Murder In The Motor Stable: (Auguste Didier Mystery 9) (25 page)

Lady Bullinger’s temper at the disruption to the race up Netherhall Gardens had not been assuaged by lobster and raspberry charlotte, and she took exception to being escorted into Lady Westland’s drawing room, adorned with photographs of her in masculine dress in her music-hall days. ‘Murder? But what on earth does Hester Hart have to do with where I was today?’

‘It’s not Miss Hart. It’s Luigi, the maître d’.’

She looked astounded. ‘Merciful heavens,
why
should anyone want to kill him? And why, may I ask, do you need to know where I was? I don’t go around murdering the servants.’

Egbert disliked being boomed at. ‘Where were you?’

‘At an At Home.’

‘At home?’

‘No.
At
one.’ She glared. ‘I was with the Duchess of Dewbury. Where did the unfortunate occurrence take place, may I ask?’

‘The body was found in the Zoo.’

‘The
Zoo
? Do you suggest I disguised myself as a gorilla?’ Maud had evidently decided on hearty humour. No one, however, had mentioned disguise, it occurred to Auguste, glancing at the photographs of the Magnificent Masher.

Agatha appeared equally horrified to hear of Luigi’s death. ‘That dear man? I am truly sorry, Inspector.’

‘May I ask where you were this afternoon, Your Grace?’

‘Certainly you may, though if you think I attended the Zoo you are greatly mistaken. I visit only on Sundays. My husband is a Fellow. I was holding an At Home.’

‘So Lady Bullinger told us. And she was present?’

‘Certainly she was,’ Agatha replied promptly.

‘And who else?’

This time the answer was not so prompt. ‘There was no one else, Inspector.’

‘Unusual, isn’t it?’

‘It’s the end of the season,’ Agatha replied snappily.

‘What time did she leave?’

‘About five o’clock to prepare for this evening.’ There was no hesitation in her voice. She might almost have been waiting for the question, Auguste thought.

Isabel was equally unperturbed. ‘I was shopping, Chief Inspector. At Whiteleys. Doubtless I will be remembered. I spent some time sitting in the hosiery department. I acquired ten pairs of ribbed silk stockings with lace insertions.’

‘We’ll check with them to confirm it.’

Isabel extended a leg and delicately revealed an ankle. ‘There is your proof. Why am I being cross-examined in this impudent way?’

‘Luigi, the maître d’ of the Motoring Club, has been found dead. You paid him for information from time to time, I understand.’

The beautiful eyes rested on him without enthusiasm. ‘Yes,’ she admitted at last. The perfect lips closed, and did not reopen as Isabel considered the import of what she had been told. ‘My husband is a very jealous man. He has the absurd idea I have – ridiculous though it sounds – a lover. I like to know if he calls at the club. That is all.’

‘All? You didn’t pay him for a look at Hester Hart’s diaries?’

‘
No!
’ The eyes widened. ‘Did he have them?’

Egbert did not reply, and Isabel wished, oh how she wished, she’d had the sense to insist on Hugh’s coming this evening. He had pleaded a stupid engagement elsewhere and she hadn’t seen him all day. It was too bad, when she needed him. Tomorrow she would leave for Goodwood and there at least she would see him.
He
would know what to do.

‘Luigi?’ Bitterly regretting his own faithfulness to his beloved, Roderick’s voice rose to an effective shriek when he had replaced Isabel in the drawing room. ‘
Why?
’

‘We believe he knew where your fiancée’s diaries were.’

‘Why should he?’ Roderick was guarded.

‘Just what I wanted to know,’ Egbert told him cordially. ‘Why give them to Luigi when she had you to turn to?’

‘She didn’t give them to me.’

‘So you’ve told us. What did you give to
her
? The
Rubáiyát
?’

‘No. Whatever it is,’ Roderick added cautiously.

‘Now tell us where you were this afternoon.’

‘Why do you want to know? You can’t suspect
me
of murdering him for the sake of diaries. What could possibly be in them of concern to me? I only recently met Miss Hart.’

‘I like to keep things tidy, Mr Smythe. Especially my notes.’

