Murder Under The Kissing Bough: (Auguste Didier Mystery 6) (27 page)

‘Well?’ Rose barked.

‘It wasn’t Fancelli, sir. It was the Princess of Wales, and Lady Roberts.’

Rose groaned.

‘I fell over the Princess’s feet, sir. She screamed. Then the door flew open the other side, and I sort of somersaulted straight out again.’ Twitch sat before Rose penitent, waiting for the verdict that must surely come. Even if he escaped being clapped in irons for terrifying the Princess of Wales, promotion could never now be his.

He underestimated Rose, who was magnanimous in defeat. But not that magnanimous. He let him sweat a bit. Then: ‘Tell you what, Stitch,’ he remarked at last. ‘Suppose I put in a report commending you for swift action in time of emergency, and preventing a dastardly attempt on the life of the Princess of Wales?’

Rose arrived at Cranton’s, a docile and devoted Twitch in tow, at two o’clock. He was none too happy. Relief at the absence of calamity at Paddington had been completely obliterated on his return to the Yard by finding that there had been another murder at Cranton’s. Furthermore he had had no time for luncheon, and for the first time in their acquaintance, Auguste let him down in this respect. So overcome was he at his macabre discovery that he omitted his usual summing up of a visitor’s requirements in regard to food. The customary journey to the kitchen or restaurant was not offered. Auguste, not perceiving the reason for Rose’s grumpiness, felt aggrieved. It was, he thought, as if Egbert considered he might be causing these crimes himself. Why? In order to ruin his first and probably his last opportunity to be a hotelier?

Sergeant Stitch was despatched to pacifying the guests who had been herded, to their annoyance, into the smoky billiard room after a luncheon served in a manner that could only be said to be perfunctory. The identity of the corpse had quickly become public knowledge if only through the absence of Mr Bowman from luncheon. Miss Guessings was missing from the billiard room, having swooned on hearing the news at luncheon.

In the drawing room, Rose stared down into the chest at the remains of Alfred Bowman. ‘How did you recognise him?’

August hesitated. ‘That lounge suit – and the brown boots.’

‘Boots? Look quite standard to me.’

‘But they are brown. No gentleman, except Mr Bowman, wears brown boots in London.’

Rose eyed him for a moment in none too friendly a fashion and decided to let it pass.

‘Someone wanted to make quite sure he was dead all right. If it had been another knife killing, we’d know where to go.’

Auguste followed his thoughts. ‘Marie-Paul Gonnet? But there cannot surely be
two
murderers at Cranton’s?’

‘Unlikely,’ Rose grunted. ‘But this don’t fit our Marie-Paul. A woman wouldn’t have the strength. Where in hell and Tommy’s name is the doc?’

The latter obliged by bustling cheerily in.

‘Blunt instrument, eh!’ he remarked chattily, preparing for business. Having delivered himself of this only too obvious comment, he ceased to make comments, but Rose had no intention of waiting until the post-mortem was complete. Waiting in a mortuary while coroners formally requested PMs and doctors dictated their gruesome findings was never his favourite occupation.

‘Time of death? Approximately.’

‘Dead about twelve hours. Sometime during the night, I’d say – if I had to,’ the doctor offered unwillingly.

‘And what kind of instrument are we looking for, if that ain’t a State secret too?’

The doctor looked at him in surprise. ‘Why should it be?’ he asked blankly. ‘Heavy, weighted end, I’d say. Like a hammer, heavy mallet—’

‘Steak mallet?’ suggested Rose sharply.

‘Possibly,’ amended the doctor cautiously. ‘The PM will tell you more.’

‘Do you think he was killed in the chest?’ Auguste asked the doctor.

‘Why?’ Rose demanded, his face turning dark.

‘There is no – er – gore on the box, Inspector. And not much blood.’

‘So Fancelli kills his victim somewhere else, and carries him down here to give us a good laugh, eh?’

‘It was merely a deduction, Inspector. Where there is steak, there may be kidney,’ Auguste murmured feebly.

‘And what I’d give to see that,’ muttered Rose grimly.

Auguste shot a sharp look at his friend, and the awful truth struck him. He had forgotten the first duty of a hotelier, the first of a chef, and the first of any human being. Has one’s guest yet dined? Here he was clearly looking at a man who had not. True, the sight before them was not conducive to tempting the stomach, but
un peu de
. . .

