by Lynda Wilcox
Now they both lived in London where Ann ran her own business as a party organiser. She was rarely out of work, as the upper classes appeared determined to party themselves into oblivion.
“You’re right, Tilly. I’m just feeling out of sorts this evening.”
Tilly sniffed, wrinkling her snub nose. “A visit to a morgue could upset anyone, I reckon. What on earth made you go?”
“I could hardly do anything else. At least I didn’t have to go right inside and identify Cropper. Mary had her sister, and a kind police sergeant, with her when she did that.”
“Well, put it behind you, now.” Tilly was ever cheerful. “Do you want the clasp or the feather headband for your hair?”
“Oh, the jewelled clasp, I think. I shall be wearing my new boa, and there will be a surfeit of feathers if I also wear the headband. I’ll end up looking like a chicken.”
Tilly laughed. “Get away with you, my lady. You’ll be the belle of the ball.”
Eleanor took a taxi to Ann’s and paid it off rather than have it wait until her friend was ready. Punctuality might be the politeness of kings, but Ann believed in being fashionably late and was still in her underclothes and dressing gown when Eleanor was shown into her boudoir.
“Come in, sit down. I shan’t be long.”
“Thanks. I’d hoped you might be ready by now. It’s gone eight.”
Ann shook her head. “You know me.” She was busy applying nail polish in a lurid shade of green to the fingers of her left hand.
“That’s rather an...interesting colour, darling.” Eleanor thought it repulsive and that it made Ann’s fingertips appear mouldy, but would not have dreamed of saying so and hurting her friend’s feelings.
“Oh, it’s all the rage, and the colour of the season according to Vogue.” She dunked the brush back into the bottle and surveyed a finger. “I quite like it, actually, and it will go really well with the dress and shoes I’m intending to wear to tonight’s party.”
“Will people ever stop partying?” Eleanor’s voice held an edge of censure. She did not object, in principle, to people having a good time and enjoying themselves, but sometimes it seemed a ceaseless round of the same people, doing nothing and going nowhere.
Ann caught her tone and grimaced. “I sincerely hope not, or else I’ll be out of a job, darling. Why shouldn’t we have fun?”
She finished painting her nails and dried them by wafting her hands, the fingers rising and falling like seaweed in an ebbing tide.
“I’m not saying we shouldn’t.” Eleanor smiled at her friend. “Don’t mind me. I’ve just had an awful day.” The echo of Mary’s anguished cry rang in her ears.
Not knowing the reason behind Eleanor’s dejected mood, Ann attempted to cheer her.
“All the more reason to go out and party, then. Sabrina’s forked out for plenty of booze, and she’s got a gramophone with all the latest records. It will be a hoot.”
Eleanor sighed. “I don’t feel like a hoot, Ann. In fact, I’m thinking of giving up my job.”
“Giving it up? You’ve only been in business a few months. It’s a bit early to talk of giving up, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I know, but I’m out of my depth. I should leave detective work to the professionals.”
Ann sat back and gave her a hard look. “Well, I like your fighting spirit, I must say. What on earth’s happened to make you feel like this? Come on, old thing. Buck up.”
“Oh, I’m all right.” Eleanor flicked at her blonde fringe. Despite her maid’s ministrations that evening, the hair needed cutting and was beginning to fall into her eyes. “At least, I’m all right while I’m dealing with my own class.”
“Your peers, you mean?” Ann said, and laughed at her own joke. It brought only a half-hearted smile to Eleanor’s lips.
“Yes, I suppose, though I don’t know why. Murder’s the same wherever it occurs.”
“Murder? Is that what you’re dealing with?”
“Yes.” Eleanor sat back in her chair and crossed her silk-stockinged legs. “It didn’t start out that way. I was engaged to look for a missing husband.”
“Yeah, well, husbands have a habit of doing that. Did you know Sir Phillip Soames has left his wife and set up with his mistress in a pied-à-terre in the South of France? Menton, I believe. Apparently, she’s a show girl that he saw in a revue at the Monte Carlo casino.” She shook her head. “Men are so predictable.”
“Cynic!”
“And Lord Millbourne is said to be contemplating marriage to a woman half his age, and he must be over seventy by now.”
