‘I can’t be!’ wailed Daisy.

‘Did you go to bed with him?’ asked Madame Bailloux.

Daisy hung her head.

‘Why?’ asked Rose.

‘Oh, why not,’ said Daisy defiantly. ‘We were all ready to set up in business with Miss Friendly. We were to be married. Now we can’t. Servants don’t marry.’ Then the burst of defiance left her and she burst into tears.

‘Oh, don’t cry,’ said Rose. ‘We’ll think of something.’

‘I’ll have to go to one of those homes for fallen women,’ sobbed Daisy.

‘Nonsense,’ said Rose. ‘Out of the question. You will have the baby here.’

‘And what will my lord and lady say to that when they return?’ asked Daisy.

Rose bit her lip.

‘If I may make a suggestion,’ said Madame Bailloux. ‘Captain Cathcart is not what I would call conventional. I think we must summon him here. It is no use crying again, Miss Levine. Your future must be resolved.’ She rang the bell and when a footman answered its summons, told him to ask Mr Jarvis to telephone Captain Cathcart and tell him to come immediately.

While they waited, Rose tried to banish visions of Daisy and Becket from her brain. It was almost impossible for a young Edwardian lady like Rose to envisage such a coupling. Edwardian fashions were a sort of rococo art, shunning the simplicity of nature. Anything approaching nudity was regarded as indelicate. Edwardian décolletage in evening dress was far less daring than in Victorian times, the bosom being veiled with lace or chiffon.

She let out a little sigh of relief when she heard the downstairs door opening and then Harry’s tread on the stairs as he mounted them to the drawing room.

‘Has anything happened?’ he asked anxiously as he walked into the room.

‘It has,’ said Rose, ‘but nothing to do with the murders. Daisy is pregnant.’

‘Ah.’ He studied Daisy, who sat with her head bent for a long moment. ‘Becket?’

Daisy gulped and nodded.

‘I’ll get him.’

Wicked Paris, thought Daisy, with its effervescent charm, its naughtiness, its seductive air that anything was permissible.

Harry returned, followed by Becket. ‘Sit down, Becket,’ he said. ‘We have a problem. Miss Levine is pregnant.’

Becket’s normally bland white face went through a series of emotions all the way from shock and dismay to dawning delight. He went and knelt beside Daisy’s chair and took her cold hand in his. ‘We’ll find a way,’ he said.

‘As you know,’ said Harry, ‘Philip Marshall has left.’

‘He destroyed our dream,’ said Daisy. ‘Becket and me were to start a salon with Miss Friendly. We’d be married and be proper business people.’

‘That’s no longer on the cards,’ said Harry brutally. ‘Couldn’t you have waited?’

‘For how long?’ demanded Daisy. ‘You said me and Becket could get married, but then nothing happened.’

‘Let me think. You’d better get married as soon as possible. You and Becket can live with me as a married couple. Then we will try to find some sort of business for you.’