by Carola Dunn
“Can’t hurt,” he said with abominable cheerfulness. “Can’t hurt either of you.”
“No, and it’s not as if we don’t both enjoy it.”
“But you’re still down in the dumps. Is something else worrying you?”
The truth was, she was feeling guilty about bullying Mel into betraying a confidence. At least Mel had known from the first that her story would be passed on to Alec, so Daisy herself would not be betraying a confidence.
But they had a pact not to talk about his cases during dinner, so she said only, “Later, darling.”
He groaned, knowing perfectly well what that meant. As they retired to the sitting room after rhubarb tart with top of the milk—another sweet to be finished off! She’d have to have a word with Mrs. Dobson—he said, “Don’t tell me you’ve found me another suspect?”
“Are you satisfied with the ones you have?”
“Not very,” he admitted. “They’re all extraordinarily slippery. Who is it?”
“It’s not. Sorry, I misled you.” Daisy poured coffee from the flask Mrs. Dobson had left for them. The delicate, flower patterned demi-tasses were a wedding present she hadn’t dared use before. (Mrs. Fletcher would have strongly objected to ousting the perfectly good china she’d been using for years.) “It’s a bit of information about one of your existing suspects. Darling, I can’t tell you who told me, but you’re bound to guess. Will you promise not to—”
“Daisy, you know I can’t promise.”
“Right-oh, then, just promise to try, if it’s a useful snippet and you have to go to the source for confirmation, just try to suggest you got it somewhere else.”
“Is this another rumour?”
“No, not at all. It’s a very reliable source I trust absolutely. I was told that Gwen Walker forged her husband’s signature to a large cheque, so cleverly the bank didn’t catch it.”
“Great Scott!” Alec’s coffee cup stopped halfway to his lips. He put it down with care. “The note’s been our biggest stumbling block.”
“Tell me?” Daisy coaxed.
He sighed. “You know so much already, I don’t see why not.” He gave her one of his brief but all-encompassing resumes of what they had learnt at the Walkers’ house. “Since then,” he went on, “we’ve heard from the pathologist that the major died of coal-gas poisoning. He also had Veronal in his system, and the lab says there are traces of Veronal in the sample from the mug he must have drunk from, the one without her prints. There are no signs, though, no bruising, to show he was manhandled to the oven.”
“If the Veronal put him to sleep, she could have taken her time about moving him.”
“Exactly. We’re still waiting to hear from the handwriting expert, but whatever he says, if your story’s confirmed, the suicide note could well be a forgery. Then there’s her alibi for Talmadge’s death. Ernie Piper got a signed statement negating that.”
“It does look bad,” said Daisy.
“Unless the errand boy recognizes her, there’s nothing really conclusive though,” Alec said in exasperation. “If she comes up with a better story about where she was, one we can’t disprove, the rest could be demolished by a good barrister for the defence. I shall apply for an arrest warrant tomorrow morning, but I’ll try to get a confession before I use it.”
“Does she strike you as someone who’s likely to cave in and confess?”
“Yes, frankly. She’s not half as cool and collected as she tries to appear. Well, I’m done in.” He stood up, yawning and stretching. “Coming to bed, love?”
“I’ll be right up, darling.”
She carried the coffee tray through to the kitchen and washed up the cups, not wanting to leave them to Mrs. Twickle’s tender mercies in the morning. As she dried the second, she wondered why Mrs. Walker had not at least rinsed out the Ovaltine mugs, if she had drugged the major.
She should have wiped her fingerprints off the oven knob, too. Presumably she had not been thinking clearly, understandable in the circumstances. Yet she was calm enough to think of arranging cushions to add to the appearance of suicide, calm enough to forge the major’s signature. Odd! What was infinitely more horrible, she must have been calm enough in Talmadge’s surgery to watch him die and remove the evidence.
Curiouser and curiouser, thought Daisy. But Alec was waiting for her in bed and she didn’t pursue the thought.
The next day was Mrs. Dobson’s day off. After breakfast, she gave Daisy detailed instructions for heating and browning the shepherd’s pie she’d left in the larder. Then she put on a hat with a distressing resemblance to a dead crow and departed.
