by Carola Dunn
At this interesting moment, a constable stuck his bead around the door. ‘Miss Dalrymple? The Superintendent wad like a word wi’ ye and the wee lassie, ma’am.’
He led the way to the station-master’s office, where Mr. Halliday sat behind the desk, talking on the telephone. He nodded as Daisy and Belinda came in, and waved them to chairs. Daisy chose to cross to the fireplace to warm her hands at the glowing fire. Belinda, still pale and quiet, stuck to her side.
‘I have the young lady here, sir,’ said the Superintendent. ‘Do you want to speak to her? . . . No, sir, I haven’t had a chance . . . Yes, sir, Detective Chief Inspector Fletcher of the Met. He vouches for her – that is, he says if she claims it was murder she’s very likely right . . . Yes, sir, any of three counties, I’m afraid. We may be able to narrow it down after the postmortem . . . Yes, sir, Dr. Redlow from Newcastle is on his way. Our Dr. Fraser doesn’t . . . No, sir, he is not more accustomed to doing autopsies on sheep, but . . . Thank you, sir.’ He listened a moment longer, said good-bye, and replaced the receiver on its hook with a controlled precision as expressive of annoyance as any outburst.
‘The Chief Constable?’ Daisy enquired, moving to take a seat before politeness required him to rise. Belinda stood beside her, leaning against her shoulder. She felt the child trembling.
‘The Chief Constable,’ Halliday confirmed. ‘In View of the rural nature of the general run of crimes committed in my district, the auld b . . . ahem . . . has agreed to ask Scotland Yard for assistance. Your father, Miss Fletcher, is already on his way.’
‘Is he very angry?’ Belinda asked with trepidation.
‘He’s not very pleased.’ The policeman cast a glance of quizzical amusement at Daisy. ‘In fact, I’d go so far as to say he’s definitely hot under the collar.’
Belinda missed the amusement. ‘Are you going to arrest me?’ she whispered.
‘Whyever would I do a foolish thing like that, young lady?’
‘You don’t think I did it?’
‘Bless my soul, not for a minute. Why should I?’
‘Because I was wicked today. I ran away from my granny, and stowed away on the train without paying, and . . .’
‘Aha! Well, those are wicked deeds indeed, but not the sort we arrest little girls for, not out here in the wild and woolly North.’ He gave her a stern look. ‘Just don’t do anything like that again.’
‘Oh I won’t, honestly, I promise!’
‘Very good. Now, Miss Dalrymple, you’ll be making your explanations to the Chief Inspector when he arrives. I sincerely trust you are correct in your surmise, or I shall never hear the end of it. “Credulous yokel” is the least of what I’ll be called.’
Daisy envisioned Alec’s ire if she had called him out on a wild-goose chase as well as, in his view, enticing Belinda from home. She hadn’t missed the hint that he was at least as angry with her as with his errant daughter. ‘Believe me, Mr. Halliday,’ she said, ‘you can’t possibly hope I’m right any more fervently than I do.’
With a noncommittal nod he stood up. ‘We should have somewhere arranged for you to stay shortly ma’am.’
‘Thank you.’ Rising, Daisy offered her hand. He gave it a firm shake. ‘And thank you, Superintendent, for your kindness.’
‘Yes.’ Belinda said hurriedly, ‘thank you for sending for Daddy, sir’ She too offered her hand, which he gravely shook.
‘Mind you stay out of mischief now, young lady,’ he said.
‘He’s a nice man, isn’t he?’ Belinda said as the door closed behind them. ‘At first I thought he was awfully fierce, but his eyes twinkle like Sergeant Tring’s.’
She had perked up considerably. However, as they emerged onto the platform, she fell silent again and tucked her hand under Daisy’s arm.
Smythe-Pike and Bretton sat on one bench, Peter and Jeremy Gillespie on another, all enveloped in overcoats, woollen scarves, and hats. Raymond was still marching up and down the outer edge of the platform, though more slowly now. As he approached the bench where his father and brother sat, Jeremy got up and accosted him.
‘Come on, old chap, come and sit down. You’ll exhaust yourself.’
Raymond brushed him off with a violent gesture. ‘I’m all right. Leave me alone, I tell you.’
His brother shrugged and sat down again.
Dr. Jagai came over to Daisy. ‘That young man is not well, I fear,’ he said. ‘Do you know what ails him, Miss Dalrymple?’
