Sophie shook her head. ‘I think maybe it’s not her death, but Emily herself we need to know more about. Her friends, her family, who she was.’ She took a sip of tea, and thought for a moment. ‘You know, I think it might be time for Lil the debutante to make another appearance,’ she said cautiously.
‘Oh I say! What a good scheme!’ exclaimed Lil, looking so immediately enthusiastic that Sophie couldn’t help but laugh.
Several hours later, Sophie and Lil were standing on the pavement outside the residence of Miss Phyllis Woodhouse. Billy had looked up Phyllis’s address in Sinclair’s records, whilst the two of them had borrowed a copy of Lady Diana DeVere’s etiquette book from the Book Department and scrutinised the chapter about paying calls.
Whilst Lil knocked and was ushered into Phyllis’s house by the butler, Sophie turned her attention to the house next door, where Emily Montague had lived. She had made up her mind to see whether there was anything she might learn about Emily, or her family. But from where she lingered on the pavement, the house seemed completely still. In spite of the warm weather, the windows were tightly closed, the blinds drawn. Even the door knocker had been tied up with a strip of black crepe.
But after a few minutes had passed, a maid appeared out of the servants’ entrance. She seemed to be in rather a hurry, and she was concealing something small under her apron. Sophie at once bent down, pretending to be fiddling with a button on one of her boots. To her surprise, the maid passed her and then slipped stealthily up the stairs of the next-door house. What could she be doing at the Woodhouses’, Sophie wondered?
Inside, Phyllis had welcomed Lil with enthusiasm: ‘Miss Rose! Why, how lovely to see you!’
‘I do hope you don’t mind me calling,’ said Lil, perching herself sedately on a little chair in the spacious drawing room. She was heartily relieved to find Phyllis all alone. She was proud of her debutante performance, but she wasn’t sure quite how well she would fare if she had to convince Phyllis’s mama as well as Phyllis herself.
‘Not in the least!’ exclaimed Phyllis at once. ‘Mama is out with Grandmama, and I’m fearfully bored. It’s jolly to see you – but did you come all by yourself ? Is your chaperone still unwell? ’
Lil gave a nervous laugh. ‘I’m afraid she is, rather,’ she said, and then hurried on before Phyllis could start asking her difficult questions about the mumps. ‘The thing is, I heard the awful news about Miss Montague. I didn’t know her very well at all, but I know she was a friend of yours, so I thought I should call. I was so sorry to hear what happened to her.’
To Lil’s alarm, Phyllis’s large blue eyes at once filled up with tears. ‘That’s so awfully kind of you,’ she said, in rather a trembling voice. ‘Oh, Miss Rose – I do feel terrible about poor Emily.’
‘It’s tremendously sad. I’m so sorry – it must be dreadful to lose such a dear friend.’
‘But that’s just it!’ said Phyllis, looking up at her unhappily. ‘The honest truth is we weren’t dear friends – in fact, we were barely friends at all. We ought to have been – we’ve been neighbours for years. We even went to finishing school together. But Emily could be so beastly sometimes! At school she was always ragging me about what a fearful dunce I was, and getting the other girls to rag me too. It’s been the same since we came out – whatever I said, she always made me feel a perfect ninny.’ She paused for a moment and dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief. ‘But I know you oughtn’t to speak ill of the dead – and now she’s gone and it’s all so ghastly. I can’t help feeling that if only I had been better chums with her, maybe this would never have happened!’
‘Oh, Phyllis – don’t be silly,’ said Lil, gently. ‘That’s stuff and nonsense. What happened to Emily wasn’t your fault.’
‘But perhaps if we’d really been friends, she would have been with us at the York House ball, not walking out along the river all by herself at night!’ Phyllis wailed. ‘And – and we all thought she had eloped – and we were all gossiping and laughing about it at Veronica’s tea party!’
‘There’s no sense in feeling guilty about that now,’ said Lil briskly. ‘Look, perhaps you weren’t always such a wonderful chum to Emily – but it doesn’t sound like she was an awfully good friend to you either.’
‘I suppose you’re right,’ said Phyllis, still sounding a little anxious.
