by Myers, Amy
‘And,’ Rose continued, ‘in connection with a plot to murder the Prince of Wales.’
‘Quoi? This is quite ridiculous, Inspector. Monsieur Didier, has not some mistake been made?’
Auguste shook his head mutely. In the face of the evidence what could he say?
Marie-Paul, descending the staircase for breakfast, took in the situation at a glance, flying to her mistress’s side.
‘What are you saying to Madame?’ she demanded shrilly. ‘Eh?’
A glance from the Baroness stilled her as Rose said: ‘Do you deny, madam, that you are not the Baroness von Bechlein? There is indeed such a lady, but she is in Hungary at the moment with her husband. That you are in fact Thérèse Lepont, Belgian national, owner of the Hôtel Sud in Brussels?’
‘No,’ Thérèse said abruptly, as Marie-Paul clutched her arm. ‘I do not deny it.’
‘Madame?’ Marie-Paul’s hands gripped the more tightly, though the news was clearly no great shock to her.
Thérèse gently prised her arm away. ‘All will be well, Marie-Paul,’ she said firmly before turning to Rose: ‘I do deny, however, that I have murdered anybody, or have any intention of doing so. Except perhaps Mr Didier,’ she said lightly. ‘I believed you were my friend,’ reproachfully.
‘Madame, if only it had been possible.’ Now he knew how traitors felt.
‘What about my poor Marie-Paul?’ she asked briskly. ‘Is she to be left here to see to my affairs or to be arrested as my accomplice?’
‘Your accomplice will be caught soon enough, madam.’
‘Caught?’ she asked warily.
‘We know where Fancelli’s been sleeping, madam,’ said Twitch, eager to join the festivities. ‘You managed to warn him last night, because he didn’t turn up, but we’ll get him—’
‘I think we’d better go, madam,’ Rose interrupted quickly. The odds on Twitch’s promotion lengthened.
‘By all means,’ Thérèse agreed cordially. ‘By the way, do you have any evidence to charge me?’
‘Enough to stop you and Fancelli murdering the Prince of Wales tomorrow.’
‘If you can catch him,’ she pointed out, amused.
Chapter Nine
‘Madame? Ah non, non!’ The hitherto subdued Mademoiselle Gonnet was promptly transformed into a fighting, spitting tigress on behalf of her maligned mistress. Having seen Madame escorted away, she had almost to be physically restrained from pursuit, her voice harsh as she imparted her views on the British police force to its members present. ‘Tyrants’, was the only word Rose could understand, which was just as well. Auguste, who understood a lot more, since they were in his native tongue, was shocked, unable to believe that for a few moments the other evening he had contemplated . . . Marie-Paul glanced at him, and subsided into a semblance of her normal self, eyes flashing, controlled fury in her tense figure. ‘Murder le Prince de Galles? But how, monsieur?’ She spread her ringless hands expressively. ‘With what? And how could I not know if Madame intended such a thing?’
‘How indeed?’ commented Rose mildly.
She shot him a suspicious glance. ‘Madame could not stab anybody, she has not the strength,’ Marie-Paul declared.
‘Together you might have,’ observed Rose.
‘You do not think that I—’ She half rose from the chair in alarm.
‘We’d like you to remain in the hotel, if you don’t mind, miss. Just till this matter’s settled. Just in case you have plans to meet Fancelli.’
‘Who is this Fancelli?’ she asked sullenly.
‘He was employed here as a cook, until yesterday,’ a graphic look at Auguste. He didn’t see it, for his eyes were on Marie-Paul.
‘I have never heard of this person,’ was her defiant reply.
‘Madame Lepont would hardly tell you. She could meet him without your knowledge.’
‘How?’ Marie-Paul answered. ‘We arrive on Sunday, and she is with me always.’
‘You visited friends some mornings,’ observed Auguste. ‘And there are the nights.’
She hesitated. ‘This is true, but Madame would not descend to the kitchens during the night like a scullerymaid,’ she added scornfully and triumphantly.
‘You knew she was not a baroness, didn’t you, Miss Gonnet?’ Rose cut in.
She relaxed in her chair, and smirked. ‘So if she pretends to be a baroness, is this a crime?’
