by Carola Dunn
In the drawing room, she found Geraldine presiding over coffee and liqueurs. Vincent and Laurette, unsurprisingly, had gone up. Sam and Frank were there, and Edgar was showing off in a jar the Ghost Swift he had managed to capture with his handkerchief. Hepialus humuli was a pretty yellow moth. Edgar’s specimen was a female he informed them. The male was white and smaller.
“More ghostlike?” Frank suggested with a grin.
“Yes, particularly as the underside of the wings is brown, so it appears to flicker as it flies. Daisy, I should like to show the kids.”
“They’ve gone to bed. Can you keep it till morning?”
Edgar reflected. “If I put it in a larger jar, it should be all right.” He trotted off.
Sinking into a chair, Daisy accepted a cup of coffee and a Drambuie. “No sign of Alec?”
“As far as I know,” said Geraldine, somewhat austerely, “he and Ernest are still outside. Lowecroft is a trifle perturbed at the unauthorised absence of his footman.”
“Oh dear, I’d better have a word with him.”
“That won’t be necessary. I have explained to him the exigencies of the situation. For all practical purposes, Alec is in charge until further notice.”
Frank asked, “Are we allowed to talk about what’s been happening?”
“It’s a free country,” said Daisy, hoping she might hear something helpful. “Alec can’t stop you.”
“Not in my drawing room.” Geraldine was firm. Frank and Sam exchanged a glance. “For an injured man to enter in search of succour is one thing. To discuss the topic casually over coffee is another matter.”
“I daresay Alec will want to talk to each of you later,” said Daisy.
“He won’t disturb Martha,” Sam said aggressively.
“Good heavens no!”
Not tonight, at least, Daisy added mentally.
Geraldine turned the subject to the West Indies and the difference between Jamaica and Trinidad. Edgar returned and joined in. The conversation was interesting, but Daisy only gave it half her attention. She was pondering that look exchanged between the two men.
Could they possibly be conspiring? How on earth could they profit jointly?
Suppose they had worked out between them that Sam and Ben were third and fourth in line. It would have to be in that order, or nothing made sense. Frank would help Sam to get rid of Raymond and Vincent, and in return, Sam would promise to take care of—perhaps even adopt—Ben and his siblings, possibly with cash for Frank thrown in to sweeten the deal.
Alec would say it was sheer speculation, and most improbable into the bargain. She ought to tell him, all the same.
Ernest came in to see whether more coffee was needed. Apart from a portentous and incomprehensible glance in Daisy’s direction, his appearance would not have led anyone to imagine he’d been hunting through a shrubbery for a murderous knife. Apart from the look and a twig caught in his collar at the back, Daisy noted.
“Is Mr. Fletcher back indoors?” she asked him.
“In his lordship’s study, madam.” He didn’t add that Alec would like to see her.
Slightly peeved, she finished her coffee, excused herself, and went to find him anyway.
Seated at the desk, he was talking on the telephone, dictating a telegram by the sound of it. He looked up when the door opened and a shade of irritation crossed his face at the sight of her, but he waved her to a chair. To her disappointment, there was no bloodstained knife on the desk, nor anything that might conceal it.
“Repeat that, please, operator.” Alec listened, corrected a word, and added sternly, “Remember, this is police business. It is highly confidential.” Hanging up, he leant back wearily and ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t know why I bother to tell her to shut up about it. I imagine the whole household knows by now, and the village will by morning.”
“I just hope we don’t have the press round our ears by morning.”
“Not till midday at the earliest, I should think.” He took a swig from a glass of pale amber liquid—whisky, no doubt. “Truscott had better close the main gates. No doubt one or two of the most persistent will eventually find the footpaths, or conceivably arrive by water, but most will head for the pub and pick up what they can there. Which will be plenty.”
“Geraldine is pretty well-respected in the village, and they think Edgar is barmy but they like him. Not to mention Mother.”
“Of whom they are all scared to death.”
