Murder In The Motor Stable: (Auguste Didier Mystery 9) (7 page)

‘John is a very
old
and
close
friend of mine,’ Hester cried loudly to the assembled company. ‘Not so much now as in the old days,’ she cooed. ‘Remember the caravan to Palmyra, John?’

‘What caravan?’ Hortensia demanded curiously.

‘There was no caravan,’ John squeaked.

‘You are being a gentleman, John,’ Hester pouted.

‘I see no lady.’ John surprised himself with his own repartee.

Hester turned white with fury. ‘Get out of the way, you fool,’ she yelled at the unfortunate Pierre who was trying to intervene with a plate of éclairs at Auguste’s instigation.

Auguste controlled his indignation, unlike Hester.

‘Very well,’ she shouted. ‘All my kind
friends
are gathered here now. I am very moved, remembering the old days, when we were all so much
closer
. It has moved me to two decisions. I shall grant Roderick his dearest wish and become his wife.’ She looked round venomously at the horrified faces. ‘Secondly, I know the modesty of all my friends forbids any request to see their past kindnesses to me recorded in print but I do now feel they deserve recognition. Fortunately, I have
preserved all my diaries, and now I have accepted an offer to publish my memoirs.’

Edith Rose flushed proudly as their maid Ethel, scared out of her sixteen-year-old wits at serving not only a French sir and madam but a princess to boot, staggered in with a large dish and proceeded inexpertly to ladle portions into plates.

‘Not Mrs Marshall’s
soupe à l’Augustine
? Edith, you spoil us,’ Tatiana said valiantly.

‘I can’t compete with your Mrs Jolly, of course,’ Edith replied modestly.

‘Mrs Jolly could not produce this,’ Auguste assured her sincerely. Firstly, Mrs Jolly would have been instantly dismissed if any of Mrs Marshall’s recipes had appeared on his table. Great lady and famous cook she might be. So had Alexis Soyer been. But not to Auguste Didier, maître chef; his professional allegiance was to Maître Escoffier. Secondly, incomparable cook though Mrs Jolly was, Edith, who had no doubt struggled all day to prepare this, had included an ingredient that Mrs Jolly, by the nature of her employment, could not use: love. What could be happier for himself and Tatiana than an evening at the Highbury home of his friend Chief Inspector Egbert Rose of Scotland Yard? For the moment he dismissed the thought of what had prompted his desire to see Egbert. No dinner should be ruined by such matters; instead it was devoted to discussion of the two weeks they were shortly to spend together at Eastbourne. It was not until they were settled in the small conservatory Edith loved so much, watching the dying light over the garden, that the subject could be broached in a general, not official, way, since ladies were present. Not too general, as far as Egbert was concerned.

‘Haven’t brought me a body, have you? You haven’t got Pyotr Gregorin propped up in the rear seat of that motorcar of yours, have you, Tatiana?’

Auguste shuddered. Even in jest the name of Gregorin reminded him all too vividly of the other disadvantage of marrying into the Romanov family. Gregorin, a member of the Czar’s dreaded Okhrana, had a personal mission to remove Auguste Didier from the world for his temerity in marrying Gregorin’s niece. Like the anarchists, Gregorin employed patience as a weapon, but Auguste had little hope that the mission would be abandoned. Nor had Egbert, and periodic jests were his way of ensuring Auguste had not relaxed his guard.

‘Nothing to do with Gregorin, Egbert. We want your advice on how to prevent a murder,’ Tatiana replied quickly, well aware of Auguste’s struggling emotions.

‘Not my department. You want that fellow Freud for that. The
id
.’

‘The what, Egbert?’ Edith asked, puzzled.

‘
Id
.’

‘Oh.’

‘Let me explain.’ With relief, Auguste expounded on Hester Hart and the storm clouds gathering over next Thursday’s trials, not to mention the furore the threat of memoirs had produced. The chill that had come over the senior members of the club for the rest of yesterday afternoon had been noticeable.

Edith broke the silence when he had finished. ‘She doesn’t sound a very
nice
lady, Egbert.’

‘Unfortunately, the Yard doesn’t deal in niceness, or nasty atmospheres, and that, I gather, is all you have to go on.’ He looked at Auguste.

‘My nose,’ Auguste replied with dignity.

