Murder in the Limelight (17 page)

‘Your home’s in Bayswater, sir.’

‘I walk part of the way, Inspector,’ said Herbert obstinately. ‘No law against that, is there? Look in at the market. Go to my club on the way. If I was going to hit Bates over the head, I wouldn’t walk up Wellington Street for everyone to see, would I?’ His eyes were cold as he glanced at Auguste. ‘Now would I?’ he repeated, pulling a face and cocking his head on one side.

Auguste saw the smile involuntarily cross Rose’s face. He had seen that effect before too. He had seen Herbert play clown in the Harlequinade more than once. It was the grin he gave after stealing the sausages. He had never seen him do it offstage.

Florence Lytton stepped confidently from her front entrance towards her carriage. Her coachman opened the door, and she clambered in. There was someone in there already. Before her screams had died the intruder had gone and a posy of violets resided in her hand.

Obadiah lived on the top floor of an old house in Floral Street. The stairs were cold and unwelcoming, and it was with surprise that Auguste and Maisie saw the inside of his lodgings after they were admitted by the woman downstairs who ‘did for him’, as she put it.

They were not expensively furnished, but warm and comfortable, a cocoon against the world. Above the small fireplace was a mantel crowded with photographs; an aspidistra stood before the window together with a table with more knick-knacks and photographs, including one of a severe-looking woman in crinoline and bonnet with a boy and a girl at her side, the latter a female edition of her father in embryo, the former roly-poly in sailor suit. Also displayed there were the older generations of Bates, in
daguerrotype, their clothes suggesting a more opulent style of living than that enjoyed by their descendant.

‘How are you, Obadiah?’ said Maisie, removing her muff and coat and going to sit by the old man, who was lying on a chaise longue, a large bandage round his head.

‘As well as can be expected, Miss Maisie,’ he said. ‘It’s the Galaxy I’m worried about. I’ve been thinking it over. What are they to do without me?’ His face crinkled up as if with physical pain.

‘Don’t worry about that, Obadiah,’ said Auguste. ‘They’ve got young Fred—’

It was a red rag to a bull. ‘He don’t know how to run a stage door,’ Obadiah shouted. ‘I’d best be getting back.’ He swung his legs to the ground and had to be forcibly restrained by Auguste.

‘You must remain here. You don’t want him to have another go at you, do you?’

The old man glared at him obstinately. ‘You Frenchies don’t understand the English. I’m an old soldier, I am. I’ve got to get back.’

‘Perhaps and perhaps not. But the inspector wants you to take no risks,’ said Auguste.

‘I’m going back,’ muttered Obadiah, struggling to his feet. ‘The Galaxy’s all upset. Ladies and gentlemen quarrelling, shouting at each other – it ain’t right. It’s got to stop. And I’m going to stop it.’

‘But, Obadiah, suppose your attacker tries again. Do you have no idea who it was?’

Obadiah shook his head. ‘Like a thunderbolt it was, Mr Didier. Made me think, I can tell you. But I’m going back all the same. Tomorrow.’

‘But—’

‘And that’s all I’m going to say. None of this, “It may be him, it may be her.” We’ve got the Galaxy to think of. I’ll speak in my own good time.’

It was not the first occasion that Auguste had been forced
to grit his teeth when faced with the obstinacy of Obadiah Bates. Even the Afghans had proved no match for him!

The awning above Romano’s had never looked so welcoming. Maisie stared at it from the Galaxy restaurant window. ‘You will not go,
ma mie
.’ Auguste had said firmly.

‘I will,’ she replied robustly. ‘You detect your way, I’ll detect mine.’

‘Do you not trust your Auguste to solve these crimes? Did I not solve the affair of the Duke of Stockbery? Do you think you are Mrs Paschal? Are you going to write more
Revelations of a Lady Detective
?’ he demanded.

‘I don’t see the Honourable Johnny inviting
you
out to dinner,’ said Maisie matter-of-factly. ‘There are some things that need a woman to carry them out successfully. And don’t wait up for me. I’m going back to my lodgings this evening.’ And with this parting shot, she had sallied forth to meet her masher.

The Honourable Johnny had not booked a private room, the Honourable Johnny liked to be seen with his escorts. He was amazed that Maisie should condescend to come out with him again; he’d rather got it into his head that he was persona non grata with the Galaxy Girls. As though the pretty little dears were in any danger from him! He wouldn’t touch a hair of their heads.

Luigi, the maître d’hotel, advanced towards them, smiling. The Honourable Johnny was a regular – and generous – customer. He was shown to his usual table.

