Murder At The Music Hall: (Auguste Didier Mystery 8) Read online

  ‘What?’

  ‘My mutton-chop broiler.’

  A split second for Egbert to take this in. ‘I don’t cook,’ he said flatly.

  ‘Then I cannot detect.’

  ‘Nobody asked you to.’

  ‘You will, Egbert, you will.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I fear another murder.’

  Chapter Three

  Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps the fresh morning air would clarify the butter, distinguish fantasy from fact, and there was no menacing threat lurking in the shadows. Perhaps Egbert’s quest to track down the missing cross would lead him far away from the Old King Cole. Perhaps he, Auguste, could be left quietly to enjoy the pleasures of the Shadwell riverside fish market at dawn. True, this was not one of those autumn mornings about which Keats had waxed so lyrical, but the air was full of early promise. Dockers and other workers hurried to their various destinations with a purposefulness lacking as days wore on, delivery boys were already cycling by with loaded baskets, and wayside vendors of toffee and watercress were zealously taking up their positions. In the market he was happy, surrounded by the wonders of the deep. Or, in this case, the Thames. Auguste eyed the silvery bodies of eels, no doubt fished from the river with forks by the urchins scooting around the fringes of this workplace. They seemed a vastly different species from the colourless grey flab that adorned the menu of the Old King Cole. Everywhere he looked lay the glories of river and sea. Ah, what wonders of gastronomy he could show Lizzie if duty did not call. No doubt at this very moment she was plunging those ladies’ legs into their pickling marinade, whereas a matelote . . . As soon as his choice was made, conscience hastened his step briskly back towards the Old King Cole.

  Tatiana, after all, was away from home. When she was there, life crackled and sizzled like caramelising sugar. It bubbled with laughter like champagne. Without her it was as dull and flat as overcooked cod. On the other hand, the Old King Cole was not without its lighter side; after all, today he would be teaching Egbert to cook. Furthermore, he was here for only six days and for one of those at least Will had survived. Did that mean his fears were groundless? On the surface, the Old King Cole was what it seemed, yet at the very least the jovial image presented on stage and that backstage were markedly different. He had perceived no unity or warmth backstage, merely a group of performers going about their individual business. What heat there was was caused by jealousy and suspicion, not mutual admiration.

  Fame was a double-headed monster: it attracted, it repelled. Moths danced round its bright light, but they were creatures of the night with all night’s mysterious secrets. Will Lamb might have a simplicity that would take him like an arrow through life, but what might lie in wait in the undergrowth along his golden path?

  Auguste laughed at himself for his high-flown sentiments, as Lizzie quickly brought him down to earth as soon as he walked in.

  ‘I cooked him a negg,’ she told Auguste with pride, jerking her thumb at a slightly more human-looking Egbert, still clad in down-at-heel garb.

  ‘A good ’un too,’ Egbert commented approvingly, to Lizzie’s gratification.

  ‘Load of fish just arrived, Mr D,’ she sang out, as she galloped down the stairs to her basement kingdom. ‘Nearly slung it away,’ came her now disembodied voice.

  Surely a jest? Auguste rushed down to inspect his precious delivery. In their boxes, without the company of their fellows, he was forced to admit his prize purchases spoke a little less of ambrosia to come and a little more of hard work.

  ‘What’s this?’ Lizzie came up to peer under his shoulder and poked curiously at a strange specimen. ‘Cor, it’s all slimy.’

  ‘Slimy it may be, Lizzie, but it is a John Dory, distinguished by, legend says, St Peter’s thumbprint, to which you have now added your own.’

  ‘Who’s John Dory?’

  ‘It is said it derives from the Italian janitore, meaning the gatekeeper of heaven, St Peter. Or,’ Auguste explained eagerly, anxious to instruct this keen new pupil, ‘from a gentleman’s name allotted to a fictitious plaintiff in a case of law.’

  ‘How many fishes come up before the beak?’

  ‘About as many as the paltry number of dishes we will produce at our present rate of working.’

  Lizzie grinned, burst into ‘Whoa, Nellie, don’t you go too far’ and plunged into a large tub of unappetising slime which he identified with difficulty as eel and onions.