‘That’s Raymond Gillespie. He was in the trenches during the War and his nerves haven’t recovered from the horror of it.’
‘Shell-shock? I wondered. I’ve seen cases before and been able to help them a little. Perhaps I should offer my assistance.’
‘I wouldn’t,’ Daisy said frankly. ‘Not outright, anyway. He’s very sensitive on the subject.’
‘Yes, many feel it’s a weakness to be ashamed of. But I can’t let him go on suffering unnecessarily. If I ask his advice, maybe he’ll be willing to listen to mine.’
‘His advice?’
‘On a matter of etiquette.’ The doctor grinned. ‘Here I am, stranded amidst his hostile family. He is the gentleman nearest to me in age. It will be quite reasonable for me, as a humble, uncivilized foreigner, to approach him to ask how best to ingratiate myself with the rest, won’t it?’
Daisy smiled. ‘It might work. He’s probably the least likely to snap your nose off.’
‘Apart from the charmingly outspoken Miss Kitty!’
‘He’s Kitty’s favourite brother,’ said Belinda, ‘and he was nice to me. I could introduce you, just tell him your name and that you’re my friend. Could I, Miss Dalrymple?’
Daisy hesitated. In the extraordinary circumstances, to insist on strict etiquette would be fatheaded. Yet, after all, Raymond Gillespie was one of the suspects.
Belinda would be in full view of everyone on the platform, though, including three police constables, and anyway the murderer had no reason to attack her. Raymond was given to irrational outbursts, admittedly, but Belinda would be safe with Dr. Jagai.
She obviously felt safe with him. Since he had come up, she had ceased to cling to Daisy. Glad to see the child regaining her confidence, Daisy said, ‘Right-oh. When he comes back this way. Don’t try to stop him if he goes on walking, don’t go near the edge of the platform, and come straight back to me.’ Gosh, she thought, what must it be like to be a mother?
Belinda and the doctor went to meet Raymond. He stopped and politely lifted his Trilby hat to her. A moment later, he and Chandra Jagai shook hands. Daisy breathed a sigh of relief.
The two young men started talking. Belinda turned to come back, but at that moment the solicitor, Braeburn, advanced upon Daisy.
‘I hope you’ll excuse my speaking to you, madam,’ he said hoarsely, tipping his hat in a most perfunctory manner, and then jamming it down on his head again. He was swathed in an olive green muffler up to his chin, in spite of which a drip depended from the red, pointy tip of his nose. ‘I’m Braeburn, Mr. McGowan’s – the elder Mr. McGowan’s – solicitor.’
He seemed more ill-at-ease than was called for by the indecorum of addressing an unknown lady. His eyes kept shifting, never quite meeting hers, and hands in black leather gloves twitched and fidgeted with the tortoiseshell head of his cane. Altogether an unprepossessing specimen.
It must be a shock to the system of a respectable solicitor accustomed to estates and conveyances to find himself involved in a murder, Daisy decided charitably. ‘What can I do for you, Mr. Braeburn?’ she asked.
‘You seem to be the only person with whom the police are communicating, and I wondered if you would mind informing me as to how long we are to be exposed to this abominable wind.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t know. The police are doing their best to find lodgings for us, I understand.’
‘It’s disgraceful! I am subject to sore throats at the least chill. Already I feel extremely unwell, and I fear the result may prove to be a quin
sy. And all because I was so obliging as to remain to render what assistance I might to the police, though under no conceivable obligation to do so.’
‘It’s everyone’s duty to assist the police,’ Daisy said severely, then took pity on his obvious discomfort. ‘I expect you could squeeze into the ladies’ waiting-room if you explain you’re ill. And I’ll ask Dr. Jagai to examine your throat once we’re settled. He’ll know what to prescribe.’
‘No, no, on no account!’ the lawyer squawked.
Daisy gave him a withering look. ‘Dr. Jagai is as well qualified as anyone, but you can send for a local man if you prefer. The Superintendent mentioned a Dr. Fraser.’
‘Quite unnecessary. I . . . I’ve found medical men to do more harm than good. Dover’s Powders, a hot mustard footbath, a hot poultice, and a gargle with bicarbonate of soda to ward off the quinsy, that’s the ticket.’ His nervous agitation fading, he gave her a sickly smile. ‘And Friar’s Balsam, of course. No doctors. I believe I shall take your advice and seek refuge in the waiting-room. Thank you, ma’am.’ Raising his hat, he bowed slightly and departed with his heron-like stride, his cane swinging in his left hand.