Mrs. Twickle had been given the day off, too. “Might as well,” Mrs. Dobson had said, “seeing Mrs. Fletcher isn’t here to chivvy her while I’m out, and you busy with your writing, madam. She won’t get much done without someone stands over her, and that’s a fact.”
So Daisy was alone in the house. Driven as much by Mrs. Dobson’s expectations as anything else, she went up to her writing room. She made a note about the cook-housekeeper’s opinion of the daily help, but she couldn’t concentrate on working out how it fitted into her article. After a restless half hour with nothing accomplished, she fetched Nana from the back garden and took her for a walk in Regent’s Park.
It was another perfect spring day. Daisy did her best to enjoy it and not to think about the two unnatural deaths Alec was investigating. For once he had told her everything. He was about to arrest Gwen Walker. Apparently he had solved the case, so it was too maddening to be troubled by niggling doubts.
Still, she didn’t know Mrs. Walker at all well, and what she knew of her was the reverse of admirable: unfaithful to her husband and forging his signature! No doubt Alec would resolve all the inconsistencies in the evidence before hauling her off to prison.
And then he would have to ring up his mother to tell her it was safe to come home. Daisy heaved such a huge and melancholy sigh that Nana looked up at her and whined. Or perhaps she whined because Regent’s Park was not the sort of park where one could let the dog off the lead to run free?
“We’ll go to Primrose Hill tomorrow,” Daisy promised.
When they reached home, Daisy could hear the telephone bell ringing through the front door. Naturally she fumbled with the key, but it rang on and on, a desolate, pleading sound in the empty house.
At last she reached the apparatus and snatched it up. “St. John’s Wood 2351.”
“Mrs. Fletcher? Mrs. Alec Fletcher?” A woman’s voice she didn’t recognize, urgent yet uncertain.
“This is Daisy Fletcher. Would you mind holding on just a moment?” Nana, still attached to her wrist by the lead, was pulling her towards the kitchen. Daisy unclipped her and she dashed off to find her water bowl. “Sorry, I got a bit entangled with the puppy. Who is it?”
“Thank heaven you’re home. I’ve been trying all morning.” A pause so long she thought they’d been disconnected was followed by a sort of gasp, then, “This is Gwen Walker.”
“I’m afraid my husband isn’t at home.”
“No, he’s probably on his way to arrest me.” Now, beneath a veneer of bravado, she sounded frightened. “Mrs. Fletcher, I want to talk to you. I want to explain. I heard you went to see Mrs. Talmadge—you’re the only person she’ll see. I must tell someone what happened or I’ll go mad. Oh, please, let me come and see you. Please!”
Daisy thought fast. Curiosity and even a touch of sympathy urged her to agree. Caution pulled the other way. Alec believed Mrs. Walker to be a murderer, and except for the puppy, who wouldn’t be the slightest use as a protector, Daisy was alone in the house. She could ask Sakari and Mel to join her, but they might not arrive before Mrs. Walker.
On the other hand, why on earth should Mrs. Walker want to kill Daisy? It couldn’t help her. Both Talmadge’s and the major’s deaths—if he hadn’t killed himself—were emotional crimes. That was what was wrong with them, what clashed with the cold, unemotional carrying out.
“I’m sorry,” Gwen Walker said dully. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
“No, wait! You took me by surprise. I’ll come to you.”
“You will? It’s very kind of you.” The formal phrase sounded odd.
“I’ll be there shortly,” said Daisy, and hung up.
Her mind still raced. The Walkers’ servant would be there, and the friendly charwoman Alec had told her about. But supposing they had been given the day off? Supposing Mrs. Walker wanted to strike at Alec through Daisy, or simply lost her temper and attacked?
Daisy dialled Sakari’s number. If Sakari and Mel, or at least one of them, couldn’t go with her, she’d just ring back and say she’d changed her mind. If she arrived with them and Mrs. Walker didn’t want to talk, so be it.
“Mrs. Prasad, please. This is Mrs. Fletcher.”
It seemed forever before Sakari spoke. “Daisy? I am on my way out. You have found another clue?”
“Maybe a confession. I don’t know exactly. But can you come with me, right away?”
