Snobbery With Violence Read online

  “Jolly useful having cards on the doors,” whispered Freddy to Tristram an hour later. The bed candle he was holding dripped hot wax on his hand and he swore. All the gaslight had been turned off for the night.

  “I say,” said Tristram, staggering and holding on to the wall for support, “we won’t go too far, will we?”

  “Bit of a kiss and a cuddle. Say she asked us to call. With her reputation, who’s going to believe her?” Freddy giggled and hiccupped. “Hold the candle up so as I can read the card on the door. I thought this was her room.”

  “No, it’s that old fright, Mrs. Jerry Trumpington. Try the one below.”

  They staggered together back down the staircase. “Here, let’s try this door,” said Freddy. “Ah, got it. Here we go.”

  He opened the door gently and they both approached the bed on which a silent figure lay asleep.

  Freddy lay down on one side of the figure and Tristram on the other.

  “Now,” whispered Freddy. He grabbed the sleeping figure.

  Which shot up and screamed and screamed. A shaft of moonlight fell on the terrified features of Mrs. Jerry Trumpington.

  “Sorry,” babbled Freddy. “Thought it was my room.”

  Mrs. Trumpington’s lady’s maid rushed in and began to scream as well. Sir Gerald Burke appeared in the doorway. Freddy and Tristram tried to get past him but he blocked the way. More guests began to appear carrying bed candles.

  Daisy joined the crowd. When all attention was focused on the guilty pair, she slid Rose’s card neatly out of the holder and put back Mrs. Trumpington’s card.

  “What is going on here?” demanded the Lord Hedley.

  “Frightfully sorry, wrong room,” pleaded Freddy.

  But Mrs. Trumpington had recovered from her fright. As her maid lit the gaslight, a distinctly salacious look began to appear in her small eyes.

  “Two of you got into my bed. Why was that?”

  “Too much to drink,” said Tristram desperately.

  “Oh, you naughty, naughty boys,” said Mrs. Trumpington.

  “What’s the matter?” Mr. Trumpington, a small man with a beaten air, shuffled to the front of the crowd wrapped in a violently coloured silk dressing-gown.

  Mrs. Trumpington laughed. “I do believe these wicked, wicked boys were trying to seduce me.”

  “Can’t be true,” said her husband. “I mean, why?”

  “Downstairs, you two,” said the marquess to Freddy and Tristram. “The rest of you go to bed.”

  Daisy slipped quietly back up to Rose’s room. Rose was fast asleep. She had not awakened during the whole commotion.

  Rose entered the breakfast room the following morning still blissfully unaware of the happenings of the night before. One long sideboard was laden with a row of silver dishes kept hot by spirit lamps. There was a choice of poached or scrambled eggs, bacon, ham, sausages, devilled kidneys, haddock and kedgeree. An even larger sideboard offered pressed beef, ham, tongue, galantines, cold roast pheasant, grouse, partridge and ptarmigan. A side table was heaped with fruit: melons, peaches, nectarines and raspberries. And in case anyone should prove to be still hungry—scones and toast and marmalade and honey and specially imported jams.

  Rose, an early riser, was relieved to see there was only one other guest in the breakfast room, Margaret Bryce-Cuddlestone.

  “You look very bright and fresh,” commented Margaret. “Never tell me you slept through the whole thing.”

  “What whole thing?”

  So Margaret told her. “This is outrageous,” exclaimed Rose when she had finished. “I’d better go home.”

  “These things happen. No one else will mention it to you and the two culprits will never dare even approach you again. It is my belief that someone took the card from your door and put it on Mrs. Trumpington’s door. Mr. Pomfret and Tristram Baker-Willis were so ruddled with drink that they had lost their minds.”

  Rose still looked distressed, so Margaret said, “Just think of it. The awful Mrs. Trumpington remains convinced it was her favours they were after.”

  Rose began to laugh. “That’s better,” said Margaret. “Let’s go for a walk after breakfast.”

  “I suppose I’d better get Daisy to accompany me.”

  “Daisy?”

  “My lady’s maid.”

  “You call her Daisy?”

