“We always arrest attempted suicides.”
“I was not attempting suicide,” howled Rose. “Someone pushed me.”
“You left a letter,” said the policeman accusingly. “It is in English, but as you can hear, my English is very good.”
“I have just come from Commissioner Lemonier,” said Harry. “You will come with us to the Crillon and you may telephone him from there.”
¦
Rose was lying in bed. Beside the bed sat a remorseful Daisy. Harry had been furious with her for having let Rose go out alone.
Daisy looked up as Harry and Lemonier entered the room. “How are you?” Harry asked Rose.
“Cold and hot by turns. I am so sorry. I should never have gone out alone. I thought the murderer would have fled somewhere out to the country. There was something about a letter. What letter?”
“This was found on the quay just where you were pushed in. It was weighted down with a stone. I’ll read it to you. It says, ‘I killed Dolores Duval and Madame de Peurey. I do not want to live any more. Rose Summer.’”
“I thought I was going to die,” said Rose through white lips. “The current was so strong and I felt myself getting weaker and weaker. I called for help but no one seemed to hear me.”
“Too busy watching the show,” said Harry bitterly. “Monsieur Lemonier, you must know this is rubbish. For a start, Lady Rose was with us in Saint Malo at the time of Madame de Peurey’s murder.”
“Nonetheless, to be thorough, we will take a copy of milady’s handwriting.”
“I have a note Lady Rose wrote to me,” said Daisy. “I’ll get it. No need to bother my poor lady at the moment. You can see she is not well.”
Daisy went to her room and found a list of things to be packed Rose had given to Daisy in London and brought it back.
Lemonier read it carefully and compared it with the note. “I have my police combing every hotel and lodging house in Paris, although we have only a vague description. Police are interviewing everyone who was on the quay. Can you remember seeing anyone, milady?”
Rose shook her head. “Funnily enough, just before I was pushed I began to feel afraid and realized how stupid I had been to go out on my own. I did not see anyone. There was no one on the quay when I went down the steps.”
¦
Benton, the duchess’s lady’s maid, came in to see her mistress in a high state of excitement. “You will never believe what has just happened, Your Grace. Lady Rose went out walking beside the Seine and somebody pushed her in! The police are here.”
“Will this never end?” demanded the duchess crossly. “I am no longer amused. We will leave tomorrow, Benton.”
“But Your Grace, the police said –”
“Do you think I care what a lot of frog policemen say? My orders are to pack. Fetch Kemp.”
When her butler arrived, the duchess said, “Take a telegram. Right. Got paper and pen? Good. ‘Dear Polly. Daughter involved in murder and mayhem and whole business is too vulgar for words and can no longer chaperone her so suggest you catch train to Paris and get to the Crillon toute suite and take her away because I have had enough of it. Effie.’ Send that right off, Kemp.”
But when the telegram arrived at the Palace Hotel in Monte Carlo, Lord and Lady Hadshire were on their way to Cairo and had left no forwarding address.
¦
Daisy rapped on Harry’s door during the night and when he answered, she whispered urgently, “Oh, Captain, Rose has a bad fever. She needs a doctor.”
“I’ll see to it right away.”
Harry ordered a doctor to be sent immediately and told the hotel manager also to hire a trained nurse. Then he quietly entered Rose’s room. She was tossing and turning and her face was flushed.
Daisy began to cry softly. “I should never have left her.”
Harry sat down beside the bed and took Rose’s hot hand in his own and held it tightly until the doctor arrived.
Dr Maurey was an elderly gentleman with silver hair and a gold pince-nez. He sent Harry out of the room while he examined Rose. Harry paced up and down the corridor wondering whether he should wake the duchess. When the doctor called him in, he said he thought Lady Rose was suffering from a severe chill and shock. He had prescribed powders which Miss Levine was to dissolve in water and get the patient to drink every four hours. He would call again in the morning. Harry told him a nurse had been ordered and if the doctor waited a few more minutes, he was sure the nurse would arrive. Rose needed expert care.
Daisy felt useless after the nurse arrived and took over. She wished they were all back in England. The nurse was middle-aged and appeared efficient but could not speak a word of English. Daisy felt so far from home, lost in an alien land. She began to wonder whether God was punishing her for having slept with Becket. What if Becket should decide not to marry her? Daisy had remained a virgin until her affair with Becket, having heard too many stories of girls being seduced and then abandoned.
¦
At nine in the morning, Harry walked along to the duchess’s suite to tell her about Rose’s illness. The doors were all standing open and he could see hotel servants inside, clearing and cleaning.
“Where is Madame la Duchesse?” he asked.
When he was told she had left early that morning, he muttered, “Selfish old toad.”
He went down to see the manager and explained that he would need a lady of reputable standing to act as a chaperone. The manager appeared to find his request as simple as if he had ordered flowers.
Later that afternoon, he introduced Harry to a lady called Madame Bailloux. Madame Bailloux was a small, dainty Frenchwoman in her fifties with small sparkling black eyes. She said she had previously been employed as a companion to the Marquise de Graimont, who had recently died. She had excellent references. Harry told her all about Rose’s situation and said that madame would be expected to travel with them to London.
“I know London well,” she said in prettily accented English.
“Lady Rose does have a companion, a Miss Levine, but Miss Levine is young and I need someone older to act as chaperone,” said Harry.
“I will do my best. I remember seeing Dolores Duval driving her carriage in the Bois,” said Madame Bailloux. “Could she not have been the victim of some enraged lover?”
“Then why murder Madame de Peurey?”
“Because Madame de Peurey may have known the identity of this murderer. A time ago, I remember, Dolores Duval was under the protection of a certain Monsieur Thierry Clement. He manufactures cardboard boxes and things. Very rich. I am sure this hotel can furnish you with his direction. Hotels are a mine of information.”
Harry made a note of the name, thanked her and said he would arrange accommodation at the hotel for her if she could move in as soon as possible.
¦
He obtained the name of Monsieur Clement’s factory and went off with Becket, driving out through the outskirts of Paris towards Roissey. He realized as Becket drove up to the factory that possibly someone as rich as this Monsieur Clement might very well not visit his own factory but leave it all to a manager. So he was pleasantly surprised to be told that Monsieur Clement was in his office.
A small, portly man rose to meet him. “A private investigator,” he said in French.
“I am investigating the death of Dolores Duval,” began Harry. He told him the whole story and said he was searching into Dolores’s background to try to find out who might have wished to kill her.
Monsieur Clement sighed. “Poor Dolores. I was her first. I’ll never forget that day. I was walking along the ramparts of Saint Malo and there was this vision coming towards me. She was dressed like a peasant, clogs and Breton coif, but nothing could hide that beauty. I took off my hat and asked, ‘What is an angel like you doing here?’ She said she was working on a farm. I said such beauty should not be labouring. It sounds very trite now, but her beauty struck me like a thunder-bolt. I said, ‘Come away with me and you will never have to work again. You will have your own apartment in Paris.’
