Murder Under The Kissing Bough: (Auguste Didier Mystery 6) (23 page)

It was a suggestion worth following up, but, after sending Ma back last in the growler, Rose returned to the hotel from Smithfield disgruntled and more overtly worried than Auguste had ever seen him. ‘Like looking for a needle in a haystack. Might have been around, might not. Plenty of places where an out of work chef could doss down for the night and no one take any notice. I’ve left a sergeant there making enquiries, while we get on this end. I’m going to turn this place over from top to bottom, including all your guests’ rooms again.’

A faint cry of protest from Auguste was cut off as he realised both its futility and its injustice.

‘What are you looking for?’ was all he managed to say with comparative calmness.

‘Listen, Auguste, one of these guests of yours is probably a murderer and would-be assassin – unless we think Fancelli is operating on his own.’

‘
Non
. He would not have worked here in that case, he would not have chosen the time he did to murder the girl since they were both sleeping on the premises, and most of all, Egbert, he would not have put the body in the chest!’

‘Reasons,’ Rose shot at him.

‘It could not have been coincidence that that chest was chosen. It had to be someone who was present when the chest was used for the jest by the Misses Pembrey.’

‘Right.’ Rose fell silent, ruminating.

‘Why otherwise would he take this job in the first place? And I do not understand why a job of such magnitude,’ Auguste burst out, aggrieved, still shocked at such neglect of duty. ‘Why not apply to be a footman, a dustman, anything, merely a delivery man, if assassination is his real trade. Wages, after all, cannot be material if Fancelli’s mission is political.’

‘We’ll get him,’ said Rose soothingly. ‘And the villain behind him. My men are going to turn over every inch of this place,
now
.’

‘What shall I tell the guests?’

‘Tell them what you like,’ said Rose impatiently.

‘The truth,’ said Auguste mournfully.

Those of the guests that had remained in the hotel for a quiet morning were gathered in the drawing room. They were not pleased at being herded unceremoniously out of their rooms or from billiard and smoking room to sit under the eagle eye of a nervous police constable while Rose and Twitch proceeded to examine their most intimate belongings once again.

‘Damned odd ideas you have of Christmas games,’ snarled Carruthers. ‘Dalmaine and I were in the middle of most important discussions on Wellington’s eighteen-pounders.’

Thérèse and Marie-Paul returned from a morning outing that had precluded the Baroness from kitchen duties and cast the fate of luncheon into the inexperienced hands of John. They, too, were far from amused to find themselves hustled into the drawing room.

‘I must say,’ said de Castillon, standing shoulder to shoulder over this with Sir John, ‘that diplomatic status seems to count for extremely little nowadays. I demanded immunity from the Inspector and am told it has been refused after consultation with the Ambassador. I am not even permitted to leave to consult the Embassy.’ He glared at Auguste.

‘I am sure when you know the reason, sir, you will agree this is the only course. Today is the first of January. As you know, in two days’ time precisely the Prince of Wales will greet Field Marshal Roberts at Paddington. We have every reason to believe it is there that the attempt will be made upon the Prince’s life, an attempt,’ he added amidst the sudden silence, ‘orchestrated
at least in part by one of yourselves.’

Auguste had had experience of making such speeches before in similar circumstances but rarely one that brought in its wake such an atmosphere of menace. He looked at the faces surrounding him, emotions varying from curiosity and bewilderment to anger and outrage.

Bowman was the first to speak.

‘You think one of
us
has something to do with it?’ His face bulged. ‘Good God, I’m British. Why should I want to murder poor old Bertie?’

This, amid shrieking from Gladys, chattering excitement from the twins, Auguste adroitly managed to avoid answering as he slipped out to join Egbert Rose.

He found him in Bella’s room gloomily regarding a display of lingerie that owed little to Dr Jaeger’s adamant instructions for the wearing of sanitary wool next to the skin. The young constable with him was clearly overcome by the array of lace-trimmed garments and silk stockings. Auguste averted his eyes, for the perfume emanating from the drawer brought back all too vividly the events of two nights previously.

‘Distasteful sort of job, eh?’ said Rose at last. ‘If you don’t find something to make it worthwhile, you wonder what you’re doing after a while, rifling through this sort of stuff.’ He had a private and irreverent image of Edith in this lacy red corset, and hastily put it to one side.