“But of course. This I will not miss for all the tea in China. Or India. I will cancel my appointment and pick you up in a few minutes.”
Melanie required more explanation and was much more hesitant. By the time Daisy had persuaded her to go along, the chauffeur Kesin was ringing the doorbell.
“We’ll fetch Mrs. Germond next,” Daisy said to him as he opened the car door for her.
“Melanie comes with us?” Sakari asked. “Splendid! Where are we going?”
Daisy laughed. “Suppose I told you Bourton-on-the-Water?”
“Then I would say, I hope you can tell Kesin how to get there. What an adventure.”
“Just to the Walkers’ house,” Daisy said, sobering. “She wants to talk to me, and I don’t feel quite comfortable going alone.”
“Aha. I cannot blame Mrs. Walker if she prefers to confess to you rather than to Alec. He can be quite formidable, I think.”
“Yes, he can. But I don’t know that she intends to confess. She may want to convince me that she’s not guilty, perhaps in the hope that I can persuade Alec. And she may decide not to speak at all with you and Mel present.”
“That would be a pity.”
“Yes. I expect it’s silly of me, only I’ll feel safer with you there.”
“I am certain you are wise to bring us with you,” Sakari said with a smile, “if only to appease Alec.”
They picked up Melanie and drove on to the Walkers’ house. The cook-housekeeper opened the door.
“Mrs. Walker is expecting me,” Daisy told her.
“You, madam.” The woman glowered at Sakari and Mel.
“Mrs. Fletcher!” Gwen Walker, her face pale and unpowdered but still beautiful, came into the hall. She caught sight of the others. “Oh!”
“I hope you don’t mind my bringing my friends. You know Melanie Germond and Sakari Prasad, don’t you?” Daisy was pretty sure the Walkers’ house was one the Prasads were invited to.
The polite, commonplace words seemed to calm Mrs. Walker. “Of course. Do come in.”
“Coffee, madam?”
“Yes. No. Perhaps later.” She led the way into the sitting room and looked rather helplessly around. “Do sit down.”
A burning cigarette, balanced on the edge of an ashtray, showed where she had been sitting. Melanie, murmuring “Don’t let us intrude,” firmly led Sakari to the other end of the room. Daisy chose a chair far enough from Mrs. Walker’s not to be smothered in cigarette smoke but close enough to hear if she spoke softly.
Gwen Walker sat down and stubbed out the smouldering end, then picked up a cigarette box and offered it to Daisy.
“No thanks.”
“You don’t? How wise. They turn everything yellow, fingers, teeth … Raymond wouldn’t touch them. I didn’t smoke while …” She put the box down on the low glass table and pushed it away from her. “You know about us?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t kill him! I swear I didn’t.”
“Why can’t you tell Alec where you really were that lunchtime? If you have a good reason for keeping quiet about it, he’ll keep it confidential.”
“Good reason? Yes, the best of reasons. I went to see Raymond.”
“Oh dear!”
“He wrote saying he had to talk to me, and I was to go in the back way. We didn’t usually meet in his house, but I’d done it once before, when we first … I knew the way, through the alley and the garden. He was waiting at the door, and he hurried me into his surgery. What a place to be told you’re not wanted any longer!”
“Why didn’t he just write to tell you it was over?”
“He wanted to see me one last time. He was really rather keen on me. I liked him a lot, and we had lots of fun together, but on my part it wasn’t exactly a grand passion. I suppose that makes it worse, in a way.”
Daisy’s agreement remained tactfully unspoken. “Fun” didn’t seem to her an adequate excuse for infidelity. “What happened?” she asked.
“He was in a bit of a dither, because he’d had some difficult patients and the last had only just left. He kept telling me to speak quietly because he wasn’t sure whether the nurse was still in the waiting room, and the servants might come downstairs at any moment. Of course, they could have seen me coming up the garden path—he hadn’t thought of that.” She shrugged. “Actually, he was pretty upset about having to say good-bye, so I dare say he wasn’t thinking too clearly at all.”
“Having to say good-bye?”
