Snobbery with Violence (22 page)

‘Just a bit of distraction while you got up to God knows what. If only something would break. I’ve 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 pre-arranged 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 Palverston 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.

‘I believe your husband takes arsenic for an . . . er . . . illness.’

Silence. The needle continued to flash.

‘I believe’, said Rose, steeling herself, ‘that he slept with Mary Gore-Desmond sometime at the end of the season because he believed that sleeping with a virgin would cure his illness. I also think Colette knew this and tried to blackmail him. I believe it was he who threw me off the castle roof.’

‘You are a dangerous and vicious liar,’ said Lady Hedley. ‘I love my husband and no one is going to take him from me. You silly young things. What do you know of love?’

Rose stared at her, her mind racing. One of Lady Hedley’s lace sleeves fell back as she continued to ply her needle, revealing a surprisingly strong-looking arm.

‘I had the money, you see,’ said the marchioness suddenly. ‘A chain of grocery shops. You’ve heard of Crumleys?’

‘Yes,’ said Rose. ‘I believe the shops are all over the country.’

‘My father. He rivalled Lipton. But it was trade. I was classed as the daughter of a shopkeeper, no matter how many millions we had. My first season was a nightmare. I was snubbed and patronized all round. It was then that my father, God rest his soul, who was a very shrewd business man, decided to get me a title. His spies told him that Hedley was in debt. Hedley agreed to the marriage, and a good few of those dreadful women who had snubbed me had to watch me take precedence. I did not enjoy the intimate side of marriage and told him to take his pleasures elsewhere, provided he was discreet.

‘I believe he went to brothels. But when he contracted syphilis, he began to become foolish. Someone has to look after him,’ she ended with a sigh. She picked up her needle again.

Rose stared at her. Could it be possible? she wondered. Could the inoffensive-looking Lady Hedley be the strong one in the marriage? If that was the case, then . . .

She took a chance. ‘It was you,’ Rose said. ‘It was you who murdered Mary Gore-Desmond and killed Colette and tried to kill me.’

‘But you see, you have no proof and no one will believe you.’ Lady Hedley continued to stitch at the tapestry just as if Rose had been talking about the weather.

‘I will find proof,’ said Rose.

‘But you are leaving tomorrow morning.’

‘How did you manage to come and go without anyone seeing you?’ demanded Rose. ‘How did you manage to put a drug in the constable’s drink? The voice John heard came from below him. So how could you pass him to get at the tea?’

‘Simple. The back stairs for the servants are narrow and steep. One of our servants fell down and broke his neck and so after that they were instructed to use the main staircase except when carrying down the slops. I called John, ran up the back stairs and out where he had left the tray. Matter of minutes. I am very resourceful, you know.

‘Colette was the worst. Silly woman. She tried to blackmail me. She had seen me on the back stairs the night Mary was poisoned. I told her I would pay her in diamonds but she was to pack her suitcase and meet me outside. I told her I would meet her at the back of the castle because I did not want anyone to see the transaction and the silly fool believed me. So we were standing by the moat and I simply pushed her in. Fortunately she could not swim, although I was fearful the splashing and noise she was making before she drowned would wake someone. The supposed box of diamonds was simply a box with two bricks in it. I put the bricks in her suitcase and threw it in the moat.

‘Hedley knew nothing about it. He’s a child. He’d ordered so much arsenic from some quack in London, he didn’t even know some was missing.’

Rose got to her feet. ‘You are a monster,’ she said. ‘I am going straight to Kerridge.’

The marchioness ferreted in her work-basket and produced a revolver which she pointed at Rose.

‘Sit down,’ she said. ‘You are not going anywhere until I decide what to do with you.’

Rose stayed standing. The light from the fire shone red on the barrel of the wicked-looking revolver.

Her knees were shaking, but she said, ‘I am going to walk out of here and you are not going to stop me. You cannot shoot me.’

The marchioness rose as well and walked around the tapestry stand to face Rose. ‘I can shoot you and put the gun in your hand and say you committed suicide. Everyone will believe me because you are regarded as odd.’

The door swung open and Daisy darted into the room and flung herself in front of Rose just as Lady Hedley fired.

