Murder In The Motor Stable: (Auguste Didier Mystery 9) Read online

  ‘My invention will revolutionise all your lives, ladies.’ He opened his arms towards them in fervent appeal. ‘Last year the Wright Brothers conquered the air. This year I, Harold Dobbs of Upper Norwood, will conquer earth.’

  Hortensia was not impressed. ‘What’s this contraption going to do? Fly out of its stable?’

  Harold Dobbs was saved from the crowd’s apparent plan of guillotining him forthwith by the arrival of the full majesty of the law in the form of two police constables who persuaded the crowd to retreat from the courtyard back into Petty France. Faces remained glued to the railings nevertheless, as the horses plodded round to the motor stable with their presumably precious burden.

  ‘Do you think Hortensia won that round?’ Tatiana asked glumly. The lace at her neck had been torn by over-eager Hams, and her green sash had disappeared.

  Auguste had almost been garrotted by his apron strings, his white hat was jammed over one eye, and his eye would undoubtedly shortly be black. Nevertheless, he had a vague memory of having once promised he would care for and support this woman for the rest of his life. ‘If so, she will not win the war, chérie.’ Unfortunately, in his view.

  ‘Hortensia has influence. Her husband is a well-known archaeologist. He was here today. They say he’ll be knighted soon.’

  ‘It is not like you to admit that this is a factor to be considered.’

  ‘It is the way of the world and, more important, it is the way of London. I hope she does not deter ladies from joining my club. The whole point of my horse-training programme is that horses and motorcars can live together.’ Tatiana was perturbed. Auguste had a faint recollection of her telling him recently of her rota to send members with their cars to horse owners’ homes for training sessions to accustom horses to motorcars. It was Auguste’s treacherous view, shared by most horse owners, that motorcars should accustom themselves to horses rather than the other way round.

  ‘How could anyone not admire it?’ Tatiana’s dark eyes were fixed lovingly on the Dolly Dobbs as they followed the wagon round to the motor stable at the rear of the club’s headquarters. ‘But it is terrible that Hortensia got wind of its arrival – the car is supposed to be a secret.’

  ‘What is so secret about it? It is painted bright red.’

  ‘It is not a partridge, chéri; it does not need camouflage against its enemies. And it is very secret indeed. Its official Motor Club of Great Britain trials are on the twenty-first of July, next Thursday, and no one must even see it before its first public appearance this Saturday.’

  ‘But now they have.’

  ‘Aha.’ Tatiana paused mysteriously, as lifting gear was lovingly placed by its inventor round his beloved’s bodywork, once Fred had manoeuvred the wagon into the entrance of one of the motor houses.

  The old carriage house had now been converted into a motor stable with ten motor houses, a repair and washing house and separate benzine house a short distance away. With all the motor house doors open this hot Tuesday afternoon, the motorcars looked uncommonly like horses poking their noses out. Perhaps he should offer them carrots? Auguste thought benignly. The Dolly Dobbs was being housed next to the repair house, as was usual for motors requiring special attention.

  ‘What you have seen is only the shell,’ Tatiana whispered. ‘It has been brought here early to receive its very special equipment. It was even stripped of its battery of accumulators for the journey.’

  Auguste displayed an intelligent interest in his wife’s career. ‘You mean it is an electric car? But they have been invented already.’ The open landaulet was unlike the tall electric broughams he was used to seeing in London streets.

  He instantly regretted his rashness. Tatiana’s eyes lit up as she drew breath for a full explanation. ‘Of course, but they are limited in their use by their range. They can manage only about fifty miles before the battery has to be recharged or changed. So in practice they are limited to town work or to country houses with their own electric lighting plant. It is true,’ she continued with the same enthusiasm that Auguste would devote to a bavarois, ‘the number of garages in the country is increasing now and batteries can be changed easily, but that is no help if the battery is exhausted on the open road.’

  ‘So the Dolly Dobbs will carry a spare battery?’ Auguste tried again, ignoring his throbbing eye.

  ‘A spare?’ Tatiana was amazed at such ignorance. ‘Weight versus range is the whole problem. How can they carry another battery? They would travel even less distance. Of course, if the secret Edison battery being developed fulfils expectations . . .’

