by Carola Dunn
“By Jove, sir, if anyone asks such infernally impertinent questions, you jolly well raise your eyebrows at them. Not at all the thing.”
Arbuckle was surprised into a snort of laughter. “Attaboy,” he said, standing up. “I figured you’d come through with the goods. Waal, I’d better be getting back to the hotel.”
“Would you like me to come with you?”
“I don’t say I wouldn’t appreciate your company, son, but that surely would raise eyebrows, you calling on me when Gloria’s gone off visiting.” His knowing look made Phillip blush. “No, you’ll have to steer clear of the hotel. Better not come into town, either, because I’ll be damned if Gloria would have accepted an invitation from anyone but royalty knowing you’d be in this part of the country. I’ll be able to get hold of you here?”
“For the present.” Phillip was suddenly overwhelmed by a wave of fatigue. He really was too rocky to face his family’s inevitable questions if he went home. No earthly use raising his eyebrows at them! “I’ll ring you up before I leave. You will keep me in the picture, let me know at once if there’s anything I can do? Anything at all!”
“Sure thing. Just be careful what you say on the ’phone.” Arbuckle wrote down the Dalrymples’ telephone number. Shaking Phillip’s hand, he said, “I reckon my girl’s found her a mighty fine guy, yes sirree. Now don’t you go tearing your hair. I’ll pay whatever they ask. Gloria’s going to be okay.”
If so, Phillip thought miserably, escorting his visitor down to the hall, why was her father so haggard?
For want of anything more helpful to do, he trudged back up to the bedroom. How he wished he were the clever sort of chap who always knew the answers, who had a plan at his fingertips to meet any situation! Someone like Bulldog Drummond, who not only knew just what to do but had the devil’s own luck. Perhaps if he sat down, closed his eyes, and concentrated … .
Or lay down. His bones ached and the bed looked awfully inviting. One could think just as well prone as sitting up, he assured himself, as he hung his jacket on the back of a chair, kicked off his shoes, and stretched out on top of the bedspread.
Sleep hit too fast to be resisted.
When Phillip woke up, he knew precisely what to do. The notion buzzing around in his brain was an absolute corker, he decided, examining it from every angle.
What did Bulldog Drummond do when his back was to the wall? He called in his friends. Phillip would consult Daisy.
Daisy not only had brains, she was quick-witted. She was forever getting mixed up in shady business and finding her way out in one piece, even helping the police, he gathered. He didn’t approve. He had done his best to dissuade her from letting herself be drawn into murder investigations, so he’d look an absolute ass calling her in now, but this was different.
This was Gloria in danger. Besides, if it came to taking any risks, he would keep Daisy well out of the way. Even Gervaise could not have faulted him for asking her advice.
Nor could Arbuckle object. Phillip would make Daisy swear not to contact the police, and he trusted her if he trusted anyone in the world.
Sitting up, he swung his legs off the bed and reached for his shoes. He must wire her at once, begging her to hop on a train this very afternoon. Surely she didn’t slave over her blasted articles on Sunday afternoons?
As he tied his shoes, Ernest arrived. “Oh, you’re awake at last, sir,” he said. “Her ladyship wants to know—wishes to enquire, that is—will you be coming down to dinner?”
“To dinner! What time is it?”
“Half past six, sir. The dressing-bell will ring in half an hour.”
“Ye gods, I’ve slept the whole day away!” said Phillip, shocked.
“Yes, sir.”
“I must send a telegram immediately.”
“Yes, sir. Dinner, sir?” the footman ventured to enquire as Phillip sped past him.
“I’m abso-bally-lutely ravenous,” Phillip called back over his shoulder, well on his way to the stairs. Dash it, he thought, bounding down, how could he have wasted so much time? Daisy might not be able to come till tomorrow now.
If only she had a telephone, he’d be able to persuade her of the urgency of his plea without blowing the gaff to any inquisitive operator. A wire was going to take some thought.
5
Alec opened the passenger door of the Austin Chummy. Daisy stepped out onto the pavement. A whiff of petrol fumes ceded to the lingering smell of his aromatic pipe tobacco and the fragrance of the roses in the front garden.
