by Carola Dunn
She should have asked Belinda about the bits of shouting she had understood, which might well give a clue to the rest. Nor had the child ever answered the question about what made her believe she would be sent to prison.
Surely she ought to be back from her walk by now. Oh lord, Daisy thought in a sudden panic, were she and Alec both quite wrong to trust Chandra Jagai?
Jumping up, she dropped the newspaper on her chair and hurried out to the lobby.
‘Miss Dalrymple!’ Belinda, rosy-cheeked, was just taking off her hat. Behind her the doctor, smiling, unbuttoned his coat. ‘We had ever such a nice walk, on the walls by the river. It’s perfectly safe there. We saw fishing boats and swans and all sorts of things.’
‘And we talked, didn’t we, Belinda?’
‘Dr. Jagai says I have to tell you or Daddy absolutely everything.’
‘Thank you, Doctor, I was just thinking we hadn’t quite got to the bottom of things.’ Daisy noticed Briggs pausing on his way through the hall and pricking up his ears. ‘Come into the dining room, Belinda. There shouldn’t be anyone in there.’
‘I’ll be in the lounge if you need me,’ said Jagai.
The tables in the dining room were already set for lunch. Daisy pulled out a chair and sat down. Belinda stood before her, hands tightly clasped, looking guilty.
‘I didn’t mean not to tell you.’
Daisy took her hands. ‘It’s all right, darling. I know you were frightened. But what exactly was it that frightened you? Why did you think you’d be sent to prison?’
‘He said so. It was in the corridor, after I fetched Dr. Jagai, ’member? He went in with you and I waited outside, and then the guard came to see why the train stopped, and everyone came out. Someone whispered in my ear about wicked little girls listening at doors and they’d get put in prison if they told what they heard.
Leaning forward, Daisy asked urgently, ‘Who?’
‘I can’t be quite absolutely sure. There were lots of people crowding around and talking. But I thought it was that lawyer.’
‘Mr. Braeburn! Now I remember you asked me if lawyers could put people in prison. It’s a pity you’re not sure, but I think we’d better tell your father right away. Come on.’
They went to the landlord’s parlour but no one was there. As they came out, Tom Tring came down the stairs. ‘Looking for the chief, ladies?’ he asked. ‘He’s upstairs, with Mr. Braeburn.’
‘I don’t want to go!’ cried Belinda.
‘Mr. Tring, could you take Belinda to Dr. Jagai?’
‘O’ course, miss. Come along, Miss Belinda.’ He engulfed her small hand in his vast one. ‘Room nine, miss.’
Daisy sped upstairs. After a false start she found the room just round the corner from hers, and was raising her hand to knock when she heard Alec’s voice thanking Braeburn for his cooperation.
It must mean the solicitor was not scratched. Confused, Daisy let her hand drop. The door opened and Alec stared down at her in surprise.
‘What is it?’
In a low voice she told him, ‘Belinda says Braeburn threatened her with prison if she repeated what she’d overheard.’
She was about to add that Belinda wasn’t quite sure, but Alec didn’t wait. He flung back into the room.
‘You threatened my daughter?’ he roared in a voice worthy of Desmond Smythe-Pike, standing arms akimbo glaring down at the chair by the fireside. Unfortunately it hid the lawyer from Daisy and she couldn’t very well just barge in.
‘Threatened?’ he squeaked. ‘Good lord, no.’
Suspicion joined the fury in Alec’s face as he stared down. His dark, heavy brows met over his nose in a formidable scowl. ‘Take off that scarf,’ he demanded, his tone deceptively calm.
‘I really must protest, Chief Inspector,’ Braeburn said shakily. ‘I’m an ill man. I shall take a dangerous quinsy if I expose my throat to the cold. You yourself admit that you have no legal right to insist on . . .’
He spluttered to a halt as Alec leaned forward and grabbed. His hand returned to Daisy’s view with a black cravat dangling. Piper, standing just inside the door, moved towards them.
Now Alec’s voice was as soft as a panther’s footfall, and as dangerous. ‘Just how did you come by those scratches on your neck, Mr. Braeburn?’
‘I must have done it when half asleep,’ Braeburn squawked.
‘You claim they are self-inflicted?’ Alec asked sceptically.
