Edwardian Murder Mystery 01; Snobbery with Violence

and lit the headlights, climbed back in and set off again.

Rose found driving in the dark very exciting, fascinated by the square of light the two headlamps created before them.

When Harry reached the outskirts of Creinton, he parked the car under some trees, got out and extinguished the headlamps and said, “Now, Lady Rose, you and Daisy are to stay here with Becket to protect you. I will be as quick as I can.”

“But I wanted to be a burglar,” protested Rose.

“Stay here and don’t dare move,” hissed Harry.

“Spoilsport,” muttered Rose. “Honestly, Becket, there was really no reason for us to come. This is not an adventure.”

“It’s better this way, Lady Rose. If the captain gets caught, it won’t be nearly so bad as if you were found with him. Imagine the headlines in the newspapers. There are still two reporters staying at the pub in Telby.”

¦

Harry walked swiftly along, glad it was one of the days when his leg was not paining him. When he reached the square, he felt very exposed and kept close to the buildings, relieved there was no moon.

When he turned the key in the side door, the lock gave a loud click, which, to his ears, seemed to echo around the silent town like a pistol shot. He waited for a moment, Ustening, and then opened the door and went in. He lit a dark lantern. He found himself in a small kitchen. The door leading out of it was fortunately bolted on his side. He slid back the bolts, top and bottom, and found himself in a narrow passage. Ahead lay the front door, the panes of stained glass on the upper panels gleaming faintly. He remembered that he had entered the waiting-room on the right with Rose and then had gone through to the surgery. There was a door before he reached the waiting- room door, which probably led into the surgery. He tried the handle. It was locked. He hurried along to the waiting- room door. Locked as well. Both were stout mahogany doors. He tried a door on the other side of the corridor. Locked as well.

There was a staircase facing the front door. Perhaps some old files were kept in the upper rooms. Harry crept up the stairs. There were three doors leading off a landing. All were locked.

He retreated to the kitchen, defeated. He could possibly find some implement in the kitchen that might jemmy the door to the surgery open, but that would lead to a full police investigation. All he wanted to do was to read Lord Hedley’s file. He sat down for a moment at the kitchen table to rest. Rose was going to be so disappointed in him, he thought with a wry smile.

Perhaps there might be something he could use to pick the lock. But he had never picked a lock before and hadn’t the faintest idea of how to go about it.

There was a Welsh dresser against one wall. He set the lantern down on it and opened the first drawer. It was full of knives and forks and spoons. He picked up one of the knives. It had been cleaned so many times with Bath brick that it was thin and fragile. He put it back and opened the other drawer.

At first he could not believe his eyes. He held up the lantern and stared down. The drawer held keys with labels attached.

One label read ‘Front Door’, another ‘Waiting-Room’. There was even one marked ‘Safe’.

Harry grinned and selected the one marked ‘Surgery’. He was about to leave the kitchen when he heard footsteps in the alley outside. He extinguished the lantern and crept to the kitchen door and locked it and then crouched down. The footsteps came closer. A hand rattled the door. Then the footsteps moved on. Glancing up, Harry saw a police helmet bobbing past the window. The constable on his nightly rounds.

He waited and then cautiously relit the lantern and made his way to the surgery and unlocked the door.

He searched along the rows of files, looking for a folder marked ‘Lord Hedley’, but there was nothing there.

It might be in one of the upstairs rooms, thought Harry. I should never have let Rose come. This might take all night and she might do something silly like come looking for me.

He went back to the kitchen and collected the keys to the upstairs rooms. The first had been a bedroom, but the bed was now piled high with odds and ends and the rest of the room was full of discarded furniture.

The next room was an office with a roll-top desk. There were bookshelves all round, mil of medical books, some very old indeed. And beside the fire stood a large safe. Harry studied it. To his relief, it was an old-fashioned one without a combination lock. He went back to the kitchen and collected the safe key and went upstairs again.

He unlocked the safe and knelt down in front of it, the lantern on the floor beside him.

There were various items of jewellery in a box:a gold half hunter, dress studs, a gold Albert and a gold toothpick. Another box contained, to his surprise, an opium pipe and a small quantity of opium. Was Dr. Perriman an opium smoker? Or had that vice been one of the late Dr. Jenner’s? There were various title deeds and business papers, and a cash box containing a few hundred pounds.

There was one thick file which he took out and laid on the floor and opened. In it was Lord Hedley’s medical file and also correspondence between Dr. Jenner and a Dr. Palverston in London. Harry let out a soundless whistle. The correspondence between the two men discussed the use of arsenic to counteract the effects of syphilis. And in Lord Hedley’s file, he found Dr. Jenner had started to treat Lord Hedley for syphilis last summer.

He carefully replaced everything and locked the safe. In order to give Kerridge this information, he would need to cover up the fact that he had broken into the surgery.

He went downstairs and put the keys back in the drawer, being careful to lay them back in the order he had found them.

He breathed a sigh of relief when he locked the kitchen door behind him and hurried off towards where he had left the others in the car.

Daisy and Becket were excited at his news, but Rose seemed a trifle disappointed.

“It all seems so easy,” she complained. “I had imagined you having to behave like a real burglar.”

Harry had carried that bright image of Rose singing in his car. It popped like a balloon and disappeared. She was really a very silly little girl.

¦

Harry called on Kerridge first thing in the morning with his new information.

“Where did you get this?” demanded the superintendent.

“I can’t really tell you.”

“You must.”

“Superintendent, I know you pay informers and you do not demand where they got their information from and drag them into court.”

Kerridge drummed his fingers on the desk. “I can confront Hedley. Even if he admits he has syphilis, he will deny having anything to do with Mary Gore-Desmond. We will then need to approach her parents for further proof – was she sleeping with anyone else? – and that will shake them rigid. But it shows Hedley has arsenic at his disposal.

“Still, I’ll need to interview him. You may yet be forced to tell me how you came by this information.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” said Harry.

? Snobbery with Violence ?

Eleven

I had grown weary of him; of his breath And hands and features I was sick to death. Each day I heard the same dull voice and tread; I did not hate him:but I wished him dead.

– G.K. CHESTERTON

Rose had to endure a row from her furious mother. Why had she sent her guard away? Was she misbehaving herself with one of the gentlemen?

Rose protested that the policeman must have misunderstood her. Lady Polly said that they had all been told that they could leave on the following morning.

“I am glad of it. Hedley is not what we had been led to believe. I do not like this extremely vulgar castle and I do not like his guests. That Fairfax woman is atrocious. None of the young men are suitable. We are opening up the