Murder At The Masque (17 page)

And what was Her Majesty going to say about all this? He trembled at the thought of the eagle eye, which would transfix him from the Royal Train as he dutifully lined up with other dignitaries on the Cannes railway station platform as her train passed through. And he trembled even more at the summons to Cimiez that would follow.

She’d already pinioned his movements by arranging a state visit by the President of the French Republic in April. ‘So that you may see how these things are done, Bertie,’ she
had informed him. Nonsense, she wanted to ensure that, once
again
, he didn’t enjoy a decent holiday.

Washington believed in the opposite approach, as in his batting tactics. When under threat, you hit out. Unfortunately Rose’s ball developed a spin that Washington hadn’t bargained for.

He glanced nervously around the public rooms of the Hôtel Gonnet. Since the hotel was full of nothing but talk of Westbourne’s death, it did him more good than otherwise to be seen talking to Rose and Auguste in the salon. Unfortunately he was Ibw straight away, through misunderstanding exactly where the inspector’s questions were leading.

‘I would hardly wish to murder Lord Westbourne on the strength of one day, Inspector,’ he tried to say easily. ‘Nor have I actually’ – he wondered how to phrase this— ‘in the circumstances made it
de facto
.’

‘Burglary, sir?’

‘Burglary?’ His face grew blank. ‘I thought you were referring to—’ He broke off.

‘I’m interested in a jewel thief who pinched six Fabergé eggs in London. What did you think I meant?’

Washington could hardly reply. He turned red, realising that he had been on the point of an unusual indiscretion.

‘I am a cricketer, sir. What do I know of burglary?’ The charming smile managed to reassert itself, seeming to ask how could anyone suspect such a gentleman.

‘Just routine, sir,’ Rose smoothed.

It transpired that Washington had been in England throughout the period of the robberies, and moreover had attended precisely those social functions that had been followed by the disappearance of the rubies.

When they had gone, Washington stared blankly into his future. He was at a crossroads. Where and what should he do? When they began making deeper inquiries . . .

As one artiste to another, Natalia Kallinkova was sympathising with Rachel Gray over
marrons crème
and
eclairs de chocolat
at Rumpelmayers where ladies gathered for afternoon tea. Rachel Gray was eyeing Natalia jealously, wondering just how she managed to consume these cream cakes and was still able to dance. She herself was inclined to the statuesque and her Platinum Anti-Corset took much of the credit for her elegant figure on stage.

‘This evening I cannot dine with you, alas. I dance,’ explained Natalia in between bites of chestnut cream.

‘I sympathise. I fortunately am resting,’ proclaimed Rachel in gravelly tones. In fact she had no choice.

‘How wise,’ Natalia cooed, knowing the situation perfectly well. Rachel Gray might be an outstandingly good actress but many actor-managers preferred to have a lesser actress and less temperament.

Natalia patted Mephistopheles, who wondered what had so revolutionised his life with so many outings. He slobbered over her foot in appreciation. The ladies had met apparently by chance. In fact it was a chance carefully engineered by Natalia. She was pondering how to introduce the subject of dress and the burning question of yesterday’s murder without descending to the obvious when Rachel Gray saved her the trouble.

‘I did so admire your dress yesterday, Kallinkova. Such a striking colour.’

‘Thank you, dear Miss Gray, and I yours. White was the colour, was it not?’ Natalia held her breath, Rachel was last on her list. Her knowledge of the vagaries of fashion had increased a hundredfold during her investigations.

‘Simplicity is best,’ Rachel nodded, gratified, ‘as Miss Bernhardt and Mrs Siddons found. Also my namesake, the Divine Rachel, was seen to best advantage in white. Purity of expression,’ she added.

‘And how bold and imaginative to wear to a cricket match,’ Natalia enthused. There was a pause as Rachel
wondered whether by any chance she had detected a slight note of sarcasm, but decided not, as Natalia’s face was so obviously exuding warmth and friendship.

‘Tell me,’ said Natalia, continuing confidentially woman to woman. ‘Do you think Lord Westbourne’s death is really connected with our eggs? That the robber is so unscrupulous that he would
murder
for them? And how, this is what terrifies me, how did this evil man know about our eggs?’

Rachel leaned forward eagerly. ‘That’s what puzzles me also. It is quite terrible. If Cyril ever found out about the Grand Duke . . . Of course, Igor merely gave it to me as a tribute to my genius,’ she added hastily.

