Murder in The Smokehouse: (Auguste Didier Mystery 7) (22 page)

‘Got something for you,’ Cobbold announced.

‘Regimentals?’

For answer Cobbold tipped out the bag. To Auguste and Rose the contents shouted out: moleskin trousers, check shirt, scarf, old jacket, bowler hat, and old shoes.

Auguste could not resist it. ‘They do not look like regimentals, Chief Inspector.’ He managed to sound disappointed.

Egbert cast him a scathing look. ‘Sit down,’ he invited Cobbold, dismissing Wright. Rose pushed Auguste’s apple pie across to Cobbold. ‘Fancy some pie? Mr Didier is leaving to return to the Hall.’

‘I thought I might stay—’ Auguste began.

‘The Hall,’ interrupted Rose dismissively.

Smarting, Auguste retreated. He reached the front entrance and reconsidered. Tom Griffin was
his
. He marched back. He sat down again and Egbert did not comment. They were indeed talking about Tom Griffin.

‘His Nibs up at Balmoral will be relieved that it’s not going to be a major scandal,’ Egbert was saying, ‘but if I know him he’ll still want to know who did it, travelling man or not. And quickly.’

‘I don’t know what constitutes a major scandal in
London, but round here it’s anything implicating the Tabors.’

Egbert Rose stared at him. ‘You’re right, Cobbold. We’re not out of the wood. We can release Cyril, and the clothes prove it can’t be Mariot, which clears Miss Laura and I suppose Carstairs. There are still other Tabors.’

‘Why should they want to kill a travelling man?’ Cobbold demanded.

‘Auguste here reckons it’s to do with young Alfred and his gambling debts.’

‘But he is not the only possibility,’ Auguste put in quickly. Thank goodness now there was no mention of Tatiana. Or was that merely because of his presence?

‘We ain’t ballet dancers, Auguste,’ Egbert told him irritably. ‘We go through the facts one by one. We don’t leap six foot up and twirl around in the air like something out of
Swan Lake
.’

‘But you must consider other possibilities,’ Auguste pleaded. ‘We must find out more about Tom Griffin. Suppose he was an illegitimate brother?’

Egbert laughed. ‘I’d like to see Priscilla’s face.’

‘He is about the right age,’ Auguste continued doggedly. ‘Should we not ask the good Inspector Stitch to make investigations in Somerset House now he has returned to London? Tom Griffin is or was about sixty, perhaps a year or so younger: his birth should have been registered. Also Stitch could make enquiries among the workhouses and orphanages in South London where he was born. If Tom’s mother died when he was young he might have been taken into one.’

Rose hesitated, but was suddenly diverted by the idea of interrupting Twitch’s Sunday evening, with details of a nice job for the morrow. ‘Got a telephone here?’ he enquired of the Lion’s landlord.

It was nearly nine by the time Rose and Auguste arrived back at Tabor Hall, accompanied by Cyril Tabor.

Gertie’s sad face brightened; she was no longer alone in the Tabor lions’ den. ‘Cyril,’ she shrieked, hurling herself into his arms with an enthusiasm that strained her narrow jet shoulder-straps to danger point.

‘Steady, kitten. I wasn’t snatched away from the gallows.’

Priscilla rose to her feet, in righteous indignation. ‘I am glad that you have come to your senses, Chief Inspector. Cyril, you will need a brandy.’

‘I need three,’ he corrected.

‘I’d be glad if you wouldn’t leave the Hall yet, Mr Tabor,’ Egbert Rose said stolidly, ‘pending further enquiries. I’d like to have a word with you tomorrow morning in my rooms here.’ He stared blandly at Lady Tabor.

‘I thought you understood our rooms could no longer be at your disposal, Chief Inspector, after this unfortunate case of wrongful arrest,’ Priscilla countered.

‘I’m quite willing to stay on at the Golden Lion, Lady Tabor. It’s a nice little place; I’ve taken quite a fancy to it. Warm and cosy. Especially when you’re seated round the log fire with interesting folks, like the editor of the
Craven Herald
, and I believe gentlemen from the
Morning Telegraph and The Times
are still in residence.’

There was a pause, as Priscilla reconsidered her position.

Miriam spoke for her. ‘Much more convenient for you to be here on the spot when you have to arrest another member of our family, Chief Inspector. Do keep us informed on whom it is likely to be.’