  “Her surname is Levine and my mother wanted me to rename her Baxter, but I didn’t like that so I compromise by using her Christian name.”

  “Yes, bring her along, I call mine by her first name. She is Colette Bougier and she complained that the English servants called her Booger. As she is a very good lady’s maid I capitulated and now I call her Colette.”

  The castle gardens lay outside the walls. The lady’s maids walked behind their mistresses, who had both changed into walking clothes after breakfast.

  Colette put her hand on Daisy’s arm, causing her to stop until Margaret and Rose had moved out of earshot. “Terrible last night, was it not?” she whispered. “The way they do go on. In France one keeps the mistress discreetly hidden.”

  “My lady is nobody’s mistress,” said Daisy hotly.

  “I did not mean that. I mean, they say they put the cards on the bedroom doors so everyone can know which is their room, yes?”

  “Yes, surely—”

  “No, it is because perhaps some gentleman is protected from making the dreadful mistake of sleeping with his wife instead of his mistress.”

  “You mean they ain’t got no morals,” said Daisy and quickly corrected herself, ever mindful of Rose’s teaching. “They haven’t any morals?”

  “Only the young ladies go on as if they are in the convent.”

  “Going to be a dull party, then,” said Daisy cheerfully. “Mostly young ladies.”

  “Ah, but even they can fall. I know ...”

  “Colette! My shawl,” called Margaret, “And do keep up with us.”

  Colette ran forward and wrapped the Paisley shawl she had been carrying around her mistress’s shoulders.

  Rose had been telling Margaret all about Sir Geoffrey Blandon and how her father had hired a certain Captain Cathcart to find out about him.

  “I’ve heard a rumour about a certain captain who fixes things, covers up scandals, things like that. What’s he like?”

  “Nothing out of the common way,” said Rose stiffly. “Quite rude, in fact.”

  “Has he done any more work for your father?”

  Rose longed to tell her new friend all about the king’s aborted visit but decided that it was something she could never talk about. “No, and I hope I never see Captain Cathcart again.”

  The house party settled down to a routine of shooting and hunting for the men in the afternoons while the ladies read or sewed or played croquet. Then, after another long boring dinner, there were charades or cards. Rose found the company of Sir Gerald Burke amusing and her new friendship with Margaret enjoyable and yet she longed to go home.

  There was an atmosphere in the castle she did not like. Almost at times a feeling of menace.

  And yet the marquess paid her a great deal of fatherly attention. Finding out she liked to read, he took her on a tour of his library, proudly showing off leather-bound books bought by the yard from the bookseller, with little attention to content.

  The weather had turned dark and stormy and the folly of having arrow slits in the walls of the towers was soon revealed as the wind screeched through them like so many banshees.

  One particularly vile night, Rose sat up in bed reading a novel by H. G. Wells, unable to sleep because of the noise of the wind. Draughts were everywhere, seeping through the windows and under the doors, causing the flames of the candles to flicker.

  And then she thought she heard a voice calling, “Fetch the doctor.”

  She got out of bed just as Daisy came into the room. “I heard something, my lady. Did you hear it?”

  “It sounded like someone calling for a doctor. I hope no
thing has happened to Miss Bryce-Cuddlestone. Pass me my dressing-gown, Daisy.”

  “I’m coming with you,” said Daisy.

  Wrapped in dressing-gowns, they opened the door. There were faint sounds coming from downstairs on the left.

  They went down the stairs, the light from their bed candles throwing up great shadows on the stone walls. Then there was a scream.

  “I think it’s from the other tower. It’s along this corridor here,” whispered Daisy.

  They made their way along the long corridor which connected the towers. Lady Hedley appeared from a room at the end of the corridor. Her face was chalk-white and she had a handkerchief pressed to her lips.

  “Go back to your room, Lady Rose,” she said. “We are waiting for the doctor. Miss Gore-Desmond is . .. has been ... is ill.”

  But other guests appeared behind Rose and they all clustered forward despite the marchioness’s protests.

  The gaslight was flaring in Mary Gore-Desmond’s room. Rose had a brief glimpse of a still figure on the bed, the marquess, the butler, the housekeeper, and Mr. Jerry Trumpington, when the marquess turned round and with his face red with anger shouted at them to go away.

