Murder In The Motor Stable: (Auguste Didier Mystery 9) (21 page)

‘And you have Miss Hart’s will?’

‘Miss Hart did not make one – to my knowledge, and against all my advice.’ Ferdinand managed to look both regretful at such blatant flouting of his wishes and confident that his knowledge was all-encompassing; if, however, he implied, Miss Hart had been misguided enough to choose another solicitor for the purpose of a will, then she must have taken leave of her senses, which would invalidate it anyway.

‘There’s none been found at her rented London house and –’ Egbert took pity on Ferdinand – ‘no mention of another solicitor. Odd considering the dangerous travels she’s been undertaking for the last fifteen years.’

Ferdinand looked affronted. ‘I have already said that I advised her to make a will. Frequently. Indeed, after Sir Herbert’s death four years ago, I considered it essential. Miss Hart, however, travelling much in the East, strongly believed that destiny was in the hands of Allah; if it was important that her will should be made, then Allah would protect her until such time as there was someone with whom she wished to share her worldly belongings. As, indeed, seemed to be the case, for when she returned on this last occasion, she was considering making one.’

‘In whose favour?’

‘She did not say. She informed me she was planning to marry, however, and I deduced it was therefore Mr Smythe.’

‘He’s our obvious suspect, Mr Ferdinand.’

Ferdinand was shocked. ‘Mr Smythe is a most amiable young gentleman.’

‘You’d be surprised how many amiable young gentlemen I’ve put behind bars. How much is Miss Hart’s estate worth?’

‘Quite a lot. An income of ten thousand pounds a year at least. The sale of Bromley House, Sir Herbert’s residence, alone brought a capital of fifteen thousand, and the value of Hart’s Buttons of which Miss Hart holds a majority of the shares at one penny three-farthings is a further fifty thousand pounds.’

‘And
no will
?’ Egbert was incredulous.

Ferdinand went pink. ‘I cannot force my clients to take my advice,’ he said huffily.

‘Any more income?’

‘Very little. Sir Herbert was the only son of a Lancashire chimney sweep, and his prospects were therefore unlikely to be good. However, one day, slithering down the wrong chimney stack, he arrived, like Mr Charles Kingsley’s Water Baby Tom, in a lady’s bedroom where he came across a broken glass button on the floor and was immediately seized with the idea that superior buttons might be produced if portraits of our late dear Queen’s children could be incorporated within them. He began in a small way and within two years he had made modest headway. Then came the unexpected tragic death of the late Prince Consort. Immediately his new factory rushed out superior quality black buttons decorated with an oval black and white silhouette of Prince Albert, and his fortune was made, as they say.’ Ferdinand beamed, looking more like Mr Pickwick than ever.

‘A most stirring story,’ Egbert commented gravely.

‘Hester, his only child, was born the following year, eighteen sixty-four, by which time her father was already a rich man. Those were the days. Shall we ever see their like again?’ He sighed. ‘I had a great regard, and I may say affection, for Sir Herbert.’

‘And for his daughter?’

‘Since you ask, no. Poor Hester did not inherit her father’s confidence in his own abilities and she did not possess a social position of sufficient standing to give her that confidence. Nevertheless she was determined to go out and win her own buttons, so to speak. And very well she has done for herself,’ Ferdinand said approvingly, then stopped speaking rather quickly as he recalled her death.

‘And to whom, if she did not leave a will, does the fortune pass now?’

‘I haven’t the slightest idea,’ Ferdinand announced gleefully. ‘I know of no relatives on her father’s side, save a cousin who died in the South African War, and I know nothing of her mother, who predeceased her husband, save that she was his first factory “hand” and his model. We are advertising in
The Times
and making investigations at Somerset House.’

‘The funeral won’t wait for that,’ Egbert commented.

Mr Ferdinand lost some of his cheerfulness. He was professionally averse to matters that would not wait.

