Murder Makes an Entree

by Myers, Amy

  ‘How could you? Faithless, faithless,’ she moaned, clutching at his lapels. ‘Tell me it is not true, Thomas. That you did not mean what you said to me that day.’

  ‘My dear Gwendolen,’ he cut in impatiently, disengaging her from his new blazer. ‘Of course I meant it. I am extremely sorry, but I have just had a most trying time.’ He forced a laugh. ‘Among other matters. Mr Dickens’s Datchery has come back, you might say. And as to you, we are –’ remembering his diplomacy – ‘we are good companions, but I haven’t the least wish to remarry.’

  ‘You’re going to marry her!’ she shrieked.

  ‘Who?’ His face darkened.

  ‘Mrs Langham.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ he said testily. ‘I cannot imagine where you got that idea.’

  ‘You lie, you lie,’ she sobbed.

  ‘Very well then, I lie.’ Finally he lost his temper. ‘I am indeed to marry Mrs Langham. I consider her a model of feminine beauty and virtue, and of course I would prefer to marry her above you. Who would not?’ – forgetting all about the advantages of a diplomatic approach.

  The shriek that went up as she sank back on to a wicker sofa drumming her heels on the ground and yelling and shouting that she wished he were dead, and that she’d been dishonoured, made him quite alarmed. Should he depart? Should he stay? The Prince of Wales would shortly be here, and he was not yet changed. Really, this was proving a disastrous day. He pulled the rope to summon help. It was Auguste and Alfred Wittisham who answered the call, though Samuel Pipkin, attracted by the noise, was first on the scene. He realised instantly what was happening and why.

  ‘My dear Gwendolen,’ he solicitously and hypocritically began, ‘I fear this fellow has upset you.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ shouted Sir Thomas, ‘and who asked you anyway?’

  ‘My dear sir.’ Samuel was shocked. ‘You have upset a lady. Humiliated her.’

  ‘Yes, yes!’ shrieked Gwendolen. ‘He did, he did.’

  ‘I did not,’ said Sir Thomas, cornered. ‘I merely suggested, Mrs Figgis-Hewett, that you were overwrought.’

  ‘You are no gentleman, sir,’ announced Samuel loftily. ‘And unfit to be chairman of our Society. Mrs Figgis-Hewett will support me on this.’

  Too late Sir Thomas saw the error of his ways. ‘My dear Gwendolen.’ He laid a hand on her heaving shoulder.

  ‘Unhand me, sir,’ she cried, leaping up and throwing herself hysterically into Samuel’s arms. Over her shoulder he gleamed triumphantly at Sir Thomas. Vengeance would be his – and Mr Thackeray’s – this evening.

  It was then that Auguste and Alfred arrived.

  This really was the last straw. ‘What the devil are you doing down here?’ Sir Thomas asked wearily. ‘You,’ he turned to Auguste, ‘see to her.’

  Auguste obediently disengaged Gwendolen and subdued the hysterics with the aid of a swift slap, and his own comforting arm.

  ‘Is Beatrice here, sir?’ asked Alfred brightly out of nervousness, with unerring instinct heading straight for disaster.

  ‘Miss Throgmorton is in France, sir. She is not planning to marry a cook.’ He gave a scathing look at Alfred’s apron.

  ‘It’s a useful occupation, sir. Practical. She’ll never starve,’ Alfred pointed out, rallying his defences.

  Sir Thomas turned puce. ‘You marry my daughter over my dead body, and that’s my last word.’ It was not an original word, but it made his point as far as Alfred was concerned.

  Sir Thomas stalked off, maddened beyond endurance, and with only five minutes to change before the Prince of Wales arrived.

  The royal yacht Osborne had already docked at Ramsgate and the Prince of Wales was passing Dumpton Gapway, comfortably seated in Mr Multhrop’s new Panhard motorcar. He was not a happy man. There was thunder in the air, in all senses. It had been far from the capital week he had come to expect from Cowes, what with Willie winning everything in sight, having to make diplomatic speeches to his own nephew about how jolly it was to lose to him, and then just as he got time to drown his sorrows at the Yacht Club he had to come to Broadstairs. There it was now. Hadn’t changed since Mama used to stay here. She’d be expecting a full report on Pierremont House and the dear little village, so quiet, so tasteful. Well, it hadn’t changed much, except that it was bigger and a lot of schoolboys were apparently prancing round the sacred portals of Pierremont House. Apart from that, no change. Respectable and sober. Nothing ever happened in Broadstairs. He climbed down from the motorcar onto a bright blue carpet. Strange. Why blue? Had the driver got the right place?

