Edwardian Murder Mystery 01; Snobbery with Violence emm-1

by M C Beaton

  Harry found himself drawn to Rose’s side. “Captain Cath-cart,” she said coldly, “why are you here?”

  “Late guest.”

  “I do not believe it. I believe Hedley wants you to use your grubby skills to get rid of the police. What are you going to do? Blow up the castle?”

  “I hadn’t thought of that. Do you think it murder?”

  “I don’t know. When did you arrive?”

  “This afternoon. I have a splendid new motor car, a Ian-chester.”

  “Nasty, smelly things. It’s a fad. It’ll never catch on.”

  “Lady Rose. The horse is a thing of the past. Some of the cabs in London are already motorized.”

  “Of almost twenty-five thousand vehicles which passed along Piccadilly in one day of this year,” said Rose, “less than four hundred were motor cars. Now what does that tell you?”

  “It tells me that you have a fantastic memory for facts, and that memory of yours has led you to believe your intelligence superior. I think you are showing off. I think that desire to show off has blinded you to the obvious fact that the motor vehicle is here to stay.”

  Rose walked away from him, her face flaming. Margaret came to join her. “The handsome captain appears to have insulted you.”

  “He’s insufferable,” hissed Rose.

  “What did he say?”

  “He insists the motor car is here to stay.”

  “He’s quite right. Was that all?”

  Rose suddenly felt she had made a fool of herself. “Oh, he said other things. How are you?”

  “Worried. I cannot find Colette. I had to dress myself for dinner. Do you think your maid might know where she is?”

  “I’ll find out,” said Rose. She summoned a footman and told him to fetch Daisy.

  She waited until Daisy entered the drawing-room and she and Margaret went up to her.

  “Colette is missing,” said Margaret. “Do you know where she is?”

  “Colette didn’t appear for dinner in the housekeeper’s room,” said Daisy. “So the housekeeper sent one of the maids to her room but she wasn’t there.”

  “Does she have a room off yours?” Rose asked Margaret.

  “No, you were favoured.”

  “I know where it is,” said Daisy.

  “Would you please go there and find out if her belongings are still there?”

  Daisy bobbed a curtsy and left the room.

  “Has she ever disappeared before?” Rose asked Margaret.

  “Never.”

  They waited impatiently until Daisy reappeared. “Her clothes are gone and her suitcase,” she said. “Why would she go like that?”

  Margaret sighed. “I’ll need to engage another. May I share Daisy with you?”

  Daisy and Rose exchanged startled looks. Daisy had learned a great deal quickly but was far from being a perfect lady’s maid, but Rose did not know how she could possibly refuse her new friend.

  “Of course,” she said. “You may go, Daisy.”

  Daisy had just left the room when she heard a voice behind her, calling her name. She turned round and saw the tall figure of Harry Cathcart, who had just emerged from the drawing-room.

  She bobbed a curtsy. “Sir?”

  “I overheard something about a missing lady’s maid.”

  “That’s Colette, Miss Bryce-Cuddlestone’s maid.”

  “When did she disappear?”

  “Today, sometime or another, sir.”

  “Would you please take me to her room?”

  “Follow me, sir.”

  Daisy, who knew that the captain had been brought to Stacey Court to deter the king’s visit, having been part of the plot herself, shrewdly guessed he had been summoned by the marquess to help to subdue any scandal. Servants’ gossip had also informed her that it was Captain Cathcart who had found out what a cad Blandon was.

  They reached the servants’ quarters at the top of the castle, stopping on a landing to pick up and light candles, gaslight not extending to the servants’ rooms. Daisy led the way along an uncarpeted corridor and pushed open a door.

  “Why did she have a room of her own?” asked Harry. “There are so many visiting servants.”

  “This is one of the smallest and her mistress was one of the first arrivals.”

  Harry looked around. A cupboard with a curtain over it to serve as a wardrobe, a chest of drawers, a narrow bed, a table and chair, and a hooked rug beside the bed on bare floorboards.