  Auguste’s attention wandered. Motoring was much like cooking, after all. Too much flavouring and a dish was ruined; too little produced the same result. ‘So what is different about the Dolly Dobbs?’ Auguste brought himself back with some effort from a memory of his écrevisses à la Maisie.

  ‘The same as that between a soufflé à la Mrs Marshall and a masterpiece by Auguste Didier.’

  Auguste looked at Tatiana suspiciously for any sign of irony. ‘It is true my soufflé des violettes is of great quality, though perhaps vanilla is not—’

  ‘Harold Dobbs has solved the problem – or so he claims.’

  ‘You mean whether vanilla is essential to bring out the flavour—’

  ‘I do not mean that, Auguste.’ Tatiana looked annoyed. ‘The problem of the range of the electric car.’

  ‘How?’ her husband asked penitently.

  ‘Would you reveal the secret of a new recipe before tasting it?’ Tatiana replied loftily. In fact she did not know, much to her chagrin. ‘But you will see the car for yourself at the trials.’

  ‘I will?’ Auguste was instantly suspicious.

  ‘It is to be a rally and social event as well as the official Motor Club of Great Britain road trial for the Dolly Dobbs. The whole club will leave in procession from Hyde Park Corner. We shall drive our motorcars along the Dover road to Martyr House near Barham Downs on the far side of Canterbury, where His Majesty will greet us. He is staying with the Earl of Tunstall.’

  ‘And the Countess?’ Auguste could not resist innocently adding, since Isabel, Lady Tunstall, was well-known in society for her lack of adherence to the marriage vows.

  ‘As you say, and the Countess.’ The wild oats of His Majesty might all now be cast but there was still room for respectably cultivated wheat in his social itinerary.

  Auguste greeted Tatiana’s news with even more foreboding. In his experience any event with both His Majesty and himself involved was likely to go seriously wrong, usually to the detriment of Auguste Didier. He must resist Tatiana’s pleas to accompany her on the Léon Bollée at all costs, he decided. ‘Delighted though I would be to meet Bertie again, I fear, chérie, I have arranged to discuss Dining With Didier with my publisher.’ There was a great deal more of his projected ten-volume magnum opus in his head than there was on paper, but it proved a most useful ‘Bunbury’, to employ Mr Oscar Wilde’s method of evading unwelcome appointments.

  ‘You must cancel it.’

  ‘Je m’excuse?’

  ‘There is the banquet.’

  ‘What banquet?’

  ‘The one you are to prepare in the gardens of Martyr House next Thursday.’

  There was a brief silence.

  ‘I could not tell you before, Auguste,’ Tatiana added placatingly. ‘Bertie has only just thought of it.’

  Various verbs that combined well with Bertie rose to Auguste’s lips, but what was the point of letting fly with them?

  There were distinct disadvantages in marrying into even the outer purlieus of the British royal family, but the chief one was the restriction on his cooking. An artist should be free, not ordered as to where he could or not practise his art. Did the Pope order Michelangelo to paint only for him? No. Yet His Majesty King Edward VII had made it a condition of his marriage to Tatiana, a remote Romanov and hence his cousin, that he should not cook for gainful employment; he might (like Alexis Soyer, Auguste seethed) cook
for charity, he might cook at private homes, and he bally well had to cook for the King whenever so commanded.

  When Tatiana opened her Ladies’ Motoring Club earlier this year, Auguste had been overwhelmed with pleasure when she asked him to be honorary chef at important dinners and banquets, of which tonight was one. Cooking banquets for the King was a different matter, not because he had any doubts as to his ability to outshine any other chef in the country (save his old maître Escoffier perhaps), but because he and his friend Chief Inspector Egbert Rose of Scotland Yard had found that the King and themselves, once in proximity, had an unfortunate tendency to run into calamity. On several occasions the calamity had been murder, and Auguste had been forced into the role of detective. He disliked it; he was a chef, not a Sherlock. He saw the apprehensive eyes of his wife, however, and nobly replied, ‘How delightful.’

