Murder Makes an Entree (7 page)

Emily headed the column, in a bright pink dress with face to match. Heinrich followed her in check jacket and trousers that
would certainly not have been tolerated in the Kaiser’s presence, then Alice in a provocatively thin muslin gown
with hand-embroidered roses on it; Alfred with bright red cummerbund and Panama hat; James in a blue and white striped blazer
and cricketing tie, and Algernon carrying what could only be one of the new gentlemen’s bathing costumes in bright green stripes
over his arm. Without so much as a by your leave, this gypsy band of erstwhile eager apprentices, oblivious of Auguste’s indignant
face, sped out of the door and disappeared.

‘Sid,’ said Auguste sadly, ‘it is good that some have a sense of responsibility.’

‘Yus,’ replied Sid, but was strangely quiet as he worked. Fifteen minutes later he tiptoed out of the door, leaving Auguste
in the midst of a loving discussion of the differences between the taste of
écrevisses
and
crevettes
in a sauce.

‘
Eh bien
,’ remarked Auguste ruefully, when he discovered Sid’s defection, ‘perhaps it is that I grow old.’ He placed a
bain-marie
lovingly on the table, but for once failed to invent a new sauce to cook within it. He remembered the boater, he recalled
the blazer waiting upstairs. ‘
Non
,’ he informed the
bain-marie
happily, ‘I do not grow old, not yet.’ And within five minutes he had emerged to greet The Seaside.

‘I will,’ he announced to his conscience, ‘investigate the fish.’ He strolled along the promenade, swinging his cane, fish
rather less in his mind than the many most attractive young ladies adorning the sands. Kent, he said to himself, having recently
read
The Pickwick Papers
in honour of the forthcoming weekend, is known for its apples, cherries, hops – and women. He hummed to himself, and a smile
lit his face, as he crossed the bridge and walked down towards the pier.

It was an attractive corner with an old inn opposite the pier and an old clap-boarded boathouse at its entrance. Most noticeable
were two figureheads, no doubt from wrecks: a Scotsman performing a Highland fling, and another
apparently of a Greek god. But Auguste had no time for sightseeing. The smell of the ocean was in his nostrils, and more than
that, the smell of fish. Skirting round two ample matrons and a bathchair, he made his way to the end of the pier where two
fishermen were engaged in tobacco-chewing and a silent contemplation of life. They glanced up as he planted himself before
them.

‘Ah,’ said one uninterestedly.

Auguste, however, was born in a fishing village, and this was an attitude he recognised. Cannes or Broadstairs, fishermen
spoke the same basic language.

‘
Bonjour, messieurs
,’ he announced cordially. ‘I require some fish. Much fish,’ he added as this did not meet with instant reaction.

‘Sprats,’ announced one of the men succinctly. ‘Tomorrow.’

‘Lobsters,’ countered Auguste.

‘Outa season!’ He spat.

‘Not by next Saturday,’ said Auguste firmly. They eyed him more carefully.

‘Meanwhile,’ said Auguste, seeing he was gaining ground, ‘I require dory, crayfish, cod, flounders, hake, sole, crab—’

‘Nah.’

‘The Duke of Stockbery, whom I advise, looks for a new supplier.’

The Duke of Stockbery could fish for it himself, seemed to be their reaction. Auguste had blundered.

‘Ramsgate, you wants.’ They turned their backs.

‘This week,
mes amis
. you will look after me. And in return, on Saturday you, and not Ramsgate, will ensure that the Prince of Wales eats well.’

Slowly they turned round.

‘Ah,’ remarked one. ‘Nothing against Teddy, not never.’

‘Ah,’ added his companion. ‘Broadstairs scrubs and
Margate kings, mind. Ramsgate capons, Peter’s lings.’ They cackled.

Disregarding this since he could make nothing of it, Auguste pressed on. ‘
Bon
. So it is agreed. I will come each evening and give you my requests. And you, like efficient men of Kent, will supply them
in the morning.’

‘Ah.’ They spat in unison, and resumed their seats.

Auguste shook hands with them, raised his hat, and retired. It was a job well done. Perhaps this seaside would be
amusant
after all. His imagination began to run riot, fish of all shapes and sizes floating through his mind’s eye, sauces of every
hue adorning their fresh magnificence.

