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

  ‘You’ve had a touch of influenza, I expect. Does funny things to you. Makes you see things.’ Rose made an effort to break the uncomfortable silence.

  ‘It is true I had some opium-based medicine. But so little that—’

  ‘’Allucinations,’ proclaimed Twitch happily from the doorway.

  ‘Can blood be a hallucination?’ Auguste demanded passionately. There had been a smear of blood on the sleeve of his overcoat, which had left them unimpressed.

  ‘Come from a red herring,’ snorted Twitch and sniggered in surprise at having made a joke.

  Auguste’s eyes travelled to Rose. Rose said nothing, but the corners of his mouth quivered. Auguste departed with what dignity he could muster and had not seen his friend since.

  The shock he received two days later was therefore all the more unpleasant. He had called at her request to take tea with dear Maisie, who had vanished both from his arms and from the Galaxy Theatre to marry into the ranks of the aristocracy. Maisie, her plump curves encased in a flowing blue robe that looked a cross between a Lily Langtry jersey dress and a peignoir, was as at ease in Eaton Square as in the green room of the Galaxy. He had seen very little of her since her marriage, and the summons came as a most delightful surprise. He suppressed the thought that her husband might be proving inferior to himself in intimate matters, knowing full well that if this was indeed the case Maisie would have no hesitation in making her wishes known. His hopes, if hopes they were, were doomed. Maisie had business, not love, on her mind.

  ‘Cranton’s?’ Auguste repeated blankly. ‘Cranton’s?’ wondering whether this were some elaborate conspiracy.

  ‘Nothing wrong with Cranton’s that a bit of spit and polish won’t put right,’ Maisie said cheerfully. ‘Now what’s wrong? I thought you’d be pleased, but you look as if you’ve dropped a bad egg into the Christmas pudding.’

  ‘I do not wish to know anything, anything at all,’ Auguste said vehemently, ‘about Cranton’s.’

  Maisie was taken aback at this unexpected response. But she knew Auguste. ‘Very well.’ She sighed heavily. ‘I’ll have to ask someone else. Perhaps Mrs Marshall,’ she added thoughtfully. ‘Or Nicholas Soyer. He’s a descendant of Alexis, isn’t he? He’s got a good reputation. Perhaps he’d like the job.’

  ‘No!’ thundered Auguste, roused by the sound of hated rival names.

  They eyed each other for a moment.

  ‘Tell me more about it,’ he said resignedly.

  ‘I run a travel business, you know,’ said Maisie with some pride. ‘I must say, Auguste, this seed cake is not half bad. I pinched the recipe from the Ritz.’

  ‘I am sure its chef would be delighted to hear your recommendation,’ announced Auguste through gritted teeth. ‘Now, kindly tell me about Cranton’s and about why you are running a business. Does your husband not provide for you? Ah, Maisie, I warned you—’

  ‘Don’t be so old-fashioned, Auguste.’ Maisie licked her fingers. ‘Now, I couldn’t do that with George here,’ she announced in satisfaction.

  ‘I am honoured,’ murmured Auguste.

  ‘George and I have an understanding,’ Maisie told him briskly. ‘At least, I have an understanding and he accepts it. I’ve provided the son and heir, and a daughter. Now I’m having a year or two off and doing what I want to do. I have to have a manager, of course, while I do some countessing in between, but I keep an eye on ’im. You know what men are. No attention to detail.’

  ‘Now, Maisie, you know very well—’ Auguste stopped as he saw her twinkling at him. Ah, how he remembered that look.

  ‘I provide a sort of Cook’s Tours for Coronets,’ explained Maisie happily. ‘Lady Gincrack’s Holidays for Gentlefolk. Like it?’

  ‘Who is this terrible lady?’ he asked blankly.

  ‘Me of course. It’s a spare title of George’s family that isn’t used much.’

  ‘I can understand why.’

  ‘But it’s splendid for me,’ enthused Maisie. ‘At this time of year I specialise in folks from the colonies who remember their Christmases and come back to Europe without any ancestral mansions to go to, and in folks left alone here who want to escape from their own families and find another one for a few days. There’s quite a few of them. So I’ve hired Cranton’s for a Twelve Days of Christmas party. A grand old English Christmas, wassails and warbling, that sort of thing.’

