Murder In The Motor Stable: (Auguste Didier Mystery 9)
Read Murder In The Motor Stable: (Auguste Didier Mystery 9) Online
Authors: Amy Myers
Murder in the Motor Stable
Amy Myers
The ninth Auguste Didier crime novel
Copyright © 1996 Amy Myers
The right of Amy Myers to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
First published as an Ebook by
Headline Publishing Group in 2013
All characters in this publication – other than the obvious historical characters – are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library
eISBN: 978 1 4722 1390 7
Jacket illustration by Tim Gill
HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP
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London NW1 3BH
Amy Myers was born in Kent. After taking a degree in English Literature, she was director of a London publishing company and is now a writer and a freelance editor. She is married to an American and they live in a Kentish village on the North Downs. As well as writing the hugely popular Auguste Didier crime series, Amy Myers has also written five Kentish sagas, under the name Harriet Hudson, that are also available in ebook from Headline.
Praise for Amy Myers’ previous Victorian crime novels featuring Auguste Didier, also available in ebook from Headline:
‘Wittily written and intricately plotted with some fine characterisation. Perfection’
Best
‘Reading like a cross between Hercule Poirot and Mrs Beeton . . . this feast of entertainment is packed with splendid late-Victorian detail’
Evening Standard
‘What a marvellous tale of Victorian mores and murders this is – an entertaining whodunnit that whets the appetite of mystery lovers and foodies alike’
Kent Today
‘Delightfully written, light, amusing and witty. I look forward to Auguste Didier’s next banquet of delights’
Eastern Daily Press
‘Plenty of fun, along with murder and mystery . . . as brilliantly coloured as a picture postcard’
Dartmouth Chronicle
‘Classically murderous’
Woman’s Own
‘An amusing Victorian whodunnit’ Netta Martin,
Annabel
‘Impossible to put down’
Kent Messenger
‘An intriguing Victorian whodunnit’
Daily Examiner
Also by Amy Myers and available in ebook from Headline
Victorian crime series featuring Auguste Didier
1. Murder in Pug’s Parlour
2. Murder in the Limelight
3. Murder at Plum’s
4. Murder at the Masque
5. Murder makes an Entrée
6. Murder under the Kissing Bough
7. Murder in the Smokehouse
8. Murder at the Music Hall
9. Murder in the Motor Stable
And Kentish sagas written under the name Harriet Hudson
also available in ebook from Headline
Look for Me by Moonlight
When Nightingales Sang
The Sun in Glory
The Wooing of Katie May
The Girl from Gadsby’s
Murder was not on the agenda when the Ladies’ Motoring Club committee decided to organise a run of their 1904 motor cars from London to Canterbury under the patronage of His Majesty King Edward VII. It is to be the occasion of the official Motor Club of Great Britain road trials for the electrically powered Dolly Dobbs, which its inventor claims has overcome the need for constant recharging of batteries – and this is its first public outing, after months of secrecy.
Trouble is on the way, however, for the Dolly Dobbs sparks off mighty passions: from rival inventor Thomas Bailey determined to beat it; from the Duchess of Dewbury who hopes to drive it; from Hester Hart, the famous lady traveller recently returned to England; from Lady Bullinger, leader of the club’s ‘racers’; from Hortensia Millward, leader of the Horse Against Motor Car Society and, indeed, it seems, from many others who frequent the club’s London headquarters and motor stable.
In the club’s kitchens, Auguste Didier presents the members with a cuisine worthy of his position as master chef. But when hidden passions explode into hideous murder and Inspector Egbert Rose of Scotland Yard is called in, Auguste’s other skills as sleuth are put to the test once more, as he battles to help solve the case.
For James
car buff extraordinaire
with love
Murder at the Motor Stable
would never have chugged out on to the road without the support of my publishers, especially Jane Morpeth and Andi Blackwell of Headline, and my agent Dorothy Lumley of the Dorian Literary Agency, and to them my great thanks.
I am also very grateful to Fred Ferrier and my husband James Myers, car buffs both, for their help and suggestions, and to Bernard Pfrunder.
Lastly, I owe an apology to His Late Majesty King Edward VII for having forced him to accept an engagement in Kent on a day when in fact he was beginning a three-day tour of Liverpool, Swansea and Birmingham.
Hester Hart hailed the White Cliffs of Dover from the top deck of the Belgian mail steamer with an enthusiasm worthy of William the Conqueror leaping on to Pevensey Beach. A new kingdom lay before her, the land of her birth. The newly dubbed Queen of the Desert, daughter of Sir Herbert Hart, button manufacturer to royalty, was about to begin her next and most important conquest.
