Kitty rang the bell beside a neat white card marked Styles & Longfield on the door of a red, sandstone building in Sloane Square. The door opened and a very small girlish-looking man held out his hand. “I’m Bertie Longfield. I’m afraid Charlie was called away to see a sick aunt but his sister is acting as hostess. Do come in.”
He ushered Kitty into a small sitting room. Three elegant young men languidly got to their feet. Bertie made the introductions and said that Charlie’s sister, Charlotte, would be along directly.
The door opened and Charlotte sailed in. She looked remarkably like her brother except that her hair was brassy-blonde and she had a high falsetto voice.
“Such a charming little bird of paradise has flown among us. Hasn’t she, dear boys? Charming. Love your teagie. Do sit down, darling and have some darling, darling cakes. So delicate, aren’t they? Like the sunlight on angels’ wings.”
“Quite,” replied Kitty faintly.
“Love, love, love the drooping lines of your teagie, absolutely deevie. Beardsley, that’s it! Quintessence of Beardsley. Don’t you agree, darling boys?”
The darling boys were rolling around the room in fits of the giggles. Kitty began to be annoyed. The room was stuffy and overcrowded with all sorts of irritating bits and bobbles. Heavy blinds sealed off the summer sunshine and cast a pale light upon a large portrait of a nude of indeterminate sex which hung above the fireplace.
Kitty was reminded of a time in the schoolroom when her dress had been unfastened at the back and, instead of telling her about it, the other girls had sniggered all day. She decided it was time the new Kitty took over. A faint look of hauteur settled on her young face. “What are you all sniggering about?” she demanded in a high clear voice.
The giggling stopped. The bevy of young men looked at each other helplessly. “Oh, don’t mind them,” said Charlotte. “Boys will be boys, I always say.”
“How unoriginal of you,” said Kitty sweetly. “What for example do you not usually say. I’m sure it must be something very witty.”
To her surprise, the young men burst out in a sort of Greek chorus of “Oh, naughty, naughty. Claws in! Claws in!”
Kitty stared at them in surprise. A little light began to dawn. “Mr. Styles is a devotee of Mr. Oscar Wilde. Are you all perhaps of the… same… religion, shall we say?”
There was a stunned silence. The innocent, naive child of the middle classes that Charlie Styles had promised them, was turning out to be as formidable as a dowager.
“Oh, do have a cake,” said the much-flustered Charlotte. She bent over the tea table and a corner of her dress caught on her chair and lifted up to expose a length of black, hairy, muscular leg encased in a black sock and suspenders. Charlotte Styles was Charlie after all. Blazing with fury inside but keeping a calm, social smile on her face, Kitty got to her feet and insisted on taking her leave.
“Do not trouble yourself, Charlotte. I can see myself out,” said Kitty. As she reached the door, she raised the point of her lacy parasol and, watched by a horrified audience, she neatly lifted “Charlotte’s” blond wig from his head and threw it into the fireplace.
Charlie Styles burst into tears. “Get out!” he screamed, his face like an anguished clown’s, as the tears mixed with paint and powder coursed down his cheeks.
Kitty took several deep breaths when she reached the street. She decided to take the underground railway home in the hope that the novel experience would take away some of the nightmare of the afternoon.
She bought a ticket at Sloane Square station and went down the steps to the platform which was surely unusually crowded. As she waited in the press, a portly man told her that a train had broken down but that the line was now clear and another train would be through any minute. “I’ve never traveled underground before,” confided Kitty.
“Oh, I’m used to it,” said her portly friend. “But m’ daughter—she’s about your age—gets very excited. Here… if you move a little to the front, you’ll see the train coming along the track.”
Kitty leaned forward but all she could see was the black mouth of the tunnel. Then she heard a faint rumbling sound and the ground began to tremble under her feet. “That’s it now,” she cried. “I can hear it coming.”
She turned her head to smile at her new friend and received a vicious shove on the back which sent her sailing onto the tracks. Everyone started screaming at once and Kitty saw the lights of the train bearing down upon her. Suddenly a man was beside her on the tracks. He lifted her bodily, threw her like a rag doll onto the platform, and then leaped to safety himself as the train thundered into the station. It was Judson, Lady Mainwaring’s footman.
Kitty was so terrified and flustered and dizzied by the anxious faces, that she would have allowed herself to be swept onto the train with the crowd, but Judson held her back. “This is a matter for the police, my Lady,” he said.
She put a trembling hand to her brow. “The police, Judson?”
“Wot’s all this ’ere?” said an authoritative voice. Judson explained, the policeman took out his notebook, and everyone began to talk at once. It had been a little fellow with a scar, it had been an old lady in a big hat, it had been that fat man over there. Kitty’s new friend explained that he had been standing beside her when she fell but that he had not seen who had pushed her. Kitty, Judson, and the most coherent of the witnesses were led off to Chelsea police station where they spent a confusing hour making statements and getting nowhere.
The inspector settled the babble. If my Lady would go home, then a gentleman from Scotland Yard would call on her as soon as possible.
