Murder in Pug's Parlour Read Free

as a result, had demanded Didier’s curry as a condition of his attendance.
    ‘George,’ protested the Duchess, laying her hand lightly on the ducal arm and smiling with practised charm at Auguste. Fifteen years younger than her husband, it was hard to believe she was the mother of a twenty-year-old daughter and twenty-two-year-old son, and Her Grace would have been the first to agree with you. Only she and May Fawcett knew the labour that went into achieving this effect.
    The Duke grunted. ‘Bad business though. Place gone haywire. The sergeant fellow tells me Greeves was poisoned but they don’t know. Even had the impudence to tell me he’s leaving a guard. Must have been an accident. Things get left around. It happens.’
    Auguste stiffened but His Grace, not attuned to his inferiors’ feelings, swept on. ‘Easy enough. Organisation gone to pot. Saw a gal skipping around at five o’clock yesterday afternoon.’ The Duke shook his head in despair. His dislike of seeing the female members of his staff after noon was legendary. ‘What with her not in her black when she should be, and Freds in dress livery before luncheon, I don’t know what the staff’s coming to. Discipline gone to pot. See to it, Did’yer, there’s a good fellow.’
    ‘Certainly, Your Grace,’ murmured Auguste.
    It was easier to agree than to point out it was now Mr Hobbs and not the chef whose duty it would be to discipline the lower servants. The Duke had this simple idea that an order given to one servant could be passed on to all, that behind that green baize door was one cohesive unit striving only to do its best for the Dukes of Stockbery. So, Auguste supposed, in the last resort it would. But before that lastresort, what petty bickerings, what jealousies, what rivalries, what jealously guarded prerogatives and dividing lines. So foolish – except for his own grievance of course. How glad he was that as chef with his two assistants, two kitchen-maids, one vegetable maid, two scullery maids and the pantryboy, he formed a small separate sovereignty within the vast empire below stairs. Or was it just Greeves, with his sly insinuations, his sinister, brooding eye on them that had resulted in that perpetual sense of unease in which they had lived for so long?
    ‘Monsieur Didier’ – the Duchess’s accent was impeccable – she had had a French lover for the whole of one London season – ‘we realise what a blow this has been and how distressed you must be at this unfortunate accident, but, Monsieur Didier, can you still
manage
? It is quite impossible to stop our guests arriving on Friday.’
    ‘Damned cheek,’ grunted the Duke. ‘Whippersnapper of a policeman suggested we call the whole thing off till he’d finished what he called his investigations. I said I knew old Hobbs could cope perfectly well, and he had the impudence to tell me that wasn’t what he’d had in mind. Sent him off with a flea in his ear.’
    ‘
Oui
, madame,’ said Auguste, disregarding this intervention and concentrating on the important matters, his eyes brightening as usual at discussions of
les menus, le banquet
, which had occasioned this unusual afternoon summons. The morning was his regular time for admission to the Presence. Another fifteen house guests would be arriving on Friday to Monday, not to mention the guests invited for the day only for the shoot and the dance. It was only a small dance, of course, nothing like the ball that would be thrown at the end of the three-week shooting party. The guests on Friday would be arriving by London, Chatham and South-East railway. Only one train wasinvolved for it had a special connection to Hollingham Halt, its voyagers known to the more frivolous of the railway staff as the Tower Trippers.
    For the Friday evening to precede an informal dance, a dinner
à la Russe
had been planned. For the Saturday a buffet to excel all buffets. The marble-shelved larders were groaning under the weight of stores