Below, on Admiralty Pier, as the ship docked, she could see porters and seamen swarming like ants, with several English policemen stolidly in their midst. You could find ants the world over, dragomen, muleteers, labourers of all sorts; a few shekels and they were happy. If only English society conformed to such simple standards, she would never have embarked on her travels; services rendered were repaid by disservices, unless you were among the élite. She smouldered as memories flooded back. Settlement of old scores required planning and thought, and she had had a long time to devote to them. Fifteen years ago, in 1889 she had set out to march in the steps of Jane Digby and Hester Stanhope. Now it was 1904, a new century, and unlike her predecessors she was coming back to force society to clasp her to its so tightly corseted bosom.
As the gangplank went down and porters swarmed up on to
the decks, she indicated her small baggage to a rough-looking Dovorian, comparing him unfavourably with the Arab dragomen who had enlivened her travels. Her corded trunks had been despatched in advance with the precious burdens on which her entire plan was based, and this fellow could wreak little harm on the possessions she had with her.
‘London,’ she told him curtly.
‘First class, madam?’
Hester was annoyed. Couldn’t the fellow tell? Naturally she was travelling first class. This was England, not Syria.
Inferior to dragomen the Dovorian might appear, but he knew when his 3d charge was at risk, and once past His Majesty’s Customs led the way straight to a Ladies Only carriage.
The keen April wind strained at the hatpin moorings of her peacock-feathered large-brimmed hat as Hester paid the fellow off, now well pleased.
Ladies
Only. Yes, at last she would be awarded her rightful place in society, after all the snubs and rejections. She would storm its portals; not only would she ruffle the pretty feathers of those who had once barred her way, she would pick those pretty chickens off one by one.
And she had decided just where to start: the newly formed Ladies’ Motoring Club, run by some tinpot Russian princess . . .
‘I would rather die, son of a goat.’
Auguste Didier, distracted from the
filets de sole à la Tatiana
by his chef’s passionate cry, hurried to intervene. Common sense told him that this incident was one more round in the feud between his chef Pierre Calille and Luigi Peroni, the club restaurant’s maître d’, and if it were not resolved, dinner would be the principal victim. Grimly, he took control.
‘What is so important as to interrupt the making of a mayonnaise?’
‘Mint, Monsieur Didier.’ Luigi was only too happy to impart the bad tidings to Pierre’s superior who was, moreover, the husband of the Madam President of the Ladies’ Motoring Club. ‘There have been complaints.’
‘But English ladies like mint.’ Auguste was puzzled. ‘Indeed, some recognise no other herb.’
‘
Not
in rissoles.’ Luigi oozed smugness.
‘
Rissoles?
’ Pierre shrieked. ‘They were
croquettes
of the finest quality. Monsieur Escoffier himself encourages novelty.’
‘Unfortunately, Pierre, ladies like Lady Bullinger do not always appreciate novelty,’ Auguste said gently.
‘And I do not appreciate being told how to cook by a mere waiter,’ howled Pierre. ‘How can I be a slave to English taste when I have come to reform it?’
Auguste had some sympathy with this viewpoint, but in the interests of his wife’s club, compromise was obviously called for. ‘Perhaps a little less mint—’
‘It is unsubtle, like your cooking,’ Luigi cut in, seeing the tide flowing in his favour. ‘Not like basil.’
‘Basil subtle?’ Pierre’s dark eyes flashed. ‘I have read Mr Keats’ poem “Isabella”. Italians used pots of basil for burying heads in.’
‘I will bury yours, dog.’ Luigi was thrown from his usual poise by an unfair dig at his national honour. ‘I am responsible for—’
‘I,’ Auguste informed them loudly, ‘am responsible for dinner tonight. Shall we proceed?’ He mentally thanked his father for choosing an English wife whose genes usually predominated in time of trouble, a useful gift for a Provençal stuck between the Milanese maître d’ and the Marseille-born Pierre, he reflected. He liked both men though his preference was for the stalwart, philosophical Pierre. To look at they were not dissimilar; both were in their early thirties, of roughly the same height as himself, 5 feet 10 inches, both dark-haired, of medium build, with the liquid dark eyes and complexion of the Latin. Where Pierre’s held passionate concern for his calling, Luigi’s were amused and detached. The one, Auguste guessed, had a strict moral code; the other, he suspected, lacked it. However, all that concerned him was that when they were quarrelling the club failed to run smoothly. Like now.
‘What is
that
?’ He suddenly awoke to the fact that the far distant rumble of voices to which he had hitherto paid little heed was becoming not only louder but ominously so. Moreover the clang of the iron gates of Milton House in London’s Petty France suggested the noise might have something to do with his wife’s motoring club.
‘Dolly Dobbs,’ shouted Luigi excitedly.