Lady Mainwaring was very worried when she heard the news about the latest attempt on Kitty’s life. The sooner the girl’s marriage was settled the better. Emily Mainwaring, who had always considered herself a sympathizer with the agitators for women’s emancipation, now suddenly wished Kitty would get pregnant. That would settle her down. Nothing like a nursery full of children to keep her out of mischief. She told Kitty to go and relax in the garden and sent a messenger off to find Lord Peter Chesworth.
The light was fading over the city as Kitty sat at the edge of the canal and wondered who was trying to kill her. Perhaps the incidents were not related at all. The incident at Hadsea could simply have been a practical joke that had gone too far. And the press on the platform at Sloane Square underground station had been so great, someone could have lunged against her by accident.
She was suddenly aware of someone walking across the grass toward her and turned her head sharply. It was her husband, the expression on his face unreadable in the dimming light. He sat down next to her without a word and they both stared straight ahead at the glassy waters of the canal. The orange glow that was nighttime London began to spread across the sky and the ever-present hum of the great city reached their ears, faintly. Some wild animal roared in his cage in the nearby zoo and the sharp clop of a horse’s hoofs on the street outside the house only served to punctuate the stillness of the evening.
Kitty slid her eyes sideways and studied her husband’s profile, the high-bridged nose, the hooded eyes, and the long, thin, mobile mouth. He suddenly turned and looked at her and she blushed.
“My dear,” he said, “this situation is ridiculous. Your life is in danger and I feel I should have some right to protect you.”
“You have no right,” said Kitty in such a low voice that he had to strain to hear.
He studied his wife’s averted profile for a minute and then began. “Before I met you, I was having an affair with a certain lady, I think you know that.”
“Yes,” whispered Kitty.
“That is all very definitely over.”
Now Kitty jerked her head around. “Over! It certainly doesn’t look like it.”
“I have tried to explain matters to the lady but she is… well… very possessive. I’m sorry about it, Kitty. Will you forgive me? Our marriage has had such a bad start. I feel sure we could make something of it if only we tried a little. Will you come home with me?”
He rested his arm along the back of her chair without touching her but she felt as if an electric shock had been passed through her body. She sat very still, her face unreadable in the gathering dark.
He went on, his voice hesitating slightly. “I have not been, by any means, a saint, Kitty. I have had a lot of experience with… well… experienced women. I have never had to… court a young girl like yourself and I find myself somewhat at a loss and that makes me behave in a somewhat boorish manner at times.”
Still his wife kept silent.
“I heard you say the other night that you were lonely. Well, I am lonely too, in a certain way. At the moment, all that I am asking you for is companionship. I will not… share your bed until we have perhaps reached a certain understanding.
“I was worried sick about losing Reamington. A lot of the chaps in my position marry heiresses and, like a fool, I did not realize that I was also responsible for another human being. I thought you would go your way and I’d go mine. But I hate it when you go away, Kitty. Please come home with me.”
It had cost Peter Chesworth a great deal to make this speech and suddenly he realized that if she rejected him, he would feel like an utter fool. His wife gave a little sigh and he suddenly burst out, “Oh, for God’s sake, can’t you open your bloody mouth?”
The instant it was out, he could have bitten off his tongue but his wife gave a low gurgle of laughter. “Now that sounds more like the husband I know. Yes, Peter, I will come back with you on those terms. Goodness knows, I have been getting into some terrible messes. I had better tell you about them because I’ve discovered that society gossip is faster than Marconi any day.”
She began to tell her husband about her adventures with Henry and then of her visit to Charlie Styles. At first she began quietly and sorrowfully but finally the idiocy of both adventures struck her and she began to laugh. Peter laughed with her, particularly at the tale of Charlie Styles’s wig but he inwardly decided to give Henry Dwight-Hammond a bloody nose at the first opportunity.
Gratified to find that her aristocratic husband was not going to call her a naive fool and that he, on the contrary, was the first person that had ever really listened to her, Kitty went on to tell him about the evening at the Pugsleys. He laughed heartily at the story of Mr. Pugsley’s new suspenders but stopped when Kitty began to tell him about little Jane Pugsley’s “imaginings” of a hand at the window setting fire to the curtains. He would have put it down to a child’s vivid imagination had it not been for the subsequent attempts on Kitty’s life.
Peter closed his long fingers around Kitty’s little hand. “You need not be frightened again, my dear. We will go everywhere together.”
Kitty looked down at the hand clasping hers. She was held rigid in a sea of ecstatic emotion as little waves of feeling lapped through her body. All thoughts of her handsome husband being a murderer fled into the dark corners of the summer evening. Kitty sat as still as a statue, frightened to move and break the spell, quite unaware that her highly sophisticated husband was experiencing the same emotions.
Peter Chesworth was fascinated that this slight physical contact with this young girl—his wife—could hold him imprisoned in a stronger current of passion than he had ever felt before during the most intimate contact with other women.
