Murder in The Smokehouse: (Auguste Didier Mystery 7) (15 page)

She reached for his hand and drew him down beside her on the sofa. ‘I believe I left about two o’clock,’ she said airily, leaning towards him. ‘Perhaps a little earlier.’

‘We were told you left at about a quarter to one.’

‘Perhaps,’ she snapped, sitting upright again.

‘Why did you leave? Had you quarrelled?’ Auguste asked as gently as possible.

‘No!’ Two red spots of anger flushed her cheeks.

‘Then why?’

‘You can’t think I had anything to do with shooting that poor man—’ she wailed, changing her tactics. ‘Oh, Mr Didier, you are a gentleman, so I will tell you. It is not my husband who has the problem, but me.’ She tried a giggle.

‘You mean?’ Auguste tried to fathom this little problem, ‘you needed to visit a bathroom?’

‘I snore,’ she snapped again, angry at such obtuseness.

The Dowager Lady Tabor, as Auguste reached the entrance hall, was sitting waiting for him with Savage.

‘Ah, Mr Didier, here I am. Ready to be unleashed on the outside world.’

‘I hope I am not late?’ he asked anxiously.

‘Not in the least. I had a delightful conversation with your wife.’

Tatiana? What was she doing here? Auguste had a feeling he wasn’t going to like it whatever it was. His worst fears were confirmed, as he escorted Miriam down the outside steps. His Lordship’s Daimler awaited them as planned. What was not planned was the fact
that Tatiana appeared to be sitting in the driving seat instead of the Tabor chauffeur.

‘There now. Isn’t that a delightful surprise?’ Miriam beamed.

Surprise, yes. He was less sure about how delightful it was. He had planned a quiet talk with the Dowager: a sharp-eared Tatiana might not be an asset.

Hardly to his surprise he found himself gripping a starting handle, after he had helped Miriam into the back seat. A scowling Savage tried to follow her, but was thwarted. ‘Mr Didier is to sit here, Savage.’ Savage began ponderously to move to the front as Auguste held the door open for her, but before she could enter, Beatrice came flying down the steps in lavender silk, grey frills and white lace, dragging a reluctant black pug dog complete with Wellington boots.

‘I shall come too,’ she announced happily. ‘Such a nice way to walk, isn’t it, Tatiana?’ Without a glance at Savage, she rushed past and into the front seat, handing the pug’s lead to Auguste.

‘No room, no room, Savage,’ shouted Miriam, taking pity on Auguste and making room for Boofuls. ‘Never mind, you can take me to church next Sunday, you dear thing. She so wants to drive in a motorcar,’ she explained to Auguste as the Daimler lurched off. ‘But George will never take me out in one. Priscilla won’t let him. She
would
be cross if she knew. Some nonsense about its being dangerous. It’s far more dangerous being next to her shooting pheasants. Tabor women have always handled a gun well, even Laura, but Priscilla is convinced she’s Annie Oakley. Or do I mean Calamity Jane?’ She laughed.

Auguste resigned himself to the prospect before him as the Daimler bounced in and out of holes and ruts, and Boofuls, not content with his own boots, took a slobbering interest in Auguste’s. Why worry about
Gregorin, he wondered dolefully, considering he was doomed to death under Tatiana’s patronage anyway? Why had the English abolished the rule for a man with a red flag to walk in front of these fiendish contraptions?

‘Are we going to Settle?’ he asked.

‘No, I want to revisit the Barden Tower. I haven’t been there since I came with my darling Charles in ’45. He proposed to me there. Do you know Mr Wordsworth, Mr Didier?’

‘The poet?’

‘He was such a
dull
man,’ Miriam observed. ‘A worthy fellow, but, I suspect, not much fun to have to dinner. Now whom would
you
choose to entertain at dinner?’

‘Brillat-Savarin,’ Auguste replied promptly, glad to be on familiar ground, here at least.

‘Karl Marx,’ contributed Tatiana.

‘Who is he?’ asked Beatrice, puzzled. ‘Is he in the Marlborough House set?’

‘Yes, Mrs Janes,’ Miriam assured her blithely. ‘Just talk to His Majesty about him. Such a good chum of the King.’

