Sick of Shadows - M. C. Beaton [62]
“You visited a certain Reg Bolton in Wormwood Scrubs on several occasions just before his release. He is the man who tried twice to kill Lady Rose.”
“I visited him along with other prisoners. I was doing my duty, bringing Christian hope to the suffering.”
“Nobody seems to think of bringing Christian hope to the victims,” said Rose.
“Don’t you think it odd,” pursued Harry, “that after your sister is murdered, a hired assassin called Reg Bolton tries to kill Lady Rose, a man you visited?”
Jeremy’s face was wax-pale and his eyes burned with fury. “Get out of here,” he shouted. “How dare you? You are accusing me of killing my own sister.”
“You haven’t heard the end of this,” said Harry. “I am sure the police will want to interview you. Come, Rose.”
“Well, I didn’t expect to get a confession out of him,” said Rose as they walked together across the quadrangle.
“No, the purpose was to rattle him and see if he betrays himself in any way.”
Daisy and Becket sat in the front seat in sulky silence. Becket had sprung the idea on Daisy that maybe they could one day save enough to buy a little pub in the country. Daisy could work behind the bar. Daisy had said furiously that she was not going to sink to be a barmaid. Becket had called her a snob and said she had acquired ideas above her station.
Becket was driving, so Rose and Harry climbed into the back.
They went to the Randolph Hotel for luncheon. Daisy and Becket sat at a separate table, staring angrily at each other in dead silence.
“I think,” said Harry, “that I should go to Scotland Yard on our return and tell Kerridge about these visits.”
“Good idea. I shall come with you.”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Why?”
“It’s a man’s world. There are people at Scotland Yard who view my visits with disfavour. They feel Kerridge should not be wasting time with amateurs. The presence of even a beautiful lady like yourself diminishes me.”
“That’s not fair!”
“As I have just pointed out to you, it’s man’s world.”
Now Rose was, like her companion, too furious to speak. Harry tried several times to talk about various things, but she sat glaring at him and refused to utter a word.
It was a carload of silent and sulky people who returned to London.
Harry went straight to Scotland Yard. Kerridge was out on a case, so he waited patiently while the mist thickened on the river Thames outside the window.
At last Kerridge returned and listened in surprise to Harry’s story about Jeremy’s prison visits.
“I’ll pull him in for questioning.”
“It won’t do any good at the moment. All he has to do is look outraged. No one else is going to believe he had a hand in his sister’s murder. I’d like to examine that house they rented for the Season.”
“What do you expect to find? It’ll have been scrubbed from top to bottom.”
“There might just be something.”
“All right. I’ll come along with you.”
“Are you sure the servants that were there at the time didn’t hear or see anything?”
“With the exception of a temporary footman hired from an agency, the servants were all the country ones. I gather Apton Magna is a pretty poor place. They weren’t going to say anything that might mean they’d lose their jobs.”
The thin house in Clarges Street that had been rented by the Tremaines was standing empty. They got the key from the factor and let themselves in, then searched high and low, Harry crawling along the floor-boards, to see if one bloodstain might have been overlooked.
“She might have been killed here,” said Harry. “She certainly wasn’t killed in that boat or there would have been a lot more blood.”
“The pathologist said that costume had been put on her after her death and the blood from the wound on her chest had seeped through the material.”
“You didn’t tell me that.”
“You’re not in the force and I have plenty of other cases taking up my time, which reminds me, if you’re finished here I’d like to get back to the Yard.”
“I hate being passed over just because I’m a woman,” raged Rose, walking up and down her sitting-room. “I’d like to show him I can detect better than he