Murder In The Motor Stable: (Auguste Didier Mystery 9) (24 page)

Harold Dobbs was not out in the sunshine; he was looking at it through his parlour window, unimpressed. Outside in the garden, his children were whooping around like a Wild West rodeo, using the neighbours’ somewhat younger children as horses. Why didn’t they use them as motorcars? he wondered fiercely. The charge of the Light Brigade would never have failed if Lord Cardigan had used motorcars, especially if they were of Harold Dobbs’s design.

Should he or should he not go to see Thomas Bailey? Suppose he mentioned the awkward matter of the patent? Then Judith broke in upon his thoughts.

‘It’s time you rebuilt Dolly.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s not patented, and Thomas Bailey’s was.’

‘So what? You didn’t steal his idea, did you?’

‘No,’ he said quickly, ‘but it means I can’t build one again.
Unless Bailey and I see if we can’t make it work between us. You see, Judith,’ he went off into a string of technicalities during which she adopted her Harold-you-are-a-genius look and mentally composed the week’s shopping list. ‘Perpetual motion is within our grasp; I am positive I am on the right road. Perhaps wind is not the answer. I shall discuss it with Bailey.’

‘I shouldn’t.’ Judith suddenly finished her list and heard what he was saying.

‘Why not?’

‘We don’t know that he isn’t the terrible person who smashed poor Dolly.’

‘That would make him a murderer too,’ Harold pointed out.

‘Someone has to be.’ Judith fixed him with a stare. ‘And it wasn’t you, was it?’

‘Of course not,’ Harold said righteously. ‘You know I was here all that evening and night.’

Judith said nothing. She had slept like a log till morning.

Egbert Rose yawned. Mondays were worse when you had worked on Sunday. He had been here all day, studying forensic reports, Fingerprint Department reports, and his own notes. There was no sign of Twitch who was no doubt still beavering away in Somerset House.

Time to go, and he closed his files thankfully. Edith was expecting her sister for supper tonight, and he always liked her husband Fred, a restful sort of bloke. Auguste was also, in a way, though not like Fred. Fred rarely said anything, and you couldn’t say that of Auguste.

The door opened and a messenger shot in with a telegraph message. Egbert regarded it with extreme distaste. He didn’t like things you couldn’t control. You could decide whether to read letters that came by post, and even whether you answered a
telephone, but a telegraph message brooked no delay. It could be from one of the divisional supers, and it could be urgent. He pulled it towards him, read it – and lifted the telephone off its hook.

Auguste hummed to himself. The cares of the day were over and he had the bliss of this special evening ahead. True, Tatiana would be out, but this meant the whole evening could be devoted to delightful experimentation. It was Mrs Jolly’s evening off, and by arrangement he was allowed the courtesy of cooking in his own kitchen. He had decided on chicken crépinettes, a recipe he had learned during his apprenticeship under Monsieur Escoffier at the Faisan d’ Orée in Cannes, to which he now wished to make some subtle variations. He had tried to interest Mrs Jolly in this fascinating project, but she had refused. She knew what she was good at, and though she could always be persuaded to try something new, she could never be persuaded to try something at which she had previously failed.

He ran upstairs to his dressing room to bathe and change into his cooking clothes, just as the telephone bell rang out. He heard their butler go to answer it, and then with sinking heart heard his footsteps mounting the stairs. The call was for him. With a sigh Auguste followed the footsteps downstairs again, and took up the telephone, always solemnly offered to him on a silver salver.

‘Egbert here. What are you doing this evening?’

Relief. ‘Tonight I am cooking, in my own kitchen. You are welcome to—’

‘I’m afraid you’re not. I need you, and later Tatiana.’

‘What has happened?
Where
do you want me?’

‘The Zoo, Auguste. The Zoological Gardens of Regent’s Park.’

Monday was always the busiest day of the week at London Zoo, mainly because it cost only 6d to get in as opposed to 1s on the other days, and partly because admission on Sundays was restricted to Fellows of the Society and their friends. This ensured that every Londoner from Ealing to the Isle of Dogs would be there on Monday, together with a few members of higher London society who had failed to persuade a Fellow to give them a ticket for the more fashionable Sunday. It was still crowded when Auguste arrived although it was past six o’clock, and some of the smaller children were being dragged bawling out through the gates as he paid his sixpence entrance fee. He wondered idly whether Egbert had had to pay sixpence too.

He hurried through the turnstile, studied the usefully provided Guide to the Gardens plan, then set off towards his goal, pushing through the crowds gazing entranced at monkeys and pink flamingos. Why did the parrot house have to be in the furthest corner of the gardens? Was Gregorin, his old enemy, the reason for the summons? He hadn’t thought of him for months; perhaps this was his reward for ignoring the threat. His reason promptly dismissed the thought. If it was Gregorin, Special Branch would be involved, not Egbert. No, this was to do with Hester Hart.