On Monday morning it rained. Grey skies hung low over the moors, as Cobbold’s men continued their search for missing regimental uniforms, squelching through mud on the flat land, tramping in mud-clogged boots on the high. Nothing was found. Egbert Rose achieved much the same result with Alfred, who clung to his story that the debt-collector who had called had been completely paid off, and that was the end of the matter. It was not, but for the moment Rose let him go. Interviews with everyone else from the Dowager Lady Tabor down to Betty Tubbs the scullerymaid failed to reveal anything more.

By the evening someone else had a grievance: Inspector Twitch.

‘Him and his daft ideas,’ he squealed with indignation over the telephone line, while Rose listened without compassion. ‘Do you know how many Tom Griffins were born in South London in the early 1840s? Dozens of the little nippers. And I had to look every one of them up and not a blasted clue as to which one is
your
fellow. And I bin to every workhouse, every orphanage, but not one of them had records of a Tom Griffin.
And
I’ve bin to every board school, every national school, every old dame school,
everywhere
. I’ve got a list as long as the Commissioner’s face to follow up!’

‘You’re doing a grand job,’ Rose told him cordially. ‘Keep up the good work,’ and went back to his supper.

Auguste mentally danced up and down in impatience. Waiting, always waiting. In cooking there were at least tantalising smells and tastings, to lure one along; in detective work there was frequently nothing. Surely Egbert could not still think Cyril guilty – yet he was still hunting for regimentals. To whom could those ragged garments have belonged other than Tom
Griffin? The corpse was Tom Griffin’s. Surely Egbert must realise that?

At dinner he felt distinctly unwelcome at the Tabor table, which he forced himself to attend. Tatiana had vanished on an unexplained mission of her own. Something to do with motorcars, he supposed vaguely.

He also noticed the Janes’ absence, and boldly asked his hostess the reason.

‘Harold had a sudden call to London.’ Priscilla’s smile was wintry.

‘He couldn’t wait to get away, if you ask me,’ Alfred said judiciously. ‘Now Cyril’s free, he was afraid the arm of the law might fall on him.’

‘Why?’ Auguste asked, pinning him down.

Alfred was nothing loth. ‘The yellow god, jealousy, old chap. The King’s one thing; but I heard a whisper at Doncaster that our buxom Beatrice had been spreading her bosom rather further.’

Auguste felt the likelihood of its spreading to Tom Griffin was unlikely, but could not say so. Not yet.

‘I think
we
should leave now it’s all over,’ Gertie announced bravely.

‘It’s not all over, kitten,’ Cyril told her.

‘What?’ She stared at him, her lip trembling at salvation so unkindly removed.

‘They still think I did it. Or one of us.’ Cyril stared querulously round the table. Was there some kind of warning in his words, Auguste wondered.

‘They’re busy digging up the grounds,’ George said gloomily. ‘I’ll ask them to put the manure down for the winter while they’re about it.’

No one laughed. Not even Victoria.

‘What do you mean, still under suspicion, Cyril?’ Priscilla demanded crisply.

‘Stands to reason. Whoever he is, the chap died here. One of my suits is missing. They still think I did
it, changed his clothes, and buried his own. They just can’t prove it.’

Auguste held his breath. Something hovered here, he was sure. Something that could not be spoken because of his presence, perhaps.

‘Do they still think it’s Colonel Simpson?’ asked Priscilla at last.

‘Either that or the debt collector who called here for Alfred a few weeks back.’

‘I thought we had disposed of that notion,’ Laura said resignedly.

‘I suppose you didn’t kill him, did you, Alfred?’ enquired Miriam.

‘Mother,’ barked Priscilla immediately. ‘There are those present who might take you seriously.’

‘We’ve only Alfred’s word for it that he paid the man off,’ Miriam pointed out meekly.

‘If I did shoot him, you’d be the first to know,’ her grandson tried to joke, but his hand was unsteady on the glass.

It was hard to believe in Alfred’s guilt – Auguste studied the spotty young face – but then did murderers have to be middle-aged and shifty-faced?

‘I don’t think Alfred’s got enough blood in his veins for murder, do you, Mr Didier?’ Miriam brightly made amends.

Auguste politely pretended that the dessert basket was his only interest.

‘I think you’ll find, Mr Didier,’ Priscilla boomed decisively, ‘that the poor man had some kind of delusion about the King. No doubt he followed him about all over the country.’ A pause. ‘Shall you be at Newmarket, Mr Carstairs?’ Normal life was being resumed.

‘No. I thought I’d stay on a little, if I may. I might be of help.’

‘I do not require help,’ Laura informed him stiffly.

‘I meant the family.’

‘The Tabors have much experience of being under fire,’ Priscilla replied tartly.

