Murder Under The Kissing Bough

by Amy Myers

Genres: General Fiction; Historical Fiction; Mystery

Synopsis

The sixth Auguste Didier mystery. At the exclusive Cranton's Hotel in London, master chef Auguste Didier is host to a varied party of guests intent on enjoying a real English Christmas, complete with boar's head, Christmas trees, kissing boughs, party games and ghost stories. But not all is as it seems beneath the happy veneer of festive pleasures, for a killer stalks the elegant corridors. How could a baroness from the Continent, three pretty wards of a Foreign Office official, a soldier on leave from the South African War, a rich industrialist, a maiden lady from the provinces, a young married couple, a French diplomat and his beautiful wife with a roving eye, or a crusty retired army officer be embroiled in murder - not to mention a plot to assassinate the Prince of Wales? Auguste Didier, while anxiously ensuring the hotel cuisine reaches his own high standards, works his way through the complex ingredients of murder to put an end to the mysterious and terrible deeds that have not only ruined his Christmas but also disrupted his kitchens.

Release date: October 24, 2013

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 316

Sample

Prologue

It clawed at his face. It fought his every breath. He drew deep, gasping gulps of air, then spluttered as the fog caught at
his throat in triumph. Damp and oppressive, the blanket that had woven itself so insidiously round him distorted reality,
seeking its final victory over his mind. A London Particular, they called it. Particular what? he thought savagely, ridiculously,
his head swimming partly from the medicine he was taking for the perpetual rhum that seemed to single him out for a vicious attack each winter, and partly from disorientation in the fog.


Auguste Didier gulped; he was, he assured himself, a practical man. His French logic would come to his aid, and subdue the
wild phantoms of imagination that were the heritage of his English mother. He had, he reasoned, set out from Albion Street
such a short time ago that he could hardly be far from it now, despite his blundering by error into the old cemetery of St
George. Here lay buried Mrs Radcliffe, authoress of the Mysteries of Udolpho, whose Gothic horrors it would not be wise to dwell on at the moment. It had taken some time to find his way out again, and
relief had made him careless – he had turned a corner, but which? And where was he now? Logic also reminded him that every
mortal person and every wise animal was safely at home, and he would do well to follow their example speedily, but the fog
seemed to thicken. Curzon Street and London’s Mayfair had never seemed more attractive.


‘I will take basil, and balm, catnep and clivers,’ he told himself fervently. ‘I will take linseed, liquorice; I will take
Monsieur Soyer’s lait de poule, but never, never again will I take Armstrong’s Black Drop medicine for colds.’


Dizzily he clung to a lamp-post, and tried once more to think where he might be. Connaught Place – this was Connaught Place.
Of course. Relief flooded over him. This was the site of the Three-legged Mare, the old Tyburn tree where so many had perished
in public executions, where bones were still found sometimes during digging work. The atmosphere still seemed foetid, even
in this November of 1900, the threshold of the twentieth century. In this thick fog, relieved only by the occasional pool
of dim light from a street light, it was all too easy to think of the murderers that had died here. Murder. . .


He shivered. Murder indeed. This was a fog. Murder had not touched his life now for well over a year; his visits to dear Egbert
Rose now had little to do with the business of Scotland Yard. They had been free to concentrate on the important matters of
life, to discuss the intriguing subject of a cuisine fit for the twentieth century.


Absorbed in this compelling subject he cautiously worked his way along, crossing roads hurriedly as the occasional carriage,
its sound deadened in the fog, loomed up as a monstrous shape in the gloom. One came upon him so suddenly he had to run, stumbling,
catching his breath with painful difficulty, as he cannoned into iron railings on the opposite side of the road. Clinging
to them, he worked his way along in the direction of Grosvenor Square. He should turn to the right surely, down South Audley
Street. But there was no right turn. And these railings, they were not those of Mayfair, he realised, fighting an irrational
panic welling up inside him. These houses towering up into the fog above him were taller, more uniform. He must still be north
of Oxford Street, and once again lost.


