Edwardian Murder Mystery 02; Hasty Death emm-2

by M C Beaton

  “How did this happen?” he asked. “Did that monster…?”

  “Naw,” said Daisy wearily. She told him about burning the rope from her wrists.

  “Lady Rose should be kissing your feet, not firing you,” exclaimed Becket.

  “I can’t blame her. She’s had a bad shock. That’s why I’d better stay down here where I belong.”

  ♦

  Billy Gardon nipped up the stairs to his theatre flat, dreaming of riches to come.

  He stopped short when he saw the door hanging on its hinges. He rushed into the room.

  A man stepped out from behind the broken door, swung him round and smashed a fist into his face.

  Billy fell on the floor and, nursing his jaw, stared up into the blazing eyes of his attacker. He saw a tall well-dressed man with a handsome face. The glaring eyes were black and hooded. Billy thought he looked like the devil himself.

  “On your feet!” roared Harry. “You blackmailing little worm!”

  Billy crawled onto his knees and then stood shakily on his feet, nursing his jaw.

  “It was only a bit o’ a joke, guv,” he whimpered.

  Harry pulled a chair up and sat down. He looked broodingly at Billy. If he turned him over to the police, he felt sure it would leak out to the newspapers. It would come out that Rose had been working as a typist and consorting with an ex-chorus girl from one of London’s lowest music halls and her social future would be ruined. And surely a few more weeks at the bank and living in that dreadful hostel would bring her to her senses.

  He came to a decision. “Pack up,” he ordered. “My man will call on you tomorrow with a steamship ticket to Australia – steerage. If he does not find you – let’s say at ten tomorrow morning – I will go to the police. At the least you will get a life sentence of hard labour for this. You will keep your mouth shut. You will not tell anyone. I have spies all over London,” lied Harry. “How do you think I found you so easily?”

  “I’ll go, guv, honest. Just give me a chance.”

  “Very well. But if any word of this gets out, I shall find you and kill you, and then, I think, report you to the police, who will bury you in quicklime. I do not see why the state should pay for your incarceration.”

  When Harry returned home, Becket informed him that Lady Rose was taking a bath and putting on clean clothes. Miss Levine was in the kitchen – “But I think a doctor should be called to look at her wrists.”

  “Why?”

  Becket told him how Daisy had engineered the escape.

  “Call a doctor. What is Daisy doing in the kitchen?”

  “Lady Rose says she wants nothing more to do with her.”

  “Let’s see about that.”

  ∨ Hasty Death ∧

  Three

  As to making a companion of a servant or inviting her to the drawing room to have tea with one, as I have heard is sometimes done, such a thing is simply ruinous to the mistress’s authority in her own household and highly derogatory to her personal dignity.

  Mrs C.E. Humphry, Etiquette for every day (1902)

  Harry waited patiently until Rose reappeared, bathed and dressed. “Thank you for all you have done,” said Rose. “Have the police arrested that dreadful man?”

  “I am making arrangements to ship him off to Australia and I have frightened him into silence. Otherwise society would be delighted to hear of your latest escapade.”

  “Being kidnapped and tied up can hardly be described as an escapade.”

  “Granted. But the daughter of an earl working in an office would most certainly be regarded as an escapade.”

  “You are right,” conceded Rose. “But what was the point of bringing us here?”

  “You need to present a respectable appearance before you return to that hostel. You will tell Miss Harringey that you were both the victims of a practical joke. I told her I was your brother, therefore it will seem perfectly in order for me to escort you back. Now to the problem of Daisy. I gather from Becket that you do not wish to have anything to do with her.”

  Rose raised her eyebrows. “Of course not. How can you even ask such a question? She put my life at risk. I could have choked on that gag.”

  “Nonetheless, you might still be choking on that gag if she had not severely burnt her wrists in helping you to escape. Becket has sent for the doctor. You did thank her, I hope?”

  “I did not know her wrists were burnt,” said Rose. “I will see that she is amply compensated when my parents return.”

  “Money solves everything, heh? And how will you explain the reason why Daisy must be paid?”