The motorcar abruptly turned left, hitting a grass bank, reversing, hitting something else, and then roaring under an arch triumphantly ahead to the great alarm of a farmer peacefully ambling towards his fields in the wooded valley they were entering. Tatiana promptly yanked the wheel to swerve round him, though she did not trouble to decrease her speed.

‘Oh, splendid,’ carolled Miriam. ‘What a good driver you are, Mrs Didier.’

Auguste momentarily toyed with the idea that the Dowager Baroness Tabor was a madwoman kept by the Tabors under restraint, since she seemed as drawn to murder as Tatiana.

‘Why ever does George believe motorcars to be
dangerous? I sometimes think he is like the Shepherd Lord, of whom Mr Wordsworth wrote. Like him, he would be quite happy living out here with a few sheep and the occasional pheasant or grouse to shoot. Dear Priscilla can be just a little demanding, and just as the Shepherd Lord disliked Skipton so George dislikes the London season.’

‘Who is Lord Shepherd?’ Beatrice enquired, pricking up her ears at the idea of an unfamiliar member of the peerage.

‘Shepherd Lord, dear Mrs Janes. Such a romantic story. His father was The Butcher, Earl Clifford The Butcher, that is.’ Miriam laughed. ‘After their defeat at Towton Moor, many Lancastrians forfeited both their estates and many, their heads too. Earl Clifford was dead, and his wife, fearing for her infant son’s life, gave him into the care of a shepherd in Cumbria. Mr Wordsworth highly approved of the fact that when he finally claimed his inheritance, he lived in none of his splendid castles but instead restored the twelfth-century Barden Tower, buried deep in the countryside, and studied alchemy and astronomy.’

The Daimler stopped with a jerk that threw Miriam into Auguste’s arms. He politely disentangled himself and disembarked, relieved to be on solid ground once more.

‘This?’ asked Beatrice, disappointed at the bleak towering building. ‘But it’s muddy. Boofuls doesn’t like mud. I’ll have to stay in the motorcar with him.’

Relieved, Tatiana hurried after Miriam, who was already walking spryly to the ruins.

‘He was a recluse?’ Tatiana asked with such interest that Auguste wondered whether she had notions of taking up alchemy.

‘Fortunately for the future of the Clifford line, he seemed to have learned the secret of procreation – and
also of fighting, for he left his tower to fight at Flodden nearly thirty years later. I can quite see George doing the same. Priscilla would be at his side, of course. Perhaps even in front,’ she added. ‘Or Laura,’ Miriam added. ‘I can see Laura marching into battle.’

‘And why not?’ Tatiana said spiritedly. ‘If women so wish, they should do so.’

‘I fear my Charles would have been shocked at that idea.’

Looking at her feminine figure and demeanour, Auguste could only agree with her late husband. He could see no military qualities about her at all.

‘Laura was always Charles’ favourite. Such a quiet little thing, but so passionate underneath. She feels things deeply. And like Charles, so devoted. I have been fortunate in my children. Of course one could not call Cyril devoted, but he is a Tabor through and through. George has his pheasants, Cyril his young ladies. Such an attractive boy, always pretending to be so much in awe of George, his elder brother, but in fact the leader. Cyril always gets what he wants, and always did. That’s why Priscilla doesn’t get on with him. Now aren’t I a chatterbox?’ She stared up at the ruin towering over them. ‘Over fifty years and it hasn’t changed.’ There might have been a tear in her eye. ‘I am glad to have seen it again,’ she said quietly.

‘Shall we take tea at the inn?’ asked Tatiana brightly as they climbed back into the Daimler. Boofuls had been returned to the back seat, Auguste noted with some amusement, and was looking crestfallen – a state of affairs that rapidly changed when Auguste climbed in.

‘An
inn
?’ asked Beatrice in alarm, her eyes round. ‘But I cannot enter a public house.’

‘Auguste will protect you,’ said Tatiana cheerfully, swerving to avoid a pheasant that had forgotten it was
1 October and was peacefully ambling across the road. ‘It will be something
new
.’

‘Will I like it?’

‘Undoubtedly not, dear Mrs Janes,’ Miriam informed her. ‘Just like the Shepherd Lord. He couldn’t adapt to the life of a gentleman any more than you could to the life of a scullerymaid.’

Beatrice shuddered. ‘But he had all that money. Just think of the clothes he could have bought.’