The bullet hit Daisy in the side. But Daisy had inherited Rose’s steel-boned corsets and the bullet ricocheted off one of the steels, pinged off a bronze bust of Lord Hedley, and planted itself in the marchioness’s forehead.

Becket was shouting, ‘Police!’ at the top of his voice.

Footmen and police came bounding up the stairs. The marchioness was lying on the rug by the fire, a hole in her forehead and her brains spilling out the back of her head over the rug.

Daisy had fainted. While Becket was rapidly explaining that he and Daisy had heard Lady Hedley’s confession, Rose ripped open Daisy’s muslin blouse. ‘Get me scissors,’ she shouted.

A policeman handed her a pair of scissors from the work-basket and Rose cut the lacing on the stays and pulled them apart. There was no blood. She began to cry with shock and relief.

Then Harry was there with his arms around her, helping her to her feet.

‘I don’t care if it’s a cover-up,’ said Kerridge wearily early that evening. He and Harry were closeted in the study. ‘The criminal is dead and so I don’t mind bowing to pressure. The story is this. Lady Hedley took her own life while the balance of her mind was disturbed. Mary Gore-Desmond’s death was accidental. Colette? Who cares about a blackmailing French maid who doesn’t seem to have any family that we can trace?’

‘So who knows the truth?’

‘Just you, Becket, Daisy and Rose. Oh, and Rose’s parents. A couple of footmen. Do you know Lady Polly’s reaction? She said, “Do you mean that maid saved my daughter’s life? Oh, dear, we’ll need to keep her now. She knows too much and she knows about the other business.” What other business, Captain Cathcart?’

‘Haven’t the faintest,’ lied Harry, for he knew Rose’s mother had been referring to the bombing at Stacey Magna. ‘How is Lady Rose? I haven’t been allowed to see her.’

‘Remarkably well, considering everything. She’s a brave girl. If it hadn’t been for her we’d probably never have found out.’

‘If it hadn’t been for Daisy, she’d probably be dead. How is Daisy?’

‘Chirpy as a Cockney sparrow. The doctor says she has a huge bruise under where the bullet hit the steel. Oh, that was something else Lady Polly found to complain about. She asked Lady Rose, “What were you doing giving an expensive corset to your maid?” So Lady Rose starts to complain that she cannot abide the constriction of that sort of stays and they end up having an argument about dress.’

‘How’s Hedley?’

‘He’s trying to look shocked, but you can see it’s dawning on him that he gets all her money. He’ll be able to buy his virgins, now. What a world. I suppose you’ve turned out not to be any use to Hedley.’

‘On the contrary, I am employed to go about the sordid business of making sure the footmen on the scene keep their mouths shut. I suggested it might be a good idea to bribe Daisy. No one apart from Rose is thanking her and I feel she deserves a reward.’

‘What will you do with your life now?’ asked Kerridge.

‘I’m not quite sure,’ said Harry, bending down and rubbing his bad leg. ‘But next time, I will be sure that the people I work for are decent and honourable.’

‘Captain, if they were decent and honourable, they would not require your services. You’ve heard of Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency, haven’t you?’

‘Of course.’

‘You might try something like that. Get something maybe a bit more meaty than blowing up railway stations all because some earl doesn’t want to entertain the king.’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about. There’s the dressing gong.’ Harry held out his hand. ‘It’s been a pleasure meeting you. I don’t suppose we’ll meet again.’

Kerridge shook his hand. ‘I’m sure we will, Captain. I’m sure we will.’

Harry had assumed that Lord Hedley would not be present at the dinner table, but there he was at the head as usual. He was wearing a black armband, as were the other men there. The ladies had all found something black to wear.

To his surprise, Rose was there as well, her face looking pale and almost translucent above the black of her dress.

Conversation was muted, but as the wine circulated, voices began to rise. ‘So awful,’ said Maisie Chatterton to Harry. Harry was amused to notice that all the drama had made Maisie forget to lisp. ‘But I always thought there was something a little bit mad about her. I never want to come here again.’

‘I think we’ll all be glad to leave in the morning,’ said Harry.