Hasty Death

∨ Hasty Death ∧

Ten

It is a mistake to suppose that eating and drinking stimulate conversation at the moment. We know that not until the champagne has gone at least twice round the tables are our tongues loosened; and this unlocking process is not a pretty one.

Macmillan’s Magazine, 1906

Dinner that evening started off silently. Even Lady’s Glensheil’s tongue was silent. Her black gown was decorated with so much jet that it glittered like the skin of some primeval reptile.

The men were wearing black armbands and the ladies had looked out their darkest clothes. For the young women of the party, Rose, Daisy, Maisie and Frederica, it had been hard to find anything suitable to wear, débutantes usually being attired for evening in white or pastels.

Daisy was the most decorous in her grey silk. Rose was wearing lilac silk, but with a dark purple shawl about her shoulders. Maisie’s maid had stitched black edging on a lime-green gown and Frederica had embellished her white gown with a tartan sash as if for a highland ball, thinking that a show of native Scottishness showed enough respect for the dead.

Everyone began to drink more than usual. The acidulous Sir Gerald Burke was the first to give tongue. People said he had become nastier after that business of extricating himself from the clutches of a middle-aged American lady. Gerald had wrongly assumed the lady to be an heiress and, on finding she was not, had proceeded to retreat, followed by her loud and public recriminations.

“I don’t know why we are all being kept here,” he complained. “It’s all your fault, Jerry.”

“What, me? I didn’t murder her, old chap.”

“You wanted rid of her. Why not just own up and let us all go home?”

Harry decided to see if he could shake them. “I don’t think it could possibly be Jerry,” he said. “I mean, he was four sheets to the wind last night. His hand wouldn’t have been steady enough to inject the drug into the champagne bottle.”

All eyes turned on him. Angela Stockton, resplendent in acres of black velvet and a black cap, looked like an actress playing Hamlet’s aunt. “You’re being ridiculous,” she said. “Isn’t he, Peregrine?”

“Talking tosh,” mumbled her son. “We’ve got to get out of here or we’ll all go mad.”

He had reason to be worried. The night before, when Mrs Jerry was choking out her last breath, he had been busy seducing a buxom kitchen maid. The girl had cried afterwards and said she had sinned and he was terrified she would tell Lady Glensheil before he had a chance to put some miles between himself and the old battleaxe.

“No,” said Harry calmly. “Mrs Jerry did not struggle before she died. There was an empty champagne bottle beside the bed. The cork was in the wastepaper basket and it had a fine hole pierced in it.”

There was an alarmed silence. The general consensus of opinion of everyone except Rose and Daisy was that the much-goaded Jerry had lost his rag in a drunken rage and throttled his wife and they didn’t blame him one bit. “Would have done it myself if I’d been married to a bullying horror like her,” Neddie Freemantle had said earlier.

“I do not like everyone shouting across the table,” said Lady Glensheil. “Kindly confine your conversations to the people on your right or on your left.”

No one paid any attention to her.

“You know what I think?” asked Tristram Baker-Willis ponderously.

“No, we don’t,” snapped Sir Gerald. “None of us thinks you can think.”

Tristram ignored him. “I think it’s all balderdash and tosh about poor old Freddy being a blackmailer.” He fastened his gaze upon Rose. “You never liked him. That’s why you started this rumour about blackmail.”

“That’s not true!” said Rose. “How do you explain three people paying him ten thousand pounds each and now one of them is murdered?”

“We all know Jerry strangled his wife,” said Tristram.

“I say, steady the buffs.” Neddie Freemantle.

“Enough!” shouted Lady Glensheil. “We will now talk about something else!”

That evening she was wearing a small jewelled cap embellished with ostrich feathers and those very feathers appeared to bristle with outrage.

They all felt silent, poking at their food like bad children and covertly studying one another.

There was a general feeling of relief when she rose to lead the ladies to the drawing-room. They were crossing the hall when a small kitchen maid curtsied and addressed Angela Stockton. “Mum, I got to speak to you.”

“What are you doing abovestairs, Miss Whatever-your-name is?” barked Lady Glensheil.

“I got to be done right by,” whined the maid. She pointed at Angela. “Her son done took my cherry.”

“What has this to do with fruit?” demanded her ladyship.

“I’ll deal with it,” said Angela hurriedly.

She stepped forward and took the girl by the arm and hustled her into an ante-room.

“What’s this about, girl?”

“Your son bedded with me last night.”

“You must have led him on!”

“Not me, mum. I feel I ought to go to the perlice. After all, a fellow who ruins a poor girl like me must be up to worst.”

Angela slumped down in a chair.