Three solid-helmeted police constables were shooing away curious sightseers, to the great indignation of the lawful occupants, some of whom, it being a fine day, were enjoying an outside airing on their perches and resented being deprived of their due reward in the form of nuts. A black-capped lory screeched angrily as Auguste rushed past, backed up in his complaint by an equally colourful Swainson’s lorikeet. Auguste, however, had no evil designs on their living quarters outside or inside; he could hear Egbert’s voice coming from
somewhere out of sight behind the parrot house, where the public had less cause to walk.

Heart in his mouth and feeling rather sick, Auguste cleared his credentials with the constable and hurried round to join Egbert. He found him standing by a kneeling police surgeon. To his horror he realised they were inspecting species of homo sapiens. Auguste struggled to overcome his revulsion as for the second time in under a week he saw a pool of blood creeping out from under a face-down dead body.

‘Who is it?’ he asked in a voice he hardly recognised as his own. All Egbert had been able to tell him on the telephone was that the body of a man had been found; there was no identification save a club key on him. He could be the husband of a member or, Auguste swallowed, one of the kitchen or dining room staff.

‘Luigi Peroni, and he’s been stabbed. No weapon again. Odd thing is,’ Egbert indicated a gun, ‘there was a Colt lying tastefully by his side. My money’s on its being Hester Hart’s, so we don’t have the trouble of hunting it any longer. Very thoughtful of our murderer.’

All around came shouts of family laughter interspersed with jungle roars from animal cages. Close by, children were scrambling over one another in their eagerness to pay their twopence for an elephant or camel ride. Chimpanzees were clutching the hands of their keepers as they paraded round the lawn; judging by the excited roars, a sea lion was performing for an admiring crowd. Here behind the parrot house, in stark contrast to the life that buzzed around them, a man lay dead.

‘And it could have been anyone who killed him,’ grunted Egbert.

‘The parrot house,’ Egbert remarked disgustedly. ‘What a place for anyone to end their days.’ Edith liked coming to the Zoo; it had been part of the holiday ritual for them to escort her sisters’ children here at least twice a year, and the lion house, sea lion enclosure and camel rides were old familiar friends. Now that the children were adults, he and Edith still came, tracing out the familiar patterns ready for the new generation of children now coming of zoo age. He didn’t like this blot on the gardens of his memory; it was a personal affront.

The police surgeon clambered stiffly to his feet. ‘He’s been dead about an hour and a half, judging by his temperature. Roughly, that is.’

Egbert looked at the long row of parrots on their outdoor perches by the trees, screeching in the late afternoon sunshine. ‘He could have used the gun. Wonder why the villain brought both?’

People were now beginning to make their way home, and as Auguste watched, the gardens began to belong once more to the animals they housed. The roars from the lion house, the chattering of the monkeys, and the cries of birds of prey began to speak more loudly of the jungle they had come from, in these last hours before sundown.

‘And why choose this public spot at all? There are many quiet corners in London,’ Auguste pointed out.

‘But a good place to meet unobserved. The animals are on parade during the week, not their visitors like on Sundays. What gatekeeper is going to remember one face from another? Stitch is over at the main gate now.’ Egbert watched as the surgeon and constables covered the body. ‘We’ll wait till the Zoo closes.’

‘I suppose it could not be suicide,’ Auguste asked, ‘and the weapon removed by someone else?’ It sounded unlikely even to him.

The surgeon shook his head. ‘I’ll know more later. But from the amount of blood I’d say the weapon was driven in too deep and hard.’

‘The killer would get blood on him though?’

‘Some, but not as much as from a more superficial wound.’

‘Was there nothing in his pockets, Egbert, that might lead us to the diaries?’

‘I’ll send Stitch back to the house again, just in case. Here he is now.’

Twitch was escorting a uniformed man, white in the face at the prospect of his coming ordeal. ‘The gatekeeper, sir.’

‘I’d like you to take a look at him.’ Egbert was sympathetic. ‘Nasty business, but it has to be done. Look at the clothes – and the hat,’ he instructed as the gatekeeper gingerly approached the body, which the surgeon uncovered again. The homburg had been found lying at the side of his body. ‘Remember him? And whether he came in alone or with someone else? Or someone leaving with bloodstained clothing?’

The gatekeeper took as short a look as was possible, and shook his head on all counts. As he departed, a police constable brought up an elderly sandwich-board man. He, too, was
nervous, his boards proudly bearing the signs ‘Buns for the Bears. Two a penny’ clanking together in his agitation.

‘He says he saw a gentleman walk round here,’ the constable prompted, as his charge seemed overwhelmed.

‘That’s right. During my easy time when I takes a little walk.’

‘This gentleman?’ Egbert indicated the still uncovered face of Luigi Peroni.

