Murder At Plums (16 page)

‘I was at the end of the parade with Erskine,’ Rose pointed out shortly. ‘In any case, there was a ten-minute gap at least before Worthington came on to the scene. I grant you, anyone could have left the parade after we’d re-entered the house.’

‘Then how would he reach the conservatory again, unless it was after you had all gathered in the dining rooms?’

‘Or perhaps it was one of your staff, Monsieur Didier.’

‘One of
my
staff would not wander off into the
conservatory where they had no business to be,’ said Auguste loftily. ‘Except perhaps,’ he added, ‘the temporary staff.’

‘Temporary?’

‘Hired for the evening, monsieur, to cope with the extra numbers.’ He had an uncomfortable jolt as he recalled the curious matter of the forty-fifth man.

Rose sank into further gloom – more problems. An indefinite number of possible villains – that was all he needed.

Reluctant to concede that any of his staff – however temporary – might be concerned in this matter, Auguste suggested, ‘It was someone entered from the garden perhaps?’

‘It is possible. The tradesmen’s entrance leads to the garden, and Worthington saw whoever it was through the conservatory windows.’

‘Too dark surely.’

‘No, because there was little light in the conservatory or the smoking room. It would be quite possible to see a person in the garden, especially if the face were suddenly pressed up against the pane.’

‘But what happened then? He gave Worthington a fright. But he wasn’t shot till long after that.’

‘He could have come into the Folly after we had left Worthington alone, and called to him.’

Rose did not seem overjoyed at this simple explanation, perhaps because the chances of finding an anonymous person in the garden were even less than finding a villain among the 300 or so people in the club. They were at least a defined group.

‘It is motive we seek, monsieur. Though it is hard to see a motive for murdering Colonel Worthington.’

‘You would be surprised, Didier. All sorts of offal comes out when you start gutting the rabbit, eh?’

‘But is it not more likely that Erskine was the intended victim?’ asked Auguste. ‘It is after all strange that there should be two persons of murderous intent in Plum’s.’

‘Unless it’s someone with a grudge against Plum’s, of course.’

‘Then we deal with a madman,’ said Auguste forthrightly.
‘But I do not think this man mad, monsieur, or if he is then but mad nor’-nor’-east, as your good Prince Hamlet remarks.’

‘No, I don’t think we’ve a madman here – any kind of madman,’ ruminated Rose, disregarding Auguste’s erudition. ‘Of course, I suppose our chap in the garden could have come in to kill Erskine and found Worthington in his way.’

‘Very careless,’ commented Auguste. ‘Perhaps, monsieur, this Worthington knew who was threatening Erskine and so he had to be killed first?’

‘Now that’s a thought,’ said Rose. ‘Though it don’t explain why he didn’t tell us who the man in the Folly was. Or woman,’ he added.

‘Colonel Worthington would not rush outside for a mere woman,’ said Auguste laughing. ‘Or if he did, he would have told everyone with much anger. He hated women.’

‘Misogynist, eh? That rules out jealous mistresses then. Not that he exactly looked the Casanova type. What else do you know of him? What sort of chap was he?’

‘He was—’ Auguste paused. What had Worthington been like? Had Plum’s known anything of the real man? ‘He was just the club bore, Inspector. He sat in his chair; he talked and talked. He had been a member for many years and, since his retirement, I heard he came in every day. He is – was – looked after by a housekeeper. He fought at Chillianwallah. Everyone knew he fought at Chillianwallah.’

‘That was a fair time ago,’ observed Rose. ‘Before the Crimea, wasn’t it? What’s he done since, I wonder?’

Erskine went to meet his wife as she came out of the temporary cloakroom. He put his arm around her and solicitously helped her arrange her light summer cloak. ‘Come, Amelia, I am safe.’

‘Oh Gaylord, suppose it had been you,’ she wailed to the sympathetic glances of the other ladies.

‘There, there, my love, Inspector Rose will ensure that nothing happens to me.’

Inspector Rose himself, still furiously making notes in the smoking room, was not so sure.

‘Jorrocks’ Atkins metaphorically hung up his boots and went to bed. Gad, what a day. Plum’s Passing and old Worthington dead. He hadn’t quite taken it in yet. But he would, just as soon as he returned to Warwickshire and sat a horse again. The old scores were settled now all right.

One of Auguste’s temporary waiters took off his evening dress with a sigh of relief. What an evening. He wouldn’t have missed it for. the world. Better than anything at the theatre.

