Hasty Death emm-2

by Marion Chesney

  When she had gone, Ailsa rose and went back to her room in a business women’s hostel in South Kensington and collected a box of china she had brought from her parents’ home in Scotland and had never used.

  On her way back to Camden Town, Miss Jubbles comforted herself with the thought that Harry would notice the absence of his lovely rose-decorated cup.

  The next time Ailsa served Harry tea in a cup embellished with lilacs, he did not notice the difference.

  Rose would not admit it to herself but she was more determined than ever to find out the identity of the murderer as a way of seeing Harry again.

  ‘I think perhaps I should encourage Tristram,’ she said to Daisy.

  ‘You’re never thinking of marrying him!’

  ‘No . . . although it has crossed my mind that I would not have so restricted a life were I married.’

  ‘Then what happens if you fall in love? You’re not the kind to have an affair.’

  ‘I don’t think I shall ever fall in love. Gentlemen are so . . . weird.’

  ‘So why are you going to encourage that bleeder?’

  ‘Language, Daisy!’

  Daisy sighed. ‘I mean, why?’

  ‘Because he was Freddy’s best friend. We know little of Freddy’s habits or where he went apart from to these boring social affairs and to his club. He might have had a mistress and set her up in one of those places they set up mistresses, like St John’s Wood, and the blackmailing stuff could be hidden there.’

  ‘Why not tell the captain your idea? It’s his job.’

  Rose set her lips in a firm line. ‘It is my idea and I will follow it through.’

  In the weeks that followed, Harry had gone back to his usual detecting duties of finding lost dogs and covering up scandals. To his surprise, none of these scandals seemed to disturb his hard-working secretary. Miss Jubbles had smelt of rosewater. Ailsa smelled of peppermint, which seemed to be her only weakness.

  Harry would have been amazed had he known that she despised society as heartily as Kerridge and admired her employer for having chosen to work for a living.

  One day when Harry was out, Brigadier Billy Handy called. ‘Came to see how you were settling in,’ he said.

  ‘Very well. Thank you for the recommendation.’

  ‘Need to be discreet in this business. But you’re used to that, hey?’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Ailsa.

  ‘Mind you, it’s funny work for a baron’s son, albeit a younger one. He should find himself an heiress. Funny. I thought he and that beauty, Lady Rose, might have got hitched. No sign of that?’

  ‘None whatsoever.’

  When he had gone, Ailsa slid open the bottom drawer of her desk and took out a squat bottle of gin. She poured a strong measure into a teacup and knocked it back. She heard footsteps on the stairs and put the gin bottle away, took out a little bottle of peppermint essence and swallowed some, then darted to the cupboard and hid the teacup.

  ‘I did not expect you back so soon, sir,’ she said, as Harry limped in. It was one of his bad days and his leg was painful.

  Harry paused at the door to the inner office. He sniffed the air. ‘Funny, there’s a smell of gin.’

  ‘Brigadier Handy called when you were out. He wished to see how I was settling in,’ said Ailsa.

  ‘Really? I thought he was a brandy-and-soda man. Get me Lady Potterton’s file, please.’

  Harry decided to drop into his club that evening. It was simply called The Club and situated at the bottom of St James’s. The first person he saw was the brigadier. He sank down in a chair opposite the old man and stretched out his throbbing leg.

  ‘I believe you called at my office today,’ said Harry.

  ‘Yes, called round to see how Miss Bridge was settling in.’

  ‘She is an excellent secretary. May I get you a drink? Gin and something?’

  ‘Good heavens, man. I never touch the stuff.’

  Harry laughed. ‘My office smelt of gin. I thought you had left your scent behind.’

  ‘Not me. And it can’t be the missionaries’ daughter. Must be one of those new cleaning materials. They smell a bit like gin. How are you, old man? I’ll have a brandy and soda.’

  ‘Nothing came of that murder case at Farthings or the murder of Freddy Pomfret. It really galls me to have a murder committed right under my nose.’

  He signalled to the waiter and ordered two brandies and sodas.

  ‘I read in the newspapers that Lady Rose was one of the guests,’ said the brigadier. ‘Good dowry there.’

