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

  Leaving the capable (in her own inimitable way) Lizzie in charge, Auguste hurried back to his post to greet Will as he came offstage. How much he would have preferred to stay tutoring his raw assistant than to pursue a probably imaginary death threat, or hunt a wild-goose in the form of a probably non-present missing cross.

  He reached the dressing-room only to be physically swept aside at the door by a large lady in crimson whom he identified as Evangeline Yapp.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ she said coldly. ‘I believe I was here first.’

  In fact, it was merely her corseted bosom and outstretched arm that had arrived first but in any case both were immaterial.

  ‘I beg your pardon, madam, but I must be present.’ He gently pushed the arm aside and opened the door.

  Alarm leapt into Will’s face as he saw who was behind his guardian. ‘No,’ he cried, leaping up and backing away.

  ‘I regret, madam—’ Auguste turned to Mrs Yapp.

  ‘Nonsense,’ she said briskly, advancing so that Auguste could only go backwards, sandwiched between Will and her, or sidestep. In defence of duty he chose the former course. ‘Don’t you remember, Will, how well we got on?’ she asked soulfully. ‘Don’t you remember the props room at the Grand at Wigan?’

  ‘Happy memories, Evangeline,’ Will managed to stutter.

  ‘We shared our love and our art.’

  ‘Did we?’ Will clutched pleadingly at Auguste.

  ‘Mr Lamb is not well at present.’ Auguste began firmly to push forward, colliding with the S-bend corset, and forcing her to retreat backwards. With Will still clutching behind, he felt he was engaged in some exotic dance.

  ‘I have,’ she announced with dignity over Auguste’s shoulder, ‘cherished your memory.’

  ‘And I yours,’ Will gabbled, seeing the door within Auguste’s reach.

  A shriek of delight from Evangeline and Auguste was pushed bodily to one side, stumbling over the chair. ‘Oh, Will, I knew it. You care for me yet.’

  She threw her arms around him, pressing him to her chest. Regaining balance, Auguste rushed in to separate them and found himself enveloped into a galloping threesome as Evangeline tried to reach Will once more.

  ‘I love Mariella,’ Will wailed desperately.

  The flailing arms dropped. ‘Mariella?’ she repeated flatly.

  ‘She smells nice and she sings to me,’ Will explained happily, seeing a possible end once again in sight.

  ‘I can sing to you too,’ Evangeline offered hopelessly.

  ‘She has nice little dogs too,’ Will said eagerly. ‘I like little dogs. Not to eat of course, and not the bloodhound type, but little yappy things.’

  Evangeline left the room quietly, apparently defeated, and Auguste almost felt sorry for her. In fact she was seething with anger and planning her next move.

  ‘We are not yet open,’ Auguste cried, agonised at the banging on the door at a quite unreasonable hour on the Wednesday morning.

  ‘Mr Didier, you disappoint me. You really do.’

  A familiar voice. Auguste opened the door, and James Higgins strolled in.

  ‘This is an honour,’ Auguste greeted him somewhat cautiously, remembering his profession and other character traits from their previous meetings on a matter of Faberge eggs.

  ‘Likewise, I’m sure. Fancy your remembering me, Mr Didier. You get around, Cannes one time, Wapping the next. Mr Rose anywhere to be found?’

  ‘Not until this afternoon.’

  ‘Give him a message, then. Tell him he’s sniffing at the wrong tree. No dolly-shops. Jewellers is what he’s after. Restorers, repairers.’ This was accompanied by a heavy wink. ‘See what I mean?’

  ‘Not precisely, Mr Higgins.’

  Higgins sighed. ‘I do have to spell it out for you youngsters. Fakers, Mr D, makers of fakes.’

  ‘The Portuguese Embassy has suddenly got interested, Auguste,’ Egbert told him, now clad once more in his usual business suit. Edith had been much relieved. ‘Chatty, they were. And you know why? Because the cross hadn’t turned up at Lisbon. Not that that’s a surprise to us. The ship’s captain said the parcel never arrived – mind you, that’s what he would say if he decided to stab the courier and pinch the thing for himself. According to him, he was expecting it at three-thirty.’

  ‘Does His Majesty know yet?’

  Egbert fixed him with a look. ‘Solicitous, aren’t you, about His Majesty’s welfare?’

  Auguste went pink.