He smiled at the irony. He, Auguste Didier, born in the sun of Provence. What was he doing here soaked in the fogs and rains
of England? For a moment he could not think what kept him here.


‘Custard tansy,’ he reminded himself firmly. ‘Quince sauce. Marsh-grazed mutton. . .’

But even delights such as these failed to calm him. He stopped, trying to concentrate on a reasoned plan to work out where
he was. Where there were railings there must eventually be steps to a door.


He laughed at himself, glad at this evidence that his powers of detection were not deserting him. Then the unpleasant thought
occurred to him that unless he found out where he was he might never see Egbert again. Could one die of fog? A nameless master
chef found dead on the pavement only yards from his home. Panic began to grip him. He would knock on the nearest door, plead
for sanctuary. Nay, demand it. The owner would welcome the famous Auguste Didier. Even Mrs Marshall, who ran a rival cooking
school to his, would open her doors to Auguste Didier on a night like this. Rival? Did he say rival? Nonsense. There was no
comparison. He, Auguste, ran an establishment to teach true cuisine, the highest perfection of the art of cookery. Mrs Marshall—

He stopped. He knew where he was at last. He could just make out the name over the door as the fog swirled around it. Cranton’s
Hotel. Though it was a hotel no longer, for its doors had closed for the last time; the rooms that had entertained Lord Byron,
Robert Browning and Thomas Carlyle were shabby and dusty, the famous wood panelling left to rot after the last of the Crantons had died some years ago. Now the hotel was but a sad reminder of days that were gone. Someday, he too would have
a hotel, he told himself, a hotel whose kitchens would rival those of his old master, Auguste Escoffier, at the new Carlton
Hotel.


Heartened, he pulled his Raglan overcoat more closely round his neck, as a swirl of fog left its damp trail on his face and
neck. He knew now that he was at the tradesmen’s entrance in the mews at the back of the hotel, which fronted Portman Square.
He mused on all the tradesmen’s entrances he’d known in his life. Would he ever earn the right to go in the front entrance?
Firmly he reminded himself of all he had to be grateful for, yet as the fog pressed in upon him, the task was difficult.


‘Here? At Cranton’s? Christmas?’


The voice, a woman’s, was hoarse, coming from nowhere, urgent and compelling, yet he could see no one in the fog, deepened
by the gloom of late afternoon. A murmur in answer. Another woman. Strange. Out alone at this time of day? And one voice was
cultured, the other seemed rough. They could only be a few feet away from him, though the sound was both magnified and distorted
by the fog.


He could offer his services in escort. They might travel the better in company.

‘J’arrive!’ he cried out eagerly.


He left the security of the railings and plunged towards where he guessed the two women might be, just as the fog was pierced
by a strange sound, a gurgle, a muffled choking. Then nothing. Then another gurgle. Auguste stood for a second transfixed.
Someone needed help. Which way to go? What had happened? The noises seemed to have come from all round him, the impression
of someone, something passing close. And then there was nothing but the oppressive fog swirling down again.


He ran blindly for a few yards, tripped and fell. He scrambled to his feet and limped another few yards, fog and fear catching
him in their toils within this world of grey. But now the grey was broken by another colour. Red. Red blood oozing over the
pavement in front of him. And the huddled body of a woman – no, a girl.


In an unreal world, he knelt down, turning her slightly until sightless eyes gave him the answer to his fear. He hardly needed
to feel for a pulse. She was dead. Slowly he stood up and watched a trickle of blood run into the roadway, as the fog closed
once more around him.


Torn by conflicting emotions, Auguste dithered at the door to the kitchens. How could he entrust the important matter of the
duck forcemeat to a new untried chef? Yet how could he superintend the work without offering the greatest insult one chef
could offer another – lack of trust? Perhaps in this case he might plead justification as he did not know Signor Fancelli’s
work. . .


