by Myers, Amy
‘Did you catch him, miss?’
Emmeline turned pink. ‘No,’ she whispered, ‘but he was there. I know. I nearly caught up with him at the house but when the lights went out I came back to find Alfred, because the candles were alight here.’
‘Did you—?’
‘I had gone in search of her,’ admitted Alfred unhappily. Once he had got free of Phèdre’s clutching hands, he thought crossly. ‘But I took a wrong turn and found myself at the house, so I turned and came back.’
Rachel had never seemed less attractive to Alfred.
‘You didn’t come back,’ she said lightly. ‘I don’t recall, do you, Harry?’
‘Well, I was going to,’ said Alfred belligerently. ‘I was nearly there when I heard Lady Westbourne’s voice, and it seemed to me that no gentleman should obtrude on such an argument,’ he finished firmly, delivering blow for blow. No, indeed, much more fun to linger in the dark outside the light cast by the candles. It had been quite a conversation.
‘Argument?’ said Lady Westbourne with knitted brow. ‘What can you mean, dear Mr Hathaway? Harry, Rachel and I are old friends. You didn’t take seriously my words to Rachel, did you? My poor Alfred, we play these little scenes from time to time to give her practice in dramatic art. It’s a game we play.’
‘You said you’d kill her,’ pointed out Alfred with relish.
‘Kill Rachel? My poor boy. You have much to learn. In any case, I didn’t, did I? Look, here she is today, as beautiful as ever.’ She bestowed a sweet smile on Rachel, indicating that she herself had been the victor.
Rachel looked round for Cyril. Cyril was such a tower of strength. Dear Cyril.
‘When did you all leave the belvedere?’ Rose continued.
‘Cyril and I left together,’ said Rachel. Left was hardly the word. He’d almost had to drag her, Cyril recalled. ‘We went straight back to the house.’
‘In fact we took the longer path of the “4”. We had things to discuss,’ said Cyril, a trifle grimly.
‘And Lady Westbourne, you and Mr Washington were in the belvedere when the lights went out?’
‘No, Inspector, we were on our way back when they went out, with Count Trepolov, who had joined us by then.’
It seemed so cosy; it had not been. Really, Harry almost made it seem as if he were yielding his place to Nicolai again. She had soon scotched that.
Trepolov was sitting in misery. Tatiana had returned to Paris, saying no more of his proposal. He must follow her. Surely now she would return his suit? But he must go now, despite the fact that the new colony of bees should be arriving. But he would soon be back, and they could be married in July or August, the time when the bees swarm, time to make new homes and a new life, a fitting time for a honeymoon.
Now he was recalled by a start with the distasteful subject of Saturday night, when he had wandered in the gardens to the belvedere, consumed in misery about Tatiana. Fancy Dora thinking he would return to her. How foolish. How little he cared now that the slight had been delivered whether she had another lover or not. All that was past.
‘And why did you go to the belvedere, Count Trepolov? To see Lady Westbourne?’
He hesitated. ‘No, Inspector, I wished to be alone with my thoughts. I had just become betrothed in marriage to the Princess Tatiana Maniovskaya and wished to think over my happiness.’
‘Congratulations, sir,’ said Rose, then suddenly jolted: Tatiana? A Russian princess. He glanced at Auguste, whose face told him all he wished to know.
‘I left with Lady Westbourne and Mr Washington,’ Trepolov said, ‘just as the dead cook arrived. He was not dead then, you understand. He was annoying us. He asked us to eat his zakuski while we wished to continue our discussion,’ he said with dignity. ‘So we left, walking round the avenues. The “8”, I think it was. While we were there the lights went out, and we hurried back to the house.’
‘And you passed no one going in the opposite direction?’
‘Yes,’ said Lady Westbourne, glowing with triumph. ‘One person did pass us – I believe person is the word. That person was in bright yellow.’
‘So our friend Mimosa – if Lady Westbourne’s right – was in the belvedere while the lights were out. Or Alfred Hathaway or young Miss Vanderville. The others claim to be back in the villa or making their way there.’
‘They could have returned,’ Auguste pointed out, trying hard to concentrate on what Egbert was saying and not the pain that raged within him.
‘They’d have been seen in the avenues by the candlelight.’
