Murder in Pug's Parlour (10 page)

There was no response.

Not so gently now, Auguste shook him by the shoulders.
‘Tell me, Edward. You want to go to prison? You want
me
to go?’ The boy shook his head. ‘Then trust me, and tell me.’

Edward licked his lips nervously. ‘Wasn’t done in the morning-room, Mr Didier. Can’t ’ve bin.’

‘Why not, Edward?’

‘Must have been put in after it got to the pantry. When we were all together. Can’t have bin before.’

‘Why not?’ said Auguste, almost shouting now.

Edward shuffled his feet. ‘’Cos I took a swig of it before dinner. Hadn’t been feeling too good and when I puts it in the decanter I thought he wouldn’t miss a nip. So I took a drop before we goes to the servants’ hall. Right as rain, I was.’

Auguste’s hands dropped from Edward’s shoulders and he stared at the boy. ‘Then it must have been one of us after all.’

He needed time to think, to let the content of this conversation marinate for a while, to reflect. There must have been a way. Meanwhile – ‘Edward,’ he said urgently. ‘
Écoutes, mon enfant.
Not a word of this to the good Sergeant Bladon. Not for the moment. Yes?’

Edward Jackson needed no urging.

‘Oh, Mr Didier, I couldn’t.’

‘Auguste, dearest Estelle. You must call me Auguste,’ he breathed softly into her ear, a little brown curl tickling his nose. ‘And yes you could. Why not? It is a simple thing, is it not?’

‘But I don’t like to.’

‘It is to find out who murdered Greeves. You asked me to find out, dearest.’

‘But to—’ She blushed.

‘He is not that unattractive,’ said Auguste.

‘But not like—’ She blushed again and looked modestly down.

‘Of course he is not like me, my precious,’ Auguste murmured tenderly. ‘But just one kiss . . . Like this.’

So it was, just before going off duty from guarding Pug’s Parlour, and being relieved by the Maidstone Constable Tomson, that PC Perkins was overwhelmed by Miss Gubbins not only stopping to speak to him but actually moving very close to him. He was given to understand that she would be only too happy to accompany him to the village dance on her next evening off. Were PC Perkins any more experienced than Ethel herself, he would have recognised Ethel’s brave efforts at flirtation as singularly amateur, but, as he was not, he was gratified indeed to find her pretty face looking up at him admiringly and her lips so close to his, it seemed not so very daring to cover them firmly with his own. Ethel was surprised to find it not the ordeal she had feared, while Constable Perkins was oblivious to all but the wonder of Miss Gubbins.

Auguste had entered the sash window of Greeves’ room with dexterity. It took but a moment to reach the bookcase and to extract the large family bible. He dared not strike a lucifer match and therefore it was by touch he identified the large shape cut out in the middle of the book which accommodated a small notebook comfortably. He slipped it into his hand, and put the bible back on the shelf. As he straightened up, a hand fell on his shoulder. A hand that belonged to a zealous reader of stories of detection, as the path to the distant horizon of promotion.

‘Well, well, well, if it isn’t Hawkshaw the Great Detective,’ said Sergeant Bladon smugly.

‘Just a look, Monsieur
le Sergent
, I implore . . .’

‘Now why should I give you a look, Mr Didier?’ said Bladon heavily. He was seated importantly behind the desk specially allotted to him at Kent County Police HQ in Maidstone, flushed with the success of his capture. ‘Trying to divert suspicion, that it? It wasn’t no book you was after, were it? It was the bottle,’ he shot out.

‘Bottle?’ echoed Auguste in puzzlement.

‘The poison container – the aconite bottle,’ explained the sergeant, unknowingly sending his reputation with Auguste down to the bottom again. ‘Revisiting the scene of the crime, retrieving it. You knew we’d be on to Mrs Hankey’s supply of aconitia, so you thought you’d be clever. You had your own bottle, and you hid it after you poisoned the brandy. So then you had to get it back.’ Good thing he’d come up to the Towers to see Perkins before he left.

‘Non,’
said Auguste. He glanced at the sergeant and decided his method of approach. ‘Monsieur
le Sergent
, you English are so logical, so clear-thinking. You must see that it is illogical. To a man of reason like yourself –’ Bladon’s neck grew pink above his uniform collar. ‘You must see that had I wished to poison Mr Greeves I did not need a bottle. I grate some root of wolfsbane into the horseradish with which it can so easily be confused. I mash the leaves into the sorrel, I put the sap in his gravy – I am the cook, it would be simple. No need of bottles from Madame Hankey’s storecupboard or anywhere else.’

