Murder Makes an Entree

by Myers, Amy

  ‘It is the sauce and the fish, a unified whole, we must consider.’ Auguste was pontificating in that voice he used solely for discussing cuisine, a mixture of reverence, excitement, practicality and anticipation. ‘True, boiled whiting alone is not a dish for a king. But with the right sauce it might be transformed. Who knows? This is the infinite excitement of cuisine. Now, consider: shrimp, lobster, anchovy, mussel, oyster. I will hear from each of you, if you please, arguments in favour or against each in turn. Only when we have settled on the perfect sauce will—Ah, Egbert!’ Auguste broke off, none too pleased to be interrupted on a mere matter of murder when he had been in a world of his own, exalted by the power of cuisine.

  ‘I’ve come about the kidneys,’ said Rose practically. ‘If you’ll all take a seat, please.’ Obediently they sat round the kitchen table. ‘Mr Didier has told you, I am sure, that atropine’s been found in one of the dishes of entrées.’

  James folded his arms defiantly as though daring anyone to try to put handcuffs on him.

  ‘But only vun person was poisoned,’ pointed out Heinrich. ‘How is this?’ There was a note of challenge in his voice.

  ‘Any suggestions?’ Rose asked, throwing it back to them.

  Alice had. ‘I read in my Harmsworth Magazine once that a man died because he ate rabbit pie and the rabbit had been eating belladonna. Perhaps that’s how the kidney got poisoned. A sheep had been eating it and poor Sir Thomas got the wrong one.’

  ‘It’s possible, Miss Fenwick, but I think the dose—’

  ‘And I,’ said Auguste eagerly, ‘heard of a man who was poisoned because the coffee he drank was strained through a linen cloth which months earlier had been soaked in atropine solution, and mistakenly used again. A lesson I attempt to tell my pupils. Always—’

  ‘Coffee,’ said Rose meditatively. ‘Ah yes.’

  ‘The poison could have been added at the table just before Sir Thomas was poisoned,’ ventured Heinrich hopefully. ‘They have only to lean forward, drop the poison in the dish—’

  ‘The Prince of Wales perhaps?’

  ‘Nein,’ said Heinrich flushing.

  ‘Beddington,’ said Algernon. ‘He was leaning his elbows on the table.’

  ‘Mrs Langham, I feel, is the most likely person from her position opposite Sir Thomas,’ said Alfred brightly.

  ‘It is possible, yes,’ agreed Rose. ‘The difficulty is that this poison was added in crystal form; to dissolve it you need hot water or alcohol. It would be difficult to add it in the way you suggest since it would have to be poured.’

  ‘Alcohol,’ repeated Alfred faintly.

  ‘It could have been added by someone in the scullery,’ said James, rushing to the defence of Alfred. ‘After Emily had taken the dish out, anyone could have done it.’

  ‘Why would they do that?’ asked Rose. ‘And why did no one notice it?’

  There was a silence.

  ‘There was a lot of fings going on aht there,’ Sid volunteered at last. ‘You wouldn’t have noticed if the Crahn Jewels was thrown into the kidneys.’

  ‘Perhaps. But we think,’ Rose said, ‘it was done to disguise the fact that the poison that killed Sir Thomas was not in the entrée at all, but in another dish. Probably one later in the meal, and from the timing probably the goose, though perhaps the soup. One of the peculiarities of atropine is that it acts differently on different people. It can take effect immediately, but it usually takes twenty minutes or so for the full effects to be felt. Now your meal began at seven thirty and the readings were due to begin at nine, although Sir Thomas did not begin until a quarter past nine. About what time did they finish eating the entrée?’

  ‘About a quarter past eight, Inspector.’ Auguste prided himself on his immaculate memory for all matters concerning meals for which he was responsible.

  ‘So if he were poisoned by the entrée, he didn’t display any symptoms for over an hour. That suggests it wasn’t the entrée or any of the earlier courses.’

  Alfred began to look increasingly unhappy.

  ‘So we must consider the goose, any entremets he may have eaten. The goose is the most likely, since it was after that he felt ill and went to his room.’

  ‘And perhaps took poison there,’ said Auguste eagerly.