“What’s your name?” she demanded.

“Alice Turvey, mum.”

“How much?”

“I don’t rightly understand, mum.”

“You want money, don’t you? How much?”

Alice put her apron up to her face to dab her dry eyes while figures ran through her head. “Two hunner’ guineas,” she finally gasped out.

“You shall have it,” said Angela wearily.

“When?”

“Now. Come to my rooms. But you must leave this house.” Angela always carried a great deal of money with her.

Alice bobbed a curtsy and followed her. Ten minutes later she ran down the stairs to the servants’ quarters and signalled to the pot-boy, who followed her out the kitchen door.

“Did you get it?” he asked.

“Two hunner’ guineas,” said Alice triumphantly.

“Told you she’d pay up. When d’you get the money?”

“I got it.”

“Good. I’ll steal what I can and we’ll get out of here tonight. It’s off to ‘merica for us.”

“But the police might stop us.”

“Easy. You’ve been fired, that’s what you’ll say, and I’m helping you with your bag.”

♦

Kerridge started the interviews all over again the following day but his researches were interrupted as various guests came in to complain they had been robbed. Lord Alfred said his gold cigarette case was missing, Lady Glensheil could not find a silver buttonhook, Maisie screeched that her pearl necklace had gone, Tristram Baker-Willis said he had been robbed of twenty pounds which he had left in his dressing-table drawer and the others complained of expensive trifles that had been taken from their rooms. Only Rose’s and Harry’s rooms had been left untouched.

It was quickly established that both the kitchen maid and the pot-boy were gone. A shame-faced policeman on guard outside the gates to keep the press at bay said he had questioned the couple when they left the estate but they both said they had been dismissed and the young girl had cried most touchingly.

Irritated, Kerridge started the hunt for the missing couple.

And Lady Rose Summer received a proposal of marriage.

♦

She was walking in the gardens to take the air. The morning’s rain had cleared but the clouds were still thick overhead and a stiff wind was blowing. Daisy had just grumbled that it was too nasty to be outside and Rose had sent her away.

She heard someone calling her name and turned round. Tristram Baker-Willis came up to her. “Lady Rose, I have been trying to have a word in private with you.”

“Go ahead,” said Rose. “Is it something to do with these murders?”

“No. And such a pretty lady as yourself should not be troubling your head with such awful things. I blame Captain Cathcart. He’s always whispering to you. Is there something between you?”

“Nothing at all,” snapped Rose.

“You see – this is jolly difficult – I’ve fallen most awfully terribly in love with you and I want you to be my wife.”

Rose stared at him in amazement. “Why?”

“I just told you,” he said in tones of exasperation. “You’re making this awfully difficult for a chap.”

“Mr Baker-Willis,” said Rose, “I fear the fright of these murders is making you behave in a strange way. My parents have told me to return to London as soon as possible. But although you should have asked my parents’ permission first before proposing to me, I can give you my answer. I barely know you and, no, I do not wish to marry you or anyone else here.”

He kicked moodily at the sodden earth of a flower-bed. “I may be your last chance.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know you’re called the Ice Queen and chaps say you talk like an encyclopedia. I don’t mind all that, but most chaps would.”

“I am getting cold, Mr Baker-Willis. I find your proposal unflattering. If you will excuse me…”

She hurried away from him round the house and nearly collided with Harry.

“Whoa!” he exclaimed. “What’s all the rush?”

“Mr Baker-Willis has just proposed marriage to me.”

“Has he, by Jove? Why on earth would he do that?”

“Get out of my way, you stupid man,” shouted Rose. She pushed past him and stalked into the house.

♦

“And Captain Harry dared to wonder why anyone would propose to me,” raged Rose to Daisy a few minutes later.

“It does seem odd.”

“Not you, too!”

“I mean,” said Daisy, “it’s not odd that a gentleman should propose to you. Only if the gentleman happens to be Mr Baker-Willis. He hasn’t been making sheep’s eyes at you. Why the sudden interest?”

“I have a very large dowry,” said Rose in a small voice, her anger evaporating.

“That’s probably it. A lot of those fellows are always looking for an heiress. And a title draws them like a magnet.”

“Oh dear,” said Rose. “I called Captain Harry stupid. I thought he was saying I was too ugly to attract a proposal from anyone, including himself.”

♦

Harry and Becket were summoned to the estate office to face an angry Kerridge.

“Sit down, both of you,” said Kerridge heavily. “I had a man on the gate last night. You pair drove out past him. He said he didn’t stop you or question you going or returning because the idiot assumed you had my permission. I distinctly told him to let no one past. But, oh, no, he touched his helmet as you go off and then he lets two thieving servants away as well.”

