I don’t know what I believe anymore.
Murder in Aladdin’s Cave
by Amy Myers
Amy Myers is the author of a half-dozen different mystery series. The earliest of them all, and one of the most popular, is that starring Victorian chef Auguste Didier. This new case is Auguste’s latest — but he’s no longer the author’s only fictional chef/sleuth! 1920s chef Nell Drury features in her next book, Death at the Wychbourne Follies, the second in a new series.
Auguste Didier was in full agreement with Queen Victoria’s declaration: He was not amused. The correct way to greet the opening of the New Year lay in producing a superb turbot à la crème in the delightful surroundings of the theatre-restaurant kitchen. It was not correct for him to be picking his way gingerly down into the bowels of the Galaxy Theatre in search of a parasol used in a burlesque performed twenty years earlier, in the mid 1870s. His ordeal was due to a request from Princess Petal, who was the leading lady in tonight’s pantomime, the traditional treat for children and their parents at Christmastime. It was true that the Princess Petal — Hetty Clogg in everyday life — was extremely pretty, but nevertheless the aroma of herbs in his kitchen was far superior to that of Aladdin’s Cave, the theatre’s name for the huge storage room reeking of stale air and dust from long-ago productions.
Auguste shivered. There was light here, thanks to the need to operate the understage machinery, but not enough to make this a desirable mission, especially as the charlotte à la chantilly demanded his attention.
“Strewth!”
Auguste heard this unearthly scream just as he reached the last step. Running towards him was Jacob Hunt, who maintained the many wigs demanded by the Galaxy productions. Jacob looked as terrified as he sounded. A slightly built, nervous man at the best of times, this lack of control was nevertheless unusual.
“What’s wrong, Jacob?” Auguste asked in alarm. This evening’s performance of The Princess and the Bean was due to begin in just under an hour’s time, at seven-thirty, and with the cellarmen not yet at their stations by the machinery, he would have to deal alone with whatever catastrophe had taken place.
“Body,” Jacob blurted out. His usual grin was absent and his face was ashen.
Auguste relaxed. “You just saw one of those dummies from Lady Katie’s Conundrum,” he reassured him. The dummies used for Miss Fanshawe’s Fashion House in that production had been very lifelike.
Jacob shook his head violently. “Body,” he repeated. “Blood.” He pointed to the doorway to Aladdin’s Cave and held out his hands, on which Auguste could indeed see traces of blood. “I shoved tonight’s wigs in the props room upstairs,” Jacob rushed on, “then came down here. I was after an old Black Club — hair comes from Spain, and the guv’nor said Henry Irving once wore it. And now look what’s happened. I find a blooming corpse instead. I tried to get the dagger out but couldn’t face it.”
In the dim light, Auguste could see Jacob’s jacket also bore signs of what might well be blood and he advanced even more cautiously towards the open door, beyond which now lay the darkness of the unknown. Summoning up what remained of his courage, he stepped inside Aladdin’s Cave.
No magic oil lamp lay there, no genie appeared as it had for Aladdin. Instead, beside the nearest pile of mock tree trunks adorned with dusty stage hangings and an old candelabra, sprawled the body of a man. The gaping mouth, the sightless eyes, and the blood — and the dagger still partly thrust into the chest — made it clear the man must be dead, but Auguste forced himself forward to feel for a pulse. There was none and the hand fell limply back.
“It’s Baron Glumboots,” he whispered in horror. Glumboots was the most disliked man in the Galaxy Theatre Company. “What could he have been doing here?” There was no response from Jacob. He had fainted.
Baron Glumboots, in real life Mr. Oscar Fish, had lived up to his role of villain offstage as well as on. Famous for playing this role in melodramas at the Adelphi Theatre, the Galaxy had been eager to acquire his services for the scoundrel who aspired to the hand of Princess Petal. The Princess and the Bean was based roughly on Mr. Hans Christian Andersen’s story, but in the Galaxy version Princess Petal has fled in distress from the baron’s evil advances to seek help at the castle of Queen Beanbody and her son Prince Ralph.
Auguste had discovered on his arrival in England from his native France that the pantomime was a peculiarly English tradition in which, as far as Auguste could gather, the principal boy was always played by a girl, and the elderly female comic character was always played by a man. Why this should be so, he had no idea. The English, Auguste decided, had some very strange ways.
At least he could testify that Princess Petal was played by a woman — and he knew all too well that Baron Glumboots was a man. Now he lay dead, murdered, a terrible end no matter what his misdeeds in life, Auguste thought soberly. Leaving a revived Jacob in reluctant charge, he rushed to find the theatre manager and, failing to do so, he used the theatre telephone to contact Scotland Yard, not far away from the Galaxy in London’s Strand. Then he braced himself to return to Jacob and the grisly scene.
They were not alone for long. His telephone call had been overheard.
“What’s all this about a murder?” The property master, Harry Waters, thundered down the stairs.
The property room for current productions was on the ground floor but Waters, new to the job, saw every storage room as being his exclusive domain, particularly Aladdin’s Cave. He was a large, sturdily built man and inclined, Auguste considered, to overestimate the importance of his job. As usual, his coat was covered with paint spatters — many, Auguste noted, as red as the blood of the late Baron Glumboots.
Waters peered over his shoulder into Aladdin’s Cave, to which Auguste was guarding the entrance. “Let’s have a look.”
“No one enters,” Auguste said firmly, “until the police arrive.”
“Darn it, it’s my props room,” Waters yelled, looming over him.
Luckily, at that moment the comedian Arthur Brown arrived, fully dressed for his role of Queen Beanbody, complete with a chestnut-coloured wig and big boots showing under his skirt.
Arthur Brown and Harry Waters did not see eye to eye — and not just because Arthur was six inches shorter than the property master. Only one thing linked them: They both detested Glumboots. Harry because, it was rumoured, Glumboots frequently hinted he knew a lot about his past life, and Arthur made no secret of the fact that Glumboots had wrecked his career. Rumours circulated about a role Arthur might have won at the prestigious Albion Theatre had it not been for Glumboots’s intervention. Unfortunately for Arthur, he was sharing a dressing room with Glumboots for this Christmas season.
“What’s going on here, mate?” Arthur said. “Heard old Glumboots had met his deserts.”
He didn’t seem unduly worried, Auguste noticed.
“You beat it, Brown,” Harry Waters snarled. “What are you doing down here?”
“Looking for you, mate. You weren’t in the props room when I got here tonight. Where were you, having a set-to with Glumboots?”
Harry’s answer to Arthur was a vicious shove, after which he promptly tugged Auguste out of the way by his collar, only for Arthur to push Auguste right back into the doorway. Harry and Arthur then set upon each other and during the ensuing fight Auguste managed to close the door and stand firmly in front of it.