  “I wonder if they’ll manage to get a doctor on a night like this,” whispered Daisy. “I think she’s dead.”

  SIX

  We are at the cross-ways. If we stand on in the old happy-go-lucky way, the richer classes ever growing in wealth and in number, and ever declining in responsibility, the very poor remaining plunged or plunging even deeper into helpless, hopeless misery, then I think there is nothing before us but savage strife between class and class.

  -WINSTON CHURCHILL, SPEECH AT LEICESTER, 1909

  “Daisy! What are you doing?”

  Rose had just come down to the main hall on her way to breakfast the following morning to find Daisy standing with her ear pressed against the door of the earl’s study.

  “Sorry,” said Daisy, darting guiltily away from the door and joining her mistress. “But it’s ever so interesting.”

  “Don’t say ‘ever so,’“ Rose corrected automatically. “You should not listen at doors. It’s vulgar.”

  “Lord Hedley is in a right rage. Seems it’s not the usual doctor but a new one, the old one having popped his clogs last week.”

  “Daisy!”

  “And he won’t sign the death certificate!”

  Now Daisy had Rose’s full attention. “Why not?”

  “Seems like this new doctor, a Dr. Perriman, well, he says it’s arsenic poisoning, of that he’s sure. Lord Hedley, he says, ‘So what?’ He says a lot of ladies take arsenic to clear the skin and she’s overdone it. Dr. Perriman says he’s already phoned the police and Lord Hedley is raging and saying he’ll have him drummed out of the medical profession.”

  There was a thunderous knocking at the door and both women jumped nervously.

  The hall-boy, who had been slumbering in a chair near the door, awoke with a start and rushed to open it.

  A police sergeant stood there, with a constable at his side. The butler, Curzon, appeared in the hall.

  The police sergeant said something in a low voice and then both policemen were led off to the study.

  The castle was hushed and sombre. The wind had died down but great black clouds still tore across the sky.

  Rose was once more on her way downstairs for afternoon tea when she heard Curzon announcing in tones of doom, “Detective Superintendent Kerridge.”

  The superintendent and another detective vanished into the marquess’s study. Rose joined Margaret and the others in the drawing-room where a lavish afternoon tea was being served.

  The American twins, Harriet and Deborah Peterson, were whispering together. The rest were moodily silent until Mrs. Trumpington raised her voice. “Who just arrived? I heard a carriage. Curzon?”

  The butler, who had entered the room after Rose, said, “Persons from Scotland Yard have arrived, madam.”

  “Oh, this is ridiculous.” Mrs. Trumpington selected a large slice of Madeira cake, scoffed it down, brushed off the crumbs which decorated her jet-embroidered gown, and declared, “I mean, the silly girl obviously took arsenic for her skin. Took too much, that’s all. And anyway, that doctor had no right to jump to the conclusion that it was poisoning. And how does he even know it was arsenic?”

  “He says she smelled of garlic,” said Sir Gerald-Burke.

  “So?”

  “Evidently a sign of arsenic poisoning. Then she’d vomited all over the place and—”

  “Ladies present. I say.” Harry Trenton.

  “You did ask,” remarked Gerald languidly. “It’s all such a bore. I suppose we will all have to be interviewed by the police.”

  Lady Sarah Trenton gasped and fell back in her chair with her eyes closed.

  “Has she fainted?” asked Neddie Freemantle.

  “Acting as usual,” said Frederica Sutherland roundly. “She’s always acting and posing.”

  Sarah opened her eyes and glared at them all. “I have delicate sensibilities which the rest of you seem to lack.”

  “Did they find arsenic in her room among her cosmetics?” asked Margaret.

  “I don’t know,” said Mrs. Trumpington. “Ask the maids. There’s been an army of them in there cleaning up and laying her out.”

  “That’s destroying evidence,” gasped Rose.

  They all stared at her and she flushed at being suddenly the centre of so much attention. “It’s just that Scotland Yard has recently opened a fingerprint bureau. If the room had not been cleaned, they could have taken all our fingerprints and discovered if there was anyone who had been in her room.”