Auguste accompanied Rose into Miss Guessings’s room, whose spare Swanbill Bandalette definitely did not boast red lace.

The other rooms produced equally little of interest, save some fascinating sidelights on human nature: the Misses Pembrey’s collection of objects destined to terrify, amuse and repulse their fellow beings; Marie-Paul’s addiction to adorning her face with powders and
cream; her mistress’s almost total absence of anything save essentials; the Colonel’s walking stick that turned out to be a sword stick, Dalmaine’s surprisingly exciting choice of expensive sock suspenders and waistcoats, Bowman’s supply of interesting literature, by anonymous writers.

‘Anything strike you, Auguste?’ Rose enquired.

‘
Non
,’ answered Auguste glumly.

‘No guns. No bombs. How’s our fellow proposing to kill the Prince?’

‘Fancelli would have the gun,’ Auguste pointed out.

‘Twitch—’ On cue the door was flung open and a self-important sergeant stood there.

‘I think you’ll be interested in something upstairs, sir,’ he announced smugly in his moment of glory. He waved Auguste’s master set of keys triumphantly.

They followed him up to the top attic floor where he proceeded to unlock the communicating door leading to the unused attic rooms on the east side. He grandiosely flung the door of one of them wide open. ‘There, sir,’ he announced.

Maisie’s cleaners had not bothered with unneeded rooms. The dust of ten years adorned the cheap shabby wardrobe, the bedframe, an old chest, battered corded trunk, the single chair. All testimony to a room that had once been home for someone, thought Auguste.

Twitch had no time for sentimentality, eager to point out his finds. ‘See this, sir? Now we know where Fancelli spent last night, don’t we? A razor and strop. Shavo shaving cream, soap and bowl. Had this all planned, ’e did.’

‘Nothing else, though,’ observed August. ‘No spare clothes. And how did he get in through the locked door?’

‘There’s his spare pair of braces,’ Twitch pointed out defiantly. ‘And it’s easy enough to pick a lock.’ He
wasn’t going to have the Frenchie doing him out of his hour of glory.

‘Probably has the rest of his belongings tucked away somewhere. Left luggage store, perhaps,’ he suggested grandly.

Rose was examining the mattress. ‘Someone’s slept on this all right. No dust. Well done, Sergeant Stitch.’

‘Now we’ve found Fancelli’s hiding place, we know his partner’s right here – among
his
guests.’ Twitch gave Auguste a smug and far from loving look, as though the guests had been personally selected by him.

‘He’s right,’ said Rose. ‘You best stay with them, Auguste, on all their visits. I suppose we can’t keep them locked up here,’ he added a little wistfully, ‘but at least you can make sure none of them slips away. Sergeant Stitch and I will get back to the Factory.’

He might almost as well have added, ‘Where the real work’s done,’ thought Auguste despondently, as he trailed down to luncheon. So much for Didier, the great detective. Always before, food had played a part in inspiring him to the heights of detection. Now he had been miraculously restored to his beloved kitchen, only to be snatched away again. He was bereft of all that made his mind work best – Egbert and food both gone. True, he should still be able to reason, but he needed the constant stimulation of the art of cuisine. Without it, he was as arid and dull as a pheasant without its casserole, a boiled fish without its sauce, a pudding without its crust. So convinced was he of his diagnosis that when he remembered that there had been no gun in the room Fancelli had been using, he dismissed it as unimportant. Which was a pity.

Auguste’s announcement had somewhat dampened the frisson that the proposed afternoon’s tour round the great private mansions of Hyde Park and St James’s
had previously caused. The prospect of viewing the valuable possessions of the richest in the land was definitely overshadowed by the news that one of their party was, according to the police, about to despatch the richest himself for ever. Nevertheless, the visit was well attended, with Thérèse joining the group after Auguste had told her, putting duty before dinner, that arrangements were well in hand. She had not in fact enquired after dinner, seeming far more interested in hearing graphically with many embellishments from the twins that they too were under suspicion of murder and would-be assassination.

