by Carola Dunn
She remembered advising Isabel to get a watchdog. It still seemed a good idea. Now the three of them were back at home, they should start looking for a puppy.
On her return to the fringes of the town, Daisy passed a garden where someone was attempting to burn a pile of damp leaves and rubbish. Clouds of smoke billowed across the road and grabbed her by the throat. She tried not to inhale as she hurried past, but she started to cough, bringing on the nightmarish choking sensation that had made her bout of bronchitis so beastly.
She emerged from the haze gasping. A few yards ahead was a bus stop with a bench. She sat down, and after a few minutes recovered her breath and her equanimity. The doctor had warned that her lungs would be abnormally sensitive to irritants for a while, though with care they should recover completely.
Her chest still ached a bit, but slowly she walked on. By the time she reached Cherry Trees, she felt much better.
Isabel, naturally, was hoping for news of the investigation.
“Sorry,” said Daisy. “Alec was out very late last night but he didn’t tell me anything this morning. Not much at least. Just that they were expecting to hear from the Majestic and Mrs. Gray’s friend in St. Tropez.”
“Mr. Underwood told me they’d already had a telegram from the Sûreté.”
“Police and hoteliers never sleep. What did it say?”
“The hotel has the trunks in storage and wants to know what to do with them, since madame didn’t take up her reservation.”
“Did Mr. Underwood get anything out of Mrs. Hedger?”
“No more than you and I did. What’s more, she marched out in a huff, saying she wouldn’t come back till I could promise she wouldn’t be pestered while she was trying to do her job.”
“Oh dear!”
“Mr. Underwood said he wasn’t going to try that again. They’ll let her cool off and then, if they still need her, take her over to the station. They have a lead to the Grays’ gardener, and they found out the names of the maid and housekeeper, so they’re looking for them. When they find them, they may not have to bother with Mrs. Hedger. She’s more trouble than she’s worth.”
“He told you much more than Alec told me!”
Isabel smiled. “He stayed for a cup of coffee.” While she and Daisy talked, she had made a fresh pot of coffee and moved a few gingersnaps from a cooling rack onto a plate, and they had adjourned from kitchen to sitting room. “I’m not sure Mrs. Hedger isn’t more trouble to me than she’s worth, too. I’m really fed up with her. Have another biscuit.”
“Thanks. They’re delicious. You must have been up early baking.”
“No earlier than usual. They’re very quick to make.”
“You must be busy, though. I don’t want to keep you from what you were going to do.” Daisy started to get up.
“No, wait.” Isabel glanced at the window. “I was going to work in the garden, but judging by the gloom, it’s going to start pouring any minute. I thought the sunshine wouldn’t last. I wonder if you’d mind lending a hand.…”
“Anything I can do to help.”
“Just keeping me company for half an hour, really. The thing is, I want to work out what needs doing in the cellar to make it suitable for storing apples. Jams and bottled fruit, too, and root vegetables. And— Well, to tell the truth, I don’t want to be down there alone.”
“I don’t blame you!”
“When I went down to inspect the cleaning, the workmen were with me, you see. Not that I believe in ghosts, but I’d just rather not…”
“Of course I’ll come. You’re bound to need someone to hold one end of a tape measure or something.”
“I’ll borrow Vera’s tape measure. Dressmaking is not one of my domestic skills.” Isabel went over to a Victorian sewing table.
“I’ll get my notebook from my coat pocket.”
Isabel dropped off the coffee tray in the kitchen on the way. The door to the cellar stood ajar, as she had been airing it since it was cleaned. She stepped on to the landing and reached to her right to click on the electric light.
“The men nailed a lath across the broken rail, but I don’t know how strong it is. Be careful.”
“I won’t touch it.” Daisy sniffed as she stepped through the door. All she could smell was ginger biscuits. “I’m glad I didn’t actually see the body.”
“So am I! I don’t think I’d ever have been able to use the cellar if I had. It will smell wonderful when it’s full of apples.”
Leaving the door wide open, they cautiously descended the steep, narrow stairs. The handrail bolted to the wall seemed sound enough. Daisy tried to avoid looking at the shallow, rectangular excavation where the body had lain.