“It’s been a lovely evening,” she said, not wanting it to end. “Will you come in for a nightcap? Only South African sherry, I’m afraid, unless Lucy’s splurged on Spanish ‘cognac.’”
“I’d better not.”
“Binkie might have left some whisky, or there’s always coffee, or cocoa.”
Alec laughed. “Fear of South African sherry couldn’t stop me, though I’d hesitate to drink Lord Gerald’s Scotch. Unfortunately, crooks don’t cease operations over the weekend. It’s early to rise for me tomorrow. If anything is certain in this life it’s that the stack of paper on my desk will have grown since I last scowled upon it.”
“My stacks of paper are all ready to be posted,” Daisy said with satisfaction as he escorted her up the short path to the front door. She stopped on the step, fumbling in her evening bag for the key by the light from the street lamp.
“Well done. The best I can say is that there are a couple of cases I can close and send down to Files.”
Key in hand, Daisy paused. “Alec, I don’t suppose you could get away next weekend for a day or two?” Was she being frightfully presumptuous? She had ragged Phillip about being slow to introduce Miss Arbuckle to his parents, and she had known Alec much longer. These days a girl didn’t have to wait for a man to make all the running, she reminded herself. “I’m going down to Fairacres, to Mother at the Dower House, and I’d like awfully for you to meet her.”
Without warning, she found herself enveloped in an ardent embrace. The key clinked on the step as she put her arms around his neck and kissed him back with great enthusiasm.
“Gosh!” she said shakily when at last forced to come up for air, “can all coppers kiss like that?”
“I hope you have no intention of trying to find out.” He let her go and stepped back, running a hand through his thick, dark hair. “Daisy, that was shockingly ungentlemanly of me,” he said ruefully.
“What rot! You can’t say that without implying that I was unladylike.”
“In that case, I withdraw the apology.” He smiled. “Do you mean you won’t withdraw the invitation?”
“Of course not, idiot,” Daisy said lovingly. “Can you accept?”
“I have a few days’ leave due. I can’t …”
‘ … promise—I know. A second Jack the Ripper might be on the prowl at this very moment.” Her involuntary shiver led Alec to put his arm around her shoulders. She looked up at him.”But you’ll try?”
“That I can promise. You’d better give me the name of the nearest hotel so that I can ring up and book a room.”
“There are lots of hotels in Great Malvern, but the inn in the village is nearer, and I’m told it’s quite comfortable. The Wedge and Beetle at Morton Green.”
“The Wedge and Beetle it shall be. I’ll try to get away for lunch one day this week, too.” He bent his head.
This time Daisy was prepared to be kissed. To her frustration, a motor-car promptly pulled up behind the Austin and she heard Lucy’s penetrating soprano.
Alec’s lips brushed hers. “I really must be off,” he said regretfully. “Lunch on Tuesday, if I can make it?”
“Spiffing. Wire me if you can’t.”
She watched him walk down the path, a broad-shouldered figure in the lamplight, with a spring in his step despite the lateness of the hour. He paused at the gate to exchange goodnights with Lucy and Binkie, turned to wave to Daisy, then was eclipsed as the other two approached.
&nbs
p; “What-ho, Daisy,” said Lord Gerald Bincombe, a large, taciturn ex-rugger Blue.
“Solved any mysteries tonight, darling?” Lucy asked sardonically.
“No, darling, but you can help me solve one. I’ve dropped my dratted key.”
“Aha!” Lucy sounded amused. “I wonder what made you do that?”
Feeling herself blush, an outdated affliction she was mortifyingly prone to, Daisy stooped to search. She said crossly, “Give us a hand, do.”
“Hullo, here it is.” Binkie bent down, retrieved the key from the path, and presented it to Daisy with a slight bow.
“Thanks.” She opened the door and flipped the electric light switch. A yellow envelope lay on the mat inside. “Oh, there’s a telegram. For me,” she added, picking it up and dropping it on the hall table while she took off her hat and gloves.
They all went down to the semi-basement kitchen for cocoa. Sitting at the kitchen table, Daisy opened the telegram.
