Murder Under The Kissing Bough: (Auguste Didier Mystery 6) (26 page)

‘May we speak to you, Mr Didier?’ one of them (he had no idea which) asked him meekly.

Auguste eyed them suspiciously. The twins were identified in his mind with trouble and today was too important to add gratuitous problems to his load. Nevertheless, he reminded himself conscientiously, they were guests at Cranton’s.

‘We have something to tell you. At least, Evelyn has.’

‘It was you as much as me,’ retorted Evelyn.

‘It was your idea,’ Ethel pointed out, this leading to further heated discussion.

‘If this,’ cut in Auguste at last, his tone indicating he had obviously forgotten all about their being guests, ‘is another of your tricks—’

‘Oh no, it isn’t,’ they assured him in unison, horror in their voices at the mere idea.

‘It’s about the service lift,’ Ethel told him brightly. ‘You remember you said the Baroness or Fancelli hid the body in the lift while the rooms were being cleaned – well, they couldn’t have.’

‘Why not?’ asked Auguste, his heart sinking at the
mere idea of the one sure explanation of the case being thrown into doubt.

‘Because we were using it that morning,’ said Evelyn. ‘We –’ sidelong look at her twin – ‘were going to play a trick on you, Mr Didier, and Ethel said—’

‘No, that was you,’ her twin informed her speedily.

‘What was this trick?’ Auguste demanded sternly.

‘Evelyn got in,’ said Ethel blithely, ignoring this, ‘but the lift went down too quickly and jammed at a funny angle, so I had to call Danny—’

‘Danny Nash? What was he doing inside the hotel on Christmas morning?’ demanded Auguste.

Evelyn glanced at Ethel. ‘He came in to see Rosanna,’ she said vaguely. ‘They were in the billiard room. Anyway, he managed to get the lift up again, and so Evelyn got out. Danny was rather cross, and he jammed the lift where we couldn’t reach it. That was about nine o’clock. Then very early next morning, he told us, he came in and unjammed it. It didn’t matter because it isn’t used during the day, so it didn’t upset your staff, Mr Didier.’

Only my theory of how the murder was committed, thought Auguste savagely. ‘Could the Baroness or Fancelli have freed it?’

‘They might have done,’ said Ethel helpfully, Sherlock Holmes to the fore, ‘but Danny found it jammed just as he had left it, so it doesn’t seem possible. The body couldn’t have been in the lift, even for a little while.’

Auguste glared at them, most unfairly, he was aware. But revenge should be his. ‘What was this trick?’ he asked through gritted teeth.

The twins looked at each other, and Evelyn nodded.

‘We were going to steal the boar’s head,’ Ethel told him, torn between terror and pride, ‘and replace it with Guardian’s bowler hat covered in icing. It did look
nice,’ she added regretfully. ‘He had very nice eyes made out of your curtain rings.’

Auguste’s fists were clenched, his chest puffed out in indignation. ‘The art of cuisine is not a matter for jest.’

‘Oh
no
,’ said Evelyn fervently. ‘Anyway we didn’t do it, and we have made it up to you, Mr Didier, because we can tell you how it was done.’

‘My boar’s head?’ asked Auguste, his mind still sidetracked to this enormity.

‘No, the murder,’ Ethel told him impatiently. ‘If the lift wasn’t used, there must have been another way.’

‘And what was it?’ Auguste asked grimly, arms folded, judgment suspended.

‘Follow us, my man,’ Evelyn announced importantly, in her best Holmes voice, ‘for a reconstruction of the crime.’

Obediently Auguste followed the girls to the second floor, hoping that Marie-Paul and Alfred Bowman had decided not to spend the morning resting in their rooms.

‘Watson and I have reason to believe,’ Ethel began, gruffly waving aside Evelyn’s protestations over her role, ‘that the Baroness hid the body in one of the bathrooms opposite while the room was cleaned, staying in there herself with it. She avoided the risk of being seen by placing one of Miss Gonnet’s shawls round the body so that it looked as if her companion were helping her to the bathroom to run the bath.’

‘Dead bodies are heavy,’ said Auguste firmly.

‘It’s only a few feet,’ said Ethel crossly, ‘and the risk of being seen was very small.’

