Carême in Brighton — a mystery novel - 3. Chapter 3: of Jack Hartell’s Heartbreak & Rust-Proof Iron

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Chapter 3: of Jack Hartell’s Heartbreak & Rust-Proof Iron

The new day that had dawned over Brighton was oppressively colourless. However now, as mid-morning approached, the skies were simply grey with overcast clouds. They were not as leaden as before.

Carême and Lady Morgan met again after the chef’s daily levée with Prince George. They found a place where they might spend a few, unobserved minutes exchanging information: the Chapel Royal.

The Irish novelist knew the way and guided the Frenchman to a separate building at the south-east corner of the property. Carême was amazed to get into the stone structure – which struck a rather plain appearance from the outside. He found himself standing in a soaring space of the best taste. Known to him as Directoire, it was the style of the 1790s emphasising delicate lines, delicious hues and disciplined Classical proportions. Utterly ‘un-oriental,’ the Chapel Royal had robin-egg walls with thin plaster pilasters rising thirty feet to a pale yellow barrel vault ceiling. One full-height window in clear glass comprised most of the narrow end at the north.

The pair began strolling to the centre of the open-floored church.

“Before the Regent started construction on the Music and Banqueting Rooms, this was George’s entertainment venue.”

The chef was aghast. “Comment ça?”

“It was raised as a chapel to show the King how ‘pious’ Prince George can be. But soon after, it became the place he’d throw balls and serve banquets. And look there.” She gestured to the thinner side of the room along the south. “He has theatrics given here as well.”

Carême spied what she meant. For the balcony across this end of the chapel was arrayed like an opera house’s ‘Royal Box,’ right down to the rich drapery hanging in gold-fringed swags from the up-curve of the barrel vault.

It was an odd feeling for Carême to contemplate how this space, intended to stay quiet and contemplative, was utilized to throw live-for-the-moment parties. Was George intentionally thumbing his nose at convention? Or had he merely blundered his way into an affront to decency? Carême resolved that the answer was ‘no’ to the mistaken notion. The appropriating of the chamber was too bold an act for it to have been accidental, and no doubt was taken against strong advice from his Counsellors.

However, the two visitors were here for business.

“What have you uncovered?” the chef asked. “Anything good?”

Sydney Morgan began speaking excitedly. “Yes! Let me spill the beans on what I’ve found out, mostly via my lady’s maid talking to the other lady’s maids, especially Brigitte, Princess Charlotte’s servant-companion.” She paused for breath, preparing to get lost on a tangent. “That mademoiselle de Saint-Exupéry is so charming! She’s pretty, tasteful, well brought-up – talented at the piano too – from what I understand.”

All of this praise put Carême in a slightly foul mood, though Lady Morgan did not know why.

She frowned and continued in a more sober manner. “Anyway, back to what I’ve learned. Word of mouth has it, as the Doctor already told you, Luluh Connell does indeed have an admirer amongst the kitchen staff; and it’s one known to be sweet on her. The new intelligence adds that the girl was secretive with who because the lad is ‘below her’ station.”

“But she’s a chamber maid.”

“Correct. So that makes me consider who in the kitchens fits this ‘lowly’ description. The answer: one of the young men charged with doing more menial tasks.”

“Ah. Very clever of you, Lady Morgan.”

“The lad could be risking his neck to filter treats from the table scraps up to her, but I don’t know if that has anything to do with her rapid decline.”

“Yes.” Carême nodded slowly. “It seems unlikely: in fact, incroyable to think the young man is trying to kill her, if indeed he is ‘sweet’ on her.”

“True, but stranger things have happened, and you never know until you know. You know?”

The novelist’s presentation of vernacular Irish wit had been lost on Carême. So too was the woman’s laugh now greeting his puzzled scowl.

“There’s an old Irish proverb that runs, dig into other people’s gardens and expect them to root through yours. I wouldn’t be at all surprised, dear Chef, to learn spying for foreign powers is best done in the servants’ hall.”