No. Auguste’s hand removed itself reluctantly from the knob of the door as its owner reminded himself that he was both maître d’hôtel and host. And Mine Host, he told himself regretfully, did not involve himself in the cooking, however great the temptation.
The merest eye on the kitchen and tables would be all that was called for, save that he had reserved for himself the task
of final preparation of the boar’s head, and moreover intended to head the procession bearing the boar’s head in for Christmas
luncheon. He deserved it, Auguste told himself defiantly. After all, what was the point of being the host if other people
had all the exciting duties?


The kitchen door flew open from the other side and Auguste blushed lest he be thought to be loitering at the door. But Antonio
Fancelli did not seem to notice.


‘Monsieur Didier, the pudding,’ he said accusingly. ‘You wished to stir him. You ’ave no come.’

‘Ah.’ Auguste’s chest swelled. Maître Escoffier, after all, would not allow anything important to escape his eagle eye, not even the dreaded but so important plum pudding. The stirring was but a pretext to ensure proper attention had
been paid to it. His mind flew back a few years to stirring the Christmas pudding with Maisie, the ritual so beloved of the
English in honour of the Three Kings. Dear Maisie. He smiled a little ruefully. How could he have refused her request? And
after all, there was no certainty that some villainy was to take place at Cranton’s. He carefully refrained from thinking
of murder. He had had quite enough of murder. . .


No one had believed him. Not even Inspector Egbert Rose of Scotland Yard.

‘But there was a body,’ Auguste had shouted endlessly, only to be faced with politely disbelieving faces.


Rose was convinced that it had been his imagination. Auguste’s ‘body’ had become quite a joke at the Factory. Twitch, or Sergeant
Stitch to give him his correct title (something Rose frequently forgot to do), had seen to that. Twitch was no admirer of
Auguste Didier’s gifts as a detective and was delighted to see that Frenchie brought down more than a peg, ‘a whole clothes
line’, as he smugly put it. Rose told Auguste as tactfully as possible that he must have been overworking. His men had crawled
over every inch of the roads surrounding Cranton’s Hotel; there was no body, not a trace of blood.


‘Naturally,’ Auguste had retorted crossly, ‘the murderess had time to get rid of it.’

By the time he had managed to persuade a shopkeeper that he was not a madman and that a telephone call to Scotland Yard was
all he required, there would have been time to move twenty bodies.


‘How?’ Rose asked him bluntly. ‘Dead bodies weigh heavy. Your murderess couldn’t just heave her over a shoulder and walk off.’


‘Perhaps she lives nearby,’ countered Auguste defiantly.

‘Young ladies don’t live alone,’ grunted Rose. ‘And it might occasion comment if she walked into the family parlour with a
corpse.’


‘Then someone else moved it,’ glared Auguste.

‘Why?’ asked Rose, kindly enough.

‘I do not know,’ shouted Auguste. ‘This is your job.’


‘Not without a body it isn’t,’ said Rose shortly, avoiding Auguste’s reproachful look. ‘No girl’s even been reported missing.’

‘Surely this is not unusual in London?’ retorted Auguste. ‘Even nowadays, many, many girls leave their homes for the streets,
and no one notices if they disappear.’


‘The aim of the white slavers is to keep the girls alive, not kill ’em off,’ observed Rose drily.

Egbert Rose was tired, and he’d wasted more than a week on and off in a fruitless search for Auguste’s ‘body’, a fact Twitch
was making great play with at the Factory. It was a week he could ill afford, for there were grave matters on hand that if
proved to have substance would far outweigh the disappearance of one girl. Matters that could not be discussed with Auguste.


‘You’ve had a touch of influenza, I expect. Does funny things to you. Makes you see things.’ Rose made an effort to break
the uncomfortable silence.


‘It is true I had some opium-based medicine. But so little that—’

‘’Allucinations,’ proclaimed Twitch happily from the doorway.

‘Can blood be a hallucination?’ Auguste demanded passionately. There had been a smear of blood on the sleeve of his overcoat, which had left them unimpressed.