Anxious to divert Kerridge’s attention from themselves, Harry said, “There was evidently some fuss last night when the ladies left the drawing-room. Becket here says it was the talk of the servants’ hall. Peregrine Stockton had seduced a kitchen maid. Angela Stockton led her off into a side-room. I would assume she paid her off. She and the pot-boy obviously decided to help themselves to a few trinkets as well while we were all the in the drawing-room.”

But Kerridge was not to be distracted. “So where did you go last night?”

“I motored to London to pick up my letters and came straight back. I did not think I was a suspect.”

“Everyone’s a suspect, even you,” said Kerridge nastily. “Don’t ever leave here again until this investigation is finished. We have wired all worried parents and relatives to stay away. If I cannot find anything out today, I will need to let them all go.”

♦

To Rose’s distress, Tristram seemed to have come to the conclusion that his proposal had been too abrupt and so he set about courting her. His method of doing this was to praise her fulsomely and throw her languishing glances.

She could only be glad that her parents had decided to stay in London, having been informed by the police that she would only be required to stay at Farthings for, perhaps, another day. Rose felt sure that if they had arrived on the scene and if Tristram had asked their permission to pay his addresses, and if she proved to have turned down another eligible gentleman, they would, she knew, be furious.

What the newspapers were saying about it all, no one knew, Lady Glensheil having stopped the delivery.

No one wanted to chat or socialize or play croquet any more. Suspicion hung like a black cloud over Farthings.

Guests and staff were painstakingly interviewed over and over again. More detectives arrived, discreetly dressed, to search the whole house.

“They won’t find anything,” said Daisy to Rose. “I bet our murderer, if he took any blackmailing evidence, has got it neatly hidden somewhere in London.”

“Mrs Stockton and Lord Alfred really must be sticking hard to their stories about paying Freddy ten thousand pounds out of the goodness of their hearts,” said Rose. “I only saw them talking together once and eavesdropped. It seems that Lady Glensheil is so determined to put an end to all this that when Kerridge got permission to search their homes in London, they could do nothing to stop it, because she has more influence in high places than either of them. But although they seemed furious at the intrusion, neither of them seemed particularly worried that the police would find anything.”

“When I was growing up in the East End,” mused Daisy, “there never was any privacy. And one day after the show at Butler’s, this stage-door Johnny gave me a box of chocolates. I knew if my brothers and sisters saw that, I’d never get any. So I hid it up the chimney. Wouldn’t you know it? Next day was a cold snap and Ma lit a fire and the whole box tumbled down into the flames.”

Rose stared at her. “Daisy, I wonder if the police searched up the chimneys?”

“Let’s go and put it to Kerridge.”

“No, wait a bit.” Rose was desperate to prove to Harry that she was better at detecting than anyone else. “The police would announce they were searching the rooms again. One of the servants would see them searching up the chimneys and the news would go around like wildfire. I know, at dinner tonight I’ll suddenly say I feel faint. You help me out of the room.”

“I’ll help you make up to look pale,” said Daisy eagerly.

“Not white lead. I do not know why women will still use that cosmetic. So many of them die of lead poisoning.”

♦

Harry fretted over the soup at dinner. He kept stealing glances at Rose. She was so very white and there were blue shadows under her eyes.

Then he heard Rose mutter an excuse and rise from the table. She left the room, supported by Daisy. Harry, being neither relative nor husband, had to remain where he was and resist the impulse to run out of the dining-room to find out what was wrong with her.

“Now,” whispered Rose as they made their way up the stairs. “Mrs Stockton’s room first.”

There was no electricity laid on at Farthings, nor gaslight, and so they had taken one of the bed candles from the hall table to enable them to read the names on the cards on each door.

“Here we are,” said Rose at last. “Let’s hope her maid is in the servants’ hall.”

Rose had a stab of worry that the door might prove to be locked, particularly after all the petty thefts, but to her relief it opened. Oil lamps were burning in the little sitting-room, so she blew out the candle.

“I’ll look,” said Daisy. “If anything’s hidden, it’ll be on the little ledge above the hearth.”

“These are Tudor chimneys,” Rose pointed out. “They probably go straight up. Don’t take off your evening gloves, Daisy. If there’s anything there, we don’t want to leave fingerprints.”

Daisy crouched down on the hearth and reached up into the chimney. She felt around. “Nothing,” she declared, sitting back on her heels. She tried the bedroom chimney, but there was nothing there either.

“Let’s hurry and try Lord Alfred’s chimney.”

Another search along the old twisting corridors until they found Lord Alfred’s room.

