Hasty Death Read Online Free Page A

to be typed.’
    ‘May as well get on with it,’ sighed Daisy. ‘If we’re awfully good, they might give us some real work.’
    They worked hard and their shoulders were sore by lunchtime.
    ‘I need to use the you-know-what,’ said Daisy.
    ‘There will be one at King William Street underground station. I read about it in the newspaper.’ said Rose. ‘I do not want to see more of Mrs Danby than I need to.’
    As both were still wearing the undergarments that ladies wore, they spent a considerable time in the toilets.
    For the fashionable lady of the day wore an incredible amount of undergarments. To begin with, there was a garment known as combinations: a kind of vest and pants in one piece, made of fine
wool, or a mixture of wool and silk, its legs reaching to the knee. It had a back panel which unbuttoned below the waist. Over this went the corset, usually made of pink coutil, boned and shaped to
provide the fashionable hourglass figure. Then came the camisole, a kind of underblouse that buttoned down the front, was gathered at the waist and trimmed with lace round the neck and the
diminutive puffed sleeves.
    The knickers had lace frills at the knee and they were made from very fine material such as lawn, nainsook or nun’s veiling. Silk stockings were clipped to the corset. Then the large round
petticoat was placed in a circle on the floor and stepped into.
    The only advantage of all these layers of clothes, thought Daisy, when she and Rose emerged once more into the freezing air, was that they kept you warm. Rose had been pleasingly impressed by
her first visit to a public toilet and thought it well worth the charge of one penny. It was spotlessly clean and all shining white tiles and polished brass and the female attendant had been
courteous.
    Daisy stopped at a tobacco kiosk and asked the girl for a packet of cigarettes and directions to somewhere cheap to eat. She told them there was a Lyons a little way along Cheapside.
    ‘You’re never going to smoke!’ exclaimed Rose.
    ‘I feel like it,’ said Daisy stubbornly.
    In Lyons teashop, Rose exclaimed over the cheapness of the items on the menu. ‘Just look, Daisy, meals are only threepence or fourpence. We could eat out every day! What will you have?
There’s poached egg on macaroni, Welsh rarebit, or sardines on toast.
    ‘I’ll have poached eggs on macaroni,’ said Daisy. Rose ordered Welsh rarebit.
    ‘That’s better,’ sighed Daisy when they were finished. ‘We didn’t have time for breakfast.’
    ‘It wasn’t much to eat,’ said Rose, looking around the restaurant and thinking that at home she would have had a choice of eight courses at least. ‘It’s not as if
it’s expensive. I never saw this one – braised loin of mutton with carrots. Only sixpence, too.’ So they had the mutton with bread and butter, two slices at a penny each. And when
they had finished that, they rounded off their meal with coffee, twopence a cup, and apple dumpling, four pennies each. When they finished and Daisy was complaining that she would need to loosen
her stays when they got back to the office, they left the cosiness of the teashop with its white-and-gold frontage feeling sleepy with all they had eaten.
    As they headed back to the office, the day was so dark that the street lamps were being lit, a man with a long brass pole moving from lamp to lamp and leaving a chain of lights behind him.
    The air was not only cold but smelt of innumerable coal fires.
    Mrs Danby was there promptly at two-thirty to make sure they were at their desks and then retreated.
    After an hour, the door opened and a young man came in. He had a thick head of hair, liberally oiled with bear grease, a long nose and large mouth, and wore the City uniform of
black coat and striped trousers.
    He affected surprise when he saw them and said, ‘Wrong room. But I’d better introduce myself. I am Gerald King.’
    ‘I’m Daisy Levine and my friend is Miss Rose Summer.’
    Gerald