Rose pulled the white bell-stop. She waited and waited. Then she tried the handle of the front door. It was unlocked. She went into a large square hall. A cleaning woman was on her hands and knees scrubbing the floor.

‘Which is Miss Duval’s flat?’ asked Rose.

‘Door on your left, missus,’ said the woman over her shoulder.

The door was slightly open. Rose knocked and then called. No reply. She stepped inside the flat. She would leave her card on a tray she could see on the side table. She took out her card case, and then put it away again. Dolores might only be amused by the fact she had called. Then she saw the door to a front parlour was open. She walked towards it. Perhaps there might be some evidence of why Dolores had hired Harry.

The first thing she saw was one slippered foot lying behind a sofa by the window. Her heart began to thud. Rose walked around the sofa and let out a sharp scream of fright. Dolores was lying dead on the floor. She was dressed only in a white silk-and-lace nightgown and an elaborately embroidered dressing gown. A red stain of blood had seeped from a hole in her chest. A revolver was lying on the floor beside her. Numb with shock, Rose picked up the revolver.

A loud scream erupted from behind her. Rose swung round, eyes dilated with fright, the revolver still in her hand. It was the cleaning woman. ‘Murder!’ she screeched and then ran out into the street, shouting, ‘Murder. Perlees! Murder!’

People began to crowd in to Dolores’s flat. Rose stared at them and they stared at Rose until a man walked forward and took the revolver from her.

‘What’s going on here?’ A policeman thrust his way through the crowd. A chorus of voices rose, some shouting, ‘She murdered her. She had the gun in her hand.’

‘I didn’t ... I found her,’ whispered Rose through white lips.

‘Name?’

‘Lady Rose Summer.’

The policeman turned and shooed everyone out of the flat. He saw a telephone on a table by the fireplace and dialled Scotland Yard.

‘My business with Miss Duval is confidential,’ Harry was saying to the enraged earl.

‘You paraded yourself and that trollop at the opera in front of everyone. Your engagement to my daughter is off What is it, Jarvis?’

The earl’s secretary was hovering nervously in the doorway.

‘I beg your pardon, my lord, but I have received an urgent call from Scotland Yard. Lady Rose has been arrested for murder.’

CHAPTER TWO

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing,
and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

Oscar Wilde

Superintendent Kerridge knew Rose. She had been involved in several of his previous cases. He had her escorted to his office and served with hot sweet tea, anxious to interrogate her quickly, as he was sure the earl was about to descend on him with a battalion of lawyers.