Die Laughing

by Carola Dunn

  10

  Gladys opened the door. “I’m sorry, madam,” she said, “Mrs. Talmadge is not—Oh, it’s you, m’m. Lor, m’m, you’re ever so wet.”

  “I’ve come for my umbrella,” Daisy explained. “I left it in the waiting room.”

  “Oh dear, the pleece took away the keys. They maybe took your brolly, too, m’m, thinking it was a clue. Nurse might know. They was asking her about stuff in there. I’ll go ask her, m’m, if you’ll just step in. She’s upstairs with the mistress.”

  “How is Mrs. Talmadge?” Daisy asked, stepping in.

  “I’m s‘posed to say ‘As well as can be expected,’ m’m, when people call or ring up. But you being here yesterday, well, I heard Nurse telling Cook the mistress slept right through till noon, what with the doctor’s med’cine and all. And when she woke up, she felt sick and didn’t want no lunch. Nurse made her eat some consommy and a bit of dry toast, just to keep up her strength, like.”

  “That sounds like a good idea.”

  “She didn’t have no breakfast, being asleep, nor dinner last night neither. The chief pleeceman—him that’s your husband, isn’t he, m’m?—he came this morning and wanted to see the mistress, but Nurse wouldn’t let him. I’ll go ask her about your brolly, m’m.”

  “Thank you, Gladys. Tell her I enquired after her patient, and I’d be grateful for the latest news.”

  The housemaid left Daisy standing in the hall, as no welltrained parlourmaid would have. The wilting daffodils in the vase on the half-moon table were another sign of a household at sixes and sevens. Hilda Kidd must be sleeping after watching over Daphne Talmadge all night.

  Daisy badly wanted to talk to the cook—Mrs. Thorpe, if she recalled correctly—but she couldn’t think of an excuse to go to the kitchen. Or rather, she came up with a couple that might satisfy the cook, but there wasn’t a chance they would pass muster with Alec. Instead, she hurried into the study, telephoned Scotland Yard, and left a message about Gwen Walker. She put a couple of pennies on the desk to pay for the call, then returned to the hall to wait for Gladys.

  The silver tray on the table now held a large number of visiting cards, with written messages of sympathy visible on the top layer. This morning, callers must have been practically queuing up to leave their condolences. Daisy wasn’t sure whether she ought to add her own card to the heap. What on earth was the proper etiquette when one had been present at the discovery by the bereaved of the murdered body of the deceased? Even the Dowager Viscountess would be hard-pressed to come up with an answer to that conundrum.

  Lady Dalrymple would certainly not approve of her daughter’s present appearance. Daisy regarded her droopily damp image in the looking-glass over the table, wondering whether her hat would ever recover. Thank heaven she had put on an old one to go out in the rain.

  “The pleece took your brolly, m’m,” Gladys announced from halfway down the stairs. Continuing down, she went on, “The mistress says to lend you one to go home, but she wants to see you first. Would you be so kind, m’m, she says, as to step up to her room. Nurse says she’s too ill to see anyone, but she says she won’t take her med’cine till she’s seen you. Miss Kidd says it smells ever so nasty. If you please, m’m.”

  “Of course I’ll go up.”

  Daphne Talmadge was in bed, propped up on several frilly pillows. Her starkly pale face rose from a froth of lace adorning a pink quilted satin bed-jacket. Miss Hensted stood by the bed, a neat figure in her uniform dress and cap, a brown medicine bottle in one hand. It occurred to Daisy that the nurse would already be looking for a new job if it weren’t for Daphne’s breakdown.

  “Daisy, how good of you to c-come!” Daphne’s voice broke on a sob.

  “There now, what did I say, you’re getting all upset again,” Nurse Hensted reproved her. “Better take your dose like the doctor said.”

  “Not now. Later. I want to talk to Mrs. Fletcher. Go away, Nurse. I’ll ring when you can come back.”

  The nurse set down the bottle with rather a thump on the bedside table beside a glass of white liquid, milk perhaps. But she looked less annoyed than anxious. “Don’t let her keep you long, Mrs. Fletcher,” she said in a low voice as she passed Daisy. “Call me if she gets agitated.”

  Daisy gave her a nod, and made sure the door was properly latched behind her. Whatever Daphne wanted to say, it was none of Miss Hensted’s business, and Daisy didn’t quite trust the nurse not to listen.

