Sick of Shadows (4 page)

Lord and Lady Hadfield were heading back to London, a local policeman having been sent to tell them about the attack on their daughter.

“I’ve had enough,” said the earl. “The only thing is to send her out of the country where she’ll be safe. I must say Cathcart’s been a fat lot of good at protecting her.”

“It’s Rose’s fault,” moaned the countess. “Always wilful. And what were the servants about to let her leave the house?”

“If Brum thinks he’s getting any sort of raise in pay after this, he can forget it,” raged her husband.

“I wouldn’t do that,” said Lady Polly uneasily. “He might talk to the press.”

Rose was beginning to feel exhausted as she told her story over and over again to Harry and the superintendent. Matthew had told her that her parents were on their way back and she felt sure that nothing now would stop them from packing her off to India. Inspector Judd had been placed on guard outside the drawing-room to make sure none of the servants was listening outside the door.

“I think the fellow was probably wearing a wig,” said Harry. “I mean the wig, the pince-nez and the black cloak are really all that anyone can remember. I think, Lady Rose, that it would be a good idea to get you out of London for a bit, but not to Stacey Court. You would not even be safe in your country home. I wish we could lock you up in a police station.”

“Wait!” Kerridge held up a hand for silence. “I’ve got an idea.”

Rose and Harry waited patiently while the superintendent sat lost in thought. He was a grey man with grey hair and bushy grey eyebrows. “I correspond still with a policeman in a village called Drifton, near Scarborough in Yorkshire. I met him once when I was up there on a case. Regular chap with a delightful family. Lovely village which no outsider visits. What if Lady Rose and Miss Levine here were billeted with him for a bit? He could do with a bit of extra money.”

“I cannot see my parents’ accepting that idea,” said Rose stiffly. “Furthermore, I have no desire to live with a policeman in some Yorkshire village.”

There was a commotion downstairs. The earl and countess had arrived home. They could hear the earl shouting, “Where is she? And get those damned reporters off my front step.”

He entered the drawing-room, shrugging off his sealskin coat and dropping it to the floor. A footman picked it up and handed it to the earl’s valet.

Kerridge thought it odd that Lady Polly did not hug her daughter. She simply sat down, unpinning her hat and handing it to her maid, before haranguing Rose for having dared to leave the house.

“I have an idea, my lady,” said Kerridge. He told them about his policeman friend in the Yorkshire village.

The earl and countess stared at him in silence. Rose waited for her parents to tell the superintendent he was talking rubbish.

To her dismay, her mother said slowly, “How long would Lady Rose be away?”

“Several months, I’m afraid. Give us a chance to catch this fellow.”

Rose’s parents fell silent again. Lady Polly thought of months without having to worry and worry about her troublesome daughter. She and her husband enjoyed society but they had had little enjoyment recently because of fretting about Rose’s odd engagement.

The earl was thinking that several months away from Cathcart and she might change her mind about this ridiculous engagement.

“Is this policeman respectable?” he asked.

“Oh, very,” said Kerridge. “Good church-goer.”

“And does he have children?”

“Got five young ’uns.”

“Would the police station have enough room to house my daughter and Daisy?”

“Big old rabbit warren of a place. I’m sure he’d find room. I’ll telephone him now, if you like.”

“He has a telephone?” asked the earl, who thought that magic instrument was only confined to the upper reaches of society.

“Yes, he has, my lord.”

“Why can’t I stay with Aunt Dizzy in Scotland, or Aunt Matilda in Dover?” asked Rose.

“Because this murderer can find out who your relatives are and I don’t want you anywhere where there are servants who might talk. Would you like me to telephone this man? He is P.C. Bert Shufflebottom.”

Daisy giggled. “What a name!”

“I’ll have you know, my girl, that Shufflebottom is a good old Yorkshire name.”

The earl made up his mind. He rang the bell. “Get Mr. Jarvis here.” When the secretary entered, he told him to take the superintendent to the telephone.

Rose hoped against hope that the policeman would refuse. How could she help Harry with the case if she was stuck up in the wilds of Yorkshire?

But Kerridge was soon back. “He says he’ll be delighted. I assume, my lord, you will be paying him something towards their keep?”

