“I want to know what you have all been up to,” said Kerridge. The four had retreated to a morning-room on the same floor.
“Lady Rose is still shocked,” began Harry. “Mrs Stockton held a gun on her and was going to shoot her. Miss Levine managed to escape and came to look for me. Fortunately we saw her on the street and came here immediately.”
Kerridge turned his grey gaze on Rose. “Why was Mrs Stockton trying to kill you?”
“I had been thinking and thinking about the murders,” said Rose in a low voice. “I thought she might have committed them. I always thought she was mad. I came with Miss Levine and challenged her. She pulled out a gun and said she was going to shoot me. She confessed to both murders. She said she shot Mr Pomfret because he was blackmailing her. He had a photograph of her eating roast beef.”
Kerridge’s bushy eyebrows nearly vanished into his hairline. “Do you mean she killed twice over a plate of roast beef?”
“She said she had built up a world-wide reputation as a vegetarian. She said Mrs Jerry was going to the police. She said Mr Pomfret had a picture of her in a compromising position with a young footman. Although she did not have the evidence, Mrs Jerry thought she had.”
“And what was Lord Alfred being blackmailed about?”
“I believe it was because he had got a servant girl pregnant and she died in childbirth,” said Harry smoothly. “We only have what Mrs Stockton told Lady Rose. There is no proof of that.”
“The press are going to have a field day with this,” said Kerridge.
“I think it would be better,” said Harry, “if we stick to the roast beef blackmail. We cannot mention the other two because there is no evidence.”
“At least Mrs Stockton saved us a court case. Did you not guess she was going to poison herself?”
“How could I?” said Harry. “She said it was heart medicine.”
“I don’t believe you. There’s a lot in your statements I don’t believe. But I’m very glad to have two murders solved.”
“May we please leave further questioning until tomorrow?” asked Harry. “Lady Rose has been through the most terrible ordeal.”
“Very well. But Lady Rose, you did a mad and foolish thing. If you had any suspicions that the killer was Mrs Stockton, then you should have come to me. Never do anything like that again. Go back to your society life. Get married. Have children. That’s what a woman is supposed to do.”
“You are just an old-fashioned fuddy-duddy, Mr Kerridge,” said Rose. “Women should be independent and have the vote.”
“Those trouble-making suffragettes should all be locked up. I want you all at Scotland Yard first thing in the morning.”
♦
Rose, Harry, Becket and Daisy emerged from Angela’s house. The day had turned dark and they were nearly blinded by the magnesium flashes of the press on the doorstep going off in their faces.
“This is bad,” said Rose as they drove off. “My parents are never going to forgive me. Why did you not tell Kerridge the truth about why Lord Alfred was being blackmailed?”
Harry shrugged. “He did not murder anyone. It would extend the inquiry and I am heartily tired of the whole thing.”
♦
The Roast Beef Murders hit the papers the following morning. Photographs of Rose, looking beautiful, stared out wide-eyed from every newspaper. She was hailed as a heroine, as the New Woman of this new century.
Rose’s parents recovered from their initial fury to bask in the reflected glory of their daughter’s bravery. Invitations poured into the earl’s town house, every society hostess wanting to brag that she had managed to get the latest celebrity to attend her ball or dinner.
Rose became tired of relating the edited version she had told Kerridge over and over again.
Tristram seemed to be always at her side, saying loudly that he should have been there to protect her.
Rose came to the conclusion that nothing could make her want to marry such a boring man as Tristram. She decided she had better get rid of him. Everyone seemed to assume that an engagement was in the offing.
He was driving her in the park one day a few weeks later. Rose was in low spirits. Harry had not called or sent any message.
“I am thinking of joining the suffragette movement,” she said, unfurling her lace parasol to shield her face from the rays of the sun.
“Eh, what? You’re joking, of course.”
“Not in the slightest. If I marry, I would expect my husband to attend rallies with me.”
Tristram was so shocked and alarmed that he blurted out, “Any husband worth his salt would give you a good beating first.”
“Take me home now,” ordered Rose.
♦
The former Miss Jubbles, now the new Mrs Jones, left church that day on the arm of the baker. She had experienced savage pangs of jealousy when she read about the exploits of what she considered her ‘old rival’ in the newspapers. But now she felt simply proud to be a married lady.
She had inherited a comfortable sum of money on her mother’s death, and as Mr Jones drove her off in their new motor car under the admiring gaze of the neighbours, she felt she would burst with pride.
Her replacement, Ailsa Bridge, filed Harry’s cases, typed his letters and occasionally fortified herself with gin. She no longer kept a bottle in her desk drawer but had a flask of gin firmly anchored by one garter under her skirts.
♦
Harry was plucking up courage to try to call on Rose. It was only his duty, he told himself. He at last presented himself at the earl’s mansion to be told that Lady Rose was not at home. This he translated that she was not being allowed to see him.
♦
Rose was, in fact, upstairs in the drawing-room being confronted by her parents. “It’s no use your protesting, my girl,” the earl was saying. “It’s India for you. And don’t threaten me with that business of me stopping the king visiting. It would harm you as much as me, and that precious Captain Cathcart would go to prison. The season’s nearly at an end. You’ve led us all to think that you might accept Baker-Willis after all and then you tell us some story that he had threatened to beat you, which I don’t believe. Should have beaten you myself.
“I will arrange for you to sail at the end of the summer. You may take Levine with you, but you’ll be staying with the Hulberts, remember them?”
“I do. Mrs Hulbert is a cross, overbearing woman.”
“Enough of that. Need someone to keep an eye on you. Get yourself a nice officer. No adventurers, mind.”
♦
Inspector Judd said to his superior, “You never quite believed Lady Rose’s story, did you, sir?”
“No, I did not. Oh, yes, the Stockton woman did commit the murders, but I think either Lady Rose or Cathcart found the blackmailing stuff. I think they’re protecting Lord Alfred.”
“Why?”
“Because that young man had an affair with another man, I’m sure of that. I just sense it.”
“But that should have been reported!”
“I let it go because we got our murderer and we’ve enough on our plate without hounding Lord Alfred. But I do think that somehow Lady Rose or Captain Cathcart decided to take the law into their own hands. I don’t like it. Let’s just hope Lady Rose settles down and gets married. I’m sure she’s the one who causes all the trouble. Women always do.”
The superintendent did not see the paradox in that in his dreams of the revolution, there were always beautiful women on the barricades beside him, armed to the teeth and waving the red flag.
♦
“What am I to do?” wailed Rose later that day. “I don’t want to go to India and sit in the heat while the memsahibs gossip about me.”