Die Laughing

by Carola Dunn

  Daisy tried to work out how to say politely that a man visiting his mistress in her bedroom at home on the day after her husband was murdered was simply not on. Especially as he’d been murdered in that very house. “I really don’t think—”

  “I don’t care what people say. It’s too late to worry about that. Will you go down and telephone him for me?”

  “As a matter of fact, there’s a policeman down there for the express purpose of stopping you getting in touch with Lord Henry until Alec has talked to you. And please don’t ask me to write a note or something. I may not always agree with Alec, but I couldn’t deliberately thwart him like that.” At least, not unless she was absolutely certain he was wrong.

  At present, the only certainties were that Daphne was tired, upset, and worried about Lord Henry. Daisy hoped she wasn’t deluding herself that he cared equally for her. Or was she worried because she was afraid he might desert her?

  She could even be making up the whole story to divert suspicion from herself to him. A reconciliation with her husband eliminated her motive for killing him, but intensified Lord Henry’s—always supposing he really was devoted to her.

  “I wish he’d hurry up and come then,” Daphne sighed. “Mr. Fletcher, I mean. But I want you to tell him first what I’ve told you. It won’t be quite so difficult if he already knows the worst.”

  “I could try to ’phone him at the Yard, and if he’s not there, leave a message that you’re ready to see him.”

  “Would you? Please?”

  “Right-oh. Then I’ll wait and come up with him, if you’re sure that’s what you want. He can’t very well object to your having a chaperon.”

  “I’m afraid I’m taking up a great deal of your time. I know you’re awfully busy with your writing. I do envy you for having something really worthwhile to do, and I admire you for going on with it spite of what people say. I sometimes think if I had had more to do …” She sighed again. “You’ve been very kind, and I don’t want to ask anything more of you, but … I don’t think I can bear the Hensted woman brooding over me any longer. Her squabbles with Hilda alone are intolerable.”

  “You really must brace yourself to dismiss her. Did Dr. Curtis say you ought to have a nurse on hand?”

  “For a few days, at least.”

  “Well, if you like I’ll call an agency and get them to send someone, but I can’t chuck Miss Hensted out for you. I don’t see why she should mind, given pay in lieu of notice. After all, the job she was hired for no longer exists, and she told Alec she abhors waiting on an invalid.”

  Daphne brightened. “She did? Then maybe I can make it seem as if I’m doing her a favour by letting her go.”

  “Try it,” Daisy advised. “I’ll send her in. I’m off to ’phone Alec.”

  When Daisy left the bedroom, Nurse Hensted was on the landing waiting to return to her patient. Hilda Kidd, thank heaven, was nowhere in sight.

  Lost in thought, the nurse didn’t notice Daisy for a moment. Judging by her heavy frown and downturned mouth her thoughts were not pleasant. It must be hard to lose a position she had no doubt expected to keep for years, particularly one where the work was not exactly exacting. Even if Daphne kept her on, it could only be a few days before she’d have to start pounding the pavements again in search of a new job. She would probably end up either in a hospital or looking after an invalid.

  She looked up, saw Daisy, and started forward. “I hope you didn’t upset her, Mrs. Fletcher,” she said belligerently. “We don’t want another emergency.”

  “Mrs. Talmadge is quite calm at present. You’ll see that she stays calm, won’t you?”

  “That’s my job. It’s Hilda Kidd gets her all worked up.”

  Daisy nodded, but she paused to listen before going downstairs.

  Miss Hensted pushed the door to after her, but it didn’t latch, bouncing back to leave a crack. Daisy heard professionally soothing sounds, but without putting her ear to the crack she couldn’t make out the words. Not that it mattered; she just wanted to make sure there wasn’t going to be a battle royal.

  Daphne’s voice came next, in firm tones. Then the nurse said clearly, “Oh yes, Mrs. Talmadge, I’d be ever so grateful. I didn’t want to leave you in the lurch, but it’ll suit me down to the ground. You’ll write me a reference? I’m sure I’ve always given satisfaction.”

  All was well. Daisy went on down the stairs. She found DS Mackinnon perched uneasily on the shield-back chair in the hall. He jumped up when he saw her.