The Imperial Hotel proudly faced the sea, halfway between its two rivals, the Albion with its Dickensian associations and
the relative newcomer, the Grand Hotel, standing sentinel on the West Cliff. The Imperial, with its solid, ornate façade and
a tower at either end, offered comfortable grandeur, like Broadstairs itself. It had been built in the 1860s, to take advantage
of the sudden influx of visitors provided by the arrival of the London, Chatham and Dover Railway at Broadstairs. This late
start in railway communication with the outside world enabled Broadstairs and the Imperial to gain from the benefits of visitors,
while still maintaining their reputation for selectness. Steamers called at its noisy neighbours, Margate and Ramsgate, but
Broadstairs, favoured by the discriminating, in the main slumbered peacefully on. The Imperial Hotel exuded the essence of
Broadstairs: we are here in our excellence should you have need of us, but we shall not stoop to seek you out.

Nevertheless its owner was a worried man. Particularly today.

‘I don’t know, I’m sure, Mr Dee.’ Mr Cedric Multhrop subsided into one of the comfortable armchairs in his lounge, then leapt
up guiltily as though a mere hotel owner had no place to be sitting down in his guests’ domain. ‘Should it be the red carpet
or the blue? That’s what I keep asking myself. The red is more correct, but new it is not, Mr Dee.
I couldn’t say it’s new, but then could blue be said to be royal? That’s what I ask myself.’

Auguste, or Mr Dee as he had become over the week, smiled. He was, after all, on holiday even if it was the all-important
5th August, the day of the Grand Banquet, of the arrival of the Prince of Wales. He had grown quite fond of Mr Multhrop with
his many worries but, being on holiday, failed to view his ‘problems’ with as much anxiety as Mr Multhrop himself. Auguste
had responsibilities of his own. Already early on this Saturday morning he and his pupils were beginning to prepare for the
banquet in the Imperial kitchens. The hotel staff had been firmly relegated to a very small part of their own domain for the
preparation of luncheon and would thereafter be merely onlookers, apart from serving the food to the hoi polloi of the guests
this evening, while Auguste and his pupils served the Prince of Wales’s table.

‘Oh, do use the blue, Papa; it’s so pretty.’

Auguste’s eyes misted at the sound and sight of the lovely Araminta, Multhrop’s eighteen-year-old daughter, rustling down
the staircase in a delightful
froufrou
of petticoats, her large blue eyes fixed on her father, but well aware of every male in sight. Her curls bounced enchantingly
as she clung to her father’s arm, dimpling at Auguste. ‘Do say the blue.’

‘Then the blue it is, my love,’ said her father fondly, as much putty in her hands as was Auguste.

This had truly been a bewitching week, Auguste reflected. On Wednesday he had escorted Alice to the Grand Theatre at Margate
where they had watched
Charley’s Aunt
. For himself, he did not find the piece as graceful as could be wished, but Alice seemed to find it most enjoyable and had
giggled over its charms ever since. They had returned on the late theatre train, and it had been most pleasant walking down
from the railway station and along the seafront so late at night; ah, to have a pretty girl by one’s
side, and the touch of her lips on yours. Which girl, however?

He might have wooed Alice away from Alfred Wittisham had Araminta not stolen his heart. Never would he forget sitting beside
her in the night air watching an open-air performance of
The Parvenue
and listening to the band at Fort House on Thursday evening. Never would he forget the walk home along the promenade afterwards
when her delicate little hand, albeit gloved, stole into his. The warm night air had quite gone to his head, and had Araminta
not been quite so very unattainable, doubtless other parts also would have shared his intoxication. Fortunately a decidedly
unromantic evening breeze had sprung up, subduing ardour in favour of a brisk walk home. Bracing was the word for the English
seaside, Auguste had decided.

‘Aaah!’ cried out Mr Multhrop in anguish. Leaving his cry wafting after him, he disappeared in pursuit of a housemaid who
was busily removing all the clean antimacassars that had only just been placed lovingly in position for the oil-bedaubed heads
that would shortly be resting on them. Perhaps even royalty’s oil.

An army of minions was tidying, dusting and polishing areas that the Prince of Wales could never see, unless he were to perform
acrobatics; to Auguste’s eye the scene resembled the gardeners at work before the arrival of the Red Queen in Mr Carroll’s
amusing tale. Mrs Multhrop sped around after them, confusing matters more, Mr Multhrop sped after her and Araminta remained
still, the cynosure of all eyes, smiling delightfully and of no practical help whatsoever. It was not expected of her. Auguste
repressed the traitorous thought that so far as household management went, she would prove like Mr David Copperfield’s ‘child-wife’
Dora. Some discernment she had, however, for had she not made most complimentary remarks about his
filets de sole Murat?