“So they may keep their mouths closed—unless the reporters think it’s a big enough story to start handing out bribes.”
“We can but hope.” Alec finished his whisky and looked into the delicate demitasse coffee cup that stood on a tray next to it.
“More coffee, darling?”
“I need a large mug of the stuff. I may be up most of the night. Ernest can bring me some when he comes back. I sent him to put in an appearance in the drawing room and then to fetch the papers from our room.”
“I hid them in your drawer, under your clothes.”
“First place a burglar would look, love, I’ve told you before. A footman shouldn’t have any trouble.”
Daisy wrinkled her nose at him. “You didn’t find the knife, I take it.”
“No. Unless it was immediately obvious, it was pretty hopeless searching at night, particularly as both torch batteries were failing. And as Ernest pointed out, it wouldn’t have taken a minute to run down to the backwater and chuck it in, or just dump it in the woods between the end of the laburnums and the backwater. It’s all blackberry brambles and stinging nettles.”
“Butterflies like nettles.”
“I daresay.”
“Another pointer to Frank, don’t you think? I mean, he’s the one who knows about the wood and the inlet. He’d know it would be easy to dispose of the weapon.”
“Unless Sam’s been in England prospecting the lie of the land. One of the cables I’ve got to send tonight. Or two or three. What was his ship’s name?”
“You should have let me take notes. Juliet?”
“Julianna, that’s it.” He reached for the phone. “I’ve sent another request for Tom and Piper, by the way.”
“Citing the attack on Vincent.”
“And the Chief Constable’s request for help. I’m hoping the night superintendent will send them by the first train, not wait for Crane to put his oar in in the morning. But I must make sure Sir Nigel went ahead and called in the Yard. Is it too late to ring him?”
“Shouldn’t think so.”
“Sir Nigel Wookleigh, police business,” Alec told the operator.
He was put through remarkably quickly. While he was talking to the Chief Constable, Ernest came in with the document case. He set it on the desk and picked up the tray. Quietly, Daisy asked him to bring Alec more coffee, in large quantities. He bowed acknowledgement, once again the very proper footman, and went out.
“Yes, very shocking,” Alec was saying. “Thank you, sir. I appreciate your cooperation. Good night.”
“He’s already wired the Yard?” Daisy asked.
“Just a few minutes ago. The local super wasn’t keen and had to be persuaded. He’s agreed to send a couple of constables at first light to search for the knife.” He opened the case and took out a thin manilla envelope and a fat folder with a handwritten note clipped to it. He gave Daisy a speculative look. “It would save a lot of time if you’d go through the police reports for me. Frankly, I’m not expecting to learn much from them. The Worcester police are quite capable of digging out anything of real significance and I can’t do anything about it till tomorrow anyway. If you see anything even remotely promising, set it aside.”
Opening the folder, Daisy groaned. “Third carbon copy. I need more light.” She moved to a chair with a reading light on a table beside it.
She didn’t start on them immediately. She watched Alec remove two sheets of handwritten paper from the envelope, scan them quickly, then go back and read carefully.
He looked up.
“The preliminary medical report. Interesting, though not exactly helpful. Pardoe says there’s no external evidence of what killed Raymond.”
“He definitely wasn’t stabbed like the Empress of Austria?”
“No. Given the excess weight he was carrying, Pardoe suspects he had hardening of the arteries, leading to high blood pressure. A spike in blood pressure caused by a sudden shock such as his fall between the trams could have caused a stroke if he happened to have an aortic or intracranial aneurysm.”
“What’s an aneurysm?”
“A weak spot in the wall of a blood vessel. A spike in pressure could make it rupture.”
“Ugh!”
“If he had one. It’s all speculative.”
“And you’re always telling me not to speculate. Dr. Pardoe seems to be oblivious to that rule. Let me get this straight. Strictly within the realm of speculation, the fall caused a shock, and the shock caused a fatal stroke. But what caused the fall?”