‘Of course,’ murmured Natalia sympathetically.

‘But Cyril might misunderstand.’ Rachel paused. ‘I have my
admirers
, but Cyril knows they mean nothing to me. I would not like to think Cyril might come to know of Igor. He is so very quiet I never know what he is thinking . . .’

‘A treasure,’ put in Natalia infelicitously, for Rachel looked at her doubtfully.

‘He would do anything for me,’ she affirmed. ‘I have that knack of commanding devotion in people.’

Natalia looked suitably impressed. ‘Ah yes, that young Alfred.’

‘So sweet,’ murmured Rachel, uneasily thinking of his fervent declaration: ‘I’d do anything for you Rachel.
Anything
.’

Count Trepolov was bending lovingly over a hive when Rose and Auguste arrived, fingers hovering, trying not to yield to the temptation to open the hive yet again. It had been a mistake the other day, a false alarm, and incalculable harm might be done if it were again too cold. He rapped on the wood, and a pleasant hum inside told him all was well within. Lucky little bees.

Would that he had some such hive to creep to, some such
queen to worship, some such ordered existence to live. Soon he would have to return to St Petersburg to take up his duties yet again. By that time he would perhaps have won the hand of his lady; and by that time the pangs of love for Dora, Lady Westbourne, would surely have died. Meanwhile life was hollow. Even mead could not totally redeem it. His own mead, liquor of the gods, created from his own honey flavoured with the flowers of the Cannes hillsides.

‘Sir—’ His manservant was ushering out that English policeman and someone else. One of the kitchen servants, he recalled, and apparently now interpreter.

‘You are a policeman,’ he accused Rose.

‘Yes, sir, and investigating the theft of rubies and the death of Lord Westbourne.’

‘And why you come to see
me
?’

‘Just a formality, sir.’ He was getting tired of this phrase. ‘As you were in England at the time of the robberies, and present yesterday, we just have to ask for an account of where you were, in case the two things are connected.’

‘Me? A
burglar
.’ A rare smile crept over Trepolov’s lips, but it did not reach his eyes, Auguste noticed. ‘This is very funny. You think I am a burglar and I kill Lord Westbourne for
that
?’ He went off into a peal of laughter till an angry buzzing from within the hive recalled him to his senses. ‘Bees do not like upsets,’ he said to Rose reproachfully.

Not only bees, thought Rose warily, edging away from the buzzing. A Londoner, bees were no different from wasps in his view. ‘What were you doing in London, sir?’

Trepolov looked startled. ‘I was in London because there is no point being here in February.’

‘Why’s that, sir? The weather?’

‘The
bees
.’ The man was a fool. ‘There is nothing to do in February, but in March and April in Cannes the bee year begins. So of course I must be here.’

‘Did you see the dagger lying on its salver during the tea break yesterday?’

‘I waited for the Grand Duke to come back to discuss tactics. I see it in his hand.’

‘But not after that?’

‘
Non
,’ he said abruptly.

‘You went out to the field with the Grand Duke?’

‘Yes. No.’ He changed his mind belatedly. ‘With the Comte de Bonifacio. First I go to the
cabinet de toilette
.’ He looked at them defiantly as though they would deny a man the right to such freedom.

‘Did you know Lord Westbourne – and Lady Westbourne?’

Count Trepolov stood up. ‘I am a man of honour, Inspector.’

His eyes strayed wistfully to the hives. Bees were so much less complicated than human beings. ‘I have no interest in Lord Westbourne,’ he said fiercely. ‘Or Lady Westbourne,’ even more fiercely. ‘I like only
honey
.’

Alfred Hathaway was lying fidgeting on the chesterfield, toying with an ode and trying to feel ill after his exertions of yesterday. Instead he found to his consternation that the idea of a brisk ride to the Mauvarre pine forest didn’t seem at all a bad idea.

His health, however, underwent a severe setback when Inspector Rose arrived. Apart from yesterday, he had last seen the inspector at the Café Royal during the unfortunate days of its dominance by Mr Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas. In those days he was a young aspiring poet from a middle-class home and he hadn’t had the least idea that there was anything strange about their behaviour. He had thus been forced to hide his ignorance, which ill became a bohemian poet, when the trial burst upon a horrified society. By association he blushed in Rose’s presence.

