Murder In The Motor Stable: (Auguste Didier Mystery 9) (30 page)

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You’re going to make a motorcar fly with wax wings?’ Auguste asked, delighted he’d come.

‘No, no, we are Phoebus.’

‘We’re going to harness the energy of the sun,’ Thomas amplified. ‘We call it solar power. We need a huge circular piece of metal to attract the sun’s rays and a source of water to produce steam or gas to produce electricity.’ He beamed.

‘How splendid,’ Tatiana said weakly.

Miss Dazey, prowling in the wake of the party, seized her chance as Harold and Thomas began the task of fitting a towing line to the front of the Dolly Dobbs’s frame. She plucked at Leo’s sleeve. ‘What are you going to do in August, Leo?’

‘Dunno.’ He looked round for support, but there was none. Mr and Mrs Didier were inside the motor house with those two daft inventors. They hadn’t the least idea how to build a motorcar. Whereas he— He tore his mind away from such daydreams.

‘I do. My parents are employing you as motorcar driver and engineer to drive them to Deauville, stay there, and drive back. I shall be there too,’ she added carelessly. ‘What do you say?’

Nothing apparently. He was speechless.

‘You don’t even have to kiss me if you don’t want to,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Only it would be nice once in a while.’

Leo found his voice. ‘Like now?’ He led her out of sight of his superiors and proceeded to demonstrate great mechanical and artistic skill in a field even more enjoyable than motor repairs.

Everyone had gone. Tatiana was conferring with the porter over last-minute details, Egbert and Edith had gone home to Highbury. Auguste felt an odd reluctance to return to the kitchen; he had bidden his farewells to it before dinner and therefore the soul had gone from it; it would remain an empty shell until life was breathed into it once more in September. Nevertheless he found himself automatically going there to check all was well.

‘Goodnight, Mr Didier. See you in September.’ Annie Parsons was leaving, all but the last to do so.

The kitchen looked desolate; all signs of dinner were gone, copper pans replaced on their hooks, plates stacked away, utensils back in their drawers instead of lying invitingly by the side of chopping boards. Only a basket full of food open on the table suggested signs of life. He felt a great longing for Eastbourne, as far away as ever. He would have to stay with Egbert until the case was over. Did he not bear an equal responsibility in these closing stages? There might be some snippet of information, some detail he might remember that could tip the scales of justice as far as Francis and Smythe
were concerned. Francis had not yet been caught; suppose Egbert followed his inclination and charged Smythe? How would he feel then? The answer was simple: Egbert would be making a mistake, and therefore he, Auguste, had to remain.

He eyed the basket of food on the table, left over from dinner. After Eastbourne, he and Tatiana would travel to France for two weeks, a different land, a different cuisine. It would inspire him anew for the autumn. The best food in the world could be found in England, but the inspiration for cooking it was found only in France. If only the two countries could get together in the interests of the
estomac
. Perhaps that was what His Majesty had had in mind when he proposed the Entente Cordiale.

Take a
saupiquet
for instance, a dish he had discovered while travelling to eastern France – for thus he thought of Alsace-Lorraine, not as part of Germany as they had been since the war thirty-odd years ago. The most delicate sauce was needed, and not too strong a ham. On the other hand the sauce must be piquant; the reduced vinegar, and the meat stock, must be strong enough to complement but not clash with the ham. It was all a question of emphasis.

A question of emphasis
. . . The brain left to simmer behind the scenes suddenly reasserted itself. The bells rang, and this time were answered. Auguste turned and ran through the corridors to the main entrance, fearing to find it in darkness. Had he missed her? The porter’s lodge was dark but there was an electric light still burning in the lobby. He rushed to Tatiana’s office and found her still occupied at her desk in the process of last-minute clearing.

‘I need another fifteen minutes,
chéri
,’ she pleaded as he burst in.

‘Tatiana, tell me everything you heard when you took the cocoa over to Hester Hart.’

‘But it’s all in the notes, and Auguste, we are leaving on
holiday
tomorrow.’