  “They will be so glad that I am rid of her, they will pay anything.”

  “You are at fault, you know.”

  “How, sir?”

  “You chose to step outside your class and befriend an ex-chorus girl from the East End. It amused you to do so. You educated her and introduced her to a better way of life and now you want to throw her back again like some toy that had failed to work.”

  “That is not the way it was. We were friends.”

  “A friendship easily broken.”

  Rose’s lip trembled. “I have suffered an ordeal, I am abominably hungry, and yet all you can do is rail at me over a servant.”

  “Aha! So Daisy is nothing more than a servant. I suggest we have her up here and ask her to explain what drew her back to her old haunts.”

  Harry rang the bell. “Becket, fetch Miss Daisy. Is the doctor coming?”

  “He will be here shortly.”

  A few moments later, Daisy was led into the parlour. “None of us has eaten, Becket,” said Harry. “A late luncheon, I think, after the doctor has left. Pray take a seat, Miss Levine.”

  Daisy sat down on the edge of a chair and Rose turned her head away.

  “I am interested to know what took you back to your old neighbourhood,” said Harry gently. “First, some brandy for Miss Levine, Becket. She is looking extremely pale.”

  He waited until Daisy took several sips of brandy.

  “Now,” he prompted her.

  Daisy gave a dry sob, like a weary child. Rose turned her head and looked at her, at the white face and the bound wrists.

  “My lady and I were working in a room together, sir, typing out stuff from ledgers. We decided they were just making work for us. Then one of the bosses needed a temporary secretary and Ro – I mean my lady, got the job. So I was on me…my…own. Men kept dropping in for a bit, but when they saw it was only me they left.

  “I began to feel that Daisy Levine was really nothing. I began to remember the old days in the theatre, where I was considered attractive. I thought I’d just go back to my own kind, as I thought of them. That’s where I met Billy. I’d known him before, and when he asked me up to that flat for a drink, it seemed all right to go.

  “Like a fool, I told him the whole story. I was lonely, you see. You can’t break the barriers of class, sir. It’s flying in the face of nature.”

  Harry turned to Rose. “You inadvertently broke the barriers of class, Lady Rose. You joined the suffragettes and then abandoned them. You cannot go around changing the rules and expect things to be easy. So do you want to get rid of Miss Levine and return to your comfortable and privileged life?”

  Rose thought of her pride in her job and how she had dragged Daisy along with her into this new life. She remembered Daisy’s gallantry, her spirit, and realized for the first time that she would not have been able to go through with the business of getting a job without Daisy.

  “I’m sorry, Daisy,” she said. “Thank you for helping me to escape. We will go on as before…as friends.”

  “Thank you, my lady.”

  “Rose, please.”

  “The doctor is here,” said Becket.

  “Take him through to the back parlour. When he is finished, we will have lunch.”

  “Very good, sir. Miss Levine?”

  ♦

  The doctor declared the burns to be bad but not serious. Daisy�
�s wrists were once more treated and bandaged. She was made to swallow two aspirin and told to rest.

  After the doctor had gone, Becket produced a meal he had ordered from a restaurant in the King’s Road.

  During the lunch, Rose suddenly said, “I am glad now we decided to work at the bank. Please apologize to your secretary for trying to take her job away from her.”

  Harry raised his eyebrows. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I had this mad idea that it might be fun to work for you and I went round to offer my services.”

  “Miss Jubbles said nothing of this to me,” said Harry. “I wonder why.”

  “Well, she wouldn’t, would she?” remarked Daisy. A touch of colour had returned to her cheeks.

  “Why not?”

  “She doesn’t want to lose her job.”

  “Miss Jubbles should have known her job is secure.” Harry’s black eyes studied Rose’s face. “I am interested to know why you wanted to work for me. I was under the impression that you neither liked nor approved of me.”

  “Daisy and I were of help to you over that murder at Telby Castle last year. I thought it might be fun to work together again, that is all. Do you have many exciting cases?”

  “Not in the slightest. Lost dogs, society scandals that need to be covered up, that sort of thing. But you surely do not intend to work at that bank for very long.”