“It’s possible that the stroke caused the fall in the first place. However, besides skinned knuckles and bruised knees, he had an odd bruise in the middle of his back, a small round bruise. Its appearance suggests a sudden forceful jab approximately forty minutes before his death.”
“Does Dr. Pardoe suggest what might have made a bruise like that?”
“No pathologist will ever speculate on that sort of thing on paper.”
“He may be the exception that proves the rule.”
Alec laughed. “Perhaps. I’ll talk to him tomorrow after the autopsy and suggest some possibilities, and he’ll tell me yes or no. If I’m lucky.”
“A walking stick,” Daisy proposed. “Poked between the people waiting to cross the street. Vincent probably had his. So did Raymond himself, come to that. Frank didn’t have one, but he could have bought one—”
“In which case we’ll find the seller.”
“Or he could have found one lying about somewhere. Men who carry one as part of their getup, not for support, are always forgetting them, especially in railway stations. I don’t know whether Sam usually carries one, but he didn’t have one when we met him in the park, remember?”
“He could have bunged it into a ditch or under a convenient bush anywhere between here and Worcester.”
“A man dressed like a sailor, as Sam was, would have been conspicuous. Someone would remember him.”
“He could have worn a suit on the train and changed somewhere after the ‘accident.’”
“I suppose so,” Daisy acknowledged. “By the way, I told Sam and Frank that you’d probably want to talk to them this evening.”
“I do, but they’ll be waiting up for me till three in the morning if we don’t get on.”
Thus admonished, Daisy set about puzzling over the appallingly smudged typescript. She had to concentrate too hard to catch what Alec was saying on the telephone. Ernest brought him a pot of coffee and a large cup, and he set down a smaller cup and saucer beside Daisy.
“Mr. Lowecroft thought as you might like some cocoa,” he whispered.
“Perfect, thanks.”
She took a sip, and then forgot to drink as she delved back into the reports. At last she came to the end. She reached for her cup, but the usual revolting skin had formed on the cocoa.
Alec finished dictating a telegram and turned to her. “Well?”
“I’m not much wiser than I was when I started. None of the bystanders the police managed to nab as witnesses could say more than that the person who prevented Raymond falling under the wheels was ‘an ordinary looking man.’ The same description, over and over. No one can remember whether he had a moustache, even. None of them admitted to having been that man. No one so much as mentioned Raymond’s having been pushed on to the tracks in the first place. They all assumed he had stumbled on the edge of the kerb.”
“What about the copper on point duty? He must have had a bird’s-eye view.”
“He saw Raymond falling, out of the corner of his eye, and then he focussed on stopping all the traffic as quickly as possible. I doubt you’ll find anything useful in this lot.”
“As expected. Thanks for reading them, love. You might as well go to—” The phone rang. “Yes, miss, DCI Fletcher speaking.” He listened, made a note. “Thank you, miss.” He hung up with a sigh. “She’s getting quite chatty—pleased that I’ve received a wire after sending so many.”
“Edgar’s telephone bill is going to be enormous.”
“He can forward it to the county constabulary. That one was from the Yard. Tom and Ernie will be on the 8:10 express from Paddington tomorrow morning.”
TWENTY-NINE
Daisy half wakened when Alec came to bed. The luminous dial of the bedside clock said it was twenty to two. To her drowsy indignation, he set the alarm for half past five.
When it duly shrilled, she was reluctantly ready to get up. Alec told her to go back to sleep.
“I have to deal with the bobbies they’re sending from Worcester to search for the weapon used to attack Vincent. I don’t hold out much hope of finding it, nor of it telling me much if we do, but the effort must be seen to be made.”
“Good luck, darling. I hope you don’t get rained on.”
“It’s misty out. Not foggy enough to hinder the hunt. I expect it’ll be sunny later.”
“It’s a pity to waste this beautiful weather trying to catch a criminal. My apologies for my relatives’ shenanigans!”
After the disturbed night, Daisy couldn’t fall asleep again. She drowsed for a while, then got up early. She was the first down to breakfast, apart from Alec, who wasn’t there.