“His wife was going to have a baby. Is going to. Ray said he had to stand by her, it was the only decent thing to do. That was all right with me. All good things come to an end. But poor Ray was frightfully hangdog about the whole business, so I thought it might make it easier for him if I wasn’t too kind and understanding. I told him in no uncertain terms that I’d had enough of him and never wanted to see or hear from him again.” She bit her upper lip. “And I never did. I flounced out, and he must have gone straight to his ‘cheerer-upper.’”
“His …?”
“That’s what he called that damned gas.” Her voice rose. Her back was slightly turned towards the other two, and she seemed to have forgotten their presence. Daisy could see Sakari, who was listening avidly, but not Mel, who was no doubt trying not to listen. Gwen Walker continued, more and more agitated. “When I heard he was dead, I hoped it was an accident but I was afraid he’d killed himself. Why do they think he was murdered?”
“They have evidence,” said Daisy. This was not the moment to boast that she had discovered the evidence.
“I never even dreamt it was murder until your husband started asking questions. After that, Francis couldn’t pretend any longer that he didn’t know about Raymond and me. I told him it was all over before Ray died, and that was when he convinced himself that I’d killed him. He wouldn’t believe me.” She bowed her head and covered her face with her hands. “He wouldn’t believe me, so why should anyone else? I can’t prove I didn’t.”
“It’s a pity you lied to the police. It makes it harder for them to believe anything you tell them now.”
“I realize that now. I haven’t been able to think straight for days. But lying about where I was is the least of it.” She reached for the cigarette box, took one out and lit it, then left it to die in the ashtray. “I’ve been abysmally stupid.”
Stupid seemed a peculiar way to describe murdering one’s husband. “What have you done?” Daisy asked.
The sitting-room door opened. In came Mrs. Bates with a tray. “Coffee, madam.”
“But—”
“I asked if you wanted coffee and you said yes, madam.” She set the tray on the table and departed.
Blast the woman, Daisy thought, hoping the interruption was not going to put an end to the flow of confidences.
23
Exasperated, Gwen Walker rolled her eyes at Daisy. “It’s no earthly use arguing with the woman. She never listens to a word I say unless she wants to.
If she thinks I ought to offer my guests coffee, coffee they shall have. Will you have a cup, Mrs. Fletcher? Mrs. Prasad, Mrs. Germond, may I offer you coffee?”
The four cups on the tray had reminded Mrs. Walker of the other two, and there wasn’t much chance now that her apparent frankness would continue. Daisy swallowed a sigh as Sakari joined them eagerly, Melanie reluctantly. At least Mel was far too polite to refuse to accept coffee from someone she knew to be a forger and suspected of being a murderer. A snub would turn the probability of no new revelations into a certainty.
Pouring coffee, dealing with sugar and hot milk, Mrs. Walker was the complete gracious hostess. She passed a plate of simply delicious, crisp, orange peel-flavoured biscuits, homemade. Daisy decided Mrs. Bates had her good points after all, but for the next few minutes the talk was all of unsatisfactory servants.
Listening, Daisy made mental notes of one or two points for her article, despite her impatience. She was beginning to despair, though, when the front doorbell rang.
Mrs. Walker stopped with a gasp in the middle of a sentence and turned so pale Daisy was afraid she might faint. They sat in stiff silence, the word “Police” unspoken on everyone’s lips.
The housekeeper took her time answering the bell. At last they heard her footsteps in the hall. The front window was open, and through it came a man’s voice. “Snyder, miss, of the Daily Graphic. Now, you look like an intelligent woman. I expect you can tell me all about what’s going on here.”
Mrs. Bates said not a word but the door closed with a thud. Definitely she had her good points.
Melanie moved swiftly to the window, closed it, and pulled the orange-and-black jazz-print curtains across, then turned on the electric light. As she returned to her seat, Gwen Walker started to cry.
Sakari reached over to pat her hand. “It is better to get it off your chest,” she advised, “if I have the correct idiom.”
“Francis refused to believe I hadn’t killed Raymond.” The words came fast now, punctuated by sniffs. “We were sitting in the kitchen, drinking that ghastly Ovaltine he’s … he was so keen on, and he said he was too upset to sleep. He asked for one of my sleeping powders. He wanted to take it in his Ovaltine, so I went up and got one for him. Then I went back up to bed.”