‘Now, what are you going to eat, Miss Wilson?’ Johnny said, gulping slightly. Maisie’s blue dress, although not so devastating as the yellow one, was nevertheless considerably lower in the décolletage. She glanced at the menu. Her corsets could not stand too great an onslaught.

‘What do you tell your brother and sister about these evenings out of yours?’ she enquired inquisitively.

Johnny’s face paled a little. ‘Go to my club,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Good fellows they are there. They’ll say anything. Tip them decently, you know.’

Maisie studied Romano’s menu intently. Had the Honourable Johnny not been at his club the night of Edna Purvis’ murder?
And
on the night Christine Walters had failed to keep her rendezvous with Lord Summerfield? Suddenly the
cailles farcies
looked much less inviting.

‘This is the yeast that rises too much. No, no,
non
!’

‘Why, Auguste, I’ve never seen you in a temper before,’ marvelled Maisie, helping herself to a large portion of kedgeree and two of Auguste’s brioche rolls. Her waistline’s demands were apparently only mandatory after ten o’clock. Auguste had almost refused to serve her, but he was a maître chef and it was a crime against his honour for anyone to profess hunger and go unfed.

‘I am not in a temper,’ shouted Auguste, eyes flashing dangerously, his hair unruly after an agitated hand had been thrust through it, a misdemeanour for which he had so often to reprove
la petite
Gladys. ‘I am merely astounded that you wish to go out with murderers.’

Maisie paused in mid-mouthful to cast a look at him.

‘People who may be murderers when I, your – your –
alors
, I say no, it shall not be.’

‘Your what?’ asked Maisie interestedly, applying black pepper to the kedgeree.

‘What are you doing?’ he cried out in horror once more. ‘You think I do not know how to season food? Is that it? You doubt my judgement?
Ma foi
, you betray me. First with gentlemen, then with pepper.’

‘Now, now,’ she said appeasingly. ‘You know I have no palate.’

‘That is true,’ he said, partly mollified, ‘but to do so in front of me, your—’

‘Your what?’ she enquired again.

‘Your beloved, Your
bien aimé
,’ he said, glaring at her.

She laughed. ‘That doesn’t mean you can order me about, as though I were Gladys. I never promised to obey you when you carried me over the threshold of your bed.’

‘I regard my duties to you as those of a husband,’ said Auguste firmly.

‘Do you indeed?’ murmured Maisie. ‘Then why aren’t you?’

With straight face she watched Auguste turn as pink as his own shell-fish dressing. Then his French ancestry reasserted its dominance over his English blood. He waved his hands in Gallic expressiveness. ‘
Ma mie
, would that – but I explained about my Tatiana – that I could not marry any but her, impossible though that is—’

‘That’s all right, Auguste,’ said Maisie. ‘So I’ll continue to see such gentlemen as I wish.’ She stirred her cocoa vigorously and gave him a charming smile.

‘
Non
,’ Auguste gulped, torn in a decision even greater than whether to serve carp
à la poulette
or in a
matelote
. ‘If you wish it,
ma mie
, I will marry you.’ It was out. The decision was made. Tatiana was far away. That betrayal he put firmly aside for the moment. He would square his conscience later. At the moment all he could think of was Maisie, sitting there so serenely, high-necked yellow and white lace blouse tucked into a wide belt beneath that entrancing . . . He gulped.

‘I’ll think it over,’ said Maisie composedly.

‘Think it over!’ he exploded. ‘But I have asked you to
marry
me.’

‘Very wise of you, Miss Maisie,’ said an approving voice from the doorway. ‘Takes a lot of thought, wondering whether to marry a Frenchie.’

‘Inspector,’ said Auguste, turning in fury, ‘this is a private moment.’

‘You come in, Inspector,’ said Maisie. ‘Don’t take any notice of Auguste. He’s upset. It’s the shock of having
signed his life away. Have a brioche. The quince marmalade is good.’

‘It may be usual for you, Maisie,’ said Auguste bitterly, ‘to receive proposals of marriage, but by me, these matters are taken more seriously.’

‘I can testify to that,’ said Rose cheerily. ‘Remember Miss Ethel, Mr Didier?’ Auguste gave him an outraged look and was strangely silent.

‘How did you find Mr Bates? He wasn’t too good when I looked in,’ said Rose, eyeing the coffee pot hopefully. Mrs Rose preferred her cup of tea.

‘Obadiah insists on coming to work. He is so convinced no one can man the stage door but him,’ said Maisie.

‘I’ll have to give him a guard,’ said Rose. ‘Our friend isn’t going to leave it at that. He’ll try again – and quickly. Ain’t he any idea of who hit him? Or why? He wouldn’t say anything to me.’