‘That’s him.’ He edged away as quickly as possible.

‘When was this easy time?’

‘In my business, after the big animals have been fed at four o’clock, my turnover decreases,’ he explained. ‘It picks up again just before closing time. It must have been about a quarter to five. There was someone waiting for him.’

‘Who?’ Egbert asked sharply. ‘Man or woman?’

‘I believe it was a man, but the merest impression was all I gained. A long coat, a hat, a
presence
. Lots of people come to the Zoo to meet other people. Ladies and gentlemen, if you know what I mean.’ He looked hopefully at Egbert.

Egbert did know what he meant. He meant he didn’t want to be pinned down.

‘I went into the parrot house. I like looking at them. They’re restful.’ A screech nearby sounded like mocking laughter to Auguste. The bun-seller looked at them, conscious of disappointing, and tried again. ‘This place hasn’t been the same since Jumbo went.’

‘At least we’re a little further forward,’ Auguste said comfortingly to Egbert as half an hour later the corpse of Luigi Peroni was carried to a waiting motor van. Twitch had been despatched to Luigi’s lodgings, and he and Egbert were walking back through the gardens to the main entrance. At their side pink flamingos waded in the evening sunlight, an
elephant (not the late lamented Jumbo) extended a hopeful trunk for buns, and monkeys chattered, bringing close lands Auguste would never see.

‘How far forward?’ Egbert cast a scathing look at a monkey extending the hand of friendship towards him. ‘Even the parrot-keeper couldn’t tell us anything.’

‘The bun-seller believed it to be a man, and surely if Lady Bullinger, the Duchess or the Countess had come into the gardens with murder in mind, they could hardly be mistaken for a man.’

‘They wouldn’t be wearing their tiaras,’ Egbert pointed out grumpily. ‘In one of those dust coats, with a large hat, they might pass at a distance for a man.’

‘Unlikely,’ Auguste replied firmly. ‘Moreover, there is something else you must consider.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘You are assuming that the killer of Luigi was also the killer of Miss Hart.’

‘That’s true.’ Egbert was none too happy at having this pointed out to him. ‘But it’s likely, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, but coincidences do happen. We know Luigi supplied information for money, but we don’t know to how many people he supplied it – or how many he might be blackmailing as a result. He might even have had other enemies who were nothing to do with the club.’

‘What about Pierre? He couldn’t stand the fellow.’

‘Certainly you should talk to him. And there is Luigi’s fiancée – and his other young lady.’

‘Nicely brought up fiancées don’t go stabbing their intended behind parrot houses.’

‘Nicely brought up people are as capable of murder as anyone else when they are threatened.’

‘Which brings us back to their ladyships, the diaries—’

‘And Mr Roderick Smythe,’ Auguste supplied for him. ‘He is, remember, Lady Bullinger’s godson.’

‘Ah yes, my Mr Smythe. Where might he be this evening? Any ideas?’

‘Yes. On a moonlight drive to Hampstead.’

‘Charlie, I have a job for you this evening.’ Tatiana summoned all her charm and all she could assume of centuries of Romanov authoritarianism. Jobs for Charlie were not easy to assign, especially at the last moment, and especially on a July summer evening, but in view of Auguste’s terrible telephone message, she had no option.

Charlie eyed her narrowly. He was not averse to work but he preferred it to be of his choosing and timing. Nevertheless, he was prepared to listen. His bulk shifted to a pose of amiability.

‘I want you to be maître d’ at the club restaurant this evening. It won’t be very busy.’

Charlie, taken entirely by surprise, was unable to adopt his normal laconic attitude. ‘Hell and Tommy, why?’

‘Can’t you do it?’ Tatiana abandoned charm for the formidableness of Peter the Great.

‘Consider me there already, Mrs D. Luigi ill, is he?’

‘Worse, I’m afraid. He has been found murdered.’

Charlie whistled. ‘Annie will be upset.’

‘Annie?’

‘Annie Parsons, ma’am. She’s been sweet on Luigi for weeks.’

‘I thought she was sweet on you.’

‘So,’ said Charlie darkly, ‘did I. But Charlie, she says, my heart is another’s, and off she goes. I suppose that gives me a motive.’

‘Charlie,’ Tatiana remarked sadly, ‘you wouldn’t have the energy for murder.’

Hastily she scrambled into her linen dust coat, put on her tam o’shanter, searched frantically for her goggles, and hurried outside to where the Léon Bollée awaited her. Even that glory failed to excite her this evening. After all, who wanted a motorcar that ran so perfectly it was silent? She liked noise and excitement. Perhaps it was time to have a new motorcar. Or perhaps she, like Auguste, was just longing for the end of the season when she, too, could escape the London dust for Eastbourne, which was now assuming the attraction of a Lost Atlantis. But how could they leave the club while the murder of Hester Hart remained unsolved? And now there was another to add ot it.