  ‘At Cranton’s. Christmas.’ That voice floated through his mind.

  ‘Non,’ he told her firmly. ‘Absolument pas.’

  This Christmas he must consider the future of the cooking school. He would not go anywhere that held the slightest whiff of any crime, let alone murder. The nightmare of November was with him still. ‘I could not get the staff in time,’ he pleaded, unwilling to tell her what had happened, ‘train them to produce forcemeat, and puddings to the required standard. And the dinner, and mince pies, le réveillon for the new century . . . There would be too much to plan for in the time. Yet,’ he was suddenly abstracted, ‘we could have, I suppose, all roasted fowl, with lighter desserts. And I have always wished to try punch sauce with plum pudding. The boar’s head of course would be borne in by me, as maître chef.’

  ‘You haven’t changed, Auguste.’ Maisie was amused. ‘Don’t you ever think of anything but food? I don’t want you to be the cook.’

  ‘What?’ His face blanched. ‘Not the chef? Then who? Ah, Maisie, you were not serious about Soyer? You would not wish me to work under someone?’

  ‘No, no,’ said Maisie patiently. ‘I want you to be the host, the manager, the maître d’hôtel for the holiday. I plan to drop in myself from time to time. George is going to Switzerland with his dear Mama, and it’s understood that where dear Mama goes, I don’t. I’ll divide my time between you and the children.’

  But Auguste was scarcely listening. ‘The host?’ All those unattainable dreams of his own hotel, for how could he ever afford to buy his own hotel? Now he was being offered a chance to pretend. . .

  ‘I’d get you a wonderful chef,’ promised Maisie gleefully, seeing sudden indecision on his face.

  He regarded her doubtfully. ‘He must be one who can both cook a baron of beef to perfection as well as the most delicate chanterelles, who loves both the raised pie and the paté de foie gras, the English crayfish and the. . .’

  ‘Yes, yes, I’ll make sure,’ Maisie said hastily. ‘You are free, aren’t you?’

  Auguste stiffened, his pride under attack. ‘As it happens,’ he said loftily, ‘I am.’ His current pupils would leave in a week’s time, two weeks before Christmas, and so far he had no new clients. It was tempting – but impossible. ‘But I cannot do it,’ he announced.

  ‘Why not?’ she said indignantly.

  ‘Because of murder,’ he blurted out, unable to dissemble any longer.

  ‘You’re planning one?’ she asked with interest.

  ‘I fear one,’ he said darkly. ‘I saw one.’

  She began to laugh. ‘If you could see my list of guests, Auguste, you’d know there was nothing to worry about. Stuffy as an embalmed crocodile, this party is. You’ll see.’

  ‘No, I will not see,’ he said sadly. ‘Hard though it is to refuse you anything, dear Maisie, this I cannot do.’ He rose to his feet in dignity, then remembered he had not yet tasted that most interesting looking confection, and sat down again.

  ‘What a pity,’ Maisie smiled sweetly. ‘And the owner of Cranton’s is a friend of Princess Tatiana too! How disappointed your Tatiana will be.’

  Auguste stiffened. He had no idea Maisie knew Tatiana. Now he had no choice. If the owner of Cranton’s was a friend of Tatiana’s, then to Cranton’s he must go. Otherwise news of his churlishness might reach her ears. Hopeless his love for her might be, but his honour at least must be kept brightly burnished in her eyes. So to Cranton’s he must go and forget this nonsense, his wild fancy of murder. After all, Egbert had told him there was no body, so no body existed. It had been his imagination. And as for what he
thought he had heard, had he not just seen the legend Cranton’s Hotel above the doorway? Probably the words, if words there had indeed been, were Bantams at Christmas, phantoms at Christmas, Canton at Christmas – some reference to the Boxer trouble in China, perhaps. Certainly nothing to worry him. . .

  Auguste stood on the wide wooden staircase in the grand entrance hall of Cranton’s Hotel and sniffed appreciatively; for once not at food but at the smell of beeswax polish. All around him shone the ornate wood panelling, installed earlier that century, when the original Adam houses had been converted for use as a hotel. Their uniform high windows on three storeys surmounted by a smaller row in the attics, presented a majestic front – and rear – to the citizens of London. Old, comfortable furniture invited use, new Sommier Elastique Portatif spring mattresses from Heal’s awaited occupants, log fires burned already on the hearths; suddenly Cranton’s was alive again.

