Hasty Death (8 page)

‘Why, my very dear Captain,’ she said, her thick lips opening in a smile. ‘How goes the world?’

‘Very baffling,’ said Harry, sitting down opposite her.

‘I was about to take tea. Will you join me?’

‘Too kind.’

Mrs Jerry rang the bell and ordered tea for two.

‘The reason I am here,’ said Harry, ‘is because of the death of Freddy Pomfret.’

‘Poor chap.’

‘Indeed. Why did you pay Freddy ten thousand pounds?’

She sat very still, her slightly bulbous eyes fixed on his face. Then she said, ‘Did I?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, I remember. He was short of the ready, that’s all. I’m a generous soul.’

‘Ten thousand pounds would be considered a fortune to most people in this country.’

‘But I am not most people. How did you find out?’

‘I heard something at Scotland Yard. No doubt the police have been in touch with his bank.’ Harry could imagine Mrs Jerry’s fury if she knew the real source of the
information.

Two footmen came in carrying the tea-things. Mrs Jerry waited until they had both been served and then waved the servants away. When the door had closed behind them, she said,
‘What’s it got to do with you, anyway?’

‘I am working for his family,’ said Harry, feeling that he really must contact Freddy’s family as soon as possible before he was caught out in his lies.

‘I really think the – er – trade you are in is most distasteful.’ Mrs Jerry ignored the thin bread and butter and the mounds of sandwiches and fruitcakes and selected a
meringue filled with cream.

‘Was Freddy blackmailing you?’ asked Harry.

She bit down on the meringue so violently that a shower of meringue crumbs, meringue powder, and a dollop of cream joined the detritus of food on her bosom.

‘Geffout!’ she roared when she could.

‘I beg your pardon?’

She seized a napkin and wiped her mouth. She lumbered to her feet, panting with rage.

‘Out!’ she shouted. ‘And never darken my doorstep again.’

‘I didn’t know anyone actually said that apart from the stage,’ said Harry equably. ‘If Freddy was not blackmailing you, why are you so furious?’

Mrs Freddy rang the bell. ‘Because of your impertinence. Because I am a respectable woman without a stain on my character.’

‘Unlike your dress, madam? You are covered in food. You are a walking menu.’

The footmen entered. ‘Throw him out!’ howled Mrs Jerry, collapsing back in her chair.

‘It’s all right, I’m going,’ said Harry.

As he walked outside, he wondered if he had been too blunt. He reflected ruefully that he would not be able to contact Rose because he had nothing to tell her, and in the same moment wondered
why that should matter so much.

‘So pleasant to see you looking your old self again,’ sighed Lady Polly. ‘We have decided to launch you back into society by gentle degrees.’

To her mother’s surprise, Rose did not object but merely lowered her long eyelashes and said meekly, ‘Yes, indeed.’

‘There are various cards here. We will go through them and decide which ones to accept.’

Rose’s sharp eyes caught sight of a name – Mrs Angela Stockton. She picked up the card. Mrs Angela Stockton was requesting the pleasure of the earl and countess and their daughter at
a lecture she was giving on Rudolf Steiner.

‘This looks interesting.’

The countess raised her lorgnette and studied the card. ‘It’s for tomorrow afternoon. Too late to accept now. Besides, who is Rudolf Steiner?’

‘It would be interesting to find out.’

‘I have no intention of going, even although the woman is perfectly respectable.’

‘I would like to go – with Daisy.’

‘As to Daisy,’ said Lady Polly, ‘I fear you may have become over-familiar with her.’

‘I agree. So I am going to make her my companion and hire a lady’s maid.’

‘Out of the question.’

‘It was Daisy who persuaded me to leave my working life. You are always worried that I will do something disgraceful. Daisy takes care of me. Why, she was even shocked that I should
threaten to tell society how you arranged for the road and railway station at Stacey Court to be blown up so that the king would not visit us.’

‘Quite right. I hope you have dropped that silly nonsense.’

‘I’ll need to think about it. Of course, were Daisy elevated to my companion, I wouldn’t dream of mentioning it.’

‘We spoilt you,’ said Lady Polly bitterly. ‘Most young gels who behaved the way you have behaved would have been locked up in the asylum by now. Wake up!’ she suddenly
shouted at her husband.