‘It has happened before,’ he gabbled. ‘I am subject to acutely painful quinsies. One instinctively reaches for an itch or a source of pain, and in a half waking state one is not aware of clawing oneself until too late It is most embarrassing. You will understand why I didn’t care to reveal such a ridiculous plight.’
‘Hardly ridiculous. They look nasty. You ought to ask Dr. Jagai to wash them with boracic and apply iodine.’ Was Alec backing down? Daisy wondered in dismay. But he continued, ‘We are losing sight of my original query: What’s this about your threatening Belinda?’
‘Not threatening, Chief Inspector, warning.’ Braeburn had regained his composure. ‘I had seen Miss Fletcher in the corridor when Mr. Smythe-Pike and Mr. Gillespie were consulting me. When I saw her again lurking, as I supposed, outside Mr. McGowan’s compartment, I merely warned her in a fatherly way that eavesdropping is wrong.’
Nonplussed, Alec glanced back at Daisy. She mouthed ‘prison’ at him.
‘My daughter understood you to threaten her with prison.’
‘Prison, ha ha! I know enough of criminal law to know little girls are not sent to prison. I said something about telling tales; perhaps she misheard it as gaols. There was a good deal of noise in the corridor by then.’
‘Perhaps,’ Alec said noncommittally. ‘Well, I’m glad that’s cleared up. Thank you.’ He started towards the door, then stopped halfway and returned. ‘You won’t object, I trust, to the local police surgeon taking a sample of blood to test.’
‘Blood?’ said Braeburn faintly. ‘I don’t care for doctors.’
‘Just a pinprick in the finger, I understand, sir. It’s amazing what they can tell from a few spots of blood these days. They’ll prove in no time that yours doesn’t match what we found.’
‘Yes. Yes, of course. If you really consider it necessary, Chief Inspector.’
‘I do. I’ll ask Dr. Fraser to step round, and in the meantime, I must request that you do not leave the hotel. Thank you, sir.’
The moment Piper closed the door behind the three of them, Daisy said, ‘I didn’t realize they could tell exactly whose blood was on the pillow-case.’
Following her down a step and along the passage, Alec said in a low voice, ‘They can’t. The most they can prove is that his blood is or is not in the same group. It can’t convict him, though it could clear him. But few people know that, any more than you did.’
‘You hoped he’d give himself away?’
‘Yes, or at least refuse the test.’
‘That would have been a reasonable reaction, innocent or guilty,’ Daisy pointed out, ‘as reasonable as his explanations of the scratches and what he said to Belinda’.
‘In fact,’ said Alec, ‘he was altogether too reasonable. He ought to have threatened to have my blood for harassing him.’
‘You still think he did it?’ She started down the stairs.
‘We haven’t found scratches on anyone else. Tom’s checking the manservant. Otherwise there’s no one left but Raymond Gillespie. Ernie, find him, will you, and bring him to the back parlour.’
At the foot of the stairs, he turned towards the rear of the house while Daisy and Piper went on to the lounge.
‘The chiefs worried, isn’t he?’ Daisy said.
‘Mr. Braeburn agreeing to the blood test, meek as a lamb – well, it don’t look like he done it, miss. And the chief was counting on them scratches to give the game away.’
Daisy nodded.
As they entered the lounge, Belinda bounced up to her. ‘Miss Dalrymp
le, Dr. Jagai says he’ll buy me a ginger beer now the bar’s opened, but only if you say I may. It won’t spoil my lunch, honestly.’
‘I don’t suppose it will. Tell him you may, and don’t forget to thank him.’
‘I won’t. He said he’d buy some for Kitty, too, and I went to ask her, but she’s not allowed to sit with us.’
‘What a shame. Perhaps now I’m here her mother will let her.’ Daisy paused, biting back a sigh as Anne approached, wearing a peevish pout.
‘Daisy will you speak to that policeman of yours for me? He really must let us go. It’s not at all good for the children being cooped up in a tiny room with Nurse for so long.’
‘Bring them down here for a while.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t, not with a murderer about. Besides, Harold says they’d disturb everyone. Do come and see, and you’ll be able to explain to Mr. Fletcher how impossible it is’.
‘All right.’ This time the sigh escaped. ‘Just a minute.’
Daisy went to meet Dr. Jagai, who was coming towards her. ‘May I offer you a sherry?’ he asked.
