The Devil's Feast Read online

  Writhing in anguish, his face now a ghostly, bluish hue and forced into a ghastly, mirthless grin, the blood gushing freely from his mouth, he begged the Almighty for mercy, cried for his children, and then, with a final ragged breath, expired.

  The details bore little relation to the facts as I knew them, and the Reform was not named.

  “A bit of gossip in a flash journal, a bill and a broadside, all in the last twelve hours,” I said. “Good reasons to be alarmed, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Three dead, the place closed, police on the door—it was hardly to remain a secret forever,” said Blake.

  • • •

  “YOU ARE NOT STAYING for breakfast?” said Helen. I had washed away the ordure of Smithfield and was preparing to set off for Francobaldi’s kitchen.

  “I haven’t the time. Forgive me, Helen, I cannot stay very long.”

  “What a surprise.”

  “I am sorry, but I have so very much to get done by this evening, my dear. If you had let me tell you about it, you would understand.”

  “Don’t chastise me, William.”

  “I apologize. I will stay and take coffee with you.”

  “That is three apologies in so many sentences.”

  We sat, I endeavoring to hide my impatience, she naturally aware of it, and drank our coffee in silence. Helen, it seemed to me, had turned herself to glass. Those about her—myself most of all—had come to avoid saying anything difficult or unpleasant, or too close to the nub of things, for fear that she would break. I could not blame her. India had taken so much from her, but now a mountain of unsaid things had grown up between us.

  And so the unspoken thoughts arose in me again, as they had for months: Is this how we are to spend the rest of our lives together? Will we never speak of your feelings about our child?

  “My dear,” I said, “let me explain why I must go, please. Besides the poisoner we are looking for, the banquet that was to have been canceled is now taking place—this evening. It will require all our attention. But I assure you, when it is over . . .”

  “If you will be attending the banquet, am I not invited?”

  “I shall not be attending, Helen, I shall be in the kitchens watching the food, and there will be no ladies; it is for gentlemen only, politicians and the like. But afterward, I know Monsieur Soyer will be delighted to entertain you.”

  “In the kitchen, like a servant?”

  There were some leaves of paper on the occasional table by the mirror. I picked them up. “You have a letter,” I said, smiling. “Any news of Fred?”

  An exasperated grimace crossed her face, so swiftly that anyone who did not know her as well as I would not have seen it. It made my heart clench in my chest. She picked the pages up and handed them to me.

  “It’s from your sister,” she said briskly. “He is healthy. Your father is complaining about your absence. He seems in a fine old mood. I do wonder what he would say about your residency at the Reform.”

  “If you are so determined to tell him, please feel free,” I snapped. I regretted the words at once. “I’m—”

  She flinched. “Do not apologize. I joke,” she said, “I joke. As for today, I have a number of calls to make, and I do not require your company. Do you not wish to know the arrangements?”

  “If you would like to tell me.”

  “This afternoon, I have invitations to call on several East India Company ladies, and Lord Marcus’s wife has asked me to call, too, tomorrow,” she said. “I am told she is very elegant. Lady Catherine Grealey has invited us to dinner tonight. I had assumed that you might be detained. It just so happens that Henry Darrow is going and has offered to escort me—I told you he came up with us, didn’t I? I do not need your approval to accept him, do I?”

  Some would say a married woman should not be escorted to dinner by a man neither her husband nor a relative, nor one who, though some twenty years her senior, clearly admired her.

  “Of course not.”

  “There is something else you can do for me. I shall want a carriage.”

  “No one has a carriage in London.”

  “Except Lord Marcus.”

  “My dear, he is one of the richest men in the city.”

  “How am I to travel, then? On foot? In an omnibus?”

  “No, of course not. I will arrange to have a hackney cab placed at your disposal for the afternoon.”