She again laughed; and again Carême failed to see what was so funny. Truth was, his mind was elsewhere.

Unbeknownst to them, but concurrently, a very different scene was unfolding in the Pavilion’s Decking Room, for François had begged use of the facility from the Head Table Decker – with whom he had an amicable working relationship – to deck out the footmen in proper ‘Democratic Attire’ for serving the day’s dinner.

A bit of levity passed through the footmen like an electrical current. It was funny to them to see one another in anything but cutaway coats, white stockings and black britches.

The young men stood in an antsy line as François fitted them one by one. Yesterday evening, he’d gone out and found a town tailor – a French one, naturally – and now, while the tailor’s assistant jotted notes right behind them, the two inspected the troops. They surveyed the young men’s best from-home attire and augmented to suit the dignity of the Regent’s home.

While Gris Thorndyke scowled and folded his still red-coat-clad arms in the background, François went up to the next in line. He ran his fingers under the lapel of the handsome lad, found some fraying, and told Monsieur Appert, “This one will need a new coat.”

“Colour?” the tailor asked.

François frowned in concentration. Then he asked the boy, “Which colour would you like?”

The question thoroughly thrilled the footman. “I’ve always wanted a snuff-coloured jacket – you know, a rich brown.”

Distré glanced at Appert, who nodded.

“Then snuff you shall have!”

Setting aside the lad’s excited glee, François resumed his inspection. The young man’s trousers were acceptable, but his waistcoat was not. “A new vest; yellow satin, I think.” He moved up to the boy’s neckwear. A ruffled frill, which he’d probably obtained from his father, was both too dingy and old-fashioned to serve.

François ambled to an open trunk of neckgear the tailor had brought. He selected a colourful scarf and returned to his charge.

Standing before him, and personally undoing the old, he removed the frill and fixed the new example in place.

The youth was all smiles feeling the imported silk against his neck.

“There,” François said through his own grin. “Now when you feel this luxury formerly only belonging to the Lords caressing you under your chin, hold your head a little higher and remember your station. Be proud to serve Carême’s food.”

Ignoring the contempt-spiked snigger coming off the Chief Footman, François gave the lad a brotherly double-shouldered slap. “Now take off your old jacket so the tailor can measure you for your new one.”

“Thank you, Mister Distray!”

François stepped to the next man in line, but the Kitchen Comptroller came storming over.

“Who,” he demanded, “has authorized the hiring of a tailor!”

Feeling both assured and wry at this point, François decided to have some fun. “Carême did, naturellement.”

The moneyman puffed up. “Dare I question if the chef de cuisine has the unilateral authority to approve outfits for footmen that will run into the hundreds of pounds!”

François applied some fake innocence on himself. “I only work on Carême’s authority, naturally, and he likewise only proceeds on the Regent’s authority . . . ”

The bean-counter’s face tightened, waiting for the now-inevitable hammer blow.

“ . . . Which His Highness gave this morning.”

“I . . . . I . . . . Oh. I—”

François draped his arm across the functionary’s shoulder, false friendship ringing hollow in his voice. “Next time – before barging in where you are not needed – you had better check in with your lord and master first, n’est-ce pas?”

Donald Bland broke off the hostile embrace in a near rage. But before he left, the man hailed the Chief Footman. “Mister Thorndyke, I would very much like a word with you, please. In private.”

The pair skulked off, each parting with hateful glares for the smiling maître d’hôtel.

Just then, Carême entered from the outside through the glass doors.

François hurried instructions to the rest of the footmen. “Pick out the scarves you like, wear them and keep them fresh. Also, wait for the tailors to measure you. You ALL will get brand new work suits!”

The young men, thoroughly won over to Distré’s side, shouted “Huzzah!” as a body and nearly stampeded to inspect the selection of neck attire.