‘You really oughtn’t blame yourself –’ went on Lil, but before she could say any more, the maid came back into the room. ‘If you please, Miss Phyllis, there’s someone here to see you,’ she said.
‘Who is it, Elsie?’
‘It’s – it’s Miss Montague’s maid, miss. From next door. Susan, her name is. She says she’s got something for you.’ The maid pursed up her mouth as she said this. Lil thought that she looked as though she disapproved of Susan-from-next-door.
‘Oh – how very strange. I wonder what she can mean? Do show her in, Elsie. You don’t mind, do you, Miss Rose?’
Lil shook her head, even as the young woman came in to the drawing room. She was dressed like any other maid, but she looked boldly around the room as she bobbed a curtsey.
‘Begging your pardon, miss,’ she began at once. ‘I don’t mean to intrude. But I wanted to bring you something. My young mistress, Miss Emily, I know she was a friend of yours, and she’d want you to have something to remember her by. She always spoke well of you.’
She handed Phyllis a small green velvet box. Inside was a little paste brooch in the shape of a bow. Seeing it, Phyllis looked as though she was going to burst into tears all over again. ‘Oh – I remember Emily wearing this!’ she exclaimed. ‘How thoughtful of you! But – but – does Mrs Montague know you’ve brought this for me?’
Susan looked quite insulted. ‘Of course she does, miss. She said I could come. She was feeling too upset to come herself.’ Then all at once, her expression changed. ‘My poor young mistress!’ she wailed. ‘She was so good to me! And now she’s gone, and I shall lose my place!’
Phyllis looked stricken. ‘Oh heavens – you poor thing!’ She fumbled for her purse, took out a pound note and pressed it into the maid’s hands. ‘Here – take this,’ she said. Susan stifled a sob, but Lil could have sworn that her eyes glinted as her fingers closed around the money.
‘Oh thank you,’ she breathed. ‘She always said you were so kind, my poor mistress. Good day to you, miss,’ she said, and scuttled out of the room.
Lil sensed an opportunity. ‘Heavens, look at the time!’ she exclaimed, leaping to her feet. ‘I must go at once – my chaperone will be awfully worried. Chin up, Phyllis! Remember what I said – none of this is in the least bit your fault!’
‘But – but – you’ve only just arrived –’ stuttered Phyllis in confusion, as Lil rushed helter-skelter out of the room.
‘I oughtn’t to be talking to you.’ Susan folded her arms defensively. She was eyeing Sophie and Lil across the table of the little tea room: it had taken five shillings to persuade her to accompany them. ‘The mistress’d have my guts for garters.’
‘Well, if you aren’t going to tell us anything, we’ll have our money back,’ said Lil, promptly.
‘We just want to find out what really happened to Miss Montague,’ said Sophie. ‘That’s all.’
‘You’ve worked out that it wasn’t really an accident, then? Well that makes you smarter than the rest of them,’ Susan gave a contemptuous snort. ‘As if any respectable, well-brought-up young lady would suddenly decide to go strolling along the river at night, all alone!’
‘So what was she really doing?’ asked Sophie, leaning forwards across the table.
Susan sipped her tea, and said nothing.
‘Go on,’ said Lil impatiently. ‘Five shillings, remember? And your tea. And we won’t tell Miss Woodhouse what your little pantomime in her drawing room was all about. I suppose Mrs Montague didn’t really know you’d taken that brooch?’
Susan shrugged. ‘She won’t notice, one way or the other. She doesn’t have a cl
ue. Besides, it was only a cheap thing – worth more to Miss Woodhouse than the pawnbroker, I reckon. Now Miss Emily’s gone, I have to look out for myself.’
‘So tell us what you know about what happened.’
Susan eyed a plate of sticky buns on the counter. ‘I’m hungry,’ she said plaintively. ‘I can’t talk when I’m hungry.’
Lil rolled her eyes. ‘Fine. You can have a bun. But you have to talk.’
Susan heaved a sigh. ‘Very well. I’ll tell you. But keep it to yourselves. I’ve no mind to get myself in trouble.’ She lowered her voice.
‘The Montagues are flat broke,’ she began. ‘People don’t know it yet, but they’ve barely a farthing left. Mr Montague had money troubles before he died – but after young Mr Raymond, Miss Emily’s brother, inherited – well !’