  Relieved, Tatiana laughed. ‘I will drive you down.’

  ‘Won’t you be driving the Dolly Dobbs?’ He could at least avoid this ordeal.

  ‘No. Agatha – the Duchess of Dewbury – is to drive it, since she is its inventor’s patron.’

  Auguste faced the inevitable. The banquet must be prepared in meticulous detail and transported from London; he might make a last-minute appeal to travel earlier. And even if it was refused, if Hortensia Millward heard of the trials it could hardly fail to prove a most spirited journey. Mounted highwaymen at Blackheath were a distinct possibility. Auguste cheered up, even if it would mean the waste of a July day when he might be in their small Queen Anne’s Gate garden discussing recipes with Mrs Jolly, their cook.

  ‘Very well. I will prepare a banquet to excel over all banquets. And furthermore the dinner tonight will be my finest. You shall enjoy every morsel.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘Why do you doubt it?’ Auguste was somewhat indignant.

  ‘I have my committee meeting first.’

  ‘But what is so unusual about this meeting?’

  ‘The agenda.’

  ‘And that is?’

  ‘Hats and Hester Hart.’

  The treasurer of the Ladies’ Motoring Club, Lady Bullinger, crammed her cap on to her coiffured hair as firmly as she wished she could crush that upstart Hester Hart. The man’s cap, goggles, serviceable large fingerless gloves and tightly-fitting buttoned mackintosh coat made an odd match with her blue evening dinner dress, but Maud was a practical woman, and the evening was damp.

  ‘What are your views on snakes, Snelgrove?’ she demanded of her maid as the latter handed her the hatbox containing a more suitable head-covering for fashionable dining.

  Snelgrove had only seen snakes in the reptile house of the Zoological Gardens; no gallivanting over the Continent in a racing car like her ladyship, but she had her answer ready.

  ‘Keep an eye on them, milady.’

  Lady Bullinger snorted. ‘Quite right, Snelgrove.’

  That was what she would do to Hester Hart. One couldn’t go anywhere this season without falling over that woman, seeing her face grinning out from the pages of the Illustrated London News, posed at Palmyra, dallying in Damascus, jolting through Jericho, and, worse, lording it over London. Every time she was forced to greet the woman in the Motoring Club or out of it, she had the temerity to hint that she had not forgotten their earlier acquaintance. Well, nor had Maud. She wasn’t ashamed of what she’d done. On the contrary, she was proud of it. All the knighthoods in the world couldn’t have taken the buttons out of that family. All the same, Maud was a practical woman. It might be better not to antagonise Miss Hart, as society now seemed determined to lionise her. By next season she would be forgotten, but for the moment it was wiser to tolerate her.

  Like HMS Warrior under full steam, Lady Bullinger headed down the stairs of her Wimpole Street town house, imperiously waved the motor servant out of the driving seat and into the rear, and took the wheel of her new 6-cylinder Napier touring car herself.

  As she roared into Oxford Street, she momentarily forgot she was not in her Napier racer now, and strained the newly permitted speed of 20 mph to the limit. She seized the speed lever to change to a lower speed, wishing it were Hester Hart’s neck. She turned her mind to happier subjects. Soon she’d have all the opportunity she wanted to drive fast, when she began practising in earnest for the International Women’s Race in France in October. There was no doubt now that she would be the representative for England. Who else was there? No one.

  Maud gave a triumphant squeeze to the hooter, and two elderly gentlemen in Piccadilly leapt for safety. She was looking forward to dining with Phyllis and Roderick this evening after the meeting. True, her godson could have done better for himself than affiancing himself to a musical comedy actress, but the gel was at least presentable in society. Unlike Hester Hart.