‘Thanks, but not just now. Doctor, would you mind keeping an eye on Belinda just a little longer? Mrs. Bretton wants me to go up to the children with her.’
‘Not at all. She’s lively company.’
As Daisy and Anne went out to the lobby, Piper and Raymond came from the bar-parlour, Ray with a tankard of beer in his hand. A tremor made the surface of the dark liquid shimmer. He was pale – whether paler than usual Daisy couldn’t be sure – and one corner of his mouth twitched. She gave him what she hoped was an encouraging smile. He didn’t seem to notice.
Alec had better be gentle with him, or he’d have her as well as Judith to reckon with.
Alec didn’t like the look of Raymond Gillespie. Nor, judging by his wary expression, did Tom Tring. Perhaps it had been a mistake to let the young man stew. If he had one of his nervous attacks, Alec had no idea what to do.
Inviting him to sit down on the magenta sofa, he went over to Piper and murmured, ‘If he cracks, run for Miss Smythe-Pike.’
‘Right, Chief.’
Alec sat opposite Raymond. ‘Have you recalled anything which might be useful?’ he asked, trying to put him at ease. ‘For instance, anyone you saw in the corridor near Mr. McGowan’s compartment, either before or after you looked in?’
‘There wasn’t a soul. I’ve been thinking and thinking. I’m pretty sure he was dead by then. There’s a sort of . . . a sort of horrible absence . . . Haven’t you ever felt it?’
‘I know what you mean.’ Though he had indeed experienced the emptiness of death, Alec had always ascribed it to his own mind, not to an exterior force, or absence thereof. He certainly didn’t believe it could be sensed through a slit an inch or two wide in the absence of definite knowledge. Raymond’s oversensitive imagination was running riot after the event – or he was prevaricating.
Not much point in delaying the moment of truth, he decided. ‘May I see your hands?’ he requested.
Raymond held them out. They shook. ‘They’re a bit of a mess,’ he said, a quaver in his voice.
They were considerably worse than the doctor’s hands, perhaps reflecting the vigour with which Raymond had striven to release Belinda from the briars. Alec noted one reddish, irritated swelling with a black spot at the centre, as if a thorn had broken off in it. However, none of the scratches appeared to have been caused by fingernails.
‘You ought to get them seen to,’ he said. ‘Ask Dr. Jagai to extract that splinter for you and disinfect the wound.’
‘You’re as bad as Judith, Chief Inspector. She keeps fussing.’ His wobbly attempt at a smile failing, he bit his lip. ‘You want to see my arms, too, don’t you? The others said that’s what you’ve been doing.’
‘Please.’
Rising, he took off his jacket and fumbled with shaking hands at his cufflinks. Alec had to help him. Clumsily he pushed up his sleeves, not troubling to roll them. His right forearm, thin but muscular, bore two faintly visible abraded streaks. The left had four parallel grooves, red and sore-looking, running nearly from elbow to wrist.
‘Not brambles,’ said Alec grimly. ‘Do you mind telling me how you came by these scratches?’
‘No, I won’t!’ Raymond’s voice rose. ‘I know what you think. You looked at everyone’s arms, it’s obvious the old man marked his murderer. But I didn’t kill him, I tell you. I didn’t do it!’
‘Now calm down! Did I accuse you? All the same, if you could just explain . . .’
‘I won’t!’
‘You must admit it looks bad,’ Alec pointed out in a reasonable tone. ‘I should tell you that a voluntary statement is looked upon with a good deal more sympathy than one made by a man answering a charge. Besides, there’s a lot of sympathy for those who suffer from . . . their war service.’
‘You think I’d plead shell-shock? Never! I didn’t kill him. I had enough of killing over there, don’t you understand?’
‘I understand that shell-shock victims are liable to periods when they are unaware of their own actions.’
Raymond slumped back onto the sofa. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said dully. ‘I always know when there’s a bit missing, and there wasn’t. There just wasn’t.’ He shook his head. ‘I swear there wasn’t’
‘Then you won’t mind letting the police surgeon test your blood.’
He looked up, his thin face eager. ‘A blood test? Of course not. That’ll prove I didn’t kill that poor old man.’ Then he sagged again and buried his face in his hands. ‘Or that I did. If I did, I deserve to hang. I shan’t plead shell-shock, never!’
Alec’s heart bled for him, and for his fiancée. If he didn’t hang, he’d probably be confined to Broadmoor for life.