Both of them sat, rapt and enchanted, almost painfully aware of every sight and scent in the dark summer’s night. A clump of delphiniums blazed in the darkness like a blue flame, a single ripple snaked across the canal like a brush stroke in a Chinese painting and the tinny music from a party in one of the nearby houses sounded infinitely poignant. The smells of cooking from the kitchens—wine, onions, fresh bread, and herbs—mingled with the heady scents of the flowers in the garden.
Lady Mainwaring took one step into the garden, looked at the silent figures by the water and retreated into the house. How odd to think that she had sat just like that one summer’s evening long ago with a young man who was to become her husband. Emily sighed. All that magic of youth and love fleeing before the humdrum daily routine of marriage, turning the tremulous young girl into a brittle sophisticate and the young man into a middle-aged eccentric, dying of diphtheria contracted in a London slum, because his pride had been hurt.
Past forgotten and future unheeded, the enchanted couple sat on, mute, their hands still clasped. Then there was a discreet cough behind them and the evening shattered like fragile glass. Kitty became aware of a cramp in her leg and Lord Chesworth noticed that a large beetle was crawling across the garden table.
“A person from Scotland Yard to see you, my Lady,” said the butler. “I have put him in the study.”
“That’ll be about what happened this afternoon in the underground,” said Kitty, getting to her feet. “Do come with me.”
But the detective from Scotland Yard said, firmly and politely, that he would like to see the Baroness alone. Lord Chesworth opened his mouth to protest but Kitty smiled at him so warmly and said, “I am sure it will only take a minute, Peter, and then we can go home,” that he merely shrugged and left the room.
The detective introduced himself as Mr. Albert Grange. At first sight, he was an unprepossessing man. He had a round, fat, middle-aged face embellished with a tired mustache and thin strands of hair carefully arranged on the top of his head to conceal as much of his baldness as possible. His grubby, high, celluloid collar was cutting into his jowls and his dark gray suit showed shiny patches of wear. But his little brown eyes were twinkling with intelligence and he had a fatherly manner that was very endearing.
“Well, my Lady,” he said, “I’m blessed if I know where to begin. How’s about you beginning at the beginning and telling me about everything in your own words. Now, there’s no one in the room but you and me and I’m not going to take notes. So just you talk away about every little bit that you can think of.”
“It all started at Hadsea,” said Kitty.
Mr. Grange interrupted. “No… start before Hadsea. Before you was married would be a good beginning.”
For the second time that evening, Kitty had found a good listener. She told more than she knew. The astute Mr. Grange quickly grasped that her mother had arranged the marriage but he said nothing until Kitty had reached the end of her story.
Then Mr. Grange asked in a deceptively mild voice, “You don’t suspect your husband, now, do you?”
“Of course not,” Kitty nearly screamed and then calmed herself. “Why should I?”
“Well, now. You’re a very wealthy young lady by all accounts.”
“But he has my money. I—I—mean, my m-money is his,” stammered Kitty.
Mr. Grange looked at her thoughtfully. “You must pardon me, my Lady, if my questions seem impertinent, but money breeds more crime than anything—next to passion that is. We get lots of these here creem passionellies down at the Yard. But in this case, there’s no question of another lady, now?”
Kitty thought of Veronica Jackson. He had said it was over. She must trust him.
“No—none at all, and may I suggest, Mr. Grange, that we look for someone else. I do love my husband, you see.” Her voice broke a little on the last sentence and Mr. Grange took mental note. Loves her husband all right, he thought cynically, but that isn’t the problem. The problem is—does he love her or that Mrs. Jackson he’s been seen around with? But he felt he had gone far enough.
He tried another tack. “What about this Lady Henley. You say your mother got in touch with her by advertising in the Times. Can you imagine, just imagine, mind, that this Lady Henley would want to kill you?”
Kitty giggled. “Not unless she’s turned cannibal. She isn’t interested in anything but food.”
“Well, then, has anyone shown you any bit of dislike or hate that you can think of?”
Kitty thought of the screaming, crying Charlie Styles but to explain it to the detective would send Charlie and his friends to prison. Then there was Veronica. But that would mean betraying her husband’s trust. She shook her head.
“Well, my Lady, that leaves us pretty much where we started. Now if I could just take you through it all again….”
It was two hours later when the detective decided he had gotten as much as he was going to get that evening. “I’ll call on your mother and Lady Henley tomorrow,” he said. “Now, if you would just tell his Lordship to step in here for a few minutes…”
Kitty found her husband pacing up and down the hall outside. “Of course I’ll see him,” he said when she relayed her message. “And I’ll get rid of him quickly. Insufferable little bounder. Go and see to your packing.”
But Kitty was not to learn what passed between the detective and her husband. Peter Chesworth was very silent on the road home and Kitty desperately wished he would say something to raise the cloud from her mind. For the detective’s insinuations had started her worrying again. What did she know, after all, of this strange man sitting next to her?
He seemed to brighten, however, when they reached their town house. He sent Checkers, the butler, to fetch the decanter of sherry and ushered her into the drawing room. Kitty looked at Checker’s fat retreating back and when he had closed the door on them, she asked her husband, “Did you hire the servants, Peter? They are not at all like the ones at Reamington.”