‘Not if they walked on the far side of the avenue. There would be a dark area where the candlelight shadow ends. And the candles in the belvedere are so high they would not show anything going on beneath them to observers from the house.’
‘I don’t see why La Belle Mimosa should kill Boris.’
‘Unless it were Boris grabbed at the egg.’
There was a pause. ‘Perhaps we’d better go and see the good lady,’ said Rose reluctantly.
La Belle Mimosa appeared delighted to see them. ‘So both of you wish to be my lovers, hah!’ she cried triumphantly.
‘No, Miss Mimosa.’ Rose was firm. ‘We’ve come to see you about Saturday night, as you know full well.’ He didn’t need Auguste’s presence, strictly speaking, but he certainly was not going alone.
She was wary, the glint in the tigerish eyes very noticeable.
‘So you find my egg, huh?’
‘Not yet. Now, I understand you were walking towards the belvedere round the avenue of “8” when the egg was stolen. Sure you weren’t already at the belvedere?’
‘Non. Eh, Inspecteur, quel est ton prénom? Que tu es beau, toi.’ Her tones were liquid honey. ‘I was walking towards the belvedere, it is true,’ she conceded, brought back to Saturday by the look on his face, ‘but never got there. Picture it. The lights go out in the house. I am in the avenue. I run back towards the house. Mon Dieu, what is happening, I ask myself. But as I do so, I hear a sound in the garden. “Come here,” he growls. I am foolish. I do so and this hand grabs me. Mon Dieu, what is happening? My egg, it is gone.’
‘And what were you going to the belvedere for?’
‘I go to admire the stars, chéri. What else? You think I go there to stab some crazy old Russian, eh?’ She laughed. ‘Non, Inspecteur, I see the so proud Lady Westbourne go, I see Harry Washington with Madame Tucker.’ She minced round the room in neat mimicry of Rachel Tucker under the influence of the tragic muse.
‘Did you not see who stole the egg?’
‘He had a cloak and a big hat, and a mask. That is all I know,’ she said carelessly. ‘And it was not a ghost. A ghost does not stay to insult a lady by putting his hand down where he has not paid to touch,’ she added bitterly.
‘And what of the gendarme guarding you?’
‘Pouf, he is no good that one. When the lights go out, he goes rushing towards the house,’ she said scornfully.
‘Could this man have been the Comte de Bonifacio?’ inquired Auguste.
She turned her full attention on to him, a slow smile lighting her face. ‘Eh, Auguste. All men are the same in the dark.’
‘All right, Higgins, tell me. What’s your story?’
Higgins jutted out his jaw. ‘Yer mean, where was I, Inspector, during the ’anky-panky? You knows very well. I was mending the electricity. General ’andyman, I am. Lucky I was around,’ he added virtuously.
‘We do not know you mend the electricity,’ pointed out Auguste, determined to restore his wounded confidence in his powers of detection. ‘We see you go to mend it, and we see you later saying you have mended it, and voilà, the lights are back on once more. But we do not know that perhaps Muriel is not down there mending the electricity while you are in the belvedere.’
Higgins sighed. ‘So it’s murder now as well as theft. The trouble with you lot in Scotland Yard is that you think life’s all Sherlock ’Olmes and Dr Watson. It ain’t that complicated. The lights
went out, and I fixed ’em. Ten to one, you’ll find the bloke that murdered Westbourne and old Boris was just feeling in a nasty mood and stabbed the first person ’e came across.’
‘I’ll be in a nasty mood afore long, Higgins, if I don’t find out what you’re up to,’ said Rose feelingly.
Rose was to find himself one step nearer very shortly. In police headquarters, he found Fouchard eyeing eagerly a bunch of telegrams from Scotland Yard, sent regardless of expense, though doubtless there would be words spoken once Rose had returned. Whilst on foreign soil, however, they felt duty-bound to support him.
Rose whistled in surprise as he regarded the contents of one of the telegrams, and handed it to Fouchard, eagerly reading over his shoulder.
‘So much for gentleman cricketer Harry Washington.’ Harry Washington, it had transpired, was the son of Bert Lincoln, cracksman and jewel thief, at present safely a guest of Her Majesty’s prison service. ‘Like father, like son perhaps.’