Apart from a few ordinary shelves in one corner, the wine racks were obviously unsuitable for the kind of storage Isabel needed. “You’ll be able to reuse the side pieces, won’t you?”
“I should think so.”
“Heavens, if these racks were all filled with bottles, he could have tippled day and night for years.” Hearing a heavy thud in the house above, Daisy glanced up at the doorway. “What was that?”
“I don’t know,” Isabel said with a frown. “I can’t think of anything left in a position where it might fall. Unless Vera stacked her books in a tall, untidy pile—but I doubt we’d hear that down here, all the way from her bedroom. It sounded like the front door slamming.”
“I’m sure you shut it. Did you lock it?”
“No. I really must get in the habit of—”
“Hello? Where are you?” A male voice, on the edge of hysteria. It was vaguely familiar to Daisy.
“Oh blast!” Isabel exclaimed. “It’s Vaughn. I suppose he’s—”
“I know you’re at home. Where are you?”
“Should I tell him about the Majestic?”
“If it’ll get rid of him,” Daisy advised.
Isabel moved towards the staircase, but before she reached it Vaughn appeared at the top. Dressed in an overcoat of a rather too vivid blue, he hadn’t doffed his hat on entering the house so unceremoniously. In one hand he held the strap of a leather satchel, in the other a dripping umbrella. His face was very pale.
“You know where Judith went,” he shouted at Isabel. “The copper wouldn’t tell me, but it was obvious he knew and only you could have told him.”
“I found out since last time you asked me,” Isabel said soothingly. “The police are pretty certain she’s dead, but she seems to have made plans to stay at the Hotel Majestic in Paris.”
“The Majestic? I’ll find it. But I can’t have you setting the coppers on my trail. I’m going to lock you in.”
“You said you never had the keys!” Isabel took a couple of swift strides towards the stairs.
“Keep back!” Vaughn wielded his steel-ferruled umbrella like a spear. “One jab and you’d go flying.” Without turning his head, he chucked the satchel behind him in the passage. Taking a jangling bunch of keys from his coat pocket, he stepped backward, pulling the door shut.
As it thumped into its frame, Isabel bounded up the steps. Daisy heard the click of the lock. Isabel turned the handle and tugged, but she was too late.
“Blast!” said Daisy.
Isabel sat down on the top step and looked at her watch. “Half past eleven. Five hours till Vera comes home. But Alec will miss you.”
“Not if he’s busy. Vera won’t be able to let us out without a key, unless Vaughn’s left it in the lock. But she won’t know we’re stuck here and she has no reason to try the door.”
“She’ll go to the kitchen for a cuppa. We’ll shout through the keyhole.”
“There’s those little flap things. And he may have left the key in the hole.”
“The first thing is to find out. I brought a pocket torch to get a good look at how the shelves are put together. That’ll help.” Isabel ascended the stairs. Daisy, standing at the foot, watched her kneel down on the landing and fiddle with the flap. “It’s not very strong. I may be able to lever it off.”<
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“I have a nail file in my pocket. Would that help?”
“Yes.”
Daisy trod carefully up the steps, one hand on the wall rail. “Here you are. I’ll hold the torch, shall I?”
The ceiling light was centrally placed so as to illuminate the racks, and the landing was murky. Daisy trained the torch beam on the keyhole. Isabel easily prised off the little oval piece of brass. She put it in her pocket and stuck the nail file into the hole.
“It goes in quite a way. I don’t think he left the key.”
“In any case, the door fits too tight for us to slide a paper under it and catch the key as it falls, the way they do in thrillers.”
“Let me have the torch a minute.” Isabel tried to shine the light into the keyhole while peering past it and her hand. “I can’t see very well but I’m pretty sure it’s not there.”
“See if you can twist the flap to the side.”
Isabel handed the torch back, stuck the nail file in again, and wiggled it. “That’s not getting anywhere. I’ll try to push it hard enough to bend it. No, I can’t get a good enough grip on the file.”