  “Trust our walking encyclopaedia to know that,” said Gerald waspishly, and Rose, who had begun to regard him as a friend, gave him a hurt look.

  The door opened and Lord Hedley came in. “The police want to interview you one at a time. Sorry about this. It’s all the fault of that doctor, Perriman. First it’s the working classes getting uppity, now it’s the middle classes. They make trouble to get their revenge on us.”

  “Why would they want to do that?” asked Rose.

  “Envy. Pure envy,” said the marquess. “Your parents phoned, young lady. I told them there was no need to travel here. Once this trivial matter has been resolved, we can all relax and enjoy ourselves. Now, the police will begin with the ladies. Lady Rose? Perhaps you should go first.”

  “Why?” Rose wanted to ask. But she got up and followed the marquess through a door in the hall and along a corridor. “I’ve put him in the estate office,” said the marquess. He ushered Rose in and closed the door.

  Rose and Kerridge took stock of each other. Kerridge saw a very beautiful girl in high-boned white lace blouse and tailored skirt. Rose saw a thickset grey-haired man, with calm grey eyes and a thick grey moustache, standing behind a desk.

  “Please be seated, my lady,” said Kerridge. Another detective sat a little away from Kerridge and a policeman with a large notebook was perched on a hard chair in a corner of the room. A stuffed fox glared down from the wall behind the desk, its mouth open in a snarl.

  “Now, Lady Rose,” said Kerridge, “where were you on the night Miss Gore-Desmond died?” •

  “I was in my room and I heard someone shouting—I think shouting, ‘Get a doctor.’ My maid and I put on our dressing-gowns and followed the sound of the voices. Lady Hedley came out of what I now know to have been Miss Gore-Desmond’s room. She said Miss Gore-Desmond had been taken ill. I had a glimpse inside the room of Lord Hedley, the butler and housekeeper, and, I think, Mr. Trumpington. I am afraid that is all I can tell you.”

  “What kind of lady was Miss Gore-Desmond?”

  “I didn’t really get to know her. She seemed—well, prickly, as if she despised us all.”

  “Did she favour any gentleman in particular?”

  “Not that I noticed. She sewed a lot. Petit point. She did not converse much, or if she did, I did not notice. Will that be a
ll?”

  “Just one other thing. Do you know a certain Captain Harry Cathcart?”

  High colour stained Rose’s cheeks. “I believe he is an acquaintance of my father.”

  “The bridge and the station at Stacey Magna were blown up.”

  “Yes, but what has that to do with the death of Miss Gore-Desmond?”

  “Just curious. Have you any idea who was responsible?”

  “The Bolsheviks, of course. Everyone knows that.”

  Rose thought she heard him mutter, “Except me,” but could not be sure.

  “That will be all for now. Shall I ring for a footman?”

  “I can find my own way back, thank you.”

  He consulted a list. “Would you be so kind as to ask the Misses Harriet and Deborah Peterson to step along?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Why did you ask her about that business at Stacey Magna?” asked Inspector Judd.

  “Because I have a nagging feeling that it had more to do with stopping the king visiting than any plot by Bolsheviks. But we’d better stick to this business here. What’s worrying you, Judd? You’ve a face like a fiddle.”

  “You say this Lord Hedley is rich.”

  “Yes, very.”

  “And yet you say those suits of armour are fake? Why didn’t he have real ones?”

  “No feel for history. I was reading up on this place. There used to be a beautiful house here and Lord Hedley’s father tore it down and took out all the Adam furniture and burnt it all. He built this about thirty years ago, when everyone wanted everything to look like something out of the Knights of the Round Table.”

  The American sisters entered the “room and Kerridge began to question them. After they had left he worked his way through all the guests, ending up with the Marchioness of Hedley.

  “Are you going to be long?” she asked.

  “No, my lady,” said Kerridge soothingly. “Just a few questions.”

  “No. Meant are you going to be long here Tiresome. Can’t abide policemen.”

  “This may be a case of murder,” said Kerridge severely.

  “Tish, tosh! Silly girl used the stuff as a cosmetic. That’s all.”

  “Did she have any enemies?” pursued Kerridge doggedly.