‘Perhaps murder has never touched you so closely before.’

‘An unknown dead man does not touch our family honour, Mr Carstairs.’

‘Unless it’s “honour rooted in dishonour”. . .’

‘I
beg
your pardon!’

‘Forgive me, Lady Tabor. I’ll leave your house, of course.’

‘You’ll do no such thing.’ George went pink at such robust exertion of his will.

Oliver looked at him. ‘You’re right. I’ll stay.’

‘What if Twitch fails to turn up anything, Auguste?’ Egbert asked him, as he went to bid him goodnight, and report on the evening’s conversation.

‘But he must find something. Blackboots told me Tom was an orphan from Clapham, and his mother—’ He broke off for Egbert was roaring with laughter.

‘
Clapham
,’ he repeated, shaking.

‘What is the matter?’

‘It’s Twitch,’ said Rose between guffaws. ‘He’s still searching high and low throughout South London.’

‘What is wrong with that?’

‘I’ll tell you. And if I’m right, Twitch will have your guts for garters. You said South London. Was that Blackboots’ definition or yours?’

‘Clapham
is
in South London.’

‘It never occurred to you there might be more than one Clapham?’

A terrible feeling came over Auguste that he was not going to like this.

‘You’d better get hold of some of that Koko-for-the-hair stimulating-for-the-brain stuff,’ Egbert told him
rudely. ‘Clapham is a small village a few miles from here. You changed trains there yesterday. Clapham Junction, it’s called.’

‘There’s such a thing as wasting police time,’ Twitch screeched malevolently over the telephone, secure in the knowledge that only Auguste and not the Chief could hear him. Auguste smarted from injustice. Anyone could have made such a mistake. Yet he knew that in Stitch’s strictly kept mental accounting book, this was a major entry on the debit side and would not lightly be forgotten.

On this bright October morning, Twitch sank from his mind as hopes rose. Clapham village lay a mere mile and a half away from the Midland railway line in the valley, and Auguste strode purposefully forward. A poster at the station had informed tourists that they might hire ponies for the purpose of visiting Clapham, but arrival by pony appealed to him even less than the offered Daimler.

What was the etiquette of using one’s host’s carriage when bound upon a task that might bring murder uncomfortably close to his family? It was hard enough living under their roof. By now the Tabors seemed less like the arrogant
aristos
from his childhood history books of the Revolution and more like a family with normal foibles. Were there no youths of twenty-one in Bethnal Green convinced they knew everything there was to know about life; no mothers as fiercely possessive as Priscilla in the back streets of Paris; no country farmers as stolid and unimaginative as George?

Clapham was a pretty grey-stone village, divided by a sparkling beck. Children played hopscotch in the streets and on his right was the most welcoming New Inn, but he decided to postpone this reward until further forward in his quest. Clapham’s annual sheep fair had just taken place, but apart from a middle-aged man of Mediterranean extraction leading an equally middle-aged dancing bear, there were few signs of it now. He decided to go directly to the church at the far end of the village street. Inside he hesitated in the semi-gloom, looking hopefully for a verger. Suddenly the church was flooded by the harsh glare of what could only be electric light.

‘Surprised, eh?’ The vicar materialised at his side. ‘We’re the first village in England to have electric light in the streets. It’s as good as an extra policeman.’

Auguste was doubtful whether it was such a dramatic improvement so far as the church was concerned. He missed the sense of ageless communion that the warmth of gas or oil bestowed. But at least the registers would be easier to read.

‘Clapham is fortunate to have your farsightedness,
mon père
,’ he said politely.

‘Not mine. The owner of Ingleborough Hall. You’ll be wanting to see the registers, I expect.’

‘Do you know the name of Tom Griffin?’ Auguste asked hopefully, following him to the vestry.

‘No. I’ve only been here six years though. Lamb.’

Was this an invitation to luncheon? Auguste hesitated – fortunately.

‘Canon Lamb,’ his guide amplified.

Left alone with the registers, Auguste began his task with enthusiasm, convinced that the basis of the mystery lay within these volumes. If Tom Griffin were about sixty he must have been born in the early 1840s and his mother probably between sixteen and thirty
years before that. He pored over handwritings from spidery to copperplate, but could find no record of the baptism of a Tom Griffin, nor indeed of any Griffin at all, father, mother or son. For thoroughness, he checked the marriage registers. No Griffin had married in the relevant period, and being illegitimate, Tom might not have been baptised of course. Or what was far more likely, he realised despondently, was that the Griffins had simply moved here when Tom was small. And if they were travelling folk, it could have been from anywhere.

