Murder in Pug's Parlour Read online

  Supper was equally sombre in the servants’ hall. An atmosphere of uncertainty reigned over it. No one had told them anything. Even PC Perkins was no longer a source of information. Would the hand of the law fall on them and sweep them off? Were they even now sitting side by side with a double murderer? Eating his cooking? They pecked at their food, and one of the best barons of beef that the Home Farm could produce, and a soufflé specially concocted by Auguste to soothe their minds, passed for nothing.

  Equally glum, Inspector Rose sat down to his solitary supper. His presence had caused great concern for the protocol of Stockbery Towers. Was he servant or guest? Should he dine with the family or with the servants? Mrs Hankey had come up with the solution. The old schoolroom was quickly converted to a working-room and dining-room, the old nursery for sleeping quarters. And there sat Egbert Rose, gloomily inspecting a rocking horse with a faded blue saddle that mocked him from the shadows.

  ‘Just a plain bit of fish,’ he had told Auguste, on being questioned as to what he would like for his supper. ‘Nothing too rich, mind,’ he said warningly. It was the cry of his life. Not that Mrs Rose produced rich food, but such were the unfortunate results of her repasts that Egbert laboured under the delusion that she did.

  Auguste had returned to the kitchen, seeing this as a direct insult to his cooking, not the desperate cry of a man tortured too long by inefficient cuisine. ‘Nothing too rich,’ he muttered in disdain, as he laboured. The results he took up himself and set the tray with dignity in front of Egbert Rose.

  Before him lay shining cutlery and napkins, a rose in a silver vase, provided by Ethel, and an array of gleaming silver dishes.

  Inside them was nothing that was instantly recognisable to Inspector Rose as anything, let alone fish.

  ‘It looks rich,’ he said forebodingly.

  Auguste stood in front of him, arms akimbo. ‘Monsieur, it is not rich.’ He held his eye firmly, until Rose’s fell, and reluctantly the inspector began to spoon some food on to his plate. Not till he had taken the first mouthful, did Auguste feel free to depart.

  When an hour later Edward Jackson went to collect the dirty dishes, the inspector was sitting in front of the nursery fire, an unusually restful expression on his face, hands across his stomach.

  The silver salvers were all but empty.

  ‘He ate it all, Monsieur Didier,’ whined Edward. ‘There ain’t enough left for me.’

  ‘Edward, if you still desire the sole au chablis, you must wait till the leftovers come down from the main hall,’ said Auguste firmly.

  ‘Yes, Mr Auguste. ‘Course, I could slip on me footman’s get-up and go up there and get some now,’ said Edward daringly. ‘If I wait for the Freds to come down I’ll be starving to death. Go on, Mr Didier, let me. They’ll never recognise me, I’ll just be a footman, like I was at the party – it’d be a laugh.’

  ‘Edward,’ said Auguste warningly, ‘if Mr Greeves were still alive, you’d never dare do it. You do as you wish, but I do not know anything, do you hear, anything, if you are caught. You can plead your case with Mr Hobbs yourself. I wash my hands of you.’

  Chapter Seven

  Edward Jackson, resplendent in full dress livery, walked somewhat warily into the dining-room. Fortunately, for his confidence was not as great as he had made out to Auguste, it was empty – of everything in fact, since all signs of the sumptuous repast which had taken place had vanished. From the drawing-room came sounds of soft, cooing conversation, from the billiards-room the sharp cracks of cue on ball, and the murmur of brandy-thickened voices. Edward considered. Not all the food had been brought back to the kitchens – the cold plates must still be in the servery, in case some were speedily required to prevent the sudden starvation of any of the guests. Perhaps there’d still be some of that sole-shabblee there as well in a chafing dish. With this cheering thought, Jackson turned down the corridor towards the servery entrance. The corridor, however, was no longer empty. Coming from the ballroom was a familiar figure.

  Edward Jackson grinned. ‘Wotcher,’ he carolled cheerily, perkily.

  The recipient of the greeting did not respond, but turned away.