“Who’s it from?” Lucy asked, pouring milk into a saucepan with the utmost care to avoid splashes on the hip-waisted yellow silk georgette clinging to her slender figure.
“Phillip. How odd! ‘Urgent emergency,’” Daisy read. “‘Come pronto Fairacres not Dower House need you now please.’ With his name, it’s one word over the twelve—the ‘please’ was an afterthought.”
“Urgent, emergency, pronto, now; he’s certainly keen to get you there in a hurry.”
“But why? I suppose it’s too late to telephone from a box to find out.”
Binkie consulted his wrist-watch. “Nearly midnight.”
“Too late, and you don’t know where he is,” said Lucy.
A horrid possibility crossed Daisy’s mind. “Oh Lucy, you don’t suppose Mother’s fallen seriously ill? Why should he say to go to Fairacres not the Dower House? He hardly knows Edgar and Geraldine.”
“Surely not, darling. You would have heard from your cousin, or maybe a doctor, not Phillip. You know what an ass he is. No one would leave it to him to contact you. Mysteriouser and mysteriouser—just your line—but I shouldn’t worry about the dowager.”
“No, I expect you’re right.” Could it be that the Arbuckles had met his family by chance with disastrous results? Daisy debated whether to tell Lucy and Binkie about Gloria. Not her tale to tell, she decided.
“Drive you down tonight, if you want,” Binkie offered gruffly. “Back in time to toddle to the office.”
“You’re an angel, but Phillip can’t possibly expect me to leave at this time of night, not to mention what Edgar and Geraldine would say if I turned up on their doorstep at dawn. I’ll take the first train in the morning. Where’s the Bradshaw’s, Lucy?”
“You used it last. Oh drat! The milk’s boiling over.”
Binkie coped manfully with the emergency, and Lucy made cocoa with what was left of the milk. Daisy took her threequarters of a cupful up to her den to look for the railway timetable, more to give the other two a spot of privacy than because she was in a hurry to find the best train.
On her way upstairs, she wondered what on earth had put the wind up Phillip. He was by nature on the phlegmatic side, not easily excited to more than a bit of minor bluster or a temperate enthusiasm.
Why had he not been more explicit, if not to avoid worrying her? Lucy was right, of course, about Phillip being the last person anyone would ask to get in touch with her if her mother was ill. All the same, Daisy could not help being anxious. She could not imagine why he should tell her to go to Fairacres rather than the Dower House, or even Malvern Grange, if the Dowager Lady Dalrymple were not involved.
Unless he didn’t want her ladyship to get involved—which suggested a row with his family over Gloria. The question then became, did Daisy want to get involved? To be present at their meeting, to help smooth the way and prevent a row was one thing. Landing in the middle when he was already hock deep in the soup was quite another.
Sitting down at her desk, she reread the telegram. “Urgent emergency” sounded positively desperate. She had better go, but she’d really give it him in the neck if all he wanted was his hand held!
The train service to Malvern was excellent, the Victorian spa enjoying a renaissance since the Armistice. Reading, Oxford, the long, slow pull up into the Cotswolds and the rush down the steep slope into the Vale of Evesham, with Bredon Hill dominating the plain to the south. A brief stop in Worcester, then over the Severn and Daisy was in her home country.
At the ripe old age of twenty-five, one ought to be blase, but she still felt some of the excitement of the end-of-term return from school.
The rich, red soil, orchards, hop-fields, and market gardens, streams and pastures, woods crowning the low rises, and always the Malvern Hills to the west—this was home. She had climbed the hills, walked and ridden through the woods and fields, cycled along the twisting lanes, through the villages of brick and stone and half-timbered cottages.
Puffing and sighing, the train drew into Great Malvern station. The porter who opened the compartment door for Daisy greeted her by name.
“Morning, Miss Dalrymple. Mind the wet paint.”
The pillars and elaborate brackets holding up the roof over the platform had just been repainted red and blue; their fanciful wreaths of ironwork leaves and flowers were glossy green, yellow, and white; men were scrubbing the patina of soot from the walls of the long building, patterned with vari-coloured stone. Daisy stepped down to the platform with an involuntary sense of civic pride in the uniquely decorative station.