A morning’s study in the splendid new public reading room of the Patent Office confirmed everything Auguste had ever suspected about the eccentricities of the English. Every year about ten thousand happy inventors had their applications granted for patents on such essential items as burglar traps, bust improvers or foul breath indicators. There were also a great many ladies and gentlemen devoted to the technological future of the motorcar. The ladies tended to concentrate on the provision within them of face-protectors and footwarmers, the gentlemen on motorcars that could travel up staircases (presumably to be parked by the adoring driver’s bed) and horse and human – removers to clear unwanted debris from the sacred motor vehicle’s path.

With the invaluable aid of the Patent Office reference systems, Auguste was able to hurry to Scotland Yard at midday on Saturday with the eagerness of a dripping Archimedes leaping from his bath to report his new theory on the displacement of water. ‘I think you should have a further talk to Mr Dobbs,
mon ami
.’

‘What have you found?’ Egbert looked up hopefully.

‘There is a patent on Mr Thomas Bailey’s Improved Electrical and Wind-Powered Motorcar dated tenth March eighteen ninety-nine,
and
renewal. I made the most exhaustive searches and there was nothing in the name of Harold Dobbs. Moreover, I was not the first person, I was informed, to be recently interested in checking the patents for motorcars. At least two ladies, on separate occasions, recently spent some time there on the same pursuit.’

Upper Norwood would not have been Auguste’s ideal venue for a Saturday afternoon in July. He had more in mind a quiet discussion on their balcony with Tatiana overlooking the park, perhaps even a fleeting visit to his own kitchens. Mrs Jolly had mentioned a new recipe for venison that had intriguing possibilities. Mace entered into it. However, Egbert was insistent that he should accompany him, and making only the proviso that he must be back at the club by five o’clock in order to check the Saturday night dinner – and perhaps, he thought wistfully, even
cook
some of it – he submitted gracefully.

Harold Dobbs was, surprisingly, in happy mood, pottering in the large shed that dominated their garden, his inventor’s domain. It fitted Harold, Auguste decided. It was haphazard, untidy, and decidedly eccentric. A drawing of a motorcar that looked as if Sir John Tenniel might have put his hand to it in a
very off moment was pinned over a newspaper portrait of General Gordon at Khartoum, while a similar one of his late monarch Queen Victoria had various amounts of pounds, shillings and pence scribbled in its borders – presumably Dobbs’s costing budgets. Bits of motorcars still to be made lay everywhere. In the middle of the floor was a large space roped off for no apparent reason. Dobbs saw Auguste looking at it.

‘My new motorcar,’ he said happily.

‘There’s nothing there,’ Auguste ventured cautiously.

‘It’s in my
head
.’

‘No more Dolly Dobbs, eh?’ Egbert remarked genially.

‘My heart went into that motorcar, and it was broken beyond repair.’

‘The car or your heart?’ Auguste could not resist asking.

‘Both. How could I rebuild it
now
?’

Auguste sympathised. If a
pièce montée
of his creation had been flung to the ground, smashed into pieces, its delicate spun sugar strands a heap of crumbs, how could he recreate exactly the same artistic triumph? Personally, he could not see motorcars in quite the same light, or the Dolly Dobbs as a triumph, but he was prepared to admit a similarity in outlook.

Egbert was not so tolerant. ‘That’s what we’re here to discuss.’

‘I don’t want to rebuild her,’ Harold said piteously.

‘That couldn’t be anything to do with the fact the Dolly Dobbs is a copy of Thomas Bailey’s Brighton Baby, could it?’

He stared at them nervously. ‘How could it be? I’ve been working on the Dolly Dobbs for five years. How could I have known what Bailey was doing? Anyway, who says it’s a copy?’ he added too belatedly to convince.

‘Those who’ve seen both of them. Mrs Didier, Mr Didier, the Duchess, Leo, Fred Gale—’

‘It’s coincidence.’ Harold was red in the face.

‘Then why didn’t you try to patent yours? Bailey did. Is that why you smashed the machine up yourself, so that you didn’t have to drive it publicly once you knew the Duchess was driving in the Brighton Baby?’

‘That’s certainly why you would not allow it to come out of the stable last Saturday, isn’t it?’ Auguste asked.

