Free Hasty Death by M. C. Beaton

Jove, do I see Madeira cake?’
    Looking down from the window, Miss Jubbles saw the carriage with the crest on the panels drawing up outside and a liveried footman jumping down from the backstrap.
    She heard footsteps on the stairs. The footman entered. ‘I am here to take Captain Cathcart to visit the Earl of Hadshire.’
    Miss Jubbles’s heart beat hard. That girl again!
    ‘I am afraid,’ she announced in tones of stultifying gentility, ‘that Captain Cathcart is not here. He has gone abroad.’
    ‘And when is he expected back?’
    ‘He did not say.’
    ‘When he returns, tell him to contact his lordship immediately.’
    ‘Certainly.’
    And then Miss Jubbles heard that familiar tread on the stairs. Harry had suffered a shrapnel wound during the Boer War, and on the bad days, walked with a pronounced limp, and this was one of
the bad days.
    He entered the office and paused in the doorway. He had recognized the earl’s carriage outside.
    ‘Captain Cathcart,’ cried the footman, who recognized Harry from his visits to the earl’s home. ‘Your secretary said you had gone abroad.’
    Miss Jubbles’s face was red with mortification. ‘I am sorry, sir,’ she said. ‘When I said abroad, I meant abroad in London.’
    ‘That’s all right,’ said Harry. ‘But the earl is a client and an important one. You knew I was due back here late afternoon because I told you.’
    ‘I am so sorry. I forgot.’ And with that, Miss Jubbles burst into tears.
    ‘Don’t take on so,’ said Harry. ‘I have to pick up some papers from my desk. There’s nothing else for you to do this afternoon.’
    He went through to his office. On his desk was a small vase of freesias, imported from the Channel Islands. He scowled down at them. They were expensive. He took some papers off his desk and
walked out.
    ‘Miss Jubbles,’ he said gently, ‘I appreciate the flowers but they are much too expensive a gift. Please extract the amount from petty cash.’
    ‘Oh, sir, they were only a little present.’
    ‘Please do as you are told,’ ordered Harry, ‘and enter the amount in the petty-cash book.’
    Tears rolled down Miss Jubbles’s cheeks. ‘Here,’ said Harry, handing her a large handkerchief. ‘Now, I must go.’
    He was beginning to suspect that his secretary’s feelings for him might be a trifle too warm, but never for a moment did Harry guess at the depth of the obsession that would cause her to
sleep with the handkerchief against her cheek that night.
    Harry turned in the doorway. ‘And do not accept any more cases. I am going to be tied up with one important one for the foreseeable future.’
    ‘Come in, Cathcart,’ cried the earl. ‘Tea?’
    ‘No, thank you. Do you have a problem?’
    Rose had been sent to her room.
    ‘It’s Rose again. She wants to make that Cockney maid of hers a companion. She does give Daisy the credit, I gather, for having persuaded her to get back in society.’
    ‘I think it might be a very good idea,’ said Harry. ‘Daisy’s demeanour is suitable, and with the right clothes she would not occasion comment.’
    ‘But companions have background !’
    ‘Then give her one. Any respectable recluse you know of in Hadshire who died recently?’
    ‘Well, let me see. There was Sir Percy Anstruther.’
    ‘Married?’
    ‘Married a girl half his age, who ran off and left him.’
    ‘Any surviving family?’
    ‘None as far as I know. I think the estate went to the Crown.’
    ‘Good. Daisy is his long-lost daughter. She fell on hard times. Her mother had reverted to her maiden name of Levine. You rescued her. All respectable. You discovered her true identity
after she had been working as your daughter’s maid and promptly elevated her to companion in respect for your old friend, Sir Percy. She is a strong, moral girl and will keep a guard of Lady
Rose.’
    ‘I sometimes think,’ put in Lady Polly, ‘that it might be an idea to give Rose just a taste of the asylum to discipline