“I have a propelling pencil. That might work. Just a mo.” Daisy went down to where she had left her notebook. Alec had given her a leather notebook case, with a loop inside to hold a writing implement and a gold propelling pencil to fit in the loop. “Here, use this.”
“It’d get scratched.”
“I’d rather have a little bit of fresh air than a pristine pencil!” Daisy’s suffocating nightmare hovered on the edge of her consciousness. Feeling less casual than she hoped she sounded, she asked, “How long do you think the air in a room this size would last two people?”
“Ages, I’m sure.” Isabel poked the pencil into the keyhole and jabbed. “A hammer … I know, my shoe.” With the heel of her shoe she bashed the end of the pencil. The heel hit the keyhole plate with a thump. She lowered the shoe and peered into the hole again. “Oh dear, your pencil went all the way through. The flap is bent right out of the way.”
“Good! Not only can we breathe through the hole if the air in here gets bad, but Vera is bound to see the pencil. I wonder if a rolled-up note could be pushed through. Oh, botheration, now I haven’t got anything to write with.”
“Just several pieces of paper would draw attention, even if it’s all blank.”
“True.” Inspiration struck. “I know, we can write SOS in Morse code by making holes with the nail file.”
They found by experiment that a half sheet of paper from Daisy’s notebook could easily be folded small enough to fit through the keyhole. So they sat on the steps “writing” SOS messages, Daisy with the nail file, Isabel with one of Vera’s kirby grips that she found in her pocket, having picked it up off the floor or some piece of furniture.
A dozen bits of paper would more than suffice, they decided. Isabel pushed them through. Then she sat back on her heels and contemplated the hair grip.
“I’m going to have a go at picking the lock with this. Alec made it look so easy. A little hook at the end, I think.”
Straightening the grip was easy; making a hook at the end not much harder. But the narrow strip of metal was even more difficult to grasp firmly than the nail file. Isabel poked and prodded, until it snapped at the point where she had straightened it.
“It was worth a try,” said Daisy. “Unless you have any more tricks up your sleeve, we might as well get on with your measuring.”
“Except we can’t write down the measurements.”
“What a bore.” She sighed, then wondered if sighing used up more oxygen than just breathing. Her chest felt tight. It must be her imagination. They couldn’t possibly be running short of air yet.
She could smell the carbolic now, and beneath it a faint, barely perceptible sickly sweetness. Her throat closed against it. She coughed, gasped, struggled to inhale.
“Daisy, what’s the matter? What’s wrong?”
With an effort, Daisy pulled herself together and forced herself to relax. “It’s … nothing,” she wheezed. “Sorry. Just an … aftereffect of being ill. I breathed some nasty smoke from a rubbish fire on the way here … but now it’s all in my imagination. The disinfectant…”
Isabel sniffed. “I can’t smell it. I suppose I’m used to it. If Mrs. Hedger ever comes back, I really must persuade her to stop using so much. Are you going to be all right?”
“Yes, quite all right. Let’s talk about something else. What do you make of Vaughn’s behaviour?”
“Isn’t it obvious? He killed Mrs. Gray and he knows Mr. Underwood and Alec are hot on his trail, so he’s making his escape.”
“I’ve spent too much time with detectives to believe anything is obvious. If he killed her, why persist in trying to find out where she intended to go? Before, it could have been an act to disarm suspicion, but that doesn’t explain why he came here just before bolting. He’d have done better simply to leave with all possible haste.”
“I suppose so.”
“And then there’s Willie’s side of it. Clearly he’s been involved in something nefarious at work.”
“Cooking the books, expected to boil over today.”
“I’d guess that’s why he’s hopping it. Coming here delayed his departure. Unless he believes, or at least hopes, she’s still alive, it makes no sense.”
“None of it makes sense,” Isabel said crossly. “I hope the police have a better idea of what’s going on. I wish they didn’t have such a mania for secrecy!”
“Let’s check the shelves for a nail we can extract, and I’ll have a go at picking the lock. I really don’t want to spend five hours in here, plus however long it would take Vera to get help.” Daisy glanced around. The room seemed to have shrunk. “And even if breathing through the keyhole helps, we can’t be sure we won’t run out of air.”
