Murder Under The Kissing Bough: (Auguste Didier Mystery 6) Page 4

  Carruthers glared. ‘Part of Mitchell’s Fourth Brigade. Waterloo, man, Waterloo.’

  ‘I regret he did not take part in that battle, sir. He was not born until 1840. Waterloo took place in 1815,’ Harbottle informed him nervously.

  Carruthers did not tolerate fools gladly. ‘Think I don’t know when Waterloo was? Greatest victory in the history of the British Army.’

  Frederick Dalmaine turned to him. ‘A battle Wellington was lucky to have won, sir. I have made a study—’

  ‘Lucky?’ Carruthers’s eyes bulged. ‘Lucky, sir?’

  Seeing the look on his face, Maisie hastily intervened. ‘You are quite comfortable in your room, I trust, Colonel?’

  Reluctantly he turned away from Dalmaine. ‘Yes,’ he grunted. ‘Good idea of yours to reopen Cranton’s.’

  ‘We aim to please,’ said Maisie meekly, winking at Auguste. Six years of marriage into the aristocracy had done little to soften Maisie’s dramatic sense of colour in her dress and she rustled in purple taffeta that did nothing to compliment her to the stranger. To him who had loved her it was a different matter. He felt another stirring of the old passion, and more than a moment’s regret that after due consideration he had decided his honour would not allow him to pursue dear Maisie to recapture those moments of bliss he remembered so clearly from their days at the Galaxy Theatre. He firmly ordered his mind not to remember them any more and fixed his attention on his guests. An army gentleman stealing glances at the eldest Miss Pembrey, who was talking to the other army gentleman. The maiden lady listening to a gentleman who bellowed and guffawed a great deal. A young married couple stealing glances at each other. The Baroness was engaged in deep conversation with Sir John and the Marquis de Castillon, her companion sitting quietly by her side. Ah yes, all was well. It was Christmas. This party was already at ease with itself. All would go smoothly, like a large happy family. The future for the twenty-first century looked rosy indeed.

  For a moment, a mere second, Auguste relaxed, taking his eagle-eyed attention off the serving of dinner. A girl’s startled cry, a clatter, a crash. ‘I’m very sorry, ma’am.’

  The merest blob of crème de marrons adorned the Baroness’s face as all eyes turned to the waitress who hastily picked up the spoon she had somehow managed to drop.

  Oddly, Auguste’s first thought was not of such inexcusable inattention on the part of an incompetent waitress but a sudden feeling of foreboding, together with a sense that the apparent unity here was at best a fragile shell. Why, he wondered, had the girl cried out before she dropped the spoon? And why were her eyes not on the recipient of her carelessness, but on someone else at the table? Sir John? Mr Bowman? Miss Guessings? He pulled his thoughts back. ‘A thousand apologies, madame,’ he said to the Baroness.

  She waved them aside. ‘An old woman such as I am is used to applying creams in plenty, Monsieur Didier. What is one more – particularly such a crème de marrons as this?’

  The moment passed, and all but Auguste resumed their conversations. He knew he should be thinking of what words of upbraiding he should be speaking to the waitress; he should have insisted on all male waiters, not doubling up with mere parlourmaids, but he found it difficult to shake off his sudden fear that the threat of danger had not gone away. The thought of Egbert came into his mind. Egbert and Edith, home together at the cosy house in Highbury. That was a happy Christmas, not a party of strangers thrown together by loneliness.

  Yet when they were all seated in Cranton’s long drawing room, the old gas lights glowing, hissing gently, and the log fire spitting in the centre, he quickly forgot apprehension once more, and looked round complacently at his little flock.

  ‘Ghosts, Mr Didier,’ said Rosanna, drawing him in to the group’s conversation. ‘Have you ever seen one?’

  Dalmaine cleared his throat. Now was the time to say something witty, or complimentary, to attract her attention to him. ‘I—’ was all he managed, as Maisie answered the question for Auguste, laughing. ‘He only sees the ghosts of dinners past, present, and particularly future, Miss Pembrey.’

  ‘Maisie – Lady Gincrack –’ what a ridiculous name, Auguste thought, and how typical of her husband to own such a title – ‘You are not fair. Occasionally,’ he explained, hurt, ‘I see the ghost of luncheon too.’

  ‘Talking of luncheon,’ Colonel Carruthers cleared his throat, ‘what have you got for us tomorrow? Turkey?’

