Black Ship

by Carola Dunn

  She was intrigued by these first hints of Alec’s great-uncle’s personality. All she’d known of him before was that he had cut off all communication with his sister, but mightn’t that have been the sister’s fault as much as his? Judging by her offspring, Alec’s mother, she could well have been an extremely difficult person to get along with.

  “You will stay for tea, won’t you, Mrs. Fletcher? And Jonathan? Audrey, ring the bell, please.”

  “You must excuse me, ladies,” said Mr. Irwin. “I have another appointment. The taxicab should be at the door any minute. Mrs. Fletcher, you’ll let me know when your husband returns to town?”

  “Of course. In the meantime, please arrange for a surveyor to inspect the house.”

  “When Mr. Fletcher—”

  “I see no need to wait.” Daisy was growing impatient with his incomprehensible delaying tactics. “You said yourself that it would have to be surveyed anyway if we decide to sell. I should like to have a report to show Alec when he gets home.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” he promised glumly. “These things take time. Audrey, you’d better telephone for a taxicab when Mrs. Fletcher is ready to leave.”

  “Thank you for the thought, Mr. Irwin, but I don’t need one. I left my car in Well Walk.”

  “Your car!” Shaking his head at the shocking state of the modern world, the solicitor departed.

  “I’m afraid Father is frightfully old-fashioned,” said Audrey Jessup as they all sat down on chairs upholstered in gold brocade. “What kind of car is it?”

  “An Austin Chummy. Alec didn’t need it today, and I was in a bit of a rush. I don’t usually drive in town, but it’s nice for a ride in the country, just big enough to squeeze in my twelve-year-old stepdaughter, two babies and their nurse, and a picnic.”

  “Good heavens!” the elder Mrs. Jessup exclaimed, laughing.

  “You have little ones?” her daughter-in-law asked. “You absolutely must come to live here. How old are they?”

  “Seven months.”

  “And the other?”

  “Both seven months. They’re twins, boy and girl.”

  “Double trouble,” said the elder Mrs. Jessup with a smile. Daisy had heard the comment often enough to be mildly irritated without feeling any need to retort.

  “Double joy, Mama Moira! Marilyn, my five-year-old, will be thrilled to death. She adores babies. Percy’s getting too old to appreciate being smothered in kisses.”

  The parlour maid brought in the tea trolley. As Mrs. Jessup poured, Daisy and Audrey Jessup compared notes on their children.

  “They change so fast,” said the elder Mrs. Jessup with a sigh. “Aidan, my eldest, was such a staid, sensible child. Then he went away to school. Next thing we knew, we were being congratulated on his becoming a positive demon on the Rugby football field!”

  Daisy believed her. Her friend Lucy had married a quiet, mild-mannered man who turned into a ravening beast on the rugger field.

  “But Aidan’s very staid and sensible now,” Audrey observed with a touch of wistfulness.

  “I should hope so, with a growing family of his own. My youngest, on the other hand, was a rough-and-tumble boy, always looking for trouble.” A shadow of anxiety crossed Mrs. Jessup’s face, and Daisy wondered if her youngest was still looking for trouble. “Yet he took up cricket, which has always seemed to me a rather sedate affair.”

  “Compared to rugger, positively placid!” Daisy agreed.

  “And my daughter, Deirdre, wasn’t at all like Audrey’s little Marilyn. She never cared much about dolls or babies. All she ever wanted was a horse, and though we couldn’t manage that, she took riding lessons for years. Somewhat to my surprise, she’s turned into a devoted mother.”

  “How many grandchildren have you?”

  “Five. Just wait until you’re a grandmother, Mrs. Fletcher. The pleasures of motherhood are nothing to it.”

  Daisy wished her mother and Alec’s could bring themselves to enjoy Belinda, Miranda, and Oliver instead of always finding fault. She also envied the easy relationship between the two Mrs. Jessups, so different from her own with her exacting mother-in-law.

  She finished her second cup of tea and was about to say regretfully that it was time she was going, when the maid came in.

  “There’s someone to see the master, madam. A foreigner. On business, he says. I told him Mr. Jessup don’t do business at home, but he said the master wouldn’t take kindly to him turning up at the shop, and it’s not my place, ’m, to tell him the master’s gone abroad. So!”