“Yes, yes, Matthew will see to it.”

“And,” put in Harry, “I think Lady Rose and Miss Levine should only take a few plain clothes. They must also use public transport. I suggest a discreet police guard until they are on the train and I would suggest the night train to York. There is bound to be a connecting train to Scarborough in the morning. Where is the nearest station to Drifton?”

“A market town called Plomley.”

“Right. They can get off at Plomley, and Kerridge will instruct this Shufflebottom to meet them there. None of the servants must know about this. Tell them they are leaving for Stacey Court. I think Mr. Jarvis can be trusted?”

“Yes,” said the earl. “About the only one.”

“Then he must look up timetables and make the arrangements. Shufflebottom must tell the locals that Lady Rose and Miss Levine are remote relatives from an until recently rich family now fallen on hard times.”

“I do not want to go to Yorkshire,” said Rose in a thin voice.

The earl rounded on her. “You’ll do what you’re told, my girl.”

THREE

The two divinest things this world has got,
A lovely woman in a rural spot.

—JAMES HENRY LEIGH HUNT
     

Despite her loudly proclaimed distaste at being sent off to live with a rural policeman, Rose began to feel a certain amount of excitement as they were smuggled out through the garden door of the town house and over a ladder placed on a wall at the back and so into the mews, where a closed carriage was waiting for them.

They were taken to Paddington Station to catch the midnight North Eastern Railway train to York. Because of the innovation of Pullman coaches in first class, there were now three classes: first, second and third.

Rose had been given first-class tickets to York but it had been suggested they travel second class to Plomley on the Scarborough line.

Daisy kept looking nervously over her shoulder, seeing assassins behind every station pillar. Smoke billowed out from the steam engines up to Brunel’s high arched roof.

A porter loaded their luggage on board. No footmen had been allowed to accompany them. The servants would be told in the morning that Rose and Daisy had left during the night for Stacey Court.

They had the luxury of a sleeping compartment thanks to Mr. George Pullman’s invention. When a Pullman car was attached to the funeral train carrying Abraham Lincoln’s body, the demand for Pullman’s product swiftly grew. Pullman died so hated by his employees in 1897 that his heirs feared his body would be stolen and so the coffin was covered in tar-paper and enclosed in the centre of a room-sized block of concrete, reinforced with railroad ties. Ambrose Bierce said, “It is clear the family in their bereavement was making sure the sonofabitch wasn’t going to get up and come back.”

Rose was beginning to feel that life might not be so bad after all. It was exciting to go to sleep over the chattering wheels. Only Daisy felt torn away from London, and the wheels sang a dirge on her ears: “Can’t go back. Never go back. Can’t go back.” She peered out of the window and saw only her own reflection as the night-time countryside went flying past. The east coast line was in competition with the west coast line and the great steam engine could reach up to a hundred miles per hour. Daisy shuddered. They were flying into foreign territory. Yorkshire.

They tumbled out sleepily at York station at seven in the morning. They had arrived an hour earlier, but first-class passengers were allowed to stay on for breakfast.

Rose commanded a porter to take their luggage to the Scarborough train. Daisy followed behind, feeling once more like a servant, not knowing that Rose’s autocratic behaviour was caused by her sudden nervousness. What if the would-be assassin had followed them onto the train and was biding his time?

In a fusty second-class compartment they were crowded by a large woman with four sleepy cross children who kept crying and wailing. Their mother seemed indifferent to their noise and distress.

Rose fretted and fidgeted, feeling the beginnings of a headache, and could only be glad when Daisy suddenly shouted, “Shut that bleedin’ noise.”

The children stared at her in awe and then mercifully fell silent.

The train stopped at station after station, until it finally drew into Plomley and settled down with a great hiss which sounded like a giant’s sigh.

The mother prodded Daisy in the back with her umbrella as Daisy was leaving the compartment. “Just you wait till you got kids of yer own,” she shouted.

Daisy whipped round. “If I had brats like yours, I’d drown them!”

Can’t possibly be them, was P.C. Shufflebottom’s first thought on hearing Daisy’s remark. I was told to look for two grand ladies.