Weary after the day, Emma stretched out lazily in her silk-quilted bed. She wasn’t used to so much physical labour nowadays – nor to quite such an emotional experience. Her Frenchness came to the fore. But it had all gone well – all of it. Glorying in the luxuriousness of her single bed, she purred to herself, turned over and went to sleep.

Plum’s had an uneasy calm about it. A few stalwarts came for coffee, perhaps in curiosity, perhaps in defiance, as if to prove that nothing would change old Plum’s. Even a phalanx of policemen. In contrast, Gwynne’s was humming with life. Auguste peeped out at the crowded foyer from Emma’s private office. He closed the door and sank into an armchair.

‘Dearest Emma, thank you for your help yesterday.’

‘Nothing at all,’ she murmured.

‘Watcher, cock,’ contributed Disraeli, alighting proprietorially on Emma’s shoulder.

‘Ah, but yes,’ commented Auguste, ignoring this intervention, ‘for a great cook, to put oneself under the command of another – I know what that means.’

‘You’re very kind,’ she said, keeping a straight face.

‘It is not often that I say of a lady cook, magnificent. But of you, I do. Your
charlotte de pêches
—’

‘It’s your day off,’ she pointed out. ‘And you talk about food? With a murder to discuss instead?’

‘Naturally. Food is my love, my great passion—’

‘I thought Tatiana was your great passion,’ she said tauntingly.

‘The Princess Tatiana is the great unattainable passion of my life,’ he retorted gravely. ‘Food, fortunately, is more attainable.’

‘So apparently is murder,’ said Emma, determined to drag the subject back to the more immediately engrossing of the two. ‘Didn’t I say there was something odd going on at Plum’s?’ she crowed.

‘Yes,’ said Auguste shortly. ‘We both did. Now it is murder.’

‘And we’ll both solve it,’ said Emma happily.

‘
Ma mie
, you are a cook not a detective.’

‘You always say they need the same skills.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Auguste, nettled.

‘Now who,’ said Emma, happily settling down, ‘would want to murder old Worthington?’

‘This is not proved yet. The intended victim might be Erskine.’ Auguste was not going to share his detective role without a struggle.

‘Oh no.’ Emma dismissed this. ‘Worthington without doubt. What about that person he saw in the Folly? It’s clear they came back and did him in – and that’s what I was going to tell you. I saw someone in the garden just after I arrived. Waiting, hiding. A man.’

‘But that could have been our forty-fifth waiter perhaps. Ah, but Emma, pray think. If the murderer were someone entering from the garden, how did they get the gun from the wall?’

‘That’s where the waiter outfit comes in. ’E takes the gun earlier and then goes into the garden till ’e lures Worthington into the Folly. But Worthington cries out and so ’e dodges back into the garden in case anyone sees ’im.’

‘Why not just come into the smoking room and kill Worthington?’ said Auguste simply.

‘I don’t know,’ said Emma, annoyed. ‘But ’e didn’t.’

‘Ah,’ said Auguste loftily. ‘When you have investigated as many murders as I have, you will know the best sauce is the simplest.’

‘Then ’ow is it,’ retorted Emma, ‘that you choose Francatelli’s
chevreuil
sauce for game and not Soyer’s orange sauce?’

‘I,’ said Auguste, firing up, ‘do not need to avail myself of anybody’s recipes for game sauce. And particularly not that of Monsieur Soyer. I use Didier’s sauce. The sauce created by Auguste Didier.’

‘Not particularly simple, is it?’ taunted Emma. ‘Red-currants, mace—’

‘And you,’ shouted Auguste, deciding to bring war to the gates of the enemy, ‘with your boar’s-head sauce, Emma. You speak to me of simplicity—’

The door opened.

‘Charlie,’ said Emma, pained. ‘This is my private office.’

‘Yes, but it’s only me.’ A frown crossed his face. ‘Aren’t you Plum’s cook?’

Auguste flushed. ‘I am—’

‘Monsieur Didier is the maitre chef,’ said Emma, ‘and you can either come in and be civil or be on your way.’

‘That’s what I like about you, Emma,’ said Charles Briton happily, coming in. ‘Welcoming. Anyway, you don’t know what a beastly day I’ve had. Gertrude in floods of tears because of a “nasty murder and will the Inspector think I’ve done it?” Why on earth he should think she decided to shoot an old colonel, I’ve no idea. Then on top of that, that Inspector chappie – I say, Emma, is it all right to talk in front of him?’ He broke off.

‘Yes, Charlie, if you mean Auguste.’

‘Grills me about Erskine. Seems to think I saw old Worthington off because Erskine was – um – making eyes at my wife. Couldn’t follow his logic.’ Yet for all his innocent mystification, Charles’ eyes were surprisingly sharp, Auguste noted with interest.

