Murder in The Smokehouse: (Auguste Didier Mystery 7)
Read Murder in The Smokehouse: (Auguste Didier Mystery 7) Online
Authors: Amy Myers
Murder in the Smokehouse
Amy Myers
The seventh Auguste Didier crime novel
Copyright © 1994 Amy Myers
The right of Amy Myers to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
First published as an Ebook by
Headline Publishing Group in 2013
All characters in this publication – other than the obvious historical characters – are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library
eISBN 978 1 4722 1388 4
Cover illustration by Fred Preston
HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP
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Amy Myers was born in Kent. After taking a degree in English Literature, she was director of a London publishing company and is now a writer and a freelance editor. She is married to an American and they live in a Kentish village on the North Downs. As well as writing the hugely popular Auguste Didier crime series, Amy Myers has also written five Kentish sagas, under the name Harriet Hudson, that are also available in ebook from Headline.
Praise for Amy Myers’ previous Victorian crime novels featuring Auguste Didier, also available in ebook from Headline:
‘Wittily written and intricately plotted with some fine characterisation. Perfection’
Best
‘Reading like a cross between Hercule Poirot and Mrs Beeton . . . this feast of entertainment is packed with splendid late-Victorian detail’
Evening Standard
‘What a marvellous tale of Victorian mores and murders this is – an entertaining whodunnit that whets the appetite of mystery lovers and foodies alike’
Kent Today
‘Delightfully written, light, amusing and witty. I look forward to Auguste Didier’s next banquet of delights’
Eastern Daily Press
‘Plenty of fun, along with murder and mystery . . . as brilliantly coloured as a picture postcard’
Dartmouth Chronicle
‘Classically murderous’
Woman’s Own
‘An amusing Victorian whodunnit’ Netta Martin,
Annabel
‘Impossible to put down’
Kent Messenger
‘An intriguing Victorian whodunnit’
Daily Examiner
Also by Amy Myers and available in ebook from Headline
Victorian crime series featuring Auguste Didier
1. Murder in Pug’s Parlour
2. Murder in the Limelight
3. Murder at Plum’s
4. Murder at the Masque
5. Murder makes an Entrée
6. Murder under the Kissing Bough
7. Murder in the Smokehouse
8. Murder at the Music Hall
9. Murder in the Motor Stable
And Kentish sagas written under the name Harriet Hudson also available in ebook from Headline
Look for Me by Moonlight
When Nightingales Sang
The Sun in Glory
The Wooing of Katie May
The Girl from Gadsby’s
Late in 1901, Auguste Didier and his Russian bride Princess Tatiana are visiting the Yorkshire seat of the Tabor family for a banquet the King has promised to attend. Determined that tobacco will not sully her priceless tapestries, Lady Priscilla Tabor dispatches gentlemen who wish to smoke to a gloomy Gothic folly which has been allotted for this unseemly purpose. Even His Majesty the King is no exception to the intransigent Lady Tabor’s rules.
Unfortunately for her ladyship, Tatiana is curious both about the smokehouse and about the filthy habit indulged within its walls. In the middle of the night, Auguste finds himself unceremoniously hauled from his bed by his wife to inspect the body she has just discovered there.
Once again, Didier is forced, reluctantly, to play detective – there are many secrets to be revealed and questions asked. Is this a case of suicide or murder? And, even more important, who is the corpse?
For Marion and Ned
with love and thanks
I owe an enormous debt to my friends Ned and Marion Binks who were not only the means of my getting to know and love Settle and Yorkshire but uncomplainingly traipsed through rain and snow in search of a suitable location for Tabor Hall. The geography of Malham has been slightly adapted to accommodate it.
The title for this novel sprang from a visit to Levens Hall in Cumbria when I saw their delightful smokehouse for the noxious weed, and I am grateful to Levens Heritage for permission to borrow their usage of this word. Levens Hall has no other resemblance to the Tabor Hall of this novel, nor does Priscilla Tabor’s smokehouse resemble theirs.
