The Devil's Feast Read online

  “‘On the take’?”

  “Stealing from the club. Padding the bills. Skimming off the top. It put him in a great rage.”

  “Was he guilty?”

  “The committee could find nothing against him, but he was—what’s the words?—‘censured for insolence,’ not dishonesty. He was furious at their accusations, and he said some things. They reprimanded him; he gave his notice. Lord Whatsit had to persuade him to stay.”

  “Is Soyer honest?”

  “What a question!”

  “If I am to do any good, I must know the truth. I do not wish to insult him or you—Blake would do the same.”

  Her mouth pulled downward. “Look, I think he’s honest. Committee found nothing, and he’s the best-paid chef in London, they say, and he makes more money from his inventions and his special dinners. He had a print made of the kitchens and charges a half a guinea—a guinea colored—and it’s sold over a thousand copies. I think it was more that he was protecting others.”

  “Other members of the kitchen? Who?”

  Again her mouth pulled downward.

  “Matty, I am not seeking to put people out of their posts, but I should know. Blake would ask.”

  She did not answer.

  “Matty?”

  “The cooks say it is not really stealing. Wages are not high, work is hard and long. For me, I don’t need much. But others, they’ve got families and rent. Whatever it is, it is not bad, I’m sure of it.”

  “What kinds of things are taken?”

  “Leftovers, mostly. Sometimes they sell a little something on, sometimes they feed their families. Sometimes a pat of butter might go, or a bottle of something. The one who was mainly at it was the butler, and Chef sacked him. Percy’s in charge of ordering now, and he’s very proper.”

  “Is there anyone in the kitchen who is mad or bad enough to put poison in the food?”

  “No one! The kitchen feeds people, it doesn’t kill them.”

  “Perhaps it does not. And what about this mutiny?”

  “It’s a stupid word for it. My first week, there was a grand dinner in the club. Chef was all dressed up to meet the guests. Just before service, the underchefs and the kitchen maids refused to work. I never learned exactly why—I was too new—but I heard they had all been working almost without a break for three days. He had changed the menu twice; Morel was tearing out his hair; Benoît was throwing pans on the floor. Chef went back to the kitchen, put his apron on, wheedled them round, took them through the dinner himself. It was a grand success, but afterward he fell into towering temper. Frightening, it was. He sacked five or six there and then.”

  “Do the lower staff dislike him?”

  “No! They love him and respect him. They want to be noticed by him. One word of praise from him . . . And he is generous. Gives out leftovers. Things people can sell, even, or at least until recently. In return he demands perfection. He is hard to please.”

  “So he is letting them sell the club’s food?”

  “Don’t twist things,” she said angrily.

  “Why did they mutiny?”

  “Perhaps sometimes he demands too much.”

  • • •

  FOR MY SINS, I did not relish the thought of returning to beard Soyer at once. So I instead went to fulfill the appointments that I had made the day before.

  In my head I ran through those who had been present at Soyer’s dinner: Alvanley and Ude, whom I had seen and were well. Francobaldi, who seemed to be actively offering himself up as a possible suspect. Mr. Blackwell the bottler, Mr. Prestage the engineer and Mr. Duncombe, who had sat on Rowlands’s left side but was his good friend, I would now visit. Jerrold, I would meet for dinner. Then there were myself, Soyer and Morel.

  The premises of Crosse & Blackwell was a handsome yellow brick and stucco mansion on Soho Square, not far from Blake’s lodgings. Mr. Blackwell told me that he and his partner, Mr. Crosse, had just refurbished the whole building, at no small expense. The new sign over the eight-paneled front door read “Italian Warehousemen and Oilmen by Appointment to Her Majesty.” In the shining plate-glass windows there were elegant bottles of maraschinos and marsalas arranged on velvet cushions. Small jars of essence of anchovies stood next to large jars of bright green vegetables: cucumbers, green tomatoes and peas. A few days before, I would have regarded these with relish. Now, the combination of my sore head and Mr. Wakley’s discourse on copper poisoning had extinguished my appetite.

