Murder in The Smokehouse: (Auguste Didier Mystery 7)

by Myers, Amy

  ‘Wanted to marry her. As Priscilla said at the time, she’d be wanting to marry the cook next.’

  ‘Some people do,’ said Auguste drily.

  Belatedly George realised he had blundered. ‘Things were different then, of course,’ he added hastily. People are more broadminded now.’

  Auguste hadn’t noticed.

  ‘Anyway,’ George continued hastily, ‘Priscilla made her see it wouldn’t do. He saw it himself, to do him justice. He had no money. No prospects. A sort of bookish navvy. Archaeologists they call them.’

  ‘Not Robert Mariot?’ Auguste asked astounded. ‘Not Mariot of the later excavations at Troy? And now Babylon?’

  ‘Heard of him, have you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Auguste simply. ‘Most people have.’ He was thinking rapidly. It would not be too difficult to get a photograph of Robert Mariot. Just to be sure . . .

  With some difficulty he extricated himself from billiards on the plea that he needed to speak to Tatiana. George, it seemed, was only too happy to come with him to the salon. It appeared he needed a word with Beatrice. Beatrice was, however, alone in the Blue Salon, deep in the Illustrated London News – the fashion column.

  ‘The Princess has gone to the village. On foot,’ Beatrice added, somewhat perplexed at this unusual activity. ‘She wished me to go as well, but my shoes—’ She looked at the white satin slippers, as Auguste speedily eluded his host’s ‘Perhaps I’ll come—’

  He was alone at last. For a few moments only. Hurrying down the steps behind him, came Alfred Tabor.

  ‘Ah, Didier.’

  Auguste turned. ‘Alfred,’ he said somewhat coldly, ‘if you are intending to accompany me, please do not concern yourself. I am quite able to find my own way.’

  ‘No bother,’ announced Alfred cheerily. ‘Noblesse oblige and all that.’

  ‘Very well. We’ll go this way.’ Meanly, Auguste set off on the path to Malham most certain of providing mud and puddles. Alfred was shaken but undeterred.

  ‘What do you think are the odds it was murder, Didier?’ he began eagerly.

  ‘Your mother seems certain it is suicide,’ Auguste reminded him.

  ‘She would be, wouldn’t she?’

  For one startled moment Auguste wondered if young Alfred were suggesting his mother had stooped to murder.

  ‘She’s afraid it’s her skeleton in the closet.’

  ‘Skeleton?’ asked Auguste with undisguised fascination.

  ‘Uncle Oscar, her brother. He hasn’t been heard of since the Cripple Creek Gold Rush in Colarado. The mater and her folks come from Philadelphia, but Oscar went to the bad. Grandfather threw him out without a dollar, so he went hunting for a few on his own. He turned up here about twelve years ago on the scrounge. Father was afraid he’d come to stay, but off he went and we heard he’d gone to Cripple Creek. He sent us a photograph. You can have a look at it. It’s on the wall in the back corridor to the servants’ quarters. He’s holding up a lump of rock, grinning like a Cheshire Cat.’

  ‘So he made good?’

  ‘Oscar couldn’t keep a fortune if he stored it in Fort Knox. Someday he’d come back, that’s what Father always said.’

  ‘But your parents would have recognised him.’

  ‘Who’s to say they didn’t?’ Alfred winked.

  ‘Why am I accompanied everywhere like an English cod by parsley sauce?’ Auguste demanded of his wife as she leant over the small stone bridge to admire the swift-flowing Malham beck. His voice rose sharply, to the great interest of two urchins playing with an iron hoop, and several worthies of Malham village on their way to the Buck Inn. Only with Tatiana in view had he shaken off the obnoxious Alfred.

  ‘They like you, Auguste. And why not? So do I,’ his wife told him fondly, putting her arm round him.

  He was not to be so easily beguiled. After all, she had shown few signs of liking him earlier that day. ‘It is more than that. I think it is to do with your visit to the smokehouse.’

  She sighed. ‘Tell me, chéri, again. Do you think I am a murderer?’

  ‘Non!’

  ‘Do you think I have a lover?’

  ‘Non!’

  ‘And if I had an assignation, would I have it in the smokehouse when His Majesty is nearby? And my husband?’

  ‘Non.’

  ‘Then let us forget this foolishness.’

  ‘I cannot,’ he said sadly.

  ‘Detection is in your blood, is it not? You hear the hunting horn and feel you must follow the chase.’