Similar panic was reigning in the kitchens. The Imperial’s staff, torn between a natural
amour propre
that a rival team had been imported to cook for the Prince of Wales and relief that they would not be responsible for royalty’s
displeasure (yet with the ignoble hope that they might get all the credit), watched anxiously to ensure that the incoming
team was competent. The procession of raised rook and chicken pies, with their intricate decorations, that made its appearance
in the kitchen raised their expectations as high as the pie coffins, as did the jellies vanishing into the larders, and sorbets
into the refrigerators.

Auguste had adjusted the menu to his own standards. His frantic re-reading of Dickens had revealed numerous mentions of grog.
Very well, he reasoned, then grog jelly was not too far removed from the mandate he had been given, and no one could object
to the addition of a delicious fruit sorbet. Dickens must have mentioned fruit somewhere. They would at least remove the richness
of the goose from frightened stomachs. In one corner of the kitchens the lobsters were awaiting their fate. At least there
he had been successful. But as to oysters, no. Not till September, his new friends William and Joseph maintained. In vain
Auguste pleaded that the Prince of Wales would not wait until September. William pointed out that they had their reputation
to consider; French passion met British indomitability, and Auguste yielded. No oysters.

William and Joseph had glanced at each other.

‘Crabs now,’ Joseph said. ‘You could get a nice crab or two.’

Auguste had not observed the slow smile creeping over William’s face as Joseph placed in his hand a rod with a hook on the
end. He looked at it blankly.

‘Dat dere’s a pungar ’ook; now you get all the crabs you want, mister; us’ll keep all dem furriners away.’

It had been fortunate, Auguste reflected bitterly, that no
necessity had rested on his catching pungar crabs this morning. One morning’s efforts at pungar catching had proved quite
enough. First there was the indignity of rolling up his trousers and removing his socks and shoes, then the endless probing
of horizontal holes in the rocks to see if pungars lurked within.

‘Just you tap away, Mr Auguste, and if you ’it the little feller on ’is back you’ll ’ear ’is ’ollow sound like.’

It sounded simple; it was not. The hollow sound was the beginning of the game, not the end. For the ‘little feller’, once
assaulted, retreated to the back of his hole and dug in. Battle then commenced. At the end of an hour, only one ‘little feller’
too young to know better had been in Auguste’s possession, and William and Joseph were scarcely able to restrain their mirth.
French aplomb was to the fore as Auguste handed the crab to them along with the hook, raised his new Panama hat and bade them
a courteous farewell.

Now Mr Multhrop was making periodic incursions into his kitchens, moaning gently, wringing his hands, as he beheld the mountains
of food everywhere. The Imperial was used to large banquets, but the added responsibility of the Prince of Wales made molehills
into mountains.

‘I shall be ruined, beheaded, disbarred from the Buffaloes,’ he wailed.

In his self-torture he was unable to answer the simplest query, and Auguste was forced to turn to Araminta.

‘Miss Multhrop, where are the
bains-marie?
’

‘Oh, Mr Didier, I don’t eat buns.’ Araminta looked distressed. She wanted to help if she could.

Auguste closed his eyes and counted to three. Perhaps Alice would make the better wife.

Sixty-seven Literary Lionisers were descending on Broadstairs from several directions. Some were travelling direct from Cowes,
most were arriving from London by
railway express, and the remainder by carriage from their country houses. The committee, as if for protection against the
masses, elected to follow Auguste’s example and had reserved a first-class railway compartment on the 10.45 express from Victoria.
Here too the atmosphere was strained. Only Sir Thomas, confident of victory and in his ability to overcome all opposition
by his personal charm, was at ease. The edginess of the others only added to his opinion of his own rectitude. His starched
collar, sober dark grey tweed suit, and the black bowler hat in the rack above him made no concessions to the seaside.