  “I suppose that will have to do.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Blake said the news of Scott’s departure had been received with satisfaction in the kitchen—though with less than twelve hours to go to the banquet, no one had much time to crow. Word had begun to circulate that it was Scott who had put Margaret up to informing against Matty. It was said she had spurned his advances and he had wanted this revenge. Few, however, spoke of her innocence, since that would mean admitting aloud that the poisoner was still at large.

  Francobaldi’s kitchen was at the Union Club, which occupied a mansion from the previous century on Piccadilly, overlooking Green Park. It was nothing on the scale of the Reform Club, but it was a well-maintained, handsome stone building, and through its tall windows one could glimpse great, twinkling chandeliers.

  The kitchen was far smaller than the Reform’s, but not unimpressive. Long tables were laid with fresh vegetables, fruit and game. There was a wall of copper pans, a large, polished iron range upon which various cauldrons bubbled, and two tall, thin fireplaces with the coals built up high to create a larger area for roasting blasted out enormous heat. This was a novelty I remembered from Soyer’s kitchen. Where the cooks prepared their dishes, however, was excessively crowded. They jostled each other, perspiration streaming from their faces, with a type of soldierly sullenness that I knew from the army. Indeed, there was an air of simmering anger throughout the kitchen that was almost unpleasant.

  “What is it about this place?” I murmured to Blake.

  “It’s like Hobbes’s vision of the world,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Can you not smell it? Rivalry, competition. Some thrive and others are crushed.”

  I had no time to consider this observation, as Francobaldi came up behind me and clapped me on the back—a great blow, even for me—and I was winded for a moment.

  “Captain Avery! You came! You like my kitchen? It’s not quite the Reform Club, but . . .”

  “It seems remarkably productive.” It was the first thing that came into my head. He seemed to like it well enough.

  “Let me give you the tour.”

  Having come to know Soyer’s kitchen, the various areas and arrangements of Francobaldi’s made more sense to me: the sauce cooks, the soup cooks, the meat cooks, the fish cooks, the vegetable cooks and the pâtissiers, and their various helpers and apprentices, kitchen boys and potboys. There were no women.

  I commented upon the tall and narrow fireplaces, what a fine idea they were, and how I had also noticed them at the Reform.

  “They are not Alexis’s creation,” Francobaldi said curtly. “They were the invention of the sublime Carême, who cooked for His Majesty King George IV.”

  He pushed his way between his cooks, dipping a finger in a sauce and declaring it inedibly salty or picking up a salad frond and dangling it into his mouth before announcing the dressing was good—leaving the maker either utterly crushed or puffed with pride. He picked up a pastry and thrust it into Blake’s palm.

  “Your man looks like he needs a few good meals. Are you starving him, Captain? Eat up!” He waited expectantly.

  Blake took a bite, and nodded. “Very good, sir.”

  Next he picked up a plate on which a piece of beef had been artfully placed, and sliced into it, his expression growing ever darker. In a sudden movement he tipped it onto the floor.

  “This cannot be served!” he cried. “It is like the so
le of a fucking Wellington boot! The diner would loose all his teeth if he attempted this!” He seemed furious, then suddenly burst out laughing. The cooks laughed, too, with relief. Francobaldi looked about and they all stiffened again.

  “We must be better!” he said. “Who made this? Who made this?” He pointed at the splattered mess on the floor. After a pause, a pale, ginger-featured young man stepped forward.

  “Marius, Marius, what were you thinking? What persuades you that this is acceptable, when it is in reality a fucking abomination?”

  “Je ne sais pas, Chef,” said Marius, in a small voice.

  “En anglais! En anglais! I’m concerned for you, Marius!” Francobaldi said, putting his arm round the boy’s neck as if he might break it. “How can I count on you if you cannot tell the difference between a piece of meat and a piece of India rubber? It is a disgrace, Marius! That an animal died to give us this and you have tortured it in such a way!” He let go of the boy and pushed him backward.

  “Yes, Chef,” said Marius. His hands shook.