“No, why?” said Peter. “Your mother engaged the staff here. If you don’t like any of them, get rid of them.”
Kitty quailed before the idea of giving the slab-faced Checkers notice. “Perhaps it’s because I am not used to many servants,” she ventured. “I will wait a few days.”
The door opened abruptly and Checkers entered bearing the tray. He turned his back on Peter as he deferentially handed Kitty her glass. She glanced up into his watery eyes and started at the look of undisguised venom on his fat white face. In a second it was gone, leaving her to think that she must be overtired and imagining things.
After they had finished their drinks, Peter escorted his wife to the door of her bedroom. He bent his head and kissed her lightly on the cheek but her body was so soft and pliant against his and that scent from her hair—gardenia, that was it—was clouding his senses. His mouth slid across her cheek and found her mouth and Kitty’s mind went spiraling off into a dark, dark night lit by bursts of fireworks. Then, gradually, as if it were happening to someone else, she became aware of long, hard fingers stroking her bosom and a lean muscular leg pressing between her thighs. Bright-colored images chased each other across the night of her mind. The sun sparkling on the blond hairs on Henry’s hand as it clutched her breast, Charlie’s blond wig lying in the fireplace, and the white body of her husband, gleaming in the electricity as he laughed at her picture. She went rigid and cold as if someone had thrown a bucket of water over her. Peter was immediately aware of her reaction and cursed himself for getting carried away. He kissed her lightly on the forehead and with a husky “good night” took himself off to his own room.
Immediately, Kitty wanted him back. Not to hold her like that in that frightening way but just… she wanted… oh, what in the name of heaven did she want! Kitty threw herself on her bed and indulged in a much-needed bout of tears.
Kitty shyly entered the breakfast room next morning but the passionate lover of the night before was immersed in the Daily Telegraph and merely smiled at her and returned to his paper.
At last he put it down and turned his attention to his breakfast. “Good God,” he exclaimed, lifting cover after cover. “This all looks as if it had been made a week ago. Checkers, who on earth is our cook?”
“Mrs. Checkers,” replied the butler blandly.
“Your wife, eh? Well you’d better straighten her out this morning, Kitty.”
Again that look from Checkers, a mixture of insolence and venom, was directed at Kitty. But this time her husband intercepted it.
“Checkers, you’re dismissed. You’ve got your marching orders. Now go, and take your wife with you. Your wages will be forwarded to you,” snapped Peter Chesworth.
The butler opened his mouth to say something and was forestalled.
“You want to know the reason, I suppose,” said Peter Chesworth. “Well, I’m dismissing you for dumb insolence and not because of your wife’s hellish cooking. Not another word. Go.”
The butler hesitated but Peter Chesworth was again reading his paper and Kitty realized that her husband did not doubt for a minute that his order would be disobeyed. Nor was it. Checkers finally choked out, “Very good, my Lord,” and closed the door quietly behind him.
Peter Chesworth threw down his paper again. “I’m dashed if I know what’s going on. Because of all this marriage mess—sorry, Kitty—I never really looked at any of the servants. I’d better run around to Scotland Yard and get that detective of yours onto Checkers. I’ve never seen anyone with such a vile look. Why, he looked as if he could have murdered you,” he added cheerfully.
Kitty shuddered. “I was going to have luncheon with Mama today and I wondered if you would join me?”
Her husband looked at her in dismay. “Can’t do it, my dear. I have a luncheon appointment in the city with a chap who’s getting me a special deal on a cart-load of superphosphates.”
His wife looked puzzled and Peter laughed. “I forget you don’t know about farming. Well, it’s one of our farms at Reamington. Jezzald, the farmer, has been overstocking and he doesn’t even care. He’s taken the heart out of the land until it’s good for nothing. Tell you what, I’ll drop you off at your mother’s and then pick you up afterward. Then my agent had better come over and get rid of this lot of servants and get us some more.”
“Oh, but that’s heartless!” cried Kitty. “Some of them might not deserve to lose their jobs.”
“You’ll lose your life by one of them if we’re not careful,” said her husband grimly. “Don’t worry, my agent will sort through their references.” There was a slight noise outside the door.
He leaped to his feet but whoever had been in the hallway was gone.
At midday, he escorted Kitty to Park Lane and helped her down from the carriage and bent gallantly to kiss her gloved hand. Kitty looked down at the black, curly head bent over her hand and began to stammer, “P-Peter, I would like to t-tell you…” and then lost her courage. She desperately wanted to explain why she had rejected his lovemaking the night before but standing in the middle of the pavement with the coachman within earshot, she felt suddenly shy of the tall stranger who was her husband.
“I just wanted… to know… that is, when will you be finished with your luncheon?”
“Oh, not very long. Less than two hours if the traffic in the city isn’t too heavy. Is that what you really wanted to say?” The pale gray eyes looked uncomfortably shrewd.
“N-no,” said Kitty. “But I’ll tell you later.”
He watched her slight figure walk up the steps and then sprang into the carriage and directed the coachman to drive to the city.