  Torn between the attractions of improving the cuisine of Wapping and his rival duties to Egbert and Will Lamb, it was with some reluctance that Auguste led Egbert on a tour of the glories of the Old King Cole music hall an hour later. Egbert had dutifully turned up in his oldest suit, and a cap. Edith had not been impressed. Auguste led the way to the rear door of the eating-room that led into the entrance hall of the music hall. He averted his eyes from tables that would have to be hauled much further up the ladder towards cleanliness before he would open the doors for custom. Each should, he resolved, have a cloth laid on it, adeem cloth. And suppose, he wondered, each table were to be adorned with a dish of lemon catsup – no, not lemon, tomato. His old maître Escoflfier would throw up his hands with horror at the abominable principle of any food properly prepared requiring such additions, but French cuisine was not English. Pungent tomato catsups would spice even eel and onion pie, or mutton chops, or faggots, or black pudding?

  ‘Not quite the Galaxy, is it?’ Egbert commented, faced with the backstage delights of the music hall, and remembering a similar tour years ago of the famous Strand musical-comedy theatre.

  ‘Nor its stars as fair as the Galaxy Girls,’ Auguste agreed. Still with its primitive gas lighting, and at the moment dark, the working area backstage was bleak, shorn even of the life provided by its constant stream of hot sweaty bodies. To provide a dressing-room each for Nettie and Will, two of the cubby-hole props rooms had been unceremoniously stripped of their lumber and provided with tables and shabby mirrors. A brave attempt at welcome in each room had been made with a Union Jack stuck in a coronation mug. The communal dressing-rooms at the back of the theatre were even starker. As Egbert peered in, his eye was met by a welter of old clothes, spare costumes, a few personal possessions and one small fireplace that gave no hint that it ever contained a fire, certainly not in late September.

  ‘Of course,’ Auguste said almost defensively, ‘these are not dressing-rooms as in a theatre. Artistes with several engagements a night often come ready-costumed.’

  Egbert ran his finger down the crack in the washing bowl. ‘I don’t see a silver cross hiding amongst this lot.’

  ‘Nor I a murderer.’

  ‘My cross and your mythical murderer, Auguste, have as much in common as herrings and mutton chops, that’s my feeling. The cross was pinched last Saturday, and Will Lamb’s threatening letters began over a week ago.’

  ‘The theft too must have been planned, mon ami. There is as much link as between the dead body in Nightingale Lane and the cross.’

  ‘I’ve got a garnet.’ There was belligerence in Egbert’s voice.

  ‘And I a raven.’

  Egbert stumbled over a coil of rope left lying in the wings, and cannoned into a flat depicting an Ascot race meeting. ‘I misjudged you once before, Auguste, so I won’t do it again, but sometimes a chop turns out to be a chop.’

  Auguste could not resist temptation. ‘When I have instructed you, you will realise a chop is a work of art.’ Then seeing Egbert’s face, hurriedly returned to business: ‘On what did Ma Bisley base her information?’

  ‘I went to see her again to find out, since she can’t write. No more than that the cross had something to do with the Old King Cole. Someone at the Three Tars thought he’d seen the chap who gave him his job and that it was at this music hall.’

  ‘Performer or audience?’

  ‘More likely to be performer, if he was recognised.’

  ‘Why murder the man, after he has delivered the cross?’

  ‘He could
identify the villain.’

  ‘The villain didn’t seem anxious to conceal his identity when he and his companion walked into Windsor Castle and bluffed their way out with the cross.’

  ‘Hell and Tommy.’ It was strong language for Egbert, who had walked into another obstacle. This one had sharp corners.

  ‘That’s Mariella’s fish tank.’ Auguste hurried to steer him to safety. ‘It’s kept in this corner, I understand, wheeled on to the stage and re-filled weekly.’

  ‘That’s the woman you tell me Will Lamb’s sweet on?’

  ‘Yes. A very—’ Auguste paused, ‘seductive lady. With a Portuguese husband.’

  ‘Oh-ho.’

  ‘Perhaps oh-oh, Egbert, perhaps not. Thieves are not bound by national flags, as you know. They form a world-wide brotherhood.’

  ‘Brotherhood or not, I’ll start with a word with that gentleman.’

  ‘Will he wish to have a word with a broiler of mutton chops?’

  Egbert looked sourly at him, and then down at his scruffy attire, partly covered by an ancient apron provided by Lizzie from the previous cook’s rag-bag.