But then Rose descended and looked around. She saw the policeman in uniform and approached him.

“Mr. Shufflebottom?”

“Yes, indeed, ma’am. Good journey?”

“Yes, I thank you. As you probably know, I am Rose Summer and this is Miss Daisy Levine.”

“Is that your luggage?” asked the policeman nervously, looking at a pile of suitcases and hat boxes.

“We decided to travel light so as not to occasion comment,” said Rose.

Bert Shufflebottom signalled to an elderly porter. “Load the ladies’ bags on the trap, Harry.”

Rose thought briefly of that other Harry. Did he miss her? What was he doing?

The morning was cold, with patches of frost in the shadowy bits of the station platform.

They climbed into the trap outside the station. Bert made a clucking noise and the pony moved off.

“We don’t have all that much room, ladies,” said Bert. “I suggest you select the clothes you really need—we lead a simple life—and store the rest in the old stables at the back of the cottage.”

“You do not live in the police station?” asked Rose.

“Got a tidy cottage next door.”

“How old are your children?”

“Let me see, the eldest is Alfred—he’s just finishing school this year. He’s fifteen. Next is Lizzie, fourteen. Then there’s Geraldine. Her’s thirteen. After her comes Maisie at nine years. And then there’s the baby, Frankie, nine months. Frankie was unexpected like, but we ain’t complaining.”

“We will do our best not to put Mrs. Shufflebottom to too much trouble.”

“Oh, nothing bothers my Sally much. Looking forward to some grown-up female company, she is.”

I’m not going to be able to bear this, thought Rose.

They fell silent until, after a few miles, Bert pointed with his whip and said, “That be Drifton, in t’valley.”

Rose looked down the road to a huddle of houses crouched beside a river.

“And that’s the river Drif. Get some good trout there. If Alfred’s lucky with his rod arter school, we’ll have trout for tea. I likes a nice bit o’ trout.”

Rose had expected Sally Shufflebottom to be an apple-cheeked countrywoman, but the woman waiting on the dirt road outside the cottage next to the police station was tall and thin with a severe mouth and grey hair scraped back into a bun.

She came forward to greet them. “I’m Sally,” she said. “I’ve been instructed to call you just Rose and Daisy, not to occasion comment, like. My, my, look at all your luggage!”

“I told them to take out a few things and put the rest in the stables,” said Bert. “T’won’t do to look too fine and grand.”

The cottage was a rabbit warren of small rooms. There was a kitchen-cum-living-room with a great black range along one wall on which two pots were simmering. It was furnished with a horsehair sofa, a long table flanked by upright chairs, and two armchairs on either side of the range. The floor was covered in shiny green linoleum with two hooked rugs.

“I’ll show you your room,” said Sally. She led the way along a stone-flagged passage and threw open a door. There was a double bed covered in a patchwork quilt, a dresser, a marble wash-stand holding a basin and ewer. A little table by the bed held a blue jug of wild flowers.

Daisy, used to poverty, realized that Sally had gone to a lot of trouble. The patchwork quilt was new and the room was clean and aired.

“Thank you,” she said, while Rose stared around her as if visiting a prison cell. “We’ll just sort out a few clothes and take the rest to the stables.”

“I,” said Rose haughtily, “would like a bath.”

“Bath day isn’t until Friday, when we fire up the copper in the wash-house,” said Sally. The copper was a huge copper container with a fire underneath for washing the laundry.

Daisy threw a warning look at Rose. “I hear the river at the back of the house. We’ve got our swimming costumes. That’ll do.”

“I’ll leave you to it. Dinner won’t be long.”

“Dinner?” echoed Rose faintly when Sally had left the room.

“They take dinner in the middle of the day.” Daisy took out a bunch of keys and began to unlock their cases. “I’ll get out our swimming costumes first.”

The water in the river was so cold that they both plunged in and then scrambled out again and ran back into the house. Large coarse towels had been laid out on the bed. They scrubbed themselves down, Rose too cold to be ashamed of standing naked in front of Daisy.

They put on plain wool dresses and had just finished dressing when they heard Sally call, “Dinner!”

The Shufflebottom family were all seated around the table. The girls stared wide-eyed at Rose and Daisy.

