Free Murder At The Music Hall: (Auguste Didier Mystery 8) by Amy Myers Page B

. As soon as his choice was made, conscience hastened his step briskly back towards the Old King Cole.
    Tatiana, after all, was away from home. When she was there, life crackled and sizzled like caramelising sugar. It bubbled with laughter like champagne. Without her it was as dull and flat as overcooked cod. On the other hand, the Old King Cole was not without its lighter side; after all, today he would be teaching Egbert to cook. Furthermore, he was here for only six days and for one of those at least Will had survived. Did that mean his fears were groundless? On the surface, the Old King Cole was what it seemed, yet at the very least the jovial image presented on stage and that backstage were markedly different. He had perceived no unity or warmth backstage, merely a group of performers going about their individual business. What heat there was was caused by jealousy and suspicion, not mutual admiration.
    Fame was a double-headed monster: it attracted, it repelled. Moths danced round its bright light, but they were creatures of the night with all night’s mysterious secrets. Will Lamb might have a simplicity that would take him like an arrow through life, but what might lie in wait in the undergrowth along his golden path?
    Auguste laughed at himself for his high-flown sentiments, as Lizzie quickly brought him down to earth as soon as he walked in.
    ‘I cooked him a negg,’ she told Auguste with pride,jerking her thumb at a slightly more human-looking Egbert, still clad in down-at-heel garb.
    ‘A good ’un too,’ Egbert commented approvingly, to Lizzie’s gratification.
    ‘Load of fish just arrived, Mr D,’ she sang out, as she galloped down the stairs to her basement kingdom. ‘Nearly slung it away,’ came her now disembodied voice.
    Surely a jest? Auguste rushed down to inspect his precious delivery. In their boxes, without the company of their fellows, he was forced to admit his prize purchases spoke a little less of ambrosia to come and a little more of hard work.
    ‘What’s this?’ Lizzie came up to peer under his shoulder and poked curiously at a strange specimen. ‘Cor, it’s all slimy.’
    ‘Slimy it may be, Lizzie, but it is a John Dory, distinguished by, legend says, St Peter’s thumbprint, to which you have now added your own.’
    ‘Who’s John Dory?’
    ‘It is said it derives from the Italian
janitore
, meaning the gatekeeper of heaven, St Peter. Or,’ Auguste explained eagerly, anxious to instruct this keen new pupil, ‘from a gentleman’s name allotted to a fictitious plaintiff in a case of law.’
    ‘How many fishes come up before the beak?’
    ‘About as many as the paltry number of dishes we will produce at our present rate of working.’
    Lizzie grinned, burst into ‘Whoa, Nellie, don’t you go too far’ and plunged into a large tub of unappetising slime which he identified with difficulty as eel and onions.
    Torn between the attractions of improving the cuisineof Wapping and his rival duties to Egbert and Will Lamb, it was with some reluctance that Auguste led Egbert on a tour of the glories of the Old King Cole music hall an hour later. Egbert had dutifully turned up in his oldest suit, and a cap. Edith had not been impressed. Auguste led the way to the rear door of the eating-room that led into the entrance hall of the music hall. He averted his eyes from tables that would have to be hauled much further up the ladder towards cleanliness before he would open the doors for custom. Each should, he resolved, have a cloth laid on it,
adeem
cloth. And suppose, he wondered, each table were to be adorned with a dish of lemon catsup – no, not lemon,
tomato.
His old
maître
Escoflfier would throw up his hands with horror at the abominable principle of any food properly prepared requiring such additions, but French cuisine was not English. Pungent tomato catsups would spice even eel and onion pie, or mutton chops, or faggots, or black pudding?
    ‘Not quite the Galaxy, is it?’