By the time François got there, Carême was already sitting in his office and poring over his layout for the day’s dinner. The maitre-d’ closed the door behind him.

“Ah, François.” The chef stood. “Let’s review today’s battleplans.”

Side by side, the men studied Carême’s table setting sketch showing the guest positions and food placement, the latter of which were assigned numbers for coordination twix kitchen, deckers, François and the footmen.

“A round table will be set up today in the Salon. There’ll be fourteen covers equally spaced around the edge. The food in the centre will be arranged thus: soups here and centerpiece roasts here. Two large plates placed between each of the roasts and soups will hold the entrées, which will total eight.”

The arrangement was like a clockface, with soups at the twelve and six o’clock positions; centerpiece roasts at three and nine; and the entrées at one and two, four and five, and so on.

“Yes, Chef Carême.”

“Here’s the carte de menu the Prince agreed to for today.”

Carême handed François a piece of paper, and the maître d’hôtel scanned it. Number coded to match the plan, the menu consisted of one clear soup and one vegetable puree, or potage, two fish relevées – including fried turbot with lobster sauce – two cold centerpiece ‘roasts’ and eight entrées – like scallops of pheasants with truffles, and individual macaroni pastry shells with brown-butter mushrooms. This completed the First Table.

The second setting had two hot roasts, eight entremets – including French-fried potatoes and glazed apple beignets with almonds – and the meal would be rounded off with single-serving coffee flavoured soufflés sent hot to the table straight from the ovens.

In point of fact, a two course meal with a mere sixteen side-dishes was not much of a challenge for the Frenchmen’s capacities.

“Oui, mon chef.”

“What’s the status of the preparations so far?”

“For the cold centerpiece roasts, Sous-chef Bauda has finished the quail chartreuse, which turned out beautifully. Now it chills in the Cold Kitchen, waiting for you to place the final garnishings.”

“Excellent.” The chef stopped what he was doing and engaged François with a waxy, emotional gaze. “A chartreuse – marvelous old item of the grande cuisine – so simple, who would think the unfussy combination of summer cabbage and summer game could produce something so profoundly delicious? But it does.” His manner, after a blink, returned to the professional. “And I want you to personally make the pistachio aïoli to go with it.”

“Yes, Chef. It’s my privilege, and I’ll do it exactly as you showed me.”

Carême was too busy to smile. “Yes, I know.”

There was a knock on the glass. It was Doctor Kitchiner, looking very dour.

The man let himself in and closed the door carefully behind him. “I’m afraid, old boy”—he was addressing the chef—“the girl is dead. The Prince wants answers.”

After a protracted moment of silence between the three men, Carême grew resolute. “Well then, there’s only one thing to do – confront the staff. Will you join us, Doctor?”

“No. I must attend to the matter of getting the dead’s remains, God bless her, out of the Pavilion with no one seeing. I will leave you two of my men though.”

Kitchiner gestured through the glass at a pair of clean-shaven and fairly well-dressed fellows lingering by the roasting spits for warmth.

“Bon.”

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The Great Kitchen, if one just looked at the equipment, appeared like a ghost ship running along without a crew. Saucepans, taken off the boiling embers, were set aside; steam cauldrons bubbling along had their bags of vegetables lifted out; great skewers of roasts – long as a man is tall – stood hurriedly unhooked from their iron stands before the vertical cages of roasting coals. What’s more, faucets trickled instead of gushed where numbered pots of the batterie de cuisine sat amidst moist sponges and containers of brick dust to scour them clean; brooms, ever-present in the diligent hands of tidy young men to keep refuse off of Carême’s floors, leaned higgledy-piggledy where abandoned against doorjambs and preparation tables. But where were their people? The normally attentive-to-a-flaw army of sauce-makers, steamtable fellows, spit-jacks, scullery maids and sweep-up boys?

