by Carola Dunn
Yes, Miss Prothero was still a prime suspect. However, for the moment Daisy turned her attention to the houses on the other side beyond the Vicarage, a row of small, two-story cottages opening directly onto the street.
“Who lives next door to the Vicarage?” she asked Derek.
“Sam Basin. He works in Wyndham’s Garage in Ashford and he’s got a tremenjous motor-cycle. It’s a Wooler. They’re called Flying Bananas, ’cause they’re yellow and they have a long petrol tank. He once let me sit on it.”
“Not when it was going!”
“No, but all the same, don’t tell Mummy. Mr. and Mrs. Basin live there too, and Sam’s sister is one of our housemaids at home.”
Could those spelling mistakes and the clumsily formed letters be signs of an uneducated writer after all? Daisy would have sworn they were artificial, intended to mislead, but perhaps …
“And the next cottage,” Derek went on, “that’s Mrs. Molesworth-who-came-down-in-the-world.”
Aha! Jealousy of those who retained the privileged position she had lost might be a powerful motive.
“What’s ‘came down in the world’?” Belinda enquired.
Derek explained: “It means she’s a lady but she lost all her money so she has to live in a poky little cottage like the common village people.”
“Poor lady!” said soft-hearted Belinda.
“It’s all right, she’s not starving or anything. She’s enormous and she laughs a lot, and she’s always sucking acid drops and she gives them to children, too. Do you like acid drops?”
“Not much. I like Dolly Mixture almost best, besides chocolate.”
Daisy ceased to listen as the children compared the joys of various sweets. The cottages they were passing now still had a fair view of Mrs. LeBeau’s front gate, but she could not go on interrogating Derek about their inhabitants.
At the end of the row, the village green began on the right, sloping down to the Hop-Picker in the far corner. The people in the houses around the green might have seen Johnnie walking up the hill from the station towards Oakhurst, but they could not have seen more without binoculars. Possible, but unlikely and hard to check, Daisy decided.
On the left side of the street, facing the green, was the police station, or rather the local bobby’s house, with a front room devoted to police business. Next to it was the village shop, which included the post office and, in a tiny cubicle walled off from the store-room at the back, the telephone exchange. The letter-box was not a pillar-box but the kind set into the wall, round the farther side of the building, Daisy remembered. A footpath ran down that side, cutting across hop-fields to the main road where the motor-bus to Ashford stopped. Fronting the street beyond the path rose the cone roofs of a pair of oast-houses.
It could not have been better arranged for someone who wanted to post letters without being noticed.
As Daisy and retinue approached the shop, a tall, bulky gentleman arrived from the opposite direction. Clad in brown tweed plus-fours, a shooting jacket of Edwardian vintage, and a tweed cap, he walked stiffly, rigidly upright, stalking along like a crane with the aid of a stout walking-stick. His long face was weatherbeaten, with a red tip to his nose, which looked the redder for the bristling white cavalry moustache beneath. With a slight bow, he gestured to Daisy to enter the shop before him.
“No, please do go first,” said Daisy. “I have to make sure Derek ties the dog securely. It’s Brigadier Lomax, isn’t it? We’ve met, after church one Sunday I believe it was. I’m Daisy Dalrymple, Lady John’s sister.” And you are the one other victim Johnnie suspects of having received an anonymous letter!
“How d’ye do?” As he spoke, gruffly, the brigadier fished with finger and thumb in his waistcoat pocket and pulled out a monocle. Through this he blinked at Daisy, then at the children. “Ah, yes, young Master Frobisher, is it not?”
“Yes, sir, and this is my friend, Miss Fletcher.”
“How d’ye do, Miss Fletcher.” This time the knobbly hand dived into a trouser-pocket and came up with a shilling. “Here, my boy. Treat the young lady to some sweets.”
“Gosh, thanks, sir. Is it all right if we buy a comic paper?”
“Yes, yes, by all means.” His duty done by the younger generation, Brigadier Lomax turned back to Daisy. “The wife mentioned you were coming to stay at Oakhurst, Miss Dalrymple. My daughter and son-in-law are staying with us, and my son’s fiancée and her brother. There was some talk about getting up a tennis party, I believe, if you should care for it.”
