Murder Under The Kissing Bough: (Auguste Didier Mystery 6) (30 page)

‘I’m going to be reading extracts from
Mugby Junction
,’ he declared. A sigh of satisfaction from the English members of his audience, and resignation from the foreign members.

‘Chapter IV. No. 1 Branch Line: The Signalman. “Halloa! Below there! . . .”’

Twenty minutes later Rose was working up to a tremendous peroration. ‘I said, “Below there! Look out! Look out! For God’s sake, clear the way!”’

‘Very nice, Egbert!’ beamed Edith approvingly, when at last he finished. ‘I do like a nice piece of Dickens.’

But Auguste did not hear her comment. His mind was still racing rapidly through the awful possibilities that Egbert’s reading had raised, coupled with his own offering. It all came together, suddenly, completely, like a
brandade de morue
.

Music hall songs, Dan Leno, the role of Alfred Bowman and now, all important, ‘No. 1 Branch Line’. Perhaps the recipe from which they started had different interpretations, and he and Egbert had puffed and steamed their way down the Branch Line, and reached its terminus. They had hoped the matter over, trusting somehow that Fancelli could be proved to have carried out Bowman’s murder. Yet the main line still awaited them – if only they could find the points.

Auguste rose at 6 a.m. the following morning, to attend early Mass. One of the privileges of being a hotelier was that you did not necessarily have to be present at breakfast, let alone cook it. John, having been given now some guidance by a master chef, was perfectly capable of providing a breakfast of which even the Colonel would have no complaints. Auguste returned to the hotel, however, as the first glimpses of morning light illuminated the dark and misty streets. He sniffed at the dampness of English winter, so unlike the warm winds of Provence, or the penetrating biting cold of the Mistral. He pulled his overcoat more closely round him, as he approached the back door of the hotel. This was where it had all begun, only six weeks before, in the fog. Was this the junction of the branch line? He heard again Nancy’s cry: ‘At Cranton’s? Christmas?’ Saw again the girl lying dead at his feet; reconstructed carefully what they knew of her. Conclusion: could he have made false deductions? Like Miss Guessings and her big secret, exposed by a pudding.
The
pudding, the Pall Mall Pudding
à la Didier
.

A small boy delivering newspapers passed whistling on a bicycle. A familiar tune, given to the world by Signor Verdi, and adored by one of his countrymen, Fancelli. But suppose Fancelli, too, were merely a station on the branch line? The Pall Mall Pudding, the definite article, and the fact that Nancy was a lady journalist. He stopped suddenly, remembering that as
a hotelier he should enter the front door of the hotel, not the back. He walked round slowly, so slowly that a crossing sweeper brightened, seeing trade at last. Absentmindedly Auguste tossed him a penny, then jubilantly threw another after it. For he knew now where the junction was.

He walked into a warm and welcoming hotel, full of Christmas decorations. It was the last day this cocoon of Christmas could hold them all. Later today the trappings of Christmas must go. The kissing bough taken down. The Father Christmas decoration on the tree removed. Ah, but his brain worked well now! Auguste Didier was himself again. Truly a
maître
, truly a great detective. Why had it taken so long?

Dickens should have called his amusing work
Muggins Junction
, not
Mugby
, for that is how he felt. A muggins. How could he have disappeared down that branch line so easily, lured by the garnish and not the essence of the dish?

At Highbury, Egbert Rose was enjoying a lie-in after their late night, luxuriating in his first Sunday off since Chesnais had summoned him in November. The royal welcome at Paddington having passed off without incident, and the villains being either dead or in custody, the Chief had given reluctant permission for a day off. Not that he would take it all. Tomorrow, Cranton’s guests would disperse, unless he could get first-class evidence of why any or all should be detained. But that would be later. Now, Edith’s appalling kippers were going to receive his full undivided attention for the first time in six weeks.

‘I believe, Egbert,’ said Edith blithely, as she placed a fragrant offering before him some half an hour later, ‘that looks like Auguste descending from a hansom cab. And, oh Egbert,’ her face suddenly fell, much as
she liked Auguste, ‘I do believe he’s asking him to wait.’ That boded ill.

The smell of the kipper wafted tantalisingly under Rose’s nostrils, for not even Edith could entirely miscook a kipper. He picked up his silver fish knife and fork speedily as he heard ‘the girl’, as he always thought of her before breakfast restored him fully to the world, open the door. Two seconds later, Auguste entered, hat in hand. His face fell as he saw Egbert at table, belligerently clutching eating implements, but this was too important to wait.