  This was unfortunate, as Mr. Blackwell, who declared a) he was delighted I had come, for he had been hoping to meet me again, and b) he was in remarkably good health and had never before met or heard of Mr. Rowlands, was very keen for me to try a selection of his relishes and pickles.

  “May I ask how you get the vegetables to look so very green and fresh?” I said innocently.

  “It is because they are green and fresh,” said Mr. Blackwell. “We merely pickle them as soon as they are harvested in our special mixes of vinegar or brine to maintain their quality.”

  “Do you, may I ask, use copper salts in your mixes?” I ventured.

  “Well, I cannot really tell you as our recipes are a company secret.”

  “You can tell me. I won’t tell a soul,” I said, entirely dishonestly.

  “Let us say, just the tiniest smidgen. A little copper is, in fact, rather good for the body,” he said confidently.

  “I do not think it is, you know.”

  “My dear sir, you are a civilian in these matters—what can you know about such things? I assure you, every ingredient feeds a body with goodness. Now let me tell you about my plan.”

  His plan, he told me plainly, was to persuade me to endorse “Imperial Sauce,” a new concoction of anchovies, onions, vinegar and “several secret ingredients from the East.” The idea had come to him late in the night after the dinner. He intended to sell it alongside Sir Robert Peel’s sauce. “It really is the prime minister’s favorite,” he said. The label would read “the choice of true heroes—enjoyed by Jeremiah Blake and William Avery”—or the other way round, if I preferred. I protested that we were really not sufficiently famous to sell bottled relishes. Mr. Blackwell said that he had it in mind to finance a book about our adventures in India, which would make us marvelously famous. He had “the very author in mind.” My first thought was how much Blake would hate the idea; with a jolt, the fact of his absence was borne upon me again. Then I felt queasy.

  “Will you not have a bottled cucumber? See how deliciously fresh they look!” said Mr. Blackwell.

  I fled.

  • • •

  MY PURPORTED REASON for visiting Bramah and Prestage on Piccadilly was an interest in Soyer’s inventions, which the company had manufactured. In truth, I wanted another look at Mr. John Joseph Prestage.

  “None the worse for our banquet, I see!” I said, more heartily than I felt.

  “No, indeed. Mr. Soyer truly surpassed himself this time,” said Mr. Prestage, whom one look revealed to be in robust and rubicund health. “It was a feast made in heaven,” he said. He asked that I excuse his red face; he had been at the firm’s iron foundry in Pimlico.

  “I was just overseeing the finishing of the great boilers we have made for Mr. Soyer’s soup kitchen,” he said, and proceeded to bore me with descriptions of camshafts and cogs, paddles and gearwheels.

  “It certainly was a fine evening,” I said, trying to restrain a yawn. “Are you well acquainted with Monsieur Soyer and his circle?”

  “I shouldn’t say his circle, precisely, but I certainly esteem him highly. A true inventor. We’re proud to manufacture his inventions.”

  I made clumsy attempts to bring the conversation round to how well he had known Rowlands, which I eventually ascertained was not at all, and I also learned that the club and its members had remained notably resistant to Soyer’s attem
pts to raise money for his soup kitchen in subscriptions.

  “I would have thought Mr. Duncombe and Mr. Rowlands, as MPs, might make an example,” I said finally.

  “I think Mr. Duncombe has pledged an amount, though the gentleman does have something of a reputation for overextending himself financially,” said Prestage carefully. “As I said, I had never met the other gentleman before that night.”

  I nodded assiduously over Soyer’s inventions—a small gas range, a large gas range, steam-heated fish pans, special teapots, an array of the “tendon separators” that I had seen that first night—for what seemed like hours, until I was at last able to make my escape.

  It was too early for Mr. Duncombe, who, I had been informed, rarely rose before noon. Also, I did not relish the thought of having to deliver the news of Rowlands’s death to him.

  So instead I revisited Monsieur Ude in nearby Albemarle Street. I considered it possible he would not receive me, but I needed a view of Soyer from outside his kitchen, and clearly Mr. Francobaldi would not do.