‘Come from a red herring,’ snorted Twitch and sniggered in surprise at having made a joke.

Auguste’s eyes travelled to Rose. Rose said nothing, but the corners of his mouth quivered. Auguste departed with what dignity
he could muster and had not seen his friend since.


The shock he received two days later was therefore all the more unpleasant. He had called at her request to take tea with
dear Maisie, who had vanished both from his arms and from the Galaxy Theatre to marry into the ranks of the aristocracy. Maisie,
her plump curves encased in a flowing blue robe that looked a cross between a Lily Langtry jersey dress and a peignoir, was as at ease in Eaton Square as in the green room of the Galaxy. He had seen very little of her since her marriage, and
the summons came as a most delightful surprise. He suppressed the thought that her husband might be proving inferior to himself
in intimate matters, knowing full well that if this was indeed the case Maisie would have no hesitation in making her wishes
known. His hopes, if hopes they were, were doomed. Maisie had business, not love, on her mind.


‘Cranton’s?’ Auguste repeated blankly. ‘Cranton’s?’ wondering whether this were some elaborate conspiracy.


‘Nothing wrong with Cranton’s that a bit of spit and polish won’t put right,’ Maisie said cheerfully. ‘Now what’s wrong? I
thought you’d be pleased, but you look as if you’ve dropped a bad egg into the Christmas pudding.’


‘I do not wish to know anything, anything at all,’ Auguste said vehemently, ‘about Cranton’s.’


Maisie was taken aback at this unexpected response. But she knew Auguste. ‘Very well.’ She sighed heavily. ‘I’ll have to ask someone else. Perhaps Mrs Marshall,’ she added thoughtfully. ‘Or Nicholas Soyer. He’s a descendant of Alexis,
isn’t he? He’s got a good reputation. Perhaps he’d like the job.’


‘No!’ thundered Auguste, roused by the sound of hated rival names.

They eyed each other for a moment.

‘Tell me more about it,’ he said resignedly.

‘I run a travel business, you know,’ said Maisie with some pride. ‘I must say, Auguste, this seed cake is not half bad. I
pinched the recipe from the Ritz.’


‘I am sure its chef would be delighted to hear your recommendation,’ announced Auguste through gritted teeth. ‘Now, kindly
tell me about Cranton’s and about why you are running a business. Does your husband not provide for you? Ah, Maisie, I warned you—’


‘Don’t be so old-fashioned, Auguste.’ Maisie licked her fingers. ‘Now, I couldn’t do that with George here,’ she announced in satisfaction.


‘I am honoured,’ murmured Auguste.

‘George and I have an understanding,’ Maisie told him briskly. ‘At least, I have an understanding and he accepts it. I’ve
provided the son and heir, and a daughter. Now I’m having a year or two off and doing what I want to do. I have to have a
manager, of course, while I do some countessing in between, but I keep an eye on ’im. You know what men are. No attention
to detail.’


‘Now, Maisie, you know very well—’ Auguste stopped as he saw her twinkling at him. Ah, how he remembered that look.

‘I provide a sort of Cook’s Tours for Coronets,’ explained Maisie happily. ‘Lady Gincrack’s Holidays for Gentlefolk. Like
it?’


‘Who is this terrible lady?’ he asked blankly.

‘Me of course. It’s a spare title of George’s family that isn’t used much.’

‘I can understand why.’

‘But it’s splendid for me,’ enthused Maisie. ‘At this time of year I specialise in folks from the colonies who remember their
Christmases and come back to Europe without any ancestral mansions to go to, and in folks left alone here who want to escape
from their own families and find another one for a few days. There’s quite a few of them. So I’ve hired Cranton’s for a Twelve
Days of Christmas party. A grand old English Christmas, wassails and warbling, that sort of thing.’


‘At Cranton’s. Christmas.’ That voice floated through his mind.


‘Non,’ he told her firmly. ‘Absolument pas.’


