Murder At The Music Hall: (Auguste Didier Mystery 8) (9 page)

‘Nor you of yours, Egbert, I trust?’ Auguste threw back at him, eyeing the cap and filthy jacket.

A pause. Then Egbert reluctantly grinned. ‘There’s good reason. You’ve heard of Prince Henry the Navigator’s cross?’

‘Who has not?’ For years the warfare between those who felt the cross was Portuguese and those who firmly maintained it was English, had always been English, and by jingo, should remain English, had been desultory. Now its theft had been blazoned across the newspapers together with the news that Scotland Yard was baffled, it had reached fever pitch.

‘Henry was the son of Philippa, daughter of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. Mean anything to you?’

‘This royal throne of kings, this sceptre’d isle . . . This precious stone set in a silver sea,’ Auguste declaimed. ‘Shakespeare’s
Richard II.’

‘There are even those who claim that last line is an oblique reference to the cross. Well, Philippa married the King of Portugal, and gave the cross to young Henry on her deathbed. He took it with him on his voyage to recapture Ceuta from the Muslims and that victory set Portugal off on its era of sea-going greatness and empire building. When Henry died, there was a battle royal, literally, as to who should have the cross, since Henry never married. The English crown was now in the hands of the Lancastrians, who said it should revert to them, the Portuguese claimed they should have it.

‘We won of course, but every so often Portugal gets hot under the collar, and decides it represents their national honour. Unfortunately, there are powerful forces here who think just the same. It is made worse by the fact Portugal has got precious little left of Henry’s, because everything disappeared in an earthquake a century or two later. The controversy has blown up again since Dom Carlos of Portugal is coming on an official visit here in two months’ time and His Majesty King Bertie’s going to return the compliment next April. There’s going to be a lot of bad feeling if there’s no news of that cross by November.’

‘Not so much as if we refused to return it.’ Auguste’s head seemed to have a steak mallet thrashing inside and he longed only for bed. ‘Besides, surely it is likely that the Portuguese have stolen it themselves?’

‘Not as simple as that.’ Egbert embarked on an explanation of the background. Accommodating him by listening seemed the quickest way to achieve his objective – home – so Auguste struggled hard. He fastened on what seemed to him the salient point.

‘There is a murdered body, a missing cross, a ship that left early and a programme from this music hall. But you have no evidence any of these ingredients are linked to any of the others.’

Rose looked at him balefully. ‘I can smell a connection as clearly as I smell bad herrings.’ He chortled at Auguste’s affronted look. ‘You down here gathering a few tips on what to cook for His Majesty, then?’

Auguste stared at him coldly. ‘Egbert, I have an excellent suggestion. If you are so convinced of the link, and you feel drawn to such a subtle disguise, I suggest
you retain your present garb and remain here to investigate, in the position of—’ He paused temptingly.

‘What?’

‘My mutton-chop broiler.’

A split second for Egbert to take this in. ‘I don’t cook,’ he said flatly.

‘Then I cannot detect.’

‘Nobody asked you to.’

‘You will, Egbert, you will.’

‘Why?’

‘I fear another murder.’

Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps the fresh morning air would clarify the butter, distinguish fantasy from fact, and there was no menacing threat lurking in the shadows. Perhaps Egbert’s quest to track down the missing cross would lead him far away from the Old King Cole. Perhaps he, Auguste, could be left quietly to enjoy the pleasures of the Shadwell riverside fish market at dawn. True, this was not one of those autumn mornings about which Keats had waxed so lyrical, but the air was full of early promise. Dockers and other workers hurried to their various destinations with a purposefulness lacking as days wore on, delivery boys were already cycling by with loaded baskets, and wayside vendors of toffee and watercress were zealously taking up their positions. In the market he was happy, surrounded by the wonders of the deep. Or, in this case, the Thames. Auguste eyed the silvery bodies of eels, no doubt fished from the river with forks by the urchins scooting around the fringes of this workplace. They seemed a vastly different species from the colourless grey flab that adorned the menu of the Old King Cole. Everywhere he looked lay the glories of river and sea.
Ah, what wonders of gastronomy he could show Lizzie if duty did not call. No doubt at this very moment she was plunging those ladies’ legs into their pickling marinade, whereas a
matelote
. . . As soon as his choice was made, conscience hastened his step briskly back towards the Old King Cole.