  “How is the lady, Mrs. Fletcher?”

  “Much better. I was just going to ring up my husband and tell him he can come and see her.”

  He flushed. “I already did,” he said guiltily. “The doctor said it was all right.”

  Daisy smiled at him kindly. The poor man must hate the tendency to blush even more than she did. It would make life very difficult for a police officer, so the fact that he had reached the rank of detective sergeant meant he was pretty competent at his job. Alec’s keeping a division man on the case when the Yard had taken over also spoke well of Mackinnon.

  So he probably had a good grasp of what was going on, and with any luck she might wheedle some information out of him before Alec arrived.

  “That’s good,” she said. “When I last spoke to him, he said he was going to see Lord Henry again, so I thought I’d have to leave a message. Lord Henry wasn’t exactly forthcoming last night.” That seemed a fairly safe deduction. “As for his alibi, it sounds pretty vague.”

  “Yes,” agreed the obliging sergeant. “DC Piper canna find the restaurant his lordship said he and the lady lunched at. Not a single waiter in any restaurant in or near Oxford Street recognized his photograph.”

  “And his looks are rather distinctive,” Daisy mused. So Creighton had admitted to being with Daphne at lunchtime yesterday, and had attempted to give them both an alibi. “Do you know if Tom—Sergeant Tring—managed to get hold of the errand boy I found for him?”

  “Yes indeed, easily, with the information you provided, ma’am. He hadna seen anything useful, but he gave the names of others who use the alley regularly, and some of them provided more names. Last I heard, Sergeant Tring was working his way through a list as long as your arm, and most of them out and about on their bicycles.”

  “Poor Tom!”

  “Dinna fash yoursel’, as we say in my part of the world. He’s sitting still and letting them come to him.”

  “While you’ve been slogging round all the neighbours, and I’d bet none of them have seen anything.”

  “You’d win the bet hands down, Mrs. Fletcher. This is the worst sort of place from our point of view. The houses are hidden from each other and the servants aren’t local people, as they would be in the country.”

  “Each house is an island, entire of itself,” Daisy misquoted, doubtless making John Donne spin in his grave. Compounding the offence, she went on, “Never send to know for whom the bell tolls, they all know by now it tolls for poor Raymond Talmadge.”

  “So they do.” Mackinnon, with a thorough Scots education behind him, was less successful than Tom Tring in concealing his amusement, not having a moustache to hide behind. “However, I did get the names of all the shops that delivered to this street yesterday, and those also are on Sergeant Tring’s list.”

  “The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. I hope some of them overlap with the alley users. Oh, there goes the ’phone again.”

  Mackinnon was closer to the study and beat her to it. He gave the number, listened, then said, “Detective Sergeant Mackinnon, sir.”

  All Daisy could hear was a distant quack-quack.

  “The doctor says the lady is out of danger, sir.”

  “Danger!” That came through loud and clear.

  “Out of danger, sir,” Mackinnon said soothingly.

  Quack-quack.

  “I havena seen Mrs. Talmadge myself, sir, but I assure you I wouldna dream of bullying her, or anyone else. Nor would De
tective Chief Inspector Fletcher … Now just hold on a minute, sir. Hold the line, please.” He put his hand over the mouthpiece and turned to Daisy. “Lord Henry Creighton, Mrs. Fletcher, as you’ll doubtless have guessed. He says he’s coming right over.”

  “Bringing his solicitor?”

  “He didn’t say so.”

  “Well, that could mean they’re both innocent,” Daisy said thoughtfully, “or it could be an oversight.”

  “What do you think the Chief Inspector would want me to tell his lordship?”

  “I can’t see it matters if he comes. You and Alec between you should be able to keep them apart as long as you want, and Alec might even find it useful to bring them together.”

  The sergeant grinned. “In his presence. Verra well, I’ll say he can come.” He turned back to the apparatus. “My lord? Hello?” Shrugging, he hung up the earpiece. “It seems his lordship didna wait for permission. I hope Mr. Fletcher will get here first.”