  Daisy held back the curtain over the cupboard. “See! All her clothes have gone.”

  Harry set his candle in its flat stick on the table. He opened the top drawer of the chest of drawers and then the lower ones.

  He turned again and surveyed the room. Then he went over to the bed, stripped off the covers and threw them on the floor, and then pulled up the thin mattress. “Bring the candle over here,” he ordered.

  Daisy held her candle high as she joined him. Lying under the mattress was a silver locket, a cigarette case, and a piece of fine lace.

  “Do you think she stole those items?”

  “I think she put them there for safekeeping,” said Daisy. “Lady Rose gave me a bracelet and I keep it under my mattress here in case anyone tries to steal it.”

  “Odd,” said Harry. “Did you ever talk to her?”

  “Only a little when our ladies were out for a walk. She was talking about morals and saying about the cards on the bedroom doors being there so that the gentlemen would know which room to visit during the night. But she said young ladies were strictly protected. I said that since the party was mostly young ladies, there’d be no goings-on. Something like that. And she said, “But some of them can fall. I know…” And then Miss Bryce-Cuddlestone called for her shawl, so I never did find out what she was talking about.”

  Harry stood still for a moment. Then he replaced the mattress and the bedclothes. “You’d best keep quiet about this for the moment,” he said.

  “If Miss Gore-Desmond was murdered and Colette knew something and was maybe paid to go away,” said Daisy, “you wouldn’t cover up something like that, sir?”

  “No, I couldn’t. Is the superintendent resident in the castle?”

  “No, sir, he’s at the Telby Arms.”

  “I’d better see him sometime early tomorrow morning,” said Harry, half to himself. “That will be all, Daisy. Let’s go.”

  They left the room and began to walk back along the corridor and downstairs.

  “Why did you decide to become a lady’s maid?” asked Harry.

  “Lady Rose offered me the job.”

  “And do you like it?”

  “Yes. Ever so.”

  “Is anyone courting Lady Rose?”

  “Not yet. But they will.”

  “Yes, I suppose she will not stay single for long. Society has short memories.”

  ♦

  Although Daisy had promised not to say anything, she thought that promise only concerned the other servants and so told Rose what had happened.

  “This is fascinating,” said Rose when she had finished. “Do you know what time Captain Cathcart plans to leave in the morning?”

  “I could find out from Becket, his manservant.”

  “Would you do that, Daisy?”

  “I’ll try. But if he’s retired for the night, I can’t go to the men’s quarters.”

  “See if you can find him.”

  Daisy went downstairs to the kitchens where the staff were preparing dishes of sandwiches. “Has anyone seen Becket? Captain Cathcart’s man?”

  “His master has just rung for him,” said the butler.

  Daisy went back upstairs from tower to tower, studying the names on the doors until she found the right one. She retreated a little way and hid in an alcove. At last, she heard the door opening and Becket’s voice saying, “Seven in the morning. Certainly, sir.”

  Daisy moved out of the alcove. “Mr. Becket,” she whispered. “I need to talk to you.”

  ♦
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  Harry stood in the courtyard in the morning, waiting for Becket to bring the motor car round.

  “Good morning, Captain Cathcart.”

  He started and turned round. Rose was standing there, heavily veiled, accompanied by Daisy.

  “Why are you about so early, Lady Rose?” he asked.

  “To accompany you to see the superintendent.”

  Harry glared at Daisy, who blushed and muttered, “I only told my lady.”

  “And why should you want to see the superintendent?”

  “Because I can be of help,” said Rose. Although outwardly calm, Rose was inwardly frightened he would refuse. She was sure he had been invited to try to hush things up and she was determined to see that he did not do so.

  He stood looking at her thoughtfully. Then he said, “You may be of use. But do not interrupt when I am talking to the superintendent.”

  Superintendent Kerridge was just sitting down to a breakfast of black pudding, kidneys, and bacon and eggs when the landlord informed him that there was a party from the castle to see him.

