“I see him,” Stoker murmured from behind his newspaper. “Was it necessary to hit the poor fellow?”
“I did not hit him,” I protested around my fashion paper. “He must have been cut by some of the flying glass when the orrery smashed.”
“And this is definitely our man?”
“Indeed so,” I said. I peeped over the edge of my fashion paper to watch the maharani and her grandson make their departure through the main doors. A carriage was waiting at the curb for them, drawing smartly away as soon as the doorman closed them in.
“If only all detectival work were so gratifying,” I mused. “That was ten minutes gone and already we have found our man.”
“The question is, what do we mean to do with him?” Stoker said softly.
I nibbled at my lip. “An excellent question. As you say, we can hardly accuse him directly of being the author of the crime. Or can we?” I began.
“No, we cannot,” Stoker said with unaccustomed firmness. He folded his newspaper and rose. “I am going to see Julien and allow him to feed me. You may come or not, as you please.”
I trotted after him, through the discreet door that led to the hotel’s basement. It was a warren of various domestic offices—kitchens, laundries, pantries—and the pervasive London smell of damp stone was overlaid with more wholesome and appetizing aromas.
We found Julien d’Orlande in his domain, the pastry kitchen, overseeing the arrangement of an elaborate confection.
“My friends!” Julien exclaimed, coming to shake hands with Stoker. He eyed my veil and lifted it to kiss me on either cheek. “One cannot hide such beauty, my dear Veronica,” he murmured into my ear.
I grinned. Julien’s flirtations were as innocent as they were obvious. He would happily kiss hands and cheeks and drop compliments like bonbons, but he was surprisingly monogamous when his heart was engaged. He had recently become enthralled with a widow of comfortable means, and his erotic attentions were reserved solely for her.
He brandished his pastry bag. “I am very nearly finished here, but the gâteau St. Honoré waits for no one,” he said gravely as he applied a series of piped embellishments of stiffly whipped cream around the edge of a circle of puff pastry. Pâte à choux had been piped atop this and the entire thing was topped with profiteroles, held in place with sticky golden strands of sugar transformed by the alchemy of heat and time into amber caramel.
“Beautiful,” Stoker breathed.
“My friend, you cannot see the most luscious part. The inside is filled with crème chiboust,” he teased as Stoker made a whimpering sound in his throat.
Julien handed him a bowl of leftover crème chiboust and a spoon. “Come,” he beckoned. “We will go where we may be private.”
“How do you know that is necessary?” I asked.
He gave me a knowing look. “With the two of you, it is always necessary.”
Julien issued a series of rapid instructions to his crew and then shepherded us into his private room, a sort of study where he kept his cookery notebooks, bottles of exquisitely expensive syrups he concocted himself, and assorted mementos from his travels. A pretty religious statue had been added to the collection, a churchman clutching a baker’s peel.
“You have a new friend,” I observed.
Julien gave the saint a fond look. “Saint Honoré, the patron of pastry chefs. You will note his mitre? He was bishop of Amiens in his day, and not to be confused with the patron of the boulanger, Saint Lazare. His feast day is in a few weeks, and I am making them always to practice his special cake,” he added, nodding towards the pastry kitchen, where his assistants were still struggling to replicate the intricate gâteau St. Honoré.
He sat back in his chair, folding his hands expansively over his taut middle. For a pastry chef, Julien had a remarkably slender physique, fit and wiry in spite of the masses of sugar he consumed. He was dressed in a chef’s coat of pristine white, but he never wore a toque, preferring instead a soft cap, usually of crimson velvet. Today’s effort was new, still velvet, but a striking shade of cyclamen.
“A gift from your lady friend?” I guessed.
He smiled, broadly enough to show his dimples. “She makes me many gifts, ma petite chou.”
“So you have entirely given up on the idea of wooing J. J. Butterworth?” I inquired. “It was only January when your head was quite turned by her charms.”
He shrugged. “Dough cannot rise in the cold,” he said cryptically. “But you did not come to discuss my love life. How are you, my friends?”
“In need of information,” Stoker said. But, having scraped the bowl of crème chiboust clean, he allowed his gaze to drift to a small plate of enticing tiny glazed fruit tarts that shimmered like jewels.
Julien, attentive as always, offered the plate to me first, then thrust it into Stoker’s hands. “You must try them. I am not unhappy,” he said, high praise from such an exacting practitioner of the pastry arts.
My little tart had been filled with a bit of crème anglaise and then heaped with candied apricots and glazed, the whole affair topped with brandied sugar spun into a miniature bird’s nest.
I swallowed the last delectable crumb and sucked the sugar from my fingers. “You are truly a master,” I said with a happy sigh.
Julien waved aside the praise, but his pleasure was obvious. “Now, if I were to guess, you have come either to inquire about the opera singer who is currently in residence with her husband and her lover—or the maharani.”
“Got it in one,” Stoker told him through a mouthful of tart.
“Which?” Julien asked.
“The maharani,” I said promptly. Under other circumstances, I would have been thoroughly entertained by a little salacious operatic gossip, but a lady and two men with claims upon her attentions struck a bit too near the bone for my comfort.
Julien tipped his head back and steepled his fingers. “A very elegant lady, the maharani. She favors silks in very strong colors which suit her. Not everyone can wear orange,” he advised me. “With your complexion you should not attempt it.”
“I never would,” I assured him.
He went on. “But on her it is dramatic as a rising sun, a most enchanting effect. And her figure is very good. She is not so young, you understand, but with such excellent breasts—”
“Yes, thank you,” Stoker said, flushing a delicate shade of rose.
“Do you not wish to hear about her breasts?” Julien asked. “My friend, they are delectable. Not too large, just beautifully formed.” Once Julien began enumerating a woman’s charms, he could go on for hours.