‘She carries false identity papers,’ Rose pointed out.
‘And so? For her it is real. To herself, she has been a baroness for many years.’
‘And has she been French for many years too, to herself, and not Belgian?’ Rose asked. ‘Suppose you tell us a little more about your life with her?’
‘Madame is Madame,’ replied Marie-Paul indifferently. ‘If Madame wishes you to know, she will tell you.’
‘Madame is being held on a charge of two murders, and a suspected plotted assassination,’ Rose pointed out.
The knuckles of the hands gripping the large black companion bag whitened, but it was Marie-Paul’s only sign of concern. She merely remarked: ‘C’est ridicule ça’.
‘You told us you’d worked for Madame Lepont for five years. Do you want to change that statement?’
‘No.’
‘And you didn’t know she was Belgian?’
‘What does it matter, Belgian or French?’
Rose sighed. ‘Tell her she’s a mur de pierre, Auguste.’
The stone wall remained immovable.
‘Very well,’ said Rose. ‘From now on, Miss Gonnet, you’re going to have a companion of your own. A nice big English policeman. He’ll be with you all day and one of his chums will be right outside your door tonight. And tomorrow, when we formally charge Madame with murder, yet another chum will be right with you when you come to the Yard to loosen a few boulders from that wall of yours.’
‘They’re waiting for something all right, our Madame and Mademoiselle,’ Rose observed, after he had returned from the Yard. ‘They both look as smug as a cat licking cream. Or don’t they do that in France?’
‘My mother used to say that in France the cat who stayed too long to lick the cream would find itself a cat au vin en casserole. She was, naturellement,’ added Auguste hastily, ‘jesting.’ A memory flickered through his mind, and fled as swiftly as the taste of a rose-petal cream.
‘And my mother used to say,’ Rose told him, ‘that the cat who licked the cream grew too fat to catch his mice. She wasn’t joking, though. Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, could be in luck – provided we catch Fancelli.’
‘No word?’
‘We’ve got descriptions of him outside every police station, and on half the lampposts in London. Ma Bisley’s runners ain’t heard anything; the Leather Lane community swore he hadn’t been there since before Christmas. Every Italian restaurant’s been checked and every Italian we can lay our hands on has been stopped and questioned.’
‘If he has slept here, it is not surprising he has not been found,’ observed Auguste.
‘He didn’t sleep here last night, did he? Nor, incidentally, did young Nash. Somehow Fancelli must have been warned, because he didn’t even show up. We’ve got the brains of this project safely tucked away, but we haven’t got the brawn; and it’s the brawn going to be carrying out the job tomorrow, unless we track him down.’
Brawn? Was there sufficient left for luncheon? And would John remember to add the zest and juice of an orange to the sauce? True, he had presented a creditable array of dishes yesterday, Auguste acknowledged, although there was undoubtedly too much juniper in the ptarmigan pie. It had been a wrench to leave this special seasonal pie to John, when in normal times he himself would have had the honour of creating every step of the delectable dish. And the port jelly too – a trifle too heavy. It required a touch of something – perhaps lemon? Orange? Jelly. How debased a word it was, rapidly becoming condemned to the nursery. Yet one of the lost great cooks of our time was called Jelly, he recalled. Or rather Gellée.
But no, some foolish so-called cook had dismissed him, and he had been forced to take up painting instead. How great a chef Claude Lorraine Gellée might have become if he had put the delicacy, balance and order of his landscapes into cuisine!
‘Which of them murdered the girl in the fog, do you think?’ Rose was asking.
‘A Claude bavarois,’ replied Auguste dreamily, only drawn back to reality by the sight of Rose’s blank face.
‘I don’t see our Thérèse wielding a stiletto in the fog herself,’ said Rose, having made nothing of Auguste’s last utterance.
‘I agree. We have no evidence she was even in England then. It is much more likely to have been Fancelli on his own, and for it to have been the reason he came here. Somehow this girl had found out about the threat to the Prince. Do you have any more information on her?’ Auguste asked awkwardly. He took this corpse very personally. Every time he thought of that girl, he was transported back to the choking terrors of that November night. Had he moved more quickly, might he not have prevented it? Had he realised immediately that the speaker of those words ‘At Cranton’s? Christmas?’ and the murderer might not be the same, might he have found Fancelli lurking in a basement area, waiting, waiting for this intrusive stranger to depart?