‘Have you asked the maids whether they saw the Baroness when they cleaned the room?’ asked Evelyn.

‘They did not,’ answered Auguste unwillingly, ‘but—’

‘There you are then,’ they chorused.

There was little point in an exposition on the difference between negative and positive evidence, so Auguste bowed to the inevitable. ‘
Très bien
,’ he damned with faint praise. ‘And what then?’

‘With the corpse dressed in Miss Gonnet’s clothes, she later walked her along the corridor, perhaps with Miss Gonnet’s help or this man Fancelli who worked here, into one of the empty bedrooms along there. Look!’ Ethel flung a door open. ‘The maids wouldn’t come in here, would they?’

‘Suppose Mrs Pomfret decided to inspect the empty rooms?’

‘It
was
Christmas morning,’ they pointed out, as if this entitled servants to neglect their duty.

‘And then?’ asked Auguste resignedly. The number of holes in this theory made it resemble a colander of very little use, the largest being that on the morning in question these rooms were locked.

‘Late that night,’ Ethel informed him in hushed tones, ‘the Baroness crept along to regain the corpse with Fancelli. Or Miss Gonnet. They intended to put it in the lift to take it downstairs, but finding it jammed, they were forced to take it down the service stairs at the end of this corridor. Come.’

With Auguste trailing behind, they ran down several flights of stairs, into the basement area, along the corridor and through the kitchens to John’s great surprise and annoyance, clearly seeing this as an underhand way of checking up on him. Unable to explain, Auguste shrugged expressively, but John’s subsequent blow on the meat for luncheon with the steak mallet did not suggest he was convinced.

‘Here for some reason,’ Evelyn told him gravely as they emerged into the basement corridors again, with the collection and delivery and boiler rooms in front, ‘something went wrong. Perhaps it was Danny.’

‘
Danny
?’ repeated Auguste, bewildered.

‘Yes,’ said Ethel impatiently at his dull wits.

‘He was sleeping down here in the cellars so he could see Rosanna and keep an eye on Nancy,’ Evelyn added. ‘Anyway,
something
frightened them, and they could not dispose of the body. So they think of the chest.’ She led the way back into the kitchens, to John’s fury. Ostentatiously not looking at the work in progress, Auguste followed them up the kitchen service stairs, emerging into the entrance hall.

‘Here,’ cried Ethel triumphantly, running across the hallway and into the drawing room. ‘Here is this nice chest right by a side window. If they leave the body there for a day, the following night they can arrange to get it out of the window and smuggle it away. Can’t you just picture the scene? Come, Evelyn, in with the body.’ She flung the lid open, fortunately still with her eyes on Auguste and her twin. ‘See?’

Auguste did see, and acting like lightning pushed between her and the chest, slamming it shut before Evelyn too could see. His face was very pale. ‘Mesdemoiselles,’ he said pleasantly, keeping his voice steady. ‘Bravo. A most keenly observed theory. Kindly request the constable at the door to come here before you go. I – um – must pass on your suggestions quickly and confidentially. Inspector Rose must hear of this at the very first opportunity.’

Only the latter part of his speech was correct. Egbert Rose should indeed know, and very quickly, that in the chest was the smashed and battered corpse, identifiable with difficulty, of Alfred Bowman.

Splashes of bright colour emerging out of the swirling fog were transforming bleak Paddington. Red carpet, the brilliant uniforms of the Blue and Royals of the Household Cavalry, trumpets at the ready, flags almost
canopying the railway station.

A telephone call had informed them that since the SS
Canada
had been delayed in its crossing, the Field Marshal’s railway train would be late. Rose greeted this news with sinking heart. Another fifteen minutes in which that all too isolated figure could become a victim of a bullet. He tried to convince himself that everything that could be done had been done and that with so many pairs of eyes scanning every window and crevice for pointed guns, no assassin would stand a chance. Every constable in London was on the lookout for fat Italians with a furtive air and porkpie hat. A wide variety had thus been brought kicking and screaming into police stations all over the capital. Messages had flown back and forth, but all had been in vain. Of Fancelli there was no sign. Newspaper stalls, refreshment rooms and waiting rooms had been scanned and everyone on the station seemed to have a policeman by him – though many were not recognisable as such. Or indeed as anything, Rose thought glumly, remembering the motley assortment of ‘disguises’ he had seen early that morning: false beards, eye patches, farmers, fishermen, chestnut sellers, and a pièce de résistance by one ambitious lad, an Italian ice-cream vendor. ‘In case Fancelli fancies an ice cream, Sarge,’ he had told Twitch brightly. Their art of disguise would not make the stage of Her Majesty’s, thought Rose. If he ever made Chief, he’d do something to remedy it.