  Mrs. Jessup looked dismayed, even alarmed. “Didn’t he give his name, Enid?”

  “No’m. I ast for his card, but he didn’t have one. He’s a foreigner.” In the maid’s eyes, this fact clearly explained any and all peculiarities of conduct.

  “I suppose I’d better speak to him. Please excuse me, Mrs. Fletcher.” She stood up.

  Daisy also rose. Her curiosity aroused, she had to force herself to obey the dictates of manners. “I really must be off,” she said. “Thank you so much for tea. I’m looking forward to our being neighbours.”

  Mrs. Jessup went out. Daisy stayed chatting to Audrey for a few minutes before going into the hall, where the maid waited to usher her out.

  A door towards the front of the hall was slightly ajar. Stopping at the looking glass hanging over the hall table to straighten her hat and powder her nose, Daisy heard a man’s voice. He spoke too low to make out his words, but something about the intonation sounded to her distinctly American, rather than any more exotic incarnation of English. On the other hand, Mrs. Jessup’s voice, when she spoke, was unmistakably Irish. That brogue was what she had caught a hint of earlier, Daisy realised.

  “As it happens,” Mrs. Jessup said coldly, “my husband is travelling on the Continent. He moves about a great deal from country to country—France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, even Germany. I have no way to get in touch.”

  The visitor’s voice rose. “Aw, don’t give me that, lady! You must know when you’re expecting him home at least.”

  “I don’t. His plans often change, so he sends a telegram when he’s on his way home.”

  “OK, if you say so.” He sounded disgruntled, almost threatening. “But you better tell him I came looking for him, and tell him I’ll be back.”

  The door swung open. A short, wiry man in a blue suit strode out into the hall. In passing, his dark eyes gave Daisy a sidelong glance. Something about it made her shiver. She glimpsed black slicked-back hair before he clapped a grey-blue fedora on his head, pulling it well down over his swarthy face. A black-avised devil—the phrase surfaced from somewhere in the depths of Daisy’s memory.

  He reached the front door before the maid could open it for him. Letting himself out, he failed to shut it behind him. He ran down the steps and walked quickly away around Constable Circle.

  “Well, I never!” the maid exclaimed. “Manners!”

  “Born in a barn,” Daisy agreed with a friendly smile. “I take it he’s not a frequent visitor?”

  “Never set eyes on him before, madam, and I’m sure I hope I never do again. We get plenty of foreign visitors, the family being in the importing business, but most of ’em are polite as you please, in their foreign sort of way. Begging your pardon, ’m, but is it right what I heard, that you’re taking the house next door? If you was to be wanting a parlour maid, my sister’s looking for a new situation….”

  Daisy promised to let her know as soon as their plans were certain. Down the steps she went and started across the street, intending to cross the garden by the path.

  “Excuse me, madam!” A man came towards her, hurrying up the path. Well dressed in an unobtrusive dark grey suit and carrying a tightly rolled umbrella, he looked very respectable, a banker perhaps, in no way an alarming figure.

  Daisy paused. The man came closer, raising his hat politely. He was quite young, early thirties at a guess, though his dark hair was already greying a little at the templ
es.

  “I beg your pardon for accosting you, ma’am. I saw you come out of my house. I’m Aidan Jessup.”

  The staid, sensible older son? Lucy’s Gerald would have let himself be boiled in oil before he’d have accosted in the street a lady to whom he had not been introduced, even having observed her departure from his house. Unless the house was going up in flames … But a quick backward glance showed Daisy such was not the case. However, she was not the sort to cut off a possible source of information just because of a certain disregard of etiquette.

  “Afternoon tea,” she explained, and added encouragingly, “Can I help you?”

  “You noticed the fellow who came out just before you? Who dashed off at such a pace?” He stared frowning after the American, now out of sight. “I don’t suppose you know who he was?”

  “I’m afraid not. I didn’t meet him. I imagine Mrs. Jessup—your mother—can tell you.”

  “Mother spoke to him?”

  “I believe so. I did hear his voice, and he sounded as if he came from America.”