They were absent from duty, but had been marshalled, face forward, into a single line of inspection down the length of the Great Kitchen. Filed by rank, Sous-chef Bauda anchored the column from the honored position close to Carême’s office. From there, cooks, under-cooks, and every position of preparation and clean-up followed.

The only ones not included were Kitchiner’s pair of men, who stood with folded arms – one each at the Great Kitchen’s adit and exit – and François, who leaned against the massive warming table right in the centre of the facility, from where he could scan the whole line of staff with an easy head-turn.

Chef Carême, the worthy individual, the supreme general of their culinary forces, strode down the waiting column of cooking soldiers with his hands behind his back, and his chefly knives slung from his belt like sabre and cutlass. The eyes below his white toque cap were Gallic and serious. Speaking, his tone imparted the same deliberate intent.

“Upstairs,” he said, pausing for effect, “an hour ago, a young girl of His Highness’ chamber maids – a Miss Luluh Connell – only seventeen years of age, died. She, my friends, was poisoned.”

François kept his eyes alert, looking for telltale signs of emotion. The line of possible perpetrators was long though, and any reaction Carême’s words might cause would be subtle.

The chef continued his pacing. “And furthermore, we have reason to believe one of you gathered here today is mixed up in her death.” Carême arrived at the place where a be-capped and innocent looking Thomas Daniels stood. He eyed the boy, adding, “We just want answers.”

François watched this exchange intently; too intently it turned out. For farther down the line, the maître d’hôtel missed fifteen-year-old Jack Hartell, sweep-up boy, stuff his mouth with something. He missed that while the boy chewed and swallowed awkwardly, the young man’s eyes were miserable. That they welled with tears as if their youthful owner’s life was over, having just learned the girl he loved was no longer alive.

Carême took up his stroll again. “One of you was involved with Miss Connell, and we would simply like to know who.” The chef’s progress was halted; he heard an odd sound. Muffled at first, he tried to locate it.

Carême glanced at François, who was hearing it too and scrutinizing the line of people to―

Suddenly, Jack Hartell’s teeth began to chatter violently. All the colour had drained from his face. He started gagging, foaming at the mouth uncontrollably.

As Distré, Kitchiner’s men and Carême all darted to the boy, Hartell crashed to the floor, knees buckling and sending him toppling to the tiles on his right shoulder. His legs drew up, and in this helpless fetal position, began to convulse.

François and Carême arrived, making Jack’s fellow sweep-up boys stand back and give them room.

Carême reached in the boy’s mouth, ensuring his tongue wasn’t blocking his airway. That assured, the chef inspected the victim’s sputum, which now coated his hand – it had a strange, pale sage colour to it.

Meanwhile, François had rifled through the lad’s pockets and now held a palmful of broken sugar work fencing. It was a horrible dark green.

“Villon, get the mustard powder, now!”

The maitre-d’ jumped up to do as instructed. Thomas was within Carême’s sights, peeking over the shoulders of Kitchiner’s men, so he told him, “Fetch a cup of water.”

“Yes, Chef!”

Now Carême stuck his fingers down Jack Hartell’s throat – all the way. The boy vomited a horrid mass of barely masticated green candy fragments, yellow stomach acid, and iron-smelling blood.

Again he did it; again the boy’s stomach was emptied on the floor.

François was back. He held a cannister.

“Sit here,” Carême told him, “and cradle the boy.”

François did, pulling the limp Jack Hartell up by sticking his hands beneath the young man’s armpits and drawing him close.

Carême tore off the lid of the mustard powder, used his clean left hand and dug into it. In another second, he smeared it on Jack’s tongue and all around the inside of the boy’s mouth.

Thomas stepped close with the water.

“Merci,” Carême said, taking the mug and holding it to Hartell’s lips. He poured some in, using his other hand to rub downward on the boy’s throat to make him swallow.

Once Jack did, Carême continued administering the mustard powder this way.