Was it worth making further enquiries? Yes, he decided. There was no sign of the vicar, so he made his way to the Post Office, waiting patiently in line while small children were served with sherbert and bull’s-eyes, sundry villagers with halfpenny stamps, and bookings made for telephone calls. Tactfully purchasing a dozen postcards of the glories of Ingleborough, he brought up the name of Tom Griffin, and was rewarded with the information that Old Nell might know. He tracked down his quarry to an old cottage on the other side of the beck, where Old Nell, in black skirt and shawl, was busy pouring batter on to her iron bakestone.

‘That looks most interesting,’ said Auguste sincerely. From Breckles’ explanation of the wonders of Yorkshire baking, he deduced this must be riddlebread. Above him, the pale-brown results of previous bakings were drying over strings between wooden supports, like a clothes line, and the smell in the small kitchen area suggested it would be good.

Baking day was not conducive to idle chatter, and the name Tom Griffin brought no reaction. His last slim chance had evaporated.

‘You are sure? Perhaps his mother died here, for he was orphaned while he was still a small child.’

‘Ay knows nowt about a Tom Griffin. And my memory’s as good as t’day tha taught me two and two meks four,’ Nell grunted in a thick Yorkshire accent, mixing buttermilk into the batter for a new batch of dough. Auguste ignored the delicious warm smell bent on seducing him from his purpose.

‘His mother had travelled with Wombwell’s Menagerie—’

Old Nell stood suddenly still, the dough in her hands. She stared not at Auguste but back into the past.

‘Rose!’ she whispered. ‘Little Rosie Moffat.’

Auguste sat back in the rocking chair, fully satisfied. Fresh riddlebread and some even more delightful haverbread, blue-milk cheese and rough ale surely constituted a feast to be rivalled by none, not by the ortolans of the Pyrénees or by the foie gras of Périgord.

Nell nodded, taking praise as her due. ‘Folks are forgetting how. There’s nowt like the old ways. My mother were an outcomer. A knitter of Dent, she were.’

He had heard of Dent. It must be all of twenty miles away to the north, which certainly made her an ‘outcomer’, he thought with amusement, until he recalled the Cannois speaking of the Niçois as though they were barbarians.

‘She did teach me haverbread. Tha don’t know nowt about mekking her round here. ’Tis all throwing round here. Haverbread needs rolling.’ A certain complacence was in her voice. What must it have been like for Nell’s mother to leave the sheltered Dent valley to cross the inhospitable moors on what was no doubt only a rough drovers’ track to come to a village where people, accent, even cooking were foreign to her? It was as much an upheaval as for any Army colonel’s wife facing the unknown rigours of India. This reminded Auguste of the still missing Colonel Simpson. Suppose this slender
thread now dangling in front of him were yet another false end?

He firmly put this from his mind. ‘Tell me about Rose Moffat,’ he asked Nell, as at last she stopped painfully attending to her baking.

‘She sat next to me at Dame School, she did. Kitty Blake were next to her, and Billy King – he died of the fever – and Charlie Watts. He came to no good. And . . .’ Auguste let her ramble on as the old days sprang to mind with a clarity the present lacked.

‘Rose,’ he reminded her gently.

‘Aye. Poor soul, she were pretty as a picture, but strict! One of them chapel families, sheep farmers.’

Of course, Auguste realised, that might be why there was no trace of Tom in the baptismal register.

‘Thoo should a’ seen them Sundays. Dressed up like for a funeral, all a-setting off to service. They were that strict, she never were allowed pretty ribbons, nor to play with the rest of us. Kept themselves to themselves did the Moffats. ’Tis no wonder she did run away. “Nell,” she’d say to me, “when I grow up I’m not a-going to stay.” Well, we all knew what happened to girls who ran away to the big town. “Thoo wouldn’t, Rose,” I said. “I would,” she says. “Just as soon as I can.”’

‘She was a lively girl, then. The village boys admired her?’ asked Auguste tactfully, impatient to find the link – if any – with Tom Griffin.

Nell took his meaning. ‘The lads never tried anything on with Rose, for all ’er looks.’

‘Because of her family?’

‘Aye. And because she were good and gentle.’

‘Why did she want to leave?’