  His already-pale face blanched. “Oh Hades!” he groaned. “I knew it was a terrible idea. Thank you, madam, and once more, my apologies.” He raised his hat again and made for the Jessup house at a hasty pace.

  Interesting! Daisy thought, making her way back to the car.

  There seemed to be enough secrets and mysteries at number 5 to furnish a half-ruined Gothic mansion. They ought to have an old crone for a housekeeper, instead of a smart young parlour maid.

  She had liked both the Jessup ladies, though. If they were aware of her aristocratic background, they had showed no signs of toadying. In fact, their unaffected manners were very much at odds with the flamboyance of their interior decorating. Could it be Mr. Jessup’s taste that ruled?

  If anything, the mysteries associated with the Jessups made Daisy keener to get to know them better. Who was the intrusive, aggressive American whose arrival so alarmed Aidan Jessup? What was the “terrible idea” that had apparently led to his arrival? Was the younger brother in trouble with the law?

  Could that explain Mr. Irwin’s reluctance to have a CID detective move in next door to his daughter?

  FIRST SEA INTERLUDE

  There was three men came out of the west,

  Their fortunes for to try,

  And those three made a solemn vow,

  John Barleycorn should die.

  They ploughed, they sowed, they harrowed him in,

  Throwed clods upon his head,

  And these three men made a solemn vow,

  John Barleycorn was dead.

  —OLD ENGLISH BALLAD

  “‘It was a dark and stormy night …’ ”

  Clinging to the rail, sleet streaming down his neck, Patrick muttered the words to himself. He’d have had to shout to be heard above the howl of the wind in the rigging, and in any case, he doubted his present companions would appreciate the literary allusion.

  At the best of times, the seamen had little regard for the supercargo.

  Bulwer-Lytton’s London couldn’t possibly have been as dark and stormy as the North Atlantic in a September gale, at night, on board a ship with all lights extinguished. The best that could be said for the situation was that the U.S. Coast Guard was not likely to find the Iphigenia. If they had any sense, they wouldn’t even be afloat tonight.

  On the other hand, nor would Iffie’s customers find her.

  Captain Watkins had insisted that the supercargo must be on deck, ready to keep tally of the merchandise handed over when the inshore boats arrived. Teeth chattering, Patrick suspected—to the point of near certainty—that Watkins had been having him on. Surely on a night like this the captain couldn’t even guarantee that the black ship was in the vicinity of Rum Row. If she was, one could only hope that a dozen—or a score or more—unlighted ships were not circling blindly in the area, waiting for the storm to ease.

  At least they were not likely to be blown ashore, Patrick was glad to realise. Last year, in May 1924 to be precise, the old three-mile limit had changed to twelve, so Rum Row was now some fifteen miles from the coast.

  A song ran through his head:

  Oh, ‘twas in the broad Atlantic,

  Mid the equinoctial gales,

  That a young fellow fell overboard…

  His frozen hands gripped the rail tighter. Not that he was afraid. He had, after all, chosen to come, in search of adventure. But he was so cold, he hardly felt the touch on his arm until the bo’sun’s voice bellowed in his ear, “You’d best come below, lad. The runners won’t be out tonight.”

  Turning, he was grateful for the man’s steadying hand on his elbow. Thank heaven he wasn’t seasick. That would have been the ultimate humiliation.

  A faint light glimmering through the downpour showed the position of the open deckhouse door. Finding his feet on the heaving deck, he made for it, the bo’sun a step behind.

  Once sheltered from the storm’s savagery, Patrick felt the steady, reassuring thump of the engines. His breath caught in his throat as he stepped into the cabin. After the bracing air outside, the fug seemed thick enough to scoop with a ladle. On the outward voyage, everyone but the captain slept, ate, smoked, and drank in the narrow space, to allow room for more bottles and barrels of their precious cargo—of which one cask had been broached since he went on deck. The watch below greeted him with a steaming tankard.

  “Not to worry, mate,” said one bewhiskered mariner, grinning. “‘T ain’t the ten-year-old Haig and Haig.”