Dot Lumley my agent and Jane Morpeth my editor have as usual been the rocks of expertise and judgement on which I have depended and I am most grateful to them.
Deepest black is a great leveller. Only the curious shape inflicted by the newly fashionable straight-fronted corsets at first distinguished the guests. Closer inspection might have revealed a difference in the fit of the gentlemen’s deep-black velvet court attire and mere cloth morning suits, and between their ladies’ black crepe and humbler silk. But then no one, after the finest fourteen-course luncheon the Marlborough House kitchens and cellars could provide, was greatly interested in closer inspection. This was, after all, a wedding.
‘Ah, Auguste.’
If Auguste Didier had needed confirmation that the dizzy experience he had just undergone was fact, His Majesty King Edward VII’s greeting, somewhat overhearty, would have supplied it. It was not every day that a commoner, a chef at that, married into even the outer purlieus of the royal family.
‘Your Majesty?’ Auguste bowed.
The King relaxed. The fellow still knew his place. Uneasily he recalled how he had been forced to regal compromise in their first conflict. After he had generously granted permission to Tatiana to wed the fellow, he had naturally expected them to wait a few years until the court should be out of mourning for Mama. It had politely been made clear to him that waiting was not on this cook’s menu. Auguste had
compromised with a wedding in July, shortly before deepest mourning changed to half-mourning, whether His Majesty liked it or not. He didn’t, actually. A Black Wedding meant no dancing, and, since the wedding breakfast would have to be held at Marlborough House, that meant no Alice Keppel or any other form of light relief.
Moreover, although His Majesty was aware that this chef had rendered him sterling service in the past, and not just in the form of perfectly cooked mutton chops, his royal spurs had yet to be won. He had no intention of awarding them at this time. He smiled benignly at his newly acquired remote relation.
‘Excellent sermon, eh?’
Auguste could remember little of the proceedings in St James’s Palace, save arriving in the Presence Chamber and being shown the initials of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn by a compassionate flunkey, hoping to divert him after seeing his white face. Auguste had merely meditated on whether Anne’s unkind fate on marrying into the royal family might yet be his own for his temerity in marrying in the very chapel in which the late Queen and her beloved Albert had wed. The rest was a blur.
‘I don’t remember, sir,’ he bravely confessed.
The King roared. ‘Quite understandable,’ he beamed, relieved that after all Auguste might be human as well as a chef.
Emboldened, Auguste plunged into folly. ‘I understand we shall be meeting at Tabor Hall in September, sir.’
His Majesty frowned. Unfortunately for Auguste, Tabor Hall conjured up unpleasant thoughts.
‘Quite a change, eh? You won’t be cooking this time, or ever again,’ he barked.
Auguste blinked. Did he hear aright?
‘Not now,’ the King pointed out, surprised that it was necessary to do so. ‘It wouldn’t do.’
Auguste met his monarch’s eye squarely. ‘I can’t promise that, sir.’
His Majesty’s face darkened. Then he remembered this was a wedding, and time to be jovial. He noticed that inspector fellow from Scotland Yard whom Auguste had insisted on inviting and it jogged his memory.
‘No more murder then. Understood?’
Here Auguste was in full agreement. He nodded. ‘Perfectly, sir.’
Country house visiting had many drawbacks, Auguste reflected crossly, as he fidgeted outside Settle railway station. One of them was the Midland railway. Two changes of train and the necessity of superintending thirty items of luggage had rendered the whole idea of Yorkshire even more depressing. It was dismal, cold and wet and the grey stone around them did little to help.
Nor did the sight of Tatiana’s glowing face as her tall figure, clad in the dark purple zibeline that mourning etiquette now graciously permitted, strode to the pile of trunks and miraculously brought order to chaos.
‘
Alors
, Auguste, you look like the bridegroom whose wine was turned into water.’
