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

  Tonight was the committee meeting, and that eccentric woman Hester Hart would be on the agenda. Isabel had a moment’s uneasiness. She had not yet encountered her at the club, but some years ago she had been introduced to Hester – had she been formally introduced? She couldn’t remember. What she did remember was that something unpleasant had happened, something to do with His Majesty when Prince of Wales, but whatever it was could not possibly be of any importance now, could it?

  Auguste, ready for the evening in tail coat and white tie, was watching Tatiana and her maid in their nightly battle to array his wife in full evening dress. The battle was between Eloise, who wished her mistress to do full justice both to her beauty and to her own prowess as a maid, and Tatiana who wished to get the whole ordeal over as quickly as possible in order to return to the more interesting aspects of life such as motorcars. He was aware that most husbands were never permitted to view such intimate scenes but he found it a rare chance to talk to Tatiana as well as a fascinating look into the deeper mysteries of social ritual. It was like the preparation of a grand dish, perhaps a caneton. There were the bones, covered with luscious flesh which in turn was crowned by a sauce perfectly chosen for the dish and the occasion. Tonight Tatiana’s sauce was wide-sashed ivory silk with a satin underskirt and colourful embroidered panels. Once the sauce was selected, then came the garnish. Tatiana had a tendency towards impatience over jewels, flowers and fans, but he had counselled her into wisdom. The correct garnish was essential, for appearance was a key to taste and taste to the conveyance of the true message of the dish.

  ‘Why do you not want Hester Hart to join the committee?’ Auguste watched fascinated as Tatiana wriggled impatiently and Eloise struggled with the fastenings of a Romanov diamond necklace said, Tatiana had once told him casually, to have belonged to Catherine the Great.

  ‘You always know if meat or fish are bad even though they may be disguised by sauces or spices. How?’

  ‘By instinct, which of course is not instinct, but the experience of a thousand other such dishes.’

  ‘That’s how I know too. I’ve met a lot of Englishwomen. Many I like, many I do not, either personally or as a type, but Hester Hart is different. Every time I meet her I smell trouble, Auguste. She is charming to me, she’s lively to listen to, interesting to look at, the toast of London, and yet, and yet . . .’

  “‘I do not like thee, Dr Fell/The reason why I cannot tell,’” Auguste quoted for her.

  ‘She does not add up as a dish, Auguste. She has explored Syria, Iraq, Northern Africa, and many other places, all on her own. She is a great and intrepid traveller, and yet now she has decided to settle in England.’

  ‘London and England have much to offer.’

  ‘But the taste for danger does not die so easily, Auguste. It lives on and has to be fed.’

  ‘That is why she has joined your club,’ he pointed out reasonably. ‘She will travel in fast motorcars instead of trekking or going by camel or horse. She will be a Racer, though, not a Rabbit.’

  ‘Sometimes I feel I have more in common with Hortensia Millward than with my committee,’ its president announced. ‘Why did we pick two Racers who talk only of gradients, grease cups and Gordon Bennett Cups, and two Rabbits who don’t know a worm-gear from a goose-neck?’

  ‘What trouble could Miss Hart cause if she were on the committee?’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s the danger.’

  He watched Tatiana throwing on the last items of garnish with less attention than he would have paid to the placing of an olive, and thought longingly of the moment that they would be home again and the process be reversed.

  ‘And the hats, my love. What danger can they pose?’

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ his wife informed him darkly.

  How could ladies get so heated over such an issue? Auguste wondered. Then he remembered Plum’s, the gentlemen’s club where he had been chef for several years, and the passionate arguments over the ritual of Plum’s Passing. If gentlemen could come to blows over demolishing a meringue replica of Napoleon, could ladies be expected to be different over hats? He fervently hoped so, because in Plum’s case it had led to murder.

  Auguste cautiously ventured into the club kitchen. True, he had left it in safe hands, but one could never be absolutely certain until one’s own eye was satisfied. Was all ready? The sauce for the filets de sole, the chiffonade for the consommé, the homard à la Mornay, the poularde à la Nantua, poularde Alexandra, the crème Anglaise – ah, yes, he deduced this was prepared by the fact that Pierre’s sugar nippers were lying on the table. Perfection would elude him while such details were overlooked. Routine was as important as the creative part of cooking. Or was it? he wondered. Pierre was an inspired cook, with a flair that owed nothing to conventional training. He had told Auguste he had been trained at the Marseille Hôtel Grande, but Auguste had his suspicions that his stay there had been brief and Pierre’s miraculous affinity with both fish and fowl owed more to the back streets of the city than the hotels it boasted in Baedeker’s Guides. Had Napoleon been lucky enough to sink exhausted by the roadside anywhere near Pierre Calille, he would have had a dish far superior to chicken Marengo.