Dotty, Daisy thought, watching him go. But quite a lot of people were a bit dotty about doctors.
She jumped as someone clutched her arm.
‘Oh, it’s you, Belinda. You startled me.’
Belinda stared after Braeburn. ‘What did he say?’ she whispered. She looked pale and pinched again.
Daisy wondered if Jagai and Raymond had been asinine enough to discuss the murder in front of her. ‘He was telling me all about his sore throat,’ she said soothingly. ‘Very boring. He’s fed up because the police are keeping us waiting while they find somewhere for us to stay.’
‘I wish they’d hurry.’
‘Are you frozen, darling? Let’s go back to the waiting-room. I’m dying to find out all about Aunt-Geraldine-who-ran-away.’
‘Oh no, let’s not.’ She shivered, but insisted, ‘I’m not really cold. I’d rather stay out here.’
Remembering the atmosphere in the waiting-room, adding to it a disgruntled and possibly infectious solicitor, Daisy restrained her curiosity and agreed.
They had not much longer to wait. A police sergeant came to announce that vehicles were waiting to convey everyone to the Raven’s Nest Hotel. Hurried along by Belinda, Daisy followed the sergeant to the station forecourt. Two touring cars, a char-a-banc, a pony-trap, and a motor-bicycle with sidecar stood there.
‘Golly!’ said Belinda. ‘I’ve never gone by motorbike.’
‘That’s mine, miss,’ said the sergeant, ‘and strickly speaking not meant for the transporting of this here party?’
‘Oh.’ Belinda’s face, momentarily animated, fell.
‘But I reckon the Super would stretch a point, miss, if I was to run you over quick whiles the rest is sorting their-sel’s out’
‘Would you? Can we, Miss Dalrymple? Please?’
‘The sidecar’s only meant for one,’ Daisy pointed out ‘You don’t want to go alone, do you?’
‘Gosh no!’
He eyed them. ‘Room enough for the two of you, ma’am,’ he said, opening the sidecar’s door. ‘A great bruiser of a drunk and disorderly I had in there a week or two since. Quiet as a lamb he was sitting there, then what d’you know but soon as we got him in the cells he battered down the door with the bed!’
‘Really?’ said Belinda, squeezing over on the seat.
‘Right enough. And what do you think the Super said when he come up afore the Bench?’
‘I can’t imagine,’ Daisy said truthfully.
‘“I think,” says he, “I think the surroundings must not have suited him.”’ The officer chortled as he started the motor, and Daisy smiled. She hoped the magistrates appreciated Mr. Halliday’s dry humour as much as his sergeant did.
As the machine put-putted along, the policeman kept up a running commentary. They drove up Castlegate, past a huge pink marble drinking fountain with a green-patinaed crown on top, and under an arch in a high stone wall.
‘Scotsgate,’ announced the sergeant, ‘and that’s the Elizabethan city walls. There’s older, from King Edward’s time, they say, though I don’t rightly know which Edward, but there’s not much left of them. These here’s dangerous in places, mind. Don’t you go up there on your own, missy.’
‘I won’t,’ Belinda promised.
Continuing down broad Marygate, they passed the Guildhall with its pillared portico and tall clock tower. Beside its open ground floor at the back, the Butter Market, they stopped to let a waggon heavy-laden with road-stone cross ahead.
Their guide pointed up the hill to the left. ‘See the Police Station, missy? You need anything, you just come by and ask for Sergeant Barclay. That’s me. And down there’ – he waved the other way as they started across – ‘there’s the King’s Arms, biggest hotel in Berwick and right busy now with the trout season just started. Lucky ’tis not the weekend. We had to move a few fishermen over there from the Raven’s Nest to leave room for all of you in one place.’
Daisy would have been happier housed apart from the murder suspects, but she assumed it would be easier for the police to have them all together. ‘Will Chief Inspector Fletcher be staying there?’ she called over Belinda’s head as they drove along a narrow street called Woolmarket.
‘Yes, ma’am, and there’s a room for his detective officers, too.’
‘Is Mr. Tring coming with Daddy?’ Belinda asked happily. ‘Goody!’