  Did he? Surely only in cooking, not detection? Cooking was a majestic exploration of uncharted seas in which ingredients fitted together by an artist formed a perfect recipe. Wasn’t detection like that too? Its ingredients were culled from many quarters; would they fit, or would they remain obstinately refusing to combine like tomato in risotto, sage with lamb. Yet when detective flavours married, when instinct told him the last piece of the puzzle was safely slotted home, that was like cooking. And certainly in the back of his mind some memory of an article he had read was stirring . . .

  ‘Perhaps just a little,’ he admitted, won over.

  ‘Do you think the corpse was murdered?’

  ‘I am afraid it is possible. Chérie, did you move the body? I must know before I see Egbert.’

  ‘Alexander did. I agreed.’

  ‘You lied to me.’ His heart sank.

  ‘It was necessary.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I can only tell you that it has nothing to do with that poor man in the smokehouse.’

  ‘He was a stranger to you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He wanted to sing, to shout in relief. ‘And were the lights on the path lit when you went there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And in the smokehouse?’

  ‘No. We lit them.’

  ‘Was the door locked?’

  ‘No. Though we had taken the spare key from the kitchen, of course. They have one in order to stock up the wine supply and refreshments,’ she explained.

  Was there a slight pause before she answered? A shade too much helpful explanation? Of course not. Relief bathed him with its soothing powers. He told her so.

  ‘Good. Now I wish to purchase potted trout. I am told it is good here. And it is useful. Mr Marx says that nothing is worthwhile unless it is useful.’

  ‘I’m relieved Mr Marx considers food useful,’ Auguste remarked laughing.

  ‘I am not sure he would approve of the truffles that accompanied the mutton chops you served on Saturday evening.’

  Auguste leapt on this philosophical point, perhaps in order to forget that the clouds were not completely lifted between himself and Tatiana. In marriage he had embarked upon a voyage of discovery, during which hidden rocks might yet tear the craft from underneath.

  He was beginning to know this road rather well, Auguste thought later that afternoon as the carriage jolted its way across Scosthrop Moor, past fells on which bears and rhinoceros had once grazed in prehistoric times, and on down into Settle once more. The ride was conducive to quiet contemplation of facts. Why, for instance, was Priscilla Tabor quite so vehement that it was a suicide? He played with the idea of one of the Tabors as a murderer, and dismissed it, rather reluctantly so far as Priscilla herself was concerned. No Tabor in their right mind would choose the day of the King’s visit to commit murder. One of the guests, now. Suppose Priscilla suspected one of them? She would go to any lengths to minimise scandal . . . Yet the carriages and occupants had all been counted out by the constable at the gate before the Hall had been locked up for the night.

  When he reached the New Street police station, conveniently set next to the Court House, he found Egbert Rose already on good terms with Cobbold. Not perhaps surprising, he reflected. There was something similar about their faces, albeit Rose resembled a bloodhound more than a terrier, but their eyes had the same alert, wary look.

  ‘Hah,’ Rose announced, well pleased at seeing Auguste and coming
to greet him. ‘Never thought to see Auguste the country squire.’

  Auguste followed the direction of his glance to the mud on his elegantly polished country brown boots. ‘There has been much to do today.’

  ‘Seeing His Majesty off, no doubt?’ Rose said resignedly.

  Auguste nodded. It was not the first time that His Majesty had removed himself from an unfortunate situation with all the dexterity of a lady from a box in one of Maskelyne and Cooke’s magical devices.

  ‘Right, I’m ready for Tabor Hall.’ Rose paused.

  Auguste picked up the unspoken question. ‘You will be lodged there.’

  ‘That’s decent of them.’

  ‘Not really,’ Auguste replied honestly. ‘I suspect it was preferable to your inspiring local gossip if you took rooms in one of the Malham inns.’

  ‘So I’ll be in with the lampboy, will I?’

  ‘Not at all. I persuaded Lady Tabor that the royal wing would do very nicely for you, since it is now vacated.’

  ‘The King’s bed?’ asked Rose, highly diverted.

  ‘That of a junior equerry.’

  Rose grunted. ‘Why should a stranger go to that smokehouse to shoot himself?’

  Auguste had heard that question too frequently today. ‘I suspect he did not.’ Auguste glanced at Cobbold, who seemed about to object to his presence.

  ‘Remains to be seen whether the Coroner’s enquiry agrees with you. Cobbold does.’