  Ah, what a Christmas they would have. They would see the century out in style. He had planned menus – this much Maisie had permitted – such as would grace the Prince of Wales’s own table. His anxiety over the standard of the chef had been calmed by a surreptitious visit to his current establishment, devoted to Italian cuisine. He had been somewhat shamefaced when Maisie herself arrived with her husband, finding Auguste the only other diner, engrossed in determining the quality of a soufflé. He had not met the chef, he mentioned innocently. Who was it?

  The three days Auguste had spent at Cranton’s were a time of great anxiety as well as hard work. As manager he had naturally taken a personal interest in the re-equipment of the kitchens. No matter how good these new gas stoves, they would not replace the taste of spit-roasted meat. He cast an approving eye at the new cake mixer and chopping device, the Lovelock sausage machine and tinplate pudding moulds. How right Maître Escoffier was to devote time to inventions to take unnecessary work away. He had himself been doubtful earlier in his career, seeing routine chores as part of a chefs work. But le maître had proved to him that to use a fruit cutter or mechanical spit freed the chef for more important tasks. He recalled the day when le maître had shown him a small cube, which he had told him had all the strength of a complete stockpot, or a court-bouillon. A miracle indeed if it were true, he had marvelled. Why, one could produce a soupe in hours rather than days. It could revolutionise la cuisine.

  Auguste still had doubts about his chef at Cranton’s. He was after all Italian, and Italian food in his view consisted of spaghetti, macaroni, les tomates and no finesse. Could a goose be entrusted to such a person, let alone a plum pudding?

  He had been somewhat mollified when Signor Fancelli, who had a definite look of independence in his eye, told him he had been brought up in England, when his parents came to work in the kitchens of the Café Royal, and that accordingly he held a true cosmopolitan outlook on cuisine. However, these last three days had shown that he had a distinct leaning towards Parmesan cheese with everything. Indeed, he was as addicted to it as Mrs Marshall was towards her coralline pepper. Fancelli could only be in his late twenties, Auguste told himself tolerantly. There was time for him to learn – but not before Christmas. An eye would have to be kept on him, Auguste thought with pleasure.

  All had gone well at first. Fancelli had displayed a proper deference towards him. Fire flashed, however, over the matter of the forcemeat for the goose, after Fancelli had yielded over the wild boar.

  ‘I am the chef, Monsieur Didier,’ Fancelli said, his plump, short figure quivering with passion.

  ‘And I am the manager,’ pointed out Auguste.

  Signor Fancelli folded his arms. ‘Duck,’ he said tersely.

  ‘Plum,’ said Auguste, equally tersely.

  ‘Prune,’ conceded Fancelli, as a gesture of compromise.

  ‘Non,’ said Auguste.

  Antonio Fancelli unfolded his arms, removed his apron and donned his porkpie hat. ‘I go,’ he announced.

  ‘It is Christmas Eve,’ said Auguste, standing his ground. He was well used to recalcitrant staff.

  ‘No plum,’ said Fancelli.

  ‘Plum and duck,’ said Auguste. ‘With Armagnac.’

  Fancelli stood indecisively for a moment. Then: ‘It is so,’ he declared reluctantly.

  Henceforth Fancelli was allowed to rule his kitchen, but Auguste was permitted an honorary tour once every two hours, a privilege he had managed not to abuse. Fancelli watched him warily on each occasion, singing snatches of the works of Signor Verdi or Herr Mozart irritatingly well throughout.

  At twelve o’clock on Christmas Eve, Auguste pronounced himself ready and summoned his staff together. He beamed at them happily, caught by a sudden headiness at the arrival of Christmas. It was going to be a wonderful time. Here in this cocoon of warmth and welcome, his greatest dream – or nearly his greatest – would flicker into reality.

  ‘Eh bien, mes enfants,’ he announced. ‘Follow me, for the ceremony of the hanging of the kissing bough.’ He led the way into the huge drawing room, his staff crowding behind him. Greenery and tinsel adorned every picture, every nook and cranny. A large, decorated Christmas tree stood in one corner, with a present carefully chosen for each one of the fourteen guests, plus one for each member of staff and sundry accompanying maids and valets. Auguste looked at the glittering tree approvingly. It was not the French way of Christmas – imagine this in his native Provence – but for an English Christmas, it was magnifique.