‘We’ve got a lead on her, but it will have to wait now till we’ve got tomorrow out of the way. Ma Bisley’s runner in Hackney has found someone who thinks she recognises her. Girl who used to live in the same street in Shoreditch. She could be a fifteen-year-old called Mary White, who left home about a year ago.’
‘She was on the streets?’
‘Apparently not. Went into service, so her parents said. And they had not reported not hearing from her.’
Auguste was shocked.
Rose looked at him with kindly eye. ‘Ever been out that way, Auguste? I’ll take you some day. Worse than Soho for rabbit warrens of tenements. When you get families living eight to a room, they spend all their time trying to live themselves; no time for worrying about how one that’s actually making some kind of living’s getting on.’
‘But it is Christmas.’ Auguste had been long enough in this country to know the ties that drew even to the poorest house.
‘Christmas out there ain’t changed since Scrooge and Bob Cratchit, without the goose or the happy ending. No,’ said Rose regretfully, ‘that’s a dead end. We can only try to establish the link between the household she worked for and Thérèse Lepont.’
‘But that is odd, is it not? A loose fils – the ingredient that does not fit. Another household—’
‘Auguste,’ Rose said sharply, ‘tomorrow’s the day. Start with the sure thing we’ve got – a suspect in custody. And Fancelli at large.’
‘Do not forget Mademoiselle Gonnet,’ Auguste said mutinously. Even now he could not believe the Baroness – for so he would always think of her – a political assassin.
‘Marie-Paul’s under guard,’ said Rose grimly. ‘Evidence or not.’
‘It is true Thérèse Lepont could not have got the body into the lift alone, and Mademoiselle Gonnet was at hand. Fancelli was not,’ Auguste said rather regretfully. The more iniquity he could believe that man capable of the better. ‘Although,’ he added, brightening, ‘Egbert, it would be easy enough for Fancelli to come up after breakfast on some pretext – that floor is quite deserted. Ah yes, mon ami, I have it,’ he crowed triumphantly. ‘He came up in the lift pulled up by the murderer, put the corpse in it and walked down himself.’
‘I don’t like it,’ said Rose at last, having considered. ‘Smacks of one of your fancy solutions, Auguste.’
‘My fancy solutions, as you call them,’ replied Auguste with dignity, ‘have proved correct in some instances in the past, Inspector.’
‘Perhaps it takes hindsight to see them as not so fancy after all. Perhaps this will look the same, eh? I’ll think about it. Maybe put it to the Baroness.’
‘The Baroness?’ asked Auguste, smiling.
‘Our Madame Lepont, then.’
‘What reason now does she give for being here?’ Auguste asked curiously.
‘She claims she wants her hotel to become more fashionable and thought she’d come here incognito, so to speak, to find out how an English hotel is run.’
‘Perhaps, if she does so,’ said Auguste sourly, ‘she could inform me. I did not plan, Egbert,’ he added sorrowfully, ‘to open my career as a hotelier by accusing my guests of murder.’
The guests of Cranton’s Hotel had just partaken of John’s luncheon and showed no signs of dissatisfaction. Auguste relaxed, as far as he could, knowing that Egbert was about to address them. John was developing well, even though he had received no direct training from Auguste Didier. Only he could discern the very slight errors that had been made, but such was his relief that he was prepared to overlook the sharpness of the lemon sauce for the Hindle Wakes.
‘I have to tell you,’ Rose began, ‘that at the moment we are questioning the Baroness von Bechlein, or Thérèse Lepont as is her real name, in connection with two murders and a plot to assassinate the Prince of Wales.’
Each member of his audience considered the implications of this announcement as regards themselves. Marie-Paul stared mutinously in front of her, a young constable hovering behind, anxious to be seen by the Inspector to be doing his duty by allowing her to mingle with no one, but wondering whether he stood any chance of a bite himself.
‘She’s not a baroness?’ Gladys was the first to speak. She had been looking forward to boasting of her new friends to Much Wallop.
‘No. Madame Lepont runs a hotel in Belgium, and we believe she is a member of a group of Boer sympathisers, or if not a sympathiser herself, then a paid intermediary between the group and the assassin.’