Oliver was annoyed that Angelina had deliberately chosen to sit next to Sir Thomas; Angelina was determined to bring Sir Thomas
to book as soon as she could; Gwendolen was similarly annoyed at the sight of her rival on Sir Thomas’s other side and bitterly
aware that she herself was viewing considerably more of Sir Thomas’s back than of his face. Broadstairs would, however, solve
everything, she told herself. Samuel Pipkin was tensing himself for the coming life and death struggle this evening, when
the vital decision would be made by the Prince of Wales, and Mr Thackeray would be avenged. Even Lord Beddington was on edge,
hands clasped round the duck’s-head handle of his walking stick. He didn’t sleep a wink during the journey. He had a notion
something damned odd was going to happen at Broadstairs.

‘Welcome to Broadstairs,’ announced Sir Thomas expansively as he stepped down from the railway carriage, flicking a practised
hand towards a porter. A flood of Literary Lionisers was already pouring out of the railway station, fighting in well-bred
fashion over victorias and landaus. The committee, having done their duty by their flock, were left without transport.

‘Came here once,’ commented Lord Beddington morosely, looking round while they were waiting for cabs
to return. It was one o’clock, and he needed his lunch. ‘Recognise that’ – he jerked a thumb at the nearby flint-faced water
tower poking its head above the railway line, the pride of its engineer, Thomas Crampton.

‘Oh, a
castle
,’ trilled Gwendolen. ‘How romantic,’ she enthused. ‘No wonder Dickens loved Broadstairs so. Did he, I wonder, base Dotheboys
Hall upon it?’

‘The water reservoir was not built when Dickens stayed here, Gwendolen,’ said Sir Thomas smoothly, smiling at Angelina.

Gwendolen flushed in shame, her arms trembling in their lace leg-o’-mutton sleeves, then steadied herself. No doubt Thomas
was deliberately making her look foolish in public in order to hide his real feelings. Men were strange creatures at times.
She swallowed hard and thought about this afternoon’s promenade. If he did not apologise then . . .

Oliver, set-faced, assisted Angelina into the first victoria that returned. She thanked him composedly and made room for Sir
Thomas by her side. Samuel glared at everyone, wishing he were in Tunbridge Wells, the decent civilised sort of place that
Mr Thackeray used to visit. Lord Beddington meditated lovingly on a good luncheon, followed by an even better snooze at the
Reform. It was, he noticed, distinctly less warm than it had been, with an east wind blowing as they turned into the Parade.

And in this mood of low spirits, the Week of the Lion began.

In the kitchens the Imperial’s chefs were now preparing to serve a simple luncheon for the new arrivals, while preparations
for the banquet continued apace. Because of the lack of space, Auguste had devised a shuttle system; as luncheon moved out
in stages, so more materials for the banquet could be moved in. Heinrich, James and Alfred were poised to drag in the vegetables
delivered to the
tradesmen’s entrance, as the soup tureens for luncheon moved out. Alice and Emily were already engaged on chopping ingredients
for sage and onion stuffing.

‘My grandmama says,’ remarked Emily, ‘that it’s unlucky to use sage when it’s blooming. You should never let it flower at
all.’ She looked disapprovingly at the cluster of purple flowers amid the handfuls of green-grey leaves.

‘Your grandmama will be proved correct, Miss Dawson, if you do not watch your use of that knife,’ Auguste pointed out quickly.
‘You do not concentrate, Miss Dawson. Where is your mind today?’

Emily’s mind was partly on the enjoyable walk she had taken with Heinrich, who had unexpectedly proved a most delightful companion
during the week; partly on the bright green foulard dress she had seen on sale at Bobby’s in Margate yesterday when they visited
the famous menagerie at the Grand Hall by the Sea, and partly it was on the coming evening. What, if any, dangers did it hold
for her?

‘Emily,’ said Heinrich kindly, clearing his throat, ‘the kidneys have arrived. You do not pay attention.’ Having begun the
week convinced that Emily, after her attack on his Nesselrode pudding, was one of the stupidest females he had met, Heinrich
had seven days later become quite besotted by her beauty, wit and charm. Truly, this seaside air had much to recommend it.
He had almost lost interest in a reunion with the Kaiser.

Alice’s mind was not on kidneys either. She had had a splendid and cultural week. Not only had Auguste taken her to see the
amusing
Charley’s Aunt
, but Alfred had escorted her to Ramsgate to see
Harbour Lights
. It had been great fun. And even more fun had been the fact that James Pegg had not been present; secure in his knowledge,
as he thought, that Alfred was taking an extra lesson in quenelles cookery from Mr Didier. She laughed at the thought of his
face next morning when he realised he’d been outwitted – it wasn’t hard to do.