‘I’ve every respect for it but even your nose can’t tell the difference between a bad egg and a murder. Let’s take what you’ve told me and analyse it. Is it Hester Hart or this Dolly Dobbs car that’s the key to this smell of yours?’

‘I don’t know,’ Auguste confessed.

‘Then you’d better make your mind up. If it’s the car, you’ve come to the wrong person. I don’t deal with cars put out of action, only people. And a ladies’ motoring run doesn’t seem a very likely occasion for that.’

‘Even when the event will have His Majesty at the end of it?’

A long silence, then Egbert said savagely, ‘Not again, Auguste, not
again
.’

Ill temper permeated the kitchen like over-boiled Brussels sprouts. How could it spread so quickly? Auguste fumed. Surely it could not be mere chance that made Pierre snap at Annie who burst into tears, which made the vegetable chef, who was sweet on her, shout at one of the scullery maids who promptly took it out on the other two, which emboldened the pastry chef to impugn the honour of the sauce chef’s mother and the meat chef to choose this Tuesday morning to fight out with the fowl and game chef the relative merits of their specialities. An atmosphere of bad temper was unpleasant to work in, and what was worse was that food manhandled by warring parties all too readily picked up the implications and refused to obey any of the known laws of cuisine. And in two days’ time His Majesty the King of England and Emperor of 400,543,713 people would be expecting a banquet served at the usual Auguste Didier peak of perfection.

Instant action must be taken. It was Pierre’s responsibility to do so, but Pierre, last glimpsed brandishing his kitchen knife over his head to illustrate his point to Annie, now seemed to have vanished. He, Auguste, as usual must solve the crisis.

‘
Attention!
’ he screamed at his seething cauldron of a kitchen.

There was a surprisingly instant silence.

‘Why,’ he continued formidably, ‘is the jelly for tonight’s
truites froides
shivering in fright? Why is the celebration cake mixture clinging in terror to its bowl and
why
are the snipe for the
côtelettes de Bécassines à la Souvaroff
, specially imported for His Majesty’s favourite dish, threatening to fly back to their native habitat?
Why?
’

The silence remained unbroken, since his staff correctly assumed any answer would not be highly regarded.

‘I will tell you why,’ Auguste continued. ‘It is because cooking is a work of art as well as routine toil. The joy of the artist is mysteriously transferred to his creation. So is his misery. The poet, the painter, the gardener, the musician know this.
Why don’t you?
’

Again, no answer was forthcoming.

Auguste looked round grimly. ‘It is ten o’clock. Monsieur Bernard, the sommelier, is not yet here, so I shall authorise Signor Peroni to open two bottles of the Widow Cliquot’s restorative product. This will permit each of you to indulge in a glass of orange juice and champagne. After that, there will be sunshine in your souls, and that is an order.’

To a chorus of gratified approval, Auguste went in search of the maître d’. He was not hard to find; the sound of Italian curses could be heard in the serving room adjoining the restaurant, and from the virulence of the response Auguste guessed they were being hurled at his missing chef. This was too much. He appeared as an avenging Jupiter at the doorway of the room.

‘And what is the trouble today?’ he inquired solicitously. ‘Tarragon, perhaps?’

Neither enlightened him.

‘Please excuse me, Monsieur Didier,’ Luigi said stiffly with
his best maître d’ bow. ‘A personal difference of opinion.’ The air crackled with hostility.

Auguste, his mission and opinion of those who could waste time when the delights of preparing banquets beckoned having been made clear, returned to the kitchen puzzled. The few words he had understood had borne a remarkable similarity to ‘Dolly Dobbs’, ‘Hester Hart’ and ‘Lady Bullinger’. He supposed it was only natural that the passions of the establishment for which they worked should transmit themselves to the staff, but it was strange that this particular motorcar should be quite so eagerly discussed. He could not recall the kitchens at Stockbery Towers, where he had worked for some years, coming to blows over the merits of the ducal horses and carriages.

The mood in the kitchen improved as the morning progressed, including Pierre’s, to Auguste’s relief. By the time he met Tatiana for luncheon at Queen Anne’s Gate, however, he was still carrying a nagging grievance with him that his staff did not seem to appreciate the delights of preparing a banquet fit for a king. Luncheon was an informal meal to which he usually looked forward, for it could produce delightful surprises concocted from the fertile paradise of Mrs Jolly’s creative brain. Today it was her chicken pie, but even the magic of discovering a new taste in it – could it be ginger? – failed to produce a sense of all being right with the world.