‘Obviously he lived in Yorkshire,’ Auguste retorted, as a large raindrop evaded hat and ulster and slid triumphantly down his neck.
‘Don’t you like rain?’ Tatiana asked surprised, as she looked round with interest at this new territory which bore little resemblance to her native Paris.
‘No. Nor do I like
guns
,’ Auguste told her back succinctly, as she whirled round to remove a hat box from over-close proximity to the oysters. Their presence indicated that the Tabor Hall staff had other missions in Settle besides the conveyance of the Didiers. ‘And I
do
like cooking. The life of a gentleman, it seems,
forbids me to do what I like and orders me to do the other.’
‘It is only for four days,’ Tatiana told him regretfully, as at last he was able to hand her into the Tabor carriage. ‘Four days
here
.’ Her eyes lit up with the enthusiasm of a Cortez surveying the Pacific.
An eternity! Auguste reflected on the prospect ahead. Friday 27 to Monday 30 September to be spent at Tabor Hall, which was hidden somewhere in those wild dark hills outlined menacingly against the overcast sky. The gathering was to celebrate the engagement of the Honourable Miss Victoria Tabor to Tatiana’s cousin, Alexander Tully-Rich. Tatiana seemed to be related to most of the Almanack de Gotha. The invitation had sounded so innocuous when Tatiana had first told him of it. Foreboding had struck on learning that the King would be present, for Auguste was only too aware that this visit could be a trial of his suitability for the honour of being termed a gentleman. A master chef, albeit one who had been trained by Monsieur Escoffier himself, could naturally not have automatic entrée to such exalted status. Not in England.
He reflected with some satisfaction on his victory in the Battle of the Kitchen with His Majesty – or, if he were honest, a draw. Subtly he had reminded His Majesty of the ortolans braised in Armagnac, of the
poularde Derby
and the numerous other gastronomic treats he had prepared for him in the past. The King had shrewdly taken the point. Auguste might continue to cook for charity, he might superintend banquets in the homes of friends, and he
must
cook when the King was to be present. He could do, he gathered, whatever he bally well liked when abroad, and safely out of His Britannic Majesty’s realms.
It wasn’t much, but it was something.
‘I could say I want you by my side,’ Tatiana said hopefully, ‘then you would not have to shoot.’
‘That is no excuse,’ Auguste said hollowly. ‘No English gentleman would remain with his wife in preference to shooting.’
‘You are only a half-English gentleman,’ Tatiana reminded him. ‘Very well, consider the game pies you will produce.’
Auguste preferred not to. True, Brillat Savarin had declared that the pheasant was an enigma whose glories could only be appreciated by the truly trained palate, but he had too many memories of Stockbery Towers’ game larders overflowing with hung birds and the inevitable trail of pheasant
à la financière
, pheasant pie, pheasant soup, pheasant
à la Marena
, pheasant galantine, godiveaux of fillets of pheasant, and every other way of honouring pheasant until his dreams were full of gloating birds running amok around his beloved kitchens and procreating in his larders.
His reluctance to join the inevitable shooting party at Tabor Hall stemmed from baser emotions, however. His previous experience of shooting had been confined to the occasional
lapin
on the hillsides of his native Provence, a training that did not qualify him to stand in a line of Lord Tabor’s best guns. A sudden happy recollection that the pheasant season did not open till 1 October was promptly succeeded by the less happy thought that partridges, hares, rabbits and waterfowl might prove acceptable targets for the Tabor party while limbering up for the great day.
‘I could say Mr Marx disapproved of shooting,’ Tatiana offered, struck by sudden inspiration.
Auguste failed to share her enthusiasm. Karl Marx was Tatiana’s latest excursion in attempting to discover new worlds that had been closed to her as a Russian princess in Paris.
‘Did he?’
‘No, but the Tabors will not know that.’
He managed a laugh. ‘I will say my devotion to His Majesty’s cuisine demands my presence all day.’
‘Does it?’
‘No, but the Tabors will not know that.’