  ‘You’re not thinking straight, Mr Didier,’ Rose chided. ‘Now we’ve found poison in that dish, I think we can rule out any idea of Sir Thomas creeping upstairs to poison himself – purposely at any rate. Now,’ Rose paused, ‘the coffee and the alcohol. Did Sir Thomas take a brandy, Lord Wittisham?’

  ‘Yes,’ came out as barely a whisper.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Yes!’ Alfred bawled. ‘But it was brandy, just brandy, brandy.’

  ‘Surely, Inspector, Sir Thomas would have noticed the bitter taste – and would not have drunk it?’ said James, coming to the rescue.

  ‘He might not have noticed it in coffee.’

  ‘I didn’t serve the coffee,’ pointed out Alfred, relieved.

  ‘Who did?’

  A pause. ‘I did,’ whispered Emily. ‘With Alice,’ she added hastily.

  ‘I poured it out of a jug,’ said Alice indignantly. ‘It was all the same and Emily watched me as I poured each cup. I couldn’t have done anything to it.’

  Emily nodded. ‘She’s right, Inspector.’

  ‘So it’s insoluble, Inspector,’ said Algernon brightly. ‘Nothing could have been poisoned.’

  ‘Oh no, it’s not insoluble, Mr Peckham,’ said Auguste gravely. ‘Like the perfect sauce, when the ingredients are mixed correctly, and the right ingredients have been chosen, you will have the answer. It is like a souf— My soufflé!’ he shouted, agonised. ‘It is over-time, it is ruined.’ He flew to the oven, and emerged, hot-flushed but somewhat relieved, bearing a well-risen and browned soufflé of whiting. ‘This is not perfection,’ he said sadly, ‘but it is eatable. You will join us, Inspector?’

  ‘Thank you, no,’ said Rose hastily. ‘Not if it’s whiting.’

  ‘My grandmother says when they’re curled up in a circle with their tails in their mouths, that’s a symbol of eternity,’ said Emily.

  ‘I doubt if the whiting sees it that way,’ grunted Rose.

  The Cathedral, the Nuns’ House, the City Clock and Uncle Pumblechook’s residence had been duly venerated, and a luncheon had been provided at the Bull Hotel for the benefit of the Lionisers and an odd and uncomfortable collection of those senior residents of Rochester who still remembered Mr Dickens. These included Mr Miller, a farmer, the proud recipient of some pears and roses and advice from Mr Dickens, the advice being to stick to farming, not be an author or a poet. (This did not go down well with the Lionisers. Oliver, moreover, agreed with Mr Dickens, and this went down even less well.) The elderly Miss Drages, one of whom had sketched Mr Dickens, sat next to a gentleman who remembered Dickens chatting about the unhappy marriages of actors. The present owner of Miss Havisham’s house told of a fisherman she had met in Broadstairs one day who remembered ‘Old Charley a-coming flying down from the cliff with a hop, skip and jump, with his hair all flying about’. Moreover he was the very fisherman who was mentioned in Our Watering Place as mending a little ship for a boy. A gasp of wonder ran round the historians, who resolved to visit every fisherman in Broadstairs forthwith till this treasure was found. The narrator, waxing enthusiastic at this reception, contrived to relate how the fisherman took ‘Old Charley’ in his boat the Irene round the foreland to Margate the very last time he came down to Broadstairs. Another Lioniser then proposed a toast to the memory of Mr John Chipperfield, who had died this very week, one of the last known models for a. Charles Dickens character: ‘Lamps’ of Mugby Junction was no more. The Lionisers’ cup was thus already full well before they set forth to Gads’ Hill Place.

  By the time they had toured the famous house with its owner, studied the illustrious visitors’ book, looked round the study with Mr Luke Fildes’ picture of the Empty Chair in their mind’s e
ye, and had seen the chalet where Dickens wrote his last words before his death, they were drained of emotion, and it was fortunate that Rochester Castle provided exercise without undue stress.

  Lord Beddington was not appreciating the day to its fullest, despite the fact that for some unknown reason it had seemed a good idea to buy a Panama hat. What should he do about that young scoundrel? Could it or could it not have a bearing on this present case of murder? He alone of all the Lionisers was unmoved by illusions of great men. He’d been forty when Dickens died in 1870, quite old enough to know that, whatever the fuss made over him, Dickens’s private life was hardly on a par with Queen Victoria’s. Not that he’d anything against that. After all, Dickens had had the decency to keep it to himself, not go telling the world about it. Beddington had lived long enough to know that very few people were quite what the public considered them. Including old Throgmorton and, he supposed with some surprise, himself.

