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times.”
    “I do not want to go to Yorkshire,” said Rose in a thin voice.
    The earl rounded on her. “You’ll do what you’re told, my girl.”

THREE

The two divinest things this world has got,
A lovely woman in a rural spot.
    —JAMES HENRY LEIGH HUNT      

    Despite her loudly proclaimed distaste at being sent off to live with a rural policeman, Rose began to feel a certain amount of excitement as they were smuggled out through the garden door of the town house and over a ladder placed on a wall at the back and so into the mews, where a closed carriage was waiting for them.
    They were taken to Paddington Station to catch the midnight North Eastern Railway train to York. Because of the innovation of Pullman coaches in first class, there were now three classes: first, second and third.
    Rose had been given first-class tickets to York but it had been suggested they travel second class to Plomley on the Scarborough line.
    Daisy kept looking nervously over her shoulder, seeing assassins behind every station pillar. Smoke billowed out from the steam engines up to Brunel’s high arched roof.
    A porter loaded their luggage on board. No footmen had been allowed to accompany them. The servants would be told in the morning that Rose and Daisy had left during the night for Stacey Court.
    They had the luxury of a sleeping compartment thanks to Mr. George Pullman’s invention. When a Pullman car was attached to the funeral train carrying Abraham Lincoln’s body, the demand for Pullman’s product swiftly grew. Pullman died so hated by his employees in 1897 that his heirs feared his body would be stolen and so the coffin was covered in tar-paper and enclosed in the centre of a room-sized block of concrete, reinforced with railroad ties. Ambrose Bierce said, “It is clear the family in their bereavement was making sure the sonofabitch wasn’t going to get up and come back.”
    Rose was beginning to feel that life might not be so bad after all. It was exciting to go to sleep over the chattering wheels. Only Daisy felt torn away from London, and the wheels sang a dirge on her ears: “Can’t go back. Never go back. Can’t go back.” She peered out of the window and saw only her own reflection as the night-time countryside went flying past. The east coast line was in competition with the west coast line and the great steam engine could reach up to a hundred miles per hour. Daisy shuddered. They were flying into foreign territory. Yorkshire.
    They tumbled out sleepily at York station at seven in the morning. They had arrived an hour earlier, but first-class passengers were allowed to stay on for breakfast.
    Rose commanded a porter to take their luggage to the Scarborough train. Daisy followed behind, feeling once more like a servant, not knowing that Rose’s autocratic behaviour was caused by her sudden nervousness. What if the would-be assassin had followed them onto the train and was biding his time?
    In a fusty second-class compartment they were crowded by a large woman with four sleepy cross children who kept crying and wailing. Their mother seemed indifferent to their noise and distress.
    Rose fretted and fidgeted, feeling the beginnings of a headache, and could only be glad when Daisy suddenly shouted, “Shut that bleedin’ noise.”
    The children stared at her in awe and then mercifully fell silent.
    The train stopped at station after station, until it finally drew into Plomley and settled down with a great hiss which sounded like a giant’s sigh.
    The mother prodded Daisy in the back with her umbrella as Daisy was leaving the compartment. “Just you wait till you got kids of yer own,” she shouted.
    Daisy whipped round. “If I had brats like yours, I’d drown them!”
    Can’t possibly be them, was P.C. Shufflebottom’s first thought on hearing Daisy’s remark. I was told to look for two grand ladies.
    But then Rose descended and looked around. She saw the policeman in uniform and approached him.
    “Mr.