Hasty Death

by M C Beaton

  Rose became tired of relating the edited version she had told Kerridge over and over again.

  Tristram seemed to be always at her side, saying loudly that he should have been there to protect her.

  Rose came to the conclusion that nothing could make her want to marry such a boring man as Tristram. She decided she had better get rid of him. Everyone seemed to assume that an engagement was in the offing.

  He was driving her in the park one day a few weeks later. Rose was in low spirits. Harry had not called or sent any message.

  ‘I am thinking of joining the suffragette movement,’ she said, unfurling her lace parasol to shield her face from the rays of the sun.

  ‘Eh, what? You’re joking, of course.’

  ‘Not in the slightest. If I marry, I would expect my husband to attend rallies with me.’

  Tristram was so shocked and alarmed that he blurted out, ‘Any husband worth his salt would give you a good beating first.’

  ‘Take me home now,’ ordered Rose.

  The former Miss Jubbles, now the new Mrs Jones, left church that day on the arm of the baker. She had experienced savage pangs of jealousy when she read about the exploits of what she considered her ‘old rival’ in the newspapers. But now she felt simply proud to be a married lady.

  She had inherited a comfortable sum of money on her mother’s death, and as Mr Jones drove her off in their new motor car under the admiring gaze of the neighbours, she felt she would burst with pride.

  Her replacement, Ailsa Bridge, filed Harry’s cases, typed his letters and occasionally fortified herself with gin. She no longer kept a bottle in her desk drawer but had a flask of gin firmly anchored by one garter under her skirts.

  Harry was plucking up courage to try to call on Rose. It was only his duty, he told himself. He at last presented himself at the earl’s mansion to be told that Lady Rose was not at home. This he translated that she was not being allowed to see him.

  Rose was, in fact, upstairs in the drawing-room being confronted by her parents. ‘It’s no use your protesting, my girl,’ the earl was saying. ‘It’s India for you. And don’t threaten me with that business of me stopping the king visiting. It would harm you as much as me, and that precious Captain Cathcart would go to prison. The season’s nearly at an end. You’ve led us all to think that you might accept Baker-Willis after all and then you tell us some story that he had threatened to beat you, which I don’t believe. Should have beaten you myself.

  ‘I will arrange for you to sail at the end of the summer. You may take Levine with you, but you’ll be staying with the Hulberts, remember them?’

  ‘I do. Mrs Hulbert is a cross, overbearing woman.’

  ‘Enough of that. Need someone to keep an eye on you. Get yourself a nice officer. No adventurers, mind.’

  Inspector Judd said to his superior, ‘You never quite believed Lady Rose’s story, did you, sir?’

  ‘No, I did not. Oh, yes, the Stockton woman did commit the murders, but I think either Lady Rose or Cathcart found the blackmailing stuff. I think they’re protecting Lord Alfred.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because that young man had an affair with another man, I’m sure of that. I just sense it.’

  ‘But that should have been reported!’

  ‘I let it go because we got our murderer and we’ve enough on our plate without hounding Lord Alfred. But I do think that somehow Lady Rose or Captain Cathcart decided to take the law into their own hands. I don’t like it. Let’s just hope Lady Rose settles down and gets married. I’m sure she’s the one who causes all the trouble. Women always do.’

  The superintendent did not see the paradox in that in his dreams of the revolution, there were always beautiful women on the barricades beside him, armed to the teeth and waving the red flag.

  ‘What am I to do?’ wailed Rose later that day. ‘I don’t want to go to India and sit in the heat while the memsahibs gossip about me.’

  Daisy bit her thumb and looked at her sideways. ‘If I were you, I’d go to the captain for help.’

  ‘What can he do?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ fretted Daisy. ‘But it’s his job to fix things for people.’

  ‘How are we to get there? You know I am guarded.’

  ‘Same as last time,’ said Daisy cheerfully. ‘You’re in such disgrace that another disgrace won’t matter. Your parents are very wealthy. And yet they go on the whole time about the money they’ve wasted on you.’

  ‘That is their way. They all go on like that. It’s a way of blackmailing their daughters into getting married during their first season. Most of the poor girls take anyone who offers.’

