“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.
“Look!” hissed Rose when the hymn finished. Jeremy Tremaine was walking down to a lectern under the pulpit.
Jeremy began reading from the Revelation of Saint John the Divine.
“And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone: and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald.”
“What’s a sardine stone?” asked Daisy.
“Shhh!”
Jeremy’s voice droned soporifically on. “And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat upon him was Death.”
He cast his eyes up piously and then they suddenly sharpened and focused directly on Rose and Daisy. He slammed the Bible shut and strode off down the aisle. His father looked down in surprise at his son’s retreating figure and then looked at the gallery. When he saw them, for a brief moment his face was a mask of fury.
Then the next hymn began.
The lady’s maid, Turner, waited to be summoned by Rose. When no summons came, she went to Rose’s bedchamber. Finding it empty, she checked the sitting-room and then Daisy’s room.
Turner became very worried. Only the other day, Lady Polly had threatened her with dismissal if she tried to cover up what Rose was doing.
She went down to the breakfast room. “My lady,” she said, “Lady Rose is not in her rooms. Neither is Miss Levine.”
The earl and countess stared at her in alarm.
Brum gave a discreet cough. “The coachman was saying this morning that the ladder that was left in the garden was now in the lane by the mews. Also there are footprints of ladies’ boots in the mud in the mews.”
“Damn the girl!” roared the earl. “Get Cathcart!”
As they both walked down from the gallery, Rose said, “This, I feel, is a dangerous mistake. I think we should leave.”
“Me, too,” said Daisy, heaving a sigh of relief.
They had to wait in line. The parishioners were shaking hands with the rector at the church door.
When it came their turn, Rose put out her hand and said, “We were in the neighbourhood and thought we would visit your charming church.”
She held out her hand, determined to give his a brief shake and move out to the waiting carriage as quickly as possible. But he held her hand in a firm grip. “You must stay and take some refreshment. Ah, here is my wife. Mrs. Tremaine, do take the ladies indoors.”
“I am afraid we really must go,” said Rose, trying to extricate her hand. “Our carriage is waiting.”
He turned round. “I do not see any carriage.”
Rose stared across in dismay. “I told him to wait. No matter. It is a fine day for a walk. Come, Daisy.”
“Now, you cannot walk,” said Mrs. Tremaine. “Do but step inside the rectory and our carriage will take you.”
She looked her normal friendly self. I’m imagining things, thought Rose.
“Very well. Just for a few moments. Most kind of you.”
♦
Harry was telling Kerridge about the murder of Will Hubbard. “That’s too much of a coincidence,” said Kerridge. “We’ll go down there and sweat it out of those servants after we arrest the Tremaines. If they see the master arrested, then I think they might talk.”
Judd entered and said lugubriously. “Lord Hadfield has just called. He wishes Captain Cathcart to attend him immediately.”