  This seemed to inflame Francobaldi. “I’m thinking, perhaps, Marius, that I cannot count on you? Can I count on you, Marius?”

  “Oui, Chef—yes, Chef,” said the poor creature miserably, and his face flushed puce. The kitchen seemed to become yet more charged. Marius’s fellow chefs drew away from him, and he was left standing on his own.

  “Let me see you prove it, Marius. Sauté me a cutlet. In a pan. Now.” There was a plate of them on the long table. His hands shaking, Marius took a small copper frying pan, put a knob of butter in it and placed it upon one of the shining black ranges.

  “Stop your shaking, Marius!” Francobaldi shouted. “Control yourself!” Strangely, Marius could not stop shaking. He did, however, manage to pick up the cutlet and place it in the pan.

  “No! It is too soon, you caw-handed jack! The pan isn’t hot enough. You’ll spoil it!”

  The young man swallowed, squeezed his eyes to slits and tilted the pan, spooning melted butter over the cutlet, but he was hardly able to keep the butter from shaking out of the spoon. Francobaldi began to seethe with impatience, his face and body growing tauter and tauter until, eventually, he could bear it no longer, and he pushed Marius aside and took hold of the pan himself.

  “Do I employ a room of idlers?” he barked. Immediately, all but the meat cooks withdrew to their stations.

  “This is how you do it, you fucking sapskull,” he said, scooping the butter gracefully over the cutlet and letting it burst in small, shining bubbles over the browning meat. Marius stood by dumbly.

  “Now, pass me a turning knife.” The young man reached for a long, flat utensil with holes in it, but it slipped from his fingers and fell in a clatter at Francobaldi’s feet. He knelt down to retrieve it. A fresh rage possessed the chef as he watched his minion grubbing around before him.

  “What are you doing?” he shouted, and dealt the boy a great blow on the head. The young man fell back, stunned. Francobaldi kicked him.

  I had learned painfully that it was better not to intervene in a disciplinary matter involving another man’s troops.

  “Out of my sight! That’s right, No-brains, I cannot look at you!” Francobaldi shouted. And the boy, almost gratefully, ran out of the kitchen, his colleagues covertly watching him flee.

  Francobaldi leaned against the range, finishing the cutlet, moving his copper pan this way and that. The task seemed to calm him. He called for a plate and then scooped the meat out onto it, without marring the plate with a speck of fat. By the time he turned to Blake and me, he seemed to have entirely forgotten the whole business with Marius.

  “Taste this,” he said, and before I knew it, he pulled a piece of it off the bone, and his greasy fingers were forcing it into my mouth. “Good?” I nodded, trying not to gag. “Now, Captain, let us go and talk.”

  We passed two cooks assembling a plate of fish, a perfect square of milky white flesh atop a pale mousse flecked with green.

  “Good,” he said, and they stood to attention, pleased with themselves.

  “Come, here is mia cameretta, my snug,” said Francobaldi. “Not as large as Soyer’s, of course, but comfortable enough. May I offer you refreshment, Captain Avery? A small glass of brandy? Some porter for your man?”

  We declined.

  The room had a small desk with a leather bureau chair, two deep armchairs and a fire in the grate. One wall was hung with pictures, just as Soyer’s was. The armchairs looked almost identical to those in Soyer’s room.

  “It is most generous of you to give your time to me, Mr. Francobaldi,” I said, taking a seat. Blake stood behind me, holding his cap.

  “I like soldierliness, Captain Avery—and I can see it in every inch of you. We chefs are not so very different from you. A well-run kitchen is like an army troop: obedience is everything. And I thought perhaps it might be of benefit to you to hear from someone who knows Soyer but is not of the Reform.”

  I nodded. Blake and I had discussed what I would do. Let him talk. Do not give too much away. “Is there something particular you would like to tell us—me?”

  He shifted in his chair. “I thought you’d ask me questions.”

  I sat back in my chair.

