by M C Beaton
♦
Dinner was a long and tedious affair, enlivened only by the effect Sir Gerald was having on the grim American, Miss Fairfax. They were seated together and he seemed to consider all her blunt utterances the highest form of wit. The more he laughed, the more Miss Fairfax glowed.
To his amusement, Harry, on the other side of Miss Fairfax, heard Gerald saying at one point, “You really must let me take you around when we are both in London. I see you in midnight taffeta with a high-boned collar, very grande dame.”
“I’ve never bothered about fripperies,” said Miss Fairfax.
“But you must, dear lady,” said Gerald. “And your hair would be magnificent if it were red.”
“Wicked boy,” she said with a great bray of laughter.
So enamoured was Miss Fairfax of Gerald’s company that she only turned once to Harry during the long meal and that was to ask him what the hunting was like in the countryside around. When Harry replied that he did not hunt, she said, “I should have known,” and turned back to Gerald.
Harry had told Rose he would leave the castle at two in the morning. He now wondered whether he should trick her and leave earlier. He had a sudden picture of her standing up in his motor car with her arm around Daisy, singing her heart out. She had looked really young and carefree for the first time since he had known her.
Lady Hedley was complaining that police had been crawling over the roof of the castle all day. “All Lady Rose’s fault,” she said loudly. “The young women of today are prone to fantasies and hysterics.”
Rose felt like shouting a denial down the table but kept quiet. She had told Daisy to use her wiles on Becket and make sure Harry did not change his mind about taking her with him.
♦
Daisy had rummaged in the hamper of costumes for charades and had managed to get two boys’ outfits. Giggling nervously, they put them on and crammed their hair up under a couple of tweed hats. Long overcoats completed their disguise. Before they changed into their costumes, Rose told the constable on duty that she would sleep in her mother’s room that night and suggested he take up his guarding duties outside Lady Had-shire’s door.
Becket had told Rose firmly that if his master planned to leave them behind there was nothing he could do about it. So it was with relief that they saw the car parked on the other side of the moat. They hurried across the drawbridge, Rose clutching Daisy’s arm and looking nervously to right and left.
When they climbed in, Harry let in the clutch and cruised down the slope away from the castle, not switching on the engine until they were well clear. Once out on the road towards Creinton, he stopped the car and got out and lit the headlights, climbed back in and set off again.
Rose found driving in the dark very exciting, fascinated by the square of light the two headlamps created before them.
When Harry reached the outskirts of Creinton, he parked the car under some trees, got out and extinguished the headlamps and said, “Now, Lady Rose, you and Daisy are to stay here with Becket to protect you. I will be as quick as I can.”
“But I wanted to be a burglar,” protested Rose.
“Stay here and don’t dare move,” hissed Harry.
“Spoilsport,” muttered Rose. “Honestly, Becket, there was really no reason for us to come. This is not an adventure.”
“It’s better this way, Lady Rose. If the captain gets caught, it won’t be nearly so bad as if you were found with him. Imagine the headlines in the newspapers. There are still two reporters staying at the pub in Telby.”
♦
Harry walked swiftly along, glad it was one of the days when his leg was not paining him. When he reached the square, he felt very exposed and kept close to the buildings, relieved there was no moon.
When he turned the key in the side door, the lock gave a loud click, which, to his ears, seemed to echo around the silent town like a pistol shot. He waited for a moment, Ustening, and then opened the door and went in. He lit a dark lantern. He found himself in a small kitchen. The door leading out of it was fortunately bolted on his side. He slid back the bolts, top and bottom, and found himself in a narrow passage. Ahead lay the front door, the panes of stained glass on the upper panels gleaming faintly. He remembered that he had entered the waiting-room on the right with Rose and then had gone through to the surgery. There was a door before he reached the waiting-room door, which probably led into the surgery. He tried the handle. It was locked. He hurried along to the waiting-room door. Locked as well. Both were stout mahogany doors. He tried a door on the other side of the corridor. Locked as well.
There was a staircase facing the front door. Perhaps some old files were kept in the upper rooms. Harry crept up the stairs. There were three doors leading off a landing. All were locked.
He retreated to the kitchen, defeated. He could possibly find some implement in the kitchen that might jemmy the door to the surgery open, but that would lead to a full police investigation. All he wanted to do was to read Lord Hedley’s file. He sat down for a moment at the kitchen table to rest. Rose was going to be so disappointed in him, he thought with a wry smile.
Perhaps there might be something he could use to pick the lock. But he had never picked a lock before and hadn’t the faintest idea of how to go about it.
There was a Welsh dresser against one wall. He set the lantern down on it and opened the first drawer. It was full of knives and forks and spoons. He picked up one of the knives. It had been cleaned so many times with Bath brick that it was thin and fragile. He put it back and opened the other drawer.
At first he could not believe his eyes. He held up the lantern and stared down. The drawer held keys with labels attached.
One label read ‘Front Door’, another ‘Waiting-Room’. There was even one marked ‘Safe’.