  ‘And goose, capons,’ said Auguste eagerly. ‘And of course the boar.’

  ‘Alors, which one of us is that?’ asked Thérèse von Bechlein innocently.

  ‘The sanglier, Madame la Baronne, for the boar’s head procession.’

  ‘We ought to tell ghost stories,’ put in Gladys shrilly. ‘It is Christmas Eve after all.’

  ‘You told me you’d seen a real ghost once, Auguste,’ urged Maisie. ‘Tell us about it.’

  ‘There is no such thing as a real ghost.’ Auguste had no intention of being drawn into recalling that story. ‘I will tell you instead of another,’ he said with sudden inspiration. ‘A tale of a maiden long ago.’ He looked round as a pleasurable sigh ran through the assembly, a breathless silence only broken by the sound of nutcrackers in action and the spitting of dry wood.

  ‘Il était une fois,’ he began, ‘once upon a time, there took place the wedding feast of the beautiful Ginevra and the handsome Lord Lovell. After the feast, the guests began to play hide and seek in the huge old castle, and after a while it was noticed that the bride had disappeared.’

  ‘Oh,’ proclaimed his audience on cue in sombre tones on recognising the familiar tale.

  ‘At first, not overworried, the young nobleman sought his bride, calling softly in tones of love, then more anxiously, then desperately, in all the nooks and crannies and disused rooms of the old castle. The guests joined in, calling her name, “Ginevra, Ginevra,” but no trace of the lovely bride could be found. Nor ever was that night. Her father lost his wits, the young husband, heartbroken, went off to battle and did not return for many a year.’

  ‘Ah,’ sighed his audience.

  ‘Returning to his homestead at last, he wandered the scene of her disappearance. Coming upon a room of cobwebs, in a disused part of the castle, he found an old carved oaken chest. Curious, he laid his hand upon it, and some impulse made him open it. There inside was a skeleton and rags that once had been a wedding gown. Upon the bony finger was a ring he recognised. ’Twas his own, the one he gave the lovely Ginevra.’

  An obedient united gasp of horror.

  ‘Since that day the castle is haunted by the ghost of a lady in white who seeks her bridegroom in vain.’

  A silence. Then Bella pronounced, ‘How very sad, Mr Didier. Now if my father were here, he could relate many tales of vampires that would leave your English Ginevra looking a very pale spectre.’

  ‘Vampires,’ breathed Gladys excitedly, eyes agleam.

  ‘Hunting for ladies with lovely necks such as yours, Miss Guessings,’ boomed Alfred Bowman.

  ‘Oh,’ Gladys was pink with excitement. Her eyes had fallen first on Colonel Carruthers, but clearly here was metal much more malleable.

  ‘Garlic keeps them away, I’ve heard,’ observed Major Dalmaine, determined to be noticed.

  ‘Maybe that’s why Lord Lovell pushed his bride in the chest,’ suggested Thomas Harbottle nervously with the same idea. Then as everyone looked at him, added, ‘Too much garlic, you know,’ weakly, and wished he hadn’t spoken.

  ‘Perhaps it was murder?’ suggested Thérèse thoughtfully. ‘Have you considered that? Perhaps a jealous lover pushed her in. What do you think, Mr Didier?’

  Auguste stiffened. Murder was not an option he wished to consider. But before he could reply, the twins glanced at each other and ran to the piano excitedly, one playing the familiar haunting strains of Sir Henry Bishop’s rendering of the Bride in the Chest story, ‘The Mistletoe Bough’, the other standing by her twin’s side, one hand on the lace fichu of her ivory sa
tin-clad bosom.

  ‘The mistletoe hung in the drawing room

  The holly bush shone on the hotel wall,’

  intoned the twin, one eye on her guardian who seemed not to be listening to the change of words, and the other on Auguste who was:

  ‘And Mr Didier’s retainers were blithe and

  gay

  And keeping their Christmas holiday.’

  Auguste sat rigid. She was a guest. He could say nothing. He was bound to listen, whatever devilry they came up with:

  ‘And Auguste be sure thou’rt the first to trace

  The clue to my secret lurking place. . .

  Oh the mistletoe bough, the mistletoe bough. . .’

  Auguste clapped politely, vowing that no portion of his special soufflé aux violettes tomorrow would be allowed to pass the lips of either twin.