  ‘He took it badly,’ Egbert continued. ‘He was more upset than about losing it in the first place, if you ask me. I get the blame. Incompetence, he calls it, whereas the theft itself was an unfortunate mishap. At least on the Lisboa, he says, he would have known it was steaming back to safe hands, even if Portuguese. Now it could be in Petticoat Lane or the Winter Palace for all we know. The embassy have been told the cross was stolen, but was on its way to Portugal, was delayed, and will be with them soon. His Majesty orders me to stop it reaching them. Just like that.’

  ‘Told by whom?’

  ‘Sources, they say. It strikes me the Monarchist Trade Unionist, Dom Carlos and our Gracious Majesty, are getting ready to stick together and blame the police.’

  ‘You don’t think the cross will reach Portugal?’

  ‘It may reach Portugal, but not necessarily the King. The embassy admitted with some reluctance that there’s a group of powerful folk over in Portugal in favour of doing away with the monarchy by whatever means, and declaring a republic. The movement’s been growing quietly, and it isn’t going to go away. It would do a lot of good to their cause if they had Prince Henry’s cross. When it comes to making their big blow for power, to have the honour of Portugal in their tiny hands would be a help for popular support. If you ask me, that’s what’s put the wind up His Majesty – and what he meant by “anarchists” being behind the theft.’

  ‘But if, as you imply, the Republicans have stolen the cross, how did they come to know about the Royalist plan to steal the cross?’

  Egbert shrugged. ‘Double agents, probably.’

  ‘Then your task is hopeless, Egbert. The cross could be in Portugal by now. Think of all the shipping in the Limehouse basin alone which comes and goes with few questions asked.’

  ‘They may prefer to keep the cross safely in England if they aren’t in a position to strike for power for some years.’

  ‘Do you have a list of such people living here?’

  ‘Stitch is working on it. My money is still on this place. My nose tells me so – when it can get away from the stink of those blasted herrings.’

  ‘Our resident juggler?’ Auguste ignored the slight to the hand-picked fish he’d selected from Shadwell market.

  ‘Yes. Whatever the Assistant Commissioner says, I’m moving in on him.’

  ‘What did he say?’ Auguste asked, curiously.

  ‘He wouldn’t let me search this place, or the Gomez home.’ He frowned. ‘Too much of a political hot potato, he said. Too afraid they’d explode, you might say, like that lot.’ By their side was Frederick’s pile ready for the cans.

  ‘Higgins came here this morning. He gave you a lead. Fakers, he suggested.’

  Egbert’s eyes gleamed. ‘Royalists wouldn’t need a fake, nor would a straightforward thief. What does that tell us?’

  ‘The Republicans stole it, hoping to palm off the fake on Dom Carlos and keep the genuine one themselves?’

  ‘Right. You can do without your broilerman tonight, Auguste. I’ve other fish to fry.’

  ‘Egbert, have you mentioned my presence here to His Majesty?’Auguste tried to sound as offhand as he could.

  Egbert eyed him in gleeful amusement. ‘Going to be a bit of family upset, is there? No, I didn’t.’ He paused. ‘Not yet.’

  Auguste glared. Strictly speaking he was within the terms of his arrangement with his royal relative by marriage, since he was not being paid for his service as cook at the Old King Cole. Somehow, however, he felt His Majest
y would not be pleased that Cousin Tatiana’s husband was cooking eel pies for the Shadwell Mob.

  ‘And,’ Egbert picked up his thoughts, ‘he might not like to think you willingly chose to get mixed up with another murder.’

  Chapter Four

  Two nights survived, only four to go. Never had Saturday seemed such a long way off. Even the hope of the brave new world Auguste had envisaged, in introducing the less fortunate to a finer cuisine, had evaporated. The delights of eel were beginning to pall. Two nights at the Old King Cole had convinced him that change was not what was required. Mutton chops, herrings, and faggots were, and tempting sauces (save for his brilliant idea of placing tomato catsup at the tables) were eyed with suspicion and ignored. The smell of the frying was ingrained in his skin. No matter what he did, he greeted it in the morning on his arrival, it clung to him as a friend, and then accompanied him home to Queen Anne’s Gate – where it was ignominiously received by his staff to whom Auguste suspected he was an object of derision. It seemed to him that, despite the best endeavours of their new bath, the smell clung to his sheets and was there once more as faithful companion when he reawoke the next morning.

  Wednesday did not bode any fairer than its two predecessors. He had stoically endured his chef’s idea of breakfast, in the interest of his late dinner. When he summoned John to discuss this important subject, their thoughts had not run along the same lines.