Lady Henley was waiting alone. “Your mama is not feeling very well,” she said. “She’s gone to lie down. Don’t know what’s the matter. She was all right this morning. Quite her usual old self. Then she had a sort of faint turn. Anyway, I’ve ordered a light luncheon for the pair of us.”
The luncheon was indeed light by Lady Henley’s standards—only five courses with a different wine for each course. Kitty began to feel quite light-headed towards the end. Usually, she was very careful and only drank a little but Lady Henley had proved to be an unusually entertaining companion when she put her mind to it and Kitty found that she had absent-mindedly been draining each glass.
“Where did you say your husband was?” asked Lady Henley.
“He’s gone to buy a load of phosphates for one of the farms at Reamington.”
Lady Henley grunted. “That’s Peter Chesworth all over. When he was in Afghanistan with my son—” She paused. “Didn’t you know your husband used to be in the army?”
Kitty shook her head. “Well, what a strange couple you are to be sure,” said Lady Henley. “Peter was a Captain in the Wiltshires and a very brave soldier. But my poor son, John, caught a bullet and died in the hospital in Peshawar and Peter got a nasty case of enteric fever and was sent home.
“John used to write to me a lot about Peter. Peter was his Captain. John used to say Peter would dream of nothing but Reamington. His father was alive at the time and drinking and gambling the estate into rack and ruin. ‘I’ll save Reamington!’” Peter used to tell my son. ‘Even if I have to sell my soul to do it!’”
Lady Henley saw the distress on Kitty’s face. “Don’t take it to heart, my dear. I don’t think you realize how much his land means to a man like Peter Chesworth. He loves every stick and stone, man, woman, and child on his estate. He’s a good landlord and God knows, there ain’t many of that kind of old aristocracy left. He’ll expect you to look after his people too. You’ll need to see that John on the home farm is going to the dentist and that Molly in the village is attending school and that Jane is marrying the right man and that the old people have enough to eat. All that kind of thing. You didn’t just marry Peter Chesworth, you married all these other people y’ see. But have your fun in London first because it’s a lot of work.”
Kitty suddenly remembered Checkers. She told Lady Henley about her husband getting rid of the servants. “Very odd,” commented Lady Henley. “But your mama got quite uppity with me. Wanted to get them herself. Probably went to some riff-raff agency.”
The dessert was served—a bowl of chartreuse de pèches à la Reine Alexandra—and Lady Henley let out a grunt of pure pleasure. “Goody. M’ favorite,” she explained.
“I don’t think I can eat any more,” said Kitty faintly.
Lady Henley’s eyes glistened. In an effort to do right by her young guest, she had restrained her gluttony. But enough was enough. She drew the bowl toward her and wolfed the whole confection down, gave a hearty, satisfied belch, and called for a plate of petits fours. “Don’t think I’ll bother about a savory today,” she remarked, shoving petits fours into her mouth with amazing rapidity. The little biscuits had been served in a basket made of intricately spun and woven toffee. Lady Henley picked it up and gave it a baffled look and then, with an almost apologetic glance at Kitty, clamped her jaws around the handle of the basket and started to crunch happily, like a dog with a delicious bone. Slivers of toffee flew right and left and me room was silent except for Lady Henley’s massive crunchings.
Kitty began to feel dizzy with the amount of food and wine she had consumed. “I think I’ll need to get some fresh air, Lady Henley,” she said, rising and clutching the back of her chair for support.
“I’ll take you for a drive in the park,” said Lady Henley, heaving herself to her feet and ringing for the carriage.
The fresh air did wonders for Kitty. She felt alive and happy and inclined to burst into fits of giggles at the sight of a woman in a large hat or an organ grinder’s monkey. Lady Henley felt her eyes beginning to close, glad that her young friend seemed to be in spirits. A snore from her companion sent Kitty into gales of laughter and the astonished stares from the people in the other carriages in the Row made her laugh even harder. The world around her dizzied, sparkled and whirled like bubbles in a champagne glass. She felt like dancing. She would dance! She called on the coachman to stop and before he knew what she was about, she had nipped smartly down from the carriage and started dancing away among the other carriages, her frothy skirts sailing about her. With an oath, the coachman told the footman to “get to their heads” and ran after the dancing girl. Carriages stopped, lorgnettes were raised in amazement. Voices cried, “I say, isn’t that Lady Chesworth?”
How delicious it all was! Kitty did a particularly fancy pirouette to the enchanting music singing in her head and bumped up against a stationary carriage. She found herself staring into the horrified eyes of her husband. Beside him sat Veronica Jackson, gleefully surveying her from head to toe.
Peter’s carriage had been stopped by Veronica at the corner of Park Lane. Would he mind driving her to the park? She was to meet a friend there. It would only take a minute. When they reached the park, she kept craning her head to look for the mysterious friend and Peter Chesworth had just decided that the friend did not exist when he looked down and saw his wife.
Kitty glared straight at Veronica and the champagne bubble burst. “Get out of that carriage and leave my husband alone,” said Kitty. Her voice had carried and the fashionable throng seemed to stop their carriages as one.
