“Oh, really? And then what? You lot don’t live in the real world. While you’re up there stuffing your faces, people in this village are starving.”
“You forget yourself,” admonished Harry.
“He is quite right,” said Rose. “The superintendent shall have our help. I shall find out what I can from the female guests, and you, Captain, can concentrate on the men. Daisy and Becket can find out what they can from the servants.”
“We will do what we can,” said Harry with a note of irritation in his voice, for he felt Rose was being downright unwomanly. “I would advise you to keep your radical views to yourself in future, Superintendent, particularly in the presence of ladies.”
“Oh, tish,” said Rose with a dismissive wave of her hand.
♦
“They’re up there a long time,” said Daisy to Becket as they sat in the empty taproom.
“How do you like being a lady’s maid?” asked Becket.
“It’s all right. But so much to learn. I’ve got to wash my lady’s silk stockings and I’m frightened I’ll damage them.”
“You wash them with soap and water and simmer them gently. For a blue shade, put a drop of liquid blue in a pan of cold spring water and run the stockings through this for a minute or two, and dry them. For a pink dye, same process but with one or two drops of pink dye. For a flesh colour, add a little rose-pink in a thin soap liquor, rub them with a clean flannel and mangle them.”
“‘Ere!” cried Daisy, her Cockney accent to the fore. “I didn’t think I needed to colour them. And how do you know all this?”
“I had never been a gentleman’s gentleman before, so I read a great deal on the subject. I often found myself reading advice to lady’s maids as well.”
“What about corsets?”
“You take out the steels in front and sides, lay them on a flat surface and use a small brush and a lather of white Castile soap to scrub the corsets. Run under cold water and leave to dry. Don’t iron.”
“You’re a mine of information. Do you think Colette was murdered?”
“If she knew something, someone might have paid her to go away,” said Becket.
♦
After Harry had driven them back to the castle, he helped Rose to alight and asked curiously, “Do you think you will like detective work?”
“Perhaps.”
He smiled down at her, a smile which illuminated his normally harsh face. “Why are you so interested in helping me?”
“I would like to give you a worthy motive,” said Rose. “It is simply because I am bored.”
The light went out from his face and his eyes had the old shuttered look.
Daisy followed Rose up the stairs to their room. “My lady,” said Daisy, “It may not be my place to say so, but you must learn to flirt.”
“Why?”
“Because one day a handsome man’s going to come along and someone else is going to snap him up.”
Rose looked amused. “Why are you so suddenly interested in my lack of flirting?”
“It was when the captain asked you why you were helping him and he had ever such a nice smile, my lady, and you said it was because you was bored.”
“What should I have said?”
“You could have said it in a jokey sort of voice and dropped your eyelashes like this and then given a little smile.”
“I am not romantically interested in Captain Cathcart.”
“Would do to practice on.”
Rose sat down in front of the dressing-table mirror and stared moodily at her reflection while Daisy took the pins out of her hat and removed it.
“You know, Daisy, it is this pressure of marriage which annoys and depresses me. There are women in London earning their living.”
“Not ladies.”
“There are respectable middle-class ladies working in offices. There is nothing up the middle classes. They have sound moral values,” said Rose as if commenting on some obscure tribe of Amazonian Indians.
“If you say so, my lady.”
“I will now go down to breakfast and see what I can find out. I will start with my new friend, Miss Bryce-Cuddlestone.”
“Don’t get too friendly, my lady. She could have murdered that Gore-Desmond woman herself.”
“Nonsense.”
“Poisoning’s a woman’s game.”
∨ Snobbery with Violence ∧
Seven
It would be impossible to read poetry properly in these upper-class accents; they have such a wretched poverty of vowel sounds:Aw waw taw gaw, they seem to be saying. Much of this yaw haw comes down to us from the drawl of the fashionable Mid-Victorian ‘swells’, who were suggesting to their listeners that they were doing them a favour by talking to them at all.
– J.B. PRIESTLEY, THE EDWARDIANS
In the breakfast room, Rose helped herself to kidneys and bacon and took a seat next to Margaret.
“Have you heard any news of Colette?” she asked.
“Not a word.”
“You should tell the police.”
“They will not be interested.”
Rose hesitated and then said, “I told them myself.”
Margaret stared at her. “When?”
“This morning.”
“Why?”
“A girl is missing. Under the mattress in her room was found a silver locket, a piece of lace and a cigarette case.”
“Those are items I gave to her.”
“Why would she leave them behind? Someone could have packed up her belongings to make it look as if she had left. Besides, she told my maid, Daisy, that she knew something about one of the young ladies here, implying that one was having an affair.”
Margaret’s face was stiff with outrage. “I find your poking around in things that do not concern you distasteful, to say the least. Now, if you will excuse me…”
Rose watched her go with dismay. What had she done wrong? Surely it was only natural to want to know what had become of the girl. She suddenly felt very alone again.
She saw Harry, who had just entered the room. She waited until he had helped himself to a frugal breakfast of toast and coffee and called to him, “Captain Cathcart!”
Harry joined her and said, “You are looking distressed.”
Rose told him about her conversation with Margaret.
“I wouldn’t read too much into it,” he said. “You will find all the guests want to forget about the death of Miss Gore-Desmond. They are certainly not going to trouble their heads about one missing lady’s maid. Perhaps Miss Margaret Bryce-Cuddlestone fell from grace herself with one of the men here.”
“Surely not. Surely it is only married ladies who…” Rose blushed. Then she recovered and said, “I am sharing Daisy with her. Daisy might find out something.”
“It’s worth asking her if she can find out anything. It would explain Miss Bryce-Cuddlestone’s attitude to her maid’s disappearance.”
“Morning, Lady Rose…Cathcart,” said Harry Trenton, sitting down opposite them, a plate laden high with food. “Jolly fine weather. Nip in the air, what.”
“Haven’t been awake long enough to notice,” drawled Harry.
Other guests began to come into the dining-room. Rose noticed the change in Harry. He seemed to have an endless fund of vacuous remarks. Perhaps that was how he found out things, she thought. People would slip their guard if they thought they had nothing to fear.
♦
Daisy helped Margaret change into a new outfit for lunch. She was feeling more confident because Becket had told her that any fine items which needed to be cleaned by the lady’s maid rather than given to laundresses were to be brought to him and he would help her.