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

halls on his old beat. He picked up the telephone, and shouted amiably at the operator. A few moments later Inspector Grey’s querulous voice was all attention. ‘Ah, Grey,’ Rose told him agreeably, ‘I expect you remember that ship which unfortunately left early. I need to make a few more inquiries. No objection, have you?’
    Grey had not, especially if they did not rebound on his head.
    The Old King Cole was not quite the Empire. Auguste looked round aghast at his new, thankfully temporary, domain. And its ‘restaurant’ moreover was far from Escoffier’s Carlton. He tried to remind himself he should be grateful for the opportunity to be able to cook at all, but his first sight suggested some prices were too high to pay. He had chosen to walk from the Tower of London to the theatre in order to acquaint himself with the area, and counted himself lucky to arrive. True, no snarling bandits had leapt out on him, but despite the most valiant efforts of the local council to improve the image of the road, the high dockland warehouses on his right, and the rows of uninviting-looking shops, and pubs, with the ill-smelling alleyways and lanes leading off, suggested the efforts had merely resulted in the tide of murky humanity being swept back off the main thoroughfare and forcibly held there, while it bided its time to leap out on the unsuspecting. Like Auguste Didier. Groups of sailors and dockers huddled outside the pubs, watching him curiously, and he was glad to reach the music hall.
    The Old King Cole, not far from St George’s-in-the-East church, had once been a humble pub, a wayside inn outside Shadwell, and no better, no worse than its fellows. Then an ambitious publican in the mid-nineteenth century had coincided with the decision to improve the murky image of the Ratcliffe Highway by renaming it. What better improvement than to expand his old ale-house of dubious reputation into a music hall? Consequently he built out to the rear an ornate and, he vowed, high-class music hall with a circle, gallery,
fauteuils
and sedate atmosphere. Unfortunately, heforgot to mention this desire for social betterment to his clientele, which remained identical to that which had provided his ale-house with its reputation. When LCC regulations first discouraged, then banished, the serving of food and drink in the auditorium, he gave up the struggle for respectability. The new owner, Percy Jowitt, also had ambitions, and turned the long bar on the ground floor into a grill-room, which degenerated quickly into a common eating house. Nevertheless little by little, by raising the prices, his clientele did improve to the point where respectable loving husbands were able to bring wives, even daughters. Jowitt glowed with satisfaction – though not for long. Wives and daughters, he discovered, rarely drank as much as their menfolk, and his ownership of the Old King Cole had degenerated into a constant struggle to retain such brilliant newcomers as he discovered, and to persuade his regulars to support his ageing regular turns which he shared with half a dozen or so similar institutions within a radius of three miles. Jowitt was now in his sixties, a dapper, dark-haired, anxious man, ever torn between stark reality and a Micawber-like hopefulness of the infinite possibilities of the future.
    Auguste stood at the doorway and surveyed the smoky, smelly hell which he had fondly imagined a paradise. He summoned his strength. If Alexis Soyer could cook on the top of Pyramids, or in the Crimea, surely he, Auguste Didier, could transform this den into something approaching a place fit for food. The smell of stale food and plates wafted towards him, increasing the nearer he approached to the bar.
    ‘Most of the cooking is done downstairs on thegridirons and ovens,’ Jowitt told him reassuringly. ‘You keep it hot up here, and the potato cans are outside.’
    This largely passed over Auguste’s head, as he peered into a foul-smelling hot