All had been in vain. Fancelli had not been caught. All Rose had seen, an illusion he put down to the early hour of the morning, was a white-overalled chef with rounded figure and dark locks emerging from the first Inner Circle underground train. But he vanished from sight in the early morning work crowds and was not on the station now. Rose had personally inspected the kitchens of the station hotels with great care. Nothing
and no one had been found.

Rose peered up at the vaulted roof, as though at any moment a long rope might descend with an assassin slithering down it. What method would an assassin use? A gun? Most likely. Dynamite? Possible. That’s what the Boers had used to try to blow up Bobs in Johannesburg. But track and station had been scoured. How about the procession route to the palace? That was a danger. At least poison could be ruled out at Paddington Station, he thought wrily. Knife? Couldn’t get close enough. A disagreeable thought struck him as memories of William Tell and bows and arrows came to him. Or how about one of those knife-throwing circus performers? True, Fancelli didn’t look like a circus performer, but knife-throwing wouldn’t need a lithe figure. Rose brushed the thought away. He was getting fanciful in his old age. All the same, he’d ask Twitch just to check circus lists for the future. After all, what about the Carlton and Pall Mall? Plenty of opportunities there for a man with a knife on his mind.

The band stopped playing stirring martial tunes at the sight of the train slowly puffing into the railway station.

On the red carpet, the Prince of Wales and Duke of Connaught stood to attention, behind them the Princess of Wales, who had as usual assumed deafness to Bertie’s request for her absence. Nothing more to do now than pray, thought Rose grimly from his position ten yards away. Precisely opposite where the Prince and Duke waited on the red carpet, a carriage door was held open and the small figure of the Field Marshal responsible for apparent victory in South Africa, reliever of Kimberley, Mafeking and Ladysmith, stepped out. The trumpets of the Blues and Royals gave way to the national anthem. Salutes were given and acknowledged. No sound of guns, only of running
footsteps. Rose whipped round, reflexes razor-sharp. Only a newsboy, determined to see his future monarch at closer quarters. Rose relaxed his taut muscles a fraction.

Five minutes later an open State carriage containing Bobs and Bertie drove away on its victory procession towards Buckingham Palace and luncheon. The ladies of the party and sundry other officials were packed into inferior hired carriages to take their back route to the palace, in order not to remove the limelight from Bobs himself. On this occasion the Yard had been gracious enough to grant expenditure for Rose and Stitch to follow this second procession, since they could hardly follow the Prince of Wales. Protection along the route was in the hands of Rose’s men.

Rose was admiring the precision and competence of the British in such ceremonial, listening to the cheers of those lining Praed Street at the sight of the Prince of Wales’s carriage turning in towards them, when he became aware of something wrong. The carriages in front of him were turning left, not right, and were following the Prince of Wales’s carriage.

A sharp look at Twitch. What the hell was happening? Who was driving these hired carriages? Whom did they contain?

‘Leave it to me, sir.’ Twitch leapt from the carriage, in pursuit of promotion, power, and saving royalty from the plots of assassins. ‘He must be in the front carriage.’

Rose, leaning from his window apprehensively, could see nothing in the blur of shouting, cheering faces, and the anonymous carriages of the second procession turning the corner to follow their leader. Then the crowd cleared, to reveal, as Rose’s carriage came level, Sergeant Stitch picking himself up dustily and painfully from the ground. Rose grabbed him and
pulled him up into the carriage.

‘What’s happening, man?’ He shook him roughly.

Twitch was almost crying. ‘It wasn’t my fault, sir,’ he babbled. ‘I thought it was Fancelli in there for sure, going the wrong way like that. He wasn’t driving, so I threw myself inside the carriage.’ He looked at Rose beseechingly.