  Edward, taken aback, turned to matters of more immediate moment. In the servery lay the forlorn remains of Auguste’s genius. The company had apparently appreciated the sole au chablis as much as had the inspector for none remained, but enough galantine, chicken in aspic, and Yorkshire pie were left to fill the hungriest belly. The galantine was a particularly fine one, and Edward Jackson was intent on appreciating it to the full. So intent was he that he was not aware of the door of the servery quietly opening behind him, and was taken completely by surprise as the heavy bronze lamp crashed down on his head.

  There was something troubling him. Was it the ingredients for the kidneys for tomorrow’s devilled kidneys, something omitted? His late-night checking of the luncheon preparations? No, it was less tangible than that. . . It was something to do with Edward. And livery. That was it. Mrs Hartham had been murdered, and Edward had been at the ball in livery. Now Edward had gone to the main house once again in livery – and Auguste had not seen him since. With a sudden rush of panic Auguste began rapidly to dress once more, and rushed downstairs. The kitchen was still active with the routines of late evening. William Tucker was still up with two yawning girls, and two Freds were waiting for Hobbs’ signal to clear food from the main house.

  ‘Edward, Mr Didier?’ asked Gladys. ‘No, why do you want Edward?’ She was aggrieved, for she had a sneaking suspicion that her god did not rate her own abilities highly. But Auguste had not waited.

  He tried the servants’ hall – empty. Pug’s Parlour was in darkness. With a growing sense of alarm he checked the cubbyhole of a room that Edward Jackson shared with Percy Parsons. Percy lay snoring stertorously, mouth open as wide as the Moffat lamps he so industriously tended. Of Edward there was no sign.

  Regardless of his hastily donned attire, Auguste rushed towards the baize door. Thus it was he found Edward Jackson lying on the floor of the servery, surrounded with blood and the splattered remains of the galantine.

  An enormous rage grew inside Auguste that anyone could do this to Edward, who was little more than a child, coupled with a heavy feeling of guilt that he had condoned this stupid prank. Trembling, he lifted the boy’s arm and was relieved to find it warm; once his own fear had subsided he managed to detect a gentle pulse.

  Within ten minutes Mrs Hankey was again in command, and the donkey cart once more setting out on the now familiar journey to Dr Parkes.

  Egbert Rose, roused from the most peaceful postprandial slumbers for many a day, picked up the bronze lamp, turning it over and over in his hands, thoughtfully. What a story it could tell. There was someone new at the Yard working on a theory that people left fingerprints every time they touched something, and that soon you’d be able to indentify your villain by them. Maybe, but not yet. With a sigh he put the lamp down on the sideboard and turned to Auguste.

  ‘This is a sorry business. Only a lad. It seems, Mr Didier, that you have quite a habit of being around when anything goes on. Bob’s your uncle, as they say, here we are again. Quite a coincidence.’ His tones were jocular, but his eyes watchful.

  ‘Monsieur I’Inspecteur, if I had hit this poor child over the head with a lamp, would I be the one to come to tell everybody. “C’est moi, this is what I have done”?’

  ‘Now you mustn’t take me too seriously, Mr Didier,’ said Rose mildly. ‘Just making an observation.’

  ‘I came to seek Edward because I was worried about him.’

  ‘Oh? Another bit of the old detective work, eh? Now why might he be in danger, did you think?’

  ‘I was worried because I sent him up here. To look for food – he wished for some of the sole that I gave you for dinner, monsieur. That’s why he is in the footman’s livery. Normally he would not be allowed above stairs, but on Saturday he was at the ball as a footman because they needed extra hands, and that gave h
im the idea. Put on the livery again and no one would think it strange to see the figure disappearing into the dining-room. And I let him do it.’

  ‘So he was at the ball that night, was he?’ said Rose with rising interest. ‘Night Mrs Hartham got herself murdered. Now that’s interesting, Mr Didier. Considering as how Mrs Hartham was seen talking to a footman just before the ball ended.’

  ‘But what could Mrs Hartham have to say to Edward Jackson?’

  ‘He took a message to someone.’

  ‘A lover?’

  Rose’s eyebrows rose fractionally. ‘Lover?’ he said. ‘The lady was married.’ He knew that only too well. He had spent two hours with a furious Mr Hartham, who had arrived in a temper and a hired brougham as intent apparently on seeking out the perpetrator of the blot and the scandal on the name of Hartham as to mourn for Honoria’s death, however ornate the black-edged handkerchief.

