Then, fluttering down the steps and clad in her Princess Petal costume, came Hetty Clogg herself. Auguste was very fond of Hetty, although she needed very little acting ability to play the part of the dewy-eyed Princess, whose talents lay in charming, not thinking. Her white dress floated around her, stage jewellery glittered upon her golden wig and around her neck and wrists, and her large blue eyes fixed themselves on Auguste.
“My darling Glumboots,” she cried to him. “Someone said he was dead.” Despite the tragic expression, there was, Auguste couldn’t help noticing, a hopeful note in her voice.
“He’s not your darling Glumboots, Hetty, love,” Arthur crowed with glee. “He was threatening to reveal your little spree with that singer last year. Your precious Earl of Otford wouldn’t like that, would he? He wouldn’t want to marry you anymore.”
Auguste stiffened. It was well known that the earl was besotted with Hetty, but that the earl’s mother, the formidable countess, did not share his rapture about his proposed bride.
Hetty looked tom between outrage and fear. “If Glumboots is dead, I never killed him. I wasn’t down here, Arthur. I only went to the props room.”
“What for?” snarled Harry Waters.
“The wigs,” she said indignantly. “I took mine and Miss Wisley’s to our dressing room, and yours and darling Glumboots’s up to your dressing room, Arthur, because neither of you was around. I was just being helpful. Miss Wisley wasn’t in our dressing room either; she’d said she was meeting darling Glumboots in the greenroom. Anyway, I couldn’t have killed Glumboots because he’s so much bigger than me and I wasn’t there anyway.”
After this volley of protest, Auguste predicted that Hetty would now faint, and so she did — albeit gracefully upon a chair. “How could you be so cruel, Arthur?” she moaned a little as no one rushed to revive her.
“Easy, darling,” Arthur chuckled. “I’m the Countess of Otford in disguise.”
And then there was another arrival, Miss Jane Wisley herself. Had she met Glumboots as arranged? Auguste wondered. Auguste and Jane did not get on, much as he admired her fine legs that made her such an excellent principal boy. They were on show too as she marched towards them, ready for her role in her pale blue satin coat.
“Jacob,” Jane announced imperiously, “to my dressing room, if you please. My wig needs curling — now.”
“Someone’s been murdered here. That’s more important than your curls,” Princess Petal moaned.
“Murder?” Jane went very white. “Who’s been murdered?”
“Darling Glumboots,” Hetty retorted — with some relish, Auguste thought.
Jane gasped. A trifle theatrically, he considered, judging by the hand clasped to her admirable chest, which was dutifully heaving under the blue satin coat. But perhaps it was genuine, as she was known to have been on very intimate terms with the late Baron Glumboots.
“That dear man,” she cried. “Oh no, it cannot be! No wonder he didn’t come to the greenroom.”
“He’d already chucked you. That’s what you told me,” Hetty said simply. “You said you’d make him pay.”
“I never said such a thing. Never.” Jane flushed. “He was the dearest man in London.”
“Didier!” A roar from the end of the passageway as Robert Archibald, the Galaxy manager, descended to the cellars. “What the dickens are you all doing down here? What’s going on? Fine thing if we can’t put a pantomime on without Scotland Yard descending on us. Inspector Egbert Rose, he says his name is. Turned up an hour ago and it’s only forty minutes to curtain up. Rose is asking for you, Didier. Your fault, is it? You pinched the Lovelet necklace?”
“A necklace?” Auguste was bewildered. The inspector had been here an hour ago? But he’d only just telephoned to Scotland Yard, and what was all this about the Lovelet necklace? That theft had taken place during the night nearly a week ago at the nearby Hotel Cecil, after Lady Lovelet had worn it to the first performance of The Princess and the Bean on Boxing Day evening.
“He’s come here to arrest you, has he?” Robert Archibald barked. “Understandable, but why’s he poking his nose in everywhere?”
“It’s usual—”
“What is usual,” Archibald roared, “is that a theatre puts on plays. Five minutes ago that inspector fellow ordered us to cancel the performance. I’ll have to give the whole audience its money back. We’re ruined. Ruined.”
“But murder must—”
“Murder?” Robert Archibald asked blankly. “What murder?”
“Baron Glumboots,” Auguste said, equally taken aback. “Mr. Fish’s body is in Aladdin’s Cave.”
“Nonsense,” Robert Archibald said impatiently. “Must be a mistake. There’s no murder. It’s theft the Yard has come here for. Stolen from the hotel, yet he has the cheek to say this theatre’s involved because no one else knew she had the necklace with her in London. It’s you he’s asking for, Didier. No murder, unless you’ve just bumped this Rose fellow off.”
Auguste took a deep breath. “There has been a murder, Mr. Archibald, and not of Inspector Rose. Look!” He opened the door to Aladdin’s Cave and Archibald peered in suspiciously.
A moment later Princess Petal relinquished her seat just in time for Robert Archibald to collapse onto it.
“What was Oscar Fish doing down here?” Inspector Egbert Rose of Scotland Yard grunted later that evening.
The performance had been cancelled, amid protests from Robert Archibald, and the earlier onlookers had been shepherded into the greenroom, normally where the cast relaxed, but today for them to undergo interrogation by Rose’s Sergeant Stitch. Thankfully, the body had now been removed, and only Auguste remained with the inspector in Aladdin’s Cave. The pleasures of the charlotte à la chantilly were not to be. He had hoped to creep away with the police surgeon, but Inspector Rose had said blandly: “Not you, Mr. Didier.”
“I do not know why he was here,” Auguste said helplessly in reply to Inspector Rose’s question. “He was not yet in costume, so he might have needed something or been searching for the property master. The props room is on the ground floor but I was told the property master wasn’t there at one point.” Auguste could not help wondering why he himself was here. Although he had helped the inspector in a previous case, that did not mean he had any desire to do so again. He was a chef, not a detective in the Criminal Investigation Department. He repressed the uncomfortable thought that he himself might be under suspicion, having arrived so promptly upon the body’s discovery.
“Coincidence,” Inspector Rose remarked, gazing round the piles of forgotten and unloved properties of all kinds, from comic masks to firkins of Dutch metal. “First someone tips the wink to me that the theft of the Lovelet necklace and others are connected with this theatre, and I’m no sooner here than there’s a dead body.”
“But no one from here would break into a room at the Cecil Hotel.” Auguste was amazed at this theory. “They are far too tired and too busy after performances to burgle hotels.”
“This isn’t the first jewellery theft. There have been others. It looks as if the villain shinned up the drainpipe and managed to reach the balcony of the dressing room next to where her ladyship was sleeping. Think of it, Mr. Didier. The Cecil’s gardens are handy for the river and so’s this theatre. The necklace could have been out of the country that night. Our Mr. Fish tumbled to what was happening and paid the price.”