“It sounds delightful,” Daisy said cordially. She was an absolute duffer at tennis, and could think of a hundred things she’d rather do than run about waving a racquet on a hot afternoon. But she might get a chance to sit in the shade with lemonade, chatting with the brigadier, and who could tell what magic her guileless eyes might work on him?
“I’ll tell Rosa,” he said, with such gloom she revised the odds of his remaining within a mile of the tennis court. He courteously ushered her between the boxes of plums, pears, potatoes, onions, carrots, runner beans, and peas, and into the shop. There, she once again invited him to go first.
“The children will take ages choosing their sweets and paper,” she assured him.
No one else was there except for Mrs. Burden, a thin middle-aged woman with quick, jerky movements. Her daughter’s voice could be heard from the telephone exchange cubicle, asking a caller what number he wanted. Daisy congratulated herself on having arrived between the rush of those who considered shopping early a virtue and those who put it off till just before time to get lunch. By sheer luck it was also market day in nearby Ashford, perfect conditions for a good gossip with the shopkeeper.
Brigadier Lomax bought pipe-tobacco and some stamps, and left. Mrs. Burden joined Daisy in the corner of the shop where she had found just what she was looking for. On shelves above the gumboots and plimsolls, among the white lisle stockings, babies’ sunbonnets, handkerchiefs, farm-labourers’ smocks, and socks of every description, was a pile of white cotton shorts, elastic-waisted.
“Everyone seems to go to the seaside these days,” said Mrs. Burden, “at least for the day in a charabanc. These are so much more convenient than a frock for little girls playing in the sand.”
“Yes, and in the garden. I’ll take a couple of pairs if you have the right size. No shirts? Well, she’ll just have to borrow Derek’s. Belinda, come and see if these will fit.”
Belinda was disappointed with the one small patch pocket considered adequate for girls, but otherwise pleased. She went back to helping Derek decide between Beano and Dandy. At a counter encumbered by a large yellow cheese and a small display stand of boot polish, Daisy paid for the shorts and half a dozen picture postcards.
“I’ll need stamps, too,” she said.
“If you wouldn’t mind stepping over to the Post Office counter, miss.”
“Once you’ve stuck the stamp on, there’s not much space for the address on these postcards, is there?” Daisy said chattily. “A friend of mine has a very long address, and I always have trouble squeezing it in. I expect you get some letters to be sorted with pretty badly written addresses.”
“There’s some are a real puzzle for sure, miss.” Producing a block of penny stamps, Mrs. Burden leaned on the counter, quite ready for a chat. “You wouldn’t think they cared if their letters never got where they’re going.”
“I try to remember to write the town in capital letters. I suppose it would be best to do the whole thing that way. Do you get many like that?”
“Well, miss, to tell the truth, it’s mostly those who haven’t got much education who write all in capitals, and it stands to reason they don’t write many letters.”
“I suppose not,” Daisy said, trying to think of some more leading yet innocent-appearing questions. “At least, when they do write, the capital letters make it easy for you to read the address.”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” said Mrs. Burden. “The trouble is, often
as not they write in pencil, and it’s that hard to make it out, specially by the gaslight. Still, it doesn’t happen often. In the general way of things.”
Daisy pounced. “In the general way of things?”
“There’s been a regular rash of them these past few months.” Straightening, she glanced back at the desk where she postmarked the mail, as if some might be lurking there. She looked harried, seeming to regret having spoken, but not knowing what to do other than to rush on to elaborate: “All in bunches, and all written by the same person by the looks of them.”
“Do you have trouble deciphering them? It’s not so difficult, I suppose, if they’re all to people in the village, to addresses you know.”
“Well, as a matter of fact, they are,” the postmistress admitted, tight-lipped.
“How odd!” Daisy remarked. “Wouldn’t you think whoever it is would go to see people instead of wasting the money on postage? You haven’t noticed someone suddenly buying a lot of stamps?”
