Murder at Plum’s

Amy Myers

The third Auguste Didier crime novel

Copyright © 1989 Amy Myers

The right of Amy Myers to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2013

All characters in this publication – other than the obvious historical characters – are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

eISBN: 978 1 4722 1385 3

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Amy Myers was born in Kent. After taking a degree in English Literature, she was director of a London publishing company and is now a writer and a freelance editor. She is married to an American and they live in a Kentish village on the North Downs. As well as writing the hugely popular Auguste Didier crime series, Amy Myers has also written five Kentish sagas, under the name Harriet Hudson, that are also available in ebook from Headline.

Praise for Amy Myers’ previous Victorian crime novels featuring Auguste Didier, also available in ebook from Headline:

‘Wittily written and intricately plotted with some fine characterisation. Perfection’ Best

‘Reading like a cross between Hercule Poirot and Mrs Beeton . . . this feast of entertainment is packed with splendid late-Victorian detail’ Evening Standard

‘What a marvellous tale of Victorian mores and murders this is – an entertaining whodunnit that whets the appetite of mystery lovers and foodies alike’ Kent Today

‘Delightfully written, light, amusing and witty. I look forward to Auguste Didier’s next banquet of delights’ Eastern Daily Press

‘Plenty of fun, along with murder and mystery . . . as brilliantly coloured as a picture postcard’ Dartmouth Chronicle

‘Classically murderous’ Woman’s Own

‘An amusing Victorian whodunnit’ Netta Martin, Annabel

‘Impossible to put down’ Kent Messenger

‘An intriguing Victorian whodunnit’ Daily Examiner

Also by Amy Myers and available in ebook from Headline

Victorian crime series featuring Auguste Didier

1. Murder in Pug’s Parlour

2. Murder in the Limelight

3. Murder at Plum’s

4. Murder at the Masque

5. Murder makes an Entrée

6. Murder under the Kissing Bough

7. Murder in the Smokehouse

8. Murder at the Music Hall

9. Murder in the Motor Stable

And Kentish sagas written under the name Harriet Hudson also available in ebook from Headline

Look for Me by Moonlight

When Nightingales Sang

The Sun in Glory

The Wooing of Katie May

The Girl from Gadsby’s

For the first time in its history, Plum’s, that palace of respectability where English gentlemen can find refuge from the world, has agreed to admit ladies. Nothing has been right since.

A series of bizarre incidents plague the club. A rat appears on the dining table, newspapers are mutilated, obscene letters are sent to the doorman, and a member’s portrait is slashed. ‘Pranks,’ say the members. Then a slightly less than lethal dose of poison in the brandy cream dessert turns master chef Auguste Didier into the Master Detective again. And just in time.

Then the impossible happens – a murder at Plum’s! One of the members is found dead – and Auguste and his friend Inspector Egbert Rose of Scotland Yard are on a not-so-discreet hunt for a demonically clever and ruthless killer. A gentleman perhaps.

For Peter and Audrey

Acknowledgements

My thanks are due as always to my agent Dorothy Lumley of the Dorian Literary Agency and my editor Jane Morpeth, both of whom have guided me gracefully and efficiently along the path to publication. I am also grateful to my friends Adrian Stewart and Malcolm Jones and Wing Commander W Fry, MC, who answered my questions enthusiastically and helpfully, and to Adrian Stewart for pointing me also in the direction of Donald R Morris’s excellent The Washing of the Spears for information on the Zulu Campaign. My thanks go also to my friend the artist Natalie Greenwood who so skilfully assisted Inspector Egbert Rose to sketch the plans of Plum’s Club for Gentlemen and Mr Gaylord Erskine’s residence. I should also point out that neither Plum’s nor its architecture exists in St James’s Square.

Prologue

‘Gentlemen, I fear, I greatly fear, that a dark shadow menaces our future. Indeed threatens our very existence.’

He spoke quietly, his drawn Pickwickian features bearing sufficient witness to the seriousness of the situation. For six hours now the nine men had been sitting round the oval table in the elegantly proportioned chandeliered room overlooking St James’s Square. From ten o’clock that morning, they had been locked in earnest, at times almost violent, discussion.

Its gravity was underlined by the all-but-untouched plates of German and anchovy toasts, and carafes of claret, hastily organised in the kitchens and brought up by the chef, Monsieur Auguste Didier himself, curious to know the cause of such an unusual summons. Never before in the history of Plum’s had luncheon been held in such disregard. Auguste’s sharp eyes had flicked round the nine men who barely acknowledged the arrival of sustenance, let alone his own. Bankruptcy? A death? Those unfortunate happenings? Certainly, no mere blackballing this.

‘Ah, thank you, Didier,’ Oliver Nollins’ normally cherubic face was almost grey. Regretfully Auguste had to leave his curiosity unsatisfied and depart.

With a slight sigh, Nollins turned from the cheerless spectacle of the relentless rain outside to the equally cheerless one within, to continue his thankless task of pointing out the dire consequences of the decision just taken. His fellow committee members were all, for their different reasons, reluctant to catch his eye. Being secretary was difficult enough at the best of times, but now . . . For the hundredth time he wished he had accepted his brother-in-law’s invitation to join in running his pig farm. Northumberland seemed suddenly a totally desirable distance from St James’s Square.

True, for the five years he’d been secretary, there’d been nothing worse than a blackballing, complaints over the food – the latter before the advent of Didier, of course – and Lord Bulstrode’s indiscretions to deal with. Now, however, all was changed. He could disguise the fact no longer that there was something damned odd going on in Plum’s. In Plum’s of all places. Yet, he seemed to be the only person to be aware of it. It was almost as though there were a conspiracy of silence to ignore it.

Worst of all, Nollins looked despondently round the table, now his fellow committee members seemed to have taken leave of their senses, in addition to totally ignoring any suggestion that anything could possibly, possibly be wrong at Plum’s. A dark cloud hung over the future of the club that had nothing to do with the unfortunate occurrences of the last few weeks. Slowly he returned to his seat, sat down and took up the minute book in front of him.

‘Gentlemen, as secretary of Plum’s I hereby confirm, that in accordance with the vote just recorded in this room . . .’

Each word drove a death wound into civilisation as he knew it. 1896 and a new century about to dawn. What would it bring? Could they not see that decisions like today’s were the gateway to disaster?

‘. . . This decision to be reviewed in future years,’ he finished bleakly.

He couldn’t understand how it had happened. Seven votes to two. Two opposed to the motion, he – and Worthington. Whoever would have thought that he and Worthington, the club bore, would be on the same side? How had it all come about? Everyone had been equally appalled on the day the Suggestions Book had been reviewed, so vehement in their assertions that Plum’s would go to the dogs if it were adopted. Yet somehow the unthinkable had happened.

For the duration of the banquet known as Plum’s Passing ladies are to be admitted by invitation on to the premises of Plum’s.

Ponderously Colonel Worthington cleared his throat and stood up; for once he was mercifully brief: ‘Gentlemen, not one of us here today can foresee the momentous consequences that will ensue from this day’s actions.’

And in this, it is true to say, he was only too correct.