  ‘If I get married,’ said Harry, ‘it won’t be to Lady Rose, neither will it be because of some female’s dowry.’

  ‘Oh, well, you haven’t a chance anyway. I mean, with Lady Rose.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She’s been seen about with Tristram Baker-Willis.’

  ‘Nothing there. Lady Rose told me he had proposed marriage to her at Farthings and she had rejected him.’

  ‘She might have changed her mind.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Those parents of hers keep a strong guard on her and I was talking to Hadshire the other day. Seems they really do want to ship her off to India. Now if she got married, well, Baker-Willis might prove a complacent husband and she’d get her freedom and her own household. Course she would need to provide the heir and the spare first.’

  Harry had a sudden vision of Tristram in the throes of providing himself with an heir and experienced a shudder of revulsion.

  After he had chatted about other things and left the club, Harry went back to his office and called the earl’s residence. The earl’s secretary, Matthew Jarvis, answered the phone. Harry asked if he might speak to Lady Rose.

  ‘I am afraid,’ said Matthew, ‘that Lady Rose is not allowed to receive any phone calls.’

  Disappointed, Harry rang off. He went to his secretary’s desk and searched the drawers.

  He smiled to himself. Nothing but a little bottle of peppermint cordial. The correct Miss Bridge probably did not drink any alcohol at all.

  Tristram was driving Rose in Hyde Park the following day at the fashionable hour. Rose felt guilty as she stole glances at Tristram’s radiant face. She began to have an uneasy feeling that the young man’s motive in proposing to her had not been money after all.

  ‘You must miss Mr Pomfret,’ she said.

  ‘Of course I do. We were great friends.’

  ‘Did you know he was asking people for money?’

  ‘No, but I can’t say I blame him. I mean, quite low tradesmen are buying titles. So why not Freddy? It would have meant such a lot to him.’

  Rose took the plunge. ‘As you know, I think, he was blackmailing people.’

  ‘He wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘Did he ever give you anything to keep for him? Documents? Anything like that?’

  ‘The only thing he gave me was a box of cigars. He was trying to give up smoking and he loved cigars. Said if he kept them near him, he would smoke the lot in one day. He said he couldn’t bear to give them away but to keep them in case he cracked and wanted one.’

  ‘And did he?’

  ‘What! No. Poor fellow was shot two days later. I say, look at that frightful hat.’

  Harry reined in his horse under a tree and watched the couple. Rose looked very relaxed in a carriage dress of brown velvet trimmed with gold braid and with a dashing little hat tilted over her glossy brown curls.

  Tristram was laughing and chatting. They seemed perfectly at ease with each other. He heard a voice from below him. ‘Captain Cathcart!’

  Now what bore was going to plague him on this awful, stupid day, he thought sourly. He looked down and saw Daisy.

  He dismounted quickly. ‘Why, Miss Levine. I have not seen you this age. What on earth is Lady Rose doing letting Mr Baker-Willis drive her around? I thought she had turned down a proposal of marriage from him.’

  ‘She might come round,’ said Daisy uneasily. ‘I mean, she feels that if
she got married and had her own place, and all, she wouldn’t be such a prisoner. My lord and lady keep such a close watch on her. They’re delighted she’s going about with Mr Baker-Willis, so he got permission to drive her in the park. Mind you, she does say she wants to find out if Mr Pomfret told him anything or gave him anything to keep.’

  ‘I wonder if she has found out anything,’ said Harry. ‘I tried to phone her but was told she was not allowed to accept calls.’

  ‘We’ll be cycling here in the morning at eight when its quiet. We’re allowed to do that provided two footmen come with us. You could be there.’

  ‘I’ll be there,’ said Harry.

  He returned to Water Street and said to Becket, ‘I’ll give you some money to buy two bicycles for us.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  ‘I never asked you, Becket. Where did you learn to cycle?’

  ‘When I was a boy, sir. Where did you learn to cycle?’

  ‘In Africa.’

  ‘That would be during the war.’

  ‘So you had a cycle when you were a boy? I somehow thought your parents were poor.’

  ‘Was it during the war, sir?’

  ‘Becket, we should not stand here all day wasting time. You’d better get to the cycle shop as fast as possible.’