  Madame Ude greeted me kindly—“Dear Alexis’s friend!”—while small dogs dashed about her ankles and, behind her, a parrot hung from a wire swing entwined with paper flowers and curling fronds.

  “I was hoping to have a word with your esteemed husband. It is a matter of some importance.”

  “Oh, Monsieur Ude!” she said, giving a sudden grimace. “No doubt he is about. Louis!” she shouted snappishly. “Louis Eustache!”

  “Merde, merde, merde!” said the parrot. Madame Ude’s smile faltered.

  “I do not wish to speak to anyone.” Ude’s voice emerged from another room. “I am dining, I am thinking. Send them away.” Madame Ude went in and upbraided him in loud, angry whispers. She reappeared, all smiles again, and led me into the dining room. Ude sat at the table in shirtsleeves: a fine white shirt and a silk damask waistcoat. An empty brandy glass and a fine crystal decanter half full of amber fluid sat on the table before him. The parrot, which had hopped its way in behind me, fluttered onto the alarmingly crowded sideboard. Reaching into his waistcoat pocket, Ude fished out a pair of small wire spectacles and put them on. He undid a button on his waistcoat and eyed me with his skeptical, saucerlike eyes.

  “So, what is it that you want?”

  “To talk to you about Monsieur Soyer.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “So, one day he brings you to my house, the next you come behind his back, sniffing, for what, scandale?”

  “Not behind his back, Monsieur Ude.” Not exactly, I thought. “He told you he has problems and he has asked me to help him.” He gave me a most dubious look. “I must confess I know almost nothing about your world. If I am to help Monsieur Soyer, I must know as much as I can. He trusts you. You are”—I grasped for the right phrase—“a chef among chefs. The younger men look up to you and aspire to your reputation. You are their father.”

  Ude looked not entirely displeased. He pondered for a moment, picked up the decanter and poured himself a small glass of brandy. As he did so, his sleeve rode up and along his plump arms were revealed a myriad of pale scars.

  “The badges of my profession,” he said, with a certain satisfaction.

  “You have known Monsieur Soyer a long time—what would you say about him?”

  He gave me an owl-like look over the tops of his spectacles.

  “He is a most talented chef. His food is excellent. He is a grand logistician and innovator. He looks forward. He is a showman. The English, they like a spectacle, and he knows so well how to provide that. But most of all, org-an-iz-a-tion.” He rapped out the word like a tattoo. “He is capable of arranging things brilliantly on a mighty scale. This, perhaps, is his greatest genius. He works very hard. He is very, very determined. He has known hardship and pain. His family was—how would you say?—very, very modest. His natural demeanor is to be cheerful, which is not very French. What else? He loves his wife.”

  I wanted to ask about the accusations of dishonesty, but I thought it would get me nothing but a request to leave. Or maybe, I thought guiltily, I was simply being chicken-hearted. Blake would not have hesitated.

  “Is that how the other chefs regard him?” I said.

  The great owl-eyes fixed upon me again. “How should I know? I can speak only for myself. But I will say to you something about the kitchen. The English have a joke about French chefs. ‘I ate at this chef’s establishment. I asked for the salt. The chef came out, he was tearing his hair, he was shouting, and all because I asked for the salt. How droll! How ridiculous!’

  “I do not know where this story started. But they said it of me, and now they say it of Alexis, of young Francobaldi, and others. Perhaps they will be saying it in a hundred years’ time. The young chefs, my fellow countrymen, feel they must smile at this joke, but they hate it. They give great thought to the realization of something that is a perfect balance of taste, of seasoning, of beauty. Then, without having tasted it, the customer at the table demands, ‘Where is the salt?’ and sprays it liberally over everything.

  “I may exaggerate a little. But these boys, they regard themselves as artists, whereas you English regard them as servants—and foreigners.” He cocked an eyebrow. “If they are very talented, very amusing and very nice, Society may play with them for a while, but when they are tired of them, Society sends them back to the servants’ hall.

