Murder Makes an Entree (25 page)

There was much discussion, but this was finally agreed to be more or less accurate.

Algernon’s mind was still on poison. ‘I don’t see why this coffee is so important. Why couldn’t the poison be added at table?’
he asked aggressively. ‘His attention had only to be distracted by Sid, if he was first back with his coffee, and—’

‘’Ere. Watch it, me old mate,’ said Sid threateningly.

‘Why should I watch it?’ demanded Algernon. ‘You had as much chance as the rest of us to poison Pegg’s food –
and
Throgmorton’s come to that. You were sitting next to poor old Pegg; you could have added something to his salad to look like
dressing perhaps.’

‘You seem to know a lot about what Mr Pegg ate,’ observed Emily tartly.

‘I was opposite him,’ pointed out Algernon quickly.

Interesting, thought Rose; almost as if they’d forgotten he was there. Like a pack of rats scrabbling for the gang plank.
‘Did any of you know Mr Pegg before he joined the school?’ Heads were shaken.

‘And you knew him best, Lord Wittisham?’

‘He was my friend,’ stated Alfred once more. ‘We were going into partnership. Why should I kill him?’

‘There seems, unless anyone knows to the contrary, only one reason that anyone would want to kill James Pegg, who seems to
have been an honest sort of chap from what Mr Didier tells me. And that’s because he knew something incriminating about the
murder of Sir Thomas Throgmorton. I’m afraid it’s been my experience that friend or not, that doesn’t stand in the way when
the murderer’s own safety is at stake.’

‘James Pegg was very quiet at luncheon, Inspector,’ Alice informed him, ‘so it could have been so.’

‘It wasn’t me,’ bleated Alfred pathetically, looking to Alice for support.

‘You wanted to marry Throgmorton’s daughter,’ pointed out Rose. ‘And threatened him, according to Miss Throgmorton herself.’

‘Did I?’ His face went blank. ‘I don’t now, though,’ he explained. ‘I’ve decided to marry Alice.’

There was a buzz of polite congratulations, though the general consensus was that this was an announcement that could have
been made at a more opportune time. Alice’s face flushed with happiness.

‘My granny allus says,’ observed Sid, ‘that marriage is like pushing veg through a tammy cloth; if you lets up for a second,
you gets a faceful of mush.’

‘My granny told
me
,’ Emily chipped in, ‘that she had a remedy for love-sickness and—’

‘And
I’m
telling you,’ said Rose mildly, ‘that it’s ninety per cent sure that one of you is a murderer. You’re all, no doubt for good
reasons, trying to ignore the fact, but just remember, there’s been two murders already. And I have to know which of you it
is before you all go down like six – seven,’ looking at Auguste, ‘green bottles. Some of you know a lot more than you seem
to want to tell me. I suggest you do some hard thinking, or I’ll arrest the lot of you as accessories.’

There was silence as Rose walked out. Slowly six pairs of eyes turned accusingly to Auguste. He must be, as the maître, responsible.
He must solve it.

This afternoon Auguste did not desire even Araminta’s company. He required solitude, and distance from the Imperial, from
Blue Horizon and its inmates, from Naseby – from everything save his own thoughts.

Broadstairs was crowded with afternoon promenaders, parasols sprouting like bright toadstools. Auguste walked briskly up past
Bleak House, mentally congratulating Mr Dickens again for his dramatic choice of holiday residence, and along the cliff path
towards the lighthouse and Kingsgate. Some Gothic follies built by Lord Holland were to be found there, so he had heard; follies
seemed to suit his mood at the moment.

It was not long before he left all but the most intrepid of travellers behind him and he was almost alone on the cliffs, a
blaze of pink and mauve with campions, mallow and snapdragons. He breathed in the sea air deeply. This smell was indeed superb.
The sea did not smell like this at Cannes. There the blue Mediterranean wooed one softly into its embrace; here there was
danger, excitement, it was bracing; all the difference between gentle herbs and heady spices. Here one knew that the tales
they told of smugglers were true; men gathered seaweed by day, and by night came the smugglers. Men like Joss Snelling. They
came to cliffs already cut away by seaweed hunters and now pinholed with underground passages, tunnelling into them insidiously
– like the case he was now engaged upon. Where and how would danger strike next?

