Rose, an early riser, was relieved to see there was only one other guest in the breakfast room, Margaret Bryce-Cuddlestone.
“You look very bright and fresh,” commented Margaret. “Never tell me you slept through the whole thing.”
“What whole thing?”
So Margaret told her. “This is outrageous,” exclaimed Rose when she had finished. “I’d better go home.”
“These things happen. No one else will mention it to you and the two culprits will never dare even approach you again. It is my belief that someone took the card from your door and put it on Mrs. Trumpington’s door. Mr. Pomfret and Tristram Baker-Willis were so ruddled with drink that they had lost their minds.”
Rose still looked distressed, so Margaret said, “Just think of it. The awful Mrs. Trumpington remains convinced it was her favours they were after.”
Rose began to laugh. “That’s better,” said Margaret. “Let’s go for a walk after breakfast.”
“I suppose I’d better get Daisy to accompany me.”
“Daisy?”
“My lady’s maid.”
“You call her Daisy?”
“Her surname is Levine and my mother wanted me to rename her Baxter, but I didn’t like that so I compromise by using her Christian name.”
“Yes, bring her along, I call mine by her first name. She is Colette Bougier and she complained that the English servants called her Booger. As she is a very good lady’s maid I capitulated and now I call her Colette.”
♦
The castle gardens lay outside the walls. The lady’s maids walked behind their mistresses, who had both changed into walking clothes after breakfast.
Colette put her hand on Daisy’s arm, causing her to stop until Margaret and Rose had moved out of earshot. “Terrible last night, was it not?” she whispered. “The way they do go on. In France one keeps the mistress discreetly hidden.”
“My lady is nobody’s mistress,” said Daisy hotly.
“I did not mean that. I mean, they say they put the cards on the bedroom doors so everyone can know which is their room, yes?”
“Yes, surely –”
“No, it is because perhaps some gentleman is protected from making the dreadful mistake of sleeping with his wife instead of his mistress.”
“You mean they ain’t got no morals,” said Daisy and quickly corrected herself, ever mindful of Rose’s teaching. “They haven’t any morals?”
“Only the young ladies go on as if they are in the convent.”
“Going to be a dull party, then,” said Daisy cheerfully. “Mostly young ladies.”
“Ah, but even they can fall. I know…”
“Colette! My shawl,” called Margaret, “And do keep up with us.”
Colette ran forward and wrapped the Paisley shawl she had been carrying around her mistress’s shoulders.
Rose had been telling Margaret all about Sir Geoffrey Blandon and how her father had hired a certain Captain Cathcart to find out about him.
“I’ve heard a rumour about a certain captain who fixes things, covers up scandals, things like that. What’s he like?”
“Nothing out of the common way,” said Rose stiffly. “Quite rude, in fact.”
“Has he done any more work for your father?”
Rose longed to tell her new friend all about the king’s aborted visit but decided that it was something she could never talk about. “No, and I hope I never see Captain Cathcart again.”
♦
The house party settled down to a routine of shooting and hunting for the men in the afternoons while the ladies read or sewed or played croquet. Then, after another long boring dinner, there were charades or cards. Rose found the company of Sir Gerald Burke amusing and her new friendship with Margaret enjoyable and yet she longed to go home.
There was an atmosphere in the castle she did not like. Almost at times a feeling of menace.
And yet the marquess paid her a great deal of fatherly attention. Finding out she liked to read, he took her on a tour of his library, proudly showing off leather-bound books bought by the yard from the bookseller, with little attention to content.
The weather had turned dark and stormy and the folly of having arrow slits in the walls of the towers was soon revealed as the wind screeched through them like so many banshees.
One particularly vile night, Rose sat up in bed reading a novel by H.G. Wells, unable to sleep because of the noise of the wind. Draughts were everywhere, seeping through the windows and under the doors, causing the flames of the candles to flicker.
And then she thought she heard a voice calling, “Fetch the doctor.”
She got out of bed just as Daisy came into the room. “I heard something, my lady. Did you hear it?”
“It sounded like someone calling for a doctor. I hope nothing has happened to Miss Bryce-Cuddlestone. Pass me my dressing-gown, Daisy.”
“I’m coming with you,” said Daisy.
Wrapped in dressing-gowns, they opened the door. There were faint sounds coming from downstairs on the left.
They went down the stairs, the light from their bed candles throwing up great shadows on the stone walls. Then there was a scream.
“I think it’s from the other tower. It’s along this corridor here,” whispered Daisy.
They made their way along the long corridor which connected the towers. Lady Hedley appeared from a room at the end of the corridor. Her face was chalk-white and she had a handkerchief pressed to her lips.
“Go back to your room, Lady Rose,” she said. “We are waiting for the doctor. Miss Gore-Desmond is…has been…is ill.”
But other guests appeared behind Rose and they all clustered forward despite the marchioness’s protests.
The gaslight was flaring in Mary Gore-Desmond’s room. Rose had a brief glimpse of a still figure on the bed, the marquess, the butler, the housekeeper, and Mr. Jerry Trumpington, when the marquess turned round and with his face red with anger shouted at them to go away.
“I wonder if they’ll manage to get a doctor on a night like this,” whispered Daisy. “I think she’s dead.”
∨ Snobbery with Violence ∧
Six
We are at the cross-ways. If we stand on in the old happy-go-lucky way, the richer classes ever growing in wealth and in number, and ever declining in responsibility, the very poor remaining plunged or plunging even deeper into helpless, hopeless misery, then I think there is nothing before us but savage strife between class and class.
– WINSTON CHURCHILL, SPEECH AT LEICESTER, 1909
“Daisy! What are you doing?”
Rose had just come down to the main hall on her way to breakfast the following morning to find Daisy standing with her ear pressed against the door of the earl’s study.
“Sorry,” said Daisy, darting guiltily away from the door and joining her mistress. “But it’s ever so interesting.”
“Don’t say ‘ever so’,” Rose corrected automatically. “You should not listen at doors. It’s vulgar.”
“Lord Hedley is in a right rage. Seems it’s not the usual doctor but a new one, the old one having popped his clogs last week.”
“Daisy!”
“And he won’t sign the death certificate!”
Now Daisy had Rose’s full attention. “Why not?”
“Seems like this new doctor, a Dr. Perriman, well, he says it’s arsenic poisoning, of that he’s sure. Lord Hedley, he says, “So what?” He says a lot of ladies take arsenic to clear the skin and she’s overdone it. Dr. Perriman says he’s already phoned the police and Lord Hedley is raging and saying he’ll have him drummed out of the medical profession.”
There was a thunderous knocking at the door and both women jumped nervously.
The hall-boy, who had been slumbering in a chair near the door, awoke with a start and rushed to open it.