Murder Under The Kissing Bough: (Auguste Didier Mystery 6) Read online

  Murder under the Kissing Bough

  Amy Myers

  The sixth Auguste Didier crime novel

  Copyright © 1992 Amy Myers

  The right of Amy Myers to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  First published as an Ebook by

  Headline Publishing Group in 2013

  All characters in this publication – other than the obvious historical characters – are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  eISBN 978 1 4722 1391 4

  Cover illustration by Fred Preston

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  An Hachette UK Company

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.headline.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  About the Author

  Also by Amy Myers

  About the Book

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Floor Plan

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Amy Myers was born in Kent. After taking a degree in English Literature, she was director of a London publishing company and is now a writer and a freelance editor. She is married to an American and they live in a Kentish village on the North Downs. As well as writing the hugely popular Auguste Didier crime series, Amy Myers has also written five Kentish sagas, under the name Harriet Hudson, that are also available in ebook from Headline.

  Praise for Amy Myers’ previous Victorian crime novels featuring Auguste Didier, also available in ebook from Headline:

  ‘Wittily written and intricately plotted with some fine characterisation. Perfection’ Best

  ‘Reading like a cross between Hercule Poirot and Mrs Beeton . . . this feast of entertainment is packed with splendid late-Victorian detail’ Evening Standard

  ‘What a marvellous tale of Victorian mores and murders this is – an entertaining whodunnit that whets the appetite of mystery lovers and foodies alike’ Kent Today

  ‘Delightfully written, light, amusing and witty. I look forward to Auguste Didier’s next banquet of delights’ Eastern Daily Press

  ‘Plenty of fun, along with murder and mystery . . . as brilliantly coloured as a picture postcard’ Dartmouth Chronicle

  ‘Classically murderous’ Woman’s Own

  ‘An amusing Victorian whodunnit’ Netta Martin, Annabel

  ‘Impossible to put down’ Kent Messenger

  ‘An intriguing Victorian whodunnit’ Daily Examiner

  Also by Amy Myers and available in ebook from Headline

  Victorian crime series featuring Auguste Didier

  1. Murder in Pug’s Parlour

  2. Murder in the Limelight

  3. Murder at Plum’s

  4. Murder at the Masque

  5. Murder makes an Entrée

  6. Murder under the Kissing Bough

  7. Murder in the Smokehouse

  8. Murder at the Music Hall

  9. Murder in the Motor Stable

  And Kentish sagas written under the name Harriet Hudson also available in ebook from Headline

  Look for Me by Moonlight

  When Nightingales Sang

  The Sun in Glory

  The Wooing of Katie May

  The Girl from Gadsby’s

  About the Book

  At the exclusive Cranton’s Hotel in London, master chef Auguste Didier is host to a varied party of guests intent on enjoying a real English Christmas, complete with boar’s head, Christmas trees, kissing boughs, party games and ghost stories. But not all is as it seems beneath the happy veneer of festive pleasures, for a killer stalks the elegant corridors.

  How could a baroness from the Continent, three pretty wards of a Foreign Office official, a soldier on leave from the South African War, a rich industrialist, a maiden lady from the provinces, a young married couple, a French diplomat and his beautiful wife with a roving eye, or a crusty retired army officer be embroiled in murder – not to mention a plot to assassinate the Prince of Wales?

  Auguste Didier, while anxiously ensuring the hotel cuisine reaches his own high standards, works his way through the complex ingredients of murder to put an end to the mysterious and terrible deeds that have not only ruined his Christmas but also disrupted his kitchens.

  For Natalie

  with love

  Author’s Note

  This novel is set at the close of the nineteenth century, and I should therefore explain that although there was debate on the matter, the Victorians greeted the dawn of the new century on 1st January 1901, and not 1900.

  In 1900 Portman Square was generally acknowledged one of the handsomest in London, but very little of its original splendid architecture now remains. Cranton’s Hotel is fictitious, and in 1900 the original Adam houses were still standing in its place.

  I am very grateful for help received from the Auguste Escoffier Foundation at the Musée de L’Art Culinaire at Villeneuve-Loubet, for the expert guidance of my agent Dorothy Lumley, to Adele Wainwright and all departments of Headline Book Publishing, and to the publisher Lionel Leventhal of Greenhill Books, who generously gave me Jac Weller’s classic and readable Wellington at Waterloo which he has recently reissued.

  Floor Plan

  Cranton’s Hotel

  1st floor hotel plan

  2nd floor hotel plan

  Prologue

  It clawed at his face. It fought his every breath. He drew deep, gasping gulps of air, then spluttered as the fog caught at his throat in triumph. Damp and oppressive, the blanket that had woven itself so insidiously round him distorted reality, seeking its final victory over his mind. A London Particular, they called it. Particular what? he thought savagely, ridiculously, his head swimming partly from the medicine he was taking for the perpetual rhum that seemed to single him out for a vicious attack each winter, and partly from disorientation in the fog.

