Billy. I’d known him before, and when he asked me up to that flat for a drink, it seemed all right to go.
“Like a fool, I told him the whole story. I was lonely, you see. You can’t break the barriers of class, sir. It’s flying in the face of nature.”
Harry turned to Rose. “You inadvertently broke the barriers of class, Lady Rose. You joined the suffragettes and then abandoned them. You cannot go around changing the rules and expect things to be easy. So do you want to get rid of Miss Levine and return to your comfortable and privileged life?”
Rose thought of her pride in her job and how she had dragged Daisy along with her into this new life. She remembered Daisy’s gallantry, her spirit, and realized for the first time that she would not have been able to go through with the business of getting a job without Daisy.
“I’m sorry, Daisy,” she said. “Thank you for helping me to escape. We will go on as before…as friends.”
“Thank you, my lady.”
“Rose, please.”
“The doctor is here,” said Becket.
“Take him through to the back parlour. When he is finished, we will have lunch.”
“Very good, sir. Miss Levine?”
¦
The doctor declared the burns to be bad but not serious. Daisy’s wrists were once more treated and bandaged. She was made to swallow two aspirin and told to rest.
After the doctor had gone, Becket produced a meal he had ordered from a restaurant in the King’s Road.
During the lunch, Rose suddenly said, “I am glad now we decided to work at the bank. Please apologize to your secretary for trying to take her job away from her.”
Harry raised his eyebrows. “I beg your pardon?”
“I had this mad idea that it might be fun to work for you and I went round to offer my services.”
“Miss Jubbles said nothing of this to me,” said Harry. “I wonder why.”
“Well, she wouldn’t, would she?” remarked Daisy. A touch of colour had returned to her cheeks.
“Why not?”
“She doesn’t want to lose her job.”
“Miss Jubbles should have known her job is secure.” Harry’s black eyes studied Rose’s face. “I am interested to know why you wanted to work for me. I was under the impression that you neither liked nor approved of me.”
“Daisy and I were of help to you over that murder at Telby Castle last year. I thought it might be fun to work together again, that is all. Do you have many exciting cases?”
“Not in the slightest. Lost dogs, society scandals that need to be covered up, that sort of thing. But you surely do not intend to work at that bank for very long.”
“Perhaps. But I am doing very well. Now Miss Levine is being wasted there. All she is doing is typing stuff out of ledgers that doesn’t need to be typed. As you were instrumental in getting us the work, I would be grateful if you could perhaps speak to Mr Drevey and point out to him that Miss Levine is not only an expert typist but that she has mastered Pitman shorthand.”
“I will see what I can do.”
¦
After he had escorted Daisy and Rose back to their hostel and impressed on Miss Harringey the respectability of her tenants, Harry decided to go to the office. He found Miss Jubbles hard at work polishing his desk.
“Miss Jubbles! It is Sunday. What on earth are you doing here?”
Miss Jubbles blushed painfully. “I was just passing and I thought I would do a few chores.”
“This will not do. You work too hard. Please go home.”
“I am sorry, Captain.”
She looked so upset that Harry said impulsively, “I have been out on an odd case. Do you remember I told you I was doing some work for the Earl of Hadshire?”
“Yes, but you did not tell me exactly what was involved.”
So Harry told her the whole story. Miss Jubbles smiled, exclaimed, and listened intently while inside her brain a small, jealous Miss Jubbles was raging. That girl again. That wretched
When he had finished telling her about Rose, Harry smiled and told Miss Jubbles to go home.
He gave her five shillings and told her to take a hack. Mrs Jubbles tore herself away. How sooty and cold and grim London looked! The hackney horse steamed and stamped as she climbed in and gave one last longing look up at the office windows.
The hack eventually dropped her at a thin, narrow brick house in Camden Town. Miss Jubbles lived with her widowed mother. She unlocked the front door and called, “Mother!”
“In the sitting-room, dear,” came a cry from upstairs.
Miss Jubbles mounted the narrow stairs to the first-floor sitting-room. Mrs Jubbles was sitting before a small coal fire which smouldered in the grate. She was a tiny woman dressed entirely in black. Her black lace cap hung over her withered features. Her black gown was trimmed with jet and her black-lace-mittened hands clutched a teacup.
When Miss Jubbles entered, she said in a surprisingly robust voice, “Ring the bell for more tea, Dora.”
Miss Dora Jubbles pressed down the bell-push, and after a few minutes a small maid, breathless and with her cap askew, answered its summons. “More tea, Elsie,” ordered Mrs Jubbles. “And straighten your cap, girl.”
Mother and daughter exchanged sympathetic smiles after the girl had left. “Servants,” sighed Mrs Jubbles as if used to a household of them rather than the overworked Elsie and a cross gin-soaked woman who came in the mornings to do the ‘heavy work’.
“How did it go?” asked Mrs Jubbles eagerly.
Dora took off her coat and unpinned her large felt hat and stripped off her gloves. “Wait until Elsie brings the tea-things. I’ve ever so much to tell you.”
From her daughter’s tales, Mrs Jubbles had gathered that Captain Cathcart, younger son of a baron, who had chosen to sink to trade, was enamoured of her daughter. Both dreamt rosy dreams of being finally ensconced in some country mansion with a whole army of servants at their beck and call.
Elsie panted in with a tray with the tea-things and a plate containing two small Eccles cakes. Mother and daughter lived thriftily. Mrs Jubbles’s husband had owned a butcher’s shop in Camden Town and two houses other than the one the widow now lived in. She had sold all for a comfortable sum, but was keeping aside a substantial amount for her daughter’s wedding. The fact that Dora was now thirty-eight years old had not dimmed her hopes. She saw Dora as elegant and distinguished.
Dora told her mother all about Lady Rose, ending with, “She is very beautiful.”
Mrs Jubbles sniffed. “You should tell the newspapers what this Lady Rose has been up to. They’d pay you and she’d be so socially ruined that he couldn’t possibly want to marry her.”
Dora was shocked. “I would be betraying the captain’s trust. Oh, if you could have seen the way he smiled at me. There is an intimacy there, Mother, a warmth. And to confide in me the way he did? No, he seemed impatient with the adventures of this Lady Rose. He is never impatient with me.”
A little doubt crept into Mrs Jubbles mind. “This Lady Rose is young?”
“Yes, very. Barely twenty, I would say.”
“And the captain is…?”
“Nearly thirty. Yes, he is younger than I am, but I think I am young-looking for my age.”
“Oh, yes, dear. Only the other day, the baker, Mr Jones said, ‘Where is your lovely daughter?’ That’s just what he said. So you do not think it would be a good idea to apprise the newspapers of what this Lady Rose is doing?”
“No, Mother. I would not breathe a word to anyone apart from you. And you must swear you must not tell anyone either.”
“There, there, girl. I swear,” said Mrs Jubbles and crossed her fingers behind her back.
¦
Harry had forgotten to tell Mr Drevey about Daisy’s prowess, the sick secretary had come back, and so Rose