After three or four doses, the young man opened his eyes. He was dazed and confused seeing the chef’s face so close to his own, but tears started and he pleaded for understanding. “I didn’t mean to hurt her . . . to kill her. Oh, God – I loved her―”

“I know; I know,” the chef said, comforting him. After saying “It will be all right” and brushing the boy’s forehead, Carême stood.

Footmen from the Decking Room had been drawn to the Great Kitchen by all the commotion and now stood outside the circle of staff surrounding the stricken boy.

“You and you”―Carême picked out two footmen―“assist the Doctor’s men and carry this boy upstairs so Kitchiner can help.”

“Yes, Chef!”

François stood, hefting the lad with him, and handed Jack over to the footmen. They and Kitchiner’s men hurried with the sobbing youth through the door to the Central Service Corridor.

Calmly, Carême said, “François, come with me.”

Chef and maître d’hôtel also exited the kitchen, heading to the pastry suite’s display room.

Thinking he recognized the broken pieces of sugar work in the boy’s possession, Carême opened the central glass door of the display cabinet. “Help me move it out.”

François on one side, Carême on the other, slid Chef Weltje’s pièce montée forward. Both men glanced at the back. Sure enough, various sections of the green fencing were broken off and missing. “I thought so,” said Carême.

They took it all the way out and set it on the table.

After this, François led Carême to the larder. He located and pointed to a shelf of boxes, each with a hand-colored label bearing the name of the manufacturer and a Royal Warrant, proclaiming the proud contents had been made exclusively for the Regent’s use.

Carême pulled out the ‘green’ container, opened it and inspected the sage-colored powder inside. “Mon dieu,” he uttered slowly, “it’s arsenic.” He held François’ gaze. “It’s Paris Green fabric dye and should never have been marked as ‘food colour’.”

Together, the two collected all the boxes of pre-made food pigment to dispose of immediately. The chef expounded, “Such ‘lazy’ products will ruin the health of modern man. You know as well as I do what a bounty of natural shades plants provide: if yellow is desired, soak safflower; if red is wanted, crush annatto seeds; if green – the easiest of all – boil spinach. Mon dieu.”

“What shall we do with Chef Weltje's poisoned confections,” François asked. “The temptation is too great for the staff to nibble here and there.”

“It’s obvious: they must be destroyed. But, for now, lock them up. I’ll need His Highness’ permission to get rid of them properly.”

“Yes, Chef.”

By the time the great suite of kitchens were back on course to serve the Pavilion’s dinner at 4, and all the ready-made ‘food colouring’ consigned to a fire François had built in the kitchen’s open court, Doctor Kitchiner was lightly rapping on the glass of Carême’s office.

The chef waved him in. “How is the boy?”

“Stable. I think he’ll live. The others told me how you saved his life. How did you know the mustard powder would countermand the arsenic’s toxicity?”

Carême’s smile was then a little more than evasive. “Some things a person just picks up along their journeys in life.”

The Doctor closed the door and sat himself down. While he took off and cleaned his glasses, he told the chef casually, “I’ve already spoken to His Highness about the unfolding of events, and how the investigation is over – thanks to you – and I can assure you, he is very pleased.”

Carême wasn’t sure where this was leading, and so simply nodded once in politeness.

“In any event”―the Doctor brightened his tone―“I am hosting a little gathering at my Club tomorrow night, a private function, and I think you should attend.”

“Oui?”

“Yes. Oui. Nothing elaborate, mind you. In fact, the point of my little get-togethers is to eschew all formality. We assemble as friends; friends who have a mutual interest in food.”

Carême already sensed he had no avenue of refusal. “After my duties here are complete?”

“Oh, yes. I’ll send a carriage around to collect you at half seven. All right?”

The Doctor stood to go, but paused in his tracks to add, “And, although I’m sure he’s delightful company, my invitation does not extend to your – to, that is – François.”

Kitchiner left without waiting for any reply.

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The maitre-d’ uttered a hush-hush “Follow me.”