A Fish Fortnight: how had he been foolish enough to imagine this holiday would be a pleasure? How could the school ever return
to learning about crabs and crayfish and cod? What would happen to his future after two murders
connected with his school? Perhaps he should return to France, admit defeat to working in England. Yet in France too lay an
impassable road. Paris could not be for him, not while Tatiana lived there. He could go perhaps to Bordeaux to start a small
restaurant. He viewed the prospect without enthusiasm. He could, he supposed, create a simple menu, suitable for those who
loved the sea, with all the splendid seafood of the Atlantic coast. Just one or two dishes per course; perhaps he could set
a new fashion in sauces, less heavy, less rich. Allow the true flavour of the fish to emerge, as in England. Sauces – his
mind returned against his will to his champagne-sauce entrée. His dish of kidneys
poisoned
. How could it have been – and, moreover,
why
should it be? He still felt that if only these questions could be answered, all would be clear. The reason why must surely
be that it pointed away from the entrée to another course. Or, he thought suddenly, concealed the fact that it really
had
been in the entrée. He frowned. Surely this was nonsense. Yet the thought persisted and hummed round his brain as the bees
in the clover on this lonely clifftop.

He flung himself on the grass and closed his eyes. Ghosts crept through his daydreams, ghosts of old loves, stealing in and
out of his heart, ghosts of happy days, ghosts of sad songs, ghosts of the man in the iron mask – he flinched – and now ghosts
of Dickens! In the sunshine of the day it was easy to laugh at the ghost of Mr Dickens sitting placidly in the ladies’ retiring
room at the Albion. He closed his eyes. Shadows of light danced before them, forming themselves into Mr Dickens – who rose
to his feet to greet Little Nell. A line from
The Old Curiosity Shop
, which still lay unfinished by his bedside came into his head: ‘Always suspect everybody.’ So let Mr Dickens show the way.
Auguste let his mind play and it revolved with such fantastic ideas, such strange notions, that it was idle to pursue them.
They must be nonsense. He did not dismiss them, however.
Like English meat, like English cheese, he left them to mature in his mind. Just in case.

‘We were there of course,’ Oliver tentatively pointed out to Angelina as he escorted her on a walk over the sands to the Dumpton
Gapway.

‘Where, Oliver?’ Angelina had her mind on the beauty of the day, the sharp fresh smells of the sea, and on Oliver himself.
Not on murder.

‘In the house where that poor fellow was drugged.’

‘So we were,’ she replied. ‘I did not realise it was the same day. And so I suppose we’re suspects, but what reason would
any of us have to kill that cook?’

‘Why on earth should any of those cooks want to kill Sir Thomas?’ countered Oliver reasonably. ‘It’s almost as if there were
two murders, two murderers.’

‘Do you think that’s possible?’

‘Of course. Someone could have taken advantage of the first murder to make the police believe the two were linked.’

‘So that’s why the Inspector doesn’t want us to leave. We – I mean those of us on the committee – could have murdered Sir
Thomas.’

‘Yes. Only you make it sound rather like a joint committee decision.’

‘No. It points to me.’ Angelina shivered. ‘I don’t think I care for being a suspect. But it’s more likely that one of those
people at Blue Horizons committed both crimes, isn’t it?’ she asked anxiously.

‘We both know, and I’m sure the Inspector does too, that you didn’t kill him,’ Oliver stated firmly.

‘Sir Thomas’s murder was planned. It must have been. Could you see Mr Pipkin or Mrs Figgis-Hewett carefully plotting such
a crime? She might do something on the spur of the moment like appearing in that wedding dress as Miss Havisham.’ Angelina
smiled despite herself. ‘Looking back,
it was rather funny, wasn’t it? I felt sorry for the poor Prince. But it’s sad too. You won’t do that to me, will you?’

‘What?’

‘Leave me at the church.’

Oliver stopped still, took both her hands and regarded her sternly. ‘You’re rather forward, my dearest. You haven’t yet allowed
me to fall on one knee to present you with my heart.’

‘You may do so now,’ she informed him graciously. To the great interest of one old beach scavenger and three small boys, and
to the detriment of his white flannels, he did so. Her acceptance was immediate and enthusiastic, and the ensuing embrace
took so long that even the scavenger lost interest.

‘Angelina,’ remarked Oliver some time later, ‘has it occurred to you to wonder just how Gwendolen happened to have the wedding
dress with her, if the idea was as immediate as you suggest?’

She stared at him. ‘No,’ she said, ‘it hadn’t occurred to me – and I don’t know the answer.’

‘You didn’t like him, Alice, did you?’ stated Alfred, pointblank, as they sat in the Victoria Gardens.

