* * *

‘I really think it shameful,’ said Lady Polly over dinner that evening. ‘Captain Cathcart now no longer calls to give his excuses. I am furious with him and so I shall tell him.’

‘I hope he is all right,’ said Daisy. ‘I am sure it was something very important.’

Mrs Barrington-Bruce was one of the guests. She gave a great laugh. ‘To be sure, for a man it was important.’

‘Do you know something?’ asked Rose.

‘Only that one of my footmen was walking my little doggies round Launceston Place. He told me just before I left to come here that he had seen Captain Cathcart visiting the home of a certain Mrs Josse.’

‘Who is Mrs Josse?’ asked Rose.

‘A certain very beautiful member of the demimonde.’

‘Then it must be part of some case the captain was working on,’ said Rose.

Mrs Barrington-Bruce looked at her with pity in her eyes. ‘Oh, my poor child. My poor innocent child.’

Rose was so angry that she barely slept that night, but she was still determined to go to Apton Magna. She rehearsed scene after scene in her mind where she would present Kerridge with evidence that Jeremy was a murderer, and leave the superintendent to let Harry know she had solved the case.

At five in the morning, she and Daisy crept downstairs and into the back garden. They propped the ladder against the wall and climbed up. They sat on the top, pulled up the ladder and slid it down the other side.

Once they were in the lane, they hurried away. Beyond the square, they were lucky in finding a sleepy cabbie, and asked him to take them to Paddington Station, where Rose bought two first-class tickets.

Once the train moved out, Daisy fell asleep, her head bobbing against the lace antimacassar. Rose sat bolt upright, staring unseeingly at a bad oil painting of the coastal town of Deal on the carriage wall opposite.

The carriage was stuffy, so she jerked down the window by the leather strap. The train plunged into a tunnel and smoke billowed into the carriage. She spluttered and choked and jerked the window shut again.

When a waiter called out that breakfast was served, Rose shook Daisy awake and they made their way to the dining-car.

They ate in silence. Daisy was beginning to wonder if Becket would make a suitable husband after all and Rose was eaten up with fury at Harry.

At Oxford, they changed onto the train for Moreton-in-Marsh. It coughed and wheezed and jerked its slow way into little country stations and then sat at each for what seemed like ages before jerking forward again.

They found a cab in the forecourt of Moreton-in-Marsh Station. Rose instructed him to take them to the rectory at Apton Magna and to wait for them.

‘It’s Sunday,’ said Daisy. ‘They’ll all probably be in church.’

As they got down from the carriage, they could see the congregation filing into church.