“I’ll be as quick as I can,” said Daisy. “I don’t want that manservant of his returning and finding us. He frightens me.”

Again, she knelt down to search up a chimney.

“Nothing here either.” She then searched the bedroom chimney. Nothing but soot.

“It was a mad idea anyway,” said Rose. “I know, let’s try Mr Jerry’s room, or rather, his wife’s bedroom. If the killer was in a hurry, he might have hidden it there.”

“Hurry, hurry,” urged Daisy. “Don’t want to get caught.”

Rose felt a frisson of fear as she opened the late Mrs Jerry’s bedroom door. Of course the body had been removed, but somehow the air still smelt of the patchouli that Mrs Jerry liked to spray on herself.

Daisy went quickly to the chimney. Again, her searching fingers couldn’t find anything. “Let’s get out of here,” she urged.

Back in their sitting-room, Daisy stripped off her sooty gloves. “Turner will wonder what I’ve been up to.”

“Just tell her you dropped a brooch in the grate and you were looking for it.”

“She’ll wonder why I didn’t just unbutton them at the wrist and peel them back like we do in the dining-room.”

“Forget Turner. Let me think. Of course. The killer would hardly stand in front of her and inject whatever drug it was into the champagne bottle. He, or she, would take the bottle to their room. People don’t normally carry syringes around with them. So whoever it was must have come prepared. But why? Did Mrs Jerry threaten the murderer in London?”

She went to the window and looked out. “If he – let’s assume it’s a he – threw the syringe out of the window it would land in one of the flower-beds below. But I’m not thinking clearly. Whoever it was would not need to get rid of the syringe right away. He would only do it later after Captain Cathcart made his announcement in the dining-room about the champagne bottle. Unless it was actually in his pocket – no, it wouldn’t be there. A servant might find it. So he goes up to his room as soon as he can. He must have had it hidden somewhere very clever because the police had already searched the rooms.”

“He might not have thrown it out of the window,” said Daisy. “If he leaned out, he could hide it in that thick wisteria.”

“Well, we can’t start climbing up ladders to look for it without occasioning comment,” said Rose. “If we got up at dawn, the sun strikes full on the front of the house and we might see the rays shining on the glass of the syringe. I’ll tell Turner that we are leaving for a walk very early and we can dress ourselves.”

There was a knock at the door. Daisy opened it. Harry stood there with Becket.

“I came to see how you were feeling, Lady Rose,” he said.

“Oh, I’m fine now,” said Rose airily. “It was the heat in the dining-room.”

Daisy was disappointed. Rose was obviously not going to tell them about the search for the syringe, so they would not be joining the early-morning hunt.

“As long as you are well,” said Harry. His eyes moved to the sooty pair of gloves Daisy had left on a side table. “Someone been cleaning out the fireplace with evening gloves on?” he asked.

“Silly of me,” said Daisy, not meeting his eye. “I dropped a brooch in the grate and scrabbled about for it.”

Harry’s eyes moved to the grate. Because of the warm weather, the fireplace had been cleaned and was now decorated with leaves and pine cones.

“I found it,” Daisy went on hurriedly.

♦

“They’re up to something,” said Harry as he and Becket walked down the stairs. “Why would Daisy’s gloves be covered in soot?”

“Miss Levine may have been searching up the chimneys looking for the blackmail material. I had forgotten, people sometimes hide things up chimneys when the fires are not being lit.”

“I’ll suggest that to Kerridge tomorrow. But why did she not tell me? Lady Rose will put herself in danger if she decides to detect on her own.”

♦

Rose had a restless night. She was frightened of oversleeping. But as soon as they pale grey light of dawn filtered in through the curtains, she got up and roused Daisy.

They dressed and made their way down the stairs. “I hope there is sun this morning,” whispered Rose. “It was overcast yesterday.”

They stood together on the lawn and waited. The sky was clear, with only a few wisps of cloud, which turned pink in the rays of the rising sun.

Their eyes swept along the thick wisteria which covered the front of the house.

“There!” whispered Rose, clutching Daisy’s arm in excitement. “There’s something sparkling amongst the leaves half-way up. Let’s tell Kerridge.”

“He’s at The Feathers and the policeman at the gate won’t let us past,” said Daisy. “The press are probably still lurking about. He usually comes here at eight in the morning. Not long to wait.”

Daisy suddenly grasped Rose’s arm. “I think someone was watching us, I saw a curtain twitch.”

“Let’s get back inside and wait for Kerridge,” said Rose, looking uneasily up at the windows. “I can’t see anything.”