“Oh, go away,” hissed Veronica. “You’re drunk!”
“Get down from that carriage now… you damned harpy.”
Veronica trembled artistically against Peter. “Darling, can’t you do something with her?”
That was the final straw. Kitty seized Veronica by the arm and gave it a mighty tug. Veronica pulled back and then made the mistake of standing up. Kitty caught at her dress and gave another heave and Veronica tumbled over headlong onto the grass. There were loud cheers from several of the young men in the carriages around. Cursing, Peter Chesworth jumped to the ground to help Veronica to her feet. She immediately fell heavily against him and put her arms around his neck.
Peter was trying to ease her away from him and avoid the rain of blows descending on his head from Kitty’s parasol. Lady Henley’s coachman came panting up and Peter almost shoved Veronica into his arms. He then seized his enraged wife and carried her bodily into the carriage. “Drive on, man!” he yelled to his coachman. Kitty had begun to sob hysterically. Her hair was falling down and she had dust and dirt on her skirts from where they had whirled and brushed against the various carriages.
By the time they had reached Hyde Park corner, Kitty was sobbing quietly and by the time they reached home, she was fast asleep. He carried her up the stairs and laid her gently on her bed. He rang the bell for the maid. No reply. He left Kitty sleeping and ran quickly down the stairs to the servants’ quarters. Not a soul in sight.
There was a rumble of carriages outside and then a knock at the door. To Peter Chesworth’s relief it turned out to be an army of servants from Reamington, headed by the efficient agent, Bryson.
Mr. Bryson shook his head when Peter explained the situation. “I’m sure I don’t know where Mrs. Harrison got those servants from. I can’t find out anything about any of them.”
Peter scribbled out a report on the disappearance of the servants and sent Bryson around to Scotland Yard with it. Then he took himself off to visit Mrs. Harrison.
Mrs. Harrison was lying on a chaise longue in the drawing room at Park Lane. She seemed composed and normal and could give him no help over the matter of the servants. “All I can tell you is that I went to Beechman’s Agency and ordered all the servants. The agency promised to forward me their references but they never arrived.” She gave him the address of the agency in Shoreditch and leaned back and closed her eyes.
“You must forgive me, Peter, but my doctor recommends quiet and rest I cannot speak to you further.”
Peter Chesworth took his leave and hailed a passing four-wheeler and gave the cabby the address in Shoreditch. It turned out to be an unprepossessing back street and, where the agency should have been, was a fire-blackened gap in the buildings. A slatternly woman nursing her baby on a nearby doorstep volunteered the information that the fire had taken place the previous week but whether there had been an agency there or not she couldn’t remember. He received much the same reply up and down the street and eventually gave up and decided to leave the rest of the inquiries to Scotland Yard.
When he returned home, he found that his wife was awake but looking pale and sick. She complained of a blinding headache and her eyes kept filling with tears of remorse as she remembered her behavior in the park.
Her husband, who was more worried about her welfare than he cared to admit, tactlessly gave her a blistering lecture on the evils of drink, worthy of a Methodist preacher. Kitty’s remorse fled.
“You weren’t exactly behaving like an angel yourself,” she snapped. “Parading around the park with your mistress.”
Lord Chesworth’s thin face flushed with anger. “I told you that that affair is over. Mrs. Jackson asked me to escort her to the park where she was to meet a friend…”
“Hah!” said his wife nastily.
“… to where, I repeat, she was to meet a friend.”
“And where was the friend?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” shouted her husband, feeling guilty because he was sure that Veronica had invented the whole thing. “We didn’t have time to look before you danced up, staggering and slobbering.”
“I was not staggering or slobbering,” screamed Kitty. “I was a bit tiddly, that’s all. You still have not told me what you were doing in the park with that whore.”
“I’ve told you,” shouted her husband. “Don’t try to put me in the wrong just because you’re ashamed of having made a spectacle of yourself.”
“Spectacle of myself? Spectacle of myself?” howled Kitty, jumping up and down.
“Stop repeating yourself like a bloody parrot. If you insist on behaving like a guttersnipe, you’ll be treated like one.”
“Me behave like a guttersnipe? We were above your sort of behavior in Hampstead, my Lord.”
“Nonsense. Utter twaddle! Your sort are hypocrites. Down on their knees in church on Sundays and straight into the housemaid’s bed the rest of the week.”
“My sort! What is my sort, you stupid lecher?”
Lord Chesworth had never been so angry. He looked straight at his infuriated wife and said, “Common.”
The insult burned in the sudden silence between them.
Then Kitty’s anger erupted again. Every humiliation she had suffered since she had married the Baron, burned before her eyes. Before he knew what she was about, she had picked up a vase of roses and dumped the contents over his head. “Why you little hellcat,” he shouted. He grabbed hold of her arm and gave her a hearty smack on the backside and then howled with pain. Kitty was wearing her stays.
Kitty grabbed a handful of his black curls and banged his head against the wall. He gave her a tremendous push which sent her flying back onto the carpet and then dived on top of her, pinioning her hands above her head and staring down at her flushed, furious face.