Burglaries? He was a poet, he told the inspector with some dignity, though in fact flattered at the idea. ‘Alas, I do not have the health,’ he cried, ‘to climb drainpipes, Inspector.’

Remembering his performance of yesterday, Rose was not so convinced. ‘Where were you after the tea break, sir?’

Alfred smiled in happy recollection. ‘I worshipped at the feet of an angel.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Mrs Tucker, the divine Rachel—’ he breathed. ‘Who would not worship such a creature? They speak of Mrs Patrick Campbell. She is nothing compared with Rachel Gray – You meaner beauties of the night/Where are you when the sun doth rise?’ he intoned somewhat inaccurately.

‘And you were with this angel – er – Mrs Tucker from the tea break on?’

‘Who could forsake the divine Melpomene?’ he inquired. ‘She did, I recall, leave me for a few moments.’

‘Why would that be?’

‘I did not inquire the reason.’ He blushed again. ‘I assumed it to be a visit to – ah – the ladies’ retiring room.’

‘But you felt no such desires?’ Blow me if I’m not falling into the way of speech, thought Rose.

‘Before I joined her,’ Alfred announced unhappily, whether because of awareness that this admission brought him within the ranks of possible murderers of Lord Westbourne, or because of some obscure feeling that poets should have no such earthly needs was not clear.

‘
Maman, Papa
, Inspector Egbert Rose.’ Auguste presented his guest with pride.

Madame Didier seemed uncertain whether or not to curtsy, but something in Egbert Rose’s face convinced her that shaking hands, albeit diffidently, would suffice.

‘My pleasure, ma’am – sir. I hope I don’t intrude.’ They both rushed to deny that any friend of Auguste’s at any time could possibly be said to be an intruder. Their home was his.

‘My son has told us of your work in London. That you are a great policeman like
Monsieur le Préfet Lépine
,’ offered Monsieur Didier.

Rose smiled to himself at just what the Commissioner would say to one of his humble inspectors being rated alongside the famous Lépine of the Paris police, and settled down to enjoy his visit. Hands folded primly in laps, the Didiers regarded this strange beast from England while Auguste interpreted.

‘I’m English myself,
monsieur
,’ announced Madame Didier with pride, ‘though it is many years since I have been there. I was born in Lewisham.’

‘I know it well, ma’am. I was born in Blackheath myself.’

‘Fancy that. Almost next door,’ said Madame Didier, well pleased. ‘Auguste has told you no doubt that I was at the Thatched House Tavern,’ she added with pride.

‘He did indeed, ma’am. Under the great Richard Dolby.’

‘Oh Auguste. How could you? He never listens, that’s his trouble, Inspector. I expect you’ve noticed that,
monsieur
. It was my
mother
who worked in the kitchen there at the time he created his great recipes. I always tried to teach Auguste to cook from Mr Dolby’s recipes. Jumbles, Mr Rose.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Jumbles,’ she repeated. ‘How Auguste used to love them as a little boy. Auguste, I used to say, you’ll have to be a cook when you grow up – no one else could keep up with your appetite!’

‘I know what you mean, ma’am,’ said Rose gravely, enjoying himself immensely at the sight of Auguste’s embarrassed face.

‘After the Thatched House I went to a castle,’ she confided to Rose. ‘And there I met Auguste’s
papa
. He had come to work in an English garden for experience in Cannes, you see.’

Papa
said something to her and her face grew turned pink.

‘And he took back the fairest rose to France,’ translated Auguste for Egbert’s benefit.

‘Auguste tells us,’
Maman
said doubtfully, ‘that he is employed as a cook in London.’

‘He cooks the odd dish from time to time. Not bad,’ said Rose kindly.

‘It is true we have trained him,’ said Monsieur Didier hesitantly, ‘but still he will make the
brandade sans l’ail. Incroyable
!’

‘What’s he say, Auguste?’ asked Rose, as Auguste angrily riposted to this slur.

‘No matter,’ muttered Auguste.

‘You can tell your father, Auguste, that I say you’re a top chef and that I didn’t know what eating was till I met you.’

Auguste did so, while his parents beamed, though
Papa
was slightly hesitant that he might have mistranslated.

‘Of course in London we don’t take food so seriously as you do here,’ said Rose wistfully, gulping slightly. The Hôtel Paradis’s mutton cutlets
à la provençale
– eaten too late at night – were too rich a fare not to have effects.