Murder In The Motor Stable: (Auguste Didier Mystery 9) (31 page)

‘You said “wife” earlier,’ Auguste said. ‘Were you already married?’

He still did not reply.

‘Very well. Then perhaps it is recorded in her diaries.’

‘You have the diaries,’ he said shortly.

‘Not all of them, Pierre.’

He stood up swiftly. ‘What are you going to do now, Monsieur Didier?’

‘I must tell Inspector Rose.’ Auguste spoke without thinking. When he saw Pierre slip his hand under the apron, he knew he had made a mistake. Could he reach a door? No, none of them. His only chance was to talk his way out. This was no Gregorin, after all. This was Pierre, his loyal assistant. Pierre, holding a dagger with a carved handle, a digger that had killed Hester Hart and killed Luigi Peroni.

‘I have three choices,’ Pierre said calmly. ‘I can kill you, I can kill myself, or I could tell the inspector I am guilty. Which shall I do, do you think?’

‘You respect me, Pierre. You will not kill me. That isn’t in the Arab soul.’ Auguste tried to keep his voice steady, tried to sound as if he believed what he said.

‘I was brought up in Marseille.’ Pierre studied the dagger. ‘I could easily kill you, if that is ordained.’

‘Pierre, it is not.’ Almost with compassion, Auguste spoke quietly for he could see what Pierre could not – Egbert creeping into the kitchen, followed by two police constables. All the tiredness and tension of the last few days rose up and overwhelmed Auguste. He collapsed.

Auguste opened his eyes. The sun was streaming through the window. The bed was empty apart from himself. Tatiana was humming in the dressing room. They were going on holiday. Then he remembered.

‘Egbert wants to see you downstairs, if you feel well enough.’ Tatiana came anxiously into the bedroom. ‘Do you?’

‘Are we still going on holiday?’

‘Yes. All of us.’

He sat up in bed. The world looked wonderful. He swung his feet to the floor. ‘Has he breakfasted?’ First things first.

‘Mrs Jolly and Egbert have reached an understanding. She is preparing one of her special crêpes with kidneys.’

He could already smell it in his nostrils. Soon he would smell the sea. ‘I will be with him in fifteen minutes.’

Egbert greeted him cordially, almost as though he had not been up all night. ‘Thought you might like to see these before you go. We found them when we searched his lodgings.’ He planted fourteen familiar volumes on the morning-room table.

‘Ah!’ Auguste pounced. ‘The diaries. The private ones for the years Pierre spent with her.’

‘Yes. And previous years. Pierre wasn’t the first dragoman to be her lover. She entrusted the lot to him. Seemed odd, and I asked him why if they were no longer on chummy terms.
Because he was a servant, he said bitterly, who would naturally obey her commands.’

Auguste picked one up and opened it at random. ‘“Last night Pierre taught me the Oriental
upavishta
, the sitting posture, so difficult for Westerners, but I mastered it. That makes the thirty-third position in all. He is a man of many parts, and one of them, the most important, the most sizeable I have ever met. I measured it—”’ Auguste dropped the book, but curiosity proved stronger than distaste. ‘“I love him, I
love
him! I shall marry him. Like Jane Digby and her Sheikh we shall live in our Desert of Beauty for ever.”’ He closed the book and looked at Egbert, who nodded.

‘No wonder he thought of her as his wife. Then when she got back here, she changed. It’s odd that Miss Hart, who had suffered in her youth from being treated as an inferior on account of her birth, never gave a thought to treating Pierre in the same way.’

‘As Edith said, Hester Hart was not a nice lady.’

‘That reminds me,’ Egbert said, ‘you haven’t asked me how I turned up so conveniently last night. Not that I think he’d have killed you. He likes you.’

‘How did you?’ Auguste put the disquieting thought of Pierre and their relationship aside.

‘I went back to the yard to charge Roderick Smythe. You were right, incidentally. He wasn’t the clubman, it was Hugh Francis. Anyway, Smythe was sitting there as bold as you like in his cell drinking – he wasn’t under arrest and he knew I’d have to charge or release him. He banked on the latter. “Another glass of wine, if you please,” he demanded, as cool as you like. And I remembered Edith at dinner spouting from that poem in Hester Hart’s handbag. “A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and Thou beside me singing in the wilderness”. Now I
don’t usually have poetical turns of thought, it must have been your lobster Edith turning my stomach over, but I suddenly thought that fitted our Pierre like a glove, so I thought I’d just check if he was still around at the club. Tatiana told me
you
were, so I strolled down to see you and heard what was going on.’

‘It is Edith who solved this crime then?’

‘It is.’

‘Tonight I shall cook her a soufflé Edith, better than all her beloved Mrs Marshall’s recipes put together.’

‘We’re going on holiday. You won’t be near a kitchen.’

Auguste’s face fell, then he brightened up. ‘I can eat, however.’

Auguste was happy. The breeze out on Eastbourne pier tugged impatiently at his Panama and blew gently at his blazer neck. Edith held on to her new seaside hat, and Tatiana tied her scarf round her boater as though she was in a motorcar. She only lacked the goggles. Egbert took off his lounge suit jacket and allowed his shirt sleeves to enjoy the sunshine.

They had just eaten
crevettes grises
from a stall on the pier, fresh and smelling of the sea. Their holidays had begun. They had travelled here by train.

‘Egbert says,’ Edith announced happily, ‘we are to purchase a motorcar.’

Auguste stared at his friend, who blushed.

‘Useful for business,’ he muttered.

‘Auguste, too, has agreed to purchase a new motorcar,’ Tatiana said. ‘Will you drive it, Auguste?’

He wanted to shout ‘Never’, nor could he remember ever agreeing to such a proposal, but Tatiana never lied so he must have. He looked at his wife, dark hair framing the glowing face, he looked at his friends, he looked back to the past and then towards the brave new world of the future.

‘Of course I will drive it,’ he declared.