Good humour restored, he took his wife’s hand in his, thus abandoning any pretension to the status of English gentleman for a while longer as the carriage at last pulled away.
‘
Mon brave
, this is adventure, is it not?’ his wife said happily, as the carriage jolted down the station approach, and soon turned into what was obviously the main street, crowded by gaily dressed townsfolk. Auguste caught a glimpse of a fair in progress in the distance, and suddenly that seemed the most desirable place on earth to be. But the carriage turned and the horses were led up a steep lane between the limestone houses and shops of Over Settle. The lane narrowed, leaving civilisation behind. His doom was upon him.
‘Nothing will go wrong, George. How can it?’ stated Priscilla, Lady Tabor, with her usual conviction. ‘I have organised everything for His Majesty’s visit.’ She implied – with reason – that it would take a daring god of mischance indeed to presume to counter her arrangements. Her purple silk rustled approvingly on her Junoesque figure.
‘Do remember this wasn’t my idea, Mother,’ Victoria put in brightly. An engagement party bound by stuffy royal etiquette – and, worse, in black in deference to the King’s state of mourning for his mother, and his sister, not to mention a recently assassinated President McKinley – was far from the halcyon day of wine and roses she and Alexander had blissfully imagined.
Lady Tabor turned on her daughter. ‘Most young
ladies would be overwhelmed at the privilege of His Majesty’s presence at their betrothal reception, Victoria.’
‘So long as Alexander is there, why should I care?’
‘Your mother’s right, Victoria,’ interposed Lord Tabor, nervously, one eye on his wife.
‘Oh, George, don’t be such a namby pamby.’ His mother Miriam was as usual bent on annoying her daughter-in-law. ‘Victoria’s quite right. Love is more than coronets. Or is that kind hearts? I can never remember.’
Whichever it was, Priscilla Tabor stiffened. She was aware she was on shaky ground, being one of the many American heiresses who had come to find love in England provided it were suitably encased in title, if not diamonds. The main salon at Tabor Hall might not boast the domed ceiling and painted Laguerre murals of Marlborough House, but Priscilla Tabor had done her best in presenting five hundred years of Tabor history in tapestry, aged oils and watercolours to guests sufficiently hard of hearing to have escaped her conversational lectures on the subject.
‘I have worked extremely hard, Victoria,’ she informed her daughter reproachfully, ‘in order to crown your social position.’
‘And yours, Ma.’ Alfred, lounging on a chesterfield, was all for leaping on any passing bandwagons, providing he was reasonably sure of their not overturning and trapping him beneath.
‘Mother, it’s taken three months to redecorate and refurbish the entire west wing for the King’s visit. All for two nights,’ her daughter pointed out as impatiently as she dared. ‘What should we have done if the Queen had decided to come too?’
‘I should have used a paler shade of pink,’ her mother replied seriously. No one laughed. Not at Priscilla.
‘After all,’ Victoria pressed on, ‘the King can only sleep in one bed.’
‘That’s not quite accurate, my dear,’ her grandmother said innocently. ‘Priscilla has invited Mrs Janes at His Majesty’s request.’
‘We have to accommodate his equerries, aides de camp, secretaries,’ Priscilla said loudly to regain control. ‘Also his ushers, an Extra Gentleman usher, and I believe Gold Stick. And two bodyguards,’ she added dismissively, ‘for his personal security. Not that they will be needed—’
‘At least we don’t have to lodge his kitchen staff,’ Victoria broke in, confident of aiming straight for her mother’s silk-clad Achilles heel. ‘Not with Mr Didier coming.’
Auguste was Priscilla’s major social problem. This was not, after all, her native America. How did one treat a member of the royal family who properly belonged to the servant class? Moreover one who refused to play down this fact and insisted on flaunting it before all of them by demanding to cook for His Majesty, apparently with the latter’s blessing. ‘We are fortunate Breckles took it in good part.’
