“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
– J.B. PRIESTLEY,
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.
“Have you been with Lady Rose for long?” asked Margaret.
“Not long,” said Daisy. She had been primed by Rose to find out about Margaret but had not expected Margaret to want to find out about her.
“And before that?”
“I am the daughter of one of the tenant farmers on the Sta-cey Court estates,” lied Daisy. “I am well- educated and it was Lady Hadshire’s kind way of giving me a start in life.”
To her relief that seemed to satisfy Margaret. “Do any of the gentlemen here please you, madam?” asked Daisy.
“Know your place, my good girl, and do not ask impertinent questions. The lace on my oyster satin dinner gown is soiled. Please have it cleaned by this evening.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Hand me my gloves. You may go to your mistress now.”
Daisy held the door open for her, collected the dinner gown and took it downstairs. Rose had said she had no intention of changing for lunch and that she thought the ritual of changing at least six times a day exhausting and silly.
She went in search of Becket, who looked up his books and told her to make a lather of Castile soap, clean the lace with a fine brush after it had been unpicked from the gown, put a little alum in clean water to clear off the suds, iron it with a cool iron and then stitch it back onto the gown again.
As she worked, Daisy told him that she had been instructed to find out all about Margaret.
“If you want to find out who is sleeping with whom,” said Becket, “you have to watch the corridors at
