Hasty Death by Marion Chesney Read Free Book Online Page A

was afraid that any complaint from her would be treated as the typical whining of the lower classes.
    One morning, as they arrived for work, it began to snow. Small little flakes at first and then great feathery ones already speckled with the dirty soot of London.
    By lunchtime, it was a raging blizzard.
    ‘We won’t even be able to get along to Lyons for lunch,’ mourned Rose, ‘and my back hurts with all this useless work.’
    ‘There’s a pie shop round the corner,’ said Daisy.
    ‘Oh, would you be a dear and get us something?’ said Rose. ‘I’ll see if there is anywhere here I can make tea. I think there is a kitchen upstairs next to the executive
offices. Take my umbrella.’
    Daisy struggled out into the whirling snow. She bought two mutton pies and hurried back towards the office. A news-vendor was shouting, ‘Society murder. Read all about it!’
    Daisy bought a paper and breathed a sigh of relief when she entered the bank and shut the door on the white hell outside.
    ‘I’ve got tea,’ said Rose when she entered the room. ‘There was no one upstairs. I’ll wait until they have gone this evening and smuggle the tea things back. Mrs
Danby won’t see me. She never even comes near us any more, and Captain Cathcart must have forgotten that we wanted real work.’
    ‘I’ve got the pies. Look at me coat,’ said Daisy. ‘Soaked already. We’ll never get home in this.’
    ‘Home,’ echoed Rose bleakly, thinking of that awful room.
    ‘Look, I bought the Daily Mail. There’s something about a society murder. Here’s your pie. You’ll need to eat it out of the newspaper wrapping. No
plates.’
    Rose took a bite of the pie. ‘This is really good. We should buy another two to take home.’
    ‘I say!’ exclaimed Daisy. ‘You’ll never believe who’s gone and got himself murdered.’
    ‘Who?’
    ‘That Freddy Pomfret. Remember him? We met him at Telby Castle last year.’
    ‘So we did,’ said Rose.
    ‘It says here, “Man-about-town, the Honourable Mr Frederick Pomfret, was found shot dead in his town flat in St James.”’
    As Daisy read on, Rose furrowed her brow. She remembered Freddy as vacuous and silly with his white face and patent leather hair. Hardly the man to incite anyone to murder him. But there was
something else, something about Freddy nagging at the back of her mind.
    At the end of the working day, they went out into a white world. London had gone to sleep under a thick blanket of snow.
    ‘Let’s see if the underground is working,’ said Daisy. ‘The Central London Railway goes to Holborn and then we can walk home.’
    They stumbled through white drifts to King William Street Station and took the hydraulic lift down to the platforms. Trains consisted of three carriages hauled by electric locomotives. These
were powered by the largest power-generating station in the country. The coaches were known as padded cells and they were long and narrow with high-backed cushioned seats and no windows. Gatemen
stood on platforms at the end of each carriage to call out the names of the stations.
    They paid the two pennies each fare and waited in the crush until they managed to get on ‘the tube’, as it was known.
    ‘We should have travelled like this before,’ said Rose. ‘The omnibus is so slow. Why didn’t we think about it?’
    ‘I did,’ said Daisy. ‘But it frightens me to be so far underground with all them buildings on top of us.’
    They got out at Holborn Station. The snow, which had eased a little when they left the office, had returned in all its ferocity. By the time they reached the hostel, they were cold and their
clothes were soaked.
    Rose searched in her purse. ‘I have no pennies left. What about you?’
    ‘No, but I’ve found a way to fix it.’ Daisy crouched over the meter with an army knife bristling with gadgets and fiddled about with a thin blade until a penny rattled down and
then another.
    ‘Oh, Daisy, that’s robbery.’
    ‘That’s