Sick of Shadows (16 page)

“That’s not fair!”

“As I have just pointed out to you, it’s man’s world.”

Now Rose was, like her companion, too furious to speak. Harry tried several times to talk about various things, but she sat glaring at him and refused to utter a word.

It was a carload of silent and sulky people who returned to London.

Harry went straight to Scotland Yard. Kerridge was out on a case, so he waited patiently while the mist thickened on the river Thames outside the window.

At last Kerridge returned and listened in surprise to Harry’s story about Jeremy’s prison visits.

“I’ll pull him in for questioning.”

“It won’t do any good at the moment. All he has to do is look outraged. No one else is going to believe he had a hand in his sister’s murder. I’d like to examine that house they rented for the Season.”

“What do you expect to find? It’ll have been scrubbed from top to bottom.”

“There might just be something.”

“All right. I’ll come along with you.”

“Are you sure the servants that were there at the time didn’t hear or see anything?”

“With the exception of a temporary footman hired from an agency, the servants were all the country ones. I gather Apton Magna is a pretty poor place. They weren’t going to say anything that might mean they’d lose their jobs.”

The thin house in Clarges Street that had been rented by the Tremaines was standing empty. They got the key from the factor and let themselves in, then searched high and low, Harry crawling along the floor-boards, to see if one bloodstain might have been overlooked.

“She might have been killed here,” said Harry. “She certainly wasn’t killed in that boat or there would have been a lot more blood.”

“The pathologist said that costume had been put on her after her death and the blood from the wound on her chest had seeped through the material.”

“You didn’t tell me that.”

“You’re not in the force and I have plenty of other cases taking up my time, which reminds me, if you’re finished here I’d like to get back to the Yard.”

“I hate being passed over just because I’m a woman,” raged Rose, walking up and down her sitting-room. “I’d like to show him I can detect better than he can. I’d like to go down to Apton Magna and get the parents’ reaction to the fact that their precious son was consorting with a criminal. But how are we to get out of the house without Turner and two footmen following us?”

“I’ve an idea,” said Daisy. “’Member that ladder we used to get over the garden wall? It’s at the side of the garden. If we left, say, about five in the morning, the staff would still be asleep. We could sneak out and get the early-morning train at Paddington.”

“We’ll do it!” said Rose.

Harry set out to find the temporary footman who had worked for the Tremaines. His name was Will Hubbard and his address was number five Sweetwater Lane in the City.

After the Great Fire, plans had been drawn up to build a modern City out of the ashes, with airy streets and wide boulevards. But there turned out to be so many claims from property owners who would demand heavy compensation if, say, a street ran through where their buildings used to be, that the new City, the commercial hub of London, rose again following the old medieval pattern of narrow winding lanes.

Sweetwater Lane was just north of Ludgate Circus and consisted of two lines of black tenements. Number five had a great quantity of bell-pulls. Harry pulled several of them. The front door was opened by a lever on each landing. When the door opened, several voices asked him what he wanted.

“Will Hubbard,” he shouted. There was a sudden silence and then the sound of slamming doors.

He made his way up, knocking on door after door, but nobody answered until, at the very top, an elderly lady opened the door a little. “I am Captain Cathcart,” said Harry. “I am helping Scotland Yard with an investigation.”

The door began to close. He put his foot in it, fished out a guinea and held it up. The door opened wide. She snatched the guinea in a claw-like hand.

“Come in. What do you want?”

The room was sparsely furnished with a table and two chairs and an iron bedstead in the corner. A linnet in a wicker cage sang at the window.

“Do you know where I can find William Hubbard?”

“In the cemetery.”

“What happened?”

“ ’Twere a good few months ago. I heard shouting and then a scream. That was during the night. But there’s often screaming and shouting here. In the morning, I went out to buy milk. He lived in the room below this one. The door was standing open and he was lying there, all blood. He’d been stabbed.

“I was ever so shook. I went out and saw a policeman and told him. More police came and then detectives. But nobody said anything. Well, most of them are villains, so they wouldn’t. Then his pore sister came. Such a taking she was in. I took her up to my room and made her tea.”

“Do you know where she lives?”

“She wrote it down on a slip of paper and told me if I remembered anything at all to contact her.”

“Do you still have it?”

She went over to the mantelpiece and extracted a piece of paper from behind a plaster statue of the Virgin Mary.

“May I take this?”

“Yes, I’ve no use for it. I couldn’t tell her any more than I’ve told you.”

Outside, Harry looked at the paper. A Miss Emily Hubbard was lady’s maid to a Mrs. Losse and there was an address in Launceston Place in Kensington.

He drove to Launceston Place and rang the bell. When a butler answered, Harry handed him his card and said he wished to speak to Miss Hubbard.

“Wait there,” said the butler, letting him into a hall which was little more than a narrow passage.

Harry waited. Then the butler came back downstairs, followed by a vision. This surely could not be the lady’s maid.

“Captain Cathcart,” she cooed in a husky voice with a slight accent. “I’ve always wanted to meet you. I am Mrs. Losse. Please come into the parlour and tell me why you want to speak to Emily.”

Mrs. Losse had masses of glossy auburn hair piled up on her small head. Her excellent bosom and tiny waist were displayed to advantage in a green silk gown which matched her very large and sparkling green eyes.

She listened while Harry told her of the murder of William Hubbard. “I feel it is connected to another case I am investigating.”

“How thrilling. I read about you in the newspapers. So brave! All those people you rescued in that dreadful train crash.” They were sitting together on a sofa. She put her hand on his arm and leaned towards him. She was wearing a heady perfume. Harry thought briefly of his chilly fiancée with a flash of dislike.

“May I speak to Miss Hubbard?” asked Harry. Something seemed to have happened to his voice and it came out as a croak. She gave him a languorous smile and rang a little silver bell on the table in front of her.

After a moment, a mousy little woman entered the room. She was in complete contrast to the amazing beauty of her mistress. Harry wondered whether she had been employed for that very reason.

“You may be seated, Emily,” said Mrs. Losse. “This is Captain Cathcart. He has decided to investigate further the murder of your poor brother.”

Emily sat down on the very edge of a chair and clasped her hands. “Oh, sir,” she said, “I was afraid no one was ever going to find out anything.”

“Tell me about your brother?” asked Harry gently.

“He was good and worked hard. He liked working for the agency because he said there were so many banquets and functions that there was always demand for extra footmen and he didn’t need to be tied to one master like some.”

I wonder whether he was blackmailing the Tremaines, thought Harry. Aloud, he asked, “Did your brother say anything about coming into money?”

She gave a sad little laugh. “He was always dreaming. I met him just before he was killed on my day off. We walked down to London Bridge. He said we would go and buy a little cottage in the country and raise hens and pigs.”

“And was this new?”

She sighed. “Oh, no, it was a dream he’d always had.”

“Did he talk of any rich or influential friends?”

“No, sir. He only talked about other servants he had met on his various jobs.”

Harry promised that if he found out anything, he would let her know immediately. Emily was dismissed. Harry rose to leave.

“You must come back and see me,” said Mrs. Losse as she escorted him to the door. She stood very close to him in the narrow passage, that bewitching face of hers turned up to his own.

“Yes, I will,” said Harry.

“Promise!” Those eyes glinted flirtatiously. Harry laughed. “Of course.”

He went straight to Scotland Yard to find that Kerridge had gone home ages ago and so he said he would return in the morning. When he returned to his home, he told Becket of the latest developments.

“Do you not think you should tell Lady Rose about this?” suggested Becket.

“No, I don’t think so. She will demand again to accompany me to Scotland Yard. I am in enough difficulties there with some of them who regard me as an interfering amateur. Lady Rose is very forceful. With her along, it would look as if I was under some sort of petticoat government and life would be made even more difficult for me. Kerridge is always helpful, but he doesn’t tell me everything just because I am not on the force. I know that Inspector Judd disapproves of me and I have overheard detectives calling me ‘that dilettante.’ I shall call on her after I have talked to Kerridge.”

“It is late,” said Becket. “You were supposed to take dinner with the Hadfields this evening.”

“Now I really am in trouble,” groaned Harry.

“I really think it shameful,” said Lady Polly over dinner that evening. “Captain Cathcart now no longer calls to give his excuses. I am furious with him and so I shall tell him.”

“I hope he is all right,” said Daisy. “I am sure it was something very important.”

Mrs. Barrington-Bruce was one of the guests. She gave a great laugh. “To be sure, for a man it was important.”

“Do you know something?” asked Rose.

“Only that one of my footmen was walking my little doggies round Launceston Place. He told me just before I left to come here that he had seen Captain Cathcart visiting the home of a certain Mrs. Josse.”

“Who is Mrs. Josse?” asked Rose.

“A certain very beautiful member of the demi-monde.”

“Then it must be part of some case the captain was working on,” said Rose.

Mrs. Barrington-Bruce looked at her with pity in her eyes. “Oh, my poor child. My poor
innocent
child.”

Rose was so angry that she barely slept that night, but she was still determined to go to Apton Magna. She rehearsed scene after scene in her mind where she would present Kerridge with evidence that Jeremy was a murderer, and leave the superintendent to let Harry know she had solved the case.

At five in the morning, she and Daisy crept downstairs and into the back garden. They propped the ladder against the wall and climbed up. They sat on the top and pulled up the ladder and slid it down the other side.

Once they were in the lane, they hurried away. Beyond the square, they were lucky in finding a sleepy cabbie, and asked him to take them to Paddington Station, where Rose bought two first-class tickets.

Once the train moved out, Daisy fell asleep, her head bobbing against the lace antimacassar. Rose sat bolt upright, staring unseeingly at a bad oil painting of the coastal town of Deal on the carriage wall opposite.

The carriage was stuffy, so she jerked down the window by the leather strap. The train plunged into a tunnel and smoke billowed into the carriage. She spluttered and choked and jerked the window shut again.

When a waiter called out that breakfast was served, Rose shook Daisy awake and they made their way to the dining-car.

They ate in silence. Daisy was beginning to wonder if Becket would make a suitable husband after all and Rose was eaten up with fury at Harry.

At Oxford, they changed onto the train for Moreton-in-Marsh. It coughed and wheezed and jerked its slow way into little country stations and then sat at each for what seemed like ages before jerking forward again.

They found a cab in the forecourt of Moreton-in-Marsh Station. Rose instructed him to take them to the rectory at Apton Magna and to wait for them.

“It’s Sunday,” said Daisy. “They’ll all probably be in church.”

As they got down from the carriage, they could see the congregation filing into church.

Inside, the pews were like the ones in railway carriages. “Let’s go up to the gallery,” whispered Rose. “We’ll get a better look from there.”

They sat in the front of the gallery and looked down. A smell of unwashed poverty rose up from the well of the church and Rose held a scented handkerchief to her nose.

“I wonder,” she murmured to Daisy, “why the rector ended up in a poor living like this. Perhaps there is something in his past which put him out of favour.”

They got to their feet for the opening hymn. As they sang, Rose saw the rector in his robes walking down the aisle. He climbed up the steps to the pulpit, grasped the wings of the golden eagle which decorated the pulpit and stared down at the congregation.