‘I was with Miss Lockwood from about –’ he hesitated ‘two to five. We took a turn on the Crossley. Splendid horse,’ Roderick added unnecessarily, pushing back the famous lock of hair which seemed to be sticking to a damp forehead. Sweat? Auguste wondered.

‘And where did this turn take you?’

‘I don’t recall. About.’

‘Perhaps Miss Lockwood’s memory is more vivid.’

Roderick looked unhappy, and was justified. Phyllis Lockwood’s memory was not vivid at all.

‘Mr Smythe tells us you were out on a drive with him on his Crossley this afternoon.’

‘Did he?’ The blue eyes opened wide. ‘Oh, I’m sure he’s right then.’ She gave them one of her sweetest smiles.

Charlie Jolly appeared at the kitchen door. ‘I’d like a word with you, Annie.’

Pierre, distracted from the interesting problem of whether he should add both truffles and mushrooms to the garnish for the sole, looked up with a frown. ‘Annie is working.’

‘I’m working here too.’ Charlie came right into the kitchen in pursuit of his erstwhile beloved.

‘Here?’ Annie forgot all about the quenelles in her amazement.

‘For this evening, at least. I regret to tell you, Annie, that Luigi is absent; not to put too fine a point on it, he is dead. In fact, murdered.’

Her eyes grew round. ‘Dead?’

Charlie put a protective arm round her. ‘I regret, yes.’

Pierre stood stock still, clutching a truffle, as he assimilated this information. ‘Murdered?’ he asked in a curious voice. ‘Like Miss Hart?’

‘Apparently so. I know no further details.’

Annie began to cry, sniffling into Charlie’s shoulder, and Pierre returned to the sole. But his attention was not wholly on it.

Auguste rode back with Tatiana on the Léon Bollée as the cavalcade made its way back to London. He watched her unhappy face and lightly touched her thigh. ‘I am sorry,
ma mie
, that your evening is ruined.’

‘Has it brought you any closer, Auguste, to finding out the truth? That is the important thing.’

Auguste hesitated. ‘Every case is a possible maze. You can appear to be getting closer but until you are at the very centre you can never be absolutely sure that the path will not lead you away again.’

‘And do you think that will happen in this case?’

‘I hope not. With the murder of Luigi, the path may become clearer, not more confused.’

‘I hope so. It’s beginning to poison not only the club but our lives. Not to mention Eastbourne,’ she added unhappily.

There was nothing he could say that she would accept as other than mere words of comfort, as the Léon Bollée glided serenely down the hill bringing them back into London.

At Scotland Yard Egbert found Twitch waiting patiently for him. ‘What’s Peroni’s landlady got to say for herself, Stitch? Plenty, I’ve no doubt.’

‘That she wouldn’t have let the rooms to him if she’d have known he was going to be murdered,’ Stitch reported faithfully and without humour.

‘Still no sign of where those diaries might be?’

‘I’ve been through everything again. Short of sending them back home to his family in Italy, they’ve vanished. And no one got there before me, either.’

‘All that means is that Peroni might have had a clue on his body as to where they might be, and our villain is biding his time to pick them up, having removed the clue for our benefit. What did you find out about his fiancée? I suppose it’s too much to hope for that she’s confessed to murdering him in a jealous rage?’

‘She’s in Biarritz, sir.’

Eastbourne would do for him, Egbert thought savagely.

Stitch produced a modest beam of self-satisfaction. ‘This servant person, she’s a different matter. She’s head kitchen maid at Milton House. Annie Parsons.’

‘Well done, Stitch. Any luck at Somerset House?’

Stitch inflated then promptly deflated again. ‘You’ve no idea the time it takes.’ He was aggrieved. ‘I’ve checked the father’s side. Miss Hart’s grandfather, John Hart –’ Twitch consulted his notes – ‘had a brother Cedric who had a daughter and a son, both dead. As far as I can make out, the son had no nippers, and his sister Maud only had one son who died three years ago. To go further means going back a generation to John Hart’s father.’

‘Tackle the mother’s side next then.’