The anger slowly died out of his eyes and was replaced by a mocking look. He grinned wickedly. “Now I’ve got you where I want you,” he laughed and bent and kissed her.
Kitty kicked and struggled and tried to wrench her mouth away but he was lying on top of her and she found she could neither move nor fight the sensuous, languorous feeling that was seeping through her body. She gave a little groan and surrendered her mouth to his.
Suddenly, their attention was drawn to the door.
“Lady Henley and Mrs. Harrison,” said the butler, staring straight ahead. Peter Chesworth raised his head and stared straight into the glittering eyes of Mrs. Harrison. The drawing room looked a wreck. Chairs and tables were overturned and Peter had roses caught in his hair and water dripping from his shoulders. Kitty, who was savagely wondering why good servants never knocked, tried to straighten her crumpled dress.
“How dare you!” said Mrs. Harrison.
“Now, now,” said Lady Henley. “They’re married, after all. We were passing and decided to give you a call. I’m feeling puckish, Kitty. Have you got anything to eat?”
The butler opened his mouth to say that dinner was to be served shortly, caught the look in his master’s eyes, and closed his mouth again.
“We haven’t got time to eat,” said Mrs. Harrison. “I would like to know what business a detective from Scotland Yard has calling on me.”
“There have been at least two attempts on your daughter’s life,” said Peter. “Surely we must do all we can to find out who is trying to kill her.”
“It’s all imagination,” said Mrs. Harrison. “I’ve never heard such rubbish. You’ve all been reading too many novels. The detective was a most inferior vulgar person.”
“She told him that too,” said Lady Henley. Her stomach suddenly gave a protesting rumble and she looked down at it sadly like a mother looking down on an importunate child. “Well, if you ain’t got any food, we’d better take ourselves off. Come on, Euphemia, we called at a bad time.”
“We called just at the right time,” said Mrs. Harrison, eyeing the disheveled pair. “I hope things have not gone too far.”
“Oh, come on,” grumbled Lady Henley. “Anyone would think they weren’t married the way you go on.” Her stomach issued another huge rumble and she gave it a pat. Kitty tried not to giggle. Any minute now, she thought, she’s going to say “there, there.”
Mrs. Harrison backed from the room, still staring at them.
“Mrs. Veronica Jackson,” the butler announced.
Everyone froze and gazed at Veronica who sailed in. She looked radiantly lovely and her dress of her favorite scarlet emphasized the whiteness of her skin and the glossiness of her black hair.
Mrs. Harrison swept off, her back rigid with disapproval. Lady Henley lumbered after her, grumbling under her breath with her rumbling stomach adding a sort of counterpoint.
“I thought I would call and see how Kitty was,” said Veronica brightly. Her blue eyes swept over the disordered pair and round the wreck of the room. “Been having a row?”
“Don’t be impertinent,” said Kitty. She rang the bell. “Mrs. Jackson is just leaving,” she told the butler.
“This is the last time I pay a courtesy call on you,” snapped Veronica.
“Good,” remarked Kitty indifferently, picking roses off the floor.
“Wait a minute, Veronica,” said Peter. Here was a golden opportunity to explain matters to Veronica and get her out of his married life once and for all. Then he realized his mistake. Kitty gave him one shocked look and fled from the room.
The butler waited for a minute, looking from his master to Mrs. Jackson, and then left the room, closing the door quietly.
Peter ran his fingers through his hair. “This is one hell of a mess, Veronica. Look, I’ve got some explaining to do.”
“I think you have,” said Veronica with a slight smile.
She sat down gracefully on the sofa and patted the seat beside her. Peter sat down and took both her hands in his. He felt he must break it to her as gently as possible.
“We have had many happy times, Veronica,” he began.
“Oh, yes, Peter,” she sighed mistily.
“But the time has come when I must talk to you about my marriage. I—”
The butler reentered and Peter Chesworth swore. “There are several persons to see you, my Lord. They are creating a great disturbance. They say the name is Pugsley, my Lord.”
“Oh, your wife’s friends,” said Veronica spitefully. “Send them in. You must see them, Peter.” Veronica felt that Peter’s resolve to rid himself of his wife would be strengthened by an introduction to Kitty’s low acquaintances.
“You don’t understand,” said Peter desperately. But the butler was already announcing, “Mr. and Mrs. Pugsley and family.”
The Pugsleys sidled in, gazing about them with their mouths open.
“Well, what is it?” demanded Peter.
“My Lord, my Lady,” began Mrs. Pugsley and then stared at Veronica. “’Ere, that’s not our Kitty what you was ’olding ’ands with.”
Mr. Pugsley grabbed his wife’s arm and said in a stentorian whisper, “Shut yer gab. That’s ’is fancy woman.”
Veronica rose to her feet. “I must leave you with your fascinating friends, Peter darling.” She kissed her fingers to him and sailed from the room, holding her little lace handkerchief pointedly to her nose as she passed the Pugsleys.
Mr. Pugsley took over as spokeman. “Now that ’er ’as gone,” he said, “we’ll come to the point. We’ve bin ruined, owing to that there fire what was caused by your good lady’s party.”