‘Hey, what!’ The little earl blinked like an owl.

‘Tea is served and your daughter wants to make that maid of hers a companion.’

‘And what does Cathcart have to say about that?’

‘Cathcart! He has nothing to say in what our daughter does or does not do.’

‘You must admit he saved her bacon on more than one occasion.’ The earl rang the bell and when the butler answered it, he said, ‘Brum, fetch the telephone.’

‘My lord, that instrument does not detach from the study. It is necessary for one to go to the machine.’

‘Well, go to it and phone that Cathcart fellow and tell him to come here.’

‘It would be better to send a carriage for him,’ said Rose quickly, fearing that Miss Jubbles would take the call and not pass it on. ‘His office is in the Buckingham Palace
Road. Number Twenty-five-A.’

‘Very well, jump to it,’ said the earl. ‘By Jove, do I see Madeira cake?’

Looking down from the window, Miss Jubbles saw the carriage with the crest on the panels drawing up outside and a liveried footman jumping down from the backstrap.

She heard footsteps on the stairs. The footman entered. ‘I am here to take Captain Cathcart to visit the Earl of Hadshire.’

Miss Jubbles’s heart beat hard. That girl again!

‘I am afraid,’ she announced in tones of stultifying gentility, ‘that Captain Cathcart is not here. He has gone abroad.’

‘And when is he expected back?’

‘He did not say.’

‘When he returns, tell him to contact his lordship immediately.’

‘Certainly.’

And then Miss Jubbles heard that familiar tread on the stairs. Harry had suffered a shrapnel wound during the Boer War, and on the bad days, walked with a pronounced limp, and this was one of
the bad days.

He entered the office and paused in the doorway. He had recognized the earl’s carriage outside.

‘Captain Cathcart,’ cried the footman, who recognized Harry from his visits to the earl’s home. ‘Your secretary said you had gone abroad.’

Miss Jubbles’s face was red with mortification. ‘I am sorry, sir,’ she said. ‘When I said abroad, I meant abroad in London.’

‘That’s all right,’ said Harry. ‘But the earl is a client and an important one. You knew I was due back here late afternoon because I told you.’

‘I am so sorry. I forgot.’ And with that, Miss Jubbles burst into tears.

‘Don’t take on so,’ said Harry. ‘I have to pick up some papers from my desk. There’s nothing else for you to do this afternoon.’

He went through to his office. On his desk was a small vase of freesias, imported from the Channel Islands. He scowled down at them. They were expensive. He took some papers off his desk and
walked out.

‘Miss Jubbles,’ he said gently, ‘I appreciate the flowers but they are much too expensive a gift. Please extract the amount from petty cash.’

‘Oh, sir, they were only a little present.’

‘Please do as you are told,’ ordered Harry, ‘and enter the amount in the petty-cash book.’

Tears rolled down Miss Jubbles’s cheeks. ‘Here,’ said Harry, handing her a large handkerchief. ‘Now, I must go.’

He was beginning to suspect that his secretary’s feelings for him might be a trifle too warm, but never for a moment did Harry guess at the depth of the obsession that would cause her to
sleep with the handkerchief against her cheek that night.

Harry turned in the doorway. ‘And do not accept any more cases. I am going to be tied up with one important one for the foreseeable future.’

‘Come in, Cathcart,’ cried the earl. ‘Tea?’

‘No, thank you. Do you have a problem?’

Rose had been sent to her room.

‘It’s Rose again. She wants to make that Cockney maid of hers a companion. She does give Daisy the credit, I gather, for having persuaded her to get back in society.’

‘I think it might be a very good idea,’ said Harry. ‘Daisy’s demeanour is suitable, and with the right clothes she would not occasion comment.’

‘But companions have
background
!’

‘Then give her one. Any respectable recluse you know of in Hadshire who died recently?’

‘Well, let me see. There was Sir Percy Anstruther.’

‘Married?’

‘Married a girl half his age, who ran off and left him.’

‘Any surviving family?’

‘None as far as I know. I think the estate went to the Crown.’

