Free Murder At The Masque by Amy Myers Page A

. . .
    In the kitchens of the Villa Russe, Boris Bashevksy thumped the dough for the
piroshki
. The news had travelled by means of the gendarmes to the footman, from the footman to the parlourmaid, from the parlourmaid to the housekeeper and then to Boris. Tomorrow the honour of Mother Russia would be at stake. The English must be beaten. The Romanovs ruled Russia, and their honour must be supported at all costs. Soon, very soon, the people would come into their own, but until then the Romanovs
were
Mother Russia’s honour. Thump. He reached for the vodka.
    Madame Didier watched with horror as his hand went perilously near Auguste’s
sanglier
in aspic. Thump. The boar’s head’s eyes jumped out in protest, and lodged halfway down its nose.
    Thump. The broad sweep of his hand caught the unfortunate
sanglier
which flew through the air and landed upside down in its squashed and mutilated aspic.
    Boris regarded Madame Didier guiltily. ‘Is all right,’ he assured her, seeing her appalled face, and hurrying to the scene of the tragedy. ‘Is all right,’ he repeated, rearing up from the floor some minutes later.
    Madame Didier grimly regarded the results.
    ‘Is all right,’ said Boris again doubtfully, regarding the catastrophe on the plate. He reached for the vodka bottle.
    Auguste carefully handed Natalia Kallinkova down from the carriage, full of pride to be seen doing so, and escorted her to their seats. Egbert Rose rose to his feet to greet them.
    Her eyes danced. ‘Ah, Inspector, you are here, you see. Just as I said. All the players are gathered; we await only the Prince . . .’
    A disturbance in the crowd, and a sibilant hush ran through its ranks. Someone was coming. But it wasn’t the Prince of Wales. This was an open carriage. Auguste craned his neck to see . . . In the carriage, dressed in a bright yellow silk dress with a matching pleated lace hat and parasol, and rouge on her face, was a pretty, doll-like figure, so dainty in form she could have been Japanese save for the tawny eyes and hair as golden as the Empress Eugenie’s, knotted in curls high on the back of her head. All eyes were on her as she sat without moving, accepting the homage to her beauty.
    ‘Yes,’ said Kallinkova matter-of-factly. ‘That is La Belle Mimosa.’
    One other person in the reserved seats reacted strongly. Lord Westbourne shrank back, hoping to pass unnoticed. As the lady gracefully unfurled herself and descended from the carriage, slowly she turned her gaze and stared right at him. No smile passed her lips.
    Off the coast of Cannes, the destroyer
Cosmao
let off a salvo, and a stir ran through the crowd. A little off-key, the 12th Regiment of the Line struck up with ‘The Marseillaise’, the men of the 7th Regiment of Chasseurs Alpins stood to attention. Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, heir to the throne of the British Empire, was on his way.
    An elderly Cannois, walking by the rows of seats whereAuguste was sitting, spat. ‘
Les anglais
,’ he muttered.
    ‘
Oui, mon ami
,’ Auguste said placatingly, and hearing this expression of sympathy the Cannois stopped and spat again.
    ‘Look at the place,’ the elderly resident expostulated. ‘Ruined by the English. It’s never been the same since that Lord Broogam’ (as he pronounced it) ‘came here, matter of sixty years ago. Then the others, building houses all over the place. Why, I remember this road’ – he pointed to the glory of Cannes, the Boulevard de la Croisette – ‘when it didn’t have all these fancy palms and sugar canes. Nor this fancy sand either. Just a nice old lane and seashore, as
le Bon Seigneur
made it. Now look at it.
Les hiverneurs, pah
! Ruined,’ he spluttered indignantly. ‘Now they come and build new ports. What’s wrong with the old one? The modern world,
monsieur
, the modern world!’ Shaking his head sadly, he was about to continue on his way, when Auguste remember his second quest.
    ‘You remember Cannes in the old