‘That’s no reason to go and murder someone,’ she pointed out reasonably enough. ‘Oh, Alfred, you are foolish. Why on earth
should I wish to kill James?’ Alice was offended by his implied accusation. Then she began to worry. It had to be one of them
at Blue Horizons. Alfred had swum out after James. Alfred had wanted to marry Sir Thomas’s daughter; had threatened Sir Thomas’s
life. Who more likely for the Inspector to pick upon than Alfred? Alice clung to his arm. I won’t let them take you, she vowed
to herself. I won’t.

‘Who do you think did it, Heinrich?’ Emily whispered in
a small voice as they waited for Uncle Mack to begin. ‘It must have been one of us.’

‘I do not know,’ he replied steadily, keeping his eyes glued to the stage. ‘Accident perhaps.’ But his voice had no conviction
in it. ‘Emily,’ he turned to her, but could not continue. Should he go to Rose or not?

‘I think,’ said Emily carefully, ‘whoever did this thing is indeed a very wicked person.’

‘Yes,’ he answered in a strangled voice as Uncle Mack struck up with ‘Oh Susannah, don’t you cry for me’.

Algernon Peckham was wandering about on the pier on his own. Where should he go from here? He was quite confident that no
charge could be laid at his door; he had a high opinion of his own capabilities as a criminal. But he was also growing increasingly
interested in his abilities as a cook, which had greatly surprised him. The original reason that he had taken up cookery was
receding rapidly in its attraction. If only the police weren’t hovering quite so near. If only he were free to choose.

Sid also left Blue Horizons alone that afternoon, but he was not wandering aimlessly. Far from it. Sid had an appointment
with a lady.

Edith Rose was growing weary of promenading Broadstairs on her own and had been beginning to think longingly of Highbury.
But this evening was offering a brighter prospect than usual. With Egbert absent, Auguste had offered to escort her to dinner
in the Imperial’s dining room and to the hotel concert afterwards. Mr Multhrop was less delighted at the prospect, clearly
thinking that Auguste would arrive secreting a bottle of atropine in his pocket.

Edith carefully rearranged the fichu in her best lace evening blouse for the umpteenth time and sallied forth to meet a formally
tail-coated Auguste.

‘Is this rich?’ she asked Auguste doubtfully, gazing nonplussed at the menu some half an hour later.

Auguste followed her eye and gently removed the menu from her hands. ‘If you will permit me to choose,
chère
Edith, I will order for you.’

She yielded her independence gratefully, with mingled fear and pleasant expectation. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Auguste,
but he didn’t know her stomach the way she did and she had to bear in mind that he was French. French stomachs, she was convinced,
were built on an entirely different pattern to plain English ones. True, Egbert had somewhat surprisingly survived his visit
to France, but this she regarded as an act of mercy on his Creator’s part and not a tribute to French cooking.

‘What is it?’ she enquired, looking with doubt at the
filets de sole Provençale
put before her.

‘Taste, dear Edith.’

She obeyed and tasted, then tasted again. ‘Is it French?’ she enquired. ‘I do like it.’

‘English,’ said Auguste firmly. ‘An old English recipe.’ The waiter, who disdainfully overheard this remark, began to instruct
Auguste on cuisine, an initiative speedily put an end to by Auguste.

Several courses later, Edith set down spoon and fork with a sigh. ‘That really was very nice,’ she proclaimed in high praise.
‘Mind you, I do think the china helps a lot. It tastes better somehow off pretty china. You never get a nice cup of tea except
out of a piece of bone.’

‘A piece of bone, Edith?’ said Auguste, at a loss.

‘Bone china, I should have said.’ She giggled. ‘It must be this nice lemonade you’ve given me.’

Auguste smiled. These English and their china. But he was glad she liked the dessert wine. He had worried it might be a little
strong.

‘And now, dear Edith, let us sample the entertainment
Mr Multhrop has in store for us.’ He took Edith’s hand and kissed it.

‘Really, Auguste,’ she said, pink with pleasure, ‘what will people think?’

By the time Egbert Rose returned late on Saturday night, Edith had retired and Auguste was waiting sleepily in the smoking
room with a sulky Sergeant Stitch. Stitch had not dined at the Imperial but on inferior fish and chips. He was regretting
it. Rose’s gaze, as he entered, fell on Stitch. He beckoned, an evil look in his eye. ‘I’ve a lesson for you, Stitch,’ he
said agreeably. ‘Next time, tell me exactly what was said. The full story with no deductions on the part of Sergeant Stitch.
Clear about that? Quite clear?’