‘Who?’ asked Frederick Dalmaine abruptly.
‘Antonio Fancelli, who worked here.’
‘How’s a poor old cook going to assassinate Bertie?’ shouted Bowman with a guffaw. ‘Strangle him with spaghetti?’
‘That we don’t know yet. But he has vanished.’
‘Perhaps he’s in the chest,’ offered Gladys brightly, then blushed as everyone stared at her.
The twins giggled and Auguste looked at Gladys disapprovingly. That chest was something he did not wish to be reminded of. All the same . . . He glanced at Rose who nodded slightly. Twitch slipped unobtrusively from the room, proud of his ability to divine Rose’s intentions.
Carruthers had been thinking things over. ‘You telling us that that little woman stabbed a girl to death and proposed to do the same to the Prince of Wales?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Rose replied patiently.
‘Poppycock,’ snorted Carruthers. ‘How’d she manage it? We were all here. Got it wrong. It was one of the servants.’
‘Perhaps, sir. But we think that the girl was killed in Madame Lepont’s room when she brought tea, and that the body was then put into the service lift either temporarily or to be taken below by Fancelli and hidden in the basement area until it could be disposed of. In either event, something went wrong with their plans, and the body had to be put back in the bedroom after the room had been cleaned, and was disposed of later that night by being put into the chest, a safe enough place since no one would use it again for Christmas games.’
Rose sensed a faint restlessness in his audience, but no one seemed disposed to comment, save Carruthers, who after thinking this over announced: This girl, Nancy Watkins, she was a servant. That right?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘So was this Fancelli. Right?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘There you are then. Lover’s tiff,’ said Carruthers conclusively.
‘And what about the Prince of Wales, sir?’
Carruthers turned purple. ‘If you fellows would stop chasing lifts at straightforward Christmas parties and get back in the outside world, you might stand a chance of finding this fellow, if there is such a plot – which I doubt.’
‘We have one of the murderers, sir,’ said
Auguste. ‘Madame Lepont.’
Carruthers eyed Auguste in disgust, then turned to Rose. ‘If you’d apply a bit of English common sense, you’d see why Madame Lepont is where she is. It’s because of him,’ jerking his head at Auguste. ‘You say she’s Belgian?’
‘Yes,’ replied Rose, startled.
‘There you are then. He’s French – always disliked the Belgians. Ten to one, he’s trumped this up. Vengeance, you know,’ he said mysteriously.
‘Vengeance,’ said Rose, glad of a chance of a glimmer of amusement in an increasingly anxious time. ‘You mean Madame Lepont rejected his advances?’
‘That’s correct, sir,’ the Colonel said impatiently, slightly deaf. ‘As I said, revenge for Waterloo, that’s what’s behind this.’
‘Alfred,’ said Gladys, gazing at a mummified Egyptian lady of 1,000 years BC without enthusiasm, ‘do you think I should tell everybody about this murder – that’s if I do go back to Much Wallop, of course,’ she added, greatly daring.
‘Why shouldn’t you go back?’ asked Bowman absently, caught off guard, moving away to a Coptic pall. Museums weren’t his kind of thing, but they gave you a chance to think. And the British Museum was presenting plenty of such opportunities. Or had been, up to now. Thank heavens she hadn’t arrived earlier. It had been hard enough to fade from the police guard’s scrutiny. And if Gladys had seen—
‘I thought I might be moving my abode,’ Gladys said loudly.
‘Go somewhere warm, that’s my advice,’ Bowman offered heartily.
‘Could we?’
‘Eh?’ He began to pay attention.
‘Could we?’ she repeated, slightly pink. ‘Together, that is.’
‘Dear Gladys,’ he replied quickly and easily. ‘I have a factory to run, you know.’
‘I could help you run it,’ she told him, emboldened. He stared at her speechlessly, too late perceiving where this might conceivably lead.
‘I don’t take on female staff,’ he answered, more cruelly than was wise.
‘I did not intend to take paid employment,’ she replied indignantly, too far in to draw back. ‘I had more in mind a closer relationship.’ There was, after all, nothing to lose, and so she plunged on recklessly. ‘We could marry.’
