Read Murder At The Music Hall: (Auguste Didier Mystery 8) for Free Online

Pickles, he’s a one. Eels and bangers, don’t like Brodie, Brodie don’t like him. Miguel, he’s a juggler, smarmy, thinks he’s a swell, but he ain’t, ’cos he eats his eels jellied and whelks. Mariella’s pretty – and don’t she know it.’ She giggled. ‘You’ll be meeting her,’ she added mysteriously.
    ‘You like her?’ Auguste inquired, interested at the mention of Will Lamb’s former love. Seeing her look of doubt, he added hastily, ‘And what does she eat?’
    ‘She won’t eat nothing of ours,’ Lizzie said crossly. ‘But I reckons she’d be a shrimps-and-pie lady.’
    Auguste regarded her in wonder.
‘Mapetite
, you have the makings of a true connoisseur of cuisine.’ To find someone after his own heart in such a place cheered him immensely.
    ‘Gam,’ snorted Lizzie, not understanding a word.
    A brief reconnoitre backstage told Auguste much about the financial state of the Old King Cole. It looked and smelled of failure. There were two large dressing-rooms at the rear of the building next to the stage door, and a series of cubby-holes opposite the cramped wings and backstage area, two of which, according to hastily pinned notices, had been allotted to Nettie and Will; the others spilled ancient props and lighting paraphernalia out of their doors. The performers, he understood, arrived in most cases only for their particular turns and for the moment he had the place to himself. Or so he thought.
    ‘Ah. How good of you, my dear chap, to keep a lookout for bailiffs.’ Percy Jowitt descended on him, beaming.
    Auguste surrendered. ‘Could any bailiffs get in here undetected?’ he asked.
    Jowitt looked nonplussed. ‘People come and go,’ he said vaguely.
    ‘Is the stage door kept locked?’
    ‘No. But bailiffs get in anywhere, you know.’
    Auguste abandoned bailiffs. Was it your idea to ask Will Lamb to play here?’
    ‘Certainly.’
    ‘The idea stemmed from you.’
    ‘Naturally. I am the proprietor.’ Percy puffed out his chest.
    ‘What put the idea in your head?’
    ‘Do you know, I really can’t say. It might,’ Percy acknowledged, ‘have been Pickles.’
    ‘You mean faggots and pickles?’
    ‘No, no. Our loveable Cockney chappie, Harry Pickles.Nettie Turner’s husband. Rather surprised me when he suggested it because he doesn’t like Will Lamb. Jealous, I think. But then all my regulars have the good of the Old King Cole at heart,’ he explained complacently.
    ‘Does everyone here wish it well?’
    ‘Good heavens, yes,’ Percy declared. ‘They all love the place. And each other.’ He paused. ‘Mostly, that is.’

Chapter Two
    Heat hit him like the full force of Jem Mace’s heavyweight fist. Auguste observed that the hell that had the presumption to call itself a kitchen did have outlets to the outside world, but it felt to him like a sealed Turkish bath. The idea of murder within these steaming walls did not seem so preposterous now. He remembered Will would be arriving with Nettie just before or soon after the performance started. Time was running short, with only two hours to sum up what he was dealing with, and
whom
he was dealing with. At the moment the ‘what’ was taking precedence. He recalled the London particular, the thick fog through which he’d once battled his way, only to find murder awaiting him at the end. Heat was like fog. It confused, it drummed in upon you, numbing the senses. He listened to Lizzie’s monologue as she rushed hither and thither from stove to gridiron. ‘I got the pies, mutton and eel. I done the pickled eels and faggots . . . I fries the fish, you broils yer chops.’ You?
Him! He
was the chef in this nightmare surrounding him and in half an hour’s time the customers would be pouring through the door.
    Panic spurred him to action, as he raced through the furnace of the underground kitchen after the quicksilver Lizzie, averting his eyes from the grease, crumbs and vegetable detritus that liberally gave witness of her