The Burning Issue of the Day Page 3

  Williams withdrew without having uttered a word.

  ‘Now, then,’ said Lady Bickle, ‘Mother always insisted that we put the milk in first, but that seems to be quite the old-fashioned way of doing things. I much prefer to put the milk in last. Do you have a view, Emily?’

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve been in and out of society so much over the past twenty years that I’m quite unable to keep up with the fads. I can tell you that it affects the taste, though, if that matters to you.’

  Lady Bickle seemed impressed. ‘Does it really? Well I never. How so?’

  ‘When you put the milk in first, the milk is slowly warmed by the arriving tea and is unlikely to scald. It also accepts the tannins from the tea more evenly, for reasons we need not tarry over. If you put the milk in last, it heats up rapidly as it comes into contact with a cupful of hot tea, which means that it’s apt to scald and is also unlikely to react with the tannins quite so evenly. The two taste subtly different but I met one woman who could tell the difference ten times out of ten.’

  ‘I say,’ said Lady Bickle, ‘I never knew there was so much to it. Simeon said you were a something of a science wallah.’

  Lady Hardcastle laughed warmly. ‘One picks up a few things here and there,’ she said.

  ‘More than a few, from what I’ve heard. I do hope you can help us.’

  ‘I hope so, too. Please, tell us what you know about your friend’s case.’

  While we ate our sandwiches (much easier to digest than Old Joe’s doorsteps, but not quite as satisfying) and sipped our tea (alternating ‘milk in first’ and ‘milk in last’ as part of Lady Hardcastle’s improvised experiment – I found myself unable to tell the difference), Lady Bickle explained the details of the case to us.

  ‘I presume you’ve seen the newspaper story,’ began Lady Bickle.

  ‘We have,’ confirmed Lady Hardcastle. ‘It was in the Friday edition of the Bristol News.’

  ‘Just so,’ said Lady Bickle. ‘It outlines the events passably well but, as is so often the case with newspaper reports, it doesn’t tell the whole story. And, rather predictably, it paints the WSPU in a rather negative light.’

  ‘They don’t seem to like you much, do they?’

  ‘Not at all. Not at all.’

  ‘Might I ask a question?’ I said.

  ‘Of course you may,’ said Lady Bickle. ‘I gather from press reports that you’re an important part of the team. Oh, I say. Here I am disparaging the reliability of the press with one breath and relying on them as a valuable source of intelligence with the next. Things are never quite as straightforward as we like to think, are they?’ She paused for a moment, staring absently at the ceiling. ‘I’m so sorry, you wanted to say something, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, my lady,’ I said. ‘I just wanted to clarify from the outset: do you prefer to be the WSPU or “suffragettes”?’

  ‘Oh, that’s an interesting one. When that chap in the Daily Mail coined the term a few years ago, I think we were a bit put out. I mean, the intention was to belittle us, after all, to make it seem as though we were a witless flock of little girls playing at politics. But, do you know what? We’ve come to rather embrace it. It sets us apart from the suffragists and it gives us a more . . . a more youthful and . . . what’s the word? Dynamic? Yes, dynamic, I like that. It gives us a more dynamic air, don’t you think? We girls in the Bristol branch are most definitely suffragettes.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I didn’t want to cause offence by using the wrong term.’

  ‘No offence would have been taken,’ she said. ‘We’re grateful that you’ve agreed to help us. You will agree, won’t you?’

  ‘We’re certainly happy to listen,’ said Lady Hardcastle.

  ‘Of course, of course,’ said Lady Bickle. ‘I’m getting ahead of myself as usual. How much do you know about us?’

  ‘Mostly only what we’ve read in the newspapers. We’ve been to a couple of meetings, haven’t we?’

  I nodded in confirmation.

  ‘So you know that we’ve been making a bit more noise lately. Holding genteel meetings and writing polite letters to MPs can only get one so far – that’s why we split from the suffragists in the first place, after all. Sometimes one has to make a bit of a scene. We’ve always liked to make a nuisance of ourselves, you know, getting ourselves arrested, that sort of thing. But that didn’t seem to be gaining their attention, so a couple of years ago we started a campaign of property damage.’

