Murder At Plums (27 page)

‘Of course there is. There is
always
something that is missed,’ he retorted peevishly. ‘Even in your salad dressing one misses the subtle touch of anchovy.’

‘Forget about food, Auguste—’

‘How is this possible?’

‘Auguste, are you or Disraeli sharing my room tonight?’

All that night, thoughts raced around in his head, making his dreams into nightmares. There was something that had happened during the day, something that was said at luncheon. But the only talk was of Mr Kipling.
The Light that Failed.
That was it. He woke in the middle of the night, suddenly alert. The light that failed had kindled a spark to Rose’s notes. Lady Bulstrode had said that sitting in the drawing room she had seen a bright light shining under the door that then disappeared, twice. But no bright light was possible. The corridor between the morning room and the smoking room was in gloomy darkness necessary for the procession; so was the smoking room in semi-gloom, lit only by two candles on the mantelpiece. Perhaps Worthington had turned the gas up again? In that case it would have been on when they went into the room. So the bright light could not have been caused by the waiters going in to clear the dishes. There was some other reason. That was strange. And no woman in the conservatory, if Paxton were to be believed. But was he? Perhaps the woman entered from the corridor, but in that case why rush into the conservatory, and what explained the light?

It still puzzled him as he breakfasted in silence with Emma, and made his way back to Plum’s for the day’s luncheon preparations, thankful it was not his day for the market.

‘Oh Mr Didier, I’m glad you’re here. The raggoo won’t go right.’

He took over the ragout. ‘Now add the chopped lobster, Gladys,’ he murmured, no word of reproach. His mind was still on the murder. ‘And, remember, be gentle. This is for sole, a fish with which one cannot be harsh.’ Then Juanita,
this place called Knossos. ‘The merest touch of anchovy essence, no salt of course,’ Knossos, ‘and of course, Gladys, a touch of Mrs Marshall’s coralline pepper . . .’ Pepper? Salt? The light that failed?

He gave a great yell, and Gladys promptly dropped the spoon in the ragout.

‘Oh, Mr Didier, what’s wrong?’

‘Pepper,’ he screamed, ‘that’s it,’ and seizing his ulster once more he ran dementedly out of the door. His staff stared after him as he raced through the entrance into York Street, and into Jermyn Street towards Gwynne’s. He flung himself past the doorman into Emma’s private office, where Disraeli greeted him with a bloodcurdling screech. Emma jumped, and overturned the inkpot on her accounts.

‘Auguste, are you out of your mind?’

‘Yes,’ he crowed, seizing her by the waist. ‘Come, dance with me, beloved. Pepper, pepper. It was
pepper.
’

‘Speak roughly to your little boy and beat ’im when ’e sneezes,’ panted Emma drily, out of breath as he whirled her round.

‘Pepper,
darling
Mrs Marshall’s coralline pepper. Never again shall I deride it. Always shall I adore the good Mrs Marshall.’

‘Auguste, will you
please
stop—’

‘I have realised how it is possible for a woman to be there and not to be there in the Folly,’ pronounced Auguste, stopping so suddenly that Emma lost her balance.

‘A ghost, I suppose,’ said Emma sarcastically, recovering and tearing herself away.

‘Precisely,’ said Auguste. ‘Dr Pepper, dearest Emma,’ kneeling at her feet. ‘Every schoolboy knows the trick now. Dr Pepper has written a book about it even. How to project a ghost on stage. You angle a piece of glass to the audience, shine a bright light on to the real person out of their sight whose image bounces off the glass on to the stage. And, don’t you see, the doors to the Folly are
glass
! Our lady, if lady it was, stood in the corridor with a bright light behind her so that her (or his) image was thrown through the dimmed smoking room into the dimmed conservatory by the glass doors. Worthington sitting by the fire in his usual chair
would have his back to the door, but be out of range of the light so that his reflection would not be picked up. Just that of our ghostly lady. It is the answer, I have the answer,’ crowed Auguste.

‘What light?’ enquired Emma mildly.

‘What light?’ asked Auguste, taken aback. ‘
Alors, le gaz
—’

‘It wouldn’t be strong enough. You would surely need a powerful beam, one from an electro-carbon arc or a limelight –’ She stopped. ‘Limelight,’ she said, as excited as Auguste. ‘In the junk room at the end of the corridor, there was a –’

‘Magic lantern.’ Auguste finished for her. ‘For –’

‘Peregrine Salt’s magic-lantern shows,’ they said in unison.

‘There’s a fly in that soup of yours, Mr Didier.’

