by Carola Dunn
“Spiffing!” Daisy agreed with a laugh, wondering how Inspector Flagg would take the unofficial arrival of a superior officer from the Met. And how she was going to explain everything to Alec.
“We were watching for you from the nursery windows and when we saw you coming up the drive we came down because I have to ask you, what shall I call Bel’s daddy? Bel says ‘Uncle Alec,’ because she calls my daddy uncle, but I don’t know if it’s all right to call a detective chief inspector from Scotland Yard uncle, even if he really nearly is.”
“I’m sure it’s all right, Derek, but we’ll ask him, if you like. When is he arriving?” Entering the hall with a child hanging onto each arm, she suddenly felt exhausted.
“Not till after we’re in bed, probably,” said Derek. “He’s stopping for dinner on the way.”
“But he can come and say goodnight, can’t he?” Belinda asked anxiously. “If I’m not asleep yet? He always does when he comes home in time.”
“Yes, of course.” Daisy’s father would never have dreamt of turning up in the nurseries at Fairacres to bid his children goodnight. Nor would her mother, come to that, nor Violet and Johnnie. That was what nannies were for. If a bedtime kiss was the middle-class way, there was a lot to be said for it, Daisy decided.
“Will you, when you’re my mummy?”
“Absolutely,” Daisy promised. “But run along now, I must talk to Uncle Johnnie.”
“About … about the dead body?” Bel’s freckled face took on a pinched look.
Daisy hugged her. “Yes, darling, but there’s no need for you to have anything more to do with it. You’ve both been absolute angels—I don’t know how I’d have coped without you. Now you can forget all about it.”
“Golly,” said Derek in disgust, “that would be an awful waste. Don’t be such a girl, Bel. Come on.”
As Daisy entered the drawing room, Violet looked round and Johnnie started to his feet.
“Daisy, darling,” Vi exclaimed, “I’m so glad you’re back. I’ve been worrying. And so, I may say, has your Mr. Fletcher. He’s on his way.”
“The children told me,” Daisy said, dropping into a chair. “I can’t think how Alec got away in mid week.”
“He said he had just cleared up two or three cases, and he’s due a couple of days off after working several weekends in a row. He asked about accommodation in the village, but of course I invited him here.”
“Thanks, darling.”
“Daisy,” Johnnie said impatiently, “what exactly has happened? I came home to one garbled story from the children and another from Violet. Professor Osborne’s dead?”
“Yes, it is the professor. I was frightfully afraid I was wrong, and it was really the vicar, but he’s turned up.”
“How did it happen?”
“I don’t want to hear the gory details,” Violet said firmly. “I’m going upstairs to write a note of condolence, and to lie down for half an hour before changing for dinner.” Standing up, she stooped to kiss Johnnie’s scarred cheek. “Don’t get up, darling.”
He caught her hand and squeezed it. “Take the stairs slowly, love. Daisy, can I get you a cocktail, or sherry?”
“A drop of vermouth with loads of soda, please, but what I’d really like is some salted almonds to nibble. I’m starving. I missed tea, but I don’t want to spoil my dinner.”
Her needs provided for, and Violet well out of the way, she told Johnnie about the fallen angel.
“But who on earth would do in the professor? Perhaps he was followed from Cambridge by a student he’d ploughed, or a rival academic,” Johnnie speculated. “Surely no one local. He’s been to stay in Rotherden before, but hardly enough to drive the neighbours to violence!”
“Unless he was the Poison Pen.”
“Unless … Daisy, was he? You found him out already?”
“No,” she admitted regretfully, “but it’s a possibility. When did the first letter come?”
“I feel as if I’ve been getting the beastly things forever, but I suppose it’s just a couple of months.”
“Any before the beginning of July?”
Johnnie pondered. “I couldn’t swear to it one way or the other.”
“Bother!” Crunching on a handful of almonds, Daisy wished she hadn’t forgotten to ask Mrs. LeBeau the same question.
“Why should you imagine Professor Osborne wrote them?” Johnnie asked. “Just because he’s been murdered?”
“Not entirely. I wondered before.”
“I can’t see how he could have known about … my fall from grace.”