  ‘There is something wrong with the tongue?’ Pierre appeared at his side, face strained and anxious as he saw Auguste peering into the tinplate press.

  ‘No, Pierre,’ Auguste replied hastily. Pierre took criticism hard. Indeed, who could complain at the satisfying red tongue within and its exhilarating aroma of pungent spices? ‘I was thinking of Napoleon.’

  ‘Ah.’ Pierre’s anxious face relaxed into its usual placid contours. ‘A great man of the people.’

  In the interests of dinner, Auguste forbore to point out that the peoples of Italy, Egypt, Germany, Poland, Russia, etc. might not agree with this definition.

  ‘You have much experience of murder, I am told, monsieur,’ Pierre continued. ‘Do you believe he was poisoned by the British, as rumour says?’

  Why was it that once an unwelcome thought decided to enter one’s mind, everybody and everything was only too happy to remind you of it? ‘No. The English had nothing to gain from his murder, and they are a ruthless but practical nation. Unless,’ Auguste added fairly, ‘a trivial cause arouses their passions.’

  Like committee meetings and hats, the unwelcome thought of murder helpfully nudged. Or even Hester Hart.

  ‘Any other business?’ Tatiana had planned the most infinitesimal of pauses before launching, thankfully, into the security arrangements for the Dolly Dobbs. She did not receive it.

  ‘That hat!’ boomed Lady Bullinger instantly. ‘The obvious solution is a gentleman’s cap, like I wear. Plenty of room to stick the badge on.’

  Tatiana’s heart sank. She was fond of Maud but she was undoubtedly formidable both in temperament and reputation. Fortunately she drove in so many races she was unable to grace the club as often as she’d like, a fact her husband Sir Algernon probably welcomed as well for much the same sort of reason.

  ‘But a cap won’t take a veil, Maud,’ Agatha pointed out.

  ‘Who needs one?’

  Tatiana tried hard not to gaze at Lady Bullinger’s weather-beaten complexion.

  ‘Why not something very large to keep off the rain, full-brimmed with flowers and perhaps feathers cut into motorcar shapes on top,’ Phyllis suggested brightly.

  ‘We’d take off like kites in the wind, Phyllis,’ Agatha pointed out kindly.

  Tatiana had a pleasant vision of her committee borne off instantly into the sky and left permanently on a cloud. Individually each member of it might be reasonable, together decisions were as hard to reach as when Auguste agonised over a new recipe.

  ‘Not if it doesn’t have a tall crown.’ Isabel considered her fellow Rabbit’s proposition seriously.

  ‘It has to carry the badge.’ Maud thumped the table. ‘A cap’s what’s needed. I can pull mine over my ears.’

  ‘I’m sure my ears don’t need covering,’ I
sabel informed them. She touched one lightly to indicate how petal-like they still were despite their thirty-five years.

  ‘Are you implying that I have large ears?’ Maud thundered in astonishment.

  ‘How about a tricorne?’ Agatha suggested. ‘It’s very fashionable. We could tie a veil round that.’

  ‘We’d look like upside-down Christmas gifts,’ Phyllis giggled.

  The Duchess cast her a look of great dislike. ‘Then I vote for Maud’s cap.’

  ‘But your ears are beautiful,’ Isabel remarked innocently.

  ‘How about a tam o’shanter?’ Tatiana said hastily, seeing Maud was about to erupt.

  ‘Very sporting,’ Agatha said approvingly.

  ‘I don’t want to look sporting, I want to look pretty,’ Phyllis declared.

  When all else fails, change the subject, Tatiana thought quickly. The atmosphere was getting even tenser than she’d feared and surely that could not all be due to hats. ‘There is a suggestion on the table that Miss Hester Hart, being of such international repute, should be asked to join the committee.’

  There was immediate silence as four committee members inspected the ink blotters and paper before them with intense interest.

