Murder In The Motor Stable: (Auguste Didier Mystery 9) (11 page)

It was not Luigi who greeted Roderick; it was Hester, the feathers in her hat tilting like Roman emperors’ thumbs of death towards her prey. Phyllis’s grip on Roderick’s arm tightened, either in panic or possessiveness.

Roderick’s opening defence was not impressive. ‘I thought you were to dine at home, Hester.’

‘So you chose to sneak here behind my back?’ Hester’s raised voice paid no concessions to the presence of other diners, for whom the dull menu had suddenly received an injection of spice.

Phyllis deflected the thumbs with ease. ‘Not behind your back, Miss Hart. You asked him to guard the Dolly Dobbs overnight. Don’t you remember?’ There was an admirable note of solicitous inquiry in her voice.

‘That’s right.’ Roderick was only too anxious to agree.

‘Then kindly change your plans, Roderick. I have no need of a turncoat to guard my motorcar. I shall do it myself.’

‘Hester, I can explain—’

‘How about you, Miss Lockwood? Can you explain why you are dining with
my
fiancé?’

Phyllis burst into tears, a technique she frequently found to
be effective when at a loss for words. ‘He’s
my
fiancé. He loves
me
, don’t you, Roderick?’

Roderick apparently found the question too much to answer, for he did not reply.

‘Do you, Roderick?’ Hester inquired silkily. ‘I was under the impression, last night in bed, that you loved
me
.’

Forty pairs of knives and forks, including those of Maud, Agatha, Isabel and Hugh, halfway through their meat stew, were instantly suspended. Their holders were reeling with delicious shock at hearing their
bête noire
mention the word ‘bed’ in public with no concern at all for frightening the horses.

Standing behind the eternal triangle, Auguste saw Roderick looking from one of the women in his life to the other and, like many a man before him, failing to come up with a solution worthy of the situation. He removed Phyllis’s arm, brushed past Tatiana and Auguste without a word, and seizing his hat strode out angrily without even tipping the cloakroom attendant. As he did so, he became aware of two sounds; the first was Phyllis in hot pursuit, the second was Hester’s hurled, ‘Don’t bother to return tonight for your ring; I’ll send it back tomorrow.’

The three members of her audience most concerned were delighted. Their entertainment ended, however, as Hester continued, ‘I’ll have my revenge on the lot of you. I’ve waited long enough.’

‘I don’t think it advisable that you should remain here overnight alone,’ Tatiana said firmly, as she took coffee with Hester in the lounge an hour later. Not for the first time she was thinking that motorcars were considerably easier to control than people, punctures notwithstanding. Especially
people like Hester Hart who insisted on breaking all accepted rules of society. Once Tatiana would have been in full agreement with such sentiments; now she had modified her views. She disagreed with rules that did harm, but agreed with those that caused no harm and made daily life run the smoother.

Hester decided against returning a stinging retort. She had no quarrel with Tatiana, rather to her surprise; Tatiana Didier was, after all, related to the King and was unlikely to have much in common with the world of button manufacture. ‘You need not concern yourself, Mrs Didier. I am used to guarding myself as well as my property.’

Overlooking the fact that the Dolly Dobbs was not Hester’s property but Harold’s and, she supposed, Agatha’s, Tatiana ceded to the inevitable. ‘Then you must lock all the doors and remain inside the motor house, Miss Hart.’

‘It is too warm. I have the instincts of a cat –’ how right she was, Tatiana thought – ‘I wake on an instant. I also have a pistol.’

‘I don’t like the idea of that.’

‘Perhaps not. However, I am aware I am not popular in the club.’

She sounded proud of the fact, Tatiana thought with distaste. ‘You are too outspoken. London does not approve of private matters being aired in public places. The club may be all female, but it is not a harem.’

Hester’s face darkened. ‘If that is a reproof, Mrs Didier, I do not accept it. Society needs a fresh wind from the desert to blow through it.’

‘Be careful, Hester.’ Tatiana was genuinely concerned. ‘Like the desert, I imagine, it has its own methods of defence.’