  Mr Multhrop bustled forward in great nervousness.

  ‘Your Royal Highness, good-bye – er – afternoon.’ He bowed so far forward he nearly butted royalty in the stomach, but the Prince of Wales had met many Multhrops and greeted him courteously, leaving him pink with pleasure. He greeted Sir Thomas courteously too; he greeted every damn person lined up with similar courtesy though his private thoughts were on the likelihood of a stiff brandy and soda having been placed ready in his suite. It must be his age. Once upon a time the position of the bedroom relative to those of female guests would have been far more interesting.

  The preparation of ingredients for the sauce for the kidneys was now in the capable hands of Algernon Peckham, once Auguste had extracted a promise not to follow the Soyer recipe ‘by mistake’.

  James had returned, but now Emily and Heinrich had vanished. Auguste sighed. People seemed to have been disappearing all the afternoon, one after another. His schedule had worked, but only because he seemed to be carrying out most of it himself. Wearily he checked the table china, the hotel staff being responsible for the less venerable Literary Lionisers. But he himself must oversee the Prince of Wales’s table. He went into the huge dining room, where at last he found Alfred arranging bottles on the serving tables. His practised eye ran round the room. Pekin dinner service, silver cutlery, crystal glasses, showy white napkins, all in order. He cringed at the elaborate Dickensian menus adorning each place, but was grateful for the fact that the catastrophe of the banquet, for such he was sure it would be, would be firmly laid at Mr Dickens’s door and not his own. ‘The chef,’ he recalled saying, ‘must at all times be prepared for disaster.’ Alors, he had done his best. Surely nothing could go wrong now?

  Egbert Rose was helping the sailor-suited youngster on his right to fortify his castle. Rose’s face was lobster red. He was having a wonderful time and so was Edith. He liked the harbour, Edith liked the promenades, they both liked the sands and the Pierrot shows. They had visited the theatre. They had met Auguste and seen the Margate grotto with him. That was sixpennyworth of value all right. The only thing he couldn’t persuade Edith to do was to visit Boulogne for the day. Easy enough, train to Margate, down to the Jetty, and off they could go on La Marguerite at 9.45. But no. No France for her. She liked Ramsgate. Why come to Ramsgate if you want to go to Boulogne? was her unanswerable response.

  They had been sitting on the sands all day. It was not so warm today, so Edith had stopped eyeing the bathing machines wistfully and wondering if she dared. Rose dared all right. He went down early each morning and jumped up and down in the briny, enjoying every minute of it. His habitual London expression, cagey and mournful, was never to be seen. He kept firmly away from Ramsgate police court. He was having a nice seaside holiday with the added pleasure of Auguste’s presence and without that of murder.

  Chapter Five

  Auguste caught a brief glimpse of himself in the small mirror he had unobtrusively arranged in order that he might keep an eye on events taking place behind his back; the surreptitious addition of Mrs Marshall’s abominable Coralline pepper, for example, to an imperfect sauce. It was one of the less pleasant aspects of his present occupation that the Didier School of Cuisine was constantly mentioned in the same breath as Mrs Marshall’s nearby School of Cookery. He trained master chefs; Mrs Marshall trained domestic servants. There was a considerable difference.

  Now he groaned. He looked every bi
t as ridiculous as he feared. The ultimate insult had been thrown at him: he, the Maître Auguste Didier, had been obliged, nay commanded, not only to appear in Dickensian dress but to don the unmistakable apparel of Alexis Soyer: tight white drill trousers, matching tunic, short jacket, ridiculous cummerbund, slotted into which was his own kitchen knife (no doubt for a speedy self-martyrdom after the imminent disaster of this meal) and, worse, the horror on his head.

  He peeped again into the mirror, hoping the sight might have vanished. It hadn’t. A wide pancake-shaped black cloth hat with a huge brim rolled back on one side adorned his dark hair. He was expected to superintend a grand banquet looking like this. Like Soyer! It was too much, even for the sake of cooking for the Prince of Wales.

  ‘Monsieur, what are you doing?’ Auguste’s agonised shout was addressed to the rear end of a gentleman, whose head was in an oven apparently examining a goose at close quarters.

  ‘Just doing my job, Mr Didier.’ The Prince’s detective emerged, flushed.

