Free Murder in The Smokehouse: (Auguste Didier Mystery 7) by Amy Myers Page A

heartily, shepherding him towards the billiard room. He probably didn’t know where the library was, Auguste thought sourly. ‘What do you make of this rum business, eh?’ George asked him anxiously, having put a cue in his hand as if to prevent escape. ‘Getting to the bottom of it, are you?’
    ‘Not yet, sir.’
    ‘George,’ his host said enthusiastically. ‘Call me George.’
    ‘I’m honoured.’
    ‘Deuced odd, corpse turning up in our smokehouse like that. Had a foreign look about him, didn’t you think?’
    ‘A touch of the sun, certainly. Not from Yorkshire.’
    George laughed immoderately at this feeble witticism. ‘Know who I thought it was at first?’ he said a little nervously. ‘That fellow Mariot.’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘Laura’s chap. Can’t be, of course. She’d have recognised him, though he left all of twenty years ago. Just a stupid fancy of mine.’
    ‘When you say “left”—’ Auguste began.
    ‘Wanted to marry her. As Priscilla said at the time, she’d be wanting to marry the cook next.’
    ‘Some people do,’ said Auguste drily.
    Belatedly George realised he had blundered. ‘Thingswere different then, of course,’ he added hastily. People are more broadminded now.’
    Auguste hadn’t noticed.
    ‘Anyway,’ George continued hastily, ‘Priscilla made her see it wouldn’t do. He saw it himself, to do him justice. He had no money. No prospects. A sort of bookish navvy. Archaeologists they call them.’
    ‘Not
Robert
Mariot?’ Auguste asked astounded. ‘Not Mariot of the later excavations at Troy? And now Babylon?’
    ‘Heard of him, have you?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Auguste simply. ‘Most people have.’ He was thinking rapidly. It would not be too difficult to get a photograph of Robert Mariot. Just to be sure . . .
    With some difficulty he extricated himself from billiards on the plea that he needed to speak to Tatiana. George, it seemed, was only too happy to come with him to the salon. It appeared he needed a word with Beatrice. Beatrice was, however, alone in the Blue Salon, deep in the
Illustrated London News
– the fashion column.
    ‘The Princess has gone to the village. On foot,’ Beatrice added, somewhat perplexed at this unusual activity. ‘She wished me to go as well, but my shoes—’ She looked at the white satin slippers, as Auguste speedily eluded his host’s ‘Perhaps I’ll come—’
    He was alone at last. For a few moments only. Hurrying down the steps behind him, came Alfred Tabor.
    ‘Ah, Didier.’
    Auguste turned. ‘Alfred,’ he said somewhat coldly, ‘if you are intending to accompany me, please do not concern yourself. I am quite able to find my own way.’
    ‘No bother,’ announced Alfred cheerily. ‘Noblesse oblige and all that.’
    ‘Very well. We’ll go this way.’ Meanly, Auguste setoff on the path to Malham most certain of providing mud and puddles. Alfred was shaken but undeterred.
    ‘What do you think are the odds it was murder, Didier?’ he began eagerly.
    ‘Your mother seems certain it is suicide,’ Auguste reminded him.
    ‘She would be, wouldn’t she?’
    For one startled moment Auguste wondered if young Alfred were suggesting his mother had stooped to murder.
    ‘She’s afraid it’s her skeleton in the closet.’
    ‘Skeleton?’ asked Auguste with undisguised fascination.
    ‘Uncle Oscar, her brother. He hasn’t been heard of since the Cripple Creek Gold Rush in Colarado. The mater and her folks come from Philadelphia, but Oscar went to the bad. Grandfather threw him out without a dollar, so he went hunting for a few on his own. He turned up here about twelve years ago on the scrounge. Father was afraid he’d come to stay, but off he went and we heard he’d gone to Cripple Creek. He sent us a photograph. You can have a look at it. It’s on the wall in the back corridor to the servants’ quarters. He’s holding up a lump of rock, grinning like a Cheshire Cat.’
    ‘So he made good?’
    ‘Oscar couldn’t keep a