Carême, behind him, and by this time laboring for breath a bit, contemplated the twilight murkiness of these out-of-the-way steps somewhere in the upper registers of the Pavilion.

“It’s just a little more.” François offered this assurance from out in front. “I know all the workers have gone home for the night.”

François turned a corner. The sound arose of a door getting an extra-firm push – then light appeared.

They stepped out amid a rooftop construction zone. A large flat area, which contained various stacks of fresh-cut lumber, and smaller piles of meticulously numbered iron girders, plates and angular supports – and many other components whose function was not obvious to the chef. But Carême’s sensibilities to craftmanship were instantly drawn to the fact that each iron support, no matter how large or small, was completely blued against corrosion. Such a display of forethought indicated the protection of the structure of the Pavilion’s rooves from rusting was not for George, the Prince Regent, but his descendants two hundred years from now.

François called from up ahead, mounting a temporary set of steps.

By this time, Carême had caught his breath and soon followed. Once he got to the top, he could tell why François’ exploratory nature had been pulled up here to begin with.

A work in progress, the old curving roof of the Salon was arched over by self-supporting iron joists. These formed the base for vertical iron members that would support the elaborate onion dome soon to encase and rise soaringly above them.

François clambered higher from the ringed walkway upon which they stood to the wooden construction platform built atop the iron joists. Knowing the chef would join him, he went to the edge and sat down, drawing his knees close to his body.

Once Carême was sitting by his side, both men gazed over the open countryside and gentle incoming waves lapping the seashore. The sun was setting at their backs and casting their shadows undistinguishingly from those of the Pavilion’s fanciful silhouette.

After several minutes, Carême told François, “I have to tell you, that odd doctor invited me to a soirée tomorrow night.”

“At his house?” This was news to François.

“No. He called it his ‘Club’.”

“But you have your doubts about him and his invitation?”

“Perhaps – however, tomorrow night I shall see.”

The maitre-d’s body language changed. It was all Carême needed to say to inform François he was not invited. He gazed over the darkening landscape.

“Thank you for bringing me up here.” Carême tried to sound wistful. “It makes Brighton seem a world unto itself, away from the actual, dire circumstances of our times.”

“Agathé writes from Paris that breadlines are forming. She’s heard rumors armed gangs of ex- Grande Armée soldiers are secretly banding together to fight Louis XVIII’s rule.”

“Democratic uprisings are going on in Italy, Russia, Germany – all a lit fuse on a bomb sooner or later to go off.”

“You forget London. Protests by the hungry, and radical actions, are happening there too.” François’ heart was not in the conversation. He felt he was in a twilight world himself.

The chef inhaled and raised his eyes from François’ profile. He gazed at the structure around him. Compared to the ‘rusted’ results of the Congress of Vienna, whose designers were not as careful as the Pavilion’s architect, the New Europe was being built on a flawed under-structure. The desire to move on to a post-Napoleonic era, but ignoring the hunger for self-government that birthed the French Revolution in the first place, was creating a pretty façade on a rotten framework. It was only a matter of time before the political structure fell.

However, despite all the gloom of the present, Carême wanted to focus on hope for the future – not a grand, re-designed European future, but a small, intimate one for he and François.

“Radical times or not, Villon, the life I’ve chosen, with its malignant chef’s lung, means I won’t be around for much of a retirement. And yet I want enough time, with you, to pen my all-encompassing cookbook.”

François wouldn’t look at him.

“It will be our legacy―”

“And Prince George, he’ll be your publication patron?”

The chef scoffed. “I doubt it. Each time I present my methodically planned meals and sugar work architecture, the Regent is bored and ends all discussion with a permeative ‘I’m sure it’s fine, Carême. We trust you’.”

François stared at the shadowy whitecaps rolling in at the beach. In his heart of hearts, all he wanted to do was pledge lifelong devotion and assistance to Carême and his writing ambitions . . . . But, he knew he could not.

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