  Gwendolen sitting next to him did not object to his silence. She was wondering whether Angelina could possibly be cast as Sir Thomas’s Mr Datchery. No, that was too fanciful. He knew she was coming and, besides, whatever motive could Angelina have for murder? Regretfully, Gwendolen dismissed the notion.

  Egbert Rose had talked to many bereaved ladies; he talked to them quietly, straightforwardly, compassionately. But he had never met one quite like this. Beatrice Throgmorton was a large lady, although not yet twenty-one. Her eyes in her otherwise bovine face were intelligent, her manner brisk. She had spent the time since her arrival making calm arrangements for the transfer of her father’s body to their Buckinghamshire home after the inquest tomorrow, and was now apparently set on clearing up this murder before she left.

  ‘There’s a lady here who says,’ she began without preliminaries, ‘she’s my father’s fiancée. Is this correct, would you know?’

  ‘I think, miss, it may be a figment of the lady’s imagination. Treat her gently, miss, but not too seriously.’

  Beatrice looked uncomprehending. ‘I don’t intend to treat her at all, Inspector. I wondered if she had poisoned him, that is all.’

  ‘She seems to have felt herself slighted,’ said Rose cautiously. He would leave well alone and omit the part about Miss Havisham. ‘But that’s not to say she’d commit murder.’

  ‘Someone did,’ pointed out Beatrice. ‘Who else disliked him enough?’

  ‘That’s what I need to know from you, miss.’ Rose was beginning to feel like one of his own suspects under relentless interrogation. ‘Your father thought he recognised someone here in the hotel.’

  ‘Lord Wittisham,’ said Beatrice promptly. ‘They disliked each other. Lord Wittisham believes that I wish to marry him. He proposed. My father overheard and, without consulting me or waiting to hear my reply, forbade him the house. Lord Wittisham made strong objections. My father was far from pleased. I do not come of age until I am twenty-five and my father’s consent was needed for me to marry. There is also the question of a great deal of money. Mine. I did not, and do not, in fact intend to marry Lord Wittisham, but I disliked my father’s approach, so I informed Lord Wittisham I would consider the matter. I intended,’ for the first time Rose saw the beginnings of emotion, ‘to teach my father a lesson.’

  ‘And have you told Lord Wittisham yet?’

  ‘No,’ said Beatrice composedly. ‘I suppose I ought to.’

  ‘You don’t think he took his revenge on your father, do you? It would solve his problem nicely, or so he would have thought.’

  She stared. ‘Can you see Alfred doing anything like that?’ Her tone implied she might think the more of him if he did.

  Rose thought of the vacuous young man, and silently agreed. Then he remembered Wittisham was one of Emma Pryde’s protégés and that Emma was not known for encouraging entirely vacuous young men. There must be more to him than Beatrice thought.

  ‘Have there been attempts on your father’s life before?’

  ‘He never mentioned any,’ she said, reflecting. ‘In fact rather the contrary.’

  ‘What?’

  She almost smiled. ‘It does sound strange, I admit. My father told me that when he was young he got in a fight with someone and nearly killed him, and that the man swore vengeance. They fought over a girl, I understand. Not my mother. Father was what you might call a rake. I think,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘that I take after him.’

  Rose glanced at her large, cumbrous figure and wondered anew about the passions of men and women. ‘The Lionisers are having an evening at the Albion Hotel tonight, and not only will they be there but all the people who cooked and served your father’s dinner that evening. I’d like to be sure there’s no one there whom you recognise from the past. Would you come?’

  She rose to her feet. ‘My father was murdered, Inspector. I consider it my duty to help in any way I can. I should –’ she hesitated – ‘explain that I was not close to my father. My mother died when I was fifteen, but I was brought up by a series of incompetent governesses and I saw little of either parent. My mother was always ill, my father often away or working. By the time I was out of the schoolroom, I had lost my need for a parent. Nevertheless, I shall help. I believe in justice,’ she said firmly. ‘Oh yes, I believe in justice.’