  In the very early hours of Christmas morning, Auguste walked home from the Catholic church on Maida Hill. He was once again tranquil, the air was still around him, hushed as it once had seemed to him in the days of his youth as the angels waited for the birth of the Christchild, and cattle knelt, Maman told him, to greet the holy day. He was transported back to his beloved church of Notre Dame on the hill of Mont Chevalier in his native town of Cannes. He saw again the santons round the Provençal crib, so lifelike they almost moved, it seemed to him as a child, as he stood in the candlelight of the church, holding the hands of Maman and Papa. The sound of the old French carol, ‘Nous voici dans la ville’, the women taking Mary’s part, the men Joseph’s. It haunted him still; it spoke of his youth, it spoke of what he was.

  Here there was fog in place of the Provençal sun. . . He loved England, but it was not home and Christmas was a time for home. Yet a home should have a wife, and he had none. Tatiana, his princess, was far away, beyond his reach. He had last seen her so tantalisingly in Cannes two years ago. And that reminded him that even in Provence murder could appear.

  Murder! Auguste stood stock-still in the middle of Baker Street. He knew now what troubled him. He had heard that inefficient waitress’s voice before. On the night of the murder. It was the voice of the murderess.

  Chapter Two

  Auguste woke up with a start. Immediately a hammer that seemed to have hit the pit of his stomach reminded him that it was Christmas morning, that he had had far too little sleep, and lastly that all his carefully stifled forebodings about sinister happenings at Cranton’s were swiftly rising to the surface again, like scum in a stockpot. The events of that November fog had not been a figment of his imagination as everyone, even Egbert, had been at such pains to persuade him. That voice was unmistakable. Or was it? he wondered feverishly. Perhaps it was merely that he had fastened on the voice to give substance to what had indeed been fantasy. Eagerly he seized on this enticing possibility. But conscience whispered sternly in his ear. He swung his legs to the floor, and contemplated what might be going on in the kitchens below him.

  Firmly he turned his mind to happier matters as he washed and shaved in the hot water provided for him – there were some pleasures in responsibility, he told himself. It would have been cold had he still been a chef. As he was shiveringly climbing into his combinations, Dr Jaeger-approved, he thought back to the excitement of his childhood, for with an English mother he had been privileged among his friends to hang up a small stocking at the foot of his bed in case Père Noël should happen to call. And call he always did – for eight years anyway. And many the little toys and delights he found in it, and at the bottom a glacéed orange from Monsieur Nègre’s establishment in Grasse. How clever Père Noël was to know where to find the very best. But more even than these delights were those of later in the day, when Maman would produce her own candies – sugary almonds, bonbons and toffee. It was as his first almond had entered his mouth as a six-year-old that his first perceptions of the glories of cuisine had struck him. Maman had made this. What wondrous worlds lay ahead of him if such glories could be created by human hand. They did indeed. As soon as was possible, he was apprenticed to the famous young cook Auguste Escoffier, and from then on cuisine had been his life’s work, pure pleasure – until murder had crept in with beckoning finger, the evil witch in his fairy tale. An evil that had to be erased.

  Breakfast was already served in the dining room; devilled kidneys, mushrooms and coddled eggs waited in chafing dishes for the arrival of guests – nothing heavy to dull the appetite, merely to provide a firm basis for the delights to come. Auguste stood at the entrance to the kitchens, endeavouring to control a wistfulness that he was not in sole charge of this entrancing realm. Here in the kitchens it was clear who was in charge – or attempting to be. Antonio Fancelli streaked round his three assistants, an avenging angel in pursuit of misdemeanours. A mixture of smells met Auguste’s nostrils, roasting fat, plum puddings already on to steam, the smell of freshly prepared vegetables, of cinnamon, cloves and other spices, the smell of baking – mince pies, no doubt. Geese, turkeys, ducks, capons were busily being stuffed with forcemeat. Jealousy gripped him. All this should be his. He should be able to inspect that forcemeat. How could an Italian know about such English matters as mincemeat and forcemeat? And indeed was there not something amiss here? He frowned, and restrained himself from rushing forward as he saw a young cook preparing to unmould a port jelly. No. He was here on a different matter: murder.

  ‘Signor Fancelli,’ he began firmly, ‘the young lady who helped wait at dinner yesterday evening—’

  ‘No,’ answered Fancelli defensively, waving him away as if sensing some kind of danger, ‘I no have anything to do with women.’

  Looking at his plump, unprepossessing figure, Auguste found this easy to believe; moreover the hierarchy of servants, and the chain of command, were clearly defined. The girl might well come under the jurisdiction of the housekeeper, Mrs Pomfret.

