Murder In The Motor Stable

by Amy Myers

Genres: General Fiction; Historical Fiction; Mystery

Synopsis

The ninth Auguste Didier mystery. 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.

Release date: October 24, 2013

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 318

Sample

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 die-hards, 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.’


‘So the Dolly Dobbs will carry a spare battery?’ Auguste tried again, ignoring his throbbing eye.

‘A spare?’ Tatiana was amazed at such ignorance. ‘Weight versus range is the whole problem. How can they carry another battery? They
would travel even less distance. Of course, if the secret Edison battery being developed fulfils expectations . . .’


Auguste’s attention wandered. Motoring was much like cooking, after all. Too much flavouring and a dish was ruined; too little
produced the same result. ‘So what is different about the Dolly Dobbs?’ Auguste brought himself back with some effort from
a memory of his écrevisses à la Maisie.


‘The same as that between a soufflé à la Mrs Marshall and a masterpiece by Auguste Didier.’


Auguste looked at Tatiana suspiciously for any sign of irony. ‘It is true my soufflé des violettes is of great quality, though perhaps vanilla is not—’


‘Harold Dobbs has solved the problem – or so he claims.’


‘You mean whether vanilla is essential to bring out the flavour—’

‘I do not mean that, Auguste.’ Tatiana looked annoyed. ‘The problem of the range of the electric car.’

‘How?’ her husband asked penitently.

‘Would you reveal the secret of a new recipe before tasting it?’ Tatiana replied loftily. In fact she did not know, much to
her chagrin. ‘But you will see the car for yourself at the trials.’


‘I will?’ Auguste was instantly suspicious.

‘It is to be a rally and social event as well as the official Motor Club of Great Britain road trial for the Dolly Dobbs.
The whole club will leave in procession from Hyde Park Corner. We shall drive our motorcars along the Dover road to Martyr
House near Barham Downs on the far side of Canterbury, where His Majesty will greet us. He is staying with the Earl of Tunstall.’


‘And the Countess?’ Auguste could not resist innocently adding, since Isabel, Lady Tunstall, was well-known in society for
her lack of adherence to the marriage vows.


‘As you say, and the Countess.’ The wild oats of His Majesty might all now be cast but there was still room for respectably
cultivated wheat in his social itinerary.


Auguste greeted Tatiana’s news with even more foreboding. In his experience any event with both His Majesty and himself involved
was likely to go seriously wrong, usually to the detriment of Auguste Didier. He must resist Tatiana’s pleas to accompany
her on the Léon Bollée at all costs, he decided. ‘Delighted though I would be to meet Bertie again, I fear, chérie, I have arranged to discuss Dining With Didier with my publisher.’ There was a great deal more of his projected ten-volume magnum opus in his head than there was on paper,
but it proved a most useful ‘Bunbury’, to employ Mr Oscar Wilde’s method of evading unwelcome appointments.


‘You must cancel it.’

‘Je m’excuse?’


‘There is the banquet.’

‘What banquet?’

‘The one you are to prepare in the gardens of Martyr House next Thursday.’

There was a brief silence.

‘I could not tell you before, Auguste,’ Tatiana added placatingly. ‘Bertie has only just thought of it.’

Various verbs that combined well with Bertie rose to Auguste’s lips, but what was the point of letting fly with them?

There were distinct disadvantages in marrying into even the outer purlieus of the British royal family, but the chief one
was the restriction on his cooking. An artist should be free, not ordered as to where he could or not practise his art. Did
the Pope order Michelangelo to paint only for him? No. Yet His Majesty King Edward VII had made it a condition of his marriage
to Tatiana, a remote Romanov and hence his cousin, that he should not cook for gainful employment; he might (like Alexis Soyer,
Auguste seethed) cook for charity, he might cook at private homes, and he bally well had to cook for the King whenever so commanded.


When Tatiana opened her Ladies’ Motoring Club earlier this year, Auguste had been overwhelmed with pleasure when she asked
him to be honorary chef at important dinners and banquets, of which tonight was one. Cooking banquets for the King was a different
matter, not because he had any doubts as to his ability to outshine any other chef in the country (save his old maître Escoffier
perhaps), but because he and his friend Chief Inspector Egbert Rose of Scotland Yard had found that the King and themselves,
once in proximity, had an unfortunate tendency to run into calamity. On several occasions the calamity had been murder, and
Auguste had been forced into the role of detective. He disliked it; he was a chef, not a Sherlock. He saw the apprehensive eyes of his wife, however, and nobly replied, ‘How delightful.’


Relieved, Tatiana laughed. ‘I will drive you down.’

‘Won’t you be driving the Dolly Dobbs?’ He could at least avoid this ordeal.

‘No. Agatha – the Duchess of Dewbury – is to drive it, since she is its inventor’s patron.’

Auguste faced the inevitable. The banquet must be prepared in meticulous detail and transported from London; he might make
a last-minute appeal to travel earlier. And even if it was refused, if Hortensia Millward heard of the trials it could hardly
fail to prove a most spirited journey. Mounted highwaymen at Blackheath were a distinct possibility. Auguste cheered up, even
if it would mean the waste of a July day when he might be in their small Queen Anne’s Gate garden discussing recipes with
Mrs Jolly, their cook.


‘Very well. I will prepare a banquet to excel over all banquets. And furthermore the dinner tonight will be my finest. You
shall enjoy every morsel.’


‘I hope so.’

‘Why do you doubt it?’ Auguste was somewhat indignant.

‘I have my committee meeting first.’

‘But what is so unusual about this meeting?’


‘The agenda.’

‘And that is?’

‘Hats and Hester Hart.’

The treasurer of the Ladies’ Motoring Club, Lady Bullinger, crammed her cap on to her coiffured hair as firmly as she wished
she could crush that upstart Hester Hart. The man’s cap, goggles, serviceable large fingerless gloves and tightly-fitting
buttoned mackintosh coat made an odd match with her blue evening dinner dress, but Maud was a practical woman, and the evening was damp.


‘What are your views on snakes, Snelgrove?’ she demanded of her maid as the latter handed her the hatbox containing a more
suitable head-covering for fashionable dining.


Snelgrove had only seen snakes in the reptile house of the Zoological Gardens; no gallivanting over the Continent in a racing
car like her ladyship, but she had her answer ready.


‘Keep an eye on them, milady.’

Lady Bullinger snorted. ‘Quite right, Snelgrove.’

That was what she would do to Hester Hart. One couldn’t go anywhere this season without falling over that woman, seeing her
face grinning out from the pages of the Illustrated London News, posed at Palmyra, dallying in Damascus, jolting through Jericho, and, worse, lording it over London. Every time she was
forced to greet the woman in the Motoring Club or out of it, she had the temerity to hint that she had not forgotten their
earlier acquaintance. Well, nor had Maud. She wasn’t ashamed of what she’d done. On the contrary, she was proud of it. All
the knighthoods in the world couldn’t have taken the buttons out of that family. All the same, Maud was a practical woman.
It might be better not to antagonise Miss Hart, as society now seemed determined to lionise her. By next season she would
be forgotten, but for the moment it was wiser to tolerate her.


Like HMS Warrior under full steam, Lady Bullinger headed down the stairs of her Wimpole Street town house, imperiously waved the motor servant
out of the driving seat and into the rear, and took the wheel of her new 6-cylinder Napier touring car hers. . .