Hester laughed. ‘When you have faced the perils of the Jebel Druze, a London Ladies’ Motoring Club does not seem so very terrifying.’

‘I’m sure your travels will also have taught you that danger can lurk in the most unlikely of places,’ Tatiana said quietly. ‘I shall ask Mr Gale to keep watch outside if you insist on carrying out this vigil yourself, while you remain inside.’

‘No.’

‘No traveller can afford to overlook the importance of common sense.’ Unless their vanity gets in the way was Tatiana’s unspoken qualification. ‘I am responsible for this club, and I simply cannot allow any member to remain here alone when a threat of violence has been made.’

Hester gave in ungraciously. ‘Very well. Fred Gale can sleep outside and I’ll sleep inside. After all, as Maud pointed out, I am a maiden lady.’

It was the first sign of humour that Tatiana had ever detected in the redoubtable Miss Hart.

Auguste was in the midst of a heated amicable discussion with Pierre over his desire to serve Cardinal sauce with the lobster mousse. Auguste held firmly that the sauce should contrast in this case, not complement or extend existing flavours. ‘Curry sauce,’ he was urging. ‘Mild, but—’ He broke off, alarmed, as Tatiana came rushing up to him. ‘What is the matter,
chérie
?’

‘It’s Hester. She’s adamant about guarding the Dolly Dobbs herself. Now she has told Roderick she won’t marry him, she doesn’t want him or any man to help her – or rather the car. I insisted Fred stay tonight, but I’m still worried about tomorrow. Please, Auguste, come with me by motorcar to Canterbury. Pierre can manage without you, can’t you, Pierre?’

‘
Oui, madame
.’

‘Of course I will come.’ His heart sank, but there was no choice. Tatiana was deeply worried, and, he feared, with good reason.

Tatiana left to find Fred, and Auguste tried to regain his earlier enthusiasm for the final stages of preparation. It was hard, however, and eventually he tore himself away from lobster mousse and went over to the motor stable. ‘To smell the stock,’ he informed Leo to his mystification.

Fred had left to take some rest before his vigil began. There were only four cars left. The separate motor houses were not yet locked, and Auguste walked into them one by one. The smell of machinery was always the same. A slight smell of benzine and of metal polish combined with a dull, dead atmosphere, not the warm living breath of the horses who had lived here before. For those who loved motorcars, he supposed this pungent smell
was
alive and evocative. He preferred his kitchen, where every saucepan, every scrubbing brush, every potato heralded the excitements to come on the morrow. He supposed to motorcar enthusiasts each motorcar had its own personality, reflecting that of its owners. Here, alone, at night, they spoke most vividly. Lady Bullinger’s Napier was a mighty roast sirloin of beef. Isabel’s new Royce was a subtle blend of spices from the Orient, Agatha’s Horbick a daintily arranged noisette of lamb on a purée of peas
à la française
. Lastly, in the next house to the Dolly Dobbs, was Miss Dazey’s curved-dash Oldsmobile, looking as out of place as a carp surrounded by turnips. Of Hester Hart’s Serpollet there was no sign.

And here was the cause of all the trouble, the Dolly Dobbs. Here the open passageway connecting the rear of all the motor houses had had temporary doors attached but the one to the
repair house was still open and he could see Leo working at the bench. Here was the Dolly with all the hopes and dreams placed on her about to be fulfilled tomorrow. Or were they? Suppose it was a case of the King’s New Clothes in Hans Christian Andersen’s story, a fantasy motorcar? If one looked at it objectively, could those outlandish windmills inside their monstrous hoods really work? The theory sounded possible, but then the theory taken to its logical limit, Tatiana had pointed out, would mean Harold had indeed discovered the secret of perpetual motion. Mankind had been seeking this for centuries; could a man like Dobbs really have succeeded? It remained to be seen. Tomorrow.

Despite his antipathy to motorcars, Auguste found he was interested in whether the Dolly Dobbs worked or not. Canterbury was fifty-five miles from London Bridge, the beginning of the Dover Road along which they would travel. Add to that a few miles for starting from Hyde Park Corner, plus about seven miles from Canterbury to Martyr House, and the run would be over sixty-five miles, well in excess of the capabilities of current electric motorcars. If Dolly succeeded, the glory would reflect on Tatiana’s club; if it didn’t, would the reverse be true? Suddenly he realised he was as eager to see the motorcar’s success as Harold could have wished.

