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burst open and Rose let out a scream of terror. Harry Cathcart, tired and furious, having set out before dawn after a restless night, strode into the room. “What the blazes are you doing? Don’t you know you made yourself look even guiltier by fleeing? What’s that you’re holding?” He snatched the letters from Rose. “Where did you get those?”
    “I found them this morning,” said Rose. “I was going to unpack and there they were in the bottom of my trunk.”
    “So someone followed you. Wait here.”
    Harry rushed out again.
    Rose was beginning to feel irrationally angry. He should have said something like, “Thank God, you are safe.” Not berated her as if she were a guilty schoolgirl.
    “Listen,” said Daisy. “The wind has dropped suddenly.”
    “I’m nervous waiting here. Don’t you see, Daisy, that whoever tried to make me look guilty did the murder himself? So there is a murderer in this hotel.”
    “If he’d wanted to kill us, he would have done so already,” said Daisy. “All he wanted to do was make you look guilty.”
    Harry came back. “I’ve checked the hotel register. One man called Mr. Terence Cramley left this morning. The others all seem respectable. I’ll go out and search the town for him. I’ve got a description. I’ll call at the station and see if he’s taken a train. Kerridge gave me only two days to find you. Pack up your things. We’ve got to get out of here.”
    Kerridge was summoned that morning by Sir Ian Wetherby. “I have just sustained a visit from His Majesty’s equerry, Lord Herring,” began Wetherby. “His Majesty wishes all inquiries into the death of Dolores Duval to continue quietly. I believe the editors of the newspapers have all been informed. His Majesty is distressed that Lady Rose should even be considered guilty.” The earl’s been busy, thought Kerridge cynically. “I also received a telephone call from the prime minister,” Wetherby went on. “He suggests that as Miss Duval was no better than she should be, to quote his words, then it stands to reason that some low life got rid of her.”
    “What about the so-called freedom of the press?” asked Kerridge.
    “These editors have probably all been told that a knighthood may be in the offing if they behave themselves. A statement is to be issued tomorrow in all the newspapers to say the police have found Lady Rose to be innocent of any crime.”
    “It is lucky that I believe that to be true. What if it turns out that our royal personage was involved in some way?”
    “Piffle. Absolute piffle. I prefer to forget you even said that, Kerridge. Now go about your business.”
    Harry found no trace of the mysterious Mr. Cramley in Thurbyon-Sea. He returned to the hotel and told Rose and Daisy to be ready to leave.
    Rose hesitated on the steps of the hotel. A watery sunlight was shining on the choppy sea and the wind had died down. She wished in that moment that Harry had not found her so quickly. Oh, for just a few days away from the press and the gossip of society!
    “Come along,” barked Harry.
    “Yes, sir,” said Rose and gave him a mock salute. Harry glared at her. She should be ashamed, contrite, over all the trouble she had caused him.
    Rose, wrapped up in a bearskin rug and with her veil tied down over her hat, sat in the passenger seat of Harry’s Rolls Royce as they cruised along the streets of London. Harry was driving and Becket and Daisy were in the back.
    A thin mist was swirling among the narrow sooty streets. Women, wearing the enormous hats which were so fashionable, hurried along like so many animated mushrooms. Moisture from the mist made the sooty buildings on either side glisten like jet. The air smelt of horse manure, bad drains, patchouli and baking bread.
    Harry, who had maintained an angry silence during the journey, broke it to ask, “What were your parents about, to come to London during such an unfashionable period?”
    “My mother gets bored in the country. They