  “Send them in,” ordered Kerridge.

  He stood up as Harry and Rose entered the room. “May I offer you something?” asked Kerridge.

  “No, we will breakfast later,” said Harry.

  Kerridge waited until they had seated themselves at the table. He studied the captain. Where was the silly ass he had interviewed in Chelsea? This version of Harry Cathcart looked hard and intelligent. He was determined to go on eating. I mean, he thought bitterly, that was the upper classes for you. Drop in and interrupt a good breakfast when it suited them. Well, come the revolution, they’d be singing a different tune. Did they ever stop to think that the food that was no doubt being laid out in the breakfast room of the castle would be enough to feed the poor of this village for months? No, not them.

  “You are sneering, Mr. Kerridge,” commented Rose.

  Kerridge flushed a guilty red. “Bad tooth, my lady. Now, what is the reason for your visit?”

  Harry told him about the disappearing lady’s maid and of Daisy’s brief conversation with her.

  “Servants disappear the whole time,” said Kerridge.

  Harry then told him about the items hidden under the mattress.

  “The thing is,” said Kerridge after he had defiantly munched a kidney, “I do not understand your interest in this. It is not your lady’s maid, Lady Rose.”

  “I think she has been murdered because of what she knew,” said Rose. “I think you should get men from the new fingerprint bureau down here to dust Colette’s room. Then you can fingerprint everyone in the castle. The captain’s fingerprints will be there, of course, as will those of my maid, but you can eliminate them.”

  “My lady, I am charmed by your interest in modern police methods,” said Kerridge, pointing a sausage impaled on a fork at her, “but what will happen is this. Lord Hedley, I am sure, has phoned several people in high places. Later today, I will be told to close the case.”

  “But the doctor will not sign the death certificate!” exclaimed Rose.

  “No doubt, given the right pressure, the police pathologist will. Deaths from cosmetic arsenic are quite common.”

  “But Colette…?”

  “A lady’s maid? A foreign lady’s maid? A French lady’s maid?”

  “I will be open with you, Superintendent,” said Harry.

  “About time, if I may say so, sir. You played the fool very well when I saw you before about the bombs at Stacey Magna.”

  “Oh, that,” said Harry with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Forget that. This is important. I have been summoned here by Hedley to hush this up.”

  “Why you?”

  “I am considered diplomatic.”

  “So why didn’t you keep the maid’s disappearance to yourself?”

  “I cannot condone murder, Mr. Kerridge.”

  Kerridge sighed. “I will do my best in the short time I am sure I have got left. But you can forget about fingerprinting the guests, Lady Rose. Can you imagine the outcry? I wish to keep my job.”

  “I would have thought a desire to right a wrong and bring a criminal to justice would be more important than your job,” snapped Rose.

  “Oh, really? And then what? You lot don’t live in the real world. While you’re up there stuffing your faces, people in this village are starving.”

  “You forget yourself,” admonished Harry.

  “He is quite right,” said Rose. “The superintendent shall have our help. I shall find out what I can from the female guests, and you, Captain, can concentrate on the men. Daisy and Becket can find out what they can from the servants.”

  “We will do what we can,” said Harry with a note of irritation in his voice, for he felt Rose was being downright unwomanly. “I would advise you to keep your radical views to yourself in future, Superintendent, particularly in the presence of ladies.”

  “Oh, tish,” said Rose with a dismissive wave of her hand.

  ♦

  “They’re up there a long time,” said Daisy to Becket as they sat in the empty taproom.

  “How do you like being a lady’s maid?” asked Becket.

  “It’s all right. But so much to learn. I’ve got to wash my lady’s silk stockings and I’m frightened I’ll damage them.”

  “You wash them with soap and water and simmer them gently. For a blue shade, put a drop of liquid blue in a pan of cold spring water and run the stockings through this for a minute or two, and dry them. For a pink dye, same process but with one or two drops of pink dye. For a flesh colour, add a little rose-pink in a thin soap liquor, rub them with a clean flannel and mangle them.”

