town house and the servants have been told to get it ready for our arrival. There will be a few balls and parties before Christmas and, with any luck, you will meet someone suitable there.”
“I have decided I do not wish to get married,” said Rose.
“What else is there for you to do?”
“I can type. I could get a job.”
“Are you out of your mind? Work? YOU would be a laughingstock. We do not work!”
And with that, Lady Polly slammed out of her daughter’s room in a fury.
Rose felt tears welling up in her eyes and brushed them angrily away. The attempt on her Ufe on the roof was at last beginning to affect her with a bout of delayed shock. She felt weak and useless. Tomorrow they would leave and she would never know what really happened.
Daisy came into the room. “I couldn’t help hearing Lady Polly going on at you. So we’re going to London.”
“It looks like that,” said Rose. “I wish I knew who murdered Mary.”
“Maybe Miss Bryce-Cuddlestone knows something,” said Daisy.
“She won’t speak to me.”
“Worth a try. Better than doing nothing.”
Rose paced up and down and then looked out of the window. “It’s a fine, crisp day. I could suggest a walk. Would you take a message to her? If she is agreeable, I will meet her in the hall, in, say, half an hour?”
Rose did not have much hope that Margaret would accept the invitation, but to her surprise Daisy came back and said Margaret had agreed.
¦
Kerridge had summoned Harry. “Not much good,” he said.
“His lordship was in a fine taking, threatening to have my job.”
“Does he admit to having syphilis and possessing arsenic?”
“Not him. ‘Prove it, you common little runt’ were his last words to me.”
“Get a search-warrant.”
“I’m trying,” said Kerridge bitterly. “Fve had orders to release all the guests. I sent a constable to check Dr. Perriman’s surgery. No sign of a break-in. How did you do it?”
“I had information from someone.”
“You went there yesterday with Lady Rose. Town’s still talking about it. Lady Rose and that maid of hers were singing like street balladeers.”
“Just a bit of fun.”
“Just a bit of distraction while you got up to God knows what. If only something would break. Fve more or less been ordered to get out and forget it. The press have given up and gone, so the pressure’s off.”
“And it’s back to hushing the whole thing up?”
“That’s it. At least Lord Hedley hasn’t stopped repairing the village houses.”
“Not yet,” said Harry cynically. “I wonder what he’ll do when we’re all gone.”
¦
Rose and Margaret walked in the castle gardens, which were situated to the left of the castle, on the other side from where the tradesmen’s entrance was situated.
They had talked generally of fads and fashions, with Daisy and the footman, John, following at a discreet distance behind.
A small pale disk of a sun shone down on the rose garden. Frost still lay on the earth in the shadowy patches which the sun did not reach. Rose half-turned and gave a prearranged signal to Daisy to keep well back and then said in a low voice, “Have you any idea, Miss Bryce-Cuddlestone, who could have committed murder?”
“I don’t think it was murder, Lady Rose. I think Mary was a silly girl who just took too much arsenic.”
“Then why did your maid end up in the moat?”
“Why should I know?”
“Miss Bryce-Cuddlestone – may I call you Margaret?”
“No.”
“Well, then, when you slept with Lord Hedley, did you know he had syphilis?”
“You little bitch! You nasty, snooping little bitch.”
“I would like to help. Why? Why did you allow such a man favours?”
“Favours. How old-fashioned.” Margaret began to cry, great gulping sobs. Rose put an arm round her and led her to a marble bench. A marble statue of Niobe, shedding marble tears, stared down at them from behind the bench.
Daisy pulled out a handkerchief and handed it to Margaret. She waited patiently until Margaret had gulped and sobbed herself into silence.
“I couldn’t bear the idea of another season,” said Margaret, in such a low voice that Rose had to bend her head to hear her. “My mother jeers at me a lot. She still fancies herself as a beauty. She is furious with me for already turning down proposals.
“Hedley was fun, not like those dreadful young men. He courted me. He told me that Lady Hedley had a terminal illness and was not expected to live long. He said we would be married and I would be a marchioness and outrank my mother. I slept with him one night, that was all.
“Then Lady Hedley came to my room. She told me about the syphilis. I commiserated with her on her terminal illness, thinking it had turned her brain, but she laughed and said that she was fit and healthy and that her husband should really stop sleeping with virgins because he thought it would cure his illness. I hated him then. I wanted him dead.
“I told her I would expose him, but she laughed. Laughed! She said all I would do would be to broadcast that I was no longer a virgin and that my parents would get to hear of it.”
“What did Dr. Perriman say?” asked Rose.
“He said that I showed no sign of the infection. He would not discuss Lord Hedley, but he said that people at the latent stage of the disease were not infectious. They were only infectious in the first and second stages. So I assume I have no fear of the disease developing in me.”
“Thank goodness for that. But maybe Mary Gore-Desmond was determined that he should honour his promises. Maybe that’s why she had to die.”
“But Colette!”
“Perhaps Colette found out somehow and was blackmailing him. You should tell Kerridge.”
“No, and if you do, I will deny the whole thing. Lady Hedley puts it about that you are a liar and make things up.”
“She does, doesn’t she?” said Rose slowly.
¦
Harry burst into the study after luncheon and said to Kerridge, “What fools we’ve been!”
“Enlighten me.”
“Dr. Jenner was in correspondence with a certain Dr. Pal-verston in London over using arsenic as a treatment. If you confront Dr. Perriman with the fact that we know about the syphilis and the arsenic, he will assume that Dr. Palverston said something. Accuse him of having valuable evidence and threaten to throw the book at him.”
“I’ll go over to his surgery now,” said Kerridge.
Harry went back to his room and rang for Becket. When the manservant appeared, he said, “I want you to keep close to Lady Rose. I do not want anything to happen to her before we get out of here. I think Hedley could be dangerous and I think his illness is beginning to affect his brain.”
Becket went up and knocked at Daisy’s door. When she answered it, he said, “The captain says I’m to keep an eye on Lady Rose. Where is she?”
“She said she was going to see Lady Hedley. She’s just left.”
“Orders are orders. I’d better get down there and wait outside Lady Hedley’s sitting-room door.”
“We’ll both go,” said Daisy.
¦
Lady Hedley looked up as Rose entered her sitting-room. “You are supposed to knock,” she said crossly. She