  ‘I could leave out cold pie, sir.’

  ‘No doubt you could,’ Auguste had replied amiably, ‘but pies, John, are perhaps not your forte.’ This showed admirable restraint on his part. John’s pies were his own version of cannon-balls that sped to Auguste’s stomach and lodged there, awaiting surgical removal.

  ‘The Duke of Davenport praised my pies.’

  ‘I am not the Duke of Davenport.’

  ‘No, sir,’ John agreed, wholeheartedly.

  ‘My soup de Crecy, John. Then a fricassee. A—’

  ‘That’s foreign. I do English.’

  ‘Alas, not very well.’

  Battlelines had been drawn. Both sides smouldered. Auguste’s temper was not improved by the fact that the postcard he had expected from Tatiana had not arrived. She too was working, he reminded himself, although a sneaking voice inside him suggested that a week’s work at the Old King Cole could hardly be compared with a ten-day motoring event in France. One’s dedication to one’s art could only go so far.

  There was more to Auguste’s restlessness, however, than Tatiana’s absence. Although two nights had passed without incident, save for the raven, he could not rid himself of the knowledge that backstage old emotions had been stirred up by Will and Nettie’s return and that they were proving a catalyst to stirring dormant fires. Yet he felt powerless. In the eating-room a fog of war seemed to descend on him, making it difficult to think and difficult to act.

  Today Egbert was doggedly visiting, with Stitch’s help, as many of the East London fakers as he knew of, a task in which he could hardly expect Higgins’ active participation. He, Auguste, had been left to the delights of organising fish, meat and Lizzie. The latter too was proving more difficult a task than he had imagined.

  ‘I purchased lobster at the market this morning,’ he told her innocently. ‘I thought you might instruct me in lobscouse. It sounds a most fascinating dish.’

  Lizzie paused fractionally in her flying circuits of cellar and stoves. ‘Ere,’ she shouted, disappearing into the nether regions.

  ‘Where?’ Auguste hurried downstairs, expectant of seeing delightful pink lobsters newly emerged from cooking pots.

  ‘On the kitchener.’

  No pink lobsters. No fresh smell of fish. Cautiously he dipped in and tasted a spoonful. Baron Liebig’s product greeted him like an old familiar friend.

  ‘Lizzie, what is this, if you please?’

  She appeared proudly at his side. ‘Lobscouse, Mr D. Meat and vegetable mash. Good, ain’t it?’

  ‘Delightful in its way,’ he murmured grimly. ‘But it is hardly lobster. Furthermore, Lizzie, tomorrow I teach you to make a bourguignon,’ he promised. ‘Meat stew,’ he added firmly.

  ‘Cor,’ she said dutifully, but he suspected she was unimpressed. She whipped off her apron, and headed for the door.

  ‘Where are you going?’ he asked in surprise. Surely he had not offended her so quickly.

  ‘Get me pies, of course.’

  ‘Can’t they deliver?’

  ‘Mrs Jolly don’t need to deliver.’ With this cryptic utterance, she dashed outside, leaving Auguste to contemplate this other world of cooking. He had not yet tasted these pies, assuming they were Lizzie’s own work, but he could imagine all too fearfully their taste. They probably came from the same source as the abominations that adorned the cafés of London railway stations. Or perhaps John supplied them? He would show Lizzie what a real pie could taste like . . .

  At five-thirty, Auguste reluctantly abandoned his emergency transformation of kitchens and cuisine and took up his duties as Will’s protector. The backstage area was still deserted. He walked up the steps to the upper floor. Again, deserted, nothing but the stale smell of scenery and disused props. Near the window above the stage door, an indignant rustle reminded him that though human beings might not be present, the area was hardly devoid of life. In the large basket the beady eyes of the raven watched him. Its trainer, he had learned, left it here on his way home to tea from Jamrach’s, and came back in time for his turn. The raven and monkeys were spared the mad dash from hall to hall.

  ‘The raven himself is hoarse . . .’ No, it would surely have been no accident that the bird escaped at the very moment that Will was entering the Old King Cole. Someone had crept up here, opened the window, and unlocked the cage, all to warn Will Lamb. Ghosts, ravens, letters – someone was going to a lot of trouble to prevent Will Lamb from coming to harm. And with that good wish, Auguste was entirely in agreement, for after two days at the Old King Cole, murder did not seem as unlikely as it had at the Empire, Leicester Square.