“Mr. Fletcher’s breakfasting in the study, madam,” Ernest told her. “There was five telegrams waiting for him when he come in from the garden!”
“Did they find … anything out there?”
“Not as I know of, madam. The bobbies, they’re to stay here, just sort of keeping an eye on things. They’re having a bite in the kitchen. Mr. Fletcher’s in his lordship’s study. He’s just called in that Smethwick, as was Mr. Raymond’s driver. Champing at the bit, he is, to get back to London.”
“Let me know as soon as Mr. Fletcher is alone, will you?” Daisy was itching to know what news the portentous five telegrams had brought.
Sam came down, looking worried. “Martha’s not feeling at all well.”
“Oh dear! She’s not having an easy pregnancy, is she? I sailed through mine after a bit of morning sickness at the beginning. My sister Violet is the one who always has a hard time.”
“She’s told me about … Lady John, is it? It sounds as if she’s been very kind.”
“They enjoy each other’s company. I’ll see if Vi can come up and sit with her for a while today. Is she coming down?”
“I gather she’s been breakfasting in bed. She’s thinking of staying in our room this morning, if that wouldn’t be rude. You’ll have to excuse me not knowing the proper thing. I’m not used to such exalted company.”
“Alec’s a copper. Lord Dalrymple was a schoolmaster. We’re not so very exalted. Though I should warn you about my mother, the dowager viscountess.”
“Martha said she’s very—” He grinned. “Well, that’s not to be repeated.” Sam rose as Geraldine and Edgar came in. Ignorance of etiquette didn’t preclude good manners. “Good morning.”
For the next few minutes, Lowecroft and Ernest were bustling about, in and out with fresh tea for Geraldine and freshly poached eggs for Edgar. Lowecroft, setting down a small, steaming teapot beside Geraldine, murmured something in her ear.
When he and the footman had both left the room, Geraldine said in tones of strong indignation, “Apparently Laurette told the maid who took their early tea that they’re not coming out of their room until Mr. Pearson arrives!”
“One can hardly blame them, my dear,” Edgar soothed her. “After all, Cousin Vincent has been attacked twice.”
“Twice!” Sam exclaimed.
“On Su
nday,” Daisy told him. When Sam was supposedly in London. He had gone to the Hampstead house, he’d said, and spoken to Elsie. That couldn’t have taken long. After that, he claimed to have toured the sights of the city. Impossible to verify! A fast car—
“I’m not convinced the first occurrence wasn’t an accident,” said Geraldine, with a minatory look at her sheepish husband.
Ernest popped in again with more toast. On his way out, as he passed behind Daisy’s chair, he leant towards her. “The chief inspector is free,” he muttered from the side of his mouth, with such discretion she wouldn’t have understood if she hadn’t been expecting the message.
Daisy hastily finished her coffee. “Alec,” she explained apologetically to Geraldine. “I have to seize the moment.”
“I must say it’s comforting to have him in charge, Daisy. This … this whole business would be insupportable with a stranger!”
As Daisy reached the door, the kids arrived. They had all-too-clearly already been out, somewhere particularly muddy. Perfunctory efforts at cleaning themselves up had not much improved matters.
“It’s all right, Mummy, we just came to say good morning to everyone. We’re too mucky to sit at table.”
“We had breakfast in the kitchen, Aunt Daisy,” said Derek.
“Poor Cook! All right, say your good mornings from the door. Don’t step on that carpet!”
Greetings were exchanged.
“Mummy, where’s Daddy?”
“Busy, darling.”
“Where’s Uncle Frank?” Ben asked, slightly worried.
“Right here,” said Frank from behind them. “You revolting creatures, what have you been up to?”
“We went down to the river, sir,” Derek explained, “to see if it’s gone down enough for boating.”
“No boating till I’ve had a look,” said Daisy, “and the boat’ll have to be checked in case it was damaged by the flood.” Or by sabotage. “Off you go now. If you’re staying in the house you’d better wash a bit more thoroughly.”