  Becket went off, reflecting that the captain never liked to talk about the war, and left Harry wondering, not for the first time, why Becket was so cagey about his past.

  Rose and Daisy headed for the park in the morning. It was a beautiful day, the twelfth of May, Saint Pancras Day, the patron saint of ice, because farmers believed that winter had a last blast around the beginning of the month. ‘Shear your sheep in May,’ they would say, ‘and you won’t have any sheep left to shear.’ But the weather was golden, with a light morning mist drifting around the boles of the trees in the park.

  Rose loved the park at this hour of the morning when there were so few people about, only a few footmen walking their owners’ dogs.

  They were cycling along the Broad Walk when Rose saw the familiar figures of Harry and Becket cycling towards them.

  She and Daisy dismounted and waited for them to come up to them. ‘Miss Levine told me you would be here,’ said Harry.

  Rose shot an accusing look at Daisy. ‘I didn’t tell you,’ said Daisy, ‘in case you wouldn’t come.’

  ‘I’m surprised you came at all,’ said Rose to Harry. ‘I thought you had taken a dislike to me.’

  ‘Never mind that,’ said Harry hurriedly. ‘Daisy – I mean, Miss Levine – told me that you were going to ask Tristram if Freddy had asked him to keep something for him.’

  ‘I did ask, but he said Freddy had only asked him to keep a box of cigars because Freddy was trying to give up smoking them but couldn’t bear to give them away. He wanted Tristram to keep them for him in case he decided he couldn’t hold off any longer. Nothing there.’

  Harry stood in silence. He had taken off his cap and the breeze blew a heavy lock of hair over his forehead.

  ‘I wonder,’ he said. ‘I wonder if there’s anything other than cigars inside that box.’

  ‘Wouldn’t the police have found it?’

  ‘Not necessarily. If it just looked like a box of cigars, they wouldn’t waste time on it. I’m going to have a look.’

  ‘How?’ asked Rose. Daisy and Becket had walked a little way away, wheeling their bicycles. The earl’s footmen lounged beside a tree.

  ‘Simple. I’ll pay a call on him and ask for a cigar.’

  ‘If there is anything other than cigars in that box, how will I find out? If you call on me, you will probably be told I am not at home.’

  ‘Can you slip out of the house?’

  ‘It’s difficult. The servants have been told to report my every move. These footmen will report my meeting you.’

  ‘Do you have any social engagements for this evening?’

  ‘No, thankfully. I am so weary of the round of balls and parties and calls.’

  ‘Is the front door locked?’

  ‘No, not until last thing at night.’

  ‘As I remember,’ said Harry, ‘there is an ante-room off the hall. I will try to get in and wait there at, say, seven o’clock. I will call on Tristram at five. He will be getting dressed to go out, I should think, at that time. If you wait in that ante-room for me, I can tell you what I have found. But I fear it is going to prove to be a box of cigars and nothing else.’

  Harry presented himself at Tristram’s flat at five o’clock. A manservant told him that Mr Baker-Willis was asleep and did not want to be roused until six.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Harry airily. ‘He must have forgotten he was expecting me. I’ll wait.’

  ‘In here, sir.’

  He ushered Harry into a cluttered living-room. The room contained a horsehair sofa and two armchairs. Occasional tables were topped with ornaments, glass cases full of stuffed birds, photographs and waxed fruit. A table at the window was piled high with racing journals and copies of the Pink ’Un.

  ‘May I fetch you some refreshment?’ asked the manservant.

  ‘No, no,’ said Harry airily. ‘Go about your business.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  Harry waited until the door had closed behind the servant and then began to search. He was just beginning to think that perhaps Tristram had taken the box to his bedroom when he suddenly saw a window-seat and went and lifted the lid. There on the top was the box of cigars. A box of Romeo Y Julietas, the cedar-wood box nailed shut and sealed with the familiar green-and-white label.

  Harry felt disappointed. He would have nothing to report to Lady Rose. He was about to put it back when he noticed a thin slit along the label. He held it up to the light. Was it possible it had been opened and nailed shut again?

  He tucked the box under his coat and made his way quietly out, lifting his card from the salver on the hall table and hoping the manservant would not remember his name.