  “‘Ere!” cried Daisy, her Cockney accent to the fore. “I didn’t think I needed to colour them. And how do you know all this?”

  “I had never been a gentleman’s gentleman before, so I read a great deal on the subject. I often found myself reading advice to lady’s maids as well.”

  “What about corsets?”

  “You take out the steels in front and sides, lay them on a flat surface and use a small brush and a lather of white Castile soap to scrub the corsets. Run under cold water and leave to dry. Don’t iron.”

  “You’re a mine of information. Do you think Colette was murdered?”

  “If she knew something, someone might have paid her to go away,” said Becket.

  ♦

  After Harry had driven them back to the castle, he helped Rose to alight and asked curiously, “Do you think you will like detective work?”

  “Perhaps.”

  He smiled down at her, a smile which illuminated his normally harsh face. “Why are you so interested in helping me?”

  “I would like to give you a worthy motive,” said Rose. “It is simply because I am bored.”

  The light went out from his face and his eyes had the old shuttered look.

  Daisy followed Rose up the stairs to their room. “My lady,” said Daisy, “It may not be my place to say so, but you must learn to flirt.”

  “Why?”

  “Because one day a handsome man’s going to come along and someone else is going to snap him up.”

  Rose looked amused. “Why are you so suddenly interested in my lack of flirting?”

  “It was when the captain asked you why you were helping him and he had ever such a nice smile, my lady, and you said it was because you was bored.”

  “What should I have said?”

  “You could have said it in a jokey sort of voice and dropped your eyelashes like this and then given a little smile.”

  “I am not romantically interested in Captain Cathcart.”

  “Would do to practice on.”

  Rose sat down in front of the dressing-table mirror and stared moodily at her reflection while Daisy took the pins out of her hat and removed it.

  “You know, Daisy, it is this pressure of marriage which annoys and depresses me. There are women in London earning their living.”

  “Not
ladies.”

  “There are respectable middle-class ladies working in offices. There is nothing up the middle classes. They have sound moral values,” said Rose as if commenting on some obscure tribe of Amazonian Indians.

  “If you say so, my lady.”

  “I will now go down to breakfast and see what I can find out. I will start with my new friend, Miss Bryce-Cuddlestone.”

  “Don’t get too friendly, my lady. She could have murdered that Gore-Desmond woman herself.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “Poisoning’s a woman’s game.”

  ∨ Snobbery with Violence ∧

  Seven

  It would be impossible to read poetry properly in these upper-class accents; they have such a wretched poverty of vowel sounds:Aw waw taw gaw, they seem to be saying. Much of this yaw haw comes down to us from the drawl of the fashionable Mid-Victorian ‘swells’, who were suggesting to their listeners that they were doing them a favour by talking to them at all.

  – J.B. PRIESTLEY, THE EDWARDIANS

  In the breakfast room, Rose helped herself to kidneys and bacon and took a seat next to Margaret.

  “Have you heard any news of Colette?” she asked.

  “Not a word.”

  “You should tell the police.”

  “They will not be interested.”

  Rose hesitated and then said, “I told them myself.”

  Margaret stared at her. “When?”

  “This morning.”

  “Why?”

  “A girl is missing. Under the mattress in her room was found a silver locket, a piece of lace and a cigarette case.”

  “Those are items I gave to her.”

  “Why would she leave them behind? Someone could have packed up her belongings to make it look as if she had left. Besides, she told my maid, Daisy, that she knew something about one of the young ladies here, implying that one was having an affair.”

  Margaret’s face was stiff with outrage. “I find your poking around in things that do not concern you distasteful, to say the least. Now, if you will excuse me…”

  Rose watched her go with dismay. What had she done wrong? Surely it was only natural to want to know what had become of the girl. She suddenly felt very alone again.