  ‘Have you seen her in the kitchen this morning? Is she on duty for breakfast?’

  Fancelli considered, one eye ostentatiously on the turkey even now being borne to an oven; he was clearly longing for an excuse to be free of this turbulent manager and back to what really mattered. In other circumstances Auguste might have sympathised.

  ‘No,’ Fancelli said at last, ‘I think no.’

  ‘Is she living in the hotel? Did you talk to her at all? She must have been in and out of the kitchens last night.’

  Fancelli’s dark eyes flashed. ‘I not remember. This is not my business,’ he cried, his arms lifted despairingly to some far-off god of cuisine in supplication. ‘One girl, one man – they are hands, Monsieur Didier. You know how it is,’ he added cunningly.

  Auguste did indeed know how it was. When dressed in black and white, they were simply part of a highly organised procession to supply food to tables, a cog in the performance of an art.

  ‘Is Christmas morning,’ Fancelli said rather pathetically, playing on the softening in Auguste’s eyes. ‘Is much to do.’

  It was plain that little more could be gained from remaining here at the moment. Consoling himself that he would be able to return to decorate his beloved boar’s head, and double-check that the horrible sight he had just seen was not what he suspected, Auguste set forth in search of Mrs Pomfret.

  A thin, severe-looking woman, she was hard at work in the linen room, young girls clad in print dresses scuttling in and out with their consignments, casting satisfyingly nervous glances at the unexpected arrival of the manager in their midst.

  He looked around, gratified. ‘May I compliment you, madame, on the excellent whiteness of your linen,’ then, hastily, in case this might be construed too personally, ‘sheets of incomparable glowing white.’

  ‘Reckitts,’ Mrs Pomfret informed him tersely, still suspicious of working, however temporarily, for a foreigner.

  ‘And experience, I’m sure, Mrs Pomfret.’

  ‘Thir—twenty years, sir,’ she informed him with pride. ‘I shouldn’t by rights be here, but Lady Gincrack pleaded, and I thought I’d oblige.’ She stood belli
gerently as if expecting attack. ‘So if there are any complaints—’

  ‘No, no. Very good of you to come,’ Auguste reassured her hastily. ‘I merely wished to find the maid who waited at table yesterday, and dropped the puréed chestnut cream.’

  ‘It isn’t my fault, Mr Didier, I’m sure. I didn’t choose these girls. Lady Gincrack did all that. Or her company did.’

  Never, never would Auguste get used to this ridiculous name. Why should not Maisie use her real name? His opinion of Maisie’s husband fell even further.

  ‘Yes, yes, I do not wish to upbraid her in any way,’ he hastily explained, ‘merely to –’ feverishly he searched his mind for an excuse – ‘speak to her about about – walking in the boar’s head procession.’

  Mrs Pomfret pursed her lips. Matters were getting out of control if flibbertigibbety young girls marched in processions giving themselves airs. Mr Didier had taken a fancy to her, that was clear. These Frenchies. She’d have to watch him. A housekeeper was responsible for the morals of the girls under her roof, and Mrs Pomfret was not one to shirk her duty.

  ‘She must be here somewhere, Mr Didier. She started at six. On the fires, of course; then at eight she was doing the teas with Bessie; then servants’ breakfast. Then dusting the drawing room, seeing how she’s a trained parlour maid, and the library.’

  The drawing room. Of course. She would be dusting and tidying before the guests entered for the ceremony of the Christmas tree later that morning, after church.

  At first he thought the room was empty. Then he realised it was not. Bella de Castillon peered round from the back of a Chesterfield.

  ‘Oh don’t go, Mr Didier,’ she told him as he immediately began to back out of the room. There was a certain look in her eye . . . ‘Do come in and talk to me.’

  Thus commanded, he must obey. It was against his better judgment, as a highly embarrassing episode had occurred after he returned from midnight service the previous evening. Bella had taken advantage of her husband’s preoccupation organising the arrival of whisky to demand seasonal greetings under the mistletoe. She was, she informed him, an authority on the sexual power of mistletoe; but he could not help observing she appeared even more interested in his own. Bella was so attractive, he would hardly have objected save that her husband was only temporarily engaged and might at any moment turn round. Further intriguing favours had been suggestively whispered in his ear. Still, seeing these could hardly be proffered at ten in the morning in a public drawing room, Auguste advanced, albeit cautiously.