“The Vicarage is a hot-bed of gossip, and he was the sort of man who might think it a joke to write anonymous letters. The alternative is that the vicar unmasked the Poison Pen, who meant to kill him, not his brother. They are … were very alike. Either way, Johnnie, you see why I have to tell the police about it.”
“You what? Dash it, Daisy, no!”
“It’s murder now, not just anonymous letters. You’re a magistrate. Would you really advise me to withhold information from the police?”
“N-no, I suppose not,” Johnnie said doubtfully. “But, dash it, it may have nothing whatsoever to do with it.”
“Maybe, but we can’t be sure. Anyway, as they investigate there’s a good chance they’ll find out a Poison Pen’s been active in the village. Then they’ll really start to dig, and it’s far more likely Violet will hear about your letters than if you’re frank with them and ask them to try to keep it from her.”
“I think I’ll have a whisky,” groaned Johnnie.
“I don’t see any need to tell them what the letters were about,” Daisy said, trying to cheer him. He merely groaned again.
While he was at the drinks cabinet, Daisy sipped her soda-and-It and guzzled a few more almonds. She wondered how to break to him what had apparently not dawned on him: that he would inevitably become a suspect. The moment was postponed when his butler appeared.
“There’s a person to see your lordship. A plain clothes policeman he says, my lord. A Detective Inspector Flagg.”
Heaving a mighty sigh, Johnnie set down his glass unsipped and said resignedly, “Show him in, Mitchell.”
The lanky inspector looked a trifle embarrassed to see Daisy. He gave her a brief nod, but addressed Johnnie: “I beg your pardon for disturbing you, my lord. You’ll have heard about the unfortunate incident down in the churchyard, I don’t doubt.”
“I have,” Johnnie said curtly.
“The thing of it is, sir, when my men came out from Ashford they brought a message to ring up my superintendent. Which I did, and he wants me to talk to Master Derek Frobisher and Miss Fletcher.”
“The children? Why the deuce—? Sorry, Daisy.”
She waved permission at him to use what language he liked.
“It’s not what I like to do, sir,” Flagg apologized. “I’ve young daughters of my own. But we always like to get more than one witness whenever possible, and we’ve only Miss Dalrymple’s description of what happened when she found the deceased.”
“Surely you don’t doubt Miss Dalrymple’s word!” Johnnie exploded.
“No, no, not at all, sir,” the inspector said hastily, and not quite convincingly. Not, Daisy decided, as if he did actually doubt her, but as if he bore her possible untruthfulness in mind. “Nothing like that. It’s just that in the stress of the moment, as you might say, specially in a nasty business like this, witnesses do get confused and forget exactly what they saw and did.”
“The children told me they didn’t see the body.”
“And I’m glad to hear it, sir, but for that very reason they’re less likely to have been upset and more likely to remember just what they did see. It’s remarkable how much children notice. They might, for instance, have observed someone making off down the lane, which Miss Dalrymple naturally missed. Perhaps you’d like to telephone the super, sir?”
Going over the inspector’s head might give umbrage, Daisy thought, and make him le
ss likely to heed a plea to keep the anonymous letters from Vi. To her relief, Johnnie shook his head.
“No, I dare say I’d only hear the same from him. I’ll send for them,” he continued, “but I must insist on myself and Miss Dalrymple being present.”
“You, sir, naturally. We try not to interview young children without a grown-up family member present. But …”
“Miss Fletcher has no family member in the house,” Johnnie interrupted. “Unless you wish to wait until her father arrives …”
“Her father?” Flagg was obviously startled, dismayed, and annoyed. “You mean Detective Chief Inspector Fletcher is coming down?”
“Purely in a personal capacity, I understand. He is engaged to be married to Miss Dalrymple. She is the nearest thing to a relative Belinda has at hand.”
The inspector sighed. “Very well, Miss Dalrymple stays, but please, ma’am, not a word of prompting. Otherwise I’ll have to stop and give it another go when the chief inspector gets here. You won’t be wanting to put the child through it twice.”
“No,” Daisy agreed meekly.
“I’ll send for them.” Johnnie moved towards the bell to summon Mitchell.
