Murder in Pug's Parlour (2 page)

‘Accident then,’ put in Ernest Hobbs, butler, hastily peacemaking. He was a Man of Kent born and bred, with the slow determined way of his ancestors; he always had the air of one faintly surprised to find himself no longer the lampboy he had started his career as at the Towers.

‘How can you accidentally swallow enough poison to have that effect?’ said May Fawcett belligerently, clearly piqued at being omitted from the circle of attention. A
sharp-faced intelligent twenty-eight-year-old, she was lady’s-maid to Her Grace and it was an open secret to all, save Mrs Hankey, that she and Greeves had not so much an understanding as an actuality yielding more immediate physical rewards than those anticipated in her private moments by the housekeeper. Auguste’s sympathies were with Mrs Hankey, but his money he would have put on May Fawcett in the Greeves matrimonial stakes.

‘In something he ate most like,’ continued Ernest Hobbs defiantly, looking meaningfully at Auguste. Six pairs of eyes turned to the thirty-two-year-old master chef. The usual twinkle disappeared; his dark brown eyes flashed as centuries of French honour were aroused in him. For all he was half English, he had been reared in France.
Something he ate?
Were these blockheads suggesting that cooking supervised and prepared by him, for which
he
was responsible, could poison a man? Yet behind his anger there was a faint chill. These people facing him had but a few hours before been his colleagues, his friends, his family. Now they seemed accusing strangers.

‘Mushroom, it must have been a mushroom,’ put in valet John Cricket eagerly.

‘Or that nasty French stuff you pick, like spinach. Perhaps it was that. Perhaps you put some rhubarb leaves in by mistake. Easily done. Poor Mr Greeves, suppose he—’ But the thought was too awful to be put into words and Edith Hankey’s white square of cambric was pressed into service once more.

Auguste swelled in fury. He was used to a state of armed professional enmity with Mrs Hankey ever since he had insisted it was his prerogative as chef to prepare the desserts himself, instead of leaving it in her control as mistress of the still-room. He had had no choice in the matter. Ever since he had observed her thickening a
crème bavarois
with
cornflour, he had realised that a stand had to be made. Now she was insinuating he could not tell rhubarb from sorrel.

Ethel leapt in as always to lower the temperature. ‘But, Mrs Hankey, we all had the spinach at dinner.’

‘We didn’t all have the mushrooms, though,’ put in Cricket doggedly, eyes flickering vindictively. ‘And he could have been unlucky. Just got the Death’s Cap. Might have been any of us.’

‘Monsieur Cricket, would you lay out for His Grace brown boots for a visit to his club?’ asked Auguste dangerously, quietly.

Cricket blinked nervously. He had nothing to say on the question of boots.

‘Then have the kindness to realise that I do not simply drop an
Amanita phalloides
into
une garniture de champignons
.’ Auguste’s tones were clipped and incisive. This was an affront that could not be ignored.

There was a nervous silence.

‘Perhaps it was something he took last night,’ put in Frederick Chambers, he of the unfortunate name. As Groom of the Chambers he was perpetually the target of feeble jokes from guests, all of which he suffered stoically, but worse, since the Duke was in the habit of calling all five footmen Frederick on the grounds that footmen at Stockbery Towers had always been called Frederick (way back in the last century one had been) he was in perpetual danger of being taken by surprise and answering to the name, in a manner unbecoming to his status as an upper servant; they were, of course, addressed by their surnames. Hence, Auguste presumed, Chambers’ always guarded manner, always watchful for some real or imagined affront.

‘Then why was it after dinner that he was took bad?’ Mrs Hankey’s voice wavered. ‘He was all right when we were
there. Didn’t complain – not more than usual,’ she added honestly.

Servants’ dinner, as opposed to Their Graces’ luncheon, had proceeded as usual. The upper servants and their counterparts attached to His Grace’s guests for the shooting party, being My Lord Arthur Petersfield’s valet, the Marquise’s maid, the Prince of Herzenberg’s manservant, and Mrs Hartham’s lady’s-maid, had partaken of their entree in the servants’ hall, then progressed in stately and duly ordained order of precedence to Pug’s Parlour, the hallowed sanctum of the upper servants. There they had partaken of their dessert and cheese. In most households they would also have taken tea or coffee in Pug’s Parlour, but Mr Greeves, with a fine twist of the hierarchical knife, chose to underline his highly superior status by taking a savoury and a glass of brandy alone while the rest of the upper servants retreated part way whence they had come and smartly turned left to the housekeeper’s room. There they imbibed their own more modest refreshment, before separating to take up their several duties. Usually, that is. Today, their cups had hardly reached their lips before the white-faced steward’s-room boy had burst into the room without so much as a knock.