Auguste spun round from his task of seasoning the mirepoix for the pheasants
à la dauphinoise
in horror, his first thought for his bisque of prawns
à la cerito.
His anxious eye failed to detect contamination, and he looked up to see and hear Emma laughing rudely, and even. Egbert Rose smiling.

Auguste glared. It was difficult to combine the roles of maitre chef and detective at times. He had just explained with great care and with great excitement the conclusions that he and Emma had reached, when the pheasants demanded his attention. Emma, nothing loth, had continued the exposition on his behalf.

Rose wasn’t sure what he thought about Emma Pryde. Odd dresser, that was for sure. That scarlet shawl didn’t go with the yellow skirt – yet she had a certain style about her. Somehow he couldn’t see Mrs Rose chatting to her in the little parlour at Highbury, however.

‘Oh, I don’t deny it makes sense – your theories always do. It just don’t seem very likely. Not in England somehow. More like something one of those Borgias would get up to. Murder ain’t complicated as a rule, Mr Didier. Mind you, I don’t deny there could be something to it, so we’ll take a look at this magic lantern. But even if your idea works, it doesn’t tell us how the murder was done.’

‘But yes, Inspector, the first time the Colonel rushes to the Folly the ghost disappears – for the smoking-room door is closed while he rushes out. Our villain disappears into that junk room while we all rush to the Folly – and could you say who was there and who was not there in that crowd, Inspector? – then he emerges and plays the trick again. This time the partner in the Folly shoots the Colonel.’

‘Why didn’t the person in the Folly just call him? After all, John claims there was a voice
and
it was a woman’s. Why must there have been someone in the corridor in the first place?’

‘Because our man in the garden saw no one in the Folly when Worthington rushed out.’

‘Hiding,’ said Rose succinctly.

Auguste and Emma looked at him reproachfully. Occasionally, thought Auguste with a pang of remorse for his treachery, Inspector Rose showed no imagination.

‘Inspector Rose,’ he said patiently, ‘you think you have seen a ghost. When you get there, the ghost has vanished. What would you do? Look in case the ghost is hiding?’

‘Yes,’ said Rose wickedly.

‘Gammon,’ said Emma, forthrightly.

Auguste winced. To hold the name of the pig in such low esteem was sacrilegious. The French would never—

‘You’d be feeling foolish, thinking you’d imagined it, that’s why he got so annoyed when people questioned him.’

‘Ghosts don’t have voices,’ said Rose, becoming muddled.

‘A parrot,’ said Emma brightly.

‘
Parrot?
’ echoed Rose in disbelief.

Emma had the grace to blush. ‘Ventriloquist then,’ she added weakly.

There was a silence, as Rose and Auguste tried to see that stately Spanish galleon Juanita Salt in the role of ventriloquist.

Auguste, casting only a slightly regretful eye over the delights of the preparation for luncheon, led the way to the junk room at the end of the corridor between the smoking and morning rooms. On the way, the group picked up an anxious Oliver Nollins, wondering where this determined group – including a
woman
, his horrified eyes registered – was going. Thank heaven, it was early in the morning with few members yet entrenched in the morning room. Even so, he scuttled along behind them nervously, darting glances to left and right.

With a dramatic sweep Auguste flung the door open. The magic lantern was still there, reposing peacefully on the table, and not merely a table, but a table on castors – a trolley.

‘So dangerous those limelight bags,’ moaned Nollins. ‘I keep telling Mr Salt. He ignores me.’ He looked with distaste at the cumbrous bags between their double boards.

‘Well, Mr Didier, you show me then,’ said Rose resignedly. ‘Convince me.’

‘It will not work in the light, monsieur, we must try it in the dark. This evening, after the members have left.’

At 12.30, the last die-hard member had stumbled out into the warm night air, and Oliver Nollins, bleary-eyed but determined to be present, trundled the magic lantern into position.

It was Sergeant Stitch’s big moment. To the amazement of Egbert Rose, Twitch turned out to have hidden depths. In his spare moments he was a keen indulger in amateur dramatics. His duties leaving him little time to tread the boards, he had been forced to specialise in stage work. Lighting was his forte.

Gas supplies were fixed, the limelight lit, and in a few minutes a bright flame flooded the corridor through the magic-lantern aperture. The lighting in the corridor and smoking room was turned down to minimum, and Auguste stood by the doors of the Folly.

