To his surprise, however, there was a very solid modem policeman on the front steps to Hathertree Hall, perhaps to reassure visitors that no vampires would be tolerated here. As Mary turned to lead Auguste round the side of the building to the trade entrance, he was alarmed to see someone he knew coming through the main entrance to the house. It was Inspector Egbert Rose of Scotland Yard.
“What are you playing hell and tommy here for?” Egbert asked, as taken aback as Auguste.
“Visiting the servants’ hall for luncheon.”
“I hope there’s no fish stew on the menu,” Egbert commented inexplicably. “The earl’s been murdered.”
Auguste saw no connection between the two, but his heart sank. He had been involved with murder cases before with Egbert, and despite his liking for the inspector the task of detection came a very poor second to his main love in life. He was after all a master chef, and cooking, not murder, was his métier.
“You are sure it was murder?” he asked cautiously.
“You don’t drown by accident that way, nor choose it for killing yourself.”
“Er — which way?”
“Head in a bowl of fish stew.”
Auguste gazed at him in disbelief. Egbert was fond of jests, and this must surely be one. He pulled himself together. “What kind of fish stew?” he asked with a serious face. Now surely Egbert would laugh.
But he did not. “Cook said it was...” Egbert consulted his notes. “Conger eel done with sherry, water, and herbs.”
Auguste reeled as he realised Egbert was entirely serious. Stewed eels and conger-eel soup had been among the famous cook Alexis Soyer’s recipes, but conger eels were hardly the kind of cuisine he would have expected at an earl’s table.
“One of His Lordship’s favourites,” Mary said approvingly.
Auguste found his voice. “But how could he drown in it?”
“Huge silver bowl, deep and wide,” Egbert replied. “Someone decided to hold his head down in it until he drowned. That’s my belief.”
Auguste struggled to find words to fit this terrible image, but his voice came out almost as a squeak. “Did not any of his fellow diners object?”
“There was no one with him. Wife dines separately.”
“Always does, do Her Ladyship,” Mary intervened. “Says His Lordship brings spiders into the Hall’s dining room to drive her away. Now His Lordship’s gone. I knew it. I have the sight.”
Auguste gazed around the cavernous dining room of Hathertree Hall, where the signs of the recent tragedy were all too evident, although thankfully the body of the late earl was no longer present. Nor was Mary, who had with some difficulty been despatched to the servants’ hall where Auguste would join her for luncheon. Luncheon had ceased to appeal to him, having seen the remains of the congealed conger-eel stew, but Egbert had been insistent he keep to this plan. “You understand how these servants’ halls work — very handy you being on the spot.”
Auguste did not agree. Lumps of cold eel floated in an ornamented silver bowl so splendid it deserved the most delicate of fare within it, and splashes of an ill-prepared stock still remained on the table together with a Worcester plate pushed to one side. More liquid had stained the upholstery of the surrounding chairs.
“Not like my dinner table,” Egbert remarked, seeing Auguste hastily turning his attention to the rest of the room.
Auguste saw his point. This imposing and elegantly designed room was about forty feet in length, with graceful eighteenth-century sideboards, cupboards, and table, the latter long enough to seat over twenty people. Hunting prints adorned the walls and gleaming silver covered the table. Although the earl always dined alone, it always remained fully set, Egbert told him. This formal dining room could have taken its place in hundreds of great mansions, Auguste thought. There were few signs of Dracula here or indeed of any eccentricity on behalf of the owners — and yet the earl had been drowned in stew. Not a frequent occurrence.
“Do you yet know who could have murdered the poor earl?” he asked Egbert, still grappling with the sheer frightfulness of the crime.
“Restricted possibilities. He was getting on in years and on the dotty side, it seems to me. Only four people had permission to enter while he was dining. Anyone else was promptly thrown out. The footman found him when he came to serve the dessert. He was one of the four. The butler, a Mr. Hargreaves, was there as His Lordship arrived, and stayed until the stew was served, and then he left just after the footman, James. The housekeeper, Mrs. Parsons, was one of the four too, but denies she came anywhere near the dining room last evening. The earl’s wife was the fourth but she ate dinner in her rooms as she always does. When James realised the earl was dead he ran out screaming, which brought the butler running in, and he sent a messenger for the police. They called us in. Nothing like shifting over responsibility like a sack of potatoes.”
“Who inherits?” Auguste asked practically, trying to keep his eyes averted from the scene of this atrocious if incongruous murder.
“A second cousin, a Mr. Alfred Wheal, a farmer in Sussex, now the eleventh earl of Catsfield. Should be arriving any time now.”
“Did he spend a lot of time at Hathertree Hall?”
“None at all, I gather. Deceased couldn’t stand the sight of him. Forbade him the house until he was dead.”
And now he was. Could that be a line to follow? Auguste took another careful look at the room. Everything looked so conventionally grand but even in the best-kept rooms spiders lurked, just as passions raged within the most conventional of men. Spiders, like passions, were shy of the light and of human society. Spiders spun webs to trap unwary flies, just as humans too could be overtaken by the emotions of others.
The route to the servants’ hall revealed a far different picture of Hathertree Hall from the dining room. Dust was everywhere, in the air, on the floors, on the musty prints and hangings on the walls, and where doors were open, Auguste glimpsed the same neglected picture inside. Windows were shuttered and fireplaces and hearths were littered with ashes and charred coals. Carpets and furniture were dingy and uncared for. This did not bode well for what he would find in the kitchens and servants’ hall, he thought. It was perhaps as well that luncheon had already ceased to be appealing. Mary Bacon’s opinion of the cuisine might well have been formed through the rose-tinted spectacles of yesteryear.
The smells emerging from the kitchens slightly reassured him, however, and to his relief the servants’ hall, while hardly opulent, was of the same standard of cleanliness and comfort as the dining room. The lower servants — surely far too few of them for this large establishment — were already at the table and awaiting the arrival of the upper servants. Any lingering hopes Auguste might have had for the cuisine rapidly vanished. A meagre selection of cold meats and what might have been a shepherd’s pie for a particularly unfortunate shepherd were awaiting the moment to wreak vengeance on their consumers. Sitting on Mary’s far side was a footman, perhaps forty or so, who seemed more lively than the rest of the servants and proved to be James, who had discovered the body. Auguste looked at him carefully. Discoverers of the bodies were always of interest in an investigation.