  ‘Window smashing,’ I said.

  ‘Exactly so. Never anything more. No one was to be hurt, that was a very strict rule. And only windows were to be damaged. A tiresome inconvenience and extra work for the glaziers, but nothing too serious.’

  ‘No arson?’ said Lady Hardcastle.

  ‘Oh my goodness, no. Nothing so drastic. Now, then, where was I? Ah, yes. When Mr Asquith called the General Election, Mrs Pankhurst decreed that for the duration of the election, the WSPU would cease all violent action. We would put all our energies into more conventional forms of campaign, do you see? And the window breaking and suchlike would stop. For the time being, at least. We all agreed that this would be by far the best way to get things done while still keeping everyone on our side, as it were. And we’ve scrupulously stuck to it.’

  ‘You’ve done nothing at all of that nature?’ asked Lady Hardcastle, who was now, I noticed, taking notes in her pocket notebook.

  ‘Nothing at all,’ said Lady Bickle. ‘So that’s our starting point. No suffragette from the Bristol branch has so much as stamped her foot in frustration, much less broken a window since the start of the election. And no one in any part of the WSPU has ever burned a shop down. Ever.’

  ‘So what happened on . . .’ Lady Hardcastle flipped back a few pages in her notebook. ‘. . . on Tuesday night?’

  ‘Well, that’s the thing we need you to find out. The shop burned down, and that poor journalist was killed, but it wasn’t anything to do with us.’

  ‘Your literature was found nearby. Is that how you usually announce your involvement? Claim responsibility?’

  ‘It is, indeed,’ said Lady Bickle. ‘We make sure to drop a few leaflets when we go on a spree – we need people to know it was us. We need them to know how angry we are.’

  ‘Notes, too?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ she said. ‘If we need to explain the specific reason for picking a particular target.’

  ‘But it definitely wasn’t this . . .’ Lady Hardcastle consulted her notebook again. ‘. . . Elizabeth Worrel?’

  ‘Lizzie Worrel. No.’

  ‘Not even if she were acting on her own initiative?’

  ‘She’s as loyal as they come,’ said Lady Bickle. ‘No one knows what goes on in the privacy of a person’s own thoughts, but I’m confident that even if she did lose her head and decide to burn down a shop with someone asleep upstairs, she’d not have lain the blame at our door. She would never have brought condemnation upon the WSPU.’

  ‘Do you think she might have lost her head?’

  ‘Honestly? No.’

  ‘Do you know her well?’

  ‘As well as I know any of my fellow suffragettes,’ said Lady Bickle. ‘We’re not quite a family, but we’re a tight bunch. We trust each other. We have to.’

  ‘Does she have an alibi?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, I say,’ said Lady Bickle. ‘An “alibi”. It’s like the detective stories, isn’t it? Clues, and alibis. I’m not certain that she does. She insists she was at home in Redland when the fire started, but she has no one to corroborate her story.’

  ‘Innocent people seldom have alibis to hand,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Is there any other evidence against her?’

  ‘Not so far as I know. The police haven’t said so, anyway.’

  ‘Where did you get your information from?’ asked Lady Hardcastle.

  ‘From Lizzie herself. I visited her at once. And I was at her magistrate’s hearing.’

  ‘She has legal representa
tion, I presume?’

  ‘We provided her with a brief. We have a couple of sympathetic solicitors in the city and one of them briefed a barrister at once. It didn’t do her any good, of course. We’d hoped to get her out on bail, but as you saw in the newspaper she’s been locked up in Horfield Prison until the Easter Assizes.’

  Lady Hardcastle took a sip of her tea and thought for a moment. She leafed through her notebook before looking up once more at Lady Bickle.

  ‘You make a good case for why it shouldn’t be Lizzie Worrel,’ she said. ‘The WSPU has committed no previous acts of arson and has called a temporary truce, anyway. In Lizzie, you describe a loyal suffragette who would never disobey orders. And you insist she would never do such a thing on her own initiative.’

  ‘I’d bet my jewels on it,’ said Lady Bickle earnestly.

  ‘None of that will be any good to a jury, though. You can make them see why it shouldn’t be Lizzie, but we need to be able to show that it couldn’t be her.’

