.’

‘The Boers have a nasty trick with gunpowder,’ remarked Dalmaine in a loud voice, impressively to Rosanna. ‘They set a cocked pistol on the line – railway engine passes over it, sets it off. Spark ignites a connected load of dynamite. End of train, and occupants, too.’

‘That’s murder,’ cried Gladys, shocked.

‘Assassination,’ corrected Thérèse.

‘War,’ said Eva Harbottle in her thick accent. So rarely did she speak, her voice startled everyone.

Assassination? Murder? Was this just a general discussion, or was there more involved, more passion in these few words than was apparent? He must be careful, Auguste thought, not to read too much into casual conversation. But he should not ignore it. It must be stored in the larder of his mind, ready for use with other ingredients.

There seemed surprisingly little enthusiasm for Lincoln’s Inn, despite his cunning promise of tea thereafter. Lincoln’s Inn was never reached, however. Crossing the wide thoroughfare of Holborn, expounding obediently from Maisie’s notes on the Dickensian associations of the area, Auguste was suddenly aware that his party had considerably reduced in size. Only Thérèse and her companion remained loyal. She smiled at his perplexity, and pointed. The vast emporium of Gamages was a mecca few could resist.

‘I cannot see,
ma chère
, why this store is of such attraction.’ Gaston de Castillon wrinkled his nose at the peculiar smell that was Gamages. An English smell, of wood, ironmongery and, he sniffed delicately, of the Paris Zoological Gardens. ‘On Monday we can visit
Woollands, or the Army and Navy Stores if you wish to shop.’

‘They’re not the same,’ announced Bella cheerfully, sweeping her fur-trimmed mantle past displays of strange-looking cheap machines and into another little room filled with confectionery of gaudy packing; then she turned a corner straight into the smell, it seemed to him, and a raucous voice that informed him he was ‘a jammy old jelly-belly’. It was, so the salesmen instructed them, a Chattering Lory.

‘Think how well he’d go down at one of your stiff dinner parties, Gaston.’

A rare smile reluctantly forced itself to his lips as he contemplated
le ministre
dining with competition of this sort. Then he remembered he was annoyed with Bella.

‘
Ma chère
,’ he said, ‘how much longer do we have to endure this torment?’

‘Now, now, Gaston. You know what we’re here for and why we must stay.’

‘I do not approve,’ eyeing his wife’s purchase of Ogden’s Otto de Rose cigarettes. Whether he spoke of her acquisition or her Christmas mission was not clear.

‘Nonsense, Gaston,’ she said lightly. And he didn’t know the half of it.

Colonel Carruthers, after ensuring he was on his own, marched through Cycles and Cycle Accessories to Toys and Musical Instruments and, with a short stop at model trains, arrived triumphantly at toy soldiers. From the opposite direction, having come through Magic Lanterns, and Cigars and Tobaccos, marched Dalmaine. (Rosanna had disappeared into Umbrellas.) They stopped short at twenty paces on sighting each other, then the attraction of toy soldiers outweighing dislike, they advanced till they stood side by side, hands behind backs.

‘The Dirty Half Hundreds.’ Carruthers broke silence with an insult.

‘The Fiftieth, sir, was beyond reproach.’ After all, the 50th had become the West Kents.

‘No reproach intended, sir,’ said Carruthers hastily. ‘Affectionate nickname, that’s all.’ It was an olive branch and seized.

‘Fine regiment, the Buffs,’ Dalmaine commented.

‘The best,’ responded Carruthers quietly, contemplating his imminent purchase of a 10d box of seven Buff infantry.

Dalmaine too selected a purchase, with a quick glance to see if Carruthers was watching. He was.

‘For my nephew,’ Dalmaine said lightly.

‘West Yorkshires?’ grunted Carruthers. ‘Made a mistake, have you?’

‘No. My brother-in-law is in the regiment,’ Dalmaine said stiffly.

Carruthers’ brow puckered. ‘Weren’t they in the Ashanti affair of ninety-six?’

Dalmaine did not reply. He appeared to be contemplating the further purchase of some Egyptian Camel Corps with detachable men.

‘They know. I’m sure they do,’ Eva Harbottle was whispering desperately to her husband in Guns and Fishing Tackle.

‘Of course not. How could they?’ he soothed her.

‘But suppose they do? Suppose your family—’

‘When they know you,’ Thomas said firmly, ‘they will love you. Nothing else will be important any more.’

‘If only it all goes right,’ Eva sighed to a display of double-barrelled hammer guns complete with all accessories.

Auguste, left to himself, wandered through the theatrical
department. How he remembered the Galaxy – and Plum’s. Those days of Maskelyne and Cooke at the Egyptian House. Illusion – all illusion. He debated whether the purchase of a Crystal Gazing Ball might add to the failing festive atmosphere at Cranton’s and decided it would not, though it might have some other uses. He tried on some false Dundreary whiskers together with an old gent’s bald head mask and was engrossed in contemplating the result only to be interrupted by the Baroness and Marie-Paul, returning from their shopping purchases.