  ‘No powder tattooing. Suggests he was shot at a distance greater than about fifteen or sixteen inches,’ Cobbold pointed out.

  A fact he must have registered in the smokehouse, Auguste thought ruefully, and had had no intention of passing on to Auguste.

  ‘Pockets,’ Cobbold said tersely to Rose, and tipped out the contents of an envelope on the table. One handkerchief, unmarked. Box of matches, a key.

  ‘No money,’ Auguste pointed out.

  ‘Not unusual for house guests,’ Rose countered.

  ‘But he wasn’t a house guest. So he had to get to Tabor Hall somehow. He would probably have needed money.’

  ‘Must have sprouted wings,’ Cobbold told them. ‘We’ve got thirteen constables here and not one of them has been able to turn up anything. Neither the Golden Lion nor the Ashfield Hotel claims to have had a guest of that description. Nor the Victoria at Kirkby Malham nor the Buck or Lister Arms at Malham. And not the Temperance Hotels either. He doesn’t seem to have come by train, or omnibus, or even carrier. If he leapt on a stolen horse, we’d have found the horse. I’m spreading the enquiries wider into the dales, but so far it looks as if he could only have come in a suitcase. Strangers stand out round here like currants in a Yorkshire pudding.’

  ‘What about His Majesty?’ asked Auguste hesitantly. ‘It might have been an assassin.’

  ‘As soon as we have photographs developed, I’ll send a man up to Balmoral to see if the King or his entourage recognise our corpse,’ Cobbold said dourly. ‘That aide-de-camp he left behind is as much help as clogs to a mermaid.’

  ‘If I know His Majesty,’ Rose ruminated, ‘we’ll have every blasted equerry, plus Silver Stick, Gold Stick, and the Lord Great Chamberlain, demanding to know of the Yard whether this matter’s been cleared up.’

  ‘Then we’d best start by finding out who he is – and quickly,’ Cobbold said practically. He turned to the clothes again. ‘Good quality gloves – assuming they’re his. Tailcoat, label inside pocket, badly stained with blood that’s soaked through. Maker, somebody in Paris. Looks like Noire or Poire.’

  ‘I have not heard of him,’ Auguste observed, coming into his own. ‘Yet it is good quality, if worn.’ He looked at a shiny patch on one elbow and sniffed gently. ‘Not new. Someone has tried to renovate this with ammonia – see where the cloth is slightly brown?’

  ‘Black tie and waistcoat. Both badly stained. No label on them but the tie is good-quality silk, wouldn’t you say?’

  Cobbold permitted himself a grin. ‘This is Yorkshire, Inspector Rose. Nowt but good wool here.’

  ‘High-collared piqué dress shirt. Again, good quality. Label – Amelia Pegg, New York. No laundry mark. Far travelled, our bloke,’ Rose commented. ‘What else?’

  ‘White wool combinations. Nothing unusual there for a man of his age. No corsets,’ Cobbold continued. ‘Silk braces, suspenders, socks and old-fashioned black boots. No maker’s name – it’s worn off. That seems out of keeping.’

  ‘No front braces in the trousers either,’ said Auguste thoughtfully. ‘Our man buys good clothes and keeps them regardless of fashion.’

  ‘Only recently back from abroad perhaps,’ Rose suggested.

  ‘Back?’ repeated Auguste, his recent conversation about Robert Mariot and Uncle Oscar coming to mind. ‘But we do not know he started from Yorkshire. He could have been a foreigner.’

  Cobbold looked taken aback, as if a nameless corpse to identify in Yorkshire was bad enough. Opening up the horizons to encompass other countries was far worse.

  ‘Gun’s British,’ Rose pointed out, looking at the offending article. ‘That’s a Webley, ain’t it?’

  ‘Taken from the gun room, so Lord Tabor tells me,’ Cobbold replied.

  ‘And where is that?’

  ‘Inside the house, near the garden entrance door.’

  ‘That probably rules out suicide, then. Been touched by human hand, has it?’ asked Rose casually.

  ‘Only the hand that pulled the trigger,’ Cobbold answered, ‘and maybe someone on the scene before I got here.’ A pause. ‘It’s this new fingerprint business you’re thinking of?’

  Auguste froze in horror, not at the implication as regards himself, but instantly the thought came to him: had Tatiana touched it?

  Rose nodded. ‘Central Fingerprint Branch. Might as well give them some practice. I’ll get a man up with the equipment.’