‘Inspector Rose,’ he said formally, as the policeman began to remove the body, chest and all on this occasion, due to the problems of rigor mortis, ‘I offer you my sympathy, my apologies, and
la bonne soupe
.’

His third mortuary this Christmas period, thought Rose, strengthened by soup but not inured to the sights before him. Usually he distanced himself; today it was difficult. This case was growing snake-like tentacles faster than Medusa.

He averted his eyes as the process seemed to be entering the final gruesome stages. He was going to have to go through all this again when Bowman’s son came in for formal identification.

‘Cause of death?’ he asked automatically, as the doctor came over to him.

‘No doubt about that,’ the doctor replied informally. ‘Hands.’

‘Hands?’ repeated Rose blankly.

‘Oh yes, he was strangled. It wasn’t obvious at first because of the state the head was in.’

‘How much strength was used?’ Rose shot at him. ‘Could a woman have done it?’

‘Impossible from the force used. She couldn’t have rained down those blows, or carried out a manual strangulation on a man of that size.’

‘Suppose she stunned him first?’

‘Possible. But how’s she going to carry him to the chest? Didn’t you say there were no signs of blood in the room where the chest was?’

The last effects of the bonhomie created by the soup wore off remarkably suddenly, as Rose recalled that two of his male suspects, Fancelli and Nash, had escaped his control, an oversight which the Chief would undoubtedly view, in the manner of Lady Bracknell, not as unfortunate but as plain carelessness.

At Cranton’s the effects of luncheon had long since worn off as the guests faced the disagreeable fact that not only were their rooms forbidden to them while the hotel was being searched yet again, but that their movements too were being curtailed. There would be no afternoon visit to Hampton Court. A different entertainment awaited them – that of explaining their movements in detail for the last twenty-four hours.

Twitch was in his element. Now was his chance to show that he too was capable of subtle interrogation of the swells. His chance to shine before his superiors, perhaps even to produce a master clue that would solve the case that had baffled the best minds of Scotland Yard (all except for his, that is). It didn’t begin
auspiciously, as Gladys Guessings decided to rejoin the company, in order, apparently, to swoon again, whereafter she had to be revived by sal volatile and Auguste’s camomile tea.

At the end of an exhausting afternoon, interrogation of the servants, who were beginning to think that employment in Cranton’s, however temporary, was by no means a wise career move, had revealed nothing. The search of the hotel, however, had been far more productive. There was no doubt as to where Bowman had been killed. His bed showed ample evidence of the results of the mallet attack, including a bloodstained towel.

‘But it was the strangling killed him all right,’ said Rose, surveying the bed closely. ‘Not a patch on the amount of blood there’d have been if he had been alive at the time.’

There was quite sufficient for Auguste. He was, after all, merely an
amateur
detective, he reminded himself in expiation of his shame in seeking the nearest bathroom.

Stitch’s interrogation of the guests had yielded little. No one had heard anything go bump in the night; they had all been asleep and only the twins showed any regret at this having been the case. Mr Bowman had appeared quite normal last evening, save that he was not as sociable as usual. Miss Guessings, weeping copiously, remained silent on this point. The Marquis de Castillon and Sir John Harnet debated their rights with themselves once again, and decided to conform, though disapproving of the mere sergeant status of their interviewer.

Late that afternoon Twitch had precious little to show for his efforts. But for the second time that day fortune was about to smile on Sergeant Stitch.

‘What are you going to do about it, eh?’ Carruthers
stood in front of him belligerently.

‘The Yard’s doing everything in its power, sir. No stone will remain unturned.’

Carruthers snorted. ‘Won’t find it under a stone. Too big.’

‘What, sir?’ Twitch asked, puzzled.

‘The knobkerry that’s missing from the smoking room, of course. What did you think I was talking about? Honour of the army at stake.’

Auguste regarded a row of uncleaned carp without enthusiasm. Their glazed eyes seemed to return his stare as if challenging him to invent a sauce to overcome their dull and muddy taste. This morning, however, he was in no mood to invent sauce, not even for . . . Perhaps anchovy? But no, it would not work. Not even the deliveries arriving for luncheon and dinner could raise him to his customary state of fraught tension as to whether Senn’s had sent sufficient of their ‘Hygienic Caviare (free from superfluous salt and oil)’ and whether the widgeon had been hung precisely in accordance with his instructions. For once the sight of food dismayed, and did not cheer, for the events of the day before were all too vivid in his mind.