  “Do you know much about Monsieur Soyer’s troubles, Mr. Francobaldi?”

  “I cannot pretend I have not heard about the young dandy’s death. And”—he sighed, brought his arms up and folded them behind his head in an oddly casual manner—“I know about the two gentlemen from three nights ago. Soyer is in trouble. E nella merda.”

  Plainly, he had not heard about Matty. “So, tell me,” I said, “what do those ‘not of the Reform’ say about it?”

  Francobaldi licked his lips. “That he has overstretched himself. That the Reform cannot pay. They are short as it is. They overspent on the building and are arguing with the architect over his fee. There will be a court case.”

  I nodded.

  “Alexis is very generous, very—extravagant? He always wants the best, and lives upon a grand scale. He is not perhaps so careful with his accounts. The bills mount up. The club is late to pay them. Can the club afford him? And for how long? That is what people say.”

  “Anything else?”

  He tilted his head to one side, as if considering.

  “This is a competitive business. We chefs find companionship with each other but we are also great rivals. The suppliers want to impress and at the same time to cheat us. Our employees and masters demand the best but are not willing to pay for it. It is a grand battle for survival.” He grinned. “It is life itself.”

  “And Monsieur Soyer is at the top of the pile, sir,” Blake said.

  “I think you met my manservant, Maguire, last night. He was with me in India; we have long worked together. As a matter of fact, he speaks rather good Italian.”

  “Oh no, sir, just a little to be getting by on. I do apologize for interrupting, sir,” said Blake. “You were saying that it is a competitive business, sir, that it is a grand battle.”

  “Yes.” Francobaldi was put off his stride. “One must live hard, and it is not always possible to play entirely by the rules. Especially if one is not sure how long one will remain, as your man says, ‘at the top of the pile.’”

  There was a pause. Blake poked me sharply in the back.

  I leaned forward, trying to compose my features into an expression both sincere and manly. I had no idea if I was succeeding.

  “Mr. Francobaldi, we are both men of the world. I should very much like to know your honest opinion of Monsieur Soyer.”

  “I admire him. But I make no secret of the fact that I’d like to best him. We don’t all have the resources of the Reform Club’s kitchens, however. I wonder, too, if all is truly well with him. He smiles and smiles, and never sleeps, and never frowns, never seems to tire. Do you see that?”


  “I had not thought about it,” I said.

  “We successful chefs, we all work hard and strive for the best. But Alexis . . . perhaps he has made a pact with the devil.” He laughed.

  “What exactly do you mean?” I hoped I looked confiding and reassuring.

  He did not need asking twice.

  “Soyer has ‘arrangements.’”

  “‘Arrangements’?”

  “You know. Deals. Financial interests.”

  “I saw his inventions—does the Reform frown on his other interests?”

  “Some say they keep him from the kitchen. But no, I mean that that kitchen has a reputation. Presents received in return for orders. Bills padded and the extra divided between the kitchen and the supplier. His apprentices’ fees in his pocket. Of course, many kitchens do this. The luxuries we deal in are a temptation. Just last week I had to dismiss a butler. He was ordering cases in and then selling every sixth bottle for his own profit. He will never work in a grand house again. I shall see to that.

  “To be frank, the Reform’s kitchen accounts aren’t what they should be . . . I thought you should know this. Others wouldn’t be so straight with you.”

  “You are saying that Soyer is dishonest,” I said.

  “Not I, but people . . .” He licked his lips again.

  “How far do you think Soyer would go?” said Blake. “Would he poison someone?”

  Francobaldi was taken aback. He laughed uneasily. “Your servant is very direct. I couldn’t . . . I cannot see what the advantage would be, but then, where men start to doubt each other, and money is at stake, things happen.”

  “So you do suspect him?” said Blake.

  At that he retreated, half laughing. “How can I say? But you might wonder about his staff. They’ve laid down their knives in protest on occasion. Maybe they don’t love him quite as he would like them to.”