Eleanor let her friend ramble on. It came as no surprise that the nobility were unfaithful to their wives and husbands, or marrying above and below them, after all they’d been doing so for centuries, if not longer. They had no better morals than the man, or woman, in the street and anyone who expected the upper classes to behave differently was fooling themselves, in Eleanor’s estimation.
“Good for him. Live and let live, I say.”
“Ha! You wouldn’t say that if you were his heir, who is supposed to be spitting feathers at the news. He stands to lose several hundred thousand pounds.” With a quick blow on her nails, Ann got to her feet and took down a dress handing on the wardrobe. “Help me on with this, will you? It’s got one of those new zip things down the back and I can’t reach to pull it up.”
“Then it seems a bit of a daft arrangement to me.” Eleanor did the honours and resumed her seat. “By the way, do the letters RR and O mean anything to you?”
Ann tilted her head, her glossy dark hair swinging. “No, darling, I can’t say that they do. Should they?” She slipped her feet into a pair of strappy shoes.
“Not necessarily, but they may — I only say may, because I don’t know for sure — be important in this case I mentioned.”
“Hmm.” Ann pursed her lips and wrinkled her nose as she continued to think about it. “It could be Rolls Royce something, I suppose.”
Eleanor laughed, reminded of young Joe Minshull’s suggestion. “Yes, but what does the O stand for? And don’t say automobiles.”
Ann, who wasn’t in on the joke, frowned. “I can spell, you know.” She flicked a mascara brush over lashes already as black as night. “Anyway, we can ask them at the party. Now, come on. I’m going to be late if you keep me here gossiping much longer.”
With a sigh, Eleanor followed her friend down the stairs and outside to the taxi rank in the square. She hoped that Ann was right. She badly needed to make progress in this case, not only for Mary Cropper’s sake, but for her own self-esteem.
Chapter 10
The party at Rutherford House was in full swing by the time Eleanor and Ann arrived. The cacophony of voices that greeted them as they entered was topped by the noise of a soaring raucous trumpet. Already, Eleanor felt the beginnings of a headache and wished she hadn’t come.
Sabrina welcomed them into the room at the back of the house with a Regency stripe on the walls and long red drapes at the tall windows. It felt warm and cosy after the cold night air outside.
She pointed to a trestle table covered with a long white cloth that was doing duty as the bar. “Help yourselves, darlings.” Her words were slightly slurred. “Lovely to see you both. Thanks for organising it, Ann. Your parties are the best.”
She blew them a kiss and whirled away in a foam of sea-green taffeta, and the two friends headed towards a table laden with bottles, cocktail shakers, and buckets of fast-melting ice.
“That was a kind thing to say.” Ann reached for a shaker and picked up a couple of bottles. “About my parties, I mean. I hope she tells all her friends.”
“Most of them seem to be here.” Eleanor looked about her, at the room full of upper class party-goers, and thought sadly of Mary Cropper. Ann probably organised more of these bashes in a week than her client attended in a lifetime. It all seemed so unfair.
“Cheer up, buttercup.” Ann put a glass in her hand and grinned. “You look like the s
pectre at the feast. Put a smile on it, old girl.”
“I’m sorry. I’m just out of sorts.” She sniffed the contents of the glass. “What’s in this?”
“Happy juice. Just get it down your neck and stop grumbling.”
“Hey! Who was grumbling.” Eleanor wrinkled her nose at Ann, then took a tentative sip. An instant smile curved her lips. “This is nice, darling. Thanks.”
“That’s better.” Ann nodded her head in approval of her friend’s brightened face. “It’s a form of grog that Daddy used to get in the navy and invented his own recipe for. The Americans call it a daiquiri, or something.” She took a swig from her glass. “Come on, let’s mingle.”
Thankfully, for the state of Eleanor’s head at least, someone had changed the record on the gramophone and silenced the strident trumpeter. She walked across to the group in the corner with almost a spring in her step.
“Hello, ladies. I was wondering where you’d got to. Fabulous party, what?”