  Auguste Didier gulped; he was, he assured himself, a practical man. His French logic would come to his aid, and subdue the wild phantoms of imagination that were the heritage of his English mother. He had, he reasoned, set out from Albion Street such a short time ago that he could hardly be far from it now, despite his blundering by error into the old cemetery of St George. Here lay buried Mrs Radcliffe, authoress of the Mysteries of Udolpho, whose Gothic horrors it would not be wise to dwell on at the moment. It had taken some time to find his way out again, and relief had made him careless – he had turned a corner, but which? And where was he now? Logic also reminded him that every mortal person and every wise animal was safely at home, and he would do well to follow their example speedily, but the fog seemed to thicken. Curzon Street and London’s Mayfair had never seemed more attractive.

 
‘I will take basil, and balm, catnep and clivers,’ he told himself fervently. ‘I will take linseed, liquorice; I will take Monsieur Soyer’s lait de poule, but never, never again will I take Armstrong’s Black Drop medicine for colds.’

  Dizzily he clung to a lamppost, and tried once more to think where he might be. Connaught Place – this was Connaught Place. Of course. Relief flooded over him. This was the site of the Three-legged Mare, the old Tyburn tree where so many had perished in public executions, where bones were still found sometimes during digging work. The atmosphere still seemed foetid, even in this November of 1900, the threshold of the twentieth century. In this thick fog, relieved only by the occasional pool of dim light from a street light, it was all too easy to think of the murderers that had died here. Murder. . .

  He shivered. Murder indeed. This was a fog. Murder had not touched his life now for well over a year; his visits to dear Egbert Rose now had little to do with the business of Scotland Yard. They had been free to concentrate on the important matters of life, to discuss the intriguing subject of a cuisine fit for the twentieth century.

  Absorbed in this compelling subject he cautiously worked his way along, crossing roads hurriedly as the occasional carriage, its sound deadened in the fog, loomed up as a monstrous shape in the gloom. One came upon him so suddenly he had to run, stumbling, catching his breath with painful difficulty, as he cannoned into iron railings on the opposite side of the road. Clinging to them, he worked his way along in the direction of Grosvenor Square. He should turn to the right surely, down South Audley Street. But there was no right turn. And these railings, they were not those of Mayfair, he realised, fighting an irrational panic welling up inside him. These houses towering up into the fog above him were taller, more uniform. He must still be north of Oxford Street, and once again lost.

  He smiled at the irony. He, Auguste Didier, born in the sun of Provence. What was he doing here soaked in the fogs and rains of England? For a moment he could not think what kept him here.

  ‘Custard tansy,’ he reminded himself firmly. ‘Quince sauce. Marsh-grazed mutton. . .’

  But even delights such as these failed to calm him. He stopped, trying to concentrate on a reasoned plan to work out where he was. Where there were railings there must eventually be steps to a door.

  He laughed at himself, glad at this evidence that his powers of detection were not deserting him. Then the unpleasant thought occurred to him that unless he found out where he was he might never see Egbert again. Could one die of fog? A nameless master chef found dead on the pavement only yards from his home. Panic began to grip him. He would knock on the nearest door, plead for sanctuary. Nay, demand it. The owner would welcome the famous Auguste Didier. Even Mrs Marshall, who ran a rival cooking school to his, would open her doors to Auguste Didier on a night like this. Rival? Did he say rival? Nonsense. There was no comparison. He, Auguste, ran an establishment to teach true cuisine, the highest perfection of the art of cookery. Mrs Marshall—

  He stopped. He knew where he was at last. He could just make out the name over the door as the fog swirled around it. Cranton’s Hotel. Though it was a hotel no longer, for its doors had closed for the last time; the rooms that had entertained Lord Byron, Robert Browning and Thomas Carlyle were shabby and dusty, the famous wood panelling left to rot after the last of the Crantons had died some years ago. Now the hotel was but a sad reminder of days that were gone. Someday, he too would have a hotel, he told himself, a hotel whose kitchens would rival those of his old master, Auguste Escoffier, at the new Carlton Hotel.

  Heartened, he pulled his Raglan overcoat more closely round his neck, as a swirl of fog left its damp trail on his face and neck. He knew now that he was at the tradesmen’s entrance in the mews at the back of the hotel, which fronted Portman Square. He mused on all the tradesmen’s entrances he’d known in his life. Would he ever earn the right to go in the front entrance? Firmly he reminded himself of all he had to be grateful for, yet as the fog pressed in upon him, the task was difficult.

  ‘Here? At Cranton’s? Christmas?’

  The voice, a woman’s, was hoarse, coming from nowhere, urgent and compelling, yet he could see no one in the fog, deepened by the gloom of late afternoon. A murmur in answer. Another woman. Strange. Out alone at this time of day? And one voice was cultured, the other seemed rough. They could only be a few feet away from him, though the sound was both magnified and distorted by the fog.

  He could offer his services in escort. They might travel the better in company.