‘A new member, like Miss Hester Hart?’ Auguste asked. He could not remember his wife Tatiana mentioning her.
‘
Not
like Miss Hart.’ Luigi laughed. ‘Unless Miss Hart has changed into a motorcar.’
‘No,’ Pierre retorted. ‘Miss Hart is a splendid lady, dog.’
This was not what Auguste had heard, and from Luigi’s snort of derision not his experience.
‘Where have
you
met her, peasant?’
‘I have seen in the newspapers that she has accomplished great things. It is an honour to cook for her.’
The noise outside was growing even louder and the rest of the kitchen staff were edging towards the door, Auguste noticed.
‘But what is this Dolly Dobbs?’ he asked. He dimly remembered Tatiana saying something at breakfast about the arrival of a new experimental motorcar but as he had been meditating at the time on an exciting new recipe for a sauce for roast woodcock, he had forgotten the details.
His
duty, however, was to dinner, which Tatiana had maintained should be an extra special one tonight, and he was a little hurt to find that no one shared his concern. He cast an anxious and loving eye at the purée for the sole, then curiosity overtaking even him as to the reason for the hullabaloo, he followed Luigi and Pierre, mint forgotten, to the area steps. The racket outside did not suggest joyful welcome.
He was correct. As he emerged into the courtyard the whole of Petty France was seething with something akin to a French Revolutionary mob on its way to the guillotine with a few hundred prize aristos. In this case, their fury appeared to be directed against a large object swathed in canvas on a wagon drawn by two stalwart horses and at present wedged just
inside the gates of Milton House, unable to proceed for the numbers of both male and female angry demonstrators surrounding it.
‘Down with cars!’ The shrill voice of the leader of the mob, a wirily-built lady of middle years with a determined chin and a huge placard bearing the legend ‘The Car Is the Beast of Doom’, brought more supporters pushing their way into the courtyard. ‘Uphold the rights of the horse,’ she shrieked, whipping her flock into renewed frenzy.
Those rights did not appear to include free passage to plod on their way, Auguste was amused to notice, as a forest of gloved hands clutched at their four-footed friends’ reins. Their leader pulled off the canvas covering with a victorious cry of ‘Hams!’
The mob pressed eagerly forward but the noise abruptly ceased, followed by a murmur of what might have been surprise, disappointment or merely regrouping for the final assault.
What had been revealed was, to Auguste’s eye at least, merely another motorcar, its only striking characteristic the bright red paint. It was a landaulet, with an open top, a rear seat for extra passengers, four wheels and a steering pillar. There was nothing in front of the steering pillar to hold an engine, but even he was aware that in some motorcars that was not unusual.
What then was so exciting about the Dolly Dobbs? The expert eye, Auguste concluded, might be interested in the fact that the running boards curved up to extra wide and flat-topped mudguards, but to him (and he suspected to the mob, some of whom were looking as if they had been baulked of their prey) it was just an ordinary motorcar.
The brief flicker of his own professional interest aroused by the cry of ‘Hams’ also died, as his wife hurtled past him towards the fracas, hatless, gloveless and pausing only to command his
instant assistance. ‘
Aux armes, mon ami
, it’s the Horse Against Motor Car Society. That is the Dolly Dobbs, and
that
is Mrs Hortensia Millward.’
Auguste’s view was that a motorcar should have the decency to arrive under its own steam – or petrol if it preferred – but he knew better than to voice it, much as he would have loved to call out like small boys everywhere at a car in trouble: ‘Get a horse!’
Tatiana, her usual calm face alive with excitement, and regardless of her delicate cream linen summer gown, threw herself into the mob, now regaining its enthusiasm and to Auguste’s added horror, this just as Hortensia Millward seemed bent on dragging the driver of the wagon, Mr Frederick Gale, the stalwart club engineer, down from his seat. As Mrs Millward hopped up and down, with the help of wheel and running board, impatiently hitching her brown skirt up to knee height in the interests of the Hams, Fred jumped up and flung his arms round the Dolly Dobbs’s steering pillar in a loving embrace.
‘
Now!
’
A small party of diehards, who had obviously learned their tactics at the Khyber Pass, rushed forward at their leader’s shout, to make a combined assault on Fred and his passenger, a mild-looking young man with spectacles who sat hypnotised with fright.
Appalled, Auguste dragged Tatiana back as she was about to launch herself at Mrs Millward in Fred’s defence and nobly inserted his own body between Fred, half a dozen angular corseted bodies armed with stout wood placard supports, and a middle-aged man with the air of one finding himself in the midst of the Eton Wall Game by mistake.
‘Mrs Millward, don’t you dare touch him!’ Tatiana shouted.
Hortensia, her purple silk hat knocked askew through hatpins insufficient to withstand the ferocity of her assault, was momentarily deflected from her purpose.
