Dance to Your Daddy

poster. Although its frame-work, consisting of four tall posts and the tester they supported, was complete, there were no curtains to the bed.

'I wonder how many persons have been done to death in this room since the early days of the seventeenth century?' she asked herself pleasurably. Then she reflected that the squint might have been made for beneficient purposes-to watch over a sick person or to make certain that a beloved child was sleeping soundly. She replaced the picture once more and then went across to the bed and attempted to move it out of the line of fire. She realised that, apart from George and the two maids, there was nobody in the house whom she could trust. This included Rosamund, although why she felt so deeply suspicious of the apparently friendless and lonely girl she would have found difficult to explain.

She went over in her mind the last night's interview. 'I don't know how they're going to kill me, but they will.... They're having lots of people to come and stay, you know. They hope in that way to frighten me.' Neither expression rang true. 'They don't like me to meet people from outside.' That remark was illogical, to say the least, considering that Dame Beatrice herself, and the number of people who were to come and stay, were all from outside. 'I like to keep my room to myself.' Why did she, Dame Beatrice wondered. Rosamund had noticed that the picture which hid the squint had not been there before the room was prepared for Dame Beatrice. If that were so, it seemed to indicate, even more clearly than her surreptitious visit had done, that she must have known of the squint. Yet, this being so, she had still chosen to come, in apparent secrecy, to the room, knowing all the while that anybody in the adjoining apartment could have heard her voice, known who she was and listened to the conversation between herself and Dame Beatrice.

Dame Beatrice could not move the bed. It appeared to be fastened to the floor, like a bed in a cabin at sea. Dame Beatrice borrowed another of her secretary's favourite quotations. 'Curiouser and curiouser,' she murmured, and, having studied the iron clamps, she straightened up, hearing footsteps on the wooden floor of the gallery.

CHAPTER THREE

MORRIS DANCE-BEANSETTING

'...some to dance, some to make bonfires...'

Othello, the Moor of Venice.

(1)

Amabel had returned with a message.

'Mr Straker says O.K. about the rugs, Dame Beatrice, and well et be all roight ef he breng the car round to the soide door, as Mester have gev orders Messus Trelby ent to be seen front the house.'

'Oh, you all call her Mrs Trilby, not Mrs Lestrange, do you? She is still in fancy costume, then?'

'Never don't wear nawthen else nowadays, though there's a beg locked-up wardrobe in her room.'

'I see. Tell George that I will be at the side door in five minutes' time. Where do I find this door, by the way?'

'Roight through the hall, along the corridor off to the roight, through the arch as ee'll foind there, and there et be. Carn't mess et, ef you go loike Oi say.'

Dame Beatrice found Rosamund under guard, as it were, with George standing on one side of her, the elderly, sour-faced Luke on the other, and Amabel's younger sister hovering in the doorway just behind the other three. This time Rosamund was wearing a heavily-caped George III costume, with a tricorne on her head and buckled shoes on her feet. Her brown wig, Dame Beatrice noted, was not powdered, but was loosely tied at the back with a black, watered silk ribbon. She looked extremely attractive.

George opened the door of the car, saw his employer seated and then went round to the other side and helped Rosamund in.

'Swanage, George,' said Dame Beatrice, for Luke's benefit, in case he had been told to report back to his master. George saluted, shut the car door with the brisk click of a man who cares for his car's doors sufficiently not to slam them, and took his seat at the wheel. The gravel side-path up which he had backed the car (for there was no room to turn) was narrow and weedgrown, and, as he drove slowly towards the main drive, overhanging branches struck the car on both sides. At each sharp crack Rosamund flinched and glanced quickly at Dame Beatrice. Over-acting again, her companion thought.

'Surely,' said the latter, 'they don't offer you violence, do they?'

'Not yet, but I feel it's only a matter of time,' the girl responded. 'It's the car. It makes me nervous. I haven't been in a car since Romilly brought me back from Dancing Ledge.'

'Where you drowned what?'

'I don't drown things. I told you I don't! That's just a story they put about. They try to convince me, too. They're trying to prey on my mind.'

'I see. What were you doing at Dancing Ledge, then?'

'I was running away.'

'When was that?'

'Just over a year ago. It was soon after Romilly became my guardian.'

'You mean your husband. And it was three years ago.'

The girl stared at her.

'Romilly isn't my husband. I'm his ward,' she said. 'I've only lived with him and Judith for about a year.'

'I see.' Dame Beatrice betrayed no surprise at receiving this information. 'Why did you want to run away?'

'Wouldn't you want to run away if you knew that they were after your money, and would get it, even if they had to kill you first?'