Charlotte Wynthorpe and the Case of the Disappearing Diamonds

4. Bloody Murder in the Fens

When Preston pushed open the drawing room door to serve the tea, he found Charlotte huddled into one of the large wingchairs by the window, stocking feet propped on a foot rest. Her face was obscured by a paperback with a lurid cover.

That morning, as soon as she'd tumbled out of bed and dabbed on her lip rouge, Charlotte had legged it over to Paddington Station to indiscriminately snatch a handful of detective mysteries off the rack of one of the newsstands in the busy hall. 

The young newsagent seemed to have difficulty matching the lax elegance of the woman before him with the sensationalism of her purchases, and entirely unable to keep his eyes from jumping from Charlotte's long strand of pearls and silver rings to the tawdry novels he was wrapping in brown paper.  

She'd pushed the tally across the counter, then flashed him one of her conspiratorial smiles and placed an index finger against her lips before disappearing into the blur of the crowd. 

He'd nodded, clearly unsure of exactly what he was agreeing to keep silent about, and watched her go.

The novels now sat in a sloppy pile on the table by her elbow, freed of their paper wrapping which flopped over the edge of the table like a thrown off blanket. She'd already thumbed through them and chosen the most promising one out to tackle first; the rest she would look at later.

Charlotte turned a page.

She was five chapters into the story and already it was giving her all sorts of splendid ideas. And that was exactly what she was after. Splendid ideas.

The previous night, Charlotte had been in her bedroom mentally grumbling at Carlton and envisioning Anne's stupefied expression of gratitude when Charlotte restored her stolen collier to her, when she'd realised with a start that she was a tad wobbly on the exact details of expert sleuthing.

She had read the popular detective novels simply everyone had read, of course, but hadn't paid much attention to anything other than deciding which characters she'd invite down to Ascot for the races, and which ones she'd strike right off her Christmas card list without a pang of guilt. She was starting to regret that now. 

If she was going to do some detecting, she'd concluded to her mirror image with a stiff nod as she brushed out her hair before bed, then she damned well better know how a detective thought. The only way she could think to do that on the fly was to dart over to Paddington and grab the likes of The Horrid Poisonings of Cheltenham Row, Corpses Need No Clocks, Lord Eccleston Dies, and The Murder of Ratty Armstrong* at first light.

Charlotte didn't hear the butler come in to the drawing room, so raptly was she focused on the sequence of events playing out on the tatty, grey pages in her hand.

Preston gently cleared his throat causing Charlotte to whip the novel away from her face. 

"Sorry, ma'am. It's four o'clock. Will you be having your tea here or at the table?"

"Oh, good heavens Preston, aren't you silent as a ghost today. Here, I suppose." The butler set the tea tray down on a nearby table. 

"I say, Preston," Charlotte said, casually observing him, "do you read detective novels by any chance?'

"Now and again, ma'am. My tastes run more towards the classics where literature is concerned."

"Read this one?" Charlotte flashed the cover of Bloody Murder in the Fens at him.

Preston's eyebrows shot up and a slightly pained expression appeared on his face. "No, ma'am. I can't say I'm acquainted with that particular volume."