He pushed open the door as Orbit turned, and Dennis followed him into the spacious white-tiled room shining with glass and porcelain. A door further along in the same wall as that by which they had entered evidently opened into the dining-room but McCarty led the way to another facing them and they passed down a short corridor and into a spacious kitchen.
A fat man immaculate in starched white apron and cap, with a round, ruddy face and bristling black mustache turned on them belligerently from a long pastry table.
“What is this, that you come to my kitchen? Sacré Nom! If M’sieur Obeet know this—!”
“Don’t let that worry you, André! Mr. Orbit just showed us the way through the pantry,” McCarty interrupted. “We’d like to ask you a few questions about Hughes.”
“Mon Dieu! Les gendarmes!” André raised his floury hands in dismay.
“What’s that you’re calling us?” demanded Dennis advancing truculently and the fat chef retreated behind the table in haste.
“‘Gendarmes’ it is French for Messieurs of the Police!” he stammered, his conciliatory tone comically at variance with the fierce expression lent to him by the bristling mustache. “I know nothing of Hughes, nothing! He goes out last night upon his own affairs and in the morning Ching Lee comes to me and tells me that he is dead, he falls in the street with a—a seekness of the heart. Is it not so? Alors, why do the police interest themselves?”
“Ching Lee told you that, did he?” McCarty seated himself and Dennis took a chair by the door. “Did you ever hear Hughes complain of a weak heart?”
“But no! It—it was something else, then, which have killed Hughes?” André asked quickly, then checked himself with a shrug. “What is it that you would have me tell you?”
“How long have you worked for Mr. Orbit?”