  ‘Ah,’ said Auguste, embarrassed, ‘but the sandwiches . . .’

  ‘That you helped prepare,’ Rose reminded him.

  ‘The sandwiches,’ went on Auguste disregarding this, ‘they are a signal to a lover that the lady is ready to – er – receive.’

  Rose looked outraged. He and Mrs Rose had never needed plates of sandwiches. He was only too well aware of the seamier aspects of sexual relationships between men and women, but this delicate soufflé of passion was alien to his world.

  ‘Mr Didier,’ he said severely, ‘of course, you’re a Frenchman – that sort of thing may happen in France but not in England, I assure you.’

  ‘Perhaps not, Inspector,’ murmured Auguste diplomatically.

  Rose was satisfied, having put Auguste in his place. He had not yet had time to examine the bundle of papers he had taken from the Duke’s safe.

  Half an hour later a pale, unconscious but living Edward Jackson was tucked up swathed in bandages in Mrs Hankey’s bed, a makeshift bed having been made up for the nurse. Mrs Hankey had reluctantly agreed to banishment. Outside the door stood a sleepily reluctant Constable Perkins, dragged from his slumbers yet again, in order to forestall night intruders.

  The upper servants sat in armed truce in Pug’s Parlour. The thought that Edward was hovering between life and death a few feet away and that this was his territory they were now invading depressed them all. Hobbs did not stand on the same ceremony as Greeves. Indeed he welcomed the company, having been used to it all his working life. They were interrupted by a knock, and one of the Freds put his head round the door.

  ‘Beg pardon, Mr Hobbs, Edward’s aunt, Mrs Robins. Bin to see the inspector, sent her down here.’

  A timorous woman of about sixty came in, red-eyed from weeping. She seemed overawed by the panoply of people waiting her. Mrs Hankey rose to do the honours, Ethel murmured of a nice cup of tea. They sat round awkwardly, not knowing what to say. At last feeling that effort was called for on her part, Mrs Robins vouchsafed that: ‘’E’s a good lad, really.’

  There was a chorus of assent.

  ‘’E’s had a hard life, Edward.’

  This time the chorus was not so enthusiastic as they took this as an implication that the hardness was inflicted at Stockbery Towers.

  She hastily made amends. ‘In London that was. Afore ’e came here. You’ve been good to ’im, I know that. He used to tell me on ’is day off once a month. “That Miss Gubbins, Auntie, she’s nice to me”.’

  Mrs Hankey looked put out. It was her privilege to be spoken of kindly by subordinates.

  Stepping into the awkward silence Auguste asked politely: ‘How long has he lived with you, Mrs Robins?’

  ‘’Bout two years now. ’E was a telegraph boy, like what he was ’ere before His Grace took him on. Didn’t like it though. Right ill ’e was when ’e came to me. White-faced little thing just like ’e is now . . .’ And, thinking of the still white figure she had just seen swathed in bandages, she began to weep silent tears as they looked on helplessly.

  Word speedily went round Hollingham village. Ten good men and true, already summoned for their second inquest in a week, scratched their heads and dwelt on thoughts of a double inquest. Indignation gradually took over. That Greeves was one thing, and Mrs Hartham was another – up from London, from another world. But Edward Jackson was a different matter. He lived with his aunt Maidstone way, and had done these two years. He was almost a man of Kent. They took it as a personal insult and, for the first time in three centuries, the peaceful village began to mutter against the establishment of the Duke of Stockbery. It was not generally considered that His Grace himself had crept up in the middle of the night and bashed the steward’s boy over the head, but nevertheless it was his house and there were some right funny goings-on.

  Rose was partaking of a hearty breakfast in the front schoolroom, even if kedgeree and devilled kidneys were not precisely what Mr and Mrs Rose usually began their working days with. Unfortunately their effect was considerably spoiled by Rose’s preliminary perusal of the bundle of papers from the Duke’s safe.

  What he found there was stronger meat for a delicate stomach than anything even Mrs Rose could produce. Taken aback after glancing at the first four letters from the Duchess to the Prince and to the Duchess from his predecessor, a well-known explorer of the unknown continent, he set them on one side, and strengthened his resolve by finishing his coffee.