  ‘So our brief said. I don’t think he’s much of a suffragist, but he’s professionally obliged to argue her case and he’s not at all sure there’s anything very much he can do. Without a solid alibi, it’s rather tricky to prove that someone didn’t do a thing just because her friends insist it’s unlikely.’

  ‘Well, quite,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘As I see it, then, our task would be to prove her innocence by finding out who actually did burn that shop down, killing Mr Bakersfield.’

  ‘Brookfield, my lady,’ I corrected her reflexively.

  ‘Even he,’ she said. ‘But that’s how to prove her innocence: by tracking down the real culprit.’

  ‘And will you?’ asked Lady Bickle. ‘Oh, do say you will. The police aren’t investigating any longer – they have their arsonist. You are, not to put it too melodramatically, all that stands between Lizzie Worrel and the gallows.’

  ‘Well, when you put it like that,’ said Lady Hardcastle with a smile.

  ‘We’ll cover all your expenses, naturally. The WSPU doesn’t have much money, but I’ll pay you myself, if it comes to it.’

  Lady Hardcastle glanced at me for confirmation before she spoke again. I gave the tiniest of nods and she said, ‘Very well, we shall look into it for you. And there’ll be no more talk of money. Consider it our contribution to the cause.’

  ‘Oh, thank you,’ said Lady Bickle. ‘Thank you so much. The rest of the girls will be ever so pleased. You must come and meet them. Do you have any other appointments? Can you come to the shop?’

  ‘We’re entirely free for the rest of the day. Is it far?’

  ‘Quite literally just around the corner. I’ll get Williams to fetch our coats.’

  She walked to the bell pull beside the fireplace and rang for the butler.

  When Lady Bickle had said ‘. . . literally just around the corner’, I had imagined a twenty-minute meandering walk through the streets of Clifton, during which I would contemplate the text of my forthcoming lecture on the correct use of the word ‘literally’.

  It was a good job I didn’t say anything.

  We turned right out of the door, walked down the steps, and then turned left on to Berkeley Square. We passed our little Rover and continued back the way we had driven, out on to Queen’s Road. Here we turned our first proper corner. To the right. We passed J B Hamilton’s. I could see the Great Western Railway Receiving Office ahead of us, and then a shop owned by Florence Griffiths. What a splendid name. We stopped between Hamilton’s and the GWR office.

  ‘Here we are,’ said Lady Bickle brightly. ‘Number thirty-seven. Our own little shop.’

  She was right. The window display was of Votes For Women posters, bedecked with ribbons in the green, white, and purple colours of the WSPU. There was a schedule of meetings and events on the door. This was clearly the headquarters of the Bristol branch of the WSPU and it really was ‘literally just around the corner’.

  ‘Come on in and meet the girls,’ she said.

  We trooped in after her.

  It was a small shop with a counter to the rear, behind which a door led to who knew what mysteries and delights. The walls were lined with shelves on which were stacked pamphlets, leaflets, and flyers. A newspaper rack held copies of the suffragette newspaper Votes for Women. A tailor’s dummy stood to one side of the counter wearing the organization’s customary white dress, adorned with a green, white, and purple sash, along with badges and ribbons in the same colours. A display by ‘her’ side contained similarly coloured scarves and brooches, as well as, to my slight surprise, a small note suggesting that shoppers should ‘enquire at the counter for garters and undergarments’.

  The woman behind the counter looked up as we entered and then stepped out to greet us. Dressed head to toe in white, she was a little older and a good deal less terrifyingly good looking than Lady Bickle, although I was pleased to note that she was a much more sensible height. However, there was a blandness about her appearance that made her rather difficult to notice, as though one’s eyes simply slid off her and on to something – anything – more interesting instead. She was dressed as though she were on a suffragette march. Even her boots were white, elaborately embroidered with a beautiful daisy motif. They very much looked the part and were by far the most interesting thing about her.

  She smiled fleetingly when she saw us and stepped out from behind the counter.

  ‘Georgie!’ she said. ‘We were wondering when you’d drop in. Is this them?’

