Occasional tables were topped with ornaments, glass cases full of stuffed birds, photographs and waxed fruit. A table at the window was piled high with racing journals and copies of the
“May I fetch you some refreshment?” asked the manservant.
“No, no,” said Harry airily. “Go about your business.”
“Very good, sir.”
Harry waited until the door had closed behind the servant and then began to search. He was just beginning to think that perhaps Tristram had taken the box to his bedroom when he suddenly saw a window-seat and went and lifted the lid. There on the top was the box of cigars. A box of Romeo Y Julietas, the cedar-wood box nailed shut and sealed with the familiar green-and-white label.
Harry felt disappointed. He would have nothing to report to Lady Rose. He was about to put it back when he noticed a thin slit along the label. He held it up to the light. Was it possible it had been opened and nailed shut again?
He tucked the box under his coat and made his way quietly out, lifting his card from the salver on the hall table and hoping the manservant would not remember his name.
He motored back to Water Street. “I’ve got it,” he said to Becket. “I think it’s been opened already.”
“I’ll get a chisel,” said Becket.
“No, perhaps we should leave it like this until we see the ladies. Then we can all examine it together.”
“If you will forgive me for saying so, sir, perhaps it would be better to open it here in case it contains items of an insalubrious nature.”
“You’re right. Bring the chisel.”
Harry waited impatiently until Becket returned. Then he slid the chisel under the lid and prised it open.
“By all that’s holy, Becket,” he exclaimed. “We’ve struck gold. What have we here?”
He lifted out four letters tied with pink silk ribbon. He untied the ribbons and started to read. The letters were addressed to Lord Alfred, passionate, yearning love letters describing their affair in detail and signed ‘Your Loving Jimmy’.
“Dear me,” said Harry. “I don’t think the ladies should see these. Very graphic. No wonder Lord Alfred paid up. What else have we? Photographs.”
One was a photograph of Lady Jerry in a passionate embrace with a young man in footman’s livery. It looked as if it had been taken beside the Thames. The couple were lying on the grass, the remains of a picnic beside them.
There was only one more photograph. It was of Angela Stockton in an open-air restaurant, also by the river. Beside her a waiter was in the act of carving thin slices of roast beef, although Angela’s plate was already piled high and the photographer had captured a look of anticipatory greed on her face.
“So our famous vegetarian, Becket, caught in the act.”
“It’s not a crime,” said Becket.
“This would frighten her. She has set herself up to promote vegetarianism. People pay to join her society. She has even given lectures in America. It looks as if Mrs Jerry decided to go to the police and one of them killed her.”
“Are you going to take this to Kerridge?”
“No, let me think. They should be given a chance to explain themselves. What if the blackmailer is Tristram, who knew what was in the box and decided to make some money for himself?”
¦
Rose and Daisy waited anxiously in the ante-room. Then they heard the front door open and the next moment Harry and Becket entered the room.
“You’re a clever girl,” said Harry to Rose. “The blackmailing stuff was in the box.”
“What is it?” asked Rose, reaching for the letters.
“No, don’t read those,” said Harry sharply. “They are letters to Lord Alfred from a young man with whom he had been having an affair. If the police got hold of these, he could go to prison and this Jimmy with him. You can look at the photographs.”
Rose exclaimed, “Oh, do look at Mrs Stockton, Daisy. Positively salivating over roast beef. And Mrs Jerry! How disgusting. But our criminal must be Lord Alfred.”
“It could be Tristram,” said Harry. “Have you thought of that?”
“Oh, dear, what are we going to do?”
“I will see Lord Alfred tomorrow.”
“And I will see Mrs Stockton,” said Rose.
“How can you get out of the house?”
“I will just go,” said Rose. “I will be in trouble again.”
“Well, I cannot see Angela Stockton shooting and drugging and strangling over roast beef. But you are not to give her the photograph until she tells you who was blackmailing her. I believe someone knew the contents of this box and took over the blackmailing from Mr Pomfret.”
“And then do we go to the police?”
“If it should prove to be either Tristram or Lord Alfred, yes, certainly.”
“Kerridge will charge you with withholding vital evidence.”
“I believe Kerridge will be only too grateful to have the case cleared up.”
¦
Rose hardly slept that night. What would Angela say? How would she react? The next morning she fretted that her mother would insist on her making calls and so she sent Daisy to say she had a headache. Lady Polly was feeling well disposed towards her daughter because she guessed that Rose was about to thaw and accept Tristram’s hand in marriage and so she contented herself with telling Daisy to bathe her daughter’s forehead in eau de cologne.
The countess went off to make her calls while her husband slept by the fire. At three in the afternoon, Rose and Daisy went quickly out of the house. The lady’s maid, Turner, had promised not to tell anyone they had gone out without permission.
Rose and Daisy giggled over the forthcoming confrontation. It seemed hilarious to them that anyone would pay such a large sum to a blackmailer because they had been caught out eating roast beef.
As they approached Angela’s house, Daisy suddenly burst into song:
Rose burst out laughing and had to stop and mop her streaming eyes.
“Oh, Daisy,” she gasped, “how are we ever going to get through this without laughing?”
“
“No, she won’t,” agreed Rose, suddenly sober. “Here’s her house. I’m suddenly beginning to wish she weren’t at home.”
Angela’s butler disappeared with their cards. Daisy was very proud to have her own case of visiting cards.
He reappeared and asked them to follow him to the drawing-room. Rose shivered. Although the day was warm, inside seemed to hold all the chill of winter.
Angela rose to meet them as they were ushered into the drawing-room. She was wearing a black-and-gold Turkish turban of a type favoured by ladies almost a hundred years ago. Her long loose gown was of deep purple velvet trimmed with gold embroidery.
“How very kind of you to call,” she fluted. Her American accent sounded peculiar because over the years Angela had tried to replace it with an upper-class English one, but her voice seemed to be permanently stuck somewhere in mid-Atlantic, neither one nor the other.
“Do be seated. I was about to have some fennel tea. May I press you to some?”
Daisy stifled a giggle, having had a sudden vision of both of them being pressed to a teapot.
“No, thank you,” said Rose. “We are here on serious business.”
“Dear me. Nothing to do with that frightful business at Farthings?”
“Yes, it has.”
Angela got to her feet and went and closed the double doors of the drawing-room.