  He reached for the toddy eagerly. “Th-thank you.” His teeth were still not quite under control. He took a swig and started to warm up inside. “I’ll put it d-down as lost overboard.”

  “That’s the spirit.” The bo’sun’s witticism raised a laugh.

  One of the men threw Patrick a towel. “Better get out o’ them wet duds.”

  The ordeal outside seemed to have been some sort of test. Apparently, he had passed. The son of the cargo’s owner could never really be one of the crew, though someone made room on the steam pipes for him to hang his dripping clothes among theirs.

  But he remembered the story of the Norwegian black ship Sagatind: The crew had broken into the cargo, drunk their fill, quarrelled and fought, and, when the Coast Guard seized the ship, were found blotto and bloody belowdecks.

  TWO

  “What I want to know,” said Daisy, “is why Alec’s great-uncle’s solicitor is nervous about having a policeman move into that house.”

  Alec and Tommy Pearson had just joined her and Madge in the sitting room. It was a pleasant, comfortable room, half the size of Mr. Walsall’s drawing room and without a scrap of the Jessups’ flamboyance.

  Tommy liked his glass of port after dinner, but Alec had promised Daisy they wouldn’t discuss Mr. Walsall’s will in her absence. They hadn’t kept the ladies waiting more than a quarter of an hour.

  Daisy’s demand brought a frown to the face of the stocky, bespectacled solicitor. “That, I can’t tell you,” he said, accepting a cup of coffee. He helped himself to a lump of sugar. Tongs poised to take a second, he glanced at his wife and regretfully forbore.

  Madge’s blond curls nodded approval, but as he sat down beside her, she said tartly, “He won’t tell you, more likely. Tommy’s refused to say a word to me about why you invited us to dinner tonight.”

  “For the pleasure of your company, of course, darling,” said Daisy.

  “Well, of course! But I know he has business to discuss with Alec, too. Do you want me to go and powder my nose while you talk? Or I could go up and admire the babies. They’re always so angelic when they’re asleep.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, you’re welcome to stay, Madge,” Daisy assured her. “Only it’s really Alec’s business….”

  “There’s no reason you shouldn’t stay,” said Alec, “but it’s not particularly interesting business, unless Pearson’s going to drag some hitherto unsuspected family skeleton out of the cupboard?”


  “Good Lord, no!” Tommy was shocked. “Nothing like that.”

  Daisy was always somewhat taken aback by evidence of Tommy’s earnest outlook on life. She had heard tales of his derring-do during the War, in the course of which he had been badly shot up. In fact, he had met Madge—then Lady Margaret Allinston—in the military hospital where she had been a VAD nurse and Daisy had worked in the office. Since returning to the long-established law firm of Pearson, Pearson, Watts & Pearson, Tommy had reverted to the conventions with a vengeance.

  Although he had been extremely helpful in that extremely unconventional business in Worcestershire, Daisy reminded herself.

  Doubtless his retreat into stolidity was his way of coping with the horrors he had lived through. People had different ways of dealing with the memories, some more efficacious, some less so. Tommy and Madge and their little boy were a happy family, and he was doing well in his profession. A certain degree of gravity was required of solicitors, as well as of policemen.

  Alec wasn’t being a policeman this evening, though, just a hopeful heir.

  Tommy took some papers out of an attaché case. “Let me say right away,” he stated, “that William Walsall was a very wealthy man. He left considerable sums to various charities—”

  “Buying his place in heaven,” said the irrepressible Madge.

  Her husband gave her an affectionately exasperated look. “There’s no reason to suppose so. He made generous provision for his butler and housekeeper, a married couple, though given their advanced ages, the annuities could not have been expensive. Be that as it may, I can assure you, Fletcher, your income from investments will be quite sufficient to cover the increased cost of a larger household, without—”

  “That’s what Mr. Irwin told me,” said Daisy, “but with the utmost reluctance, which I don’t understand at all.”

  “Perhaps he’s been misappropriating funds,” Madge suggested.

  “My dear, you mustn’t say such things, even in jest,” Tommy remonstrated. “Phelps, Irwin, and Apsley is a highly regarded firm. Besides, the sale of the property would be equally likely to bring to light any discrepancy in the accounts.”