‘What happened?’
‘Ran through everything that was left at the gaming tables, didn’t he? The mistress was that ashamed. She wanted to keep up appearances just as always, and she pinned all her hopes on Miss Emily making a good marriage in her first Season. That way she could save the family fortunes. Only problem was, there was no money to pay for it – the Season’s an expensive business. All those frocks and gloves and the like. But Miss Emily was smart – she had more brains than the rest of them put together. She came up with a way to pay.’
‘She stole things – from the other debutantes,’ said Sophie, realising what the maid was getting at.
‘Too right she did,’ said Susan, nodding sharply. ‘And the silly fools were too feather-brained to notice. It was child’s play for her to take a watch here, a brooch there. She had an eye for it. She’d take them and I’d pop them down to the pawnbroker’s or the jeweller’s shop, see what I could get. Oh I know it wasn’t right and proper, but it kept me in wages – and it made sure she could keep up with the rest of the debutantes, more or less.’
‘Didn’t her mother know what she was doing?’ asked Lil, all agog.
‘Her? She didn’t have a notion. She’s the sort that can’t even see the nose on their own face.’
‘So that’s why Emily took the jewelled moth at the garden party,’ said Sophie.
The maid nodded. ‘But that wasn’t the only valuable thing she got hold of that day.’
‘What do you mean?’
For the first time, the maid looked a little uncomfortable. ‘The jewels and things – they weren’t enough, not to settle all the bills. So she found another way of making money.’
‘What way?’
Susan bit her lip. ‘Miss Emily sometimes found out things that she wasn’t supposed to know. Secrets . She was always the inquisitive sort – and she wasn’t above listening at a few keyholes. It only happened a couple of times. A rich old geezer who was keeping a mistress on the side and didn’t want his wife to know about it. A young fellow who got the boot from Cambridge and couldn’t bear his family finding out.’
‘So she blackmailed them?’ asked Lil, shocked.
‘I s’pose you’d call it that,’ said the maid tersely. ‘She asked ’em for a few quid to keep her mouth shut.’
‘And that’s what happened at the garden party?’
Susan nodded. ‘I don’t know what she found out, but when she came back she was full of herself. She didn’t even seem to care about that brooch. She said that she’d overheard something – some secret – that was worth far more than any jewel.’
‘What was it?’ asked Lil at once.
Susan shrugged. ‘Search me. She wouldn’t tell. Said it wasn’t for me to know. All I know is that it was something about Lord Beaucastle. She said it should make her enough to see her set up for the rest of the Season.’
‘And then she disappeared,’ said Sophie. Her mind was working furiously: she could see it all now.
‘And they tried to say she’d gone off with young Robert, the footman!’ scoffed Susan, indignantly. ‘Idiots, the lot of them. She’d not give a young milksop like that a second look! She knew what side her bread was buttered, right enough. When she disappeared, I thought maybe she’d found some rich fellow and had run off with him. I cursed her for not taking me with her. I never thought they’d find her floating in the river . . .’
To their astonishment, Susan’s eyes suddenly welled up with tears – and Lil could see they were real tears this time, not the false ones she had produced for Phyllis. ‘I say, don’t cry,’ she found herself saying, rather awkwardly.
After Susan had left them, Sophie and Lil remained sitting at the table long after their tea had gone cold.
‘What a story!’ said Lil at last. ‘I never expected she would say anything like that.’
‘I suppose Emily Montague must have found out some secret about the Baron – something big,’ Sophie mused. ‘She tried to blackmail him, but he didn’t take kindly to that – and so instead of paying her off . . .’
‘He killed her off,’ said Lil, her eyes round.
‘Or his Boys did.’
‘Gosh!’ said Lil. ‘Poor Emily. She might have been a thief – and a blackmailer – but she didn’t deserve to die. She can’t really have been any sort of real threat to the Baron, can she? Why, she was only a young girl!’
What she did not say, but what both she and Sophie were thinking, was that Emily Montague was not really so very different from themselves. They knew secrets about the Baron; were they too in terrible danger?