Gloom seemed to have descended in a cloud on the hotel, reflected Auguste unhappily as he entered the dining room, the Christmas decorations looking incongruous as policemen stalked the premises, outnumbering the guests, who appeared desperately to be attempting to maintain a façade that permitted them to ignore two murders and an arrest in the name of social convention.

‘Slipping, are you, Didier?’ said Carruthers, but there was no fire in his voice. ‘Forgot the curry powder in the kedgeree this morning.’ He stared disconsolately at his plate.

‘Mr Didier,’ said Eva Harbottle brightly. ‘I am not used to kippers. I would like some Dutch cheese, if you please. Not English,
Dutch
!’ She was a Kruger after all, even if only a distant relation of the former President.

Gladys was not present, having requested a tray in her room. That was one relief, thought Auguste, as he reassured the Harbottles that they would not be murdered in their beds, pacified de Castillon, soothed Sir John, and avoided Bella’s eye. Running a hotel, he decided, was a job for a diplomatist. A chef could be free, independent, a law to himself; a hotelier was bound by the demands of his guests. He brooded darkly on his future.

Half an hour later, he was once more in his office with Egbert Rose.

‘The only excitement yesterday,’ Rose told him, ‘was that the carriages with the women and staff officers in it went the wrong way, by sheer mistake, and followed the Prince of Wales along the procession route instead of going back to the Palace by a back way. And that was that. Another State banquet at the Palace, and they are all alive and kicking at the end of it.’

‘So either your information was incorrect, or the attack on His Royal Highness will be made either at the Marlborough Club or the Carlton.’

‘Albert Edward won’t like that,’ remarked Rose gloomily. ‘It was hard enough convincing him when there was a definite time and place when he’d be at risk, but it’s going to be even harder to persuade him he shouldn’t drop in at his club or dine at the Carlton.’

‘There is another possibility,’ Auguste said thoughtfully, ‘that Fancelli decided not to go ahead with the attack because you had his accomplice in custody. Have you charged her, Egbert?’

Rose shook his head. ‘We’re going to have to let her go. It was a gamble, but with this further murder, a murder I don’t see how Fancelli could have carried out, I don’t have the evidence.’

‘Madame Lepont must be innocent,’ said Auguste indignantly. ‘The murderer of Monsieur Bowman is a man – and it could not be Fancelli. And
why
would Madame Lepont and Fancelli want Mr Bowman dead? There is no motive. If they are guilty and he knew it, his knowledge is superfluous even for blackmail now that Madame Lepont is arrested and Fancelli’s description outside every police station.’

Marie-Paul Gonnet obviously agreed with them. With flashing eyes she was standing indignantly in the doorway, heavy shoes and thick stockings just visible beneath her plain dark serge dress, every inch the loyal retainer.

‘You release her, heh?’ she cried. ‘You release her,
now
. There has been another murder. You say Madame do this one too? She is a magician?’

‘We’re considering it, miss,’ Rose informed her kindly. ‘Just as soon as we’re further on in our investigations.’

‘I help you,’ she offered scornfully in marked contrast to her response to Sergeant Stitch’s earlier interrogation. ‘I ’ave the room next to this Bowman. And you ask
la dame
Guessings why she come to ‘is room, eh? I hear someone outside. I am frightened. It is not nice this hotel. So I look very carefully. It is Miss Guessings who knocks on this Bowman’s door.’

Rose had taken a distinct dislike to Madame’s companion, and wasn’t going to give a French centimetre to her.

‘Most interesting. Now if you’ll leave us.’

She was ejected with difficulty by the policeman.

They looked at each other, each knowing what the other was thinking.

‘Crime passionnel, eh?’ said Rose, breaking the silence.

‘But she is a woman!’ expostulated Auguste feebly.

‘Hell hath no fury, as Edith sometimes tells me,’ Rose commented. ‘Lends strength, you know.’

‘Only if Bowman lay there and wanted to be strangled.’

‘Drugged him, perhaps,’ said Rose.

Auguste sighed. ‘I cannot believe it, my friend.’