He held the sergeant’s eye, praying he would not see the flaw in this argument. Apparently he did not, for the sergeant went on: ‘Then what was you after, then, eh?’

Auguste eyed the book lying under the sergeant’s large palm.

‘The book, Monsieur
le Sergent.
I think the departed
Greeves practised the
chantage –
blackmail – and this is the book, if I’m right, where he kept the details.’

The sergeant drew a deep breath. This couldn’t be happening to him, Mr Tommy Bladon. Blackmail, murder, dukes, duchesses. Why, this was better than the novels of Mr Hawley Smart, whose
The Great Tontine
he had just been reading. Though, mind you, it was his racing mysteries he liked best. Took him back to that day out he and Mrs Bladon had taken, down to the Folkestone Races . . . He pulled himself back from this happy reverie of times spent away from Inspector Naseby and reasserted his native Kent common sense. ‘Who’d he have wanted to blackmail among you lot?’ he said scornfully. ‘The servants ain’t got two pennies to rub together.’

Auguste looked at him. ‘Not us, not the servants. The other side of that door. The family, the guests . . .’

Bladon’s eyes bulged. ‘Do you mean – gorlimy, not
him
?’

Auguste shrugged. ‘Perhaps. Why not? It will be in the book.’ Their eyes riveted on the object between them.

The sergeant, however, made no move to open it.

‘If you will allow me to glance at it,’ offered Auguste cunningly, ‘I will suggest another possibility that might not have occurred to you.’

The sergeant snorted. Then he veered towards caution. Just in case this Frenchie had something to offer . . . ‘I can’t let it out of my hands, mind,’ he warned.

‘It is understood. Now, Sergeant, this bottle of brandy left in the morning-room – you will undoubtedly be testing it for the poison –’ The sergeant regarded him sourly. ‘Does it not perhaps suggest that someone unfamiliar with the ways of the household might think it intended for the Duke . . .?’

Auguste watched as the sergeant’s face betrayed that he
had taken in the full implications of this statement. He prayed that the crime of sending the police off with a – what did they say? –
hareng rouge
was not a crime punishable by death in England.

Awful chasms of possibility opened up in front of the sergeant. He hardly noticed as Auguste reached gently across for the little notebook.

The Duke was not a good interviewee, particularly as he seemed to be under the impression that Inspector Naseby and Bladon only wanted full details of last Monday’s bag.

‘Good God, man, how can I remember? Had several shoots since then. Look in the game book, if you like. Write it up every evening.’ Once this misunderstanding was cleared out of the way, the Duke turned somewhat mollified to the question of last Monday’s luncheon. ‘Luncheon was in the house that day. Laetitia’ll remember. Came back to the gunroom just before twelve – talked to old Jebbins there. Then over to the bootroom, boots off, change, luncheon at one. Always do. Always is.’

‘This bootroom, sir, is just by the servants’ quarters, isn’t it? Did you notice anything untoward?’

The Duke’s irritation broke forth once more. ‘Untoward? Mean to say did we see a damned tramp creeping around with a dose of poison in his hand? Got more important things to do than poke our noses into the servants’ quarters. Door’s there for a purpose, you know. Let them get on with it. No, get the scores out for the game book, make sure all in agreement, ready for the afternoon shoot, that’s what we were doing. Never got it, of course, what with all the Upset,’ he grumbled.

‘Yes, yes, sir. But nothing untoward,’ said Naseby soothingly.

Mollified, the Duke rumbled on. ‘Everything slipshod
nowadays. It’s the servant problem. Above themselves. Running about all over the place getting themselves poisoned. Housemaids here, housemaids there. Me father wouldn’t have stood for it. Sacked any woman he saw round the place after twelve o’clock. There have to be rules you know. Freds in dress livery before luncheon. Butlers hopping about upsetting the port. What the place is coming to, I don’t know. Servants – treat ’em well and what thanks do you get? Go and get themselves murdered right in the middle of the shooting season.’

The inspector broke into this monologue.

‘Brandy, sir. I understand you gave Greeves a bottle of brandy personally, every Monday morning.’

‘What of it?’

‘That’s where we think the poison was, sir.’

The Duke’s face grew purple. ‘My brandy? Hell’s fire! May not have been my best Napoleon, but you calling it poison?’

The inspector broke in again hastily. ‘No, sir, not the brandy itself. We think someone may have added poison to it. When exactly did you give it to him, sir?’