  ‘You look tired,’ Nettie said bluntly, as Will climbed into the carriage. ‘Why did you want to come early?’

  ‘I’ve someone to see,’ he replied simply. ‘I’m not a bit tired, Nettie, really.’

  ‘Mariella, I suppose. Oh, Will, you are a fool.’

  He flushed and she was annoyed at having gone too far. She put her hand on his. ‘Don’t mind me, Will. I’ve got a lot on my mind.’

  ‘You’re not ill, Nettie?’ he asked anxiously. ‘I wouldn’t like that.’

  ‘Chronic disease, Will. Harry.’

  ‘Pickles?’

  ‘Our Pickles himself,’ she continued bitterly. ‘I’ve stopped his allowance, Will, so he’s not pleased with me.’ She tried to laugh, but failed.

  ‘Money,’ he agreed succinctly.

  ‘They all want it,’ she continued. ‘They never realise how hard we had to work for it, do they? Remember you told me you had to earn farthings doing the double shuffle to queues before I met you?’

  Will giggled, and kicked his feet appreciatively on the carriage floor.

  ‘And there was me wasting my and the audience’s time burbling about fairies in fairyland, till I realised what’s really wanted.’

  ‘What is that, Nettie?’ he asked curiously.

  ‘Me, me old darling. They want to devour me whole. Never satisfied.’ Her face was very serious. ‘And when they’ve gnawed away at me long enough, they’ll turn to someone else.’

  He looked despondent.

  ‘Not you, Will,’ she reassured him. ‘You’re different. But me, I’m a woman. Replaceable. Others will always come along. Dolly, for instance. She’ll do well when she stops being an innocent maid from the country and finds out what she’s really made of. By that time, I’ll be torn to bits between the audience and Our Loveable Pickles.’ She grimaced.

  ‘Don’t you love him any more, Nettie?’

  ‘Love him?’ she burst out, caught unawares. ‘Yesterday he forced
himself in on me, half strangled me, tore off my clothes and put his cock in me, Will. What do you think? Would you do that to Mariella? ’Course not. An old hen like me doesn’t matter, he says.’

  The instant she’d spoken she regretted it. Will had nothing to do with that kind of talk; he didn’t understand the kind of life it came from. She looked at him to see if she’d upset him. His eyes were blank for a moment. Perhaps he hadn’t understood what she meant, she thought hopefully. Then he opened his mouth to speak. What’s he going to say? Panic swept through her at the thought she might have pushed him over the edge again.

  But Will seemed to speak quite normally: ‘I usually get my pies from Mrs Scrawny Todd. Do you know Mrs Scrawny? You’d certainly know her pies again. She puts a lot in her pies, does Mrs Scrawny. I don’t know what Jack Sprat would have done, that’s his secret. I’ve got a secret too, I think it’s a secret anyway, it’s a nice one. About Mariella and me, Nettie.’

  Nettie went cold. What had that bitch been up to now? It had been a mistake to come back to the Old King Cole. She’d known it would be, and she’d been proved right. She should have talked Will out of it.

  ‘Not a nasty one,’ he was saying. ‘Not like you and Pickles. I don’t think I like Pickles now. I’ll tell him so when I see him, Nettie. Perhaps I’ll even tell him about Bill—’

  ‘Bill?’ she asked uncertainly.

  ‘Bill Terriss,’ he explained, surprised she could have forgotten. ‘Oh yes, I dreamed about him last night. Or did I see him? I forget. I went to lunch at Gatti’s today and he was there. Dressed in grey, as usual. Be careful, Will, said his voice. At least I think it was, or did I dream it? Oh I will, said Will, I will have only three dozen oysters, so I will. Moderation will prevail. I think it must have been a dream, for Mrs Jones said she cooked sausages for luncheon. But I’m so sure I did see him, Nettie. And heard him.’

  The carriage stopped outside the stage door of the Old King Cole. This time Nettie got out first — just in case. No raven appeared, nor the ghost of William Terriss, but Nettie shivered all the same. Auguste heard the carriage and came to the door to meet them. He saw Nettie, pale and trembling. Will was smiling happily, in a world of his own. Auguste sympathised here; he too was beginning not to know which was fantasy and which was fact. As Will came into the building though, his expression changed. He clung to Nettie’s arm, and when he glanced at Auguste there was deep fear on his face.