‘
Chère madame
Edith, my apologies,’ he pleaded. ‘My sympathy, Egbert –’ Rose glared – ‘but this is so important.’

‘You can tell me while I eat this,’ replied Rose firmly as Edith beamed at him approvingly. ‘Kippers help me think.’

All the same, kipper progress grew slower as Auguste burst out excitedly: ‘
The Pall Mall Gazette
. Not Pall Mall the thoroughfare. Nancy was a journalist, but it was not
her
article to which she referred. But to the definite article “the” which made all the difference to the words Pall Mall.’

‘Maybe,’ said Rose grudgingly. ‘But what about it? You mean, the assassination won’t necessarily be at the Marlborough Club or the Carlton?’

‘My friend, it means more perhaps. That the assassination plot was nothing to do with these murders. That we are, like Edith’s good friend Mr Dickens, up a branch line.’

Rose took another mouthful of kipper. Auguste’s ideas were good, but he was inclined to rise higher and quicker than one of his soufflés if he wasn’t watched. He thought it over, crunching through cold burnt toast.

‘That piece of paper Chesnais gave me was about the
assassination plot,’ he announced, his tone brooking no denial.

‘But how do we know that had any connection with Nancy? Suppose it did indeed indicate that Paddington, not Pall Mall, was the place where Alfred Bowman and Fancelli planned, as you tell me he has now confessed, to kill the Prince. How do we
know
this was Nancy’s story? After all,
mon ami
, if she had wind of such a plot, she would surely inform the police?’

‘She did say “It’s all happening again”, too, remember,’ argued Egbert morosely, seeing Twelfth Day about to disappear after its eleven sisters. ‘Just like Sipido, she meant.’

‘Or something else,’ said Auguste firmly. French terrier against English bulldog. The bulldog thought for a moment, then with another loving bite of tough kipper turned into a bloodhound.

‘What about the
Gazette
anyway?’ he asked sharply. ‘An article? The management? Corruption?’

‘We must seek out the issues for November. “It’s all happening again” mean it connects with an old story,’ said Auguste, trying to contain his excitement and think logically.

‘How are we going to get at their files today?’ muttered Rose.

‘Babylon,’ said Edith brightly, coming into the room with some of her special coffee for dear Auguste. She went slightly pink as both men stared at her.

‘Modern Babylon,’ she said firmly. ‘I thought I heard you mention the
Pall Mall Gazette
. That poor editor, Mr Stead. Fancy being imprisoned after all he tried to do to help those poor girls.’

‘Blow me down with a kipper,’ said Rose slowly. ‘I don’t know about promoting Twitch. Seems to me you’re the one with the brains, Edith.’

‘Oh, Egbert,’ said Edith, pleased.

‘I do not understand,’ said Auguste, bewildered.

‘’Course, you weren’t here in the eighties,’ Rose said kindly. ‘“A Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon” was the
Gazette’s
finest hour. That article back in eighty-five by its editor, Stead, was all about how girls, many of them under fifteen, and quite a few under thirteen, were being bought out of overcrowded homes and sent under the pretence of being housemaids to the Continent for prostitution, complete with certificate, often fraudulent of course, to prove their virginity.’

Edith pursed her lips.

‘Stead needed proof of its happening before he published, so he, with a Rebecca Jarrett, had bought a thirteen-year-old girl, Eliza Armstrong, from her parents for five pounds, had her put through the usual examination for another five pounds, lodged her with the Salvation Army, and took her to France, not to a brothel of course, but a respectable home. Then he exposed the story and as a result he, Jarrett and the Salvation Army all landed up in the dock.

‘There’d been attempts for years to stop the trade, but the Committee for the Exposure and Suppression of the Traffic of English Girls for the Purpose of Prostitution could only get a hearing in Belgium, not here. Not even Lord Shaftesbury could get the courts or Parliament to move. Stead was going to have no better luck, it seemed. They were all found guilty of “Offence Against the Person”, since the parents naturally enough swore blind that they thought Eliza was going to be a housemaid, and imprisoned. Luckily, there was such an outcry, specially since they wouldn’t allow Stead to speak in his own defence at the trial, that even Parliament couldn’t afford to overlook it. He went to prison, but he published his own defence in the
Gazette
, and although it took three goes, the Criminal Law Amendment Act went through later that year and
National Vigilance Committees were set up to make sure it was enforced. But the sentences passed on the real offenders were ludicrously light. Still, the Act has worked well enough.’

‘Until now, perhaps,’ said Auguste.