From his seat at the centre of a circle of chairs, the Honourable Tommy Totteridge, Viscount Marchwold, beamed at them. Known to his intimates as Totters, he lounged comfortably in a wingback armchair, looking for all the world like a king holding court. As one of Eleanor’s oldest and dearest friends, she returned his greeting with a warm smile.
“Hello, Totters, old thing. How’s tricks?”
“Couldn’t be better,” Tommy replied, raising his glass in salute.
“Is Sophie not with you?” Eleanor scanned the group of young men and women for his fiancée, Sophie Westlake.
“Yes, she’s here. She’s in the next room dancing with Squidgy Rockfort.”
Eleanor felt a twinge of sympathy for the young man who, despite the name his parents had bestowed upon him, had gone through life imprinted with the nickname given to him by classmates at whichever public school he had attended. Eton, perhaps, or Harrow.
“Why aren’t you dancing with her yourself?”
The question brought a grimace to Tommy’s face and hoots of laughter from everyone else.
“Tell her about your two left feet, Totters.”
“Yes, show us your best moves, old bean.”
“I didn’t know you danced, darling.” A girl with scarlet painted lips batted her eyelashes at him. “You never dance with me.”
“That’s because the only thing Totters takes for a spin is a roulette wheel. Ain’t that right, Totters?”
The banter was all good natured and, Eleanor suspected, largely fuelled by alcohol. She had danced with Tommy often enough to know that he was accomplished in the art, even if he lacked a certain flamboyance on the floor.
He didn’t lack a sense of humour, however, and replied in a good-natured manner. “No it isn’t, Archie, you cheeky blighter. You know me, I don’t gamble.” He gave Eleanor a shamefaced grin. “I ricked my ankle when I slipped on wet stairs outside my club. Deuced painful, and not fit for dancing on, so Squidgy agreed to do the honours and deputise for me.”
“Poor Tommy.” Eleanor was all sympathy. She sat on the arm of his chair, one leg swinging, and patted his shoulder. “I can see you’re having a hard time of it.” She indicated the clique of friends around him with an elegant hand. “Even if they don’t appreciate your suffering.”
Ann, who had stopped to speak to someone standing at the side of the fireplace, now joined them and perched on the other arm of Tommy’s chair.
“Have you asked them yet?” She peered at Eleanor over the rim of a glass already three-parts empty.
“Give me a chance. I’ve been commiserating with Tommy over his damaged ankle.”
“What’s this? What’s this?” Tommy’s gaze flicked back and forth between the two women. “Something to ask us, eh, what? Is our resident sleuth on a case, or is this something more personal?”
A few of Eleanor’s friends disapproved of her decision to become a private detective. They considered that any form of paid employment was beneath someone of her rank and position. Fortunately, Tommy wasn’t one of them. Aware that the days of sitting in one’s castle and living off the work of one’s serfs were well past, he had himself taken a job and become the Arts Correspondent for a national newspaper. It was not hard manual labour, but it brought in a little extra income.
Eleanor applauded his efforts, especially as he would soon have a wife to support, whereas her own earnings, at least in part, went to provide the Minshulls with board, lodging, and wages.
“Yes, Tommy, it’s something that I’m working on. I’m looking for an organisation whose members wear navy blue blazers with the initials RRO woven onto the top pocket like a crest. Does it mean anything to any of you?” She gazed hopefully around the sea of slightly sozzled faces, and did not hold her breath.
“Do you know what the RRO stands for?”
Eleanor bit her tongue and said nothing. It was left to Ann to state the obvious
“If she knew that she wouldn’t be asking. Come on! Get your thinking caps on, girls and boys.”
“Oh, it’s no good you asking me,” said the girl with scarlet lips. “I’m lousy at exams.”
“It’s not an exam, Poppy, you fathead.” The speaker, a young man with a clipped moustache, shook his head. “I can’t think that I’ve ever seen that mix of letters.”
“It could stand for the Royal Riverbank Organisation.” This came from Pinky Percival, a close friend of Totters, who had the misfortune to be known as Pinky Perky.
“Is there such a thing?” Ann demanded.
“Not that I’m aware. I’m just throwing things out there, trying to spark ideas.”
His suggestion led to a lot of others in similar vein — equally spurious, equally farcical.