No one had an answer for Mrs Hankey’s question. Conversation dwindled, and private speculation rose. Reluctantly one by one they departed to take up their afternoon occupations, each one scuttling past the closed door of Pug’s Parlour, half fearful, half hynotised.

The lower servants too seemed to be milling in unusual numbers for this time of day in the humble milieu of the servants’ hall, which was conveniently close to Pug’s Parlour. There they were indulging in lurid speculations, based on their fascinated study of the deeds of Jack the Ripper, aroused by the occurrence of a sudden drama of life and
death in their midst. No hesitancy here about what the outcome of the afternoon would be. In their minds Greeves was already a goner, done to death by an arch-fiend – though about the latter point opinions varied. But had the Duke himself been found with a knife in his back, it could hardly have caused more excitement. The Duke and Duchess were but mere names to the smaller fry of the vast indoor and outdoor staff who might never see them in the whole course of their lives in service, save for Their Graces’ fleeting and statutory appearance at the annual Servants’ Ball. Archibald Stewart Greeves, on the other hand, had been the ever present tribulation that might at any moment scourge them, a greater fear to these raw Kentish girls than ‘being catched’ by the Hooden Horse, a threat their mothers held over them still.

The appearance of both Sergeant Bladon and, in due course, Police Constable Perkins changed private assumption to public certainty. Greeves must be dead. The self-important demeanour of Dr Parkes, watch-chain lying with assurance over his paunch, as he emerged from Pug’s Parlour confirmed their best suspicions. This was Murder Most Foul.

It was about five o’clock when the upper servants again foregathered, with Ethel bringing them the momentous news that Sergeant Bladon’s bicycle had been seen in the courtyard, thus being as usual one stage behind the lower servants.

Scarcely had the ramifications of this news been absorbed than a knock at Mrs Hankey’s door revealed an agog lower minion ushering in Dr Parkes. All eyes turned to the portly frock-coated doctor.

He cleared his throat, self-consciously: ‘I am sorry to inform you, ladies and gentlemen, that Mr Greeves has – um – passed away.’

A shriek from May Fawcett; a faint cry from Mrs Hankey.

‘And I’m not satisfied. Not satisfied
at all
, as I shall be telling His Grace,’ he emphasised, glaring at them. He couldn’t wait to tell His Grace, it was his big moment. ‘I have had to ask for police presence. Mr Greeves’ rooms are under guard.’

Such was the eloquence of his declaration that the upper servants imagined the whole of the Household Cavalry galloping up the drive, but reality returned with the news that the police guard was only Ned Perkins, the butcher’s youngest.

‘Good afternoon, maître.’

The Duchess of Stockbery was always punctilious in her greeting. Sitting in her blue chiffon teagown, she created an air of fragility, surrounded by portraits of the Duke’s ancestors in the library. It was an air belied by her purposeful chin. The Duke contented himself with a mere nod and a ‘’Nin, Did’yer’. However enamoured he was of their cuisine, the Duke regarded all Frenchmen as vaguely effeminate and their language as an eccentricity in which they illogically persisted.

‘Been killing off my staff, eh, Did’yer?’ remarked the Duke, all fifteen stone ensconced in his brown leather-covered chair, surprisingly intelligent eyes glaring out from under the bushy grey eyebrows. ‘Had another shot at the old Quoorma, eh, Did’yer, eh?’

Auguste stiffened. His Grace was His Grace, but even he need not have reminded him quite so outspokenly of that early disaster. True, he had not quite mastered the use of spices recommended in Colonel Kenny-Robert’s
Culinary Jottings
, but that had been in his early days in England. Now his mulligatawny, his curries were eagerly devoured by
His Grace’s guests. Why, even Colonel Milligan, on leave from the Indian Army, after the winning of the VC and much in demand by ambitious hostesses as a result, had demanded Didier’s curry as a condition of his attendance.