  ‘If he don’t, I’ll have to turn myself from frog to prince. It might put a spoke in your murderer’s wheel too – if he exists.’

  ‘But it would drive the cross far away, even if it is not on the Lisboa.’

  ‘If it’s still on the premises. But that’s not likely, even if the villain’s still here. Twitch is covering all the fences but I don’t expect much from that. The cross couldn’t be sold to the usual mob.’

  ‘Maybe it will merely be suppressed to ensure it doesn’t reach the Portuguese royal family.’

  ‘You mean till after the King of Portugal has come and gone, and probably after our Edward’s visit there next April. But then what? Send it back in a neat parcel done up with string and sealing wax to Windsor Castle?’ Egbert shook his head. ‘Unlikely.’

  ‘Was His Majesty at the Castle when the cross was taken?’

  Egbert snorted. ‘A Saturday morning in September? Why be at Windsor, when he can be banging a gun at Sandringham? Oddly enough, he was at Buck Palace for once. It was one of the equerries got taken in by our villains, and I wouldn’t give much for his having a job for life. Both these so-called representatives from the Portuguese court, incidentally, were bearded, one short, one tall, one on the young side, one a lot oldish.’

  ‘It sounds like a scene from an E. Phillips Oppenheim novel,’ Auguste observed. ‘Egbert, does His Majesty know of your suspicions that the cross is still here?’

  Rose fixed him with an eagle look. ‘He does. I couldn’t leave it till the Lisboa docks, could I, and then say, Oh yes, I forgot to tell you I found a corpse and deduced the cross might not be aboard after all.’

  ‘Was he – er – put out?’

  ‘He was.’

  ‘Oh.’ Auguste rapidly considered his own position, as cousin by marriage to His Majesty. A remote cousin, but not so remote that the royal eye was not carefully upon him.

  Egbert grinned evilly.

  Nettie Turner, in flowing tea-gown, sailed crossly into the drawing-room of her Islington home, summoned from her afternoon sleep by her housekeeper. She stopped short, far from pleased at the identity of the visitor awaiting her. ‘What are you doing here, Harry?’

  ‘Just visiting, Mrs Pickles. Looking round, as you might say. Nice place.’ Harry Pickles did not bother to get up to greet his wife, remaining sprawled on the Chesterfield.

  ‘Mrs Pickles!’ she snorted. ‘How did I land up with a name like that?’

  ‘Very willingly, if I recall, darling.’ He carefully lit the light in his eye in the old attractive way. It failed to attract her now. ‘Heavy night last night, eh?’

  ‘Play the fool on stage, Harry, not here.’

  ‘It used to be me played your lead, not Will.’

  ‘I was the fool then. No fool like an old fool, Harry, and you took the last laugh in the form of a hefty allowance. To keep away.’

  ‘Most generous of you, darling. Mind you, I could do with more.’

  ‘Push off.’

  He came close to her, but she stood her ground.

  ‘Why should I? Your chum Will ruined my life.’

  ‘Some days Brodie did, some days Will did. You ruined your own life, Harry, by being too bone-idle to create one.’

  ‘Poor old cuckolded husband. There’d be lots of sympathy for me, if I divorce you.’

  ‘You’re crazy.’ There was a note of uncertainty in her voice though.

  He caught it. ‘Am I? Perhaps I don’t want a divorce, eh? You’re a fine woman still.’ He ran his hand over her chiffon-covered bottom. She removed it. He caught both her hands savagely, bearing her down on the sofa.

  ‘Get off me, Harry,’ she said evenly.

  He laughed in triumph. ‘I’m your loving husband, Nettie. You can’t stop me.’

  ‘Loving?’ She laughed in his face. ‘You’ve got as much idea of love as a motorcar piston. In out, in out. Snore.’

  His face darkened, strengthening his grip till it bruised her. ‘Will Lamb’s better, is he?’

  ‘Will?’ She didn’t give an inch. ‘Than a Sabbath to the devil.’

  ‘The devil still has the best tunes, Nettie,’ he leered. ‘See how you like singing to this one.’