  ‘J’arrive!’ he cried out eagerly.

  He left the security of the railings and plunged towards where he guessed the two women might be, just as the fog was pierced by a strange sound, a gurgle, a muffled choking. Then nothing. Then another gurgle. Auguste stood for a second transfixed. Someone needed help. Which way to go? What had happened? The noises seemed to have come from all round him, the impression of someone, something passing close. And then there was nothing but the oppressive fog swirling down again.

  He ran blindly for a few yards, tripped and fell. He scrambled to his feet and limped another few yards, fog and fear catching him in their toils within this world of grey. But now the grey was broken by another colour. Red. Red blood oozing over the pavement in front of him. And the huddled body of a woman – no, a girl.

  In an unreal world, he knelt down, turning her slightly until sightless eyes gave him the answer to his fear. He hardly needed to feel for a pulse. She was dead. Slowly he stood up and watched a trickle of blood run into the roadway, as the fog closed once more around him.

  Chapter One

  Torn by conflicting emotions, Auguste dithered at the door to the kitchens. How could he entrust the important matter of the duck forcemeat to a new untried chef? Yet how could he superintend the work without offering the greatest insult one chef could offer another – lack of trust? Perhaps in this case he might plead justification as he did not know Signor Fancelli’s work. . .

  No. Auguste’s hand removed itself reluctantly from the knob of the door as its owner reminded himself that he was both maître d’hôtel and host. And Mine Host, he told himself regretfully, did not involve himself in the cooking, however great the temptation. The merest eye on the kitchen and tables would be all that was called for, save that he had reserved for himself the task of final preparation of the boar’s head, and moreover intended to head the procession bearing the boar’s head in for Christmas luncheon. He deserved it, Auguste told himself defiantly. After all, what was the point of being the host if other people had all the exciting duties?

  The kitchen door flew open from the other side and Auguste blushed lest he be thought to be loitering at the door. But Antonio Fancelli did not seem to notice.

  ‘Monsieur Didier, the pudding,’ he said accusingly. ‘You wished to stir him. You ’ave no come.’

  ‘Ah.’ Auguste’s chest swelled. Maître Escoffier, after all, would not allow anything important to escape his eagle eye, not even the dreaded but so important plum pudding. The stirring was but a pretext to ensure proper attention had been paid to it. His mind flew back a few years to stirring the Christmas pudding with Maisie, the ritual so beloved of the English in honour of the Three Kings. Dear Maisie. He smiled a little ruefully. How could he have refused her request? And after all, there was no certainty that some villainy was to take place at Cranton’s. He carefully refrained from thinking of murder. He had had quite enough of murder. . .

  No one had believed him. Not even Inspector Egbert Rose of Scotland Yard.

  ‘But there was a body,’ Auguste had shouted endlessly, only to be faced with politely disbelieving faces.

  Rose was convinced that it had been his imagination. Auguste’s ‘body’ had become quite a joke at the Factory. Twitch, or Sergeant Stitch to give him his correct title (something Rose frequently forgot to do), had seen to that. Twitch was no admirer of Auguste Didier’s gifts as a detective and was delighted to see that Frenchie brought down more than a p
eg, ‘a whole clothes line’, as he smugly put it. Rose told Auguste as tactfully as possible that he must have been overworking. His men had crawled over every inch of the roads surrounding Cranton’s Hotel; there was no body, not a trace of blood.

  ‘Naturally,’ Auguste had retorted crossly, ‘the murderess had time to get rid of it.’

  By the time he had managed to persuade a shopkeeper that he was not a madman and that a telephone call to Scotland Yard was all he required, there would have been time to move twenty bodies.

  ‘How?’ Rose asked him bluntly. ‘Dead bodies weigh heavy. Your murderess couldn’t just heave her over a shoulder and walk off.’

  ‘Perhaps she lives nearby,’ countered Auguste defiantly.

  ‘Young ladies don’t live alone,’ grunted Rose. ‘And it might occasion comment if she walked into the family parlour with a corpse.’

  ‘Then someone else moved it,’ glared Auguste.

  ‘Why?’ asked Rose, kindly enough.

  ‘I do not know,’ shouted Auguste. ‘This is your job.’

  ‘Not without a body it isn’t,’ said Rose shortly, avoiding Auguste’s reproachful look. ‘No girl’s even been reported missing.’

  ‘Surely this is not unusual in London?’ retorted Auguste. ‘Even nowadays, many, many girls leave their homes for the streets, and no one notices if they disappear.’

  ‘The aim of the white slavers is to keep the girls alive, not kill ’em off,’ observed Rose drily.

  Egbert Rose was tired, and he’d wasted more than a week on and off in a fruitless search for Auguste’s ‘body’, a fact Twitch was making great play with at the Factory. It was a week he could ill afford, for there were grave matters on hand that if proved to have substance would far outweigh the disappearance of one girl. Matters that could not be discussed with Auguste.