‘We asked him to think, think, think of everything that happened that day,’ said Auguste. ‘It must be something that neither we nor he see the relevance of.’

‘Unless he’s keeping something back,’ said Rose. ‘He reminds me of someone I’ve met.’ He paused. ‘Perhaps it’s Fingers Field. He kept something back when he split on the Radcliffe gang – and landed up another case for the Thames Police Mortuary as a result. You’re quite sure he cannot remember more about our young lord’s or Honourable’s movements?’

‘No, but I can tell you more,’ said Maisie, not looking at Auguste. A carefully edited account of her last two evenings was passed on to an interested Rose.

‘His club’ll back him up in anything, eh?’ commented Rose. ‘Very handy that. Very.’

Gabrielle Lepin woke up on Thursday morning in her highly respectable Bayswater lodgings and stretched her arms with feline contentment. Indeed, she looked very like
the cat that licked the cream. And this evening she would again! She did not breakfast on kedgeree; being French she was breakfasting on stale muffins, spread with jam, provided grudgingly by her landlady. It was the last time she’d have a foreigner in the house. She hadn’t realised that Gabrielle was a foreigner till too late. She didn’t look no different. And some nights she didn’t come home at all! That suited her landlady. She saved on the breakfasts.

Gabrielle was happy despite the stale muffins. She had dined with a lord and, despite all the dire warnings given her, she was still alive. She had been nervous when Summerfield took her to that private room in the Hotel Cecil, and had firmly refused the offer of a walk by the river – and yet here she was, alive! How she had boasted at the theatre yesterday. How silly they had looked now that their warnings had come to nothing. And how jealous they would be when she told them that he was taking her out this evening also, to dine and dance. She could have done without the dancing after the show, but she’d got his measure. He wanted to hold her close – that was all right by her.
Anything
, in fact, was all right with her. But he was not going to know that. She had determined not to give in to him till stage five of the game; then, when she allowed him to seduce her, as a man of honour he would have to marry her. Would the coronet have pearls or diamonds? she pondered.

In a somewhat grander home in Curzon Street, Florence Lytton and Thomas Manley were sharing a somewhat grander breakfast of breadcrumbed kidneys on toast. They were eating in silence. The façade of friendliness mandatory at the theatre took all their energies.

‘Florence, listen to me.’ Thomas laid down
The Times
which he had been only pretending to read.

Florence continued buttering her bread.

‘You must believe me,’ said Thomas vehemently, ‘I did
not,
not
, see Edna Purvis that evening, whatever I may have said to you. And, yes, I did take Christine Walters to dinner, but not that evening, and I am
not
a murderer.’

Florence’s beautiful face was unresponsive.

‘And another thing,’ he shouted, ‘I’m tired of sleeping in my dressing room. I’m moving back tonight. And if you don’t like it,
you
can sleep in the dressing room.’

That got a reaction. Her face registered fear.

Gratified by this sign of animation, he went on: ‘And I shall take whom I please to dinner, since you no longer appear to desire my company at your table or in your bed. In fact—’ he paused, thought wildly, then remembered that delightful bosom he had so often admired, ‘I have arranged to take Miss Wilson to dine this evening. I don’t know what time I’ll be back. Or
if
I’ll be back.’

Herbert Sykes was breakfasting off broiled black pudding and hot chocolate. His housekeeper, as he made no demands or complaints, served him what she liked. Auguste would have been horrified had he observed this assault on the stomach and would have urged a glass of white wine as the only thing that could possibly render black pudding acceptable to the stomach at such an early hour. But Herbert came from the North and had brought his taste-buds with him. When you have started life at the Newcastle Empire, and travelled England and much of Scotland with touring companies, you developed an iron stomach. His present affluence had not changed his habits.

He was wondering how he could summon the courage to go to the theatre to face the horror once more, present a cheery face on stage, make people laugh. He was tortured by nightmares that one day he would find himself before an audience who wouldn’t laugh. A sea of faces would stare at him, completely blank, while he fooled around, jokes falling on deaf ears, the clowning more and more desperate as the silence grew heavier. He would make a fool of himself
just as he had the other night before Florence. He scraped some butter viciously on to the cold toast. To walk into the Galaxy now was to walk into an atmosphere of hostility and distrust. Once it had been a cosy home, a cocoon of warmth. Now everything was at odds, and Florence was part of it. He’d thought she was different. Not like the chorus girls and show girls who would do anything for a good time – some of them – even with him, Herbert. Well, the ones who were getting worried about their future anyway. He could tell. He had no respect for them. None at all. But he’d thought Florence an angel, unsullied by the commonplace. Until a few nights ago. She deserved everything he’d said about her when Thomas Manley upset him so much.