  ‘These are indeed they,’ said Lady Bickle. ‘Lady Hardcastle, please allow me to introduce Miss Beatrice Challenger, manageress of our humble shop and all-round good egg. Beattie, this is Emily, Lady Hardcastle.’

  ‘How do you do?’ they both said together.

  ‘Meanwhile, Miss Armstrong, please . . . Oh, I say, this is all just too silly and formal. Florence Armstrong, Beattie Challenger. Miss Armstrong is Lady Hardcastle’s lady’s maid and right-hand woman.’

  We ‘How do you do’-ed together, too.

  ‘Where’s Marisol?’ asked Lady Bickle.

  ‘Upstairs shouting at the filing,’ said Miss Challenger.

  ‘Marisol Rojas is our very own Chilean firebrand,’ said Lady Bickle. ‘Every organization should have one. She’s frightfully well organized and an absolute whizz with the paperwork, but she has the shortest fuse of any human being I’ve ever met. She’s a poppet, really, but she does seem to find the world and everything in it terribly frustrating. Come on up, I’ll introduce you.’

  She turned to lead us through the door behind the counter, but as she reached for the handle it was wrenched away from her. A dark-haired, dark-complexioned lady stood in the doorway, her face set in an angry scowl. She stopped dead when she saw us all there.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she said in a heavy Spanish accent. ‘I did not know we had visitors.’

  ‘Please don’t mind us,’ said Lady Hardcastle in Spanish. ‘We’re all friends. We’ve come to help prove Lizzie Worrel’s innocence.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the small newcomer. She switched to her native tongue. ‘You must be Lady Hardcastle. Georgie said she was going to ask you to help. I am Marisol Rojas. Thank you for coming. The poor girl needs all the help she can get.’

  ‘I can make no promises, but we’ll do what we can.’

  ‘Your Spanish is very good,’ said Marisol.

  ‘One tries,’ said Lady Hardcastle, switching back to English.

  ‘We’re going to have to watch out for you two if you’re going to be gabbling in Foreign all day long,’ said Miss Challenger.

  Lady Hardcastle frowned, but said nothing.

  ‘I’m impressed,’ said Lady Bickle. ‘My French is passable, but I never had the opportunity to learn any other languages. Do you speak many others?’

  ‘One or two,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘It sort of comes with the job when one is a diplomat’s wife.’

  ‘I bet you’re just being modest. Am I right, Miss Armstrong?’

  ‘A lit
tle,’ I said. ‘To my knowledge she can hold a decent conversation in French, Spanish, German, Italian, Mandarin, Hindi . . . and Latin.’

  ‘And Ancient Greek,’ said Lady Hardcastle.

  ‘I’d forgotten that one,’ I said.

  ‘And Shanghainese.’

  ‘Ah, yes, and that,’ I agreed. ‘You can get by in Hungarian and Serbo-Croatian, too.’

  ‘I picked up a little Russian while we were in Moscow.’

  ‘She’s stronger than she looks,’ I said.

  Miss Challenger and Señorita Rojas looked blank, but Lady Bickle gave a chuckle.

  ‘Very droll,’ she said. ‘But I’m even more impressed than before. That’s quite a list.’

  ‘Don’t let Armstrong off the hook,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘She has just as impressive a list and she can speak Welsh as well. At least, I think she can. She might just be clearing her throat.’

  I used the beautiful language of the Bards to give my colourfully offensive opinion of this slander of my mother’s mother tongue.

  ‘You see?’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Either she just said something frightfully rude or she has a touch of bronchitis. My money’s on “rude”, I have to say, but one can never be certain.’

  ‘You know me too well,’ I said.

  Miss Challenger continued to regard us with faint disapproval.

  ‘Do I gather from your visit that you’ve agreed to help us, my lady?’ she said.

  ‘We’ve certainly agreed to try,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘I fear our reputation for sleuthing might have been slightly exaggerated by the press, but we’ll give it our best shot, won’t we, Armstrong?’

  ‘We shall,’ I said. ‘Does Miss Worrel work here in the shop, too?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Miss Challenger. ‘We open six days a week – half-day closing on Wednesday, of course. We try to make sure there’s always two of us here so between me, Lizzie, and Marisol we manage to keep the shop open and still have time for other Union business.’