A Mourning Wedding
Page 27
“I wouldn’t, Chief!”
Tom was seated behind the second screen, intended to shield the patient from the window’s daylight and draughts. Beside him a chair awaited Alec.
“Most comfortable vigil I’ve ever kept,” Tom whispered.
“Better than a street corner in Whitechapel,” Alec agreed.
Settling down to wait, he wondered who was lurking out there in the shadowy hall hoping for a chance to find Bincombe unattended. Daisy’s latest theory was credible, but Alec still favoured the Devenishes, one, two, or all of them in league, though for Daisy’s sake he hoped Angela was not involved. Or would John Walsdorf creep through the door, bent on murder? Somehow he couldn’t picture Montagu either lurking or creeping—there was simply too much of him.
Alec looked at his watch. An hour to go before Stebbins was to start snoring, and another quarter before the nurse would hurry to the cloakroom, clutching her belly as if she had eaten something that disagreed with her. With luck, the watching murderer would expect her to stay there for a while.
The whole thing depended entirely on luck. But then, one way or another, most investigations did.
Daisy undressed but she was wakeful. It was useless trying to go to sleep while Alec and Gerald and Tom and Ernie were downstairs waiting for a murderous attack. Not to mention Constable Stebbins with his tortured feet.
She put on her dressing gown, went to the writing table and started a letter to Belinda, telling her about Angela’s Tiddler. Then she wrote to her mother, who would be furious if she found out from Daisy’s sister, Violet, that Daisy was staying at Haverhill. She wouldn’t write to Alec’s mother until she got home, in case Mrs. Fletcher decided to return to St. John’s Wood to look after poor, deserted Bel.
The article she had hoped to offer her American editor, describing an aristocratic English wedding, had gone down the drain, but she could make a start on planning one about Angela’s work. That kept her occupied for some time, until her eyelids began to droop. Maybe she would sleep after all.
She went to brush her teeth. Indistinct sounds from Lucy’s room suggested she hadn’t been able to fall asleep either.
Then a door clicked shut.
Daisy dropped her toothbrush, spat foam into the basin, and flung open the connecting door. The bedside lamp was on. No Lucy.
Had she got it all wrong? Was the murderer for some obscure reason aiming at Lucy and Gerald all along? Heart in mouth, Daisy looked behind the bed, under the bed, in the wardrobe.
No Lucy.
There seemed no conceivable reason to remove her body. Perhaps she had been stunned and carried away to be murdered at leisure. Daisy hurried to the door and cautiously peered out. She was just in time to see Lucy’s peacock kimono turning the corner of the passage towards the stairs.
Lucy was on her way to where her erstwhile fiancé lay supposedly helpless. She didn’t want to marry him. Her family were pressing her to relent. In her state of mental disturbance, could some aberration have made her believe her only way out was to kill him? What if she had killed Lady Eva for the money which would enable her to live comfortably without him?
Creeping barefoot along the passage after her dearest friend, Daisy tried to bring logic to bear. Lucy couldn’t have poisoned Lord Fotheringay. Someone else had done that. But her great-aunt? She could have pretended to swallow the powder her mother gave her that night. Aunt Vickie was not difficult to deceive. And Lucy had not been in the drawing room after dinner last night, when Gerald was attacked.
Lucy strangling Lady Eva and whacking Gerald over the head—the idea was ludicrous! Wasn’t it?
Daisy peeked around the corner. Lucy was standing at the balustrade separating the gallery from the vast, murky gulf of the hall, gazing down. From below came the hurried tap-tap of heels on marble. The nurse must be on her way to the cloakroom, as arranged.
The tapping ended with the firm closing of a door. For a couple of minutes, Lucy stood still. Daisy hoped she had come to her senses and would go no farther, but, soundless in soft slippers, she moved to the head of the stairs and paused again, staring down. Then she started to descend.
Once the nurse had left, the dimly lit room was so still that Alec could hear Stebbins snoring on his chair outside the door. The constable was a willing, not to say overenthusiastic, conspirator.
Most of the bed was visible through chinks in the rattan screen Alec was hiding behind, though the door was hidden by the other screen. He had only to turn his head to see Bincombe’s bandaged head, calm, relaxed face and closed eyes. His nearer hand lay open, palm up, fingers slightly curled, on top of the blue blanket. His feet beneath the bedclothes lolled slackly to either side. He was the very picture of an unconscious patient neatly arranged by his nurse.