‘Breckles only took it in good part because he thinks he can snap any cook from beastly old London in two over his knee if need be. He’s looking forward to it,’ Victoria pointed out gleefully.
‘Nonsense.’ Priscilla firmly refused to acknowledge the possibility of trouble below stairs when all concerned were required to pull their weight for the good of the Tabors. ‘There’s nothing to worry about. Don’t you agree, Laura?’ She looked for support from her sister-in-law, who had been placidly reading throughout the skirmish.
‘She’s mooning over a letter from Roughneck Robert. He’s rushing back to see her, now he’s a household
name, to claim her hand. Poor old Olly, eh?’ Alfred said loftily.
Laura hastily put the letter aside. ‘You are wrong, as it happens, Alfred. It is not from Mr Mariot. It is from Mr Carstairs, telling me he’s driving over with Alexander today instead of arriving tomorrow.’
‘Really, Laura.’ Priscilla was outraged. ‘You might consider the maids.’
‘Oliver would not dare to seduce them under your roof, Priscilla,’ Miriam reassured her.
‘Mother!’ Laura said warningly, as Priscilla’s formidable bosom swelled.
‘No need to bother with the maids with Aunt Gertie around,’ put in Alfred provocatively.
‘Silence.’ The tone in his mother’s voice stopped him instantly. Couldn’t go too far with the mater. Not while she controlled the purse strings, and he required them to open rather too frequently of late.
‘She’s deuced attractive,’ said George incautiously of his brother’s new wife.
‘As a chorus girl, doubtless she had need to be,’ said Priscilla. ‘Now she has succeeded in marrying Cyril, she requires other qualities.’
‘Such as?’ Victoria asked.
‘She has no knowledge of
petit point
.’
‘Deplorable,’ agreed Laura.
Priscilla looked at her suspiciously, but could perceive nothing in her sister-in-law’s shocked face of which she could complain. She swept on to deliver her broadside.
‘Furthermore, I hear Cyril permits her to take a smoke.’
There was a hushed silence now. Victoria broke it, rushing in with the temerity of one shortly to escape the parental nest. ‘So there’ll be a high old time in the smokehouse. Or are you going to relax
the rules for His Majesty, Mama?’
The verdict was delayed by a loud explosion outside.
‘By jingo, what’s that?’ George demanded angrily. ‘An infernal machine?’
Victoria ran to the window and looked down upon the drive beneath. ‘Not infernal, Papa. It’s darling, darling Alexander’s. And sweet Mr Carstairs is with him, Aunt Laura.’
She rushed out and down the staircase, colliding with Richey the butler in the doorway. Speeding ahead of him down the steps, she threw herself into her beloved’s arms, as he leapt from the motorcar.
‘Oh, now we can start having fun,’ she cried.
Greatly to her surprise, Alexander disengaged himself gently. ‘Darling, I have to see your mother. Immediately.’
Victoria looked at him, and alarm shot through her. What
now
? What could be wrong? He looked far more worried than an imminent meeting with Mother would warrant. Fun was obviously going to be a little delayed.
So this was Yorkshire. Steep stony hillsides, softly curved crests melting into one another as gently as mounds of beaten egg whites, and everywhere grass and sheep. Obligingly the rain stopped and a weak sun shone, as the Tabor carriage lurched over the moors. Sheep scattered reluctantly from the path, annoyed at being interrupted in their contemplation of eternity. The occasional shepherd stared at the carriage with a frank curious interest before he returned to the real business of life: sheep. The moorland glowed with the changing colours of bracken, yet as the carriage turned further into the remote fells, Auguste shivered, remembering they were not far from Brontë country. How easy to believe now in the elemental passions of Catherine and Heathcliff.
This was as far from Provence or London as it was possible to imagine, an alien countryside, whose people seemed of a different race. He reminded himself firmly that on Monday evening he and Tatiana would be back in their new home in Queen Anne’s Gate surrounded by the comforting noisy bustle of London. Back where safety lay.