“Sit down on those two chairs next to Bert,” said Sally.

Dinner started, after Bert had said grace, with mutton broth followed by lamb stew and then apple crumble. Rose realized she was very hungry and had to admit the food was delicious.

Lizzie found courage to speak first. “Ma says you went swimming.” She stared in awe at the elegant beauty that was Rose.

“One gets very dirty on a train,” said Rose. “Your mother said bath day wasn’t until Friday.”

“You could have waited until then,” said Lizzie. “Ma would have given you first water.”

Maisie piped up. “By the time I get it, it’s awful dirty.”

Rose repressed a shudder and hoped the river would warm up soon.

“I’m sure you wouldn’t mind us arranging our own baths,” said Daisy, “if we find the wood and fire up the copper.”

“If you’re prepared to do that, lass,” said Sally, “then I’ve no objections.”

I must phone Captain Cathcart, thought Rose, and beg him to let us come back to London. “May I use the telephone in the police station?” she asked Bert.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Superintendent Kerridge said there were to be no further calls from here regarding yourself in case some girl on the exchange listens in.”

When dinner was over and the children had left again for school, Sally told Rose and Daisy to go and lie down and take a rest.

“It’s not too bad,” said Daisy as she lay in the double bed next to Rose. “They’re nice people.”

“I shall go mad here,” said Rose curtly. “Peasants do not amuse me.”

“You rotten snob!”

Rose hunched over on her side. “I am going to sleep. I hope this will all turn out to be a bad dream.”

“How do you think Lady Rose is doing?” Kerridge was asking Harry.

“Probably suffering and blaming me for everything. Lady Rose likes to be radical and think she’s at one with the common people, just so long as she doesn’t have to meet any of them.”

“Then this visit will do her good. We’re no further forward except for one little thing. Well, may not be a little thing.”

“What’s that?”

“The Honourable Cyril Banks proposed to Dolly and was turned down.”

“Let me see, that one has a bad reputation from drinking and gambling. I feel sure Dolly’s parents told her to turn him down. No money there.”

“Anyway, I’m going to interview him.”

“Mind if I come along?” asked Harry.

“Very well. But I’ll get a lecture from Judd over allowing amateurs into a Scotland Yard investigation.”

“What about the gun?”

“We got the bullet. It was embedded in some stupid hat covered in dead birds. Our expert thinks it came from a lady’s purse revolver, maybe a 0.2500 French-Belgian one.”

“Any gun of that type registered to anyone?”

“We’re working on it. Let’s go and see what the Honourable Cyril has to say for himself.”

They tracked Cyril down to The Club in St. James’s. His manservant had told them that was where he had gone. The gloomy Inspector Judd had at last to realize that there was some benefit in bringing Harry along, for The Club would not have allowed policemen, however high-ranking, past the entrance. Since Harry was a member, he was sent it to winkle Cyril out.

Kerridge waited outside until Cyril, protesting volubly that he would have Harry blackballed, emerged at last from The Club and was helped into the police car and they all drove to Scotland Yard.

In Kerridge’s office, a flustered Cyril was still protesting. “It is disgraceful that I should be dragged out of my club like a common criminal. I shall report you to the Home Office.”

“Settle down, Mr. Banks,” said Kerridge. “Only a few questions and then you will be driven back to your club. Now, we believe you proposed marriage to Miss Tremaine and were turned down.”

“So what?” said Cyril. He raised his monocle, screwed it firmly in one eye and glared at Kerridge.

“As you know, we are investigating her murder.”

“Here, now!” exclaimed Cyril. “I’m leaving. You’re trying to pin this murder on me!”

“Sit down, Mr. Banks. No one is accusing you of anything. We simply, at this stage, want to ask a few questions about Miss Tremaine. Did she say anything or give any indication that she was being threatened?”

“Well, no. In fact she prattled on about the countryside and how she missed it. Empty-headed sort of girl.”

“If you thought her empty-headed, why did you want to marry her?”

Cyril looked at the superintendent as if he thought the man had lost his wits.

“She was the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. What did it matter whether she had a brain or not?”

“How did you take it when you were rejected by her?”