‘Darling Miss Smith, you’ll have to tell her to be sensible. Tell her she can make eyes at him on the platform as much as she likes (she had better take a lesson in amorous gestures from Mrs Lace), but I don’t see how the whole works can be altered now.’
‘Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Marge will be simply furious. She is used to getting her own way in life.’
‘All I can say is that she must be furious for once. Why, it’s as much as my place is worth to tell Mrs Lace she can’t be Queen Charlotte – Noel would stop paying my expenses down here most likely, if I did, and you don’t want me to go straight back to London, I suppose! No, my angel, I’m sorry but it’s quite out of the question. Tell you what I will do though, if you like.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I’ll give you a good bite on the back of your neck.’
‘No, thank you,’ said Poppy, ‘I’m a mass of bruises as it is.’
The question, however, was by no means dropped, Lady Marjorie herself coming to the charge, hotly supported by Eugenia.
‘Is this to be a Great Social Unionist rally, or not?’ the latter demanded furiously, ‘because if it is, it stands to reason that we must keep the best parts for Union Jackshirts. Mrs Lace is not only not one of us, she is a well-known friend of Pacifists – in fact, it would never surprise me if she should turn out to be a Pacifist spy. How absurd then to insist that she shall be the one to drive along hailed by Social Unionist cheers.’
‘I dare say, but you should have thought of all this sooner,’ said Jasper, with some irritation, ‘before it was settled. Personally, I don’t give a damn who plays which part, and I wish you were all at the bottom of the sea, anyway, but you might remember that wretched old Local Beauty is slaving herself to death over your dresses, and if she wants to take the part of the least attractive queen in history, I should have thought it would be a matter of ordinary decency to let her. In any case you must arrange it among yourselves, I absolutely refuse to make any such suggestion to her.’
‘Oh, well, I see your point,’ said Lady Marjorie, good-temperedly, ‘I’ll ask her myself at the committee meeting tomorrow.’
Mrs Lace, however, when approached was perfectly firm. She listened calmly while the suggestion was being made, and then said that it was too unlucky, but Queen Charlotte’s dress was now finished, and could never be altered to fit Lady Marjorie, as there were no means of letting out the seams on the hips and round the waist. Marjorie, who had never been spoken to in such a way before, was more surprised than angry, and took her defeat with the greatest of good humour. Poppy and Eugenia were furious, and said afterwards that Mrs Lace was a spiteful cat, and Poppy said at the time to Mrs Lace that as she looked exactly like Queen Charlotte, she was quite right to keep the part. Unfortunately, owing to its target’s total ignorance of English history, this Parthian shaft went wide of the mark.
Noel and Jasper, who seldom met these days, over a quiet glass at the Rose Revived, made a point of doing so now, and agreed together that women were impossible everywhere, except in what Eugenia had referred to as their proper place. Noel no longer took Mrs Lace’s side on every subject; feeling quite certain, as he now did, of her great love for him, he was able to adopt a high-handed attitude towards her, and was by no means inclined to jeopardize all future relations with Eugenia Malmains on her account.
Mrs Lace, on her part, secure in the knowledge of her own romantic situation, felt that she could now alienate dukes’ ex-fiancées and earls’ granddaughters with the most perfect indifference. She carried her head in the air and permitted herself the luxury of being extremely disagreeable to everybody except Noel.
11
Meanwhile the two detectives continued to ply their lugubrious trade. They appeared to ignore the necessity for repose, and the inhabitants of the Jolly Roger were continually being startled by their appearance in the most unexpected places. They would jump out from dark corners like sinister Jack-in-the-Boxes, at all times of the day and night. It was most unnerving. Finally, Jasper made a heroic if unsuccessful attempt to win their confidence. He stood them drink after drink at the bar. Their heads proved to be of the ox-like variety; and although they unbent after the fourth whisky sufficiently to admit to their profession, and made after the seventh some startling disclosures as to the present tendencies of modern London society, human ingenuity and liberality could push them no further than this. The two things which Poppy was so anxious to find out, namely, whether Anthony St Julien himself was employing them or whether it was the mother of his débutante, and how much or how little they knew of her relationship with Jasper, remained locked in their own bosoms. The end of the matter was that the detectives were obliged to carry Jasper upstairs to bed, where he lay, fully clothed and staring at the electric light bulb until far on into the next day.
‘Never mind,’ he said to Poppy, when he had more or less recovered from the attack of alcoholic poisoning which ensued, ‘I am on exceedingly good terms with them now, which is always something. The worst of it is that I rather think I told them about us being engaged. Would that matter, do you suppose?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Poppy. ‘I don’t think it was very clever of you and anyway we’re not.’
‘Oh! aren’t we? I thought we were?’
‘Not at all,’ said Poppy. ‘You might bear in mind the fact