‘You don’t understand,’ Harold moaned. ‘I’m an artist. How could I lay a violent hand on my own beloved Dolly? The reason I didn’t apply for a patent is much simpler.’

‘And that is?’ Egbert pressed as Harold came to a full stop, looking wildly from one to the other, hoping for appreciation for the artist in him in vain.

‘I forgot.’

‘
Forgot?
For over five years?’

‘I’m rather absent-minded.’ An air of slight complacency entered Harold’s voice. ‘I was so enthusiastic about building my Dolly I’m afraid it never occurred to me that anyone else could possibly be as clever as me.’

‘Yet you didn’t seem too surprised when we told you the Brighton Baby
had
been patented. You knew about that.’ Egbert was never moved by the plight of artists.

He swallowed. ‘Miss Hart told me. Now you’ll think I murdered her.’ His voice ended in a shriek as the full horror of his position struck home.

‘Why should we?’ Egbert inquired as gently as a pike after a minnow.

Harold gave in. ‘She was blackmailing me. She’d found out that I hadn’t patented it. I think she was determined to drive Dolly, she liked her so much,’ he explained ingenuously. ‘So she went to the Patent Office just on the off chance she might find something interesting. She told me Thomas Bailey had a
similar idea to mine, and that if she couldn’t drive the Dolly, she would tell him before the trials.’

‘And how did you hope to get away with it once details were published?’

‘I suppose I hoped Bailey’s was different and wouldn’t work.’

‘It didn’t.’

‘
Really?
’ Delight took over his face. ‘So I can rebuild Dolly.’

‘Only if it’s different to the Brighton Baby, or yours won’t work either,’ Auguste pointed out.

‘Of course it will work,’ he answered feverishly. ‘I wonder if I should go to see Mr Bailey. If I don’t, he’ll rebuild
his
and all my work will be wasted.’ He was already moving towards the door.

‘But you’re starting on a new car,’ Auguste pointed out.

‘Dolly’s reputation must be cleared first. Where’s my hat?’ He looked round vaguely for Judith.

‘Not so fast, Mr Dobbs,’ Egbert said none too cordially. ‘Don’t forget that Dolly’s reputation gave you an excellent motive for disposing of Hester Hart.’

Harold Dobbs’s mouth opened, shut, and opened again. ‘I suppose it did,’ he agreed unhappily.

Pierre looked up eagerly as Auguste came in, though whether this was excitement at the possibility of a discussion on the superiority of French
sanguines
mushrooms over English parasols or desire to discuss the topic of Miss Hart Auguste could not tell. Obstinacy made him decide to concentrate his immediate attention on cuisine, not on the missions with which Egbert had charged him. He was, after all, a maître chef, not primarily a Scotland Yard consultant detective, he
reminded himself. Egbert all too frequently overlooked this fact.

‘What is there still to do?’ he asked, donning his long apron. ‘Are the pies glazed?’

‘
Oui, monsieur
. Is there news about—’

‘And the
poussins
with the veal and pork truffled stuffing ready for the oven?’

‘
Oui, monsieur
. Has the murderer—’

‘The Calvados and apple sauce for the quails?’

‘
Non, monsieur
, but I will do it. Have you—’

‘No,
I
will do it.’ Auguste was happy again. He was part of that warm, cocooned world in which heaven and hell had briefly made appearances and disappearances; the ecstatic joy of creation versus the imps of mischief in the form of imperfect supplies and smoking stoves. The world was called a kitchen, and he was king of it. For a little while, at least.

Eventually he took pity on Pierre – or, rather, on the club restaurant’s forthcoming dinner. Pierre had at least one eye on him, if not both, and the food might suffer. Some dishes could sulk as effectively as humans, often more disastrously.

‘Did Miss Hart ever speak of her family to you? Living members, that is?’

Happiness glowed in Pierre’s face. ‘She spoke little of her family at all, monsieur. I gained the impression she had left England to break away from her family as much as her so-called friends.’

‘But she was a wealthy woman, thanks to them.’

‘I do not know.’ He shrugged. ‘She was concerned for money. She carefully checked what I spent in the markets but I do not think she was short of money. How could she be? She travelled where she wished.’