At the end of Woolmarket, on the opposite side of Ravensdowne, stood The Raven’s Nest Hotel. Three stories high, uncompromisingly Georgian in style, it had two adjacent front doors onto the Street, suggesting it was made up of two houses thrown into one. To the right, a narrow flight of stone steps led up between it and the next building.
‘There’s a path up onto the walls,’ said Sergeant Barclay. ‘Mind now, no exploring on your own.’ He drew up in front of the hotel and ushered them in.
With a sigh, Daisy realized she could no longer postpone telephoning Mrs. Fletcher.
The Newcastle police driver changed into low gear to cross the narrow bridge. ‘Nearly there sir,’ he said.
With a sigh, Alec realized he could no longer postpone telling Sergeant Tring. ‘Tom,’ he said in a low voice, hoping the driver and Piper in the front seat could not hear him, ‘there’s a reason besides our proximity why we’ve been called in.’
‘Ah?’ said the sergeant in a ruminative way which somehow conveyed his awareness of information held back.
‘The public-spirited citizen, alias meddlesome busybody, who insists the death’s a murder is Miss Dalrymple.’
The evening sun, low in the west, illuminated the grin of sheer delight spreading across Tring’s broad face. ‘Ah!’ he said, in a quite different tone.
Alec scowled. ‘That’s not the worst. How she’s managed it I can’t begin to guess, but she’s entangled my daughter in the case.’
‘Miss Belinda?’ Tom’s relaxed bulk took on a sudden alertness. ‘She was on the train with Miss Dalrymple, Chief?’
‘Yes, the devil knows why. I’ve a bone to pick with that young lady,’ he said through gritted teeth.
‘With both of ’em, I shouldn’t wonder. But don’t go setting Miss Dalrymple’s back up, Chief. If you ask me, the first thing we’re going to need to tackle this business is her evidence!’
CHAPTER 9
‘Daddy!’ Belinda scampered across the small room into Alec’s arms.
‘Sweetheart.’ Over her shoulder, he glowered at Daisy, fierce dark eyebrows meeting over his nose. His grey eyes, capable of icily piercing a malefactor through and through, were hotly angry. He looked about to explode. Daisy hastily shut the door of the landlord’s small private parlour behind her.
‘Everything’ll be all right now you’re here,’ sobbed Belinda.
‘What I want to know is what brought you here, Bel,’ he said grimly. ‘I await an ex
planation, Miss Dalrymple.’
‘I think it’s best if Belinda explains,’ Daisy said with a reasonably successful assumption of cool composure. She sat down on a hideous sofa upholstered in magenta plush. Thank heaven the bedroom and public rooms had been furnished with decent restraint, though the heating system left much to be desired.
Alec’s glare was quite warming, though. She undid the top button of her long, cable-knit cardigan.
‘I want to know how – and why – you persuaded my daughter to leave home with you,’ he snapped.
‘Daddy, she didn’t. It’s all my fault. I’ll never run away again, I promise.’
‘Run away! What’s this?’ Holding Belinda away from him, he studied her face. She developed a sudden interest in his Royal Flying Corps tie. ‘Come on, Bel, let’s have it.’
Out poured the story: the Indian school friend she wasn’t allowed to see; his absence in the North, coinciding with Daisy’s message about taking the Flying Scotsman; the platform ticket and stowing away on the train and Daisy’s paying her fare so the ticket-inspector wouldn’t arrest her. ‘And you will pay Miss Dalrymple back, won’t you, Daddy? ’Cause she bought me lunch, too.’
‘Of course, sweetheart.’ Alec gave Daisy a distinctly sheepish look. He ran his hand through his crisp, dark hair in an unusual gesture of exasperation. ‘But honestly Belinda, of all the daft things to do!’
‘I said I won’t do it again.’
‘I really don’t think she will,’ said Daisy. ‘Any further punishment would be superfluous – she’s had a nasty shock.’
‘Ah, yes. You’d better tell me all about it, Bel.’
‘It was awful, Daddy.’ Shuddering, Belinda buried her face in Alec’s shoulder.
‘I think it’s best if I tell you first,’ Daisy proposed, ‘so that you’ll know just how much you really need to ask her, rather than putting her through it unnecessarily.’
Alec’s disconcerted face made her lips twitch. The last thing he’d anticipated when he came roaring up to Berwick was to find her protecting his daughter from him!