  ‘Let’s just go,’ said Daisy eagerly.

  ‘I would rather slip out of the house when they do not know I have gone. Have we any engagement for this evening?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘Then after dinner, I will say they have upset me and I wish to go to my room and read. Then we will go out and get a hansom to take us to Water Street. What would I do without you, Daisy?’

  ‘I did call, you know,’ said Harry when they were all settled in his front parlour. ‘I was told you were not at home. Are you feeling better, Lady Rose? Got over the shock?’

  ‘I get a few nightmares,’ said Rose.

  Harry had the unkind thought that Lady Rose seemed to be quite up to saving herself. He felt he should have been the one to get the gun away from Angela Stockton.

  ‘Miss Levine suggested I should come to you for advice, that being your job,’ said Rose.

  ‘Have you lost something? Servants been stealing from you?’

  Daisy bristled. ‘Not with me around.’

  ‘It’s just that my parents are now determined to ship me off to India. They have suggested that before and I always threatened to tell people about Father hiring you to deter the king from visiting.

  ‘Well, that won’t work any more because they point out that if I did, you would be arrested. So I have come to ask you to think of something else.’

  Harry sat silently for a long moment. Then he said, ‘The trouble is that I do not think they will ever give up until you are married.’

  ‘I’ve got it!’ Daisy clapped her hands, her eyes shining. ‘Why don’t you marry my lady, Captain Cathcart?’

  ‘Don’t be cheeky, Daisy,’ admonished Rose.

  ‘Perhaps there is a way out,’ said Harry slowly. ‘If I proposed marriage to you and suggested a long engagement, that would give you time. Then, after a year, you can break off the engagement, but during that year, as I shall be busy with my work, you will find time to find someone suitable.’

  ‘My parents would never let me accept,’ said Rose, a high colour on her cheeks. Did the captain need to look at her in that measuring way, as if she were nothing more than a business proposition?

  ‘I think they would. I am of good family. I can afford to pay the no doubt horrendous marriage settlements that their lawyers will insist upon. I can be very persuasive. They will be anxious to see you settled.’

  ‘You would need to look . . . affectionate,’ said Rose.

  ‘Oh, I can manage that.’

  ‘Go on, Rose,’ urged Daisy. ‘It’s him or India. Think of the heat, the flies, the boozy officers, the bitchy memsahibs, and what about the Hulberts?’

  ‘Who are the Hulberts?’ asked Harry.

  ‘Some terrible dragon of a woman who is an old friend of Mama’s,’ said Rose. ‘What if I take a fancy to some gentleman shortly after this supposed engagement?’

  ‘Then you terminate the engagement early,’ said Harry cheerfully. ‘Your parents won’t mind so long as you have someone, anyone, to marry.’

  Rose was beginning to find all this humiliating. Harry could at least have shown a little warmth instead of looking at her as if she were nothing more than another case.

  ‘I’m sure I can think of something else,’ she said stiffly. ‘Goodbye, Captain Cathcart.’

  ‘No, stay,’ he sai
d quickly. ‘I have hurt your feelings by being so detached about it all.’ He suddenly smiled at her, that smile of his which softened the harsh lines of his handsome face. ‘And it would serve your purpose, would it not?’

  ‘May I say something, sir?’ interposed Becket, who was standing behind Harry’s chair.

  ‘By all means, Becket. Pray be seated.’

  Becket sat down next to Daisy. ‘Lady Rose,’ he said, ‘I gather you have led a particularly restricted life of late. Were you engaged to my master, you would have more freedom. Captain Cathcart works hard, but I am sure he would be prepared to attend social events with you. You would not be the target any more of men you did not like, nor would you be so closely guarded by your parents. I think it is a very good idea.’

  ‘Oh, very well,’ said Rose ungraciously. ‘When do you plan to approach my parents?’

  ‘Late tomorrow morning.’

  ‘I do not think for a moment you will have any success,’ said Rose, ‘but thank you for trying. Daisy, are you ready?’

  ‘Well, I think it downright noble of him,’ said Daisy on the road back. ‘You would be able to help him with his detecting like you once wanted to.’