But the beauty of the day lay in another telegram. The long shot had hit target. It had taken the Yard somewhat longer to track this one down. James Higgins had no previous connection with the Grand Duke Igor. But Mrs Muriel Higgins had.
‘Muriel’s mum,’ Rose told Auguste in Mrs Didier’s parlour some time later, ‘used to work for the Grand Duke as a seamstress. There’s no sign of her having left under any cloud, no trouble while she was working there. Far from it. There were no robberies at all. And that’s interesting in itself. So interesting, I think another word with Mr Higgins might be in order. There’s something odd there all right, whether or not it’s connected with Boris’s death. I can’t see why he’d want to kill old Boris, or why anyone would, come to that. He must have been killed because of what he knew or saw. And that would suggest it must have been someone in the belvedere who saw him there or someone who saw him going there, or overheard you telling him to take his food down there, and dashed back after him.’
‘La Belle Mimosa is the most likely.’
There was a pause. ‘A clever lady she is,’ said Rose.
‘And a pretty one.’
‘Going to add her to your conquests?’ said Rose incautiously.
Auguste tried to laugh, and remembering belatedly the Princess Maniovskaya, Rose quickly changed the subject.
‘Now Boris has been eliminated, it seems likely he knew more than he said about Westbourne. Whether he knew it or not, he was holding some clue.’
‘I think perhaps he did not know it,’ said Auguste, still smarting from the Grand Duke’s rebuffs and little mollified that Egbert still seemed disposed to take his thoughts seriously.
‘What’s your reasoning?’
‘Because he was not a man of intelligence, to put two and two together. If he saw two, he would talk of two, and of two again, not of four. If he had seen something he saw I think he would have told us.’
‘Suppose he were blackmailing someone? That could be a reason for killing him.’
‘I do not see Boris as a blackmailer.’
‘Then the other way round. Suppose someone were blackmailing him into silence with bottles of vodka or whatever, but realised this couldn’t go on for ever. That sooner or later Boris would talk.’
‘The kitchenmaid said,’ Auguste thought back, ‘that he didn’t see the Grand Duke come out because he was out milking the cow. But suppose he saw someone then. Saw someone entering a window, something not quite right.’
‘Yet he said he saw nothing. He was clear enough for all the vodka to see the dagger on the table – and to recall he only saw me and the Grand Duke go into the study.’
‘There is one other possibility,’ said Auguste slowly. ‘That he knew who he had seen but was protecting the person.’
‘Why?’
‘Perhaps because they were Russian – they are a close circle.’
‘Not among the nobs and lower orders,’ objected Rose.
‘But Boris identified himself with the Romanovs, and with Russian honour. So just suppose he’d seen a Russian kill Lord Westbourne.’
‘Trepolov?’
Auguste stiffened at the name. How could she contemplate it? If it had to be anyone, why him?
‘Trepolov’d no motive for killing Lord Westbourne – or the Grand Duke. Ex-lover of Lady Westbourne is hardly a good reason, and ex-lover is what he was. Still, it’s possible, I grant you.’ He glanced at Auguste.
‘It would give me great pleasure if Trepolov were the guilty man,’ Auguste said quietly.
‘Ah.’
‘To think that such a man—’ He broke off, with a swift look at Rose. ‘It is insupportable.’
‘Quite so, Auguste.’
‘There’s the Grand Duke and Duchess,’ went on Auguste with an effort. ‘Boris would protect them, and it would tie in with his melancholy after the event. The Russian despondency of which Natalia has told me. Toska they call it.’
It was an obvious fill-up for something to say and eagerly snatched at by Rose.
‘Spare me that, Auguste. Not our Igor.’
Auguste laughed somewhat awkwardly. ‘I cannot see the Grand Duke Igor deciding to kill his cook. But of course there have been such abominations.’ He went off on a sidetrack. ‘There was the Earl Ferrers who killed his steward, of course, and—’ He broke off and looked at Rose.
Rose nodded. ‘I know. We’re still forgetting all about our friend Higgins. And the lovely Muriel.’
At this moment Mrs Didier brought in apéritifs and appetisers of moules marinated in lemon, wine and herbs.