“What-ho, Daisy!” Phillip loped along the platform towards her. “I hoped you’d be on this train, old dear.”
“I had to get up frightfully early to … . Gosh, Phil, what have you done to your head?” she exclaimed as he took off his tweed cap, revealing an encircling bandage.
Hastily he clapped the cap back on his head. “You should have seen me yesterday. I looked like a ruddy native in a turban.”
“What happened? What’s going on? I hope you have a jolly good reason for dragging me all this way!”
“I can’t tell you here.” He glanced furtively over his shoulder, then turned to her porter. “Is this all your luggage?”
“Yes, I don’t expect to stay long and anyway I have a few things at the Dower House. Phillip, Mother’s not ill, is she?”
“Ill? Lady Dalrymple? By Jove, no. At least, not that I know of. Why?”
“For pity’s sake,” Daisy said, exasperated, as she handed in her ticket, “because your telegram was so urgent and so obscure I didn’t know what else to think. Unless it’s something to do with Miss Arbuckle?”
“Sshhh!” he hissed in an agony of apprehension, casting another rapid glance over his shoulder. “I’ll explain when we get there.”
Daisy sighed. They emerged onto the station forecourt and she looked around. “Where’s your car?”
“I don’t know,” Phillip said gloomily. “Please, Daisy, don’t ask questions, just wait till we get to Fairacres.”
A green Vauxhall pulled up in front of them. Daisy recognized the chauffeur. Bill Truscott had worked for her father before the War, returned when demobbed, married a parlour-maid, and stayed on with the new viscount. He grinned at her, jumping out and tipping his peaked cap.
“Hello, Bill. How’s Mrs. Truscott?”
“Morning, Miss Daisy.” He opened the car’s back door for her. “The wife’s doing fine, still helping up at the house now and then. Three nippers we’ve got now, and his lordship’s moved us into the lodge.”
“Good for you. The flat over the garages wasn’t designed for a family. Edgar seems to be doing quite well,” she added to Phillip, stepping up onto the running board as the chauffeur went to open the boot for her bag.
“Considering he wasn’t brought up to it, and his head is full of moths and butterflies.”
Laughing, Daisy conceded, “He still has Father’s bailiff, who knows what he’s about. I doubt Edgar has to do much but approve his plans.”
“Lady Dalrymple acts as if she’s still married to a housemaster,” Phillip grumbled, “and the rest of the world is made up of small boys.”
Daisy laughed again. “I know what you mean. She’s never actually ordered me to wash off my powder and lipstick, but she looks as if she’d like to. Only Scarlet Women paint.”
“She forbade me to drive this morning because of my head.” Phillip joined Daisy in the back seat after tipping the porter. “It’s perfectly all right now.”
Bill took his place behind the steering wheel and pressed the self-starter. The Vauxhall proceeded in stately fashion out onto Avenue Road and turned down the hill away from the town.
The back of the chauffeur’s head before her, Daisy managed to subdue her rampant curiosity but for one low-voiced question. “Does Geraldine … do she and Edgar know why you called me down here?”
“Actually,” Phillip said sheepishly, “as a matter of fact, you see I spent last night there and I’m afraid I rather left them with the impression that I was going home. I didn’t actually say so, mind.”
“They aren’t expecting me? And they think they’ve rid themselves of you? Phil, you hopeless ass, I can’t just march in as if I still lived there. We’d better go to the Dower House if you don’t want to go home yet.”
“No, I can’t stay at your mater’s. You’ll think up a story to tell your cousins, old bean. I know you can if you’ll just put your mind to it. After all, isn’t that what writers do for a living?”
Reluctantly flattered by his confidence, Daisy bit back a vigorous protest and a reminder that she wrote factual articles, not fiction. She put her mind to it.
The final details fell into place as they rolled past the Dower House, a charming red-brick Georgian residence set in its own gardens at the edge of the park.
“You promised to call on Mother,” she said.
“I haven’t had half a chance!”
“No, that’s the basis for our story. You asked Bill to stop while you popped in to say hullo and … .”
