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

endeavours during the day.
    ‘What is this horrible mess on the floor, Lizzie?’ A white gooey mess that looked like frozen porridge.
    ‘’Ere’s yer faggots, Mr D. Cockroaches.’
    This was hell indeed. ‘You serve cockroaches here?’ he asked faintly. ‘Soup, perhaps?’
    Lizzie stared at him. ‘That what you do in France, is it? I kills ’em here. That’s what the white stuff’s for. Oatmeal and Plaster of Paris.’
    Auguste opened his mouth and shut it again. Time enough for hygiene tomorrow. Tonight he must survive as best he could under Lizzie’s mercurial management; he needed all his antennae trained on Will Lamb.
    At least,
nearly
all his antennae. One must be spared for this horrible astringent smell from one of the cooking pots.
    ‘
What
is that, if you please, Miss Lizzie?’
    ‘Pickle for tomorrow’s eels. Want to see ’em?’ She led the way to a larder, and flung open the door with pride. Hanging in rows from hooks were what appeared to be a dozen ladies’ stockinged legs.
    ‘Eels boiled in cloth,’ Lizzie said proudly. ‘And there’s your faggots too. Good, ain’t they? Pig’s caul and liver.’
    He duly praised her. These were the delicacies of which he had heard so much? He tried hard to ignore a murmur of protest in his stomach. After all, was not much of the exquisite charcuterie of France the result of similar cooking processes? It was merely theunfamiliar made these appear so unappetising. This is what his brain told him, but his stomach began to contradict it vigorously, and with Lizzie in anxious pursuit, he hurried back to the upper floor in the hope he might track down the last few gulps of oxygen available before customers began to arrive. There would then be, so he had understood, a brisk trade in pies and potatoes.
Potatoes!
Where were they?
    Even as the thought rushed through his mind, Lizzie, faithfully on his heels, cried, ‘Where you bin, Fred?’
    Auguste glanced up from his frantic inspection. At the window he saw faces pressed to the glass like Oliver Twist’s in the workhouse. Through the door loped a skeleton in ragged evening dress, which had obviously started in Jermyn Street and found the journey to the East End hard in the extreme. On top of the skeleton’s six-foot frame was a top-hat which it raised politely.
    ‘Good evening, Miss Lizzie,’ it replied humbly in a hoarse voice. ‘Business detained me, for I am performing my tasks on the cans to which I must speedily return.’
    ‘Fred’s a sword-swallower for the queues outside, Mr Didier,’ Lizzie informed him, ‘but he does the spuds as well. He’s a dab hand at ’em.’
    Of course, Auguste thought resignedly, what more natural than to have a sword-swallower as an assistant cook?
    ‘He cooks ’em on the spikes over the fires in the cans – and we keep ’em hot here.’ She indicated the filthy range.
    Auguste did not doubt it – what he doubted was if anything in this hell-hole could be kept cool.
    Mr Frederick Wolf regarded his new temporarysuperior apologetically. ‘I fear there is little profit in sword-swallowing nowadays. I entertain the queue with my act, for it is my duty, but the rewards for my art are insufficient for my continued survival,’ he informed Auguste gravely. ‘I trust, sir, you have no objection to my continuing my tasks here? I assure you I turn a most delightful floury potato, it positively floats to the plate beneath, so light and airy is its nature. And I am most judicious in my seasoning. I am also dexterous with a poached egg,’ he added hopefully.
    ‘I am delighted to welcome you to my staff.’ Auguste meant it.
    Another burden was lifted from him. He wondered idly whether those potatoes might be improved upon . . . a little cheese or cream adorned with a pickled nasturtium seed perhaps? There might be avenues to be explored here.
    But not now. In the next half an hour his stomach was put to the severe test of ordeal by piles of fatty mutton chops and, to