“Wait, Johnnie. Before you speak to Derek and Belinda, Inspector, you really must listen to what I have to tell you. It’s important.”
“Not now, please, Miss Dalrymple, I’m pushed for time. I left the police surgeon and my fellows down there, and I must go and find out what they’ve come up with.”
“I think you ought to hear her out,” said Johnnie with a grimace of resignation.
Flagg glanced at his wrist-watch. “I can’t spare you more than a few minutes.”
“Right-oh. Do sit down.”
“Something to drink, Inspector?” offered Johnnie, with an air of postponing the dreadful moment.
“A beer would be welcome, sir, if there’s one to hand.”
“No, but I can send for—”
“I haven’t the time to spare, sir. No matter. Be so good as to ring for the children and I’ll listen while we wait for them.” Impatient, he leaned forward in his chair, hands on his knees, while Johnnie rang the bell, picked up his whisky and subsided nearby. “Now, Miss Dalrymple.”
No time to beat about the bush. Daisy plunged straight in. “There has been a spate of anonymous letters in Rotherden recently, Inspector. I believe the murder may be connected with them.”
For a moment Flagg sat absolutely still, his shrewd blue eyes fixed on her face. Then he sat back and took out his notebook. “Anonymous letters, eh? We can’t do a great deal about those unless they contain threats or blackmail.”
“The ones I’ve read, or heard about in detail, had neither, but they were pretty foul and upsetting, and there’s always the possibility they might proceed to blackmail.”
“You don’t reside in Rotherden, Miss Dalrymple. You are not a victim, I take it?” No, the detective was certainly no fool. Even as he asked, his gaze swung to Johnnie.
“Yes, Inspector, I’ve had letters,” Johnnie admitted gloomily.
“Well, I shan’t waste time now asking why you informed your wife’s sister—or how she discovered for herself. Let me hear your ideas about the murder, if you please, ma’am.”
As Daisy yet again set forth her two opposing theories, the butler came in. Johnnie told him to have the children sent down, then Daisy finished her exposition.
Flagg nodded slowly. “Sounds reasonable,” he conceded, “though we may find a more straightforward motive once we start investigating. A village girl Professor Osborne’s got into trouble, or something of the sort. Still, we’ll bear it in mind. You’d better tell me who you reckon might have done it—who else received these letters, that is, besides Lord John.”
As Johnnie absorbed the implication, his mouth opened, then shut again without utterance. He took a swig of his hitherto untouched whisky.
If Flagg was no fool, neither was he a toady. Daisy quite approved of him, on the whole, but she jolly well hoped Johnnie had a witness to his presence far from the churchyard.
“Where were you between half past two and five to three?” she asked him.
“Now, now, Miss Dalrymple,” the inspector reproved, “that’s for me to ask. But since it’s said, my lord, perhaps you wouldn’t mind answering?”
“Not at all,” Johnnie said eagerly. “I was out riding all afternoon, all over the estate. I was looking—”
“Alone?”
“With Jackson, my bailiff. He thinks we ought to get a tractor, but most of my arable is under hops so we were looking—”
“You were with Mr. Jackson the entire afternoon?”
“Sorry, I tend to get a bit carried away. You’re not interested in tractors, of course. Yes, Jackson was with me the whole time.”
Daisy breathed again.
“I’m glad to hear it, sir, though naturally we’ll be checking with him. Is he on the telephone by any chance?”
“No, but his place is just a hundred yards or so up the lane. Turn right at the gates, and Hillside Cottage is just along on your right. You can’t miss it.”
“Thank you, sir. I’ll get on to him this evening. Please don’t attempt to speak to him before I do.”
“Why—?” Johnnie started with a puzzled frown, then his face cleared. “Oh, because his livelihood depends on me. Silly of me. I daresay he might be tempted to lie for me, but he doesn’t need to. Inspector, there’s no need to let my wife know I’ve been getting these letters, is there?”
“Ah, like that is it, my lord? Never fear, I’ll do my best to keep her ladyship in the dark, and I can’t say fairer than that.” Flagg’s understanding tone had a touch of amusement. Johnnie bridled, but he was hardly in a position to protest.