Harry grinned and selected the one marked ‘Surgery’. He was about to leave the kitchen when he heard footsteps in the alley outside. He extinguished the lantern and crept to the kitchen door and locked it and then crouched down. The footsteps came closer. A hand rattled the door. Then the footsteps moved on. Glancing up, Harry saw a police helmet bobbing past the window. The constable on his nightly rounds.
He waited and then cautiously relit the lantern and made his way to the surgery and unlocked the door.
He searched along the rows of files, looking for a folder marked ‘Lord Hedley’, but there was nothing there.
It might be in one of the upstairs rooms, thought Harry. I should never have let Rose come. This might take all night and she might do something silly like come looking for me.
He went back to the kitchen and collected the keys to the upstairs rooms. The first had been a bedroom, but the bed was now piled high with odds and ends and the rest of the room was full of discarded furniture.
The next room was an office with a roll-top desk. There were bookshelves all round, mil of medical books, some very old indeed. And beside the fire stood a large safe. Harry studied it. To his relief, it was an old-fashioned one without a combination lock. He went back to the kitchen and collected the safe key and went upstairs again.
He unlocked the safe and knelt down in front of it, the lantern on the floor beside him.
There were various items of jewellery in a box:a gold half hunter, dress studs, a gold Albert and a gold toothpick. Another box contained, to his surprise, an opium pipe and a small quantity of opium. Was Dr. Perriman an opium smoker? Or had that vice been one of the late Dr. Jenner’s? There were various title deeds and business papers, and a cash box containing a few hundred pounds.
There was one thick file which he took out and laid on the floor and opened. In it was Lord Hedley’s medical file and also correspondence between Dr. Jenner and a Dr. Palverston in London. Harry let out a soundless whistle. The correspondence between the two men discussed the use of arsenic to counteract the effects of syphilis. And in Lord Hedley’s file, he found Dr. Jenner had started to treat Lord Hedley for syphilis last summer.
He carefully
replaced everything and locked the safe. In order to give Kerridge this information, he would need to cover up the fact that he had broken into the surgery.
He went downstairs and put the keys back in the drawer, being careful to lay them back in the order he had found them.
He breathed a sigh of relief when he locked the kitchen door behind him and hurried off towards where he had left the others in the car.
Daisy and Becket were excited at his news, but Rose seemed a trifle disappointed.
“It all seems so easy,” she complained. “I had imagined you having to behave like a real burglar.”
Harry had carried that bright image of Rose singing in his car. It popped like a balloon and disappeared. She was really a very silly little girl.
♦
Harry called on Kerridge first thing in the morning with his new information.
“Where did you get this?” demanded the superintendent.
“I can’t really tell you.”
“You must.”
“Superintendent, I know you pay informers and you do not demand where they got their information from and drag them into court.”
Kerridge drummed his fingers on the desk. “I can confront Hedley. Even if he admits he has syphilis, he will deny having anything to do with Mary Gore-Desmond. We will then need to approach her parents for further proof – was she sleeping with anyone else? – and that will shake them rigid. But it shows Hedley has arsenic at his disposal.
“Still, I’ll need to interview him. You may yet be forced to tell me how you came by this information.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” said Harry.
∨ Snobbery with Violence ∧
Eleven
I had grown weary of him; of his breath And hands and features I was sick to death. Each day I heard the same dull voice and tread; I did not hate him:but I wished him dead.
– G.K. CHESTERTON
Rose had to endure a row from her furious mother. Why had she sent her guard away? Was she misbehaving herself with one of the gentlemen?
Rose protested that the policeman must have misunderstood her. Lady Polly said that they had all been told that they could leave on the following morning.
“I am glad of it. Hedley is not what we had been led to believe. I do not like this extremely vulgar castle and I do not like his guests. That Fairfax woman is atrocious. None of the young men are suitable. We are opening up the town house and the servants have been told to get it ready for our arrival. There will be a few balls and parties before Christmas and, with any luck, you will meet someone suitable there.”
“I have decided I do not wish to get married,” said Rose.
“What else is there for you to do?”
“I can type. I could get a job.”
“Are you out of your mind? Work? YOU would be a laughingstock. We do not work!”
And with that, Lady Polly slammed out of her daughter’s room in a fury.
Rose felt tears welling up in her eyes and brushed them angrily away. The attempt on her Ufe on the roof was at last beginning to affect her with a bout of delayed shock. She felt weak and useless. Tomorrow they would leave and she would never know what really happened.
Daisy came into the room. “I couldn’t help hearing Lady Polly going on at you. So we’re going to London.”
“It looks like that,” said Rose. “I wish I knew who murdered Mary.”
“Maybe Miss Bryce-Cuddlestone knows something,” said Daisy.
“She won’t speak to me.”
“Worth a try. Better than doing nothing.”
Rose paced up and down and then looked out of the window. “It’s a fine, crisp day. I could suggest a walk. Would you take a message to her? If she is agreeable, I will meet her in the hall, in, say, half an hour?”
Rose did not have much hope that Margaret would accept the invitation, but to her surprise Daisy came back and said Margaret had agreed.
♦
Kerridge had summoned Harry. “Not much good,” he said.
“His lordship was in a fine taking, threatening to have my job.”
“Does he admit to having syphilis and possessing arsenic?”