‘Bah!’ she remarked in derision, casting a scornful look at the two police constables who stolidly accompanied them, making a brave pretence that they were as fascinated by Rubens’s design for the coronation of Maria de Medici as their flock at least should be. Having privately applied to the Duke of Sutherland for admission to Stafford House, they were again the only party there, which was perhaps as well. Some of its members had matters on their minds more pressing than the charms of its Tintorettos.

‘Who would want to murder the Prince?’ asked Eva of Thomas in a high voice, intended to reach her neighbours.

‘The Boers,’ answered Gladys in hushed tones. Then, ‘Oh, I forget, you are one, aren’t you?’ she added brightly. Then she went brick red: ‘Not that anyone would think that you—’

‘Eva is a very,
very
distant relation of ex-President Kruger,’ answered Thomas hastily. ‘And now she has the honour to be a Harbottle, I take it you don’t feel the Harbottles have turned traitor?’

‘Why not?’ asked Bowman cheerfully, casting a passing glance at ‘Lord Stafford on his way to the Scaffold’. ‘The best heads in Britian used to land up in
baskets. Or butts of wine. The British admire a chap with a spot of individuality.’

‘I take it,’ Harbottle’s slight figure tried to bring centuries of British hauteur to this nouveau riche parvenu, ‘you are not implying I am a traitor to Her Majesty, that I have plans to assassinate the Prince?’

The words fell into a sudden silence in the group as they turned to look at him. Harbottle flushed red: ‘I wonder if you are aware,’ he announced loudly, ‘that this Correggio is said to have hung as an inn sign near Rome on the Via Flaminia?’

‘Bella, I am disturbed.’ The Marquis’s announcement had all the weight of King Ahasuerus ordaining life or death for Esther. He cast an austere eye on the Earl of Ellesmere’s fine collection of paintings in Bridgwater House. Paris, the eye seemed to suggest, could do better. The party had left Stafford House, leaving only as a record of their visit a false moustache attached (temporarily) to a naked Venus (fortunately it was only a ‘School of’) by two of the Honourable Misses Pembrey. Auguste did not notice. Major Dalmaine did, and wondered briefly whether, however desirable Rosanna might be, marriage into the Pembrey family would be entirely a wise move.

Bella was regarding through quite unnecessary lorgnettes that displayed her graceful white gloved hands to perfection, Titian’s ‘Venus of the Shell’, fortunately as yet unadorned with moustaches. Her husband was compelled to make his point clearer.

‘This foolish Inspector has got it into his head that this ridiculous notion of an attempt on the Prince of Wales is linked to Cranton’s. Murder is objectionable enough when it disturbs one’s Christmas, but assassination is too much when there are two diplomats of high importance in the party. It is, I consider,
libellous
.’

‘Slanderous, actually,’ his wife cheerfully corrected him. ‘And just think, Gaston,’ she gave him a rare and beatific smile, ‘what stories you’ll have to tell those stuffy old
ministres
when we return home. You will be a figure of importance, Gaston.’

‘This is true,’ he said, weighing her words with surprise.

‘That’s unless you’re implicated,’ she added laughing. ‘Are you?’

The Marquis stiffened, his eyes going to Dalmaine who was bent on following Rosanna’s progress round the gallery like Apollo stalking Daphne. ‘Really, madame,’ he replied formally to his wife, ‘you go too far.’

Rosanna was quite aware of Frederick Dalmaine’s pursuit. She had even slowed down a little so that it might be successful. She was more than a little annoyed with Danny who she had high suspicions was more enthusiastic about his career than about herself. She had commanded his presence outside Stafford House, in the hope that she would be able to absent herself from the rest of the afternoon ‘by error’, and he had not appeared. She was thus consigned to yet more Titians and Rembrandts, with all the more interesting-looking private rooms banned to them. Frederick Dalmaine was somewhat surprised at the warmth of her smile when at last she allowed him to catch up with her.

‘I am so glad to see you, Fred—Major Dalmaine,’ she dimpled prettily. ‘I get so bored with these naval actions,’ she dismissed Van de Velde with an airy wave of the hand. ‘I do think the army is much more interesting. So active. So
dangerous
,’ glancing quickly and effectively at his leg. She could never remember quite which one it was.