Snobbery With Violence - M. C. Beaton [50]
She dressed in a plain divided skirt and shirt blouse and serviceable boots. She looked out of the window. It was a cold, blustery day, with great ragged clouds streaming across the sky.
“I will go. I am not a child anymore,” she admonished herself out loud.
“What’s that?” asked Daisy, who had quietly entered the room.
“Oh, I was thinking about letting the suffragette movement down,” said Rose hurriedly. “Do my hair and then leave me, Daisy. I won’t be needing you for the rest of the day.”
Rose had not wanted to ask for instructions as to how to get to the roof of the castle, but assumed if she kept on walking upwards, she would come to some sort of a door.
She walked up the main staircase and kept on walking up, ignoring the corridors which branched off to the towers. The stairs became narrower and uncarpeted. She found herself in the servants’ quarters, which stretched out on either side of her at the top landing.
A footman appeared from one of the rooms and stared at her in surprise. “May I help you, my lady?”
“I wanted to get up on the roof to look at the view,” said Rose. She had been told not to tell anyone, but surely that meant any of the guests, or Daisy.
“You go along to the right, my lady,” said the footman, “and you’ll find a door at the end. If you open it, there is a stone staircase which will take you up. Would you like me to escort you?”
“No, no, that will not be necessary. I’ll go on my own.”
Rose made her way along the corridor to the right. She came to the door the footman had mentioned and opened it. There was the staircase leading to the roof. There was still time to go back down to luncheon and tell Harry.
On the other hand, there would be the pleasure of solving the mystery and telling him she had done it all by herself.
Squaring her shoulders and wrapping the thick shawl she had brought tightly around her, she walked up. Another door. There was a large key in it and the lock looked as if it had been recently oiled. She unlocked the door and swung it open. A blast of cold air hit her face.
Rose stepped out onto the roof and shut the door behind her.
She looked around. No one in the immediate vicinity. The roof was flat, with four banks of chimneys sending out snakes of smoke which whirled about the roof.
Perhaps someone was on the other side of the banks of chimneys. She walked around them, peering through the sudden downdraft of smoke from the whirling cowls of the chimneys. She gasped and choked. Wiping her streaming eyes, she walked to the edge of the roof and took in a gulp of fresh air.
A low crenellated wall surrounded the edge of the roof. She was at the back of the castle, where the walls plunged down, sheer into the black waters of the moat.
Rose turned and looked around. The smoke from the many fires seemed to be performing some mad snake-like dance, first bending this way and that, then running along the top of the roof, sent down by the chimney-cowls.
He would have to have modern chimneys, thought Rose. If he had put in tall, fake Tudor chimneys, the smoke would be carried away from the roof and into the air.
She turned back. There was a view of the village huddled near the castle like some poverty-stricken peasant seeking warmth.
Beyond the village, near the woods, she could see the puffs of smoke from the shotguns of the men after pheasant and hear the cracks of shot. So the men would not have been present at lunch anyway. Then through the village came Harry in his car, the car looking like a toy.
On impulse, she stood at the edge and shouted and waved.
An almighty shove in her back sent her hurtling over the edge. Rose screamed and screamed as she hurtled down past the sheer walls of the castle and straight down into the moat.
Becket was seated beside his master in the open car as they drove