“Perhaps,” came Egbert Rose’s noncommittal reply.
“But why are you here, Inspector?” Auguste frowned. Despite his help to Egbert Rose on one or two cases in the past, he was hardly a substitute for the entire Metropolitan Police detective department when it came to solving crimes.
“Your Mr. Phelps was still alive when he was found. He managed to say a few words to the constable who found him.”
“And what were they?”
“The constable took them to be the name of his killer. They were: Mr. Auguste Didier.” Egbert Rose’s gimlet eyes fixed themselves firmly on him.
“You cannot believe that,” Auguste stammered in shock. Surely the inspector knew him well enough not to think that he, a master chef, could be guilty of murder?
Egbert Rose relented. “Knowing you, Mr. Didier, no. But I need some explanation of why you should have been on the victim’s mind.”
What had earlier been a delightful meringue and Chantilly swan began to look extremely unappealing. “It was because he had dined here, not last night but the evening before. I had offered him a free dinner since it was cold outside. He told me he thought he might be murdered. I did not take him seriously,” Auguste replied miserably, “as his patter was always about local murders.”
“Perhaps someone did take him seriously,” Egbert grunted. “Tell me what he talked about.”
Auguste promptly did so, and then, for the next few days, was forced to agonise in frustration. The inspector had left to “look into it” after Auguste had faithfully recounted all the three stories to him; Egbert Rose had also informed him he would be returning. To arrest him, perhaps? Did he really think that only a day after that fateful meal Auguste would have pursued Phelps into the darkness to kill him?
Auguste felt he was in danger of becoming a Strand eccentric himself. Surely nothing could link him to this terrible crime? He would have been only fourteen when even the most recent of the murders was committed. Nevertheless, he realised it was only his word as to what Montague Phelps had claimed might be the danger facing him.
At last the inspector returned, a week after his first visit. The waiting was over, and that at least was a relief.
Not quite over, it seemed. “One of those almond pastries wouldn’t go amiss, Mr. Didier.”
Auguste speedily obliged and then he could wait no longer. “Did you discover anything that would help clear me, Inspector?”
“Not enough,” was the far from cheering reply. “The owner of that house with the locked-up chamber, Joseph Taylor, has been dead for thirty years.”
Auguste had mixed feelings. “So Montague Phelps couldn’t have seen or heard of him in London recently.” If this applied to all the cases, then the answer would lie between a random assailant and Mr. Auguste Didier. And he knew which would have to receive priority from Scotland Yard.
“Agreed,” the inspector said drily. “But he left his house to his brother on condition that the room should still remain locked. Eventually, as Phelps told you, the hotel bought it, and lo and behold there was the skeleton of the missing bride, large crinoline and all.”
There was something odd there. Auguste did some quick arithmetic. “But the bridegroom locked the door fifty years ago, in eighteen forty-four. I’m sure there were no crinolines then.”
Egbert Rose looked mildly interested. “If so, the corpse couldn’t have been there when the room was locked—”
Auguste could not wait, but burst in excitedly, “No, but afterwards where better to hide a corpse than a room everyone is forbidden to enter?”
“You mean Joseph Taylor popped a second bride-to-be in there, not his first?” the inspector asked caustically.
“Or the brother could have put one in.” Auguste’s mind raced ahead. “His dead brother Joseph would automatically be blamed. If Joseph died about eighteen sixty-four, and his brother moved in soon afterwards, there would have been at least a few years when crinolines were still fashionable.” Auguste desperately tried to remember when the crinolines had reduced in size. Surely not until late in the ‘sixties?
The inspector ruminated. “Either of them could have done it in that case. I’ll ask for more details, but it may be too late to get more scientific evidence now. The brother is still very much alive, although a fair age. A philanthropist, I gather.”
“With or without a wife?” Auguste enquired hopefully.
“Not yet known. Now this second case, Miss Gabrielle Flower. There was another witness. Another clergyman, believe it or not. The Strand must have been crawling with them that day. That makes two real clergymen at least, plus our distressed Mr. Phelps.”
Auguste clutched at an unlikely straw. “Perhaps the clergyman witness was the murderer?”
Rose regarded him with pity. “Would he risk staying around to get himself hanged? We’ve checked. He lives near Epsom now. Incidentally, there was a statement from the Earl of Dover in the file that Miss Flower had mentioned a former admirer who was a clergyman in Warwickshire where she was born and brought up.”
Auguste began to think it was increasingly possible that witness and murderer were the same, but he decided not to press the point. “And the third case?”
“The late Adolphus Bracket. His widow is dead but his daughter’s in London. She was only ten when her father was murdered and after that she and her mother went to the west country. I’ve had a word with her — she’s on the stage herself and has just come back here to play at Duke’s in Shaftesbury’s Avenue. Well thought of. She confirmed the suspect was an Italian; his name was Giovanni Fantino, who played walk-on parts at the Albion. He was thought to have fled back to Italy, but the Italian police had no trace of him.”
“He could have returned to London recently,” Auguste suggested eagerly.
“We at the Yard managed to think of that for ourselves,” Egbert Rose replied dampeningly. “And that he might not be on the stage now.”
“Perhaps working in a restaurant,” Auguste said undaunted. “Even Romanos, which might explain why Montague Phelps moved from his usual pitch to outside the Galaxy on Tuesday.”
“With your luck, Mr. Didier, you’ll have a real salmagundi here tonight. All three murderers will come marching in to supper, and you can pick out the one that suits you. I told you I like a little bit of everything.”
Chuckling, Egbert Rose departed, leaving Auguste to contemplate the daunting prospect before him if he was to clear his name. A salmagundi indeed. All the ingredients were before him — but it seemed it was up to him to present the dish itself.
Mary Bracket’s dressing room at the Albion was full of mementos not only of her own career but her father’s as well. Auguste could see dated-looking studio photographs, playbills, even an oil painting. The late Adolphus Bracket strode over this room as a Colossus, just as he had at the Albion. He remembered once listening to the distressed gentleman in the Strand, as he imitated Bracket’s portrayal of Eugene Aram, staggering theatrically as he declaimed:
“I only saw beneath my furious blows
Some writhing vermin — not a human life.
Great God! This moment I can hear his cry—”
At that moment Mary Bracket entered the dressing room. Auguste had been expecting the dramatic entrance so favoured by her father, but she proved to be a charming, graceful woman in her late twenties, with none of the imperiousness he was used to in ladies of her eminence in the profession (except at the Galaxy, of course).
“Did your mother speak about the tragedy to you?” he asked her sympathetically.
Her face grew sad. “She was so stricken with grief, Mr. Didier, that she did not live long after my father’s death. She died when I was fifteen, but she had talked endlessly of his murder.”