♦

Harry went in to see Kerridge just after eight o’clock and found Rose and Daisy already there. “These young ladies,” said Kerridge, “had the idea that our murderer may have dropped the syringe into the wisteria. You were right about the drugging. The preliminary autopsy confirms that she was drugged with a powerful sleeping-potion. I’ve sent my men to get ladders. Come with me, Lady Rose, and point out exactly where you think you saw something shining in the leaves.”

Harry was furious. Rose had lied to him. He followed them out, angrily reminding himself that he had never really liked her anyway.

As Harry stood apart from her, his hands behind his back, and his brows down, Rose felt ashamed of herself. She went up to him. “I would have told you the truth but I thought you would think my idea silly.”

“No, you didn’t,” he said curtly. “You wanted to prove that you were better at detecting than I.”

He walked a little way away from her.

“I thought you might have told me,” said Becket to Daisy.

Daisy shrugged. “If she won’t, I can’t.”

Rose pointed to where she had seen something shining. Kerridge told the policemen to put the ladder up against the house at that point and begin the search.

Rose kept glancing at Harry’s set face. She knew in that instant that anything he found out about the case he would keep to himself in future.

The policeman on the ladder gave a shout. “I see it!”

“Lift it with your hankie,” shouted Kerridge. “Don’t want your prints on it. Is it a syringe?”

“Yes.”

Kerridge turned to Rose. “Good work, my lady,” he said. “We should have you on the force.”

Then he turned to Harry. “Let’s go inside. I want to discuss this.”

He waited until the policeman had climbed down the ladder and then he and Harry walked off together, followed by Becket and Inspector Judd.

“Just look at them!” raged Rose. “I find their evidence, but because I’m a woman they never think that I should be part of their rotten discussion. When I return to London I shall contact the suffragettes and support them once more.”

♦

“I’ll get my men to search this place from top to bottom,” Kerridge said to Harry in the estate office. “Then I’ll need to let them all go. Lady Glensheil has tried to help, but I am now being leaned on heavily from above. Oh, yes, they want me to solve the case but without upsetting the nobs. And this old place has so many nooks and crannies.”

Come the revolution, thought Kerridge, this would make a good orphanage and this lot would be out there working in the kitchens and gardens. He had a vision of Lady Glensheil scrubbing the pots in the kitchen with a piece of sackcloth as an apron tied round her waist.

“Mr Kerridge,” said Harry sharply.

“Eh, what? Oh, yes, I don’t suppose there will be prints on that syringe.”

A policeman entered. “Whose window was it under, lad?” asked Kerridge.

“It was under the window on the first-floor landing.”

Kerridge sighed. “So any one of them could have thrown it out as they went up or down the stairs. Blast! Are you sure, Captain Cathcart, that neither Mrs Stockton nor Lord Alfred have been particularly friendly?”

“Not that I have seen. None of them are particularly what I would call friendly, except perhaps Tristram Baker-Willis, who has proposed to Lady Rose. Probably after her title and money.”

Kerridge looked amused. “Why do you jump to that conclusion? Lady Rose is very beautiful.”

“Lady Rose is irritating and unfeminine.”

“I would have said you both had a lot in common.”

“Tommy-rot!”

♦

The fact that they were all told they could leave on the following morning had lightened spirits considerably and an air of relief pervaded the dining-table.

Only Rose felt unhappy because Harry would not look at her and Tristram kept breathing compliments in her ear.

She was glad when Lady Glensheil finally rose to lead the ladies to the drawing-room. Maisie and Frederica spoke of the coming season. Maisie said that if she did not ‘take’ at this, her second season, she would be sent to India. Frederica said roundly that she had half a mind not to get married at all. There weren’t any decent chaps on offer. Lady Glensheil said loftily it was the duty of every young miss to marry. There was no other future for a lady.

Rose protested and said that a number of ladies these days were earning their living.

“Not ladies,” said Lady Glensheil dismissively.

When they were joined by the gentlemen, the card tables were set up. Harry sat down with Lady Glensheil, Tristram and Sir Gerald and did not once look in Rose’s direction.

Rose excused herself and followed by Daisy went up to her room. “The captain is angry with me,” she said.

“You should maybe have told him,” ventured Daisy.

“I don’t care what he thinks,” said Rose angrily.

♦

Harry and the rest of them left for London the following morning. Harry went straight to his office and looked at the pile of mail waiting for him. He decided to employ another secretary. He drafted out an advertisement to appear in The Lady magazine and sent Becket off with it.

He felt guilty about Miss Jubbles. He should have noticed she had fallen in love with him. And he had told her all about Lady Rose working at the bank!