  “Dinna fash yoursel’,” Daisy said with a smile. “If Alec left right away, he’ll have missed the rush hour, whereas Lord Henry should land right in the thick of it. And if he should somehow happen to arrive first, I’ll be frightfully chatty and clinging and he’ll be far too polite to brush me off.”

  13

  Daisy didn’t have to display her talent for adhesive loquacity. She just had time to ring up a nurses’ agency before Alec arrived.

  Sergeant Mackinnon reported apologetically that his lordship was on the way. Alec frowned.

  “It’s not his fault,” said Daisy. “Lord Henry hung up without giving him a chance to say he mustn’t come. But if you think about it, darling, it’s really very convenient. You wanted to see him anyway. Now you won’t have to chase after him. And if you want, you can see the two of them together.”

  “True,” Alec grunted. His look conveyed that while she might be telling the truth and nothing but the truth, he didn’t for a moment believe it was the whole truth. “I must go and talk to Mrs. Talmadge before he turns up.” He started towards the stairs.

  Daisy caught his arm. “Hang on, darling. I have news for you.”

  “Can’t it wait, Daisy?”

  “Not really. Daphne asked me to tell you before you go to her. And it’s no good looking at me like that. She insisted on seeing me, and Dr. Curtis said she wasn’t to be upset.”

  “All right,” he sighed. “Let’s have it.”

  “She claims she told her husband about the baby—which she admitted is Lord Henry’s, by the way—and that he—Talmadge, that is—agreed to accept it as his own.”

  “That seems excessively noble of him,” Alec said sceptically.

  “No, quite reasonable actually, darling. They neither of them wanted the scandal of a divorce, for the sake of the child and his career. She says they intended to make a new start with their marriage, to try to patch it together. He was to break off with his mistress—”

  “Does she know who that was?”

  “She didn’t mention a name. She said his current mistress. No, his latest, I think. I didn’t have Piper and his notebook with me, but I’d remember if she’d given a name. Though that doesn’t mean she doesn’t know, of course. I could hardly ask. Her part of the bargain was to tell Lord Henry she could never see him again, which she claims to have done.”

  “She told him she’s pregnant?”

  “So she says.”

  “And that it’s his child?”

  “So she says.”

  Mackinnon looked as if he were bursting to speak. Alec raised an eyebrow at him.

  “I’d’ve thought his lordship’d be delighted, sir, her not wanting him to take responsibility for the bairn. Surely he wouldna go off and murder her husband!”

  “So one would expect,” Alec agreed. “However, it’s so obvious that he had only to claim that such was the case and all the world would believe him. I’d certainly be inclined to. Yet he didn’t.”

  “Chivalry,” Daisy suggested. “After all, it would have cast even more suspicion on Daphne if she could hope that Raymond’s death would force Lord Henry to take care of her and his child. Did he say anything about her being pregnant?”

  “No. He said nothing that could be construed as an admission that she was his mistress.”

  “More chivalry. Or else he didn’t know and she made up that story out of whole cloth.”

  “I noticed that you said she ‘claims’ this and that, and ‘so she says.’ You didn’t believe her?”

  “She was very convincing, darling, but I must admit I wouldn’t be surprised if there was no reconciliation, or there was but she didn’t tell Lord Henry about it, or that she didn’t tell him the baby’s his. I think your scepticism must be rubbing off on me.”

  Alec laughed. “And vice versa. I’m inclined to believe most of what Creighton told me and to credit his reticence, and even his lies, to chivalry. I shan’t let it influence me, of course. He’s very high on my list.”

  “Just below Daphne, I take it.”

  “They’re about equal, now you’ve told me about the reconciliation with Talmadge. If true, and if Creighton’s passion for her is genuine, that vastly increases his motive.”

  “Yes, I wondered if she realizes that.”

  “I’d better go and see if I can find out, before he turns up breathing fire.”

  “She’d like me to be with her,” Daisy said tentatively. She didn’t want to ruin her present rapport with Alec.

  He raised his eyes to heaven, but said, “Right-oh, if you’ll take notes and keep your mouth shut. But only because I must leave Sergeant Mackinnon down here to stop Creighton barging up the stairs when he arrives.”