‘You’re troubled, Auguste,’ Tatiana remarked at last.

‘Aren’t you?’ He could not explain why the thought of Thursday still loomed like an enormous pile of unwashed saucepans, much higher than the prospect of meeting the King normally engendered. After all, Egbert had reluctantly agreed to accompany the cavalcade to Canterbury, and
knowledge of his job and rank should put paid to the possibility of untoward events.

‘Yes, but I don’t have a black bear sitting on my shoulders like you.’

It occurred to Auguste that his wife seldom did. ‘Why not? It’s a wife’s duty to share her husband’s ill humour.’

‘I spent the first thirty-three years of my life without you, of which six separated us by a ridiculous barrier because I was a princess and you were the cook. Now I can be with you all the time. What have I to be in an ill humour about?’

The chicken pie regained its full glory. The footman entering five minutes later was scandalised to find his employers locked in a passionate embrace. He reluctantly excused them this improper behaviour on the grounds that neither of them was English.

‘All the same,’ Tatiana added, sedately resuming her seat, ‘I have plenty of reasons for bad temper. Harold Dobbs came to see me
and
Judith . . .’

The Dobbses’ breakfast table in Upper Norwood was usually a noisy affair. Judith Dobbs firmly believed, against normal practice, that the gentleman of the household should benefit from proximity to his children instead of being forced to leave for his work before the family breakfasted. Harold had no objection, since his mind was mostly absent anyway; it was glorying in far-off fields where the name of Dobbs took its place beside those of Newton, Watt, Stevenson, Maxim, Hancock, and possibly da Vinci. Harold did not include Cugnot, de Dion or Daimler in the list of those who had served the world on wheels or wings, for to his mind foreigners played little part in the miracle of the motorcar. As far as Harold was concerned, the motorcar was conceived and
perfected in England, despite the unfortunate hiccup of the Red Flag Act which drove cars off the road for thirty years. Progress had leapt from William Murdoch’s 1784 steam carriage to Harold Dobbs, and in two days’ time the full glory of the Dolly Dobbs would be revealed to the world. The tiny fly trapped in the immaculate polish of Harold’s future buzzed worryingly, but he immediately swatted it. A mere technical detail could not affect the true artist, save that unfortunately he had had to let that Hart woman drive. He couldn’t explain to the Duchess of Dewbury just how this came about but she, like him, he comforted himself, was dedicated to the Dolly Dobbs, and Hester Hart would bring even more publicity for it than a duchess. Harold’s optimism about the future regained its usual rosy hue.

Motorcars rose above personal feelings. He had a vision of a future motorcar literally rising, like Hiram Maxim’s flying machine. Perhaps they could travel on water . . . His mind wandered, just as Dolly took advantage of his abstraction to tip the contents of the toast rack on to little Billy’s lap. Fortunately the maid brought in the morning’s post, excusing Harold from involvement in the ensuing fracas. In domestic matters, Judith always felt herself one step away from control, trying in vain to be the perfect mistress of the household that
The Lady
magazine made sound so easy and which was only darling Harold’s due.

Darling Harold uttered a yelp of distress.

‘Dolly was only playing,’ Judith said nervously.

‘No, no,’ Harold managed to say, choking. ‘This – the letter.’

Judith took it. The word letter unduly dignified the communication. Its thick block capitals written apparently without benefit of blotting paper read:
THE DOLLY DOBBS WILL NEVER
RUN
. Any hope that this might be an objective evaluation of its engineering merits was dashed by the writer’s apparent afterthought:
I WILL SEE TO THAT
.

‘What do you think it means?’ Harold quavered, helpless in the face of the unthinkable: that someone in the world was not as devoted to the Dolly Dobbs as he was.

Dolly burst into tears, waiting hopefully for her mother’s usual instant support. It didn’t come, so she bawled, ‘I’m Dolly Dobbs. Why won’t I run?’

Billy seized the opportunity to retaliate with a lapful of scrambled egg but to his annoyance was ignored by all but Dolly.

‘It means,’ Judith said decidedly ‘that we must see Mrs Didier immediately.’

Immediately was in the hands of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway, but obviously realising the importance of the Dolly Dobbs, it deposited them at Victoria Railway Station in plenty of time to ruin Tatiana’s morning . . .