“Johnnie hadn’t the foggiest who wrote them,” said Daisy. “That’s why he asked me to try to find out.”
“Did he, now?” Flagg fixed her with an unwavering stare. “I’ve been racking my brains to imagine what motive a young lady of your standing might have for doing in a professor of Latin and Greek. After all, you are the one person we know was at the scene of the crime between the start of the WI meeting and the arrival of the footman. Now, if you had discovered Professor Osborne was the Poison Pen, you might decide on the spur of the moment to seize the chance to eliminate the threat to your sister and her husband. Mightn’t you?”
11
While Daisy and Johnnie were still gaping at Inspector Flagg in stunned silence, Derek and Belinda came in. The arguments on the tip of Daisy’s tongue had to be bitten back. The children must not know she was suspected of murder.
Since Johnnie appeared too flabbergasted to cope, Daisy said, in a voice she hoped sounded like a croak only to her own ears, “Bel, Derek, Inspector Flagg wants to ask you a few questions.”
“I expect you have been talking about this afternoon,” the inspector said to them, “but all the same, I’d like to see you two young people separately, so that you don’t get mixed up with each other’s answers. All right?”
They nodded solemnly.
“You first, Miss Belinda.” He smiled at her as she crossed to Daisy and took her hand in a tremulous clasp, leaning on the arm of her chair. “Lord John?”
“You’d better take Derek to wait in the library, Johnnie.”
Johnnie failed to insist on his gentlemanly duty to protect the ladies. The omission was probably due to his dazed state, but Daisy chose to attribute it to his recognition of her ability to defend herself and Belinda.
“Suppose I don’t remember properly,” Bel asked anxiously.
“All I want is what you remember, missie,” said Flagg, fatherly and reassuring. “Now, you walked down the avenue with Miss Dalrymple?”
“And Derek and Tinker Bell. That’s his dog. I wanted to go and hear Aunt Daisy speak to the meeting, but she said it wouldn’t be interesting, so we stopped at the gates. Aunt Daisy went across the road. Derek said, ‘Let’s climb the gate,’ and he took off his gumboots and clim
bed up to the top, and then he said, ‘Aunt Daisy’s checking her stocking-seams are straight.’”
Daisy blushed, and Inspector Flagg said gravely, “You’ve got a very good memory. Comes of being a policeman’s daughter, I expect. What next?”
“I took off my boots. I put them all—mine and Derek’s—I I put them through the gate so Tinker wouldn’t run off with them. Then I climbed up. It was quite easy,” Belinda assured the detective.
“And what did you see from the top?”
“I looked over to the graveyard and I saw Aunt Daisy bending over something. I said, ‘What’s she doing?’ and Derek said, ‘Something’s fallen over. That great big angel, I think. You wouldn’t know.’ ’Cause I don’t live here,” she explained. “Then Aunt Daisy took her hankie out of her bag—at least, I think it was her hankie. It was something white. She put it down on the ground and came hurrying back. That’s when she told us there was an accident and to ring up the doctor and the police. After that, we just put on our boots and ran home to the telephone.”
“I see. How long would you say it took between Miss Dalrymple crossing the lane and Master Derek seeing her checking … er, hm … and Master Derek saying he could see her?”
“Just a minute,” Belinda said earnestly. “Half a minute. His gumboots are new and a bit too big so he can grow into them, so they’re easy to take off. And he climbs ever so fast. Frightfully fast,” she corrected herself.
“And you didn’t notice anyone in the lane?”
“There wasn’t anyone.”
“That’s all then, thank you, Miss Fletcher,” said Flagg. “That wasn’t too bad, was it? Tell me, did Tinker Bell work out she could get at the boots if she went around the gate?”
“No,” said Belinda, laughing.
The inspector stood up. “Thank you, too, Miss Dalrymple.” He gave her a bland smile.
“Not at all, Inspector,” Daisy said ironically, half inclined to wish she had not helped with the information about the Poison Pen. But it was true, as she had told Johnnie, that it was better to be frank with the police. Concealment only furthered their suspicions, justified or not. “I wish to speak with you when you are finished with Derek,” she informed him in her most haughty manner, and was glad to see him look a trifle apprehensive.