‘Same time I always do. Before we set out on the shoot. After going through the affairs of the day. Ten o’clock, thereabouts.’

‘And it was left in the room unattended?’

‘So anyone could have put poison in it,’ contributed Bladon, eagerly but incautiously.

The Duke eyed him sharply. ‘Anyone? That mean me guests? Me family?’

‘Would your guests know it was for Greeves, sir, if they saw it there?’

The Duke’s face was a picture, as he contemplated this for a moment. ‘Are you saying one of me guests would want to poison
me
?’ His Grace was by no means slow on the uptake.

‘Not necessarily, sir. A servant, perhaps.’

‘Nonsense. All devoted to me. Anyway, servants knew it was for Greeves. The poison was meant for him all right.’ There was a note of finality in his voice.

Just as Bladon’s future in the Kent Police looked precarious in the extreme, the Duke saw the humorous side. The red face spluttered into mirth. His Grace roared. ‘Why not
me
, eh Bladon? Always fancied the silken rope. Tried by his peers, eh? That what’s in your mind?’

‘I’ll tell Teddy when I see him next. His Royal Highness will be very amused to hear I’m being investigated.’ Lord Arther Petersfield laughed lightly.

Relieved that His Lordship was taking the interview in such good part, Naseby ploughed on. Had he seen a bottle of brandy in the morning-room on Monday morning? Had he known Greeves well? Had he had conversations with Greeves?

‘I really could not say, Inspector. I do not keep a diary of encounters with the lower classes.’

Naseby might have felt put down, but His Lordship was smiling amiably if a trifle aloofly. ‘Did you know about His Grace’s custom of giving a bottle of brandy to the steward every Monday morning?’

‘No, Inspector, I did not. I’m a guest, you know. Ain’t done to take a close interest in your host’s household running.’

Again the smile.

Where had he been that Monday morning?

‘My dear fellow, where should I have been?’ he enquired of Naseby. ‘Shooting of course. Shooting at Stockbery Towers is too damned good to miss just to murder a servant.’ He laughed easily, adjusting the elegant sleeve of his Norfolk jacket. With luck he could get another hour’s
shooting in before tea. That still left two hours before dinner for the seduction of Lady Jane. Not physical of course – that chore could be postponed, but her emotional conquest.

‘And what time did you return for din – er – luncheon, sir?’

Lord Arthur considered. ‘I really cannot recall for sure, Inspector. At twelve, I believe. We walked back to the gunroom together of course, and then returned to the bootroom as and when we were ready. I went almost immediately.’

‘Alone, My Lord?’

Lord Arthur paused. ‘I believe so. His Grace and then Marshall came into the bootroom while I was there. Fellow doesn’t shoot, you know. Odd sort of chap. I went to change as Marshall came in. So yes, Inspector, I returned alone. Leaving me ample time to rush behind the door to the servants’ quarters, enter the steward’s room, tip arsenic into the food and return to enjoy my luncheon.’

‘You knew Greeves’ room was there, sir?’

Lord Arthur frowned. ‘Yes, Inspector. I believe so. Regular visitors to this house, and I have the honour to count myself among their number, are aware of the position of the steward’s room, owing to our patronage of the Servants’ Ball on New Year’s Eve, since we gathered there to be escorted to the ball by Greeves. That, however, is a different matter from entering the servants’ quarters at any other time of year. I fear I should be a reckless murderer indeed to plan a murder in such a way.’

‘And when you returned for luncheon, you noticed nothing untoward?’ said Naseby unctuously, anxious to move to safer and more indefinite ground.

One handsome eyebrow flickered. ‘Untoward? Ah yes, Inspector, I did notice something.’

The inspector and his subordinate leaned forward eagerly.

‘The pheasant was just a fraction overdone. Not Didier’s best.’

‘Good morning, gentlemen.’

The Prince’s manner was more friendly. Despite his thick accent, Naseby felt more at ease with him than with that elegant man about town Petersfield. True royalty, he said to himself, knowingly.

‘I do not see how I can assist you, gentlemen.’ The Prince reclined at ease in the Duke’s leatherbound armchair. ‘But His Imperial Majesty would wish me to help you if I can, but I do not see how. It is a servant that is killed, yes?’

‘Yes,’ said Naseby hesitating, but there was something about the Prince’s manner that made him expand. ‘But there’s some doubt about whether he was the intended victim.’ The Prince looked politely interested. ‘It’s been suggested that His Grace—’