  “Of course, many of these talented young men come from very modest backgrounds, like Soyer. Some can hardly read and write, especially in English, so perhaps it is not so surprising.”

  “Were you the same, Monsieur Ude?”

  “Me?” Ude said, “Non. I knew I was an artisan. I regarded money as the most honest acknowledgment of my skills. I made sure I was well paid and now I live as I like, independent of them. When I left Crockford’s, it was not because of some spurned dessert or a disagreement over an ortolan, it was an argument about my salary.”

  “Does Monsieur Soyer have enemies?”

  “How should I know?” he said briskly. He did not like the question.

  “Please understand why I ask this,” I said. “It is possible that someone wishes him great harm. In which case, I must find them.”

  He added yet more brandy to his glass and took a long sip.

  “It is often said that the kitchen is like an army. You are a soldier, non, Captain Avery? You will understand. To feed a multitude, to create excellent food consistently, there must be order and organization, and strict discipline.

  “The kitchen is like an army, but it is also a battleground. The work is hard and the payment is low, unless you rise to the top. And you must rise quickly, you must be noticed young, or you will be left behind. No garlands and prizes for you. To rise, you must compete with others just as ambitious as you, and trounce them. In Paris and here, Alexis has trodden upon the dreams of many men, some twice his age. He likes to say that we chefs are a happy band of companions making our way in London, but . . .”

  He turned his unblinking gaze upon me again, stood up, picked up a small glass from the sideboard, poured a tot of brandy in it and handed it to me. “Tuez le ver, kill the worm, Monsieur. In English I think you say, the hair of the dog that bit you.”

  I drank it down in one go. He undid the last button of his waistcoat.

  “Are you a religious man, Captain Avery?”

  “Only conventionally so, sir,” I said honestly. “That is to say, I was brought up in the Church of England.”

  He smiled. “Moi non plus. Me neither. But I was raised Catholic, and it has left its mark, as such things do. Sins, Captain Avery, sins express real truths about men. And every profession, it seems to me, has its typical sin. A version of what we in France call its déformation professionelle. For you soldiers, Captain, the sin is anger. For a soldier, anger is so tempting, is it not? Because it is not always a sin. Sometimes, a man must be angry in order to fight,
non? And we know in our hearts that it is easier to feel anger than to feel fear. Somebody watching a kitchen in full service might think that there is much anger in a kitchen. The heat and the urgency produce this. But anger is not the chef’s besetting sin. You might then conclude that it must be gluttony, since all our days we are surrounded by incitements to eat and drink. But this too is not so. The chief sin of the chef and of the kitchen, Captain Avery, is envy.”

  • • •

  IT WAS TIME for Duncombe; I could delay no longer. A left turn off Albemarle Street and a right took me into Dover Street. On the other side, there was a grand mansion set far back from the street with a high stone wall with two grand gateways and an even grander porter’s lodge, all forbiddingly closed. A brass plate announced it to be the Russian Embassy.

  The thought came to me that I should go in, even as I told myself it was a foolish idea. I think, in hindsight, my milk-liveredness regarding Duncombe and the news I must deliver, as well as my general uncertainty about how to deal with the whole poisoning matter, shamed me. I had never faltered in battle. So, though I had no idea what I should say or to whom I should speak, I rapped as loudly as I could on the porter’s lodge. This instantly drew the attention of every passerby. But no sound issued from inside the Russian compound, and no one came.

  I tried again, more vigorously, and called out, “Hi there! I wish to visit the embassy. I am on important business!”

  After some time, a door in the gate opened with a reluctant squeak.

  “Yes?”

  “I must speak with someone in the embassy.”

  “Who, sir?” A supercilious English porter.

  I struggled for an answer. I did not even know the ambassador’s name.

  “The military attaché.”

  The porter’s eyebrows shot up. He looked me up and down, his gaze lingering at my feet. “No carriage, sir?”

  “No.”

  “And you are, sir?”

  “Captain William Avery. I am on official business.”

  “I do not believe we are expecting a Captain Avery,” he said.