Murder At The Music Hall: (Auguste Didier Mystery 8) by Amy Myers Read Free Book Online

“‘That you loved me, you loved me still the same”.’ The top G missed, which was just as well. Thomas Yapp watched his brandy glass gloomily; he could swear it was shivering, and about to shatter. He sympathised. It did not escape his notice that Evangeline was wearing her red satin, choker and all. She looked enormous and undefiable. Yet as her husband he felt duty-bound to try.
    Evangeline was built on generous proportions, five foot ten with a width to support it that left whalebone stays creaking in protest. Her voice, she claimed, demanded sustenance. Why she should have fallen for Will Lamb, a foot shorter than herself and half her width, when she already had a fine upstanding figure of a man in Thomas Yapp had left him puzzled. Will had fortunately departed ten years ago,
but tonight he was coming back.
    ‘Why not sing “The Lost Chord”, my love?’
    She peered at him. ‘I do believe you’re jealous,’ she said archly.
    ‘It’s the Shadwell Mob!’ he shouted, irritated beyond endurance.
    ‘What of them?’ Evangeline was scornful of pit and gallery.
    ‘They’re sending a chirruping mob.’
    ‘My dear Thomas, a Hooligan gang! The police stopped that blackmail gambit years ago.’
    ‘And the Shadwell Mob have revived it. They’ll kill “Marble Halls” stone dead.’ And the chairman too probably, he thought wildly.
    Evangeline was used to barracking from those thatdid not understand or appreciate her art, and Will had to be told her true feelings. ‘Marble Halls’ it was going to be. She’d sing ‘The Lost Chord’ over her dead body, she decided confusedly.
    ‘“Marble Halls”.
And
,’ she added menacingly, ‘I shall
not
sing directly after the interval. Move me!’
    Yapp’s heart sank even further. True, to play the turn after the interval was the most unpopular since people wandered back late or even stayed in the bars, and when Evangeline’s number was put up on the boards nearly everyone stayed there. But didn’t she realise if it wasn’t for him, she wouldn’t have a spot at all? Oh, the unfairness of it.
    ‘Put young Orsini after the interval.’
    ‘I can’t,’ he moaned.
    ‘Oh, I think you
can
, Thomas,’ she replied, disappointed. ‘After all, it is for darling Will.’
    Thomas’s face went as white as his starched shirt front. Suppose she realised who had had this foolish idea of inviting Will Lamb back here? She would get entirely the wrong idea. No, the sooner Will disappeared, the better. ‘I’ll do my best,’ he told Evangeline listlessly. He lurched to his feet and blindly staggered towards his position of torture for the evening.
    Lizzie licked her thumb approvingly. ‘I does a good custard,’ she told Auguste proudly.
    Auguste looked at the stagnant yellow pile in the canister, now minus one thumbful, and shuddered. No self-respecting egg had lent itself to that horror. Outside the last defiant wail of the tinny violin ground to a halt, and the tap-tap of the hornpipe dancer ceased as thequeue for the hall vanished entirely. Frederick’s raspy voice could be heard thanking his public for their valued custom and exhorting them to return tomorrow, and be further amazed and stupefied at his dangerous feats of sword-swallowing.
    From his office upstairs, Percy Jowitt beamed as he saw the crowds vanishing into his beloved hall, and congratulated himself on being such a good employer that he could attract the likes of Nettie Turner and Will Lamb back to it. Even the threat of bailiffs ceased temporarily to worry him. Everything was lovely in his garden. He did not notice the Shadwell Mob staggering towards his kingdom.
    ‘Ain’t it exciting?’ Lizzie shrieked blissfully to Auguste, eyes shining.
    ‘This?’ Auguste lifted his head from frying battered cod with one hand and grilling mutton chops with the other. ‘Not precisely exciting. An experience.’
    ‘Nah. Nettie Turner coming here. “Whoa, Nellie, don’t you go too far . . .” That Donkey Song,