  ‘You expect to find an assassin masquerading as a goose?’ Auguste enquired scathingly.

  ‘Hidden weapons,’ declared the detective mysteriously.

  ‘If an assassin were to dare to enter my kitchen,’ Auguste announced in tones that made it clear that no villain would have the temerity, ‘do you not think that poison would be his chosen means, rather than an arsenal of rifles hidden in a kitchen range?’

  ‘If you knew the criminal mind like I do, Mr Didier,’ began the detective loftily, but he left the sentence unfinished, belatedly recalling Auguste’s reputation in criminal circles. He took advantage of the noisy arrival of Auguste’s staff to beat a judicious retreat, as Auguste hurled imprecations after him, based largely on the fate that would await him should the goose come to any harm as a result of his incursions into the chef’s sovereign territory.

  Auguste had granted his pupils a half-hour respite in which to change into their enforced Dickensian dress, and was now confronted with all six apparently sharing some enormous joke. It was intensified when they noticed the attire of their maître. Even Algernon’s expression changed from sneer to genuine laughter.

  ‘The Maître Soyer would be proud of you, maître,’ he chortled.

  ‘I like the hat, Mr Didier,’ giggled Alice, tweaking it to one side.

  Auguste regarded them grimly and with foreboding. No serious attention would be paid to cuisine while his pupils were cavorting around in this outlandish dress parade. Alfred was waving a white-stockinged leg in the air, Heinrich experimentally bending over in his black knee breeches; James was pulling at his skimpy short jacket, puffing out his chest like Beerbohm Tree as d’Artagnan, Algernon was dancing a Highland fling showing off his black slipper shoes, and Alice and Emily were swishing merrily arm in arm through the kitchen in their huge, gathered black skirts covered with large, bibbed, lacy aprons. Sid, being unlikely to be displayed to the company, had been excused Dickensian dress.

  ‘Attention!’ Auguste’s cry came too late and a dish of ribboned cucumber, garnish for the lobster salads, landed upside down on the floor. He rushed to the rescue of the lobster mayonnaise which was teetering ominously.

  ‘That was you,’ said James accusingly and with satisfaction to Alice.

  ‘It vas not,’ rumbled Heinrich. ‘Mr Peckham makes the table shake. I see this.’

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ shouted Algernon. ‘That’s not fair.’

  ‘It was Miss Dawson,’ said Sid casually.

  Pandemonium ensued as discussion took place on the onus of responsibility.

  ‘Enough,’ shouted Auguste angrily. ‘Mes amis, do you forget? What has happened to you all?’ He looked at them in bewilderment as they stood, abashed. ‘The Prince of Wales is coming. We have to serve a grand banquet in forty-five minutes.’ At this point Mr Multhrop arrived, sensed the tension and promptly departed again. ‘Enfin,’ said Auguste grimly. ‘Miss Fenwick, more cucumbers. Mr Peckham, clear up this abomination.’ He pointed disdainfully to the green soggy mess and broken china on the floor. ‘And you,’ his eyes took in the other four, ‘to your tasks, if you please.’ Chastened, they donned their protective aprons, and set to work in silence.

  Auguste began to make his final checks. The broth was smiling happily, still clear and unclouded. He had caught it in time. The lobster salads were temptingly ready save for the cucumber garnish; kidneys and sauce awaited his last-minute cooking; the quails and cutlets awaited their ovens, the geese were browning nicely, the entremets, the dessert, cheeses, the prepared savouries – Auguste’s practised eye ran over them all in expert fashion. He had done this so often before. His brain told him that all would be ready in time, yet anxiety remained. One day it might not be, unless careful attention was kept. One day disaster would come. And despite all his brave words, even he could not be prepared against all disasters.

  In a small lounge, polished and dusted five times today by the Imperial’s housemaids, four committee members were awaiting the arrival of the Prince of Wales, Sir Thomas and, oddly, Gwendolen, who had inexplicably not yet arrived. Outside the door hovered Alfred, detailed by Auguste to serve drinks when royalty had arrived. He was not happy in his duties tonight. He wished anyone but he were here, for the prospect of serving Sir Thomas was not a welcome one. He wondered whether he should have taken up farming instead of cooking.

  Inside the room, tense silence reigned. Angelina, for instance, was wondering why Oliver had such a furious expression on his face. ‘What do you think of my costume?’ she enquired politely.