‘No wonder Joe wasn’t keen on going back to the East End,’ Lil added, after a little while. When they had seen him next, he had been thoroughly shame-faced about having deserted them in the cab – but now, it was easy to understand why he had done it. It was only too clear that the Baron was not someone to be trifled with.
They were rather silent as they walked back towards Sinclair’s department store.
It was evening now. The shadows lengthened, lights began to come on in the windows of the houses, and in Hyde Park, a little breeze stirred the leaves of the trees.
Night fell. Streetlights gleamed, and somewhere, a dog howled. In the East End, a lone policeman was striding along a gas-lit street, the beam of his lantern slicing through the shadows. An old woman slept in the small sanctuary of a church doorway, under the yellowing sheets of yesterday’s newspaper. Big Ben chimed, first one, then two o’clock, until the last of London’s revellers melted away into the night. In China Town, the Baron’s Boys prowled along the street like ghosts in the shadows, whilst the Lim family stirred restlessly in their sleep.
Far across the city, Phyllis Woodhouse snored gently, whilst in next door’s attic, Susan lay unhappily awake in the dark.
Not far away, in the sedate surroundings of Belgrave Square, Veronica was pacing around her bedroom, the lace-trimmed hem of her nightgown trailing along the floor. All the familiar things around her – the dressing table with its silver-backed brushes and the quaint jewel cabinet, the four-poster bed with the pretty curtains and soft coverlet – suddenly seemed as if they belonged to someone else. Her world had turned upside down. She felt sick to the pit of her stomach: there were just two days left until her coming-out ball, and Lord Beaucastle’s proposal. Her thoughts were in turmoil, but through it all, there was one thing she knew for sure. Whatever else she did, she had to see Miss Taylor and Miss Rose as soon as possible. She had a feeling that they were the only ones who could help her now.
PART IV
The Debutante Ball
Behaving with decorum is of the utmost importance, and never more so than on the occasion of a coming-out ball. A debutante must always conduct herself with elegance, grace and charm, and should on no account be seen to romp, especially in the gallop, nor to make herself in any way conspicuous.
From Lady Diana DeVere’s Etiquette for Debutantes: a Guide to the Manners, Mores and Morals of Good Society, Chapter 20: The Ball – The Debutante’s Proper Conduct – Dances – Rooms of Necessary – On the Selection of Music – Decoration of the Ballroom – Duties of Entertainers to their Guests – A Word Upon Partners �
�� The Card Room – The Fancy Dress Ball
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
‘Lilian is wearing a delightfully dainty robe du soir in ivory satin, with black velvet dévoré and ivory tulle,’ trilled Madame Lucille. ‘Note the beautiful hand-embellishing and the exquisite glass bead trim.’ She swept her hand towards Lil’s gown, and then simpered at the ladies through her lorgnette.
Lil stood perfectly still, frozen in the attitude of a Greek statue, which was generally about all that was required of a Sinclair’s mannequin. Madame Lucille – not her real name of course – Lil happened to know that she was really called Ethel, and hailed not from Paris, but from Preston – always said that it was important for the mannequins to think calm thoughts while they posed, but Lil’s thoughts on this particular afternoon were not in the least bit serene. Instead, her mind was working energetically, thinking over the events of the previous few days – their visit to Veronica, the encounter with Mei Lim and the trip to the East End, the meeting with Susan, all that they had learned about Lord Beaucastle and the jewelled moth – and Emily’s fate perhaps most of all. Nonetheless, she tried to shape her face into a suitably tranquil expression, while the ladies in attendance peered at her and muttered to one another in low voices.
‘To complement the evening gown,’ Madame Lucille went on, ‘Lilian is wearing a scarlet silk sash, and silk slippers.’
All at once Lil became aware of a flurry happening in the doorway. A young lady rushed in very late, and without a word of apology to anyone pushed herself in and took an empty seat in the front row, where her large plumed hat immediately obscured the view of several people sitting behind her. This was not at all acceptable behaviour at a dress show. ‘Well! ’ exclaimed one lady in a particularly vexed tone of voice, getting up pointedly to move seats, but the young lady who had been the cause of the fuss did not even seem to notice.
The Mystery of the Jewelled Moth Page 14