‘That’s because Erskine might ’ave been the intended victim,’ explained Emma patiently.

‘Oh, is that it?’ said Charlie. ‘Well, that gives quite a few of us a motive, doesn’t it?’ He looked meaningfully at Emma. ‘Even the cook.’

Emma’s eyes flashed dangerously. ‘You’ve been drinking, Charlie. Out.’

Charlie took one look at her and decided he had an appointment elsewhere.

‘What did he mean, my love, about my having a motive to kill Erskine?’ Auguste asked suspiciously.

‘It’s none of your business, Auguste,’ said Emma shortly. ‘None of your business at all.’

Egbert Rose perched uncomfortably on the fragile balloon-backed chair and tried to avert his fascinated gaze from Juanita Salt’s ample curves overflowing the sides of her companion balloon-back chair. Peregrine Salt, his more
dapper frame fitting the furniture without problem, was the only one of them at ease.

Juanita clearly was not, whether because of her seating or for another reason; her glances from her black eyes flashed at her husband, and even the ‘Pewegwine’ that had floated out across the air as Rose was announced was extra shrill.

‘Poor James’s Webley, Inspector? Of course I knew it was there,’ said Salt easily. ‘We value our heritage at Plum’s. Particularly of our successes. Rorke’s Drift was a triumph for the British. Not like poor Mortimer’s—’

He broke off and continued: ‘I myself had the honour to donate a South American blowpipe and the assegai used by Cetshwayo at Mathambo – the Place of Bones. Perhaps you noticed them?’

‘I didn’t know you were an army man, sir.’

‘I am not, Inspector. There are other reasons for visiting Africa. I am an explorer, Inspector. Of today and of the past. My early travels brought me into acquaintance with Shepstone and Durnford, before the Zulu war took place.’

‘But Pewegwine was a fwiend of King Cetshwayo—’ interjected Juanita proudly.

‘Hardly a friend, my dear,’ Salt said hastily, seeing Rose’s shocked expression at this admission of consorting with heathen enemies of Her Majesty.

‘Fwiend,’ said Juanita, eyes flashing dangerously.

‘Yes, well. Of course my travels in Troy—’

Rose was not interested in Troy.

‘You said I was your Helen,’ offered Juanita. ‘He put a necklace wound my neck. Helen’s necklace.’

Salt visibly shuddered; that was many years ago, and the bosom had broadened. ‘The Inspector is not interested in Troy, my dear.’

‘Very nice indeed, I’m sure,’ said Rose hastily. ‘But I’m more interested in last night.’

‘Poor Colonel.’

‘Did you know the deceased, madam?’ This casual question produced an interesting response. Her answer was clear enough, but he could swear the tension in the room increased and that the black eyes flashed briefly to her husband.

‘I have met the Colonel once or twice at soiwees, Inspector, but I did not see him last evening. I was in the dining woom with my husband.’

‘And Mr Erskine, ma’am,’ Rose suddenly asked, ‘you know him?’

This time there was no mistaking the flash. ‘He, too, I know, Mr Wose. I do not like him. I see him last night. He was wude to me.’

She shut her mouth obstinately, unwilling to reveal the nature of this rudeness which had consisted of his thoughtful eye on her ample curves, and a certain smile . . .

‘Did you both remain in the dining room all the time, sir, between the end of the parade and the time Colonel Worthington was heard to cry out?’

‘I believe so, Inspector. Where else was there to go?’

‘The lavatowy, Pewegwine. That’s where I went.’

Salt managed a sickly smile at the Inspector. ‘Ah yes, Inspector. I did not, but um, my wife—’

‘Commodes,’ said Juanita. ‘I do not like them. But Pewegwine said ladies must not go downstairs, so they put these things—’

‘My dear,’ murmured Salt weakly. ‘It is not fitting—’

‘No, it is not fitting,’ agreed Juanita. ‘It is much, much too small. But—’

Rose cut across this fascinating discussion with, ‘So you visited the ladies’ – er – retiring room which was to the left of the dining rooms. You did not go into the garden at all, or to the smoking room? Or see anybody else do so?’

‘I do not walk backwards, Mr Wose. I see nobody behind me.’ She rose with an imperious sweep of five yards of purple satin. The interview was at an end.

‘Fifty-four, Monsieur Didier.’

‘No, this is impossible, John. You mean forty-four.’

‘No, fifty-four, Mr Didier. I counted them.’ John was annoyed at having his integrity challenged. He’d been at Plum’s a lot longer than Mr Didier, and that entitled him to some respect.