  “Perhaps. But I am doing very well. Now Miss Levine is being wasted there. All she is doing is typing stuff out of ledgers that doesn’t need to be typed. As you were instrumental in getting us the work, I would be grateful if you could perhaps speak to Mr Drevey and point out to him that Miss Levine is not only an expert typist but that she has mastered Pitman shorthand.”

  “I will see what I can do.”

  ♦

  After he had escorted Daisy and Rose back to their hostel and impressed on Miss Harringey the respectability of her tenants, Harry decided to go to the office. He found Miss Jubbles hard at work polishing his desk.

  “Miss Jubbles! It is Sunday. What on earth are you doing here?”

  Miss Jubbles blushed painfully. “I was just passing and I thought I would do a few chores.”

  “This will not do. You work too hard. Please go home.”

  “I am sorry, Captain.”

  She looked so upset that Harry said impulsively, “I have been out on an odd case. Do you remember I told you I was doing some work for the Earl of Hadshire?”

  “Yes, but you did not tell me exactly what was involved.”

  So Harry told her the whole story. Miss Jubbles smiled, exclaimed, and listened intently while inside her brain a small, jealous Miss Jubbles was raging. That girl again. That wretched beautiful girl!

  When he had finished telling her about Rose, Harry smiled and told Miss Jubbles to go home.

  He gave her five shillings and told her to take a hack. Mrs Jubbles tore herself away. How sooty and cold and grim London looked! The hackney horse steamed and stamped as she climbed in and gave one last longing look up at the office windows.

  The hack eventually dropped her at a thin, narrow brick house in Camden Town. Miss Jubbles lived with her widowed mother. She unlocked the front door and called, “Mother!”

  “In the sitting-room, dear,” came a cry from upstairs.

  Miss Jubbles mounted the narrow stairs to the first-floor sitting-room. Mrs Jubbles was sitting before a small coal fire which smouldered in the grate. She was a tiny woman dressed entirely in black. Her black lace cap hung over her withered features. Her black gown was trimmed with jet and her black-lace-mittened hands clutched a teacup.

  When Miss Jubbles entered, she said in a surprisingly robust voice, “Ring the bell for more tea, Dora.”

  Miss Dora Jubbles pressed down the bell-push, and after a few minutes a small maid, breathless and with her cap askew, answered its summons. “More tea, Elsie,” ordered Mrs Jubbles. “And straighten your cap, girl.”

  Mother and daughter exchanged sympathetic smiles after the girl had left. “Servants,” sighed Mrs Jubbles as if used to a household of them rather than the overworked Elsie and a cross gin-soaked woman who came in the mornings to do the ‘heavy work’.

  “How did it go?” asked Mrs Jubbles eagerly.

  Dora took off her coat and unpinned her large felt hat and stripped off her gloves. “Wait until Elsie brings the tea-things. I’ve ever so much to tell you.”

  From her daughter’s tales, Mrs Jubbles had gathered that Captain Cathcart, younger son of a baron, who had chosen to sink to trade, was enamoured of her daughter. Both dreamt rosy dreams of being finally ensconced in some country mansion with a whole army of servants at their beck and call.

  Elsie panted in with a tray with the tea-things and a plate containing two small Eccles cakes. Mother and daughter lived thriftily. Mrs Jubbles’s husband had owned a butcher’s shop in Camden Town and two houses other than the one the widow now lived in. She had sold all for a comfortable sum, but was keeping aside a substantial amount for her daughter’s wedding. The fact that Dora was now thirty-eight years old had not dimmed her hopes. She saw Dora as elegant and distinguished.

  Dora told her mother all about Lady Rose, ending with, “She is very beautiful.”

  Mrs Jubbles sniffed. “You should tell the newspapers what this Lady Rose has been up to. They’d pay you and she’d be so socially ruined that he couldn’t possibly want to marry her.”

  Dora was shocked. “I would be betraying the captain’s trust. Oh, if you could have seen the way he smiled at me. There is an intimacy there, Mother, a warmth. And to confide in me the way he did? No, he seemed impatient with the adventures of this Lady Rose. He is never impatient with me.”