  “I’ll do my best, sir,” said the sergeant.

  On the way upstairs, Daisy said, “Remember, darling, whether she’s telling the truth or not, Daphne’s been under heavy sedation followed by a medical emergency. She’s pretty fragile.”

  “I promise not to put her through the ‘third degree.’ But any questions I ask are bound to be upsetting. This is a murder investigation and she’s one of the chief suspects.”

  “And it’s just possible that she’s innocent, and that her lover has just murdered her husband, with whom she’s just reconciled. Just be careful.”

  “I’ll be just,” he said with a grin. “I see I was not mistaken in thinking you’d taken her under your wing.”

  She turned her head to wrinkle her nose at him. “Not exactly. I’m sorry for her, but … Well, here we are.” She knocked on Daphne’s bedroom door.

  Nurse Hensted came to the door. She looked resigned when she saw Daisy, but the sight of Alec obviously dismayed her. “Mrs. Talmadge isn’t fit,” she said fiercely.

  “I know,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I can’t put off interviewing her any longer. I’ll disturb her as little as I possibly can.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll see to it,” said Daisy.

  “I’d better stay.”

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” Alec said firmly, and ushered the nurse out. He went over to the bed, where Daphne lay flat, only her head raised an inch or two by a single thin pillow. Daisy could tell he was trying to conceal his shock at Daphne’s ravaged face. He hadn’t seen her since the murder, had never seen her without her usual immaculate make-up. “I’m very sorry to trouble you at such a time, Mrs. Talmadge,” he said, his voice gentle. “I’m afraid I have to ask you a few questions.”

  She gave him a pitiful smile. “I’ll do my best to answer, Mr. Fletcher. Or should I call you Chief Inspector today?”

  “Mr. Fletcher will do nicely. I gather you asked Daisy to be present at this interview? I am not at this time taking an official statement which you would be asked to sign, but if you don’t mind she will take notes for me.”

  “Not at all. I’d much rather her than anyone else.”

  “Thank you.” He sat down, and Daisy perched with her notebook on the dressing-table stool. “Will you tell me, please, exactly what you did yeste
rday from about nine o’clock in the morning on?”

  “Nine? That’s when I got up. I usually have breakfast in bed while I open the post, but I’ve been feeling rather unwell first thing in the morning. I went downstairs after my bath, and Hilda brought me some tea and toast. I was too upset to eat, though.”

  “Why was that? No,” he went on as she cast a pleading glance at Daisy, “I need you to tell me yourself.”

  “I … You see, the day before, I went to see a doctor, because of feeling sick in the morning and … and other things.”

  “Dr. Curtis?”

  “No, a friend of my father’s. He practises in Harley Street.”

  “His name, please.”

  “Pettibone. Arthur Pettibone. When I was a child, I used to call him Uncle Arthur. He told me I was expecting a baby, and he said my father would have been delighted to have a grandchild. My father died several years ago, you see. Only, of course, Father wouldn’t have been pleased at all, because … because it’s not my husband’s child.”

  “You’re quite certain of that?”

  “Absolutely. We’ve had separate bedrooms for years and … and each gone our own way. Believe me, if I could have claimed it as Raymond’s child, I would have.”

  “So the next morning you were still so upset about the news as to be unable to eat.”

  “No, it wasn’t that. I … in spite of everything, I was happy that I was going to have a baby. I’ve always wanted children, more than one. I was an only child, you see.”

  “I see. Then what upset you?”

  “It was the night before. I … I told Raymond about the baby.” Daphne’s voice was so faint Daisy had to lean forward to hear her. “He asked if I wanted a divorce. I said no, for the baby’s sake, and he said that was lucky because a divorce would ruin him. He said … he said he’d accept the baby as his own, as long as I promised never to see Harry again.”

  “Harry?” Alec asked, for the record.

  “Lord Henry Creighton,” Daphne whispered. “I agreed.” Then her voice grew stronger as she went on, “But only on condition that he also would be true to his vows.”

  What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, Daisy thought, scribbling away in her own idiosyncratic version of Pitman’s shorthand.