‘Yes, sir. I’ve started. Her mother Maria was an only child. Her grandmother, Victoria, had a sister Mary. I’m on her track now.’

‘Keep at it, Stitch.’ Egbert yawned. It had been a long day.

Breakfast, like any other meal, was not a time to be disturbed, Auguste thought crossly. Tatiana, however, had already left for the club this Tuesday morning, so he reluctantly left his devilled kidneys to see what might be amiss with Pierre. He must have heard the news but why should
they have brought him to Queen Anne’s Gate instead of waiting for his arrival at the club?

Auguste found him in the morning room, agitatedly pacing to and fro, beret in his hand. He came forward eagerly as soon as he saw Auguste.

‘I wish to see you, Monsieur Didier. I am told Luigi has been found dead. Is it true?’

‘It is.’

‘Murdered?’

‘Probably.’

‘And in connection with the death of Miss Hart?’

‘Again probably.’

‘Then he was killed instead of me,’ Pierre said simply.

Whatever Auguste had been expecting, it was not this. ‘Why do you think that? You are not dissimilar in height and colouring, but no one could mistake him for you in broad daylight.’

‘No. But the reason he was killed might have been because of Miss Hart’s diaries. Knowing Miss Hart paid Luigi for information, the murderer would have thought she gave him the diaries to guard. But I have the diaries.’

‘
You
do? But you told Inspector Rose you did not have them.’ Auguste was aghast. Egbert was not going to like this, pleased as he would be to know their whereabouts.

‘I had to,’ Pierre said wretchedly. ‘I swore to Miss Hart to tell no one, and we Arabs take such vows seriously.’

‘Then what has changed?’

‘If Luigi was murdered for those diaries, so might I be. I am the most likely person to have them after Luigi, now that everybody knows I was her dragoman,’ he said wretchedly. ‘If I give them to Scotland Yard, I can tell everyone so, and then they will have no reason to kill me. Please to help me.’

‘Tell me where the diaries are, and
then
I’ll consider helping you. You’ve wasted a lot of time, Pierre.’

‘I know,’ he replied humbly. ‘They’re at Waterloo Railway Station luggage office.’

So simple. ‘You put the whole chest in there?’

‘No. Miss Hart did not want me to come to her house. Miss Hart took the chest herself to the railway station. I met her there and she gave me the ticket. The idea was that this was a temporary measure, until she had married and had thought of somewhere safer to keep them.’

‘Give me the ticket, Pierre.’

Pierre hesitated for a moment, then produced it from his pocket.

‘Are you sure the diaries are in the chest?’

‘Indeed they are. I have seen them.’

‘Why? You weren’t intending to make use of the information, were you?’

‘No.’ Pierre was indignant at this slur. ‘I knew Miss Hart would have wanted the diaries of her travels to be published if she failed to write her memoirs, so I gave those diaries to her publisher. You can ask them. Bacon, Archibald and Frith is the firm. Only the private diaries are left in the chest.’

‘I think that will satisfy Inspector Rose for the moment.’ Auguste took the telephone from its hook.

Waterloo Station at holiday time had a sense of a new life beginning, an energy that the city itself now lacked in late July. Buckets and spades swung enthusiastically from hands of all ages, porters shot to and fro with hand luggage, carts rushed hither and thither with trunks being forwarded in advance to seaside hotels. There were no sad farewells, only
eager expectations. Hester Hart’s chest was just one more holiday trunk to the left luggage attendant, but Pierre eyed it wistfully as it was loaded by a porter into a growler.

Leaving Pierre to walk back to Milton House, Auguste set off in the growler to Scotland Yard. He peered out of the window to see Pierre standing to watch their leaving as though with them went the last of his life with Hester Hart.

‘Here it all is. No doubt of that. Listen to this.’ Egbert, having expressed his opinion of Pierre, returned to more positive thinking, and picked a diary at random. ‘Sixth of June, eighteen seventy-eight. She must have been about fourteen. “I hate them all. They are beastly to me, all of them, and especially Agatha. I’ll show them. I wish my father were a
crossing sweeper
. I hate him too. And I hate
buttons
.”’