‘Steady on, Roz,’ said Lady Lavinia, putting a hand on Mrs Beddows’s arm. ‘I’d not be so quick to judge if I were you. Edmond has known Emily’s brother for simply aeons, and he always hinted that there was more to his little sister than met the eye.’ She paused and looked around the room. ‘I say, Miss Armstrong. What are you doing lurking over there? Come and join us for a moment.’
I gave up my perusal of the pleasingly eclectic collection of books, and moved across the room to stand behind Lady Hardcastle’s chair.
Lady Lavinia looked up at me from across the small table. ‘Your mistress has been spinning quite a yarn over here. What’s your version of events? Can you corroborate any of it?’
‘Of course she can,’ said Mrs Beddows dismissively. ‘She’s her maid. It’s more than her job’s worth to contradict her meal ticket.’
‘Really, Roz,’ said Lady Lavinia with increasing exasperation. ‘Must you be so beastly all the time?’
As was so often the case in public, I found myself in something of an awkward position. While the essence of the tale was true, most of the details were not. But, of course, I didn’t want to give Mrs Beddows the satisfaction of hearing me point this out. We had been abusing the hospitality of a foreign government by poking our noses into their affairs. However, their vaunted ‘secret police’ had been a corrupt shower of indolent duffers, more interested in feathering their own nests than in protecting state secrets. In fact, the danger had come from a gang of local smugglers who had decided that our snooping was a threat to their collective livelihoods. They had resolved to remove that threat by shuffling us, discreetly but permanently, from this mortal coil. We had escaped disguised not as sailors, but as policemen, which I always felt made for a much more exciting story. Lady Hardcastle steadfastly refused to remember this part, though, having honed her version of events over many retellings into a tale to make ladies shriek. In less belligerent company, I might have allowed myself some sport by correcting her many factual errors, but under the circumstances I felt disinclined to undermine her.
‘The events unfolded much as Lady Hardcastle has explained them,’ I said. ‘If anything, she has understated both the danger we found ourselves in and the ingenuity of our escape.’
Put that in your pipe and smoke it, I thought. That should cover the ‘she got everything wrong but it’s true nonetheless’ side of things without fibbing and, more crucially, without leaving an opening for Mrs Beddows to bully Miss Titmus any further.
‘Ha!’ said Lady Lavinia triumphantly. ‘I told you not to be so hasty, Roz. I say, would it make you frightfully uncomfortable to pull up a chair and join us, Miss Armstrong? I’m sure you have a wealth of stories to tell, too.’
‘Oh, do,’ said Miss Titmus enthusiastically.
Mrs Beddows said nothing, and gave her attention to a minute examination of one of the seams of her glove.
‘Looks like you’re on, Flo,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Pull up a pew and settle in.’ She shuffled her own chair to one side to make room for me between herself and Miss Titmus.
‘Splendid,’ said Lady Lavinia. ‘Would you care for a brandy?’
‘Thank you, my lady, I should like that very much,’ I said. I helped myself to a glass before hefting another comfortable chair into the circle.
And then the interrogation began. Lady Hardcastle and I faced an onslaught of questions from Lady Lavinia and Miss Titmus that might ordinarily have been uncomfortable. But it was accompanied by such enthusiasm, such glee, so many ‘ooh’s, ‘ahh’s, and ‘oh, my goodness’s, that it was impossible not to get swept along by it all. Nearly impossible. Mrs Beddows, though careful not to be rude, seemed to be working hard to maintain an air of unimpressed aloofness so that we might be certain that she was above such shenanigans.
Over the course of the next hour, we gave them the edited highlights of our lives of public service, starting with Lady Hardcastle’s recruitment while at Cambridge. We moved on through her espionage exploits while on foreign postings with her husband, Sir Roderick – while the authorities kept a close eye on the visiting diplomat, his socialite wife was free to snoop unobserved. I had travelled with them to Shanghai as her lady’s maid, but I had been recruited as her assistant while they were there. We shared tales of a few of the more thrilling adventures we’d had before the horror of Sir Roderick’s murder forced us to flee. We told them more of China, of Burma, of India, and of the backstreets of London, Paris, Vienna, and Berlin.
By the time we brought them to the present day, by way of murders, missing trophies, and haunted public houses, I thought Miss Titmus might burst. I’m not certain I’ve heard anyone say ‘Golly!’ quite so many times before or since.
‘No wonder you two seem more like chums,’ she said, once she had caught her breath. ‘What lives you’ve led.’
‘What lives, indeed,’ said Mrs Beddows sardonically.
Lady Hardcastle was undaunted (or oblivious – it can be hard to tell after she’s had a glass or two) and chose instead to redirect the conversation towards the three friends. ‘And now you know all about us,’ she said, ‘but we know so little of you. I mean, take you for instance, Lavinia. I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t even know you existed until the other day.’
Lady Lavinia laughed. ‘Surely not.’
‘On my honour,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Harry has known Fishy for twenty years or more – heavens, I’ve known Fishy for twenty years or more – but neither of them ever mentioned that he had a sister.’
‘Brothers, eh?’ said Lady Lavinia. ‘Useless articles.’
‘Quite so, dear. So tell all. How did you three meet?’
‘We were at school together,’ said Miss Titmus eagerly. ‘Weren’t we, girls?’
‘We were,’ said Lady Lavinia.
‘I dreamed of being allowed to go to school,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘I was so jealous of Harry when he went away. You must have been among the first.’
‘Pioneers,’ said Lady Lavinia with a laugh. ‘That was us. But I wouldn’t be too envious if I were you. I suspect you and your governess had a much less . . . testing time of it.’
‘I’m not sure my string of increasingly exasperated governesses would agree, dear. Was it awful? Tom Brown in petticoats?’
‘All that and more besides,’ said Lady Lavinia. ‘But we survived. Got through it together, didn’t we, girls?’
‘Bonds were forged,’ drawled Mrs Beddows.
‘I, for one, am jolly glad they were,’ said Miss Titmus. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you two.’
‘Were there midnight feasts and japes and pranks?’ asked Lady Hardcastle.
‘And beatings and cold baths and cross-country runs,’ said Mrs Beddows.
‘Oh, Roz, you old surly-boots,’ chided Miss Titmus. ‘We had plenty of fun.’
‘Did we? I must have forgotten.’
‘Take no notice of Roz,’ said Lady Lavinia. ‘She likes to portray herself as some manner of ice queen, immune from the petty pleasures of mere mortals, but she’s a poppet really.’
Mrs Beddows gave an ironic smile.
‘Oh, oh, Jake, do you have that photograph of us?’ asked Miss Titmus excitedly.
‘I really don’t know,’ said Lady Lavinia. ‘If it’s here at all, it will be on the piano in the drawing room.’