“No, miss.” Mrs. Burden spoke quite sharply. “It’s not my business to be paying attention to who buys what, nor I shouldn’t be gossiping about Post Office business.”
“It’s my fault,” Daisy said with a smile. “I’m a writer, you see, and I’m always interested in the ins and outs of people’s jobs. Here’s sixpence for my stamps. Thank you.”
Winifred Burden had emerged from the telephone exchange a few minutes earlier to serve the children, so they were ready to leave. Daisy was dismayed to see the vast quantity of sweets they had bought for a shilling.
“Don’t you dare be sick, you two,” she said as they left the shop, “or I shall be in disgrace. Save some for later.”
“D’you want a sherbet dab, Aunt Daisy? I bought three.”
“No, thanks!”
“Look!” cried Belinda, who had gone straight to Tinker Bell and given her a great hug. “Tinker’s chewed through the string, but she just sat there pretending! Isn’t she good and clever?”
“I told you she didn’t need a lead,” said Derek smugly. “Here, Tink, here’s an aniseed ball.”
Tinker crunched the aniseed ball and followed them up the street with her nose glued to Derek’s paper bag.
Daisy felt moderately pleased with herself. Getting names had been too much to hope for, but at least she could be pretty certain Johnnie was not the only victim of the Poison Pen. That cut out Mr. Paramount as a suspect, she thought with relief as they approached the Oakhurst gates. His resentment was aimed specifically at his usurping nephew, so she wouldn’t have to beard him in his den.
Of course, Alec would not cross a suspect off his list so easily. The old man never left the lodge and she had never heard that he had any visitors, but his daily woman might provide all the village gossip. General misanthropy could be motive enough for the other letters, or perhaps they were just an attempt to disguise the provenance of Johnnie’s.
Alec was right—once someone was on the list, it was difficult to be quite sure one could take them off.
They reached the end of the drive. Daisy glanced at the church clock: ten to eleven. She gave Belinda the shorts. “Here, go and put a pair on right away,” she said, “before you dirty that frock. Derek, please tell Nanny I’ll be very grateful if she will kindly lend a couple of your shirts to Bel. Straight home, now. I’m going to elevenses with Mrs. LeBeau.”
The door was opened by a neat, white-capped maid, not young. Daisy knew as soon as she spoke that she was not local.
“Please to come through, miss. Madam is in the arbour.”
What Daisy saw of the house as she passed through left a pleasant impression of light and air. The back garden, rather than sloping up, was terraced on three levels. The lowest was paved. The second was a rose garden, with a shady, rose-grown bower of the kind described by Dickens as a shelter erected by man for the benefit of spiders. Daisy presumed it had been swept clear of eight-legged marauders before its elegant mistress ensconced herself there.
Mrs. LeBeau came to the top of the steps to greet Daisy. Her dark hair, loosely looped up into a chignon, gleamed in the sun. “You won’t object to taking coffee outside, I hope?” she said. “We can easily move indoors if …”
“No, no, it’s beautiful out here.”
“I’m rather fond of roses, as you may have guessed! I spent some years in the grimmer parts of South Africa. Roses grow marvellously in the Cape, but where we were those that survived were generally covered in dust. I used to dream of English rose gardens.”
“I have a friend who lived in southern Italy and dreamt of daffodils,” said Daisy, sitting down on one of the white-painted wrought-iron chairs, well cushioned, in the arbour. “What took you to Africa?”
“I married a big-game hunter,” Mrs. LeBeau said drily, “frightfully handsome and dashing, but without a penny to his name. It was a runaway match and my family cut me off without the proverbial shilling. Shooting lions and buffalo was all Perry knew how to do, so he became a guide, going off into the veldt for weeks while I was left behind in dusty little dorps full of dusty little Dutchmen. With neither shillings nor pennies to our name, we hadn’t much choice.”
“I suppose not.” Daisy regarded with some doubt the expertly cultivated garden and the charming Queen Anne house, in excellent repair.
