Hasty Death (22 page)

R
ose felt sick. Angela’s eyes were glittering with a mad light, but the hand holding the gun never wavered. Rose tried to think coolly and
calmly but jumbled thoughts raced through her brain. That famous line from adventure stories she had read – ‘With one bound he was free’ – tumbled into her brain. Would
Daisy bring the photograph or would she find Captain Cathcart and get help? Her mother had insisted she go back to wearing ‘proper stays’ and a steel had edged itself loose and was
cutting into her. The whalebone stiffening in the high collar of her gown was digging into her neck. If she had accepted Tristram’s proposal and settled for an uneventful married life, she
would never have landed in this mess. ‘If you shoot me,’ said Rose, finding her voice, ‘how do you expect to get away with it?’

‘I will leave the country and hide abroad. They will never find me.’

‘If you have to leave the country, Mrs Stockton, what is the point of wanting the photograph? Your reputation will be ruined by this mad action of yours.’

‘
I am not mad!
’

Rose was aware of the bell-rope next to her chair. If only she could tug it, a servant would appear, and surely this whole household of servants wasn’t party to the murders.

‘What happened to Murphy? What happened to Mr Pomfret’s manservant? Did you kill him, too?’

‘I paid him to leave for Ireland. He was glad to accept. He didn’t know I’d killed Pomfret but I didn’t want him in that flat in case he found that photograph. I said I
was looking after him out of kindness and to honour Pomfret’s memory.’

Rose put her hand to her forehead and swayed in her chair. ‘I feel faint,’ she said.

‘Then faint,’ snapped Angela.

Rose swayed in her chair nearer the bell-rope. Then, as if about to lose her balance, she seized the bell-rope.

The double doors of the drawing-room opened and a footman stared at the tableau and then retreated. Rose could hear him running down the stairs.

To her amazement, Angela, in her fixed concentration, had not even noticed.

But suddenly a voice shouted from downstairs, ‘We’ve got to get the police!’

Angela’s eyes widened and her finger tightened on the trigger.

Rose threw herself to one side, tipping her chair over onto the floor, just as the gun went off with a deafening report. The recoil jerked Angela backwards and she gave a howl of pain and
dropped the gun.

Rose sprang up from the floor. She fell on Angela, screaming and clawing and biting, dragging her out of her chair while Angela fought to get the gun. Angela was wiry and strong. She rolled Rose
under her and her bony hands encrusted with rings fastened around Rose’s throat.

And then Harry erupted into the room, followed by Becket and Daisy. They had met Daisy in the street as she was running to get help.

Harry seized Angela by her thin shoulders and jerked her off Rose. He turned and addressed the gawping servants clustered in the doorway. ‘Fetch something to tie her up!’

‘No,’ gasped Angela. ‘I am calm now. I will go quietly.’

Two policemen came into the room. ‘Arrest this woman for murder and phone Detective Superintendent Kerridge. We will follow you to the police station and make statements,’ ordered
Harry.

Angela stood up and with a quaint dignity said, ‘I must take my medicine with me. I have a bad heart.’

‘Send a servant.’

‘No, I have it here, over in that desk.’

She went to the desk and took out a small bottle. She squared her shoulders. ‘Now, I am ready.’

Rose looked wildly at Harry but he stared back at her, his face a mask. The two policemen moved forward. ‘If you will come with us . . .’ one started to say. Angela twisted the cork
off the bottle and tipped the contents down her throat.

‘In a moment,’ she gasped. Her face contorted and she clutched her neck. Then she held her stomach and moaned as she sank to the floor.

‘She’s taken poison,’ said Harry. He turned to the servants. ‘Send for a doctor. Miss Levine, take Lady Rose into another room, for God’s sake. Lady Rose, there is
blood on your dress. Are you wounded?’

‘One of the steels in my stays came loose,’ said Rose with a hysterical laugh. ‘You knew she was going to poison herself, didn’t you?’

‘You are upset and don’t know what you are saying. We will talk later.’

By the time Kerridge lumbered up the stairs, Angela Stockton was dead. He had taken half an hour to arrive, and in that half-hour Harry, Becket, Rose and Daisy had a hurried consultation to get
their stories right.

‘I want to know what you have all been up to,’ said Kerridge. The four had retreated to a morning-room on the same floor.

‘Lady Rose is still shocked,’ began Harry. ‘Mrs Stockton held a gun on her and was going to shoot her. Miss Levine managed to escape and came to look for me. Fortunately we saw
her on the street and came here immediately.’

Kerridge turned his grey gaze on Rose. ‘Why was Mrs Stockton trying to kill you?’

‘I had been thinking and thinking about the murders,’ said Rose in a low voice. ‘I thought she might have committed them. I always thought she was mad. I came with Miss Levine
and challenged her. She pulled out a gun and said she was going to shoot me. She confessed to both murders. She said she shot Mr Pomfret because he was blackmailing her. He had a photograph of her
eating roast beef.’

Kerridge’s bushy eyebrows nearly vanished into his hairline. ‘Do you mean she killed twice over a plate of roast beef?’

‘She said she had built up a world-wide reputation as a vegetarian. She said Mrs Jerry was going to the police. She said Mr Pomfret had a picture of her in a compromising position with a
young footman. Although she did not have the evidence, Mrs Jerry thought she had.’

‘And what was Lord Alfred being blackmailed about?’

‘I believe it was because he had got a servant girl pregnant and she died in childbirth,’ said Harry smoothly. ‘We only have what Mrs Stockton told Lady Rose. There is no proof
of that.’

‘The press are going to have a field day with this,’ said Kerridge.

‘I think it would be better,’ said Harry, ‘if we stick to the roast beef blackmail. We cannot mention the other two because there is no evidence.’

‘At least Mrs Stockton saved us a court case. Did you not guess she was going to poison herself?’

‘How could I?’ said Harry. ‘She said it was heart medicine.’

‘I don’t believe you. There’s a lot in your statements I don’t believe. But I’m very glad to have two murders solved.’

‘May we please leave further questioning until tomorrow?’ asked Harry. ‘Lady Rose has been through the most terrible ordeal.’

‘Very well. But Lady Rose, you did a mad and foolish thing. If you had any suspicions that the killer was Mrs Stockton, then you should have come to me. Never do anything like that again.
Go back to your society life. Get married. Have children. That’s what a woman is supposed to do.’

‘You are just an old-fashioned fuddy-duddy, Mr Kerridge,’ said Rose. ‘Women should be independent and have the vote.’

‘Those trouble-making suffragettes should all be locked up. I want you all at Scotland Yard first thing in the morning.’

Rose, Harry, Becket and Daisy emerged from Angela’s house. The day had turned dark and they were nearly blinded by the magnesium flashes of the press on the doorstep
going off in their faces.

‘This is bad,’ said Rose as they drove off. ‘My parents are never going to forgive me. Why did you not tell Kerridge the truth about why Lord Alfred was being
blackmailed?’

Harry shrugged. ‘He did not murder anyone. It would extend the inquiry and I am heartily tired of the whole thing.’

The Roast Beef Murders hit the papers the following morning. Photographs of Rose, looking beautiful, stared out wide-eyed from every newspaper. She was hailed as a heroine, as
the New Woman of this new century.

Rose’s parents recovered from their initial fury to bask in the reflected glory of their daughter’s bravery. Invitations poured into the earl’s town house, every society
hostess wanting to brag that she had managed to get the latest celebrity to attend her ball or dinner.

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.