This Christmas he must consider the future of the cooking school. He would not go anywhere that held the slightest whiff of
any crime, let alone murder. The nightmare of November was with him still. ‘I could not get the staff in time,’ he pleaded,
unwilling to tell her what had happened, ‘train them to produce forcemeat, and puddings to the required standard. And the
dinner, and mince pies, le réveillon for the new century . . . There would be too much to plan for in the time. Yet,’ he was suddenly abstracted, ‘we could have,
I suppose, all roasted fowl, with lighter desserts. And I have always wished to try punch sauce with plum pudding. The boar’s
head of course would be borne in by me, as maître chef.’


‘You haven’t changed, Auguste.’ Maisie was amused. ‘Don’t you ever think of anything but food? I don’t want you to be the
cook.’


‘What?’ His face blanched. ‘Not the chef? Then who? Ah, Maisie, you were not serious about Soyer? You would not wish me to
work under someone?’


‘No, no,’ said Maisie patiently. ‘I want you to be the host, the manager, the maître d’hôtel for the holiday. I plan to drop in myself from time to time. George is going to Switzerland with his dear Mama, and it’s
understood that where dear Mama goes, I don’t. I’ll divide my time between you and the children.’


But Auguste was scarcely listening. ‘The host?’ All those unattainable dreams of his own hotel, for how could he ever afford
to buy his own hotel? Now he was being offered a chance to pretend. . .


‘I’d get you a wonderful chef,’ promised Maisie gleefully, seeing sudden indecision on his face.

He regarded her doubtfully. ‘He must be one who can both cook a baron of beef to perfection as well as the most delicate chanterelles,
who loves both the raised pie and the paté de foie gras, the English crayfish and the. . .’


‘Yes, yes, I’ll make sure,’ Maisie said hastily. ‘You are free, aren’t you?’

Auguste stiffened, his pride under attack. ‘As it happens,’ he said loftily, ‘I am.’ His current pupils would leave in a week’s
time, two weeks before Christmas, and so far he had no new clients. It was tempting – but impossible. ‘But I cannot do it,’
he announced.


‘Why not?’ she said indignantly.

‘Because of murder,’ he blurted out, unable to dissemble any longer.

‘You’re planning one?’ she asked with interest.

‘I fear one,’ he said darkly. ‘I saw one.’


She began to laugh. ‘If you could see my list of guests, Auguste, you’d know there was nothing to worry about. Stuffy as an
embalmed crocodile, this party is. You’ll see.’


‘No, I will not see,’ he said sadly. ‘Hard though it is to refuse you anything, dear Maisie, this I cannot do.’ He rose to
his feet in dignity, then remembered he had not yet tasted that most interesting looking confection, and sat down again.


‘What a pity,’ Maisie smiled sweetly. ‘And the owner of Cranton’s is a friend of Princess Tatiana too! How disappointed your
Tatiana will be.’


Auguste stiffened. He had no idea Maisie knew Tatiana. Now he had no choice. If the owner of Cranton’s was a friend of Tatiana’s,
then to Cranton’s he must go. Otherwise news of his churlishness might reach her ears. Hopeless his love for her might be,
but his honour at least must be kept brightly burnished in her eyes. So to Cranton’s he must go and forget this nonsense,
his wild fancy of murder. After all, Egbert had told him there was no body, so no body existed. It had been his imagination.
And as for what he thought he had heard, had he not just seen the legend Cranton’s Hotel above the doorway? Probably the words, if words there had indeed
been, were Bantams at Christmas, phantoms at Christmas, Canton at Christmas – some reference to the Boxer trouble in China,
perhaps. Certainly nothing to worry him. . .