  So she was going to have to break it. Tatiana steeled herself. ‘In principle, I feel it is not a good plan to invite such a new member to join us before we can call ourselves truly established as a committee.’

  ‘A lady in the public eye such as she is could do the club nothing but good.’ Phyllis had least qualms about speaking first. ‘There is talk of Ellis and Walery issuing a postcard of her in Arabian costume, and darling Roderick says she is a most remarkable lady.’

  ‘You did not seem to think her remarkable when you contributed that article to The Ladies’ Companion last year about how the true role of women was to provide comfort and beauty for gentlemen, and that women who galloped across deserts on camels or horses must be lacking in true womanliness,’ Isabel pointed out.

  ‘I never said that,’ Phyllis wailed. ‘Anyway, someone wrote it all for me.’

  ‘The club needs more real drivers like Miss Hart,’ Lady Bullinger trumpeted, ‘and fewer of those who refuse to venture out in their motorcars when there’s a cloud this side of the Equator.’

  ‘I have to think of my complexion,’ Phyllis cried, stung at this broadside from darling Roderick’s godmother.

  ‘All that stage lighting, no doubt,’ Agatha murmured. ‘It’s a trifle bumpy.’

  Phyllis glared. ‘I vote for the suggestion.’

  ‘I don’t,’ Isabel said. She had remembered just how Miss Hart’s plans for the Diamond Jubilee in ’97 had cut across her own, and the last thing she wanted was the same lady in a position of power now.

  ‘I do,’ Lady Bullinger declared magnanimously. ‘Give the woman a chance.’

  ‘Do you know her?’ Tatiana asked curiously. She had the impression that on the few occasions Hester had so far visited the club, Maud had almost pointedly tried to evade her.

  Lady Bullinger looked stubborn. ‘Well enough.’ She cleared her throat to indicate the discussion was over.

  ‘And I vote against her,’ said Agatha. ‘I feel there would be far too much public attention focused on her, and not on the motorcars.’ Especially the Dolly Dobbs, she thought. ‘So you have the casting vote, Your Highness.’

  Tatiana disliked being addressed as Your Highness, preferring Mrs Didier, though reluctantly bowed to the way of the world and allowed her royal rank to be used for official club purposes. She also disliked being put in this position. ‘I vote no.’

  ‘I don’t think Hester will like it.’ Phyllis suddenly looked nervous.

  ‘She won’t know unless someone chooses to tell her,’ Isabel pointed out comfortingly.

  ‘No one would discuss private committee business, surely,’ Tatiana said firmly.

  ‘It has happened,’ Agatha murmured.

  ‘If the cap fits,’ Maud rumbled, and Agatha looked furious.

  ‘Ah yes, let’s return to the issue of the hat,’ Tatiana broke in hastily. It might be her imagination, but she remembered Auguste saying that one could smell a dangerous situation devloping like the rising aroma of garlic and spices fried in oil.

  The dining room of the Ladies’ Motoring Club was palatial, light and airy, unlike so many gentlemen’s clubs he had seen. Auguste had instantly approved. With its pale green walls, Adam fireplaces and elegant columns, it was a suitable setting for Didier dishes.

  The arrangement of the tables had been the subject of much discussion when the club had opened in March. Should there be a communal table, or separate tables? Compromise had been established with a communal table at luncheon and separate tables in the evening, so that gentlemen should not be foisted on those ladies seeking immunity from masculine company. This principle had been bent a little to permit a permanent male maître d’, though his staff was female. A restaurant, it was agreed, was primarily a social venue, not for technical motorcar discussions, and all opposition vanished when Luigi had presented himself for the position. Eyes that melted as softly as butter into a hollandaise, was Tatiana’s description of him to Auguste, who was more impressed by his gifts of diplomacy. Now, he was as indispensable as the fluted pillar in the centre of the restaurant.

  Unfortunately Auguste was all too well aware of the paragon’s shortcomings. The liquid eyes turned to flint and diplomacy deserted him whenever he came face to face with Pierre. Pierre was of mere peasant stock, while he, Luigi Peroni, apparently came from a family once closely related to the former dukes of Milan. Whether this relationship was blessed by the clergy, and how such a scion of a noble house was reduced to earning a living, Luigi never explained. The liquid eyes said it all. Like the mouse in Mr Carroll’s delightful story, Tatiana explained to Auguste, Luigi had a long and sad tale.