  Taking the kissing bough from the footman, he climbed the ladder to suspend the bough from the ceiling, to denote the beginning of Christmas. He glanced down at the smiling upturned faces of his staff. This was a proud moment indeed. What a symbol. Two hoops at right-angles made a sphere of holly, mistletoe and other greenery, and from it were suspended small candles, gifts and tinsel, the latter catching the light as the bough twisted and turned in the slight draught from the fire. Mistletoe – that most ancient of mystical plants, the destroyer, the healer and, some said, the peacemaker of quarrels. Perhaps it would heal the breach between himself and Egbert, he thought wistfully.

  ‘The holly and the ivy,’ carolled one irrepressible member of staff enthusiastically, while another rushed to the piano, only yesterday tuned by Messrs Steinway after years of disuse.

  ‘For all the trees that are in the wood. . .’

  Auguste felt his eyes misting over. Why had he worried? This was Christmas; he could imagine he was running his very own hotel. He could forget the fogs of November in the joys of December. Yes, suddenly, excitingly, he was looking forward to Christmas.

  ‘Mes amis,’ he beamed, ‘now we await only our guests. . .’

  Major Frederick Dalmaine of the Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment climbed slowly down from the express at London’s Paddington railway station, somewhat annoyed that he had actually to seek a porter. Everyone else seemed to have porters gravitating to their side, yet what he thought of as his innate authority appeared to have deserted him. He hoped that his slowness of gait would immediately suggest a wounded combatant of the South African War. It was in fact true, and he had no objection to everyone knowing it.

  He was more than somewhat aggrieved. His brother, with whom he normally spent Christmas, was very much elsewhere. (His letter, received on arrival at his Southampton home, still burned a hole in his pocket. What the devil was he to do about that?) His brother being abroad, he had naturally counted on spending the festive season with his sister Evelyn and her family, only to be informed by telegram at Southampton that they were going to Scotland, and that consequently she had arranged for him to spend a real old-fashioned English Christmas at a London hotel. He was going to love every minute, the telegram assured him. Dalmaine had no intention of loving every minute. He had looked forward to being the centre of an admiring circle of small boys and their grown-up counterparts demanding every detail of the relief of Kimberley and Roberts’s victorious advance, not to mention his own face to face encounter with Jan Smuts.

  Instead he was going to be one of a party of
strangers who wouldn’t be in the least interested in his leg wound even if Field Marshal Roberts himself dropped in to chat about it. He pursed his lips, and remembered that one of his objects in returning to England before deciding on his future was to seek a wife. At thirty-five it was high time, and quite apart from his war career, he had not been idle in his years in Africa. There had been opportunities for civilians with foresight out there, and he was going to seize them, now his army career seemed over. Even if it meant acting on that letter. . .

  ‘Young ladies who have been launched in Society,’ shouted Sir John Harnet, goaded to a loss of control that his colleagues longed to provoke but failed, for his phlegmatic calm was legendary in the Colonial Office, ‘do not place jumping beans in a feller’s riding boots.’

  ‘Why not?’ enquired the Honourable Evelyn Pembrey, an expression of great interest in her blue eyes.

  ‘They are considerate of the feelings of others,’ her guardian replied stiltedly, wondering why on earth he had offered to take the job on, and when Clarence and Bertha could reasonably be expected to settle back in England to take responsibility for their offspring. True, twenty-one years ago he had fervently sworn to Bertha he would devote his life to her service despite her obstinate preference for knuckle-headed Clarence as a husband, but there was service and service. And he was beginning to feel that the joys of sponsoring the coming-out season of the Pembrey twins and trying to control the waywardness of a beautiful twenty-year-old were outside the boundary.

  ‘Oh,’ offered the Honourable Miss Ethel, stealing a glance at her twin sister. ‘In that case,’ she continued politely, ‘would you like us to remove the live frog from your muffler too?’

  A stifled exclamation from Sir John abandoned plans of taking the muffler from the butler. The butler’s eyes dilated slightly, his fingers distinctly trembling as he backed hastily from the room and disposed of the livestock in language that formed an odd contrast to that generally heard from his lips above stairs.