Auguste stood on the wide wooden staircase in the grand entrance hall of Cranton’s Hotel and sniffed appreciatively; for once
not at food but at the smell of beeswax polish. All around him shone the ornate wood panelling, installed earlier that century,
when the original Adam houses had been converted for use as a hotel. Their uniform high windows on three storeys surmounted
by a smaller row in the attics, presented a majestic front – and rear – to the citizens of London. Old, comfortable furniture
invited use, new Sommier Elastique Portatif spring mattresses from Heal’s awaited occupants, log fires burned already on the
hearths; suddenly Cranton’s was alive again.


Ah, what a Christmas they would have. They would see the century out in style. He had planned menus – this much Maisie had permitted – such as would grace the Prince of Wales’s
own table. His anxiety over the standard of the chef had been calmed by a surreptitious visit to his current establishment,
devoted to Italian cuisine. He had been somewhat shamefaced when Maisie herself arrived with her husband, finding Auguste
the only other diner, engrossed in determining the quality of a soufflé. He had not met the chef, he mentioned innocently.
Who was it?


The three days Auguste had spent at Cranton’s were a time of great anxiety as well as hard work. As manager he had naturally
taken a personal interest in the re-equipment of the kitchens. No matter how good these new gas stoves, they would not replace
the taste of spit-roasted meat. He cast an approving eye at the new cake mixer and chopping device, the Lovelock sausage machine
and tinplate pudding moulds. How right Maître Escoffier was to devote time to inventions to take unnecessary work away. He
had himself been doubtful earlier in his career, seeing routine chores as part of a chefs work. But le maître had proved to him that to use a fruit cutter or mechanical spit freed the chef for more important tasks. He recalled the
day when le maître had shown him a small cube, which he had told him had all the strength of a complete stockpot, or a court-bouillon. A miracle
indeed if it were true, he had marvelled. Why, one could produce a soupe in hours rather than days. It could revolutionise la cuisine.


Auguste still had doubts about his chef at Cranton’s. He was after all Italian, and Italian food in his view consisted of
spaghetti, macaroni, les tomates and no finesse. Could a goose be entrusted to such a person, let alone a plum pudding?


He had been somewhat mollified when Signor Fancelli, who had a definite look of independence in his eye, told him he had been brought up in England, when his parents came to work
in the kitchens of the Café Royal, and that accordingly he held a true cosmopolitan outlook on cuisine. However, these last
three days had shown that he had a distinct leaning towards Parmesan cheese with everything. Indeed, he was as addicted to
it as Mrs Marshall was towards her coralline pepper. Fancelli could only be in his late twenties, Auguste told himself tolerantly.
There was time for him to learn – but not before Christmas. An eye would have to be kept on him, Auguste thought with pleasure.


All had gone well at first. Fancelli had displayed a proper deference towards him. Fire flashed, however, over the matter
of the forcemeat for the goose, after Fancelli had yielded over the wild boar.


‘I am the chef, Monsieur Didier,’ Fancelli said, his plump, short figure quivering with passion.

‘And I am the manager,’ pointed out Auguste.

Signor Fancelli folded his arms. ‘Duck,’ he said tersely.

‘Plum,’ said Auguste, equally tersely.

‘Prune,’ conceded Fancelli, as a gesture of compromise.

‘Non,’ said Auguste.


Antonio Fancelli unfolded his arms, removed his apron and donned his pork-pie hat. ‘I go,’ he announced.

‘It is Christmas Eve,’ said Auguste, standing his ground. He was well used to recalcitrant staff.

‘No plum,’ said Fancelli.

‘Plum and duck,’ said Auguste. ‘With Armagnac.’


Fancelli stood indecisively for a moment. Then: ‘It is so,’ he declared reluctantly.

Henceforth Fancelli was allowed to rule his kitchen, but Auguste was permitted an honorary tour once every two hours, a privilege he had managed not to abuse. Fancelli watched
him warily on each occasion, singing snatches of the works of Signor Verdi or Herr Mozart irritatingly well throughout.


At twelve o’clock on Christmas Eve, Auguste pronounced himself ready and summoned his staff together. He beamed at them happily,
caught by a sudden headiness at the arrival of Christmas. It . . .