‘Good. Daisy is his long-lost daughter. She fell on hard times. Her mother had reverted to her maiden name of Levine. You rescued her. All respectable. You discovered her true identity
after she had been working as your daughter’s maid and promptly elevated her to companion in respect for your old friend, Sir Percy. She is a strong, moral girl and will keep a guard of Lady
Rose.’

‘I sometimes think,’ put in Lady Polly, ‘that it might be an idea to give Rose just a taste of the asylum to discipline her.’

‘But think of the scandal,’ said Harry. ‘She would be lost to you and damned as mad for the rest of her life.’

‘Oh, very well,’ said Lady Polly. ‘But I will hire a lady’s maid for her and one that will keep a strict eye on her as well. Rose has some very odd ideas about going into
society again. She insists on going to some boring lecture given by Mrs Angela Stockton.’

‘Mrs Stockton,’ said Harry, consulting the papers he had taken from his office, ‘is fabulously wealthy and of good family.’

‘But a lecture . . . !’

‘And has a son of Rose’s age.’

Both the earl and countess looked at Harry. ‘Now that’s different,’ said the earl. ‘Nothing up with money in the family, hey.’

T
he fact that the earl and countess agreed to their daughter’s attending Angela Stockton’s lecture accompanied only by her new
companion was prompted by parental weariness. Where had they gone wrong? They had supplied her with the best governess – or so they had believed – and the fact that they saw very little
of her until she became of an age to be a débutante could not surely have created any problem, for she had been brought up as a lady of her class.

They had enjoyed their visit to Nice, the long miles separating them from their unruly daughter having largely served to put Rose out of their minds. Angela Stockton’s lecture seemed a
safe enough place for her to be seen. Also, there was the carrot of Mrs Stockton’s marriageable son.

Luncheon was to be served before the lecture. Mrs Stockton’s impressive home was in Knightsbridge. Daisy, self-conscious in her new grand clothes supplied from Rose’s wardrobe, felt
she would have enjoyed the outing better had not Lady Polly sent her lady’s maid, Humphrey, to keep an eye on them. Daisy was conscious the whole time of Humphrey’s hot and jealous
eyes.

A fork luncheon was served in a long dining-room. The other guests were women of indeterminate age, some of them wearing very odd clothes, consisting of cotton embellished with cabalistic
designs. There were a few men, mostly reedy and starved-looking.

Mrs Angela Stockton greeted them warmly. She was dressed in black velvet with stars and moons embroidered in silver around the hem of her gown. A heavy silver belt was around her waist and
silver necklaces jangled from her thin neck. She had hair of an improbable shade of red, piled up and held in place with what looked like two ivory chopsticks. Her heavily rouged mouth was
surrounded by a radius of wrinkles. Her eyes, outlined in kohl, were very large and pale blue.

‘I am flattered that one so young and beautiful should grace my humble home,’ she said. ‘May I introduce my son, Peregrine.’

Daisy reflected that Peregrine looked like a stage-door Johnny. He had thick black hair, well-oiled, and a thick luxuriant black moustache. His waistcoat was a violent affair of red and gold
silk.

Rose and Daisy moved on into the dining-room. ‘Rabbit food,’ hissed Daisy.

They helped themselves to nut cutlets and salad. There was no wine, simply jugs of water.

Daisy and Rose sat down at a table. ‘It’s quite tasty but they might at least have served the nut cutlets hot,’ complained Rose. ‘And this house is abominably
cold.’ She signalled to Humphrey and asked her to fetch her fur coat from the ante-room where they had left their outer wrappings. ‘Miss Levine’s coat as well.’

Humphrey glared at Daisy and then went off, returning shortly with their coats.

‘That’s better,’ said Rose. ‘I think we should hear what the lecture is about and then talk to Mrs Stockton afterwards. We cannot ask her outright about the ten thousand
pounds or she will ask how we came by our information. But we can get to know her and find out if there is anything about her, any weakness, that would cause her to be blackmailed.’

‘You could get close to that son of hers easily enough,’ said Daisy. ‘He’s leering at you across the room.’

‘I don’t think I could bear it.’ Rose speared a lettuce leaf and looked at it gloomily. ‘I am going to be quite hungry after this. Did you see any bread?’

‘Not a bit.’