“The Royal Rotherhithe Observatory.”
“The Observatory is in Greenwich.”
“So it is, silly me, hic.”
“I know, I know. It could stand for Rather Rich Officers.”
“Ha! Or Rich Rotten Offenders.”
Eleanor laughed and got to her feet. “You’re certainly an inventive lot. I’m going for another drink, but don’t let that stop you. I’m sure you can come up with plenty more.”
At the table-top bar she accepted a cocktail from a fresh-faced young man with a receding chin who remarked that she obviously had the knack of coming up with good party games.
“The noise that Totteridge and his cronies are making, they clearly think it’s a hoot.”
“It may be a hoot, but it’s not a game, Roger.” The smile disappeared off Eleanor’s face. “I really do need to find out what those letters stand for.”
The Honourable Roger Evesham regarded her with just a hint of a condescending smile upon his youthful lips. “Then you need somewhere that lists them all, like Lloyds of London, perhaps. My uncle’s quite a high-up there. I could ask him for you, if you want.”
Eleanor shook her blonde head. She disliked Roger intensely. For the last month or so he had asked her out whenever they’d run into each other. Eleanor suspected that this had more to do with her being a duke’s daughter than from any fondness on his part, or liking for her as a person. He might not realise it, but he’d made his feelings so clear, she’d had no hesitation in refusing his advances, and the thought of him becoming amorous made her feel ill.
In the normal run of things her dislike of the man would be no reason to refuse his help. In this instance, however, she considered his suggestion too wide of the mark to be useful.
“Thank you, but I don’t think I’m looking for a company. It doesn’t fit somehow.” She pulled at her lower lip with thumb and forefinger, wondering about the sort of person who would have accosted Martin Cropper in that way, an arm around his shoulder, a word in his ear, as if they were close friends, yet Mary hadn’t recognised the letters, either, nor known of anyone with a navy blue blazer.
“All right.” He sneered. “Let me know if you change your mind.”
Eleanor gave a polite nod of acknowledgement and returned to her perch on t
he arm of Tommy’s chair.
“Has anyone solved it yet?” she asked.
But her friends had moved on, and were discussing the latest silent movie now on show at the Gaumont theatre in Leicester Square.
“Are you sure you’ve got the right letters on that crest of yours, Eleanor?” Tommy murmured.
“It’s hardly mine, Tommy, but I know what you mean.” She took a sip from her glass. “I’m going on what I’ve been told by the person who claimed to have seen it, though he could have been mistaken, of course.”
“Well, I’ve just been thinking. If it was a ‘C’ at the end, rather than an ‘O’, then it might be the Rother Rowing Club. They operate from somewhere in Rotherhithe — by the river, obviously,” he added with a grin. “Do you suppose that might be it?”
“Tommy, you’re marvellous!” Eleanor patted the top of his head with her free hand. “I should think it very well might be, because I thought one of the Rs might stand for river, but I was thinking of the Thames. Yours is certainly the most sensible suggestion so far.”
“I do have my moments, don’t I?” He looked very pleased with himself for a moment. “But, I say, old thing, you will be careful, won’t you? I thought you did a dashed fine job nailing Lord Lancashire for Sir David Bristol’s murder, but not every murderer is a gentlemen like Robert Lancashire, you know. I wouldn’t like to think of you getting hurt.”
“You’re a sweetie, Totters, but don’t worry. I shall take very good care of myself. My pistol is loaded and will be used if necessary.” She grinned at his shocked expression. “Are you a member of the Rowing Club, then?”
“Heavens, no. I hate any form of sport.” He shuddered. “That’s what going to Eton does for you. Frankly, I was born to be a sybarite.”
Eleanor laughed. “Aren’t we all, darling? So, how do you know of it?”
“I think a cousin of Sophie’s may be a member, or has mentioned them. The letters just rang a bell, that’s all.”
“Well, I’m very glad they did, and I think your suggestion is well worth investigating. I shall do that tomorrow.”
But tomorrow would bring other surprises and complications as yet undreamed of. Blissfully unaware of the trials that lay ahead, Eleanor fetched Tommy another drink. She forgot the dangers of her chosen job and allowed herself to enjoy the party.
