“But she’s wearing ’em. Looks like a Christmas tree.”
“Mrs. Barrington-Bruce fears some villain will rush across the ballroom and assault her.”
“She’s so corseted tonight in whalebone, it must be like armour,” giggled Daisy. “But you are causing a lot of gossip, sir.”
“I feel like asking Lady Rose to end this stupid farce of an engagement.”
“You can’t do that!” exclaimed Daisy. “She’ll be shipped off to India and I’ll have to go with her. Oh, do make a push to behave like a gentleman.”
Her rather prominent green eyes were filled with worry. Harry gave a reluctant laugh. “I’ll try.”
But Rose’s thoughts had been distracted from Harry. Dolly had slipped a note into her hand. Rose read it at the first opportunity. It said: “You are my only Frend. I am Running Away. Meet me at the Serpent at six tomorrow and I will tell all. Come Alone. Yr. Loveing Dolly.”
“You’re not really going, are you?” asked Peter on the road home. “Six o’clock! It’s nearly two in the morning now.”
“Dolly needs my help,” said Rose firmly. “I will go.”
“I’ll come with you,” said Daisy.
“No, she said to come alone and that’s what I’m going to do. Ma won’t miss me. She won’t expect me to rise until one in the afternoon.”
♦
Rose let herself out of the family’s town house at quarter to six in the morning and hurried in the direction of Hyde Park, unaware that Daisy was following her at a distance.
She assumed that Dolly would be waiting for her on the bridge over the Serpentine, where she had met her before. Rose shivered a little as she stood on the bridge. The weather had turned chilly. A duck squawked on the water below and Rose leaned on the bridge and looked over.
Then she let out a scream of fright, and Daisy, who had been hiding behind a nearby tree, scampered up to join her. Too upset to ask Daisy why she had followed her, Rose pointed downwards.
A rowing-boat was moored in the water by the bridge. In it lay Dolly dressed like the Lady of Shalott in the pre-Raphaelite illustration to Tennyson’s famous poem by John Atkinson Grimshaw. Her filmy draperies floated out from the boat and trailed in the water. Flowers were woven in her hair. Her hands were crossed on her breast. Her beautiful face was clay-white.
“Is it a joke?” asked Daisy.
“No, look, there’s blood on her dress.”
Daisy looked wildly round the park. “Come away,” she begged. “The murderer could still be hiding somewhere close.”
“We must tell the police,” said Rose.
And as if by some miracle she suddenly saw a policeman on his bike cycling through the park.
“Help!” screamed Rose. “Over here!”
Rose and Daisy clutched each other as the policeman cycled up.
“Miss Dolly Tremaine is down there,” gasped Rose. “She’s been murdered.”
The policeman hurried down the river bank at the side of the bridge and bent over the body. Then he straightened up and came running back. He took out a notebook and wrote down their names. Then he said, “Wait here.”
“Where’s he gone?” whispered Daisy through white lips.
“There’s a police box on Park Lane. It won’t be long before he’s back.”
The gas-lit police boxes for use by the police and the public had started off in Glasgow a bare four years after the telephone had been invented. The cast-iron boxes looked like men’s urinals.
They did not have to wait long. The policeman came back and began to take further notes. Who was the dead girl? Where did she live? Soon more police arrived and then two detectives, followed closely by Detective Superintendent Kerridge in a police motor car.
“Lady Rose!” he exclaimed, having dealt with two previous cases where Rose was involved. “What have you been up to now, my lady?”
∨ Sick of Shadows ∧
Two
Gorgonised me from head to foot,
With a stony British stare.
– ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
The earl’s town house was in an uproar. Lady Rose and Daisy had been escorted home by Detective Superintendent Kerridge and Inspector Judd. The earl and countess were awakened to this dire news. They were told that the superintendent would return as soon as possible to interview Rose. What on earth had their daughter been up to now?
Kerridge had shrewdly guessed that he would be in deep trouble if he continued to interview Rose without her parents’ being present. Unmarried girls were not expected to have any freedom at all. Their letters were routinely read by their parents before being handed to them. And they were certainly not expected to venture outside without being chaperoned. Kerridge was sure the earl would not consider Daisy to be a suitable chaperone without the added guard of a maid and two footmen.
Although it was noon before he arrived, having come straight from Dolly’s parents, he had to wait some time until the earl and countess were dressed.
“You, again,” was the earl’s sour greeting. “What’s our Rose been up to, then? It’s those suffragettes, that’s what it is.”
“No, my lord,” said Kerridge. “It is a case of murder.”
“Where is my daughter?” shrieked Lady Polly.
“Here, Ma,” said a calm voice from the doorway. Rose had gone to her rooms to get an hour’s sleep.
“Who’s murdered?” asked the earl. He tugged the bell-rope furiously and ordered a footman to fetch his secretary, Matthew Jarvis.
“A certain Miss Dolly Tremaine.”
“Oh, that beautiful girl,” wailed Lady Polly. “But what has all this to do with my daughter?”
Matthew came in at that moment and the earl roared, “Get Cathcart. He’s got to come here now.”
“Very good, my lord.”
“Your daughter, Lady Rose Summer, had an appointment to meet Miss Tremaine at the Serpentine Bridge at six o’clock this morning.”
“Why the deuce…?”
“Miss Tremaine gave me a note at the ball last night,” said Rose. “She said she was running away. When I arrived at the bridge, I looked over and saw her lying dead in that rowing-boat dressed as the Lady of Shalott.”
“Who’s she?” demanded the earl. “She ain’t in Debrett’s, I can tell you that. Foreigner, hey?”
“The Lady of Shalott is the title of a poem by Lord Tennyson, Pa. I have a copy of his poems here. This is the famous illustration, Mr. Kerridge.”
“Any idea why she was dressed like that?”
“Miss Tremaine may have had the costume made to wear at a fancy dress ball next week.”
“Have you any idea why she would want to run away?”
“I do not know. I only know that she was bewildered and unhappy in society. Her father is a country rector and her parents would expect her to marry someone with money to offset the cost of a Season.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” muttered the earl.
“I assume you have interviewed her parents,” said Rose. “Have they any idea why she would want to run away?”
“None whatsoever,” said Kerridge. “In fact, they say that she was about to be engaged before the Season even started. To a certain Lord Berrow.”
“Lord Berrow is old,” said Rose. “That is probably the reason she wanted to run away.”
“Fiddlesticks,” said Lady Polly. “The trouble is that girls these days will read cheap romances. One does not marry for love.”
“Steady on, old girl,” protested the earl.
“We were a rare exception,” said Lady Polly. “Where is this rector’s church?”
“Probably somewhere dire like Much-Slopping-in-the Bog,” said the earl. “Hey, rather neat that, what?”
Quite amazing, thought Kerridge. Their only child has just discovered a murder and yet they seem to have no concern for her welfare.