Piper had slipped out unnoticed, and now returned with Judith Smythe-Pike. ‘Come on, darling,’ she said gently to Raymond. ‘Let’s get your coat on.’
Child-like, he obeyed. ‘Judith, I can’t believe I did it.’
She threw a glance of venomous hatred at Alec. ‘Of course you didn’t, darling. Dr. Jagai says it takes at least four minutes to die of suffocation, and you simply weren’t gone that long. We’ll prove it somehow. Are you arresting him, Chief Inspector?’
‘Not immediately, ma’am.’ After all, except for Raymond’s refusal to explain, he had as much cause to arrest Braeburn. ‘Mr. Gillespie has agreed to a blood test. While I make arrangements, he is not to leave the hotel.’
‘But he’s not confined to this room? Come on, Ray, you’ll feel better elsewhere.’
Alec followed them out and went to the telephone cubby under the stairs. Though Redlow had already started back to Newcastle, the local man was perfectly competent to draw and test a couple of blood samples. Sergeant Barclay, answering the ’phone at the police station, said that Dr. Fraser had gone to open his surgery for his regular patients.
‘But I’ll ring him up, sir, and he’ll come over to the Raven’s Nest right away, I’m sure. Police business comes first, short of an emergency.’
Returning to the back parlour, Alec found Tom and Ernie far from happy, showing none of the usual satisfaction at a crime’s approaching solution.
‘Looks like him, Chief, don’t it?’ said Ernie glumly.
‘Can’t help feeling sorry for a young chap like that,’ Tom rumbled. ‘He’s got a fine young woman there as’d turn him around given time.’
‘It doesn’t look good,’ Alec admitted. ‘Raymond Gillespie has the obvious motive, but there’s still an outside chance Braeburn’s our man. I suppose it’s too soon to expect results from Inspector Fielding.’
‘Them Fraud Squad lads don’t know the meaning of hurry,’ Tom agreed. ‘Could take weeks.’
‘We’re lucky the blood on the pillow-case isn’t from a common group. With luck the tests will eliminate one or the other of our suspects. Well, while we’re waiting for Dr. Fraser, we might as well run over everyone’s statements and see if we can pick out anything of
interest. Ernie?’
Piper flipped back to the front of his notebook. He started reading fast from his shorthand, proud of the skill which had helped earn him a place in the C.I.D.
‘Slow down, laddy,’ said Tom. ‘Mebbe we won’t get as far, but at least we’ll notice any landmarks on the way.’
However, none of them noticed any landmarks which tended to implicate either Raymond Gillespie or Braeburn. They had just finished the interview with Peter and Enid Gillespie, and Alec was beginning to wonder where Dr. Fraser had got to, when there came a knock on the door.
‘Come in, Doctor,’ Alec called, rising.
But it was Briggs the landlord’s head which appeared around the door. ‘Telephone for you, Chief Inspector.’
‘Damn, I hope Fraser hasn’t been delayed.’ He went out to the cubby and picked up the apparatus. ‘Fletcher here.’
‘Chief Inspector, everyone here wants to know how the deuce you do it!’
‘Fielding?’
‘Yes, sir. As per your instructions, I called on Messrs Braeburn, Braeburn, Tiddle and Plunkett. Would you believe it, they’ve already got the auditors in? They’d suspected for some time that all was not according to Cocker in your Mr. Donald Braeburn’s accounts. They had just been waiting for him to go out of town for long enough to check up.’
‘And?’
‘He’s been cooking the books all right, making free with more than one client’s funds, naughty boy. It’ll take days, or weeks, to sort out the details, I’m afraid, sir.
‘No great rush, but ask them to concentrate on Alistair McGowan’s losses first, please.’
‘Sergeant Tring mentioned a possible motive for murder?’
‘Possible,’ Alec stressed. ‘Thanks, Fielding, a good job.’
‘My pleasure, Chief Inspector. We’ll bag Braeburn if you don’t, never fear.’
Alec hung up the ear-piece. So Daisy was right! At least, she was pretty certainly right about the quarrel Belinda had overheard, and without her interpretation they would never have suspected the lawyer. The quarrel might or might not have led to murder. The case against Raymond was still equally strong, or stronger, because of his lack of an alternative explanation, for those damned scratches.