  “She’s never liked me,” Daphne moaned. “I hate her hovering over me.”

  “Dismiss her,” said Daisy, moving a chair to a convenient position near the bed. “If the doctor wants you to have a nurse for a few days, hire someone else.”

  “I couldn’t. She … she knows things. If I send her away she might tell … people.”

  “A nurse who spreads rumours about her employers isn’t likely to get any decent jobs. Has she threatened to talk if you don’t go on paying her? If so, that’s blackmail, and the police don’t like it at all.”

  “Oh no, nothing like that,” Daphne gabbled. “It’s just a feeling, nothing the police would be interested in.”

  “If you’re worried about what the police might find out, I think it’s too late for that.”

  “You mean they know? About Harry? Lord Henry?”

  Daisy was a bit disappointed. Was the illicit liaison the only misdeed Miss Hensted might have discovered? “Alec went to see Lord Henry last night,” she said. Arriving home very late and dog-tired, he had told her no more than that before falling asleep.

  “But he hasn’t been arrested?”

  “Did you expect him to be?”

  “No! He didn’t kill Raymond!” Daphne buried her face in her hands and started to cry in great, gasping sobs.

  “There, what did I say?” Hilda Kidd rushed in, in a buttercup yellow dressing gown and carpet slippers, Nurse Hensted at her heels. “You’re a fine one to be taking care of her, I don’t think! Good job I came down to check. Letting people in to bully her!”

  “Rubbish,” Miss Hensted retorted angrily. “She’s just overwrought, which isn’t surprising, considering. It’s time she took her medicine.”

  “Oh yes, give it to me. I’ll take it now. I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to think!”

  “Stands to reason you don’t. That’s why Dr. Curtis left the Paral.” Picking up the bottle from the bedside table, the nurse unscrewed the top and picked up a measuring spoon.

  Daisy had moved out of the way, but made no move to leave. Hilda rounded on her.

  “See what you’ve done? I hope you’re—”

  “Hilda, that will do! Daisy, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to get so weepy. It’s just—” Daphne choked up.

  “Altogether too much.”

  “Yes. Will you … Would you mind staying till I go to sleep?”

  “Of course.” At least she could stop the nurse and the maid squabbling, Daisy thought.

  Hilda scowled. Miss Hensted, her nose wrinkling slightly, measured a spoonful of liquid and stirred it into the milk. She handed it to Daphne, who gulped down the mixture with a grimace.

  “Horrid stuff.” Leaning back against the pillows with a little sigh, she closed her eyes.

  Daisy was wondering how she would know when to leave, when Daphne grimaced again.

  “My stomach hurts,” she mumbled.

  Then suddenly she sat bolt upright, clutched her abdomen, and with a cry of pain doubled over.

  “You witch, you’ve poisoned her!” Hilda screeched, rushing at the nurse. “I’ll kill you!”

  As Daisy jumped to grab the maid, from the corner of her eye she saw Miss Hensted wrench the bedcovers off Daphne. She didn’t for a moment believe the nurse would commit murder in front of two witnesses, so she averted her gaze. Not for nothing had she chosen to work in a hospital office during the War, rather than as a VAD nurse.

  Anyway, she had no attention to spare for what was going on elsewhere. She had Hilda around the waist. For wha
t seemed like forever, the maid clawed at her hands, still screeching imprecations.

  The nurse’s cold, businesslike voice cut through the shrieks. “You’re bleeding. It looks like a miscarriage to me. Are you—?”

  “My baby!” wailed Daphne.

  “Lie down flat. I don’t care if it hurts, it just may save the poor little beggar and stop you bleeding to death. Miss Kidd, I need clean linen and a basin of cold water. Mrs. Fletcher, please go and telephone for the doctor. If you can’t get Dr. Curtis, find someone else. Lie flat, I tell you!”

  Daisy fled. She had to assume Hilda would come to her senses and help Miss Hensted instead of attacking her. At least no screams followed her as she raced down the stairs. With any luck, that also meant the drug Daphne had taken was dulling her pain.

  Could the drug have caused the miscarriage? Although her sister had had one, Daisy didn’t know much about the subject. She did know her brother-in-law had worried that any emotional upset might lead to another, and what Daphne had gone through was a huge emotional upset.