He peered beneath Dolly’s wheels into the suspended pit and the circular staircase going down to the basement, in which a few stores and sand buckets were stored. Alongside him was the massive block and tackle equipment suspended on frames attached to H-shaped girders on the motorhouse roof. Its purpose, Tatiana had told him proudly when the premises were converted earlier this year, was to pull engines out of the motorcars. Horses, he had traitorously thought, required no such maintenance. Not quite knowing why, he
went down the staircase and through the interconnecting doorway to the basement of the repair house where Fred stored the larger spares and tools. Did he expect to find Thomas Bailey or some other spy hiding there? If so, he was disappointed. There was nothing living there. He ran up the steps into the repair house where Leo was working on what appeared to Auguste’s inexpert eye to be a pile of waste rubber.

‘What time will Fred be back?’

‘Around twelve, he said, Mr Didier. I won’t go till he gets here, whether Miss Hart comes or not.’

Telling himself he felt reassured, Auguste returned to the kitchens. His mind was still not entirely on the intricacies of ice creams, mousses, terrines, raised pies and the thousand and one details of trying to organise a banquet to take place at a distance. It was a hard job to refrain from intimating that Pierre might have forgotten the horseradish sauce, or the marinated olives, but even more impolite for him to sneak around checking himself, especially as Pierre was fully conscious of what he was doing. He would have to leave those tasks until Pierre and the staff left, which they had agreed should be no later than twelve thirty in view of the fact that they would be in again at five for a frantic two hours of packing and last-moment tasks before leaving to join the royal train at Victoria.

Auguste was still amazed at the lack of thought devoted by diners to the hours of work that went into the preparation of the delights they took so much for granted; the hours of straining purées through muslin, the time spent on the spun sugar that adorned their
pièces montées
. Yet it was all necessary. Particularly for tomorrow. His Majesty had an uncanny knack of noticing the thousandth and first detail, were it to be forgotten. He was always polite in pointing it out but it would be remembered.

At twenty to twelve Tatiana appeared once more. ‘Only Maud, Agatha, Isabel and Hugh left in the lounge now, thank goodness. They have every appearance of staying for ever. What’s happening in the motor house?’

‘Leo is there. Neither Hester nor Fred has arrived yet but I will be here to see all is well. You must go home to sleep and prepare for tomorrow.’

Tatiana wearily shook her head. ‘Not till everything and everyone is settled in the motor stable. I’ll stay here until you leave. I won’t get in your way. I could do some washing-up.’

‘You could
not
,’ Auguste said firmly, alarmed. The staff had been outraged at Madam President’s appropriation of their tasks when she was discovered helping the scullery maid out on one occasion.

She laughed. ‘Very well. Perhaps I could help you cut things up instead.’

He eyed her suspiciously. ‘You could not.’

‘May I make some cocoa, then?’

‘You may.’

Hester Hart arrived at five to twelve and drove her Serpollet into a motor house. She inspected the remaining three motorcars and identified them. Like the Serpollet, she was steaming, in her case at the injustice done to her by Roderick and Phyllis. Just because Phyllis Lockwood had a baron in the family many generations back, who had performed some service in losing the American colony for England, her pedigree was deemed superior to hers. Phyllis was
persona grata
here, despite being a mere picture-postcard actress, and she, despite all she had achieved, was
non grata
. It was like school all over again. Well, when her picture appeared in the
Illustrated London News
, posing with the Dolly Dobbs, and
when she sat at His Majesty’s side as the triumphant driver thereof, their faces would rapidly change. Some of His Majesty’s best friends were in trade, just like her own father.

Hester threw one of the rugs Fred provided for passengers into the rear seat of the Dolly Dobbs and stalked into the repair house which Leo was about to leave.

‘Where’s Fred?’

‘I’m here, miss.’ Fred appeared at the outer doorway. ‘You can go now, Leo.’

Leo thankfully obeyed.