  ‘“Magnificent ruin,” quoted Mr Augustus Snodgrass,’ Samuel Pipkin proclaimed. The Literary Lionisers gazed up at the most splendid Norman keep in England. ‘Magnificent,’ repeated Samuel in his own person, ducking one of the numerous pigeons that had proprietary rights in the pink dianthus-covered walls. Samuel had now read all passages from the Lion’s work relevant to Rochester Castle, and enumerated every single friend that Dickens had brought there, as far as could be traced.

  Oliver and Angelina were inspecting a Jubilee memorial put up twelve years ago commemorating ‘fifty years of ever-broadening commerce, fifty years of ever-brightening science, fifty years of ever-widening empire!’ It could not last, Oliver thought. Next year would see the dawn of the twentieth century. Would it continue to see expansion? Would the Empire go on for ever? He didn’t like this new war in South Africa. It boded no good for the opening of the new century. But he dismissed such gloomy thoughts as he followed Angelina in full-skirted blue walking dress up the stairs to the top of the keep, and duly admired the magnificent view.

  ‘Glorious pile,’ quoted Angelina. Samuel again produced The Pickwick Papers, after a short cough to draw everyone’s attention. Unobtrusively Angelina and Oliver crept back down the stairs.

  ‘Snodgrass,’ Oliver remarked, picking up Angela’s quotation, when at last they reached the safety of the gardens far below, ‘do not let me be baulked in this matter – do not obtain the assistance of several stalwart Lionisers to carry me prostrate back to Broadstairs, do not listen to me when I say never, never again shall I visit a sight connected to the late great Mr Charles Dickens. I say do not.’

  ‘Mr Snodgrass,’ answered Angelina solemnly, seizing Oliver’s hand enthusiastically, ‘not for worlds.’

  ‘A thrill passed over Mr Winkle’s face,’ concluded Oliver hollowly.

  Angelina laughed. ‘You are an idiot, Oliver. What did you join for if you don’t like literary sights?’

  ‘For you, dearest Angelina. Now it can be told.’ He smote his breast, and fell on one knee.

  ‘Nonsense. You didn’t even know me then.’

  ‘I see nothing but the truth will do,’ he said ruefully, rising to his feet again. ‘Young man flattered – young up-and-coming playwright joins committee of literary lions – young man speedily discovers his mistake – apart from lovely young lady, jolly boring – stuck with it – what to do? Brazen it out? Shoot myself?’ Reverting from Mr Jingle to Oliver Michaels, he added, ‘Six months have proved to me that the passions of Lions are as nothing compared with those of Lionisers.’

  ‘Not always,’ she replied, laughing. ‘Look at Dickens and Thackeray. Look at Speke and Burton. Look at Gilbert and Sullivan—’

  ‘Look at Harald Langham and T
homas Throgmorton,’ interposed Oliver quietly.

  Taken by surprise, she could not answer for a moment and then said angrily, ‘If you knew, why didn’t you say something before?’

  He shrugged. ‘It was none of my business until—’

  ‘Until Sir Thomas died and you thought I might have a motive for murder?’ she finished sweetly.

  ‘I was going to say until I fell in love with you,’ he answered mildly.

  ‘Oh, Oliver.’ The Literary Lionisers descending from the keep were horrified at the sight of elegant Mrs Langham clasped in the arms of another committee member, ten were jealous, and the rest averted their eyes.

  ‘Oliver,’ Angelina said presently, ‘I have to explain. You don’t really think I’m a murderess, do you? A Mrs Maybrick?’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘No.’

  He grinned and released her except for one hand, of which he kept tight hold. ‘Now tell me,’ he commanded.

  ‘My husband was a very good poet, as you know, but he was unlucky, one of those people who are always in the wrong place at the wrong time in his career. And then towards the end of his life when he was already ill, he had one last hope to cling to. He was excellently placed to be the next Poet Laureate when the position fell vacant in ninety-six. But he was too proud to plead at the right doors. He wasn’t close to the Queen. Sir Thomas Throgmorton was. Sir Thomas had quarrelled with my husband over some business matter and persuaded the powers that be that my husband was no fit person to hold the position, whatever the quality of his poetry. It was given to Alfred Austin instead. Harald died three months later, I believe of a broken heart. I suppose it was childish of me, but I vowed to break Sir Thomas’s, if I could. So I got involved with the Lionisers to do just that.’ She tried to smile. ‘Vain of me, was it not?’

  ‘No.’