He dismounted quickly. ‘Why, Miss Levine. I have not seen you this age. What on earth is Lady Rose doing letting Mr Baker-Willis drive her around? I thought she had turned down a proposal of marriage from him.’
‘She might come round,’ said Daisy uneasily. ‘I mean, she feels that if she got married and had her own place, and all, she wouldn’t be such a prisoner. My lord and lady keep such a close watch on her. They’re delighted she’s going about with Mr Baker-Willis, so he got permission to drive her in the park. Mind you, she does say she wants to find out if Mr Pomfret told him anything or gave him anything to keep.’
‘I wonder if she has found out anything,’ said Harry. ‘I tried to phone her but was told she was not allowed to accept calls.’
‘We’ll be cycling here in the morning at eight when its quiet. We’re allowed to do that provided two footmen come with us. You could be there.’
‘I’ll be there,’ said Harry.
He returned to Water Street and said to Becket, ‘I’ll give you some money to buy two bicycles for us.’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘I never asked you, Becket. Where did you learn to cycle?’
‘When I was a boy, sir. Where did
‘In Africa.’
‘That would be during the war.’
‘So you had a cycle when you were a boy? I somehow thought your parents were poor.’
‘Was it during the war, sir?’
‘Becket, we should not stand here all day wasting time. You’d better get to the cycle shop as fast as possible.’
Becket went off, reflecting that the captain never liked to talk about the war, and left Harry wondering, not for the first time, why Becket was so cagey about his past.
Rose and Daisy headed for the park in the morning. It was a beautiful day, the twelfth of May, Saint Pancras Day, the patron saint of ice, because farmers believed that winter had a last blast around the beginning of the month. ‘Shear your sheep in May,’ they would say, ‘and you won’t have any sheep left to shear.’ But the weather was golden, with a light morning mist drifting around the boles of the trees in the park.
Rose loved the park at this hour of the morning when there were so few people about, only a few footmen walking their owners’ dogs.
They were cycling along the Broad Walk when Rose saw the familiar figures of Harry and Becket cycling towards them.
She and Daisy dismounted and waited for them to come up to them. ‘Miss Levine told me you would be here,’ said Harry.
Rose shot an accusing look at Daisy. ‘I didn’t tell you,’ said Daisy, ‘in case you wouldn’t come.’
‘I’m surprised you came at all,’ said Rose to Harry. ‘I thought you had taken a dislike to me.’
‘Never mind that,’ said Harry hurriedly. ‘Daisy – I mean, Miss Levine – told me that you were going to ask Tristram if Freddy had asked him to keep something for him.’
‘I did ask, but he said Freddy had only asked him to keep a box of cigars because Freddy was trying to give up smoking them but couldn’t bear to give them away. He wanted Tristram to keep them for him in case he decided he couldn’t hold off any longer. Nothing there.’
Harry stood in silence. He had taken off his cap and the breeze blew a heavy lock of hair over his forehead.
‘I wonder,’ he said. ‘I wonder if there’s anything other than cigars inside that box.’
‘Wouldn’t the police have found it?’
‘Not necessarily. If it just looked like a box of cigars, they wouldn’t waste time on it. I’m going to have a look.’
‘How?’ asked Rose. Daisy and Becket had walked a little way away, wheeling their bicycles. The earl’s footmen lounged beside a tree.
‘Simple. I’ll pay a call on him and ask for a cigar.’
‘If there is anything other than cigars in that box, how will I find out? If you call on me, you will probably be told I am not at home.’
‘Can you slip out of the house?’
‘It’s difficult. The servants have been told to report my every move. These footmen will report my meeting you.’
‘Do you have any social engagements for this evening?’
‘No, thankfully. I am so weary of the round of balls and parties and calls.’
‘Is the front door locked?’
‘No, not until last thing at night.’
‘As I remember,’ said Harry, ‘there is an ante-room off the hall. I will try to get in and wait there at, say, seven o’clock. I will call on Tristram at five. He will be getting dressed to go out, I should think, at that time. If you wait in that ante-room for me, I can tell you what I have found. But I fear it is going to prove to be a box of cigars and nothing else.’
Harry presented himself at Tristram’s flat at five o’clock. A manservant told him that Mr Baker-Willis was asleep and did not want to be roused until six.
‘It’s all right,’ said Harry airily. ‘He must have forgotten he was expecting me. I’ll wait.’
‘In here, sir.’
He ushered Harry into a cluttered living-room. The room contained a horsehair sofa and two armchairs. 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
