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

before the Hall. ‘You don’t mean to tell me everyone has to tramp all the way from the house just for a smoke?’
    ‘Even the King,’ Auguste assured him. ‘It is Lady Tabor’s strictest rule.’
    ‘It sounds a family whose bosom I wouldn’t care to be in,’ commented Egbert sourly. He liked a pipe from time to time.
    ‘You won’t know how apt that is until you see Priscilla Tabor’s.’
    Rose had enough bosoms to contend with in the smokehouse. ‘Not, I take it, Lady Tabor’s choice,’ he commented disapprovingly. He tried to banish from his mind an irreverent picture of Edith in black garters with roses and nothing else.
    ‘No, her visit last night – or rather, early this morning, was her first—’ Auguste said, belatedly remembering his surprise at her lack of curiosity in her husband’s choice of art.
    Egbert studied his surroundings. ‘You know, Auguste, things are changing in my world. Not at the Yard, or in England, but on the Continent they are way ahead of us. Forensic science is taught there at universities, here it’s a dirty word. But it will come, just like fingerprinting has come now that Edward Henry’s arrived at the Yard. I told you he’d set up a fingerprint branch in July, didn’t I? Sooner or later, we’ll get to the point when this room would be able to explain the whole crime to us. Even who did it, most like. Hairs, fibres, fingerprints, bloodstains—’
    Blood – that was it, Auguste remembered with relief. ‘I read an article about how analysis of bloodstains might be able to help in murder investigations.’
    ‘That’s right. In Germany. That Mad Carpenter of Rügen case. Heard about it? They’re hoping to disprovehis story that the blood on him wasn’t human but an animal’s. And that’ll be just the start.’
    ‘However good the stove, the cook is more important, Egbert.’
    ‘Try telling the Yard that,’ Egbert said sourly. ‘Now, where was the body lying – and the gun?’
    Trying to ignore his squeamishness, Auguste pointed out the marks he had made with spent matches, and those the police had added. ‘Lie down and show me.’ Gulping, Auguste obediently huddled into position.
    ‘And you were the first to see the body? How was that?’
    The moment he had dreaded. Egbert after all must know this from Cobbold. ‘No. I was summoned.’
    ‘Who by?’
    ‘Alexander Tully-Rich, now engaged to the Tabors’ daughter, and—’ He plunged. ‘Tatiana.’
    ‘You said you got there at three-thirty. Did she see a light from the bedroom window?’
    ‘No, she had come from the smokehouse.’
    ‘Why?’ the inexorable voice continued.
    ‘She and Alexander wished to have a smoke,’ shouted Auguste, red in the face, cornered.
    Rose said no more, which alarmed Auguste more than the questions. Try as he might, that first sight of the corpse on the floor was imprinted on his memory. Sprawled on its face and the gun conveniently by the right hand, a gun he believed had been placed, not fallen. And a body he now knew had been moved before he got there. What would Egbert make of it? He relaxed, as Rose changed the subject. ‘The doctor estimated he died between eleven-thirty and two. We’ll know more later. Were you all still up then?’
    ‘I was playing billiards with Oliver Carstairs till half-past twelve,’ Auguste replied stiffly. ‘I believe most people had retired. I thought my wife had, but Iwas wrong. She was with her cousin.’ He made it sound the most natural thing in the world for a newly married woman. ‘I heard nothing, but the smokehouse is a long way from the house.’
    ‘A gun makes a fair noise in a quiet night.’
    ‘So does the stable clock,’ said Auguste eagerly, glad to be on neutral ground. ‘And its striking twelve might cover the sound.’
    ‘Lucky for a murderer.’
    ‘Or planned.’
    ‘A suicide wouldn’t care.’
    They regarded each other for a moment, well pleased at the familiar dovetailing of thought processes.
    ‘Did he