‘Why not?’
‘He’s a living creature, just like a horse.’
‘Then he should not work with contraptions of the Devil.’
Auguste, a placard jammed at his neck and restrained by three pairs of feminine arms, decided not to join the debate. He loathed motorcars.
‘Motorcars are the future.’ Tatiana finally forced her way though to Hortensia and faced her grimly, arms akimbo.
‘Horses are friend to rich and poor.’
‘And did not the poor benefit equally from the invention of the wheel?’
‘How many more faithful friends are to be terrified or cast aside unwanted? How many more frail women tumbled off bicycles from fear of your monsters? They should never have repealed the Red Flag Act!’ Hortensia, bored with rational argument, made a renewed assault on Fred – he was attempting to follow his passenger, who had now been released from his trance, had leapt from his seat and had sprung to the defence of the Dolly Dobbs. It was clear from the passionate way he spread-eagled himself against it that he was intimately involved with the lady; he gazed into a future of untold magnificence.
‘My invention will revolutionise all your lives, ladies.’ He opened his arms towards them in fervent appeal. ‘Last year the Wright Brothers conquered the air. This year I, Harold Dobbs of Upper Norwood, will conquer earth.’
Hortensia was not impressed. ‘What’s this contraption going to do? Fly out of its stable?’
Harold Dobbs was saved from the crowd’s apparent plan of
guillotining him forthwith by the arrival of the full majesty of the law in the form of two police constables who persuaded the crowd to retreat from the courtyard back into Petty France. Faces remained glued to the railings nevertheless, as the horses plodded round to the motor stable with their presumably precious burden.
‘Do you think Hortensia won that round?’ Tatiana asked glumly. The lace at her neck had been torn by over-eager Hams, and her green sash had disappeared.
Auguste had almost been garrotted by his apron strings, his white hat was jammed over one eye, and his eye would undoubtedly shortly be black. Nevertheless, he had a vague memory of having once promised he would care for and support this woman for the rest of his life. ‘If so, she will not win the war,
chérie
.’ Unfortunately, in his view.
‘Hortensia has influence. Her husband is a well-known archaeologist. He was here today. They say he’ll be knighted soon.’
‘It is not like you to admit that this is a factor to be considered.’
‘It is the way of the world and, more important, it is the way of London. I hope she does not deter ladies from joining my club. The whole point of my horse-training programme is that horses and motorcars can live together.’ Tatiana was perturbed. Auguste had a faint recollection of her telling him recently of her rota to send members with their cars to horse owners’ homes for training sessions to accustom horses to motorcars. It was Auguste’s treacherous view, shared by most horse owners, that motorcars should accustom themselves to horses rather than the other way round.
‘How could anyone not admire it?’ Tatiana’s dark eyes were fixed lovingly on the Dolly Dobbs as they followed the wagon
round to the motor stable at the rear of the club’s headquarters. ‘But it is terrible that Hortensia got wind of its arrival – the car is supposed to be a secret.’
‘What is so secret about it? It is painted bright red.’
‘It is not a partridge,
chéri
; it does not need camouflage against its enemies. And it is
very
secret indeed. Its official Motor Club of Great Britain trials are on the twenty-first of July, next Thursday, and no one must even see it before its first public appearance this Saturday.’
‘But now they have.’
‘Aha.’ Tatiana paused mysteriously, as lifting gear was lovingly placed by its inventor round his beloved’s bodywork, once Fred had manoeuvred the wagon into the entrance of one of the motor houses.
The old carriage house had now been converted into a motor stable with ten motor houses, a repair and washing house and separate benzine house a short distance away. With all the motor house doors open this hot Tuesday afternoon, the motorcars looked uncommonly like horses poking their noses out. Perhaps he should offer them carrots? Auguste thought benignly. The Dolly Dobbs was being housed next to the repair house, as was usual for motors requiring special attention.
‘What you have seen is only the shell,’ Tatiana whispered. ‘It has been brought here early to receive its very special equipment. It was even stripped of its battery of accumulators for the journey.’
Auguste displayed an intelligent interest in his wife’s career. ‘You mean it is an electric car? But they have been invented already.’ The open landaulet was unlike the tall electric broughams he was used to seeing in London streets.
He instantly regretted his rashness. Tatiana’s eyes lit up as
she drew breath for a
full
explanation. ‘Of course, but they are limited in their use by their range. They can manage only about fifty miles before the battery has to be recharged or changed. So in practice they are limited to town work or to country houses with their own electric lighting plant. It is true,’ she continued with the same enthusiasm that Auguste would devote to a
bavarois
, ‘the number of garages in the country is increasing now and batteries can be changed easily, but that is no help if the battery is exhausted on the open road.’