‘The pot is still on the boil,
ma mie
. Please tell me. Exactly as it sounded.’

Tatiana obliged. It was the quickest way. ‘I couldn’t hear all they were saying on the first occasion, but I heard Hester, of course, and Roderick’s voice quite distinctly. They were quarrelling, but I couldn’t make out what about. On the second occasion I did hear because Hester was shouting. “Marry you, you fool. As if I ever would.”’

‘And what did Roderick reply?’

‘I didn’t hear. I came away.’

‘Then how do you know it was Roderick she was speaking to?’

‘Because she was talking about marrying him, of course,’ Tatiana said patiently.

‘Try to remember,
ma mie
. Did she say “
marry
you” or “marry
you
”, or “marry you” with equal emphasis?’

‘Is there a difference?’

‘Yes. A vital one.’

She thought back, reliving it in her mind, disentangling it from the overlay of repetition. ‘I’m almost sure she said “marry
you
”. You mean the second time it was Hugh Francis, don’t you?’ Tatiana was suddenly excited, as she thought about it. ‘It could have been, I suppose. Yet the first time was definitely Roderick. He would have to have left and Hugh to have arrived all in the course of twenty minutes or so. It’s possible, but why should Hugh Francis need to marry her if he would inherit anyway?’

‘That,
ma mie
, is the question.’

Auguste returned slowly to the kitchen. Was he hallucinating, overtired, seeing sour milk where there was only pure
cream? Should he not leave it to Egbert? No, for tonight the club closed, and holidays began tomorrow. Holidays for everyone.

Pierre looked up as he came in. ‘I am sorry, monsieur. I was not here earlier. I was clearing the larders.’

Auguste looked at him first subjectively, the man who cooked so wonderfully that even he could rarely fault him, who had run this kitchen almost as well as he could have done himself, who had good-temperedly and patiently put up with intrusions into what he must see as his own domain and become temporarily loyal servant, not master. Not servant, junior partner was a better term. Then Auguste saw him objectively: an Arab brought up in a Western land, who had travelled much in the East. What was he doing here, in a club in St James’s? Did loyalty to Hester Hart really answer that question, when the man’s heart lay Eastwards? Auguste was too tired to prevaricate.

‘It was you, wasn’t it? You thought you’d marry her and when she rebuffed you, you killed her.’

Pierre’s face hardly changed. He might have been discussing the best way of cooking lamb. ‘No, monsieur,
she
wanted to marry me, then she changed her mind.’

‘Why should she?’ Auguste found it hard to believe. ‘You were a hired servant to her.’

Pierre sighed. ‘I will explain – if you have the time,’ he added politely.

How unreal to be sitting at this kitchen table with a double murderer who asked if you could spare the time to listen, Auguste reflected. Now that his question had been answered, he felt even more tired, as anticlimax set in. He could not have moved even had he wished to. He felt as bound to his chair as the Ancient Mariner’s unwilling listener.

‘Out there everything is different.’ Pierre seemed not so much to be talking to him as to his own past. ‘It is the land of the Arab, not the Westerner, and their ways are the paths of right for them, just as your Bible and law are for you. They, too, have slaves of course, but all freemen have an equality you could not imagine here or in France. There are rich men, there are poor men, there are bad and good, and they are judged by that, not by their parentage. Rich men, and those of ancient families, as the world over, demand respect, but that has nothing to do with worth as a man. In London and Paris that is not the case. Society is a caste that does not admit outsiders, so Miss Hart told me, and I see it for myself. I was her dragoman for six years; she travelled as a wealthy English lady and I as her hired servant, but we were equal in the respect paid to us. The Arab values a man or woman who knows their own trade well; we were partners in an adventure. It is always so in the desert; brothers need one another’s support, for, as I told you, not all Arabs are of good will to travellers.

‘We talked much during those years; our outlook on life was the same. You saw only the worst Hester Hart; I saw the real woman stripped of the shackles of Western society. She was brave, strong, light-hearted – and happy. Of course we must marry, she said; we had been through too much together not to. It was at Palmyra she said this, a place of destiny.’