‘To get away from
them
,’ she said soberly. ‘She loved animals, and she loved children, and she weren’t going to get nowt but sheep in Clapham, her family being as
they were. She were going to wed for love and t’only person they had in mind for her to wed were someone like them. I never did think she’d go. And perhaps neither did she. But one day Wombwell’s Menagerie came through t’village its on way to Settle. And that did it. She saw this baby monkey and an elephant, and couldn’t get them out of her mind. The wonders of the world, she said. She joined me on a cart, and we rode to Settle to see t’show. Her folks didn’t know, o’ course. Even I didn’t know Rose wasn’t planning to come back. Queen Victoria herself did like Wombwell’s,’ she added. ‘I remember it yet. Yon things with horns.’

‘Goats.’

‘Nay. Rhinoceros, that’s she. Marvellous. Alive, too. Anyway, Rose came running up to me “I’m staying,” she said. “They’re giving me a job helping walk the elephants.” And that were that. I pretended I didn’t know what had happened to her, not till Wombwell’s moved right away. Then I told her folks. Such a to-do. You’d think she’d made a pact with the devil.’

‘Did they try to bring her back?’

‘Not them. She were sixteen, maybe seventeen, and to her folks that meant she were already ruined by then.’

‘And was she?’ Interest was outstripping tact.

Nell shrugged. ‘Never saw her again, not till she came back with t’babby, five, mebbe six years later. A boy it were. About two then, I reckon. What did you say your man’s name was?’

‘Tom Griffin.’

‘Tommy,’ she repeated the name, searched back in her memory. ‘Aye. Perhaps it were Tommy.’

‘And her parents took her back?’

‘Nivver spoke to her again. Nor her brothers nor sisters. She took a cottage up in the woods. Shame it was. You could see ’em pass in the street, her hesitate,
try to smile – but no, straight on by. That’s the Moffats for you.’

‘Because the baby was illegitimate?’

‘Lord luv you, no. She were wed, she said, and now I recall she didn’t call herself Moffat no longer. Could have been Griffin. No, she’d gone with the showfolk and that was enough for the family. She’d sinned. You’d think tha’d want to see their own grandchild, wouldn’t you? No. Not him, nor her, nor the brothers and sisters.’

Married. Rose Moffat might have been lying, of course, but if not that was the end of the tempting theory that Tom was the illegitimate son of one of the Tabors – unless of course Rose had married after she bore Tom, or because she was about to bear him.

‘What happened to the father?’ he asked.

‘She nivver said. She didn’t talk more than she had to. Nivver a word about where she’d been.’

‘Did she say why she didn’t stay on at Wombwell’s?’

She cackled. ‘Lord luv you, it’s more than fifty years ago.’

Fifty years or not, Auguste was beginning to feel as if Rose Moffat had passed through Clapham only shortly ahead of him. ‘How did she manage to live?’

‘She did knitting. And she helped old Ned with his longcase clocks. Nimble fingers had Rose. I can see her now tripping down the street, with that bairn. Pretty as a picture.’

‘And what happened to her?’

‘She died there, did poor Rose, up in her cottage in the woods. It were only a few years before she was took. Buried here she was. You’ll find her in the graveyard, poor Rose.’

‘And old Ned?’

‘Dead these forty years,’ Nell announced with the relish of one who had survived.

‘All her family too?’

She snorted. ‘One brother’s still here, the stiff-necked bugger.’

A brother still alive? True, he did not sound entirely
sympathique
but age can mellow the harshest of souls. As Auguste took his leave, Nell called out after him:

‘I do remember old Ned telling me that the night she died, the clock she’d been working on stopped. When she nivver came to the workshop, he went up to see if she were ill. Found her lying there dead. He nivver did get that clock to go. Poor Rose. Such a pretty lass.’

‘And the clock stopped, Never to go again . . .’ The popular song running endlessly through his mind, Auguste made his way to the Moffat family house, a huge forbidding grey building on the outskirts of the village, as outwardly dour as the woman who came to the door. A wife? Housekeeper? The house struck cold even on a comparatively warm autumn day. Or was it the atmosphere emanating from those that dwelt within? He was led down the flag-stoned passageway into an equally forbidding living room.

‘Mr Moffat?’

The gaunt old man did not answer, but pointed to a chair. His own armchair was the most uncomfortable Auguste had ever seen. Like its owner, it bore a look of conscious rectitude in its upright approach to life. Moffat looked suspiciously at him as though a visitor from the outside world might threaten his fortified castle of a mind.

‘I’ve no wish to intrude on your family’s past, Mr Moffat,’ Auguste began firmly, ‘but I am connected with the police investigation into a murder. It is just possible the victim may be the son of your late sister, Rose Moffat.’ He was painfully aware how thin the possibility was. Nothing but a Christian name to link
Tom to any connection with this dour household.