Tatiana, after all, was away from home. When she was there, life crackled and sizzled like caramelising sugar. It bubbled with laughter like champagne. Without her it was as dull and flat as overcooked cod. On the other hand, the Old King Cole was not without its lighter side; after all, today he would be teaching Egbert to cook. Furthermore, he was here for only six days and for one of those at least Will had survived. Did that mean his fears were groundless? On the surface, the Old King Cole was what it seemed, yet at the very least the jovial image presented on stage and that backstage were markedly different. He had perceived no unity or warmth backstage, merely a group of performers going about their individual business. What heat there was was caused by jealousy and suspicion, not mutual admiration.

Fame was a double-headed monster: it attracted, it repelled. Moths danced round its bright light, but they were creatures of the night with all night’s mysterious secrets. Will Lamb might have a simplicity that would take him like an arrow through life, but what might lie in wait in the undergrowth along his golden path?

Auguste laughed at himself for his high-flown sentiments, as Lizzie quickly brought him down to earth as soon as he walked in.

‘I cooked him a negg,’ she told Auguste with pride,
jerking her thumb at a slightly more human-looking Egbert, still clad in down-at-heel garb.

‘A good ’un too,’ Egbert commented approvingly, to Lizzie’s gratification.

‘Load of fish just arrived, Mr D,’ she sang out, as she galloped down the stairs to her basement kingdom. ‘Nearly slung it away,’ came her now disembodied voice.

Surely a jest? Auguste rushed down to inspect his precious delivery. In their boxes, without the company of their fellows, he was forced to admit his prize purchases spoke a little less of ambrosia to come and a little more of hard work.

‘What’s this?’ Lizzie came up to peer under his shoulder and poked curiously at a strange specimen. ‘Cor, it’s all slimy.’

‘Slimy it may be, Lizzie, but it is a John Dory, distinguished by, legend says, St Peter’s thumbprint, to which you have now added your own.’

‘Who’s John Dory?’

‘It is said it derives from the Italian
janitore
, meaning the gatekeeper of heaven, St Peter. Or,’ Auguste explained eagerly, anxious to instruct this keen new pupil, ‘from a gentleman’s name allotted to a fictitious plaintiff in a case of law.’

‘How many fishes come up before the beak?’

‘About as many as the paltry number of dishes we will produce at our present rate of working.’

Lizzie grinned, burst into ‘Whoa, Nellie, don’t you go too far’ and plunged into a large tub of unappetising slime which he identified with difficulty as eel and onions.

Torn between the attractions of improving the cuisine
of Wapping and his rival duties to Egbert and Will Lamb, it was with some reluctance that Auguste led Egbert on a tour of the glories of the Old King Cole music hall an hour later. Egbert had dutifully turned up in his oldest suit, and a cap. Edith had not been impressed. Auguste led the way to the rear door of the eating-room that led into the entrance hall of the music hall. He averted his eyes from tables that would have to be hauled much further up the ladder towards cleanliness before he would open the doors for custom. Each should, he resolved, have a cloth laid on it,
adeem
cloth. And suppose, he wondered, each table were to be adorned with a dish of lemon catsup – no, not lemon,
tomato.
His old
maître
Escoflfier would throw up his hands with horror at the abominable principle of any food properly prepared requiring such additions, but French cuisine was not English. Pungent tomato catsups would spice even eel and onion pie, or mutton chops, or faggots, or black pudding?

‘Not quite the Galaxy, is it?’ Egbert commented, faced with the backstage delights of the music hall, and remembering a similar tour years ago of the famous Strand musical-comedy theatre.