  A little doubt crept into Mrs Jubbles mind. “This Lady Rose is young?”

  “Yes, very. Barely twenty, I would say.”

  “And the captain is…?”

  “Nearly thirty. Yes, he is younger than I am, but I think I am young-looking for my age.”

  “Oh, yes, dear. Only the other day, the baker, Mr Jones said, ‘Where is your lovely daughter?’ That’s just what he said. So you do not think it would be a good idea to apprise the newspapers of what this Lady Rose is doing?”

  “No, Mother. I would not breathe a word to anyone apart from you. And you must swear you must not tell anyone either.”

  “There, there, girl. I swear,” said Mrs Jubbles and crossed her fingers behind her back.

  ♦

  Harry had forgotten to tell Mr Drevey about Daisy’s prowess, the sick secretary had come back, and so Rose and Daisy were once more closeted together, typing out from the entries in the ledgers.

  Rose was becoming weary of her new life. All her initial enthusiasm had gone, bit by bit. She longed to have a bed of her own again and decent meals. Her pin-money had gone quickly on items which Daisy had considered frivolous, such as an expensive vase for flowers and even more expensive flowers to put in it. Their wages had melted away on meals at Lyons, cosmetics, perfume that Rose felt she must have and new gloves and various other little luxuries. The winter weather was horrible.

  The pin-money she had brought to her new life had run out and their combined wages did not allow them any luxuries. She was tired of cooking cheap meals on the gas ring in their room, tired of saving pennies for the gas meters, weary of the biting cold in this seemingly endless winter. She found that although Daisy did not like to read, she loved being read to, and so that was the way they passed most of their evenings.

  Her clothes were beginning to smell of cooking, and regular sponging down with benzene did not seem to help much. Their underclothes had to be washed out in the bathroom and then hung on a rack before the gas fire. The sweat-pads from their blouses and dresses took ages to dry.

  One morning Rose discovered a spot on her forehead. She could never remember having any spots on her face before.

  She could only admire Daisy’s fortitude. Daisy never complained. Rose did not know that Daisy, after her initia
l rush of gratitude after their escape, was as miserable as she was.

  Daisy was every bit as conscious of the rigid English class distinctions as Rose and was afraid that any complaint from her would be treated as the typical whining of the lower classes.

  One morning, as they arrived for work, it began to snow. Small little flakes at first and then great feathery ones already speckled with the dirty soot of London.

  By lunchtime, it was a raging blizzard.

  “We won’t even be able to get along to Lyons for lunch,” mourned Rose, “and my back hurts with all this useless work.”

  “There’s a pie shop round the corner,” said Daisy.

  “Oh, would you be a dear and get us something?” said Rose. “I’ll see if there is anywhere here I can make tea. I think there is a kitchen upstairs next to the executive offices. Take my umbrella.”

  Daisy struggled out into the whirling snow. She bought two mutton pies and hurried back towards the office. A news-vendor was shouting, “Society murder. Read all about it!”

  Daisy bought a paper and breathed a sigh of relief when she entered the bank and shut the door on the white hell outside.

  “I’ve got tea,” said Rose when she entered the room. “There was no one upstairs. I’ll wait until they have gone this evening and smuggle the tea things back. Mrs Danby won’t see me. She never even comes near us any more, and Captain Cathcart must have forgotten that we wanted real work.”

  “I’ve got the pies. Look at me coat,” said Daisy. “Soaked already. We’ll never get home in this.”

  “Home,” echoed Rose bleakly, thinking of that awful room.

  “Look, I bought the Daily Mail. There’s something about a society murder. Here’s your pie. You’ll need to eat it out of the newspaper wrapping. No plates.”

  Rose took a bite of the pie. “This is really good. We should buy another two to take home.”

  “I say!” exclaimed Daisy. “You’ll never believe who’s gone and got himself murdered.”

  “Who?”

  “That Freddy Pomfret. Remember him? We met him at Telby Castle last year.”