‘Right. The National Vigilance Association had an international conference on the white slave traffic in London in ninety-nine. There were twelve countries officially represented, but not ours. Strange, when you think its own war had increased demand again. Touch of Nelson’s blind eye, eh? But there was such a crackdown at the ports on both sides of the Channel after eighty-five that not much has been in evidence about any organised cross-Channel trade. You get the odd governess or dancer now, but nothing regular you can pin down.’

‘It’s all happening again,’ observed Auguste. ‘Not governesses, but housemaids again perhaps.’

Rose looked towards Auguste, but not at him, staring through him, with that feeling of satisfaction he always had as something dovetailed nicely, an instinctive feeling that the jigsaw was nearing completion.

‘I’m sorry, my dear,’ he said absently to Edith, the rest of the burnt toast disregarded with the kipper bones, ‘your splendid roast will have to wait.’

‘That’s all right, Egbert,’ said Edith bravely. ‘I know Auguste wouldn’t call you away unless it was really important. But it does seem a pity you’ll miss Mr Pinpole’s pork. I’d decided to try such a nice new sauce. From Mrs Marshall’s cookery book, you know.’ She beamed at Auguste, who managed a comradely smile, as one great chef to another.

‘When this case is over,’ she said diffidently, ‘perhaps you’d join us one evening, Auguste?’

‘That, madame, would be delightful,’ he answered truthfully.

The hansom cab driver, gratified at this unusually long fare so early in the day, was all deference as they mounted, and this increased as Rose ordered ‘Scotland Yard’. Under the impression that only time could prevent the avoidance of some unspeakable crime, the cab driver persuaded his horse to unusual feats of speed, a process that did not help the quiet digestion of kipper.

‘If we’re right, what connection could Cranton’s have with the white slave traffic?’

‘If it’s organised, they need an organiser,’ pointed out Auguste.

‘Couriers,’ grunted Rose. ‘And where do the girls get so-called “trained” until they go across? There’s a lot of ifs about this yet, Auguste. We’ve got to be sure this time. And we’ve only hours to do it with those guests leaving. I’m going to have trouble holding on to Harnet or de Castillon after tonight. I’d need some solid grounds. The Chief ain’t going to be so impressed with Charles Dickens.’

‘But we cannot surely seek out all this evidence today?’ cried Auguste, appalled.

‘We can try,’ said Rose affably, setting his nose firmly forward, as if already baying after the scent. ‘I’ll start by trying to telephone Chesnais, if the lines aren’t booked.’ He paused, reflecting on the ways of the French. ‘That’ll put him off his Sunday dinner. And Twitch,’ he added thoughtfully.

‘Ah yes.’ Auguste had not yet come to the second part of his new receipt for murder. ‘Did you not say that you had asked the good Sergeant to make enquiries as to knife-throwing acts in circuses?’

‘Fancy a fat lady, do you?’

‘
Non
,’ said Auguste, and explained why.

A grin spread over Rose’s face. ‘You and your ideas,’ he said. ‘Fanciful, that’s what you are. Why
don’t you produce a nice idea on how we can find out about fallen women at eleven a.m. on Sunday morning?’

‘Maisie,’ answered Auguste simply, ‘Maisie is on the committee of a Society for Unfortunate Women.’

Rose rapped for the driver’s attention. Had he but known, they had never lost it. It was as good as driving Sherlock Holmes. ‘Eaton Square,’ Rose told him. ‘Then the Yard.’

The morning room of Maisie’s town house, where Auguste impatiently waited for his erstwhile beloved, was a compromise between his lordship’s and her ladyship’s taste. Hunting prints and a somewhat inferior Reynolds jostled side by side with posters of the Galaxy Theatre and photographs of her former chorus girl friends. After half an hour Maisie appeared, none too pleased at his unexpected arrival on Sunday morning.

‘But Maisie, I wish to talk to you about unfortunate women,’ he told her eagerly.

‘I feel rather unfortunate myself at the moment, thank you,’ she replied tartly. ‘I haven’t had breakfast.’

‘It is already eleven thirty,’ said Auguste firmly, following her uninvited into the breakfast room, ‘and moreover, how can you employ a cook – I will not say chef – who could present food such as this?’ He peered into chafing dishes critically. ‘Did I not teach you—’

‘Firstly,’ she replied, ‘it is obvious you have no children, Auguste. You would be glad of any opportunity when they’re away, as mine are this week, to sleep all day if you wish. Secondly,’ she waggled her finger, ‘one does not criticise cooks if you want them to stay. It is obvious you have never run a household, me old chum.’

‘Ah, and will never do so,’ he said wistfully.