The malaise clung to her as she drove the Bollée round to Birdcage Walk where the club was to assemble. There would only be fifteen cars – that in itself was a sign that the London season was near its end. After Goodwood this week, it would be over. This Saturday the club would close for a month, after a final dinner for those still lingering in London; the diehards, her committee, would be among them.

She saw Maud, a formidable figure in blue in her Napier. She had been full of bonhomie now she knew she could race in October. There was Agatha, neat and trim in the Horbick, Isabel, managing to imply beauty even in dust coat and goggles, and there was Phyllis with Roderick Smythe, who seemed glued to her side at the moment. Tatiana suspected Phyllis had had a tussle between not wanting to associate herself too closely with the prime suspect in a murder case and not wanting to face the ordeal of a mechanical defect alone. In fact, Phyllis would have been quite safe from sullying her hands, for Tatiana could see Miss Dazey in her
Oldsmobile and at her side a highly uncomfortable Leo.

There was no Dolly Dobbs. She had heard nothing from Harold since the disaster, and the remains of the Dolly Dobbs were still, to her annoyance, in the repair house. To her knowledge he had not been near them, and she would have to ask him to remove them.

How could she believe that any of these people, her members, her
friends
, had anything to do with murder? Tonight, however, she would have to tell them at some point that a second murder had blighted their club.

‘Darling Tatiana,’ Agatha cooed as Tatiana drove by and came to a halt behind the Horbick. One of the two steam cars let off a coincidental hoot as they prepared to move off. ‘What could be more delightful?’

Normally Tatiana would ecstatically have agreed with her. Today, the spark was failing on the plug of her enjoyment. It was hardly surprising. She had not particularly liked Luigi but he was efficient, popular, and he was a human being who was no longer alive. Should she tell the ladies now? She decided against it. Later this evening she would break the news.

The cavalcade set off past the Guards’ Chapel and Buckingham Palace, and up towards Hampstead. Their route was to include Netherhall Gardens, simply for the fun of unofficially racing the motorcars on the 1 in 7.2 gradient. It was something Tatiana had looked forward to but once again fate took a mean hand.

As the cars turned into Netherhall Gardens and halted at the line of the forecourt fence on the east side of the Finchley Road, a familiar sight met Tatiana’s eyes. Stationary at the bend at the top of the steepest part of the hill by the drain grating was a bright red motorcar with two enormous hoods on its mudguards, facing towards them like monster eyes.
Tatiana knew it couldn’t be the Dolly Dobbs and so—

‘Just what do you think you are doing, Thomas?’ Agatha demanded, squeezing her hooter bulb furiously.

He couldn’t hear the words, but the message was clear enough. Thomas, in cap and huge goggles, jumped on to the Brighton Baby and trundled her bravely down the hill towards them. ‘I’m sure I’ve got the right answer this time,’ he assured the Duchess feverishly. ‘I’ve been testing it up and down this hill—’

‘The right answer is to forget this pile of rubbish,’ Agatha informed him crisply. ‘Kindly crank my motor, young man.’

He stared miserably at the cranking handle and obeyed. The Horbick, which hadn’t needed cranking since it was hot anyway, roared away up the hill as Thomas jumped for his life.

A fine start, thought Tatiana miserably, seeing the Horbick drive round the bend without any intention of stopping, and signalled to the rest of her flock to forget their race and proceed to Hampstead. At the top of the hill, the danger lamp in the middle of the road had been knocked askew by the angry Duchess, and as Tatiana’s wheels rumbled over the next drain grating, it sounded like ominous thunder for the days ahead.

Two hours later, Egbert and Auguste alighted from a motor cab at the lamplit gates of Westland House overlooking Hampstead Heath.

‘I’ve been tempted to buy one of these contraptions,’ Egbert remarked. ‘Saves finding cabs all the time.’ He grinned.
Et tu, Brute?
was the message very clearly emanating from Auguste.

Auguste always enjoyed visiting Lady Westland, the former music-hall star known as the Magnificent Masher, and since it was in her gardens that Tatiana and her club were to dine this evening he had nurtured a secret hope that he and Egbert might
be in time to dine with them. As he smelt the aroma from the remains of the hot plates in chafing dishes on the serving tables, he wondered wistfully what he had missed. A furtive glance at the dinner plates being cleared back to the kitchens told him the worst; he had missed Gwendolen’s saddle of veal with soubise sauce. He tried to forget it as he explained Egbert’s presence and his mission to Lady Westland and her husband, but a slight sense of injustice as well as the lingering aroma remained with him. Gwendolen interpreted his expression correctly. ‘I suggest, Inspector Rose, that you and Auguste eat first and interview later, otherwise half the aristocracy of London will end up in Brixton prison cells.’