  Lord Beddington and Samuel Pipkin made complimentary grunts. Oliver remained obstinately silent. He glanced at her Little Nell attire, the white pantaloons peeping out from under layers of petticoats, the bright blue skirt, white shawl, and the becoming poke bonnet. She looked beautiful, but he was not going to tell her so.

  ‘I see,’ she said sweetly to Oliver, ‘that you feel no need to adopt Sam Weller’s cheerfulness as well as his apparel.

  Oliver swept off his battered top hat in ironic acknowledgement of her sally. Oliver’s sharp sensitive features and figure adapted well to Sam Weller, but tonight he wished he’d chosen anything rather than the trial scene from The Pickwick Papers to read. He didn’t feel at all humorous. He felt as black as John Jasper, and wondered even now whether to switch to The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Murderous was just how he felt. He would read Edwin Drood rather well, he thought savagely.

  ‘Have you seen Mrs Figgis-Hewett?’ Angelina enquired anxiously of Samuel Pipkin, since Oliver was clearly in no mood to converse. ‘It’s unlike her to be late.’

  ‘No, my dear lady, I regret I have not. I – er – do not think she is in the best of spirits. Perhaps she has decided not to join us,’ he added innocently, hugging to himself his knowledge of the dramatic scene he had encountered. He intended to press for a re-vote and one member less of old Throgmorton’s supporters would suit him nicely.

  Angelina fidgeted, worried but unable to leave as the Prince of Wales was due at any moment. With sudden resolution, she opened the door to despatch Alfred in search of the missing lady, but seeing Auguste just arriving for his final check that all was in order with the drinks, she appealed to him instead. Reluctantly, he disappeared in search of the missing Lioniser.

  Samuel had his own thoughts, lost in a dream of vengeance. He, too, was thinking lovingly of murder. He was dressed as Dr Marigold, the cheap-jack trader from The Christmas Stories, his top hat fitted out with advertisements for Dr Robinson’s Purifying Pills and Soyer’s Magic Stove. A large white cravat and black jacket unfortunately accentuated his Pickwickian paunch. He had reluctantly decided against John Jasper, for the good reason that there being nothing distinctive about his dress, no one would realise who he was.

  Lord Beddington, though silent, was not for once asleep. His head was itching too much from the dreadful old grey wig. This was the last time he would don fancy dress, otherwise next year they’d have him in doublet and hose, no doubt. Scrooge inde
ed. That had been old Throgmorton’s idea. He brooded. Could it have been a roundabout reference to that old scandal? No. Thomas was a tight old so-and-so, but even he would let it die now. Or would he?

  Interesting to have seen that young sneak thief about in the hotel, Lord Beddington switched thoughts, disturbed by memories of unhappier days. If he was Multhrop he’d be watching the teaspoons. That young man was the sort to fly high, having cut his teeth, so to speak, on – what was it? Ah yes, the paste diamond jewellery of old Higginbotham’s wife at Radstone Hall. He’d been lucky to get off with a year for that. Darned counsel with tears in his eyes, murmuring about stalwart butchers’ sons who strayed from the path, and, after all, it was only paste. Meanwhile here was he, the magistrate, in tight breeches, dirty cravat and too tight a collar stud, dressed as Scrooge.

  A sudden flurry, as of a dozen Multhrops simultaneously prostrating themselves, and the doors were flung open. Angelina sprang up, expecting Gwendolen. The others joined her. The Prince of Wales had arrived, soberly and correctly clad in formal evening attire. Behind him came Sir Thomas similarly clad. Four pairs of eyes fastened momentarily on this and absorbed the fact that they had been cheated. Sir Thomas was not dressed as Bill Sikes. They alone were in unorthodox dress.

  The Prince of Wales’s eyes flicked speedily over the unusual evening dress of the gathering as battered top hats were speedily removed from heads and a lady with long droopy drawers swept a curtsy. He hadn’t seen anything like that since his sister Vicky left the nursery.

  Oliver still raged impotently, unable to believe that he could have been so mistaken in a woman. She was to marry this mountebank, this hypocritical toad of a Sir Thomas. Samuel was convulsed with fury at this new evidence of skulduggery, resolved that no holds would be barred now. Even Lord Beddington was upset, being made to look like a damn fool before Her Majesty’s son. None of them betrayed their feelings, however, as they paid obeisance to the Prince, who gravely offered his hand in turn to Mr Scrooge, Dr Marigold, Mr Weller and Miss Nell.