  ‘I have had enough of horrors and frights to last me a lifetime,’ snapped Rose, huffily thinking that Captain Cathcart might have said something like how honoured he was, or that he would do anything in the world to help her.

  To Rose’s relief, after stopping the hansom on the far corner of the square and walking the rest of the way on foot, they were able to slip in unnoticed.

  She finally fell asleep that night torn between worrying thoughts that her parents might not accept the captain’s proposal and being uneasily afraid that they might.

  The following morning, the earl looked up from his newspaper as Brum, the butler, entered the morning-room and said Captain Cathcart had called.

  ‘What does that man want now?’ demanded the countess. ‘You didn’t send for him, did you?’

  ‘No, but I’d better see him. Useful chap. Put him in the study, Brum.’

  ‘Very good, my lord.’

  The earl entered his study and blinked at the vision that was Captain Harry Cathcart. The captain was wearing an impeccably tailored morning suit. His thick black hair with only a trace of grey at the temples was brushed and pomaded until it shone.

  ‘Ah, Cathcart,’ said the earl. ‘What’s amiss?’

  ‘I am glad to say that nothing is amiss,’ said Harry pleasantly. ‘I have come to ask for your daughter’s hand in marriage.’

  The earl sank down into a battered leather armchair. ‘This is a shock. I must say I admire your cheek. Won’t do, you know. You’re a tradesman.’

  ‘I am of good family, as you know,’ said Harry, ‘and I can now afford to keep your daughter in style.’

  ‘But you are one of society’s misfits!’

  ‘As is your daughter. My lord, think calmly about my proposal. Can you envisage your daughter married to a conventional man? Lady Rose would quickly become bored and go looking for trouble.’

  The earl took out a large handkerchief and mopped his brow. ‘This is so sudden,’ he said like the heroine of a romance. ‘I don’t know what my wife’s going to say to all this.’

  ‘Why don’t we ask her?’

  ‘Follow me. But she’ll say the same thing.’

  Harry followed the earl to the morning-room. Lady Polly was sitting reading her husband’s newspaper at a table strewn with the remains of a hearty breakfast.

  ‘That’s mine!’ said the earl, snatching the paper from her. ‘You know I don’t like anyone reading it until I’ve finished with it. You’ve crumpled it.’ He turned to an attendant footman. ‘Take this away and iron it again.’ Newspapers were always ironed so that nasty black ink should not sully aristocratic fingers.

  ‘Captain Cathcart,’ said Lady Polly. ‘Have you breakfasted?’

  ‘Thank you, yes.’

  ‘Coffee? Tea?’

  ‘Coffee, if you please.’

  Another liveried footman went to the sideboard to get Harry’s coffee. When it was placed in front of him, the earl said to the footman, ‘Take yourself off and stand outside the door and make sure no one comes in. Got private business.’

  Lady Polly looked at her husband in amazement. When the servant had left, she asked, ‘What is going on? Not more skulduggery, I hope.’

  ‘Worse than that,’ said her husband. ‘Cathcart here wants to marry Rose.’

  ‘Well, the simple answer is no,’ said Lady Polly placidly. ‘You should have known better, Captain. A man in your position can hardly hope to be allowed to marry an heiress.’

  ‘Then what will happen to Lady Rose?’ asked Harry.

  ‘We are sending her to India.’

  ‘Is that such a good idea? What if there is another mutiny? What if she meets some adventurer who is only after her money?’

  ‘Rose will be staying with a very good friend of mine who will look out for her,’ said Lady Polly.

  ‘A Mrs Hulbert, I believe?’

  ‘Yes, how did you know that?’ Lady Polly’s eyes narrowed. ‘Have you been seeing my daughter behind my back? Oh, dear God, do you have to marry her?’

  ‘Nothing like that. Servants will gossip, you know.’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t know that, young man. Only very low people listen to servants’ gossip.’

  ‘This Mrs Hulbert has daughters of her own, has she not?’

  ‘Yes, two. Bertha and Caroline.’

  ‘I assume they didn’t take at the season?’

  ‘No, that’s why they’re going.’