There was just time to slip down to the kitchens, merely to check that all was in order. After all, his reputation was at stake, for Breckles had given permission for him to organise such meals as he wished, and whatever his own opinions as to the preferability of Yorkshire dishes in Yorkshire, a maître’s first duty was to please his customers.

‘I wonder if I might prepare a turtle soup?’

‘Aye.’

‘And the dessert. If I might—’

An almighty crash as Breckles brought down a warning fist upon the table. ‘Don’t you touch puddings.’

‘No, no,’ Auguste assured him hastily. ‘Only the Nesselrode pudding. Do please try it yourself.’

Mollified, Breckles took the proffered taste. ‘Mmm.’

‘You like it?’

‘Aye.’

‘With Yorkshire chestnuts,
eggs
and cream it could almost be said to be Yorkshire,’ Auguste pointed out craftily. ‘As Yorkshire as spotted dick, anyway.’ He was rewarded by another crash of the fist.

‘
Spots
! Mr Alfred. I was going to tell you, then I forgot.’ Breckles was crestfallen. ‘’Tis loudest criers in the fair have least on their stalls, and there’s talk of how Mr Alfred lost a lot of money gambling, and how his creditors are getting pressing.’

‘Well?’

‘S’pose one of them got too pressing?’ Breckles was pink in the face at this new excitement of detection.

‘Mr Breckles, you are a wonder,’ said Auguste admiringly. ‘I always say that the art of true cuisine and the art of detection go hand in hand. Not only can you produce a Yorkshire pudding as light as a soufflé, but miracles of logical detection as well.’

Well pleased, William Breckles dried his hands on his apron and shook Auguste’s hand. Then he returned to the more important matter of batter.

‘Where have you been, Mother?’ Priscilla asked querulously, with a none too friendly glance at Tatiana and Auguste, obviously finding them guilty of leading her mother-in-law astray, since the Dowager had appeared belatedly in the dining room.

‘We went for a drive,’ her mother-in-law announced airily, ‘then I fell asleep. Now don’t fuss me as though I were a child, Priscilla. We didn’t discuss the murder, if that is what worries you.’

Priscilla stiffened, waving aside the soup. ‘Since we do not know who the dead man is and the police are apparently unable to enlighten us, I cannot see there would be anything to discuss.’

‘I do. I think it was all a plot to steal the naughty Sickert drawing,’ suggested Alfred lightly.

‘Alfred, be silent, sir,’ barked his father nervously.

‘And the burglar wore dress clothes in order to blend into the background if anyone came into the smokehouse whilst in the midst of his erotic deed,’ said Victoria, taking up Alfred’s cue.

‘Then somebody shot him to prevent the awful secret,’ Alexander concluded indiscreetly, ‘of the presence of a Sickert nude in your smokehouse becoming known throughout Society.’

‘I would have paid him to take it away,’ Priscilla announced logically, without a glimmer of humour, ‘not shot the man.’

‘Perhaps Auguste’s Russian enemy,’ volunteered Gertie brightly, ‘found the art thief in the smokehouse and shot him thinking it was our dear Mr Didier.’

‘Rather careless of him, wasn’t it, kitten?’ enquired her husband. Marital relationships appeared once more to be harmonious, although there was a distinct frostiness still towards his sister-in-law.

‘I think Mr Didier shot the man to provide himself with a nice piece of detective work,’ announced Miriam. ‘Or Mrs Janes protecting her – um – husband against a blackmailer.’

‘Mother, be quiet,’ thundered Priscilla, before Harold could comment on this theory.

Miriam meekly turned to wheedle Harold back into good humour.

Society dinner was a strange affair, Auguste thought, as full of wind as artichoke soup. He felt he was on a stage in an unknown play while the real work was carried out beneath their feet and in the wings. Around him the enamelled faces of the women, rouged and powdered and eye-shadowed, looked like painted masks as they talked and chattered. What were their real thoughts? He had found to his surprise that he was developing a strange admiration for Priscilla. With Laura he had struck up a friendship; he was beginning to treat Alfred, Victoria and Alexander with familiarity. It dawned upon him that he was getting used to Society, just as Tatiana increasingly resented it.

Alfred appeared, undismayed at his summons, in Rose’s quarters, and interrogated him on whether everything was satisfactory, as a host to an honoured guest.