  ‘I sent for some earlier this year, Chief Inspector.’

  Rose gave him a friendly nod. ‘Good. Let’s check it, together with anything else we can turn up from this smokehouse.’

  ‘What I don’t understand, sir,’ Cobbold spoke directly to Rose, ‘is what the King’s representative is doing here?’

  Auguste stiffened. Him?

  ‘Monsieur Didier?’ Rose asked in glee. ‘He’s a cook, aren’t you, Auguste?’

  ‘I have had the honour to assist Inspector Rose in a humble capacity,’ Auguste glared at Egbert, ‘on several of his cases. One or two of those have concerned the King, of whom my wife is a relation. A cousin three times removed.’

  ‘Now you’re concerned with who removed the owner of this lot.’ Rose bundled up the clothes again.

  Egbert Rose looked out unimpressed at the fells and limestone crags on the way to Tabor Hall. He was, Auguste knew, a town man. Egbert liked people, buildings, alleyways, all the million and one secrets of mankind, not bubbling becks, saxifrage and fern-covered hillsides and bored-looking sheep. Rose’s ‘nose’, famous in the Yard for its intuition, didn’t work so quickly in the country – it merely felt cold. But the smokehouse forced even him into interest as he took in its pinnacles and towers rising into the grey late-afternoon sky. He insisted on visiting it before the Hall. ‘You don’t mean to tell me everyone has to tramp all the way from the house just for a smoke?’

  ‘Even the King,’ Auguste assured him. ‘It is Lady Tabor’s strictest rule.’

  ‘It sounds a family whose bosom I wouldn’t care to be in,’ commented Egbert sourly. He liked a pipe from time to time.

  ‘You won’t know how apt that is until you see Priscilla Tabor’s.’

  Rose had enough bosoms to contend with in the smokehouse. ‘Not, I take it, Lady Tabor’s choice,’ he commented disapprovingly. He tried to banish from his mind an irreverent picture of Edith in black garters with roses and nothing else.

  ‘No, her visit last night – or rather, early this morning, was her first—’ Auguste said, belatedly remembering his surprise at her lack of curiosity in her husband’s
choice of art.

  Egbert studied his surroundings. ‘You know, Auguste, things are changing in my world. Not at the Yard, or in England, but on the Continent they are way ahead of us. Forensic science is taught there at universities, here it’s a dirty word. But it will come, just like fingerprinting has come now that Edward Henry’s arrived at the Yard. I told you he’d set up a fingerprint branch in July, didn’t I? Sooner or later, we’ll get to the point when this room would be able to explain the whole crime to us. Even who did it, most like. Hairs, fibres, fingerprints, bloodstains—’

  Blood – that was it, Auguste remembered with relief. ‘I read an article about how analysis of bloodstains might be able to help in murder investigations.’

  ‘That’s right. In Germany. That Mad Carpenter of Rügen case. Heard about it? They’re hoping to disprove his story that the blood on him wasn’t human but an animal’s. And that’ll be just the start.’

  ‘However good the stove, the cook is more important, Egbert.’

  ‘Try telling the Yard that,’ Egbert said sourly. ‘Now, where was the body lying – and the gun?’

  Trying to ignore his squeamishness, Auguste pointed out the marks he had made with spent matches, and those the police had added. ‘Lie down and show me.’ Gulping, Auguste obediently huddled into position.

  ‘And you were the first to see the body? How was that?’

  The moment he had dreaded. Egbert after all must know this from Cobbold. ‘No. I was summoned.’

  ‘Who by?’

  ‘Alexander Tully-Rich, now engaged to the Tabors’ daughter, and—’ He plunged. ‘Tatiana.’

  ‘You said you got there at three-thirty. Did she see a light from the bedroom window?’

  ‘No, she had come from the smokehouse.’

  ‘Why?’ the inexorable voice continued.

  ‘She and Alexander wished to have a smoke,’ shouted Auguste, red in the face, cornered.

  Rose said no more, which alarmed Auguste more than the questions. Try as he might, that first sight of the corpse on the floor was imprinted on his memory. Sprawled on its face and the gun conveniently by the right hand, a gun he believed had been placed, not fallen. And a body he now knew had been moved before he got there. What would Egbert make of it? He relaxed, as Rose changed the subject. ‘The doctor estimated he died between eleven-thirty and two. We’ll know more later. Were you all still up then?’