  By the time he had done so, Bladon had arrived, eager not to miss anything now that responsibility had passed to another.

  ‘Look at this, Bladon,’ said Rose gloomily, abruptly. He tossed across with scant respect the last of the Duchess’s letters. Bladon was half fascinated, half thinking it lèse majesté to be thus conducted into the inner life of the Duchess of Stockbery.

  ‘Seems to be pretty fond of this Prince fellow,’ said the sergeant, considerably understating the case. Both men had been married for many a long year, but the contents brought a blush to both faces as they read on, steadily avoiding each other’s eyes.

  Rose had first made his name at the Yard by his investigations into one of the goriest murders in London’s East End since Jack the Ripper had departed the scene, and the sexual habits of Londoners generally whether in the seamier quarters of Bethnal Green or the riper brothels of Mayfair and St James’s; he had broken up a thriving trade that, despite Mr Stead’s crusade, still thrived on child sex, including that in the nastier bordellos both heterosexual and homosexual, culminating in the Cleveland Street scandal of 1889. He had not turned a hair throughout that investigation into this homosexual pleasure-ground for rich men and their wretched perverted boys. Nor had he paled at the sight of Mary Kelly, the Ripper’s last victim. Those were facts. Part of his job. This was something else. In theory he knew that ladies however apparently respectable might yet harbour distinctly sexual thoughts and even express them. He had once been privileged to read Miss Madeleine Smith’s letters to her lover. But even the Dilke political scandal had not convinced him that ladies of high social standing might play an active part in such affairs. To Rose, ladies had hitherto always been ladies, even if gentlemen had occasionally been blackguards.

  Sergeant Bladon’s thoughts were far less complicated. He was simply shocked.

  ‘Well, that cook fellow was right,’ grunted Rose at last. ‘The departed was a blackmailer, and that was his blackmailing record book.’ He stared at the neatly collated piles of papers in front of him. What fools people were. Seemed the gentry were as stupid as anyone he’d come across up East. Plenty on the folks here at the Towers and quite a bit on some he’d never heard of. He sighed, foreseeing several weeks of work tracking down the people concerned once he got back to the Factory. He thought longingly of his untidy little pigeonhole in Scotland Yard. Funny how the name stuck, even though they’d moved.

  There was a scandalised gasp from Sergeant Bladon. He had found a rare scrap from His Grace to Honoria. His Grace was not often given to epistolatory effusions.

  ‘Nothing on his fellow servants,’ Bladon pointed out.

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p; ‘Wouldn’t need it, Sergeant. If I understand you aright, this man had the power of life and death over them anyway. He could just tell them to go, no reason given. Played around with them. I’ve met the type. That pretty girl, one who made the sandwiches, she blushed right up when I asked her what she thought of Greeves. Probably made advances to her. And he’d got those two women where he wanted them.’

  The contents of the last envelope provided more of a puzzle. Rose stared at the piece of paper.

  ‘Bladon,’ he said finally, ‘what would you say this was?’

  The sergeant looked at it, but reluctantly was forced to admit: ‘Couldn’t rightly say, sir.’ All it looked like was a series of squiggles.

  ‘I think,’ said Rose slowly, ‘it’s part of a ship’s plan. Possibly the engine room.’ He put down the piece of paper and reached for the little book that Auguste had found in Greeves’ bible. He studied the figures inside once more while Bladon gazed at him eagerly, transported into the world of his dreams. Ships’ plans, high society, blackmail. For a few heady moments, he saw himself uprooted from the purlieus of Maidstone and swept off to the heady heights of Scotland Yard: ‘I must have this man near me, Commissioner.’

  Rose, oblivious of these plans for his future working conditions, studied the initials opposite the figures carefully. There could be no doubt now that L might well stand for Laetitia – the use of the Christian name would fit with what he had heard of Greeves. H reflected his use of Honoria Hartham’s little notes. A for Arthur Petersfield. He turned to the envelope in front of him that he had not yet opened. A handful of IOUs fell out. Rose thought for a moment. Then he pulled the bell rope. Bladon watched enviously. He could well imagine what would happen if he had pulled it, Maidstone police or no, he wouldn’t care to face one of those footmen.