  Some mile or so away in Mayfair, Maud’s sister-in-law, the Duchess of Dewbury, secretary to the Ladies’ Motoring Club, studied herself critically in the mirror. She was preoccupied with her own blonde charm at forty and had little time to spare to meditate upon Miss Hester Hart. That old business was over years ago. She, Agatha, was at the peak of her mature beauty, and whatever pretensions Hester Hart might have, beauty could hardly be amongst them. Her skin was over-tended by sun and under-tended by cold cream, her hair unblessed by regular applications of rosemary rinse, and her face was as long as that of the camels on which she no doubt traversed the deserts. Camels, the Duchess reflected, had rather softer faces than Hester Hart. But then poor Hester, although almost forty, had never married. She had never known how to make the best of herself, not that there was much to make with that father, as round and fat as the buttons he made and a familiar manner that no doubt went down well at his local Oddfellows’ Friendly Society meetings but which failed to find acceptance in refined London society. Still, she might as well be kind to the poor woman, now she was a fellow member of the Ladies’ Motoring Club. Vaguely she wondered why Hester had joined, and what make of car she might drive. Would she be a Racer, like herself and Maud, seeking excitement and adventure in this developing sport, or a Rabbit, like Isabel Tunstall and Phyllis Lockwood who saw the motorcar as a kind of fashion accessory?

  She suspected the former – in which case Maud might have to look to her laurels. Poor old Maud. Fortunately her own position was secure as patroness of the Dolly Dobbs. Which motor should she take this evening? Exciting though her little Horbick two-seater was, it would involve sending her maid ahead to the club to attend to her hair and complexion on arrival. It would have to be Harry’s Mercedes.

  Phyllis Lockwood, committee member, executed a pirouette in the bedroom of her Belgravia home and thought how beautiful she was. Her latest musical play had just finished its run and she was therefore out of the public eye until the London season began again in the autumn. Her only task was to pose for postcards at Messrs Ellis and Walery for her devoted public. Fortunately this meant she had all the more time to enjoy with Roderick and they could marry at the beginning of the season. She was so glad that her great-great-grandmother was the seventh daughter of a baron and thus her career as an actress did not preclude her marriage into London society, with a wedding in St George’s, Hanover Square. She adored Roderick; with his black hair and romantic looks he could have stepped straight off the stage of a musical play himself, although he was a racing driver, not an actor. She had joined the Ladies’ Motoring Club to please him. After all, motor racing was a most exciting sport – if one did not have to take part in it oneself. Fortunately, Tatiana had made it clear that the club was to promote interest in all kinds of motoring, not just racing.

  Tatiana was adorable. It was entirely to please her that Phyllis had agreed to join the committee. It was, she told herself, a public duty. All the same, she was not entirely happy to be classified as one of the Rabbits. Though why not? Surely all women needed of a car was its ability to travel from place to place and to provide an opportunity for its owner to look attractive while doing so. This, she had found, was hard when the wind
blew and clouds of dust blinded her, clung to her cheeks and chin and flew into her nostrils and mouth, despite the silk shields. And goggles were so very ugly. The only answer was to put a veil over one’s face, but then one wasn’t seen at all. It was all very difficult. Why couldn’t those silly car manufacturers stick something up in front of the driver to stop such inconveniences? They didn’t seem to consider ladies’ complexions at all.

  Tonight, she remembered as she climbed onto her new Fiat, they were to discuss hats. That would at least be interesting. And wasn’t there something on the agenda about that dreadful woman, Hester Hart?

  Isabel, Countess of Tunstall, committee member, watched her husband depart on the Lanchester for their Kent mansion, Martyr House, with relief. For a moment she had feared he had wanted to remain for dinner, and that would be awkward because Cousin Hugh was in town, and to dine with him as a family relation (and very close friend) would be not only respectable but highly desirable. After all, he did live in the country at Richmond so until she had purchased her Royce she had few opportunities to see him. Motorcars were undoubtedly extremely useful. No one would think it strange nowadays to see a lady driving a motorcar unescorted. It was considered sporting, and what the sport was was surely up to the driver. Indeed the Ladies’ Motoring Club had revealed a consensus that such were the contortions of the body required for motorists, it should be officially (by the rules of society) deemed a sport, thereby obviating the need for corsetry – until one arrived at one’s destination, when it should be donned (unless of course the destination included a close gentleman friend). Isabel almost giggled, then remembered what damage this could wreak on lily-white madonna-like faces that carefully cultivated calmness and serenity.