‘George,’ protested the Duchess, laying her hand lightly on the ducal arm and smiling with practised charm at Auguste. Fifteen years younger than her husband, it was hard to believe she was the mother of a twenty-year-old daughter and twenty-two-year-old son, and Her Grace would have been the first to agree with you. Only she and May Fawcett knew the labour that went into achieving this effect.

The Duke grunted. ‘Bad business though. Place gone haywire. The sergeant fellow tells me Greeves was poisoned but they don’t know. Even had the impudence to tell me he’s leaving a guard. Must have been an accident. Things get left around. It happens.’

Auguste stiffened but His Grace, not attuned to his inferiors’ feelings, swept on. ‘Easy enough. Organisation gone to pot. Saw a gal skipping around at five o’clock yesterday afternoon.’ The Duke shook his head in despair. His dislike of seeing the female members of his staff after noon was legendary. ‘What with her not in her black when she should be, and Freds in dress livery before luncheon, I don’t know what the staff’s coming to. Discipline gone to pot. See to it, Did’yer, there’s a good fellow.’

‘Certainly, Your Grace,’ murmured Auguste.

It was easier to agree than to point out it was now Mr Hobbs and not the chef whose duty it would be to discipline the lower servants. The Duke had this simple idea that an order given to one servant could be passed on to all, that behind that green baize door was one cohesive unit striving only to do its best for the Dukes of Stockbery. So, Auguste supposed, in the last resort it would. But before that last
resort, what petty bickerings, what jealousies, what rivalries, what jealously guarded prerogatives and dividing lines. So foolish – except for his own grievance of course. How glad he was that as chef with his two assistants, two kitchen-maids, one vegetable maid, two scullery maids and the pantryboy, he formed a small separate sovereignty within the vast empire below stairs. Or was it just Greeves, with his sly insinuations, his sinister, brooding eye on them that had resulted in that perpetual sense of unease in which they had lived for so long?

‘Monsieur Didier’ – the Duchess’s accent was impeccable – she had had a French lover for the whole of one London season – ‘we realise what a blow this has been and how distressed you must be at this unfortunate accident, but, Monsieur Didier, can you still
manage
? It is quite impossible to stop our guests arriving on Friday.’

‘Damned cheek,’ grunted the Duke. ‘Whippersnapper of a policeman suggested we call the whole thing off till he’d finished what he called his investigations. I said I knew old Hobbs could cope perfectly well, and he had the impudence to tell me that wasn’t what he’d had in mind. Sent him off with a flea in his ear.’

‘
Oui
, madame,’ said Auguste, disregarding this intervention and concentrating on the important matters, his eyes brightening as usual at discussions of
les menus, le banquet
, which had occasioned this unusual afternoon summons. The morning was his regular time for admission to the Presence. Another fifteen house guests would be arriving on Friday to Monday, not to mention the guests invited for the day only for the shoot and the dance. It was only a small dance, of course, nothing like the ball that would be thrown at the end of the three-week shooting party. The guests on Friday would be arriving by London, Chatham and South-East railway. Only one train was
involved for it had a special connection to Hollingham Halt, its voyagers known to the more frivolous of the railway staff as the Tower Trippers.

For the Friday evening to precede an informal dance, a dinner
à la Russe
had been planned. For the Saturday a buffet to excel all buffets. The marble-shelved larders were groaning under the weight of stores awaiting conversion into works of art; the iceboxes would soon be full of the sorbets to quench hot passions aroused by the dancing; the game larders were being stripped of their contents in preparation for the forthcoming culinary delights.

As Their Graces pored with delighted exclamations and the occasional frown over the menus, Auguste wondered how they had taken Greeves’ death. Had the dread word of murder been mentioned to them? And, if so, did they feel it pertained to them? Or, as it had taken place the other side of the green baize door, was it to them simply a parlour game of Guess the Murderer, in which they were concerned simply as bystanders? Not that murder was a stranger to this house of aristocracy. There had been murders a-plenty in the past – Ethel had relished telling him of them on the dark nights when they could wander unobserved in the huge park of Stockbery Towers. There had been the unfortunate case of the ninth Duke’s sister, a little strange from birth, who had stolen by night to the coachman’s dwelling with a long kitchen knife; the third Duke’s younger brother whom no one had set eyes on after the horrible murder of My Lord of Lyme, his rival at court in the affections of Good Queen Bess. And the—