Mrs. LeBeau laughed. “You’re wondering how I managed all this. Sheer luck! A party of prospectors on holiday hired Perry. After the shooting, he went up with them into the Wit watersrand, and they practically fell over a vein of gold. I suspect it was in a drunken celebration they signed over a share to Perry. At any rate, the result was that when a buffalo took revenge on him for all the slaughter, and I came home, I found myself with a comfortable income.”
“What luck!” said Daisy, not without a touch of envy. But then, if she had not had to work for her living, she would never have met Alec. “Oh dear, I didn’t mean what luck losing your husband. I’m sorry!”
“Oh, as to that, poor old Perry had his points, but as a life’s companion … Well, let’s say my parents weren’t far off the mark. I’ve certainly no desire for a second venture into matrimony. Ah, here’s our coffee. Thank you, Alice.”
The maid transferred a Wedgewood coffee set and a plate of shortbread from her tray to the wrought-iron table. Mrs. LeBeau dispensed coffee and biscuits.
“Marvellous shortbread,” said Daisy after her first bite.
“My cook-housekeeper is Scottish.”
“And your maid is from London, isn’t she? Not local, anyway.”
“I have a flat in London and I spend a good deal of time there. And I don’t care for gossiping servants,” Mrs. LeBeau admitted with a wry smile. “There is enough talk without a maid who goes home twice a week to report my every move to her family. You live in London, don’t you? Lady John mentioned Chelsea, I think.”
Daisy accepted the change of subject, for the moment at least. They talked about London and Daisy’s work. Mrs. LeBeau kept the conversation steered firmly away from her own concerns, until at last Daisy could not decently prolong her visit.
A fearful waste after such a promising start, she thought as they descended the steps together and went into the house. The police had a great advantage in being able to pose direct questions instead of having to feel around in the dark.
On the way to the front door, Mrs. LeBeau picked up a small pile of letters from the hall table. She opened the door and bade Daisy goodbye. Daisy was half way down the path when she heard an exasperated exclamation behind her.
“Oh no, not another of the wretched things!”
Mrs. LeBeau was leaning against the doorpost, staring at one of the envelopes in her hand with mingled annoyance and apprehension. Perking up, Daisy hurried back to her.
“Is something wrong? Can I help?”
“No, no, it’s just …” Mrs. LeBeau’s voice faded, and she looked searchingly at Daisy, who did her best to appear guilelessly sympathetic. “Actually, it would be a relief to tell someone about
it, but I’d hate to shock you.”
“I don’t think I’m frightfully shockable. Living in Bohemian Chelsea, you know, and then I’ve helped the police with one or two criminal investigations …”
“I wouldn’t want the police involved in this,” said the Scarlet Woman in alarm.
“Of course not. May I guess? It’s an anonymous letter, isn’t it? I happen to know you’re not the only one to get them.”
“No?” Mrs. LeBeau’s expression lightened. “Perhaps it’s silly, but that does make me feel better. Come back in, won’t you?”
She led the way into a drawing room decorated in light blues and greys, with touches of peach, and vases of roses everywhere. A modern, comfortable sofa and easy chairs continued the colour scheme. The rest of the furniture had the simple, elegant lines of traditional Sheraton and Hepplewhite designs, whether antique or reproduction Daisy was not competent to judge. There were two well-filled bookcases, as well as a gramophone with a pile of records, and an expensive wireless set.
“What a lovely room!” A painting hanging over the mantel caught her eye and she went across to study it. A twisted thorn tree to one side framed the foreground of sun-bleached grasses and a range of dark, rocky hills which stood out against a deep blue sky. “And what an interesting picture.”
“The Witwatersrand, ‘whence cometh my help,’ if you’ll pardon the blasphemy.”
“I’m not very religious. You painted this?” Daisy asked, noticing the initials “W. L.” in the corner.
“Yes, I had to keep myself occupied somehow. My friends forgive its deficiencies, and my enemies are not invited into my house. I have enemies, you know, in the village.” She took a paperknife from a small writing-table in one corner. Sinking into a chair by the open French windows, she slit the envelope and took out the paper inside. “I thought these letters came from one of them, but if other people are getting them it sounds more like general malice.”