  The feud between kitchen and restaurant was the reason Auguste insisted on being seated conveniently near the kitchen. When they first saw the cook dining with their president, new members of the club had eyed him askance, then viewed Tatiana pityingly when they discovered the relationship. It was gradually accepted, however, that if His Majesty could countenance his marrying into the royal family, they should be able to tolerate a mere dinner in his company.

  ‘I should have made the sorrel sauce myself,’ Auguste suddenly exclaimed.

  ‘Auguste, it is perfect. I know it is.’ Tatiana sighed.

  ‘How can you know,’ he agonised, halfway poised between being seated and being upright, ‘until you have tasted it?’

  ‘Because everything you cook is perfect, and because you would not have left it if you had not had confidence in your chef. That is why you have one.’

  He considered this. ‘But do you not remember the time I deserted the rhubarb sauce and it tasted like stale water?’

  ‘That was an unfortunate accident. No one could have anticipated your sauce chef would discover at the critical moment that his wife had taken the butcher as her lover.’

  ‘But I feel something is about to go wrong.’ He sat down with this dire warning.

  ‘If so, it will not be with your cooking. It is much more likely to be concerned with hats. Phyllis decided she wanted a high-crowned Romney hat perched on her golden curls, and carried Isabel and Agatha with her. With veils tied round we’ll look like white chimneypots. Maud is furious.’

  It was true, Auguste conceded, that the dinner seemed to be going well. Lady Bullinger was dining with Phyllis Lockwood, for once without her fiancé Roderick Smythe.

  Agatha and Edward, the Duke and Duchess of Dewbury, were with two strangers. No, not strangers. The man was her protégé, Harold Dobbs, inventor of the Dolly Dobbs, so the other lady, who looked a little like a crazed terrier, must be his wife Judith. Isabel, the languid, beautiful Countess of Tunstall, was also at their table together with the gentleman he had first taken to be the Earl since he was here so frequently, until Tatiana had enlightened him. He was her cousin, Hugh Francis,
and Tatiana was convinced that all languidness vanished when they were alone together. Tonight the young and giddy Miss Dazey was with them; it was her first season in society and, as they all knew to their cost, her first on a motorcar. She took both at the same dashing pace. Unknown to her parents, she had also developed a passion for young Leo, Fred Gale’s good-looking assistant.

  By the time the entremets arrived, Auguste had relaxed and barely cast them a glance for imperfections. All around talk seemed to be of the Dolly Dobbs and speculation as to what magic it could possess that could give it a greater range than twenty-five miles out and twenty-five miles back. Magic? Magic was not for motorcars; it was for entremets, and entrées. Happily Auguste looked forward to the presentation of the cerises à la reine.

  He looked round for Luigi, and to his horror saw him locked in hissing angry argument with Pierre who was making a completely illegal and unscheduled appearance in the dining room.

  ‘What is this, and why are you here?’ he demanded furiously, leaping up, prepared to investigate calamity.

  Luigi was happy to enlighten him. ‘It’s the cherries, Mr Didier. I’m sorry to say I’ve a complaint that they’re burned.’

  ‘If he comes to my place of work, then I can come to his,’ Pierre informed his superior sulkily. ‘They are not burned.’

  ‘Let me taste them,’ Auguste ordered grimly.

  He was eagerly handed a dish of cerises à la reine and, all pleasure in the prospect vanished, he tasted the dish. It was stronger than usual, too much kirsch perhaps, but burned? Perhaps that was— Auguste was suddenly aware that no one was paying either him or the cherries their due attention.

  The eyes of the whole room were riveted on the entrance to the restaurant where, posed at the top of the three steps, was a late diner. The face was familiar to Auguste – it had much been in the Illustrated London News, even though he had not been present on her earlier visits to the club. It was an interesting face, if not conventionally handsome. It belonged to Hester Hart who was clad ostentatiously in Arabian dress. It was not her dress, however, that was causing such a sensation this evening. She was possessively clasping the arm of someone very familiar to the Ladies’ Motoring Club. It was Roderick Smythe, famous racing driver and fiancé of Phyllis Lockwood; he stood self-consciously but pink with pride, looking everywhere but in the direction of the Bullinger-Lockwood table.