  He motored back to Water Street. ‘I’ve got it,’ he said to Becket. ‘I think it’s been opened already.’

  ‘I’ll get a chisel,’ said Becket.

  ‘No, perhaps we should leave it like this until we see the ladies. Then we can all examine it together.’

  ‘If you will forgive me for saying so, sir, perhaps it would be better to open it here in case it contains items of an insalubrious nature.

  ‘You’re right. Bring the chisel.’

  Harry waited impatiently until Becket returned. Then he slid the chisel under the lid and prised it open.

  ‘By all that’s holy, Becket,’ he exclaimed. ‘We’ve struck gold. What have we here?’

  He lifted out four letters tied with pink silk ribbon. He untied the ribbons and started to read. The letters were addressed to Lord Alfred, passionate, yearning love letters describing their affair in detail and signed ‘Your Loving Jimmy.’

  ‘Dear me,’ said Harry. ‘I don’t think the ladies should see these. Very graphic. No wonder Lord Alfred paid up. What else have we? Photographs.’

  One was a photograph of Lady Jerry in a passionate embrace with a young man in footman’s livery. It looked as if it had been taken beside the Thames. The couple were lying on the grass, the remains of a picnic beside them.

  There was only one more photograph. It was of Angela Stockton in an open-air restaurant, also by the river. Beside her a waiter was in the act of carving thin slices of roast beef, although Angela’s plate was already piled high and the photographer had captured a look of anticipatory greed on her face.

  ‘So our famous vegetarian, Becket, caught in the act.’

  ‘It’s not a crime,’ said Becket.

  ‘This would frighten her. She has set herself up to promote vegetarianism. People pay to join her society. She has even given lectures in America. It looks as if Mrs Jerry decided to go to the police and one of them killed her.’

  ‘Are you going to take this to Kerridge?’

  ‘No, let me think. They should b
e given a chance to explain themselves. What if the blackmailer is Tristram, who knew what was in the box and decided to make some money for himself?’

  Rose and Daisy waited anxiously in the ante-room. Then they heard the front door open and the next moment Harry and Becket entered the room.

  ‘You’re a clever girl,’ said Harry to Rose. ‘The blackmailing stuff was in the box.’

  ‘What is it?’ asked Rose, reaching for the letters.

  ‘No, don’t read those,’ said Harry sharply. ‘They are letters to Lord Alfred from a young man with whom he had been having an affair. If the police got hold of these, he could go to prison and this Jimmy with him. You can look at the photographs.’

  Rose exclaimed, ‘Oh, do look at Mrs Stockton, Daisy. Positively salivating over roast beef. And Mrs Jerry! How disgusting. But our criminal must be Lord Alfred.’

  ‘It could be Tristram,’ said Harry. ‘Have you thought of that?’

  ‘Oh, dear, what are we going to do?’

  ‘I will see Lord Alfred tomorrow.’

  ‘And I will see Mrs Stockton,’ said Rose.

  ‘How can you get out of the house?’

  ‘I will just go,’ said Rose. ‘I will be in trouble again.’

  ‘Well, I cannot see Angela Stockton shooting and drugging and strangling over roast beef. But you are not to give her the photograph until she tells you who was blackmailing her. I believe someone knew the contents of this box and took over the blackmailing from Mr Pomfret.’

  ‘And then do we go to the police?’

  ‘If it should prove to be either Tristram or Lord Alfred, yes, certainly.’

  ‘Kerridge will charge you with withholding vital evidence.’

  ‘I believe Kerridge will be only too grateful to have the case cleared up.’

  Rose hardly slept that night. What would Angela say? How would she react? The next morning she fretted that her mother would insist on her making calls and so she sent Daisy to say she had a headache. Lady Polly was feeling well disposed towards her daughter because she guessed that Rose was about to thaw and accept Tristram’s hand in marriage and so she contented herself with telling Daisy to bathe her daughter’s forehead in eau de cologne.

  The countess went off to make her calls while her husband slept by the fire. At three in the afternoon, Rose and Daisy went quickly out of the house. The lady’s maid, Turner, had promised not to tell anyone they had gone out without permission.