‘Taste them, my friend,’ Auguste advised. ‘They are somewhat different to those on Southend Pier.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with a good whelk,’ Rose proclaimed stoutly. ‘Our friend Higgins does a grand line in them at The Seamen’s Rest. He’s tied in with this somehow.’ He frowned. ‘I don’t see him as a murderer, though. Thief perhaps. Here to remove the swag, certainly. But do you see Higgins shinning up drainpipes like an ape? Or dressing up in fancy cloaks? Much too fat.’
‘Muriel’s not.’
Auguste was at the flower market early on the Tuesday morning. He would take some flowers to Kallinkova, who had been dancing at Monte Carlo the previous evening. She would await him this morning eager to know what was happening. In his wretchedness over Tatiana, he had unconsciously avoided Natalia, when she had been so good to him. He bought a huge bunch of camellias and, almost blinded by them, cannoned into someone.
‘Pah. You are a bad omen,’ said the old Cannois. ‘Every time I see you something bad happens. I get arrested, I see ghosts . . . My son, you bring trouble in your wake.’
Auguste stood still, his spirits at the lowest ebb he could remember. Tatiana gone, she loved another. Natalia was her own mistress, doubtless she too would soon go. His art lay in ruins, and as a detective he seemed as good as a fallen soufflé. Did he truly bring trouble in his wake? Murder had followed him from Kent to the Galaxy Theatre, from there to Plum’s – and now to Cannes, his native town. He swallowed, and seeing this the old Cannois’s eyes softened. He patted his shoulder comfortingly.
‘Alors, mon fils, courage. You are a peis d’Avril, peutêtre. A mackerel. The April fool that comes too quickly to the net. Reflect, my son, reflect.’
Chapter Eleven
Natalia buried her head in the camellias, a gesture Auguste recognised. He recalled just so had she bent that graceful neck in The Awakening of Flora. He also recalled that camellias had no perfume, and wondered of what she was thinking. Perhaps it was simply to hide irritation at being thus interrupted in the midst of practice. He looked at her unlovely blue practice clothes and thought inconsequentially that those baggy trousers might very well do for bicycling. He quickly reproached himself for thinking thus critically of her. How privileged he was that she had even consented to see him. Her goodness, her kindness, her beauty – just the sight of her assuaged the pain in his heart left by Tatiana, now gone from his life for ever, gone back to Paris, no doubt to prepare
for her wedding. Why did they speak of pain in the heart? It rested, that ache, not in the heart, but the stomach, lying there as physically manifest as one of Soyer’s heavier receipts indulged in late at night.
Natalia sighed. ‘I shall be glad when this season is over. I dance only tonight, and Thursday – and then— ’ She snapped her fingers.
‘And then where?’ he asked with resignation.
‘Vienna, chéri, but then,’ looking thoughtfully at him, ‘in Paris. You come to see me?’
‘Non,’ he said abruptly. Not Paris, with its memories.
‘Then we shall meet again when the good God wishes. Or perhaps not, if He sends your lady to you in my place.’
‘That is not possible,’ he said stiffly. ‘She is to be married.’
‘Ah. Mon pauvre Auguste,’ Natalia said gently. Then: ‘Eh bien, now you tell me what happened on Saturday night after the inspector made me leave.’
She had changed the subject after a look at Auguste’s face, but to a subject which had obviously caused her much annoyance. She was still aggrieved that she had been dispatched like the other guests with no recognition given to her special status. She had merely been delegated as hostess to the Princess Tatiana Maniovskaya who was to leave for Paris early the next morning. That had been most enjoyable, but nevertheless she still smarted from being omitted from the scene of the crime.
‘So, poor Boris Ivanovich. Who wanted to kill him? He was a blackmailer perhaps? And he had a meeting in the belvedere with his victim?’ It was an excellent plot for a Strand Magazine shocker but even she conceded that Boris hardly fitted the pattern.
‘Non, it was a spur-of-the-moment murder,’ Auguste said. ‘It was his own knife. Moreover it was no appointment, for I myself sent him there.’
‘And did anyone hear you tell him to go to the belvedere?’ she pressed.
Auguste considered. ‘It is very possible. I’ – he looked shamefaced now that Boris was dead – ‘I had raised my voice,’ he admitted. He had indeed – he could remember the surprised glances of the guests looking round. But who? Which guests? He ransacked his memory. Surely – the thought went as Natalia spoke:
