Daisy bought a paper and breathed a sigh of relief when she entered the bank and shut the door on the white hell outside.
“I’ve got tea,” said Rose when she entered the room. “There was no one upstairs. I’ll wait until they have gone this evening and smuggle the tea things back. Mrs Danby won’t see me. She never even comes near us any more, and Captain Cathcart must have forgotten that we wanted real work.”
“I’ve got the pies. Look at me coat,” said Daisy. “Soaked already. We’ll never get home in this.”
“Home,” echoed Rose bleakly, thinking of that awful room.
“Look, I bought the Daily Mail. There’s something about a society murder. Here’s your pie. You’ll need to eat it out of the newspaper wrapping. No plates.”
Rose took a bite of the pie. “This is really good. We should buy another two to take home.”
“I say!” exclaimed Daisy. “You’ll never believe who’s gone and got himself murdered.”
“Who?”
“That Freddy Pomfret. Remember him? We met him at Telby Castle last year.”
“So we did,” said Rose.
“It says here, ‘Man-about-town, the Honourable Mr Frederick Pomfret, was found shot dead in his town flat in St James.’”
As Daisy read on, Rose furrowed her brow. She remembered Freddy as vacuous and silly with his white face and patent leather hair. Hardly the man to incite anyone to murder him. But there was something else, something about Freddy nagging at the back of her mind.
At the end of the working day, they went out into a white world. London had gone to sleep under a thick blanket of snow.
“Let’s see if the underground is working,” said Daisy. “The Central London Railway goes to Holborn and then we can walk home.”
They stumbled through white drifts to King William Street Station and took the hydraulic lift down to the platforms. Trains consisted of three carriages hauled by electric locomotives. These were powered by the largest power-generating station in the country. The coaches were known as padded cells and they were long and narrow with high-backed cushioned seats and no windows. Gatemen stood on platforms at the end of each carriage to call out the names of the stations.
They paid the two pennies each fare and waited in the crush until they managed to get on ‘the tube’, as it was known.
“We should have travelled like this before,” said Rose. “The omnibus is so slow. Why didn’t we think about it?”
“I did,” said Daisy. “But it frightens me to be so far underground with all them buildings on top of us.”
They got out at Holborn Station. The snow, which had eased a little when they left the office, had returned in all its ferocity. By the time they reached the hostel, they were cold and their clothes were soaked.
Rose searched in her purse. “I have no pennies left. What about you?”
“No, but I’ve found a way to fix it.” Daisy crouched over the meter with an army knife bristling with gadgets and fiddled about with a thin blade until a penny rattled down and then another.
“Oh, Daisy, that’s robbery.”
“That’s warmth,” said Daisy cheerfully, dropping the coins back in, turning the dial and then lighting the small gas fire. They took off their wet clothes. Rose still felt self-conscious at disrobing in front of Daisy, but Daisy had no such qualms. She stripped naked and then wrapped herself in a wool dressing-gown and began to hang her clothes in front of the fire. Rose followed suit.
“Have we anything to eat?” she asked.
“’Fraid not,” said Daisy gloomily.
There was a knock at the door. Rose opened it a crack. Miss Harringey stood there. “A gentleman has called,” she said, her voice heavy with disapproval.
“Did he give a name?”
“A Mr Jarvis.”
“Tell him to wait and I will be down directly.”
Rose scrambled into dry clothes, leaving off the misery of stays, and hurried down the stairs.
Mr Jarvis stood in the hallway carrying a basket. “Mr Jarvis! How on earth did you get here in this dreadful weather?” asked Rose.
“I rode one of the big horses, one of the ones that pull the fourgon. Here are some things for you” – he proffered the basket – “and here is a letter. Please do not say anything. I think the lady of the house is listening. Good evening.”
He opened the street door and mounted the large shire-horse which was tethered outside, by dint of scraping snow off the low wall outside the house and using it as a mounting block.
Rose hurried upstairs. In the room, she opened the letter. It was from her mother, Lady Polly, to say that they had returned from Nice and would Rose please stop all this nonsense and come home.
“What’s in the basket?” asked Daisy.
Rose lifted the cloth cover and gave a delighted cry. “Food! Oh, do look, Daisy. Game pie and wine and biscuits, cake, tea, coffee, and he’s even put in a bottle of milk. And there are other things.”
Daisy laid two plates and two cups on the table along with the cheap knives and forks they had purchased. “We’ll need to drink the wine out of teacups.”
“We haven’t a corkscrew.”
“I have,” said Daisy, producing the knife again and twisting a corkscrew out from among the many implements.
As their clothes steamed and the room warmed up, both began to feel more cheerful. “I know what it was,” said Rose suddenly.
“What?”
“About Freddy Pomfret. When I was working as secretary, one of the clerks came in and said, ‘Mr Pomfret has very generous friends.’ Mr Beveridge asked him what he meant and he said, ‘Three people have paid large deposits into his account so we don’t need to send him any more letters about his overdraft.’”
“Probably his relatives. But why didn’t they pay up before? What you getting at?”
Rose was about to correct Daisy’s grammar and remind her not to be so familiar but in time remembered that they were supposed to be on an equal footing.
“There must be some reason he was murdered. What if he was blackmailing people?”
Daisy looked doubtful. She thought it highly unlikely. The Freddy she remembered was silly but not villainous. Still, if Rose’s detective urges had started up again, perhaps she would get in touch with Captain Cathcart. Daisy had a fondness for the captain’s servant, Becket.
“We could ask Captain Cathcart.”
“Perhaps. I would like to see the books and then perhaps go to Scotland Yard and talk to Superintendent Kerridge.”
Daisy’s face fell. “Could we see the captain first?”
But Rose wanted to show the infuriating Harry that she could be a better detective than he was.
“I’ll see what I can do tomorrow.”
“If we can even get to work,” Daisy pointed out.
♦
The next morning was cold and still but the snow had stopped. As Rose and Daisy slipped and stumbled their way along to the underground station at Holborn, Rose wished she had packed her riding breeches. These long skirts and petticoats were useless attire for getting to work through a snowfall.
The City was quiet, shrouded in a blanket of snow. They had to knock at the bank door to gain admittance. At last one of the clerks opened the door to them.
“Nobody’s turned up except me,” he said. “I keep the door locked because anyone could walk in and rob the bank. Charles, the doorman, hasn’t turned up and he’s really got no excuse. He lives in the City. May I get you ladies anything? Tea?”
“Maybe later,” said Rose. “We’ll let you know. Thank you.”
Once they were in their office, Rose whispered, “This is a perfect opportunity. I’ll go upstairs to the counting-house and start searching.”