  He yanked up her skirts, pinioning her arms with them, forcing her head into the corner of the sofa, lying sprawled across her. She wasn’t going to shout for help, show fear, have the maids rushing in to rescue her. Not Nettie Turner, darling of the masses. So she endured it, the touch of him on her, in her, the smell of drink-sodden breath stifling her. When it was over and he relaxed his hold, she sent him sprawling on to the floor with one kick, pulled on her clothes again and fought for calmness.

  ‘No more money, Harry. Not a penny. Blackmail me all you like.’ But for all her brave words, her fears about the coming week doubled.

  Egbert Rose opened the door of Wapping’s Seamen’s Rest pub. Behind the bar publican (and fence) James Higgins did not pause in his rapt contemplation of the beer glass he was studying at close quarters, as though cleanliness were his greatest preoccupation in life.

  ‘What can I get you, sir?’ he asked politely. Already his clientele, hardly fooled by Rose’s clothes, began quietly to edge away. Fortunately Higgins was respected by both sides – up to a point.

  ‘A silver—’

  ‘It’ll be a pleasure, sir,’ Higgins cut smoothly across. ‘Muriel,’ he yelled stridently. ‘Egbert wants a few words with us.’

  ‘What have you been doing, love?’ he asked loudly. Muriel, in battered blouse and black skirt, came sedately up the stairs from the cellar, and led the way to their private sanctum without a word.

  ‘Handled any old relics recently, Higgins?’

  ‘Only Muriel, sir,’ was the jovial reply.

  Muriel tittered. ‘What had you in mind, Mr Rose?’

  ‘A silver cross with ivory figure surrounded by precious stones, mainly garnets.’

  ‘That does sound pretty,’ Muriel observed. ‘I don’t recall anyone wearing anything like that, do you, James? Mrs Fry, her from Number Eight, was wearing a nice one last week, mind you.’

  ‘Ever heard of Miguel Gomez?’

  ‘He’s a juggler on the halls,’ Muriel informed him, as if anxious to be of help.

  ‘Ever met him?’

  ‘Nah.’ Higgins pulled his Newgate whiskers thoughtfully. ‘Nor heard a whisper, if you takes my meaning.’

  ‘I do, Higgins, I do. I’ll make it worth your while.’

  ‘Worth our while doing what?’ Higgins appeared puzzled.

  ‘Ah well, must have come to the wrong place,’ Rose said loudly, as Higgins rose to open the door.

  ‘Where may I reach you, sir?’

  ‘The Old King Cole.’

  Higgins guffawed. ‘Oh dearie me. How are the mighty risen.’

  ‘Come to the kitchen and complete your merriment.’

  ‘I
t’ll be a pleasure, sir.’

  ‘You’re here early, Will.’ Mariella posed on the threshold of the small dressing-room. She had insisted to Miguel that they should be here before the performance started this evening. She needed to be ready.

  ‘Nettie isn’t very well. She’s coming later. I came on my own,’ Will told Mariella proudly, jumping up eagerly to greet her.

  ‘Oh.’ Mariella brushed this insignificant statement aside, as well as the lock of red hair that had conveniently fallen from its perch on her head. How he loved her hair, its softness, the way it gleamed. She was like the loveliest fairy on the Christmas tree. ‘I’ve brought it, Will,’ she breathed huskily, closing the door behind her, and coming close to him. Attar of roses filled his nostrils and happiness his entire body. She pushed the package into his hands.

  ‘It’s only a few days now, and then—’

  ‘I know. We’ll go over the hills and far away.’ He put his arms round her adoringly, and she pushed her body, already costumed in its slight attire (apart from the mermaid’s tail) against him to afford him the infinite pleasure of her whole shapely figure – though she doubted if he appreciated it.

  ‘I’m so happy, Will,’ she told him softly. ‘Very, very happy. You’ll look after me, won’t you?’

  ‘I will, Mariella. Words are funny, aren’t they? I will . . . that’s my name. I will.’ He said it over to himself several times, lost in his other world.

  ‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way, darling.’ She smiled indulgently. ‘That’s another joke. You’ve always been so generous to me. You haven’t changed your mind, have you? It’s been a long time, and we haven’t seen each other as often as I would have liked. I dared not. I couldn’t. Miguel’s so jealous. But now I’ve had enough of him. He wants to take all Auntie’s jewellery away from me.’

  ‘Nothing’s changed, Mariella.’

  ‘You won’t tell Miguel what we’re planning, will you? Or about the jewellery?’