‘Nor its stars as fair as the Galaxy Girls,’ Auguste agreed. Still with its primitive gas lighting, and at the moment dark, the working area backstage was bleak, shorn even of the life provided by its constant stream of hot sweaty bodies. To provide a dressing-room each for Nettie and Will, two of the cubby-hole props rooms had been unceremoniously stripped of their lumber and provided with tables and shabby mirrors. A brave attempt at welcome in each room had been made with
a Union Jack stuck in a coronation mug. The communal dressing-rooms at the back of the theatre were even starker. As Egbert peered in, his eye was met by a welter of old clothes, spare costumes, a few personal possessions and one small fireplace that gave no hint that it ever contained a fire, certainly not in late September.

‘Of course,’ Auguste said almost defensively, ‘these are not dressing-rooms as in a theatre. Artistes with several engagements a night often come ready-costumed.’

Egbert ran his finger down the crack in the washing bowl. ‘I don’t see a silver cross hiding amongst this lot.’

‘Nor I a murderer.’

‘My cross and your mythical murderer, Auguste, have as much in common as herrings and mutton chops, that’s my feeling. The cross was pinched last Saturday, and Will Lamb’s threatening letters began over a week ago.’

‘The theft too must have been planned,
mon ami.
There is as much link as between the dead body in Nightingale Lane and the cross.’

‘I’ve got a garnet.’ There was belligerence in Egbert’s voice.

‘And I a raven.’

Egbert stumbled over a coil of rope left lying in the wings, and cannoned into a flat depicting an Ascot race meeting. ‘I misjudged you once before, Auguste, so I won’t do it again, but sometimes a chop turns out to be a chop.’

Auguste could not resist temptation. ‘When I have instructed you, you will realise a chop is a work of art.’
Then seeing Egbert’s face, hurriedly returned to business: ‘On what did Ma Bisley base her information?’

‘I went to see her again to find out, since she can’t write. No more than that the cross had something to do with the Old King Cole. Someone at the Three Tars thought he’d seen the chap who gave him his job and that it was at this music hall.’

‘Performer or audience?’

‘More likely to be performer, if he was recognised.’

‘Why murder the man, after he has delivered the cross?’

‘He could identify the villain.’

‘The villain didn’t seem anxious to conceal his identity when he and his companion walked into Windsor Castle and bluffed their way out with the cross.’

‘Hell and Tommy.’ It was strong language for Egbert, who had walked into another obstacle. This one had sharp corners.

‘That’s Mariella’s fish tank.’ Auguste hurried to steer him to safety. ‘It’s kept in this corner, I understand, wheeled on to the stage and re-filled weekly.’

‘That’s the woman you tell me Will Lamb’s sweet on?’

‘Yes. A very—’ Auguste paused, ‘seductive lady. With a Portuguese husband.’

‘Oh-ho.’

‘Perhaps oh-oh, Egbert, perhaps not. Thieves are not bound by national flags, as you know. They form a world-wide brotherhood.’

‘Brotherhood or not, I’ll start with a word with that gentleman.’

‘Will he wish to have a word with a broiler of mutton chops?’

Egbert looked sourly at him, and then down at his scruffy attire, partly covered by an ancient apron provided by Lizzie from the previous cook’s rag-bag.

‘If he don’t, I’ll have to turn myself from frog to prince. It might put a spoke in your murderer’s wheel too – if he exists.’

‘But it would drive the cross far away, even if it is not on the
Lisboa
.’

‘
If
it’s still on the premises. But that’s not likely, even if the villain’s still here. Twitch is covering all the fences but I don’t expect much from that. The cross couldn’t be sold to the usual mob.’

‘Maybe it will merely be suppressed to ensure it doesn’t reach the Portuguese royal family.’

‘You mean till after the King of Portugal has come and gone, and probably after our Edward’s visit there next April. But then what? Send it back in a neat parcel done up with string and sealing wax to Windsor Castle?’ Egbert shook his head. ‘Unlikely.’

‘Was His Majesty at the Castle when the cross was taken?’

Egbert snorted. ‘A Saturday morning in September? Why be at Windsor, when he can be banging a gun at Sandringham? Oddly enough, he was at Buck Palace for once. It was one of the equerries got taken in by our villains, and I wouldn’t give much for his having a job for life. Both these so-called representatives from the Portuguese court, incidentally, were bearded, one short, one tall, one on the young side, one a lot oldish.’