Inspector Rose resignedly took up Colonel Worthington’s position in the chair, Emma stood waiting for her moment of glory. ‘Now,’ shouted Auguste. The limelight full on her from the magic lantern at her side, Emma flung open the door to the smoking room.

Rose turned to head towards the Folly.

‘Well?’ he asked. ‘Where is it, Mr Didier?’

Auguste rushed in. There was nothing. He felt mortified. He could not be wrong. ‘The doors,’ he muttered. ‘Perhaps the Colonel left them open, but it should still work if the angles were right.’ He adjusted the doors. Still nothing.

But he had spent the day perusing Professor Hoffmann’s manual and Dr Pepper’s exposition, and with the great Maskelyne. He
must
be right. He moved the door again.

‘Something,’ said Rose grudgingly. ‘But it’s very faint.’

Auguste rushed wildly back and forth, first at the window, then at the door.

Out in the corridor Twitch breathed heavily over his task.

‘Got it,’ he yelled, at the same time as Rose, glancing into the Folly, cried out as a diaphanous Emma glared at him from the Folly. He turned quite pale.

‘I did it, Inspector,’ crowed Stitch, determined his glory should be recognised. ‘It was the light. Coming at the side, as it did, it didn’t have the power, you see. But, at an angle, trained on the wall there, it bounces back on to Mrs Pryde here, and makes it that much stronger. And it breaks up the light, see, so you don’t get a give-away hard circle of light around her.’

‘Well done, Sergeant,’ said Rose curtly. He was still pale. Wait till he told Mrs Rose. ‘It could have been done, Mr Didier, that’s all I can say. Whether it was or not, we still have to prove.’

‘There is always an explanation, you see,’ said Auguste loftily.

‘That’s what you said about Will, the Witch and the Watch at Maskelyne and Cooke’s,’ said Emma caustically. ‘You couldn’t explain that either.’

‘Our Will is just as tricky. And Juanita Salt certainly qualifies for the witch. Will you arrest the Salts, Inspector?’

‘Not at the moment, Mr Didier.’ Rose was shocked. Had Mr Didier learned so little? ‘What do we have on them? Nothing but motive and a half-baked theory of yours. Only one, mark you. We don’t know how they carried out the Jones murder.
If
they did. Theory, all theory, and the Chief Constable don’t much like theories. Like eating the recipe without the food.’

‘One inspires appetite for the other,’ said Auguste a little mutinously.

‘Not if it’s disappointed, it don’t.’

‘We could surprise them into an admission of guilt,’ said Emma eagerly. ‘Set up a trap. You can project my image across the room – show them how it was done, and they’d betray themselves.’

‘And if it doesn’t, miss?’

Emma did not like being called miss. ‘We’ve lost nothing.’

‘Except the Chief Constable thinking I’ve gone off my head,’ said Rose scathingly. ‘He believes in evidence, not
magic-lantern shows. Humble thing evidence, but useful. Even if it don’t compare with your French logic, Mr Didier,’ he quipped.

Auguste donned his hat and flung himself into the pandemonium that would become the usual organised chaos that indicated luncheon preparations were under way. He looked round his kitchens. How had someone once described the kitchens of the newly opened Reform Club? ‘White and clean as a young bride’. At the moment, his looked more like an ageing matron, though none the worse for that. Maturity was the important thing in a kitchen, as in a woman. His thoughts went fleetingly not to Emma but to Tatiana, lost to him for ever. What was she doing now? Did she ever think of him? Did she see him as a dream of life unfulfilled? He dismissed such melancholy thoughts from his mind; it was time to apply the logic, to sauté his thoughts, not fry them into supinity. He thought of Soyer’s description of the two methods: the importance of sautéing, so that the maximum could be gained, the tenderness of the thoughts thereby. It was retained, almost like the cutlets
à la victime
, a recipe, according to Soyer, invented by the cook to His Majesty Louis XVIII, whereby three cutlets were burned near the fire together, and the two on the outside thereafter thrown away, thus leaving the one in the middle cooked to perfection. What wits the
grands maîtres
were, as indeed was he, Auguste Didier. The imagination, the flair, the humanity that absorbed all human nature, for to understand the art of food this was necessary. To fry, to sauté. He remembered Soyer’s story of his French friend who enquired the purpose of the Guy Fawkes carried in the streets. On being told whose effigy it was, he replied, ‘Ah, the little brute who wished to “sauter le Parlement”.’ ‘Not sauter, blow up,’ said Soyer. When his friend remarked they were much the same thing, Soyer applied his logic, and came to the conclusion that Mr Fawkes might well have desired to sauter Parliament.