Death at Wentwater Court by Carola Dunn Read Free Book Online

just call out if you needs me, miss. I’ll be just through there in Miss Petrie’s room soon as I’ve hung up your frock.” Indicating a door opposite the one to Daisy’s room, she departed.
    Daisy checked the corridor door. It was locked, with a big, old-fashioned
key left in the keyhole—probably it was used when there were more guests in the house and not enough bathrooms to go round. She slipped out of her flannel dressing-gown, dropped it on the cork-seated chair in the corner, and plunged into the luxuriously scented hot water.
    Getting out was difficult less because of the depth of the bath than because she was enjoying it so much. The water cooled very slowly. At last, hearing Fenella’s voice next door, she dragged herself from the heavenly warmth, dried quickly, shivering, and returned to the bedroom. At her request, Mabel had laid out her old grey silk evening frock. She’d be handling magnesium powder this evening and didn’t want to risk stray sparks holing her best dress.
    Wearing the grey silk depressed Daisy. Bought after Gervaise was killed in the trenches, it had seen service when her darling Michael’s ambulance drove over a landmine, and again when her father succumbed to the ’flu epidemic.
    She caught sight of her gloomy expression in the mirror and pulled a face at herself. There was enough despondency at Wentwater Court without her adding to it. Her amber necklace, the colour of her hair, both brightened and smartened the dress. She powdered and lipsticked and went down to the hall.
    The Beddowe brothers were already there, all in black-and-white evening togs, yet quite distinct from each other. James, heir to the earldom, though impeccably turned out, appeared very much the stalwart country gentleman in comparison with the elegantly languid Wilfred. Geoffrey, taller and broader than his brothers, seemed constrained by his clothes, as if he’d be more comfortable in safari kit, striding about some outpost of Empire. He asked Daisy about her equipment, and she was explaining the magnesium flashlight when Marjorie joined them.
    Marjorie’s décolleté dress, violently patterned in black and white, could have been designed—and had certainly been chosen—to stand out in a group photograph. Daisy sighed. She had hoped to portray the dignity of the Beddowe family in their ancestral hall, but the eye
of any reader of Town and Country would be instantly drawn to that jazzy dress.
    It was too late to ask her to change. The grandfather clock by the stairs struck the half hour and the earl arrived.
    He looked around, his gaze pausing on his daughter’s frock, then moving on. “Annabel’s not here yet?” he said. “Nor my sister? We’ll wait a minute or two if you don’t mind, Miss Dalrymple.”
    Daisy agreed, surprised. She thought he had deliberately excluded Annabel, and she was sure Annabel had the same impression. But perhaps he merely meant that his wife had come down before him and he had expected her to be present. At any rate, when Lady Josephine arrived with Sir Hugh, he called to his sister to join the group by the fireplace without further mention of Annabel.
    Arranging her subjects, whose height bore no relation to their importance, was no easy matter, but Daisy had worked it out beforehand and soon had them posed. She opened the shutter and detonated the percussive cap in the trough of flashlight powder.
    A blinding glare lit the hall to the rafters.
    â€œMy hat!” exclaimed Wilfred.
    â€œDrat!” Blinking against an after-image of six startled white faces, Daisy hastily closed the shutter. Clouds of magnesia smoke drifted through the hall. “I’m rather afraid that was too much light. The film will be frightfully overexposed.”
    â€œThe professional touch.” Phillip, grinning, strolled in with Fenella. “Try again, old thing, but mind you don’t blow up the