THIRTY-TWO
“Half past twelve,” the inspector fumed. “Vaughn’s not coming.”
“He may have been held up,” said Alec. “Or locked up, though I doubt it. Your county fraud people would have to go over all the figures first, and in my experience the fraud chappies are not usually so quick off the mark.”
“I’d better find out. I’ll ring my super.”
“If it were my super, I’d make sure of my ground and talk to the accountants first. None of those concerned has confirmed directly that Vaughn was under suspicion. Even assuming our conjectures are correct, Langridge and Davis may not even have laid a charge yet. You know your own superintendent best, of course…”
Underwood grinned. “From what you’ve said, Mr. Crane is much more ferocious than Parry.”
“Crane’s bark is worse than his bite.”
“You’re right, though. I’ll get on to the accountants.” He put through the call. “Not in the office?… No, I don’t want to talk to Mr. Spencer. Is Miss Chandler available?… Thank you … Good morning, Miss Chandler … Yes, DI Underwood.” Mindful of the capacity of country operators for listening in, the inspector avoided naming names. “I hope you’re now free to confirm that the accounts you were auditing concerned the business and the specific person we were enquiring about…” He listened.
Alec could hear Willie’s voice, but not what she was saying. She spoke at some length before Underwood asked a couple of clarifying questions, thanked her, and hung up, frowning.
“Well? Don’t tell me we’ve been barking up the wrong tree?”
“Not at all. We’ve been spot on. I didn’t quite grasp the details of how Vaughn did it, but he’s been helping himself, all right. Davis and Langridge went off half an hour ago to present the evidence to the accountant who deals with such matters for the county force. Apparently, Langridge hadn’t decided whether to prosecute or to try to recover the monies without undesirable publicity.”
“Is Vaughn aware that he’s in trouble?”
“She didn’t say so. From what she did say, Langridge had no time to go back to his office and confront Vaughn.”
“He could hardly have expected to get away with it forever. If he’s chosen this particular moment to take to his heels, why?” Alec could see more than one answer, but it was officially Underwood’s case and he ought to have a chance to do his share of speculating.
“The secretary must have known Langridge was going to see the accountants. Suppose Vaughn went to the office after his appointment this morning, asked to see the boss, and she told him. On top of the pressure we’ve applied over the murder … It’s enough to make anyone take to his heels, let alone a hysteric like Vaughn.”
“Unless the hysteria is all an act. It’s one of the easier emotions to fake. The trouble is, he hasn’t been charged on the misappropriation, and we haven’t the evidence to charge him with manslaughter, far less murder.”
“So, at present, we aren’t justified in asking other forces to detain him on any grounds other than wanted for questioning. Damnation. He could go to ground before we— No! I’ll bet you a fiver he’s heading for France!”
“No takers. If he killed her, he’ll want to keep up the pretence of looking for her for as long as possible, trying to bamboozle us. If he didn’t, if he honestly still hopes to find her alive—”
“Then he’ll go on trying till the last possible moment to find out where she is,” Underwood said grimly, jumping to his feet, “and he’s been pestering Isabel—Miss Sutcliffe about it. I’m going to Cherry Trees.”
He grabbed his hat from the stand and jammed it onto his head. His overcoat half on, he charged through the door. Alec, amused at his would-be knight errantry, retrieved his hat and coat and followed at a more sedate pace. After all, he had no reason to suppose Daisy was in peril from the abominable Vaughn. He stopped to leave a message for Ernie and Pennicuik, who had gone to see the gardener.
Then Alec recalled that Daisy had been going to call on Isabel. He speeded his pace.
Through the wet streets they dashed in the Austin Twelve. Alec pulled up in front of Cherry Trees, Underwood jumping out before the car came to a halt. No sign of Vaughn’s black Jowett, Alec noted.
The front gate hung open. The inspector hurried up the path. When Alec caught up with him, he was banging on the door with one hand and holding down the doorbell button with the other. He stopped. They listened. Not a sound from within.