Hats, Tatiana decided, revealed mood as well as character. Judith Dobbs’s white felt, its front brim curving up like a galleon’s prow with a particularly pugnacious figurehead underneath, warned her that trouble was on the way even before the letter had been thrust under her nose by Harold, who seemed incapable of speech.

She read it, greatly perturbed, though her words were comforting. ‘Surely this is merely a threat, perhaps from a Ham. One of the members, surely, for I can’t think that Mrs Millward would descend to such levels.’

‘There are others,’ Judith pointed out darkly. ‘Jealousy is a powerful force.’

‘You mean rivals? I hardly think Thomas Bailey would do such a thing.’

‘No.
Women
.’

Tatiana had an instant vision of the Duchess sitting down sedately on a Chippendale chair in Dewbury House, penning this nastiness and handing it gravely to the butler. Or did Judith, she wondered even more wildly, think that nameless hordes of women fighting over the glories of Harold Dobbs’s person would take vengeance by such threats? Judith must be calmed, and the Dolly Dobbs made secure, she decided. ‘I’m sure it’s not a serious threat but I will place a twenty-four-hour guard on the motor stable.’

‘Armed,’ Judith demanded. ‘A stout knobkerrie.’

‘Pistol,’ Harold at last managed to contribute.

‘With a large torch and whistle only,’ declared Tatiana firmly.

Mrs Jolly’s raspberry charlotte began to look less inviting as Tatiana regaled Auguste with the events of her morning and he was plunged once more back into the nebulous unease. Usually he could pinpoint the cause of disquiet; on this occasion he could not.

‘I’ve spoken to Fred and Leo,’ Tatiana told him. ‘They’ll watch night and day between them. Roderick Smythe insists on taking part too. He was at the stable when I arrived, already covering up the skylight with rubber sheeting and checking the bars.’

‘How did he hear of it?’

‘That’s the worst of it. Hester Hart had a letter too; she promptly threw a fit of high dudgeon and her trusty squire was at her side offering her his trusty sword. Not that that lady needs anyone’s trusty sword but her own. She’s got more
stamina than a camel, and nothing is going to come between Hester Hart and her driving that car on Thursday.’

‘Who do you think sent the letters, Tatiana?’

‘I’ve no idea. I can’t imagine Hortensia or Thomas Bailey doing such a thing, fanatical though he is.’

‘Didn’t you tell me he was working on a new car of his own?’

‘Yes. But so is half of England. And Thomas is not driving on Thursday, so why should he get so upset about another car doing so? Anyway, even if he succeeded in putting it out of action, Harold could build another.’

‘He was concerned enough to snoop round the stable.’

‘Professional curiosity. I think it’s more likely to be a Ham.’

‘Perhaps not. The club has not been a happy place since Hester came. We thought it was because of her but now it seems the problem is both Hester Hart
and
the Dolly Dobbs.’

There was a silence, as the same thought occurred to both of them.

‘Agatha couldn’t possibly be responsible,’ Tatiana burst out. ‘She’s a—’ She broke off, appalled. ‘Oh, Auguste, I was going to say “a duchess”! How
could
I? Duchesses have the same passions as everyone else.’

‘Perhaps, but you are right in that duchesses would need to feel their position very thoroughly threatened before risking their reputations by such childish threats. Being deprived of driving a motorcar hardly seems to qualify.’

‘But those memoirs Hester threatens to write. Suppose, just suppose, the Duchess features in them and her reputation
is
threatened?’

‘Then why bother to threaten Harold as well?’

‘To hide the real reason.’

Auguste wasn’t happy with this. ‘No, Harold must be involved somehow, for it is still a mystery as to why he let Hester Hart oust Agatha,
and
why he wouldn’t let the car appear last week.’

‘Harold is so vague, he may just have changed his mind because Hester let loose her battery of charm on him.’

‘He wasn’t vague when he heard Thomas Bailey had been prowling around,’ Auguste observed.

Tatiana sighed. ‘Do you remember the excitement you felt over the banquet you prepared for Monsieur Escoffier’s birthday, and the
pièce montée
of Gwynne’s Hotel you felt impelled to prepare for Madame Emma Pryde?’ Auguste blushed. ‘And the very special ball supper for Kalinkova? And—’