Auguste had to say it. He must be objective, not swayed by his liking for the man. ‘And you realised if she married you, you would be a rich man.’

Pierre smiled. ‘Would you believe me if I replied simply that I do not think that way, though I understand the temptation because I was brought up in France. The English traveller Richard Burton when he travelled in the East commented that the difference between the Arab and the Westerner is that the
aim of the Arab is to
be
, that of the Westerner is to
have
. The splendour and the squalor. That, he said, is the Arab life, and one finds it in the desert. It was my privilege to share it with Miss Hart.’

‘You asked her to marry you?’

‘No. She suggested it. She wore my ring, and we exchanged copies of the
Rubáiyát
, a poem of which Hester was very fond.’

‘That was her copy in her handbag? Why did you leave it there?’

‘Because I had given that copy to her. I have hers to me. She always carried it, so I knew it would be there. I needed to remove the title page for her own reputation, as well as my protection, for I had written in it. When I saw the pistol in her bag I removed that too. I took it away because it was so familiar to me. Part of my life. I was going to shoot her, but instead it was more fitting to stab her with our dagger.’

‘
Our
dagger?’

‘The one we shared in the desert. We exchanged vows over it, it cut our meat there, we defended ourselves with it. We had bought it together in Damascus and decided it was a symbol of our unity. To use that was the fitting end for a traitor.’

‘
Traitor?
She just changed her mind.’

‘More than that, monsieur. She put her own pursuit of vengeance first when she came here. She was a different person to my beloved Miss Hart. She asked me to take this job to help her in her plans. I knew how important they were to her, so I agreed. She would pretend not to know me, she said, and that, too, I understood. Therefore I must not come to her house; I would meet her in the Zoological Gardens.’

‘Ah, the Zoo. Now I see.’

‘Yes, where I killed that dog Luigi,’ Pierre replied matter-of-factly. ‘She changed. She spoke no more of marriage, she treated me as a servant is treated here, and you yourself know how that can be. The gulf between society and servants is a river as wide as the Euphrates, and none shall cross it.’

‘And that is the reason she cried “Marry
you
?” with such scorn, when you went to her that night?’

‘It had not always been like that, monsieur. I knew I had to kill her when she announced her betrothal to Roderick Smythe.’

‘Why
had
to? Murder is a matter of the individual will.’

‘Not for the Arab, monsieur. My wife had betrayed me, so she had to die. She was an adulteress. The woman to the stone, says Muhammad.’

‘
Wife?
’

Pierre took no notice. ‘That evening I heard you say that she was not going to marry Mr Smythe after all. I assumed immediately that saying she would was all part of her plans, and that she still intended to marry me. I hid in the storerooms, after you thought I had left that evening. I kept the dagger with me so that we could renew our vows. I was very upset to see Roderick Smythe arrive, and relieved when he left not long afterwards. I rushed to her immediately. She laughed at my love. She was not my Hester. She was an English lady after all, who would not marry a servant. So I killed her.’ He shuddered. ‘I killed my Hester. Up till then I had not thought of myself, but then I realised I must for I was in a Western country which would not look on my deed in the same way. So I smashed Dolly Dobbs in the hope you would think that the motorcar was the reason for the murder.’

‘And Luigi?’ Auguste was determined not to be swayed. ‘Was it
right
by your standards that he should die?’

‘When you are among brigands, defence is not a crime. That dog realised, when you talked to him, that I had killed Hester, and was surprised that I had confessed to you that I was her dragoman. Why should I not, after all? It was the truth. Nevertheless he realised I had killed her for he saw me cross the yard from his serving room window. If I had to die for Hester’s death, I was determined not to do so while that dog lived. So I agreed to his demand for money and suggested we met in the Zoo for me to hand the money over. I left the pistol as a sign to Hester that she was avenged. She would have been glad that it was where we used to meet.’