  ‘My lady, as I have heard,’ said Harry, who had done his homework, ‘the Hulbert daughters are singularly plain and of a somewhat sharp-natured temperament. You are foisting onto Mrs Hulbert a beautiful girl. Lady Rose will have a horrible time. Mrs Hulbert will make no push to have Lady Rose settled until she has seen her own daughters safely engaged. She may even keep Lady Rose in the background. Do you dislike your own daughter so much that you must needs guard her night and day and possibly try to force her into an unsuitable marriage? Remember that she is now capable of working for a living, and as soon as she reaches her majority, she may simply leave home to get away from the pressure.

  ‘I doubt if she will ever forgive you for putting her in asylum.’

  ‘We didn’t know it was an asylum. She just thought it was a nerve place where she could be talked out of her odd ideas,’ said the earl.

  ‘You are in danger of forfeiting the love of your daughter,’ pursued Harry.

  ‘Don’t be vulgar,’ said Lady Polly. Really, what was this odd man talking about? Daughters simply did as they were told. Everyone knew that. Did he expect her to behave like some common character in a cheap play?

  ‘We’ll be here all day,’ grumbled the earl. ‘Where’s that newspaper?’

  ‘You told the servants not to interrupt us,’ his wife reminded him.

  A look of cunning came into the earl’s usually guileless eyes. ‘Wait in the drawing-room, Cathcart.’

  When the door closed behind Harry, the earl said, ‘We needn’t bother. Let the man make his proposal. Rose isn’t going to accept him.’

  The worry cleared from Lady Polly’s face.

  ‘Of course. I’ll go and get Rose.’

  Rose was waiting in her sitting-room. She was dressed in a blue organdie gown with a little white spot. Blue kid shoes were on her feet and blue ribbons were threaded in her thick hair.

  ‘You look very fine!’ exclaimed her mother. ‘Were we due to go out anywhere?’

  ‘No, Mama.’

  ‘You’re to go down to the drawing-room. Captain Cathcart wishes to propose marriage to you.’ She gave a chuckle. ‘Hurry along then. You’ve got ten minutes to deal with him.’

  Rose entered the drawing-room and a footman closed the double doors behind her.

  The couple studied each other for a moment, each reflecting how fine the other one looked.
/>   Harry walked forward and took Rose by the hand. Then he sank down on one knee. ‘Lady Rose,’ he said huskily, ‘would you do me the very great honour of giving me your hand in marriage?’

  ‘There’s no need to play-act,’ said Rose.

  ‘Who knows when they’ll walk in on us?’

  ‘All right. Yes, I do.’

  Harry stood up and fished in his pocket and drew out a little box. He opened it to reveal a sapphire-and-diamond ring.

  ‘Oh, how beautiful,’ said Rose, as he slid it on her finger. ‘You should not have gone to so much trouble.’

  ‘He gone yet?’ asked the earl.

  Lady Polly looked down from the window. ‘His motor car is still there with his manservant at the wheel.’

  ‘I think we’d better see what’s going on.’ The earl sighed and put down his freshly ironed paper with reluctance.

  ‘They’re coming,’ said Harry, cocking his head to one side. He drew Rose into his arms.

  ‘You’re not going to kiss me, are you?’ demanded Rose, blushing.

  ‘No, just lean your head on my manly chest.’

  The doors opened and the earl and countess stood stricken at the tableau in front of them.

  ‘Congratulate me,’ said Harry. ‘I am the happiest of men.’

  There was nothing that Rose’s parents could do now but give their blessing.

  When Harry had gone, the countess rounded on her daughter. ‘Not a word out of you. You have thrown yourself away. Come, dear, I need a cup of tea.’

  The earl went back to the morning-room and picked up his precious newspaper only to find it had fallen in the marmalade dish. ‘You,’ he said to a footman, ‘take this away and clean it and iron it again!’

  Dr McWhirter’s corpse – or what was left of it – was eventually discovered by a gamekeeper. Foxes and other predators had done their busy work and left the rest to the maggots. The bullet had dropped down through the exposed skeleton and fallen to the ground. When two policemen came to remove the remains, one large regulation boot ground the bullet down into the forest floor. From the rags still clinging to the skeleton, they assumed it to be the remains of some tramp.