Card tables were being set up. ‘I think some music would be pleasant as well,’ said Lady Glensheil. ‘Whom do we have? Why, Miss Levine, I have never heard you sing.’
Rose closed her eyes. She knew Daisy loved to sing.
‘Do you want someone to play for you?’ asked Lady Glensheil.
‘Yes, I would like Becket.’
So Becket was summoned and told to bring his concertina.
Daisy whispered to Becket and then threw back her head and began to sing.
Rose suppressed a groan. The card players sat as if frozen. Daisy was getting into her stride, marching up and down and swinging her skirts as she roared into the chorus.
Rose and Harry applauded loudly and the others followed suit. ‘You do that Cockney bit very well, my dear,’ said Lady Glensheil. ‘But something more soothing now, I think. Miss Chatterton, perhaps you would oblige?’
Maisie sat down at the piano and began to murder Chopin.
Daisy came and sat next to Rose, her face flushed and her eyes shining. Rose was going to give her a lecture on her behaviour, but then thought that in her music-hall days Daisy had known a freedom denied to society women.
Harry had joined the card players. Rose thought he might at least have joined her. They were, after all, supposed to be investigating this murder. She felt tired and sulky.
‘I think I’ll retire now,’ she said to Daisy.
‘Good idea,’ agreed Daisy, but only because she had agreed to meet Becket in the gardens later.
Harry covertly watched Rose and Daisy leave the room. What a bore these cards were, he thought. He played another hand and then got up from the table and excused himself.
An hour later, Daisy, with a shawl over her head, waited in the garden at the back of the house. The air was full of the scent of lilac. She jumped nervously as Becket appeared in the darkness beside her.
‘I never heard you coming,’ she whispered. ‘Have you found out anything from the servants?’
‘Only that Lord Alfred plays backgammon.’
‘So do I!’
‘I mean, how shall I put this – he prefers gentlemen to ladies.’
‘Ah, now there’s something someone could have been blackmailing him about.’
‘Exactly. But what sort of proof would they have?’
‘There are brothels, you know, for that sort of thing.’
‘You’ve led a rough life.’
Daisy shrugged. ‘Comes in handy sometimes.’
‘But I still can’t see how it would work. Someone goes to Lord Alfred and says, “I saw you go in the door of such-and-such a place.” He’d deny it. Can’t ask the people who run the place, if it’s a high-class one. They keep their trade by shutting up about their clients.’
‘Photographs. What about photographs? Someone with one of those Kodak cameras.’
‘Could be. If that’s the case, I wonder if they were destroyed.’
Daisy sighed. ‘I’m beginning to think the murderer did destroy them and that’s the end of it. Then the three have alibis. But how do they know what time he was actually killed? Rose told me after dinner that Freddy had given his manservant the night off and yet it was the manservant who found the body.’
‘The manservant would sleep there, so he’d come back later – anyway, that’s what it said in the newspapers – find Freddy dead and call the police. The manservant left at six in the evening and returned at eleven, so they’ve been collecting alibis for that time.’
‘Where is the manservant? Do we know?’
‘I asked the captain. He says the manservant made a statement and then disappeared.’
‘Wait a bit, flats like his would have a porter on duty.’
‘Porter didn’t see anyone apart from the residents. The door to Mr Pomfret’s flat wasn’t locked. He must have let his murderer in.’
‘People must have heard the shot.’
‘StJames’s is a noisy place. The residents above and below were abroad. A Mr George Bruce at the top of the building heard something, which, in retrospect, he believes might have been a shot, but he says at the time he thought it was one of those nasty new-fangled motor cars.
‘Mr Kerridge says that the murderer must have shot Freddy as he opened the door and searched frantically through his papers and then ran out.’
‘But the porter must have seen someone running out.’
‘He says he didn’t, but it turns out he often nips round to the pub in St James’s Lane. The landlord seems to be a friend of the porter and both are sticking to their stories that the porter wasn’t in the pub that evening. Frightened of losing his job.’
‘I’d best be getting back,’ said Daisy.
Becket was just plucking up courage to kiss her on the cheek when they heard a stifled sneeze in the shrubbery behind them.
‘Who’s there?’ demanded Becket sharply.
He ran towards the shrubbery and parted the branches but could see no one.
‘Could have been a cat,’ said Daisy uneasily. ‘Cats don’t sneeze like that.’ Becket looked uneasily about. ‘Let’s go inside.’
The country house party developed into a sedate and often boring affair: croquet and cards and long heavy meals.
Harry covertly watched the three suspects. The only thing suspicious about their behaviour could be that they avoided one another. And yet what did they have in common? Lord Alfred could not be expected to enjoy the company of a gross glutton like Mrs Jerry any more than Mrs Stockton would. Nor would he approve of Mrs Stockton with her faddishness and ridiculous clothes.
Her son, Peregrine, was always trying to engage Rose in conversation but she seemed to be successful at snubbing him.
Rose had at first toyed with the idea of flirting with Peregrine to see if she could find out anything about his mother but found the young man too repulsive.
Harry had only the meeting with Kerridge to look forward to.
He had held back from presenting the bicycles to Rose and Daisy, feeling that, after all, the presents were a bit too expensive for a gentleman to present to two unmarried young ladies.
But Rose was being singularly pleasant to him – because she wanted to break his heart although he did not know that. So on the morning of the fourth day of the visit, he said a trifle awkwardly, ‘Lady Rose, I may be doing the wrong thing but I did bring you and Daisy a present.’
‘What is it?’ asked Rose.
‘I bought you a bicycle each.’
‘Oh, how simply marvellous. Daisy, the captain has bought us bicycles. May we start to learn to ride them