“Not him. ‘Prove it, you common little runt’ were his last words to me.”
“Get a search-warrant.”
“I’m trying,” said Kerridge bitterly. “Fve had orders to release all the guests. I sent a constable to check Dr. Perriman’s surgery. No sign of a break-in. How did you do it?”
“I had information from someone.”
“You went there yesterday with Lady Rose. Town’s still talking about it. Lady Rose and that maid of hers were singing like street balladeers.”
“Just a bit of fun.”
“Just a bit of distraction while you got up to God knows what. If only something would break. Fve more or less been ordered to get out and forget it. The press have given up and gone, so the pressure’s off.”
“And it’s back to hushing the whole thing up?”
“That’s it. At least Lord Hedley hasn’t stopped repairing the village houses.”
“Not yet,” said Harry cynically. “I wonder what he’ll do when we’re all gone.”
♦
Rose and Margaret walked in the castle gardens, which were situated to the left of the castle, on the other side from where the tradesmen’s entrance was situated.
They had talked generally of fads and fashions, with Daisy and the footman, John, following at a discreet distance behind.
A small pale disk of a sun shone down on the rose garden. Frost still lay on the earth in the shadowy patches which the sun did not reach. Rose half-turned and gave a prearranged signal to Daisy to keep well back and then said in a low voice, “Have you any idea, Miss Bryce-Cuddlestone, who could have committed murder?”
“I don’t think it was murder, Lady Rose. I think Mary was a silly girl who just took too much arsenic.”
“Then why did your maid end up in the moat?”
“Why should I know?”
“Miss Bryce-Cuddlestone – may I call you Margaret?”
“No.”
“Well, then, when you slept with Lord Hedley, did you know he had syphilis?”
“You little bitch! You nasty, snooping little bitch.”
“I would like to help. Why? Why did you allow such a man favours?”
“Favours. How old-fashioned.” Margaret began to cry, great gulping sobs. Rose put an arm round her and led her to a marble bench. A marble statue of Niobe, shedding marble tears, stared down at them from behind the bench.
Daisy pulled out a handkerchief and handed it to Margaret. She waited patiently until Margaret had gulped and sobbed herself into silence.
“I couldn’t bear the idea of another season,” said Margaret, in such a low voice that Rose had to bend her head to hear her. “My mother jeers at me a lot. She still fancies herself as a beauty. She is furious with me for already turning down proposals.
“Hedley was fun, not like those dreadful young men. He courted me. He told me that Lady Hedley had a terminal illness and was not expected to live long. He said we would be married and I would be a marchioness and outrank my mother. I slept with him one night, that was all.
“Then Lady Hedley came to my room. She told me about the syphilis. I commiserated with her on her terminal illness, thinking it had turned her brain, but she laughed and said that she was fit and healthy and that her husband should really stop sleeping with virgins because he thought it would cure his illness. I hated him then. I wanted him dead.
“I told her I would expose him, but she laughed. Laughed! She said all I would do would be to broadcast that I was no longer a virgin and that my parents would get to hear of it.”
“What did Dr. Perriman say?” asked Rose.
“He said that I showed no sign of the infection. He would not discuss Lord Hedley, but he said that people at the latent stage of the disease were not infectious. They were only infectious in the first and
second stages. So I assume I have no fear of the disease developing in me.”
“Thank goodness for that. But maybe Mary Gore-Desmond was determined that he should honour his promises. Maybe that’s why she had to die.”
“But Colette!”
“Perhaps Colette found out somehow and was blackmailing him. You should tell Kerridge.”
“No, and if you do, I will deny the whole thing. Lady Hedley puts it about that you are a liar and make things up.”
“She does, doesn’t she?” said Rose slowly.
♦
Harry burst into the study after luncheon and said to Kerridge, “What fools we’ve been!”
“Enlighten me.”
“Dr. Jenner was in correspondence with a certain Dr. Pal-verston in London over using arsenic as a treatment. If you confront Dr. Perriman with the fact that we know about the syphilis and the arsenic, he will assume that Dr. Palverston said something. Accuse him of having valuable evidence and threaten to throw the book at him.”
“I’ll go over to his surgery now,” said Kerridge.
Harry went back to his room and rang for Becket. When the manservant appeared, he said, “I want you to keep close to Lady Rose. I do not want anything to happen to her before we get out of here. I think Hedley could be dangerous and I think his illness is beginning to affect his brain.”
Becket went up and knocked at Daisy’s door. When she answered it, he said, “The captain says I’m to keep an eye on Lady Rose. Where is she?”
“She said she was going to see Lady Hedley. She’s just left.”
“Orders are orders. I’d better get down there and wait outside Lady Hedley’s sitting-room door.”
“We’ll both go,” said Daisy.
♦
Lady Hedley looked up as Rose entered her sitting-room. “You are supposed to knock,” she said crossly. She was still working on the piece of tapestry. “Sit down.”
Rose sat down on the other side of the fireplace. Lady Hedley stitched steadily, the needle flashing in and out.
“I came to ask you something,” said Rose nervously.
“What?”
Rose was beginning to wish she had not come. The marchioness looked so small and frail.