  The doctor’s telephone was engaged. Daisy told the operator it was an emergency, and the girl broke in on the call. Mrs. Curtis, sounding a bit cross, said her husband was just setting out on his rounds.

  “Oh, please try to catch him! It’s Mrs. Talmadge. The nurse thinks she’s having a miscarriage.”

  “My dear, I’ll run. Hold the line.”

  Daisy held on. She heard quick footsteps, a motor-car engine, a shout. The engine noise subsided to an idle. It sounded as if Mrs. Curtis had managed to stop the doctor as he drove down the drive.

  A minute later she was on the line again. “He’s on his way,” she panted. “Just a moment while I catch my breath.”

  “Thank you so much.”

  “I’m getting too old for these emergencies! He says to keep her lying flat on her back with cold compresses to the abdomen. She mustn’t take any more of the Paral he prescribed. And keep her calm, though I know that’s a tall order in the circumstances.”

  “I’ll tell Nurse Hensted. Thanks, Mrs. Curtis.”

  “I do hope she doesn’t lose her baby. Or perhaps, in the circumstances … Oh dear!” Unable to decide what to hope for, the doctor’s wife rang off.

  In the circumstances—How long since Daphne had shared a bed with her murdered husband? The baby was almost certainly her lover’s. Their motive for doing away with the inconvenient dentist was doubled with a vengeance.

  11

  Arriving panting on the upper landing, Daisy met Hilda coming out of the bathroom with a bowl of water and followed her into the bedroom. Carefully averting her eyes from the bed, though she couldn’t avoid hearing Daphne’s moans, she passed on Dr. Curtis’s instructions.

  “Just what I’m doing,” said Miss Hensted complacently. “It might stop the bleeding, you never can tell. At least she’s vomited up the Paral, for a mercy.”

  “Unless there’s something I can do to help,” said Daisy, feeling cowardly, “I’ll wait downstairs.”

  The nurse gave her the cheerfully pitying glance of one to whom blood and vomit are nothing. “Off you go, then, dear,” she advised. “You might send up some tea, if you don’t mind.”

  “I will,” Daisy promised, and once again fled, this time with an excuse to go and speak to Cook.

  The kitchen smelt of fried onions—the servants had to eat regardless of their master’s death and their mistress’s lack of appetite. Daisy found Gladys there with Mrs. Thorpe, and sent her to wait at the front door to admit the doctor. The cook was a short, thin woman with a face as dour as Hilda Kidd’s. She turned from a simmering pan on the stove to stand with her hands on her white-aproned hips waiting for Daisy to explain her presence.

  “Nurse Hensted asked for a pot of tea to be sent up, please, Cook.”

  “Oh aye? What kind? For that woman or t’mistress?”

  Daisy didn’t know. Daphne was in no state to enjoy a drink of fragrant China tea, and the nurse surely had her hands too full to stop for a cuppa. Conceivably what was needed was a stimulant to counteract any of the sedative Daphne had absorbed before she … in which case the stronger the better.

  “Indian. Strong. It’s medicinal.”

  “And t’doctor?” said Mrs. Thorpe, putting on the kettle. “What’s gone wrong, that’s what I want to know?”

  Daisy sat down at the table. “I’m not exactly sure. Miss Hensted seems to have everything in hand.”

  “‘Tis not like Mrs. Talmadge were ever ill, not one to coddle herself. Not one o’ these gaumless ladies always fussing over their food and fancying themselves at death’s door. Hilda didn’t ought to have never let that woman get her hands on her.”

  “After such a shock as she had yesterday, it’s hardly surprising that she’s not well. I know it was your day out, Mrs. Thorpe, but have you any ideas about what might have happened?”

  “Ideas?” The cook looked blank, as if she’d never heard of such things. “I’m sure ‘tis not my place to have ideas, madam. I wasn’t here and I didn’t see nowt and that’s that.” Her mouth set in an uncompromising line, she set about making the tea.

  Daisy knew when she was beaten. It wasn’t often that even the most unlikely people failed to confide in her. She wondered whether Tom Tring had had better luck.

  As long as she was here, though, there was a chance of learning something. Anyway, she couldn’t leave until she knew what was happening upstairs.

  “Pour me a cup before it gets too strong, would you, please?”

  Reluctantly Cook obliged. “I’ll have Gladys bring it to you in t’ drawing room, madam.”