Lord Chesworth eyed him with distaste. “You want money, I suppose.”
Bob Pugsley shuffled his feet. “Well, that’s a bit crude-like, that way of puttin’ it, but since you ’as put it—yes.”
“I will need to consult my wife,” said Peter icily. “Should she wish to give you anything more, I will suggest she sets up a trust for your children’s care and education. Anything you want for yourself, Pugsley, I suggest you work for it.”
“You got a job for me?” said Pugsley.
To his horror, his lordship smiled and said, “Yes, as a matter of fact I have. There is a cozy cottage available on my estate and the job of farm laborer that goes with it.”
“’Ere,” said Bob Pugsley, grabbing his wife’s arm for support. “Let’s get out of ’ere.”
“We ain’t goin’ nowheres, Bob Pugsley,” said his wife, oblivious of the fact that her youngest was being sick on the carpet and that her eldest was trying to stuff a silver candlestick into his jacket. “We’ll take it, my Lord, and gladly. And beggin’ your pardon, I’m sure, I ’opes there ain’t any ’ard liquor or dogs on your place.”
Peter smiled and shook his head. He scribbled a note. “Here! That’s to my agent. He’ll start your husband working right away and help you set up the cottage.”
Bob Pugsley saw the prison walls closing about him. “It’s me back, me Lord,” he yelled. He clutched his back, gave several artistic moans and fell to the carpet, calling faintly for brandy.
Mrs. Pugsley looked on unconcerned. “We’re most grateful, your Lordship, ain’t we Bob?” She pushed her moaning husband with her foot. “C’mon then, Bob, afore you dies of shock.”
Showing surprising strength for such a small woman, she hauled her husband to his feet and marched him to the door. Her offspring fell into line behind her. “We’ll pray for you, me Lord,” said the eldest Pugsley child with an ingratiating smile.
“Thank you,” said his lordship, putting his hand inside the child’s jacket and recovering the candlestick. “Thank you very much.”
When they had left, he gave a sigh of relief and went in search of his wife. She was in her bedroom, changing to go out.
“You need a maid,” he remarked. “The mysterious Colette seems to have disappeared along with the rest.”
“I have done without a maid to dress me for most of my life, so I don’t see why I need one now,” said Kitty pettishly.
“Then you had better change your dressmaker,” remarked her husband. “Who is going to fasten all those buttons on the back of that very pretty gown you’re wearing?”
Kitty twisted around. In her agitation, she had left the back of her dress undone. “I’ll do it myself,” she said, fumbling behind her with the tiny buttons.
He watched her for a few seconds and then went to stand behind her. “Here, let me,” he said quietly. “It’s one of the things that husbands are good at.”
“Particularly mine,” said Kitty bitterly as his long fingers deftly fastened the buttons. “He’s had lots of practice.”
Peter took her by the shoulders and spun her around. “I’ve explained and explained to you about Mrs. Jackson. Don’t you trust me?”
“No,” said his wife, in a small voice.
He made an exasperated noise and bent to kiss her but she stayed motionless and unresponsive in his arms. He felt as if she had slapped him. He put her away from him and stormed to the door. “I’m going out.”
“To Mrs. Jackson, I suppose,” said Kitty, her large eyes bright with unshed tears.
“Damn Mrs. Jackson and damn you,” raged her husband. “I’m going to my club—to get drunk.”
He went out and slammed the door.
Kitty stared around the room, irresolute. If only she could trust him! She would take her problem to Emily Mainwaring.
Lady Mainwaring was at home working in her garden. She listened sympathetically to Kitty and then put down her gardening tools and came to sit at the table by the canal. “I believe him, you know,” said Emily. “Veronica Jackson is a vulgar, grasping woman and your husband is too much of a gentleman to cope with that kind.”
“I wondered if I could come back here and stay with you?” said Kitty.
Emily shook her head. “You know you have a home here any time you want but, my dear, at the moment I think you should be with your husband. Give him another chance. You can’t keep running away. I’m sure he is very much in love with you.”
Kitty looked at her with a cynicism that sat oddly on her young face. “Every time I trust him, Veronica pops up again.”
Emily put her hand over Kitty’s. “We’re all invited to the Thackerays’ place at Cowes. You didn’t know? Probably Peter didn’t have a chance to tell you.
“Now, you are surely sophisticated enough to cope with people like the Thackerays. Their jokes are a bit cruel but harmful only if you let yourself be hurt. They have a splendid yacht and it will make a very romantic setting for you and Peter. You’re not going to let the Jackson woman just walk off with him, are you?”
Kitty shook her head.
“Good. I will travel down with you to ease any strain you may feel being alone with your husband.”
Kitty smiled at the way Lady Mainwaring could discount a whole army of servants and consider that she would be “alone.” But Lady Mainwaring, although she was a kind mistress, noticed her well-trained servants about as much as she did her furniture.
By evening, Kitty returned to her town house, feeling much calmer. At two in the morning, she heard her husband returning but he passed her bedroom en route to his own, without even pausing.