  “Oh no, I want her to stay at the door to admit Dr. Curtis, so there’s no delay. I’m quite comfortable here. Won’t you sit down and have a cup with me?”

  “I couldn’t do that, madam.” Mrs. Thorpe was stiff with disapproval. “’Twouldn’t be proper.”

  Another of those middle-class taboos, Daisy thought with a sigh. Growing up at Fairacres she and Gervaise and even Violet, the best behaved of the three, had often gone to the kitchens for a snack, and Cook would join them if she wasn’t extra-busy. And in Chelsea, before she married, Daisy had often sat down at the kitchen table with the daily help for elevenses and what Mrs. Potter called “a nice bit of chinwag.”

  Muttering, “I only hope ‘tis for t’mistress,” Mrs. Thorpe spread an embroidered cloth on a tray. She had made the tea in the Royal Doulton pot, and set out milk, sugar, and hot water in the matching jugs and basin. Now she hesitated with the cup and saucer in her hand, as if the thought of Miss Hensted drinking from the good china appalled her.

  “Why do you dislike the nurse so?” Daisy ventured.

  “Dead chuffed wi’ herself, isn’t she? Right stuck-up, fancies herself as good as t’gentry and a sight too good for us servants. Some people, you give ‘em an inch and they’ll take an ell. If there’s anything I can’t abide, ’tis someone that doesn’t know her own place.” She glared at Daisy, who decided not to offer to take the tray up, as she had intended.

  Gladys came in. “The doctor’s come, madam.”

  “Good, that was quick. Mrs. Thorpe, you’d better put out a cup for him.” And one for Hilda Kidd? No, it would only upset Cook still more to suggest the maid might drink with Mrs. Talmadge and the doctor. “Then Gladys can take it.”

  With an air of triumph, the cook set out two Doulton cups and saucers and one of the white kitchen china. “That’ll show her,” she gloated, turning back to the stove as Gladys carried the tray out.

  Almost simultaneously three bells rang: the side door, the telephone, and Daphne Talmadge’s bedroom. Gladys, already on her way, could take care of the last.

  “That’ll be t‘butcher’s boy,” said Cook. “He’s late again, t’ good-for-nowt.”

  Daisy would have liked to ask the butcher’s boy whether he had noticed anything the day before, but Mrs. Thorpe was already on her way to the door. No doubt Tom had taken the names of all deliverymen and intervi
ewed them by now—that might even be why the boy was late.

  “I’ll get the ’phone,” Daisy offered.

  “Let it ring. ’Twill stop. Just some Nosey Parker, think on.”

  A reporter, maybe, but it could be another emergency for the doctor. Daisy hurried to the study, picked up the apparatus, and gave the number.

  “Daisy?”

  “Alec!”

  “What the dickens are you doing there?”

  “I came to get my umbrella, darling. I didn’t know you had impounded it as a clue.”

  “So Mother said. But she expected you home long ago.”

  “Well, once here I couldn’t very well leave without asking after Daphne, and she wanted to see me, so—”

  “What’s this message you left for me?” he interrupted. “Something about Mrs. Walker being the missing factor.”

  “I didn’t want to be too explicit, darling, because it’s only a rumour and you never know who’s listening. In fact, hold on while I close the door.” She did so. “There. It was at the ghastly luncheon your mother and I went to today. I’m inclined to think Mrs. Grantchester set it up just so that her mouthpiece, Miss Cobb, could enlighten me.”

  “About what, for pity’s sake?”

  “Gwen Walker was seen dining in Soho with Raymond Talmadge.”

  “Mrs. Major Walker? Well I’ll be … dashed. I have to admit you’ve beaten us to it there. We had no leads so far.”

  “Maybe, but it’s just High Street salon gossip. Miss Cobb didn’t even know who was supposed to have seen them. Something much more significant is going on here right now.”

  “More significant than discovering Talmadge’s lover? Do stop being so mysterious, Daisy!”

  “Stop interrupting and give me a chance. It looks as if Daphne’s having a miscarriage.”

  “A mis—Great Scott, she’s pregnant?”

  “Is or was. The doctor’s with her now, poor thing.”

  Alec snorted. “Poor thing! Tom’s pretty sure after talking to the servants that she and Talmadge hadn’t slept together for at least a couple of years. It’s Lord Henry’s baby, and I can’t think offhand of a better motive for either or both to do in her husband. Assuming she knew.”