Though Alec neither heard nor saw the door open, he was instantly aware when it happened: Tom Tring, who had a view of an upper corner, stiffened. The soft click of the closing latch was only audible because Alec was expecting it.
Someone had entered the room stealthily. Someone was standing just inside, straining every sense. But if accosted now, that someone could say he had just come to see how Bincombe was doing, very quietly so as not to disturb him. They had to wait until the murderer’s intent was clear beyond question—yet not allow him to further harm his victim.
A dark figure approached the bed, silhouetted against the shaded lamplight. A man, tall, with a pillow in his hands …
… come to make sure Bincombe was well taken care of, had every comfort the house could supply …
With startling swiftness the pillow descended on Bincombe’s face. Alec and Tom sprang forward, flattening the screen. Piper erupted from behind the sofa. Quicker than any of them Lord Gerald’s fist flew up and connected with the intruder’s chin.
Rupert Fotheringay flew backwards, toppling the other screen, landing heavily on his back in its ruins, dazed.
As Piper pounced with jingling handcuffs, the door was flung open.
“Gerald!” cried Lucy.
“Hello, old thing,” said Bincombe sheepishly, sitting up in bed and massaging his knuckles.
Lucy took in the scene at a glance and turned into an avenging Fury. “How dare you!” she yelled at Alec. “How dare you use Gerald as bait in your filthy trap!”
“It was his own idea,” Alec said mildly.
“Lucy, you will marry me, won’t you?” Bincombe pleaded.
“No, I …”
“Don’t be an ass, Lucy.” Daisy’s barefooted arrival on the threshold, with Constable Stebbins looming behind her, added the crowning touch to turn drama into farce. “After lashing out at Alec like that because he put Gerald in danger, you can’t pretend you don’t love him.”
“I can’t go through all this again!” Lucy wailed.
“Darling, if you’re talking about the family wedding, just follow our example and tie the knot at a registry office while the family is looking the other way.”
“Which they will be for some time,” Alec said grimly, standing over the handcuffed Lieutenant Colonel. Tom and Piper had sat him up against the wall, where he leaned groggily. “The trial for murder of the heir to the earldom is liable to keep the Fotheringays’ attention occupied for the foreseeable future.”
“Murder!” Rupert sat up straight. “I haven’t killed anyone. It was—”
“It is my duty to inform you,” Tom intoned as Piper whipped out his notebook and a pencil, “that you are not obliged to say anything, but anything you do say will be taken down and may be used in evidence.”
“I haven’t killed anyone,” Rupert repeated urgently. “It was my wife, and she was never supposed to do in Aunt Eva. And then to bungle it and have to strangle her, so no one could possibly believe it was a natural death! Just like a woman—she couldn’t even manage to pick a few leaves without being seen and then she panics and …”
Alec bundled Lucy and Daisy out of the room and closed the door firmly behind them.
“What a rev
olting specimen!” said Lucy in disgust.
“I hope you’re referring to your cousin, not to Alec.”
“Rupert always was a bit of a cad but I never thought he was such an out-and-out rotter, trying to blame the whole thing on Sally. He won’t get away with attempted murder, will he?”
“I shouldn’t think so. He seemed to be anxious to implicate himself as a co-conspirator or accessory to murder or something. Lucy, you are going to marry Gerald, aren’t you?”
Lucy sighed. “I suppose so. I really do love him, but I don’t know what sort of wife I’ll make. A shrewish one, I expect. If we settle for a registrar, will you and Alec be our witnesses?”
“Then all is forgiven?” said Daisy. “We’ll be delighted!”
Also by Carola Dunn
The Daisy Dalrymple Mysteries
Death at Wentwater Court
The Winter Garden Mystery
Requiem for a Mezzo
Murder on the Flying Scotsman
Damsel in Distress
Dead in the Water
Styx and Stones
Rattle His Bones
To Davy Jones Below
The Case of the Murdered Muckraker
Mistletoe and Murder
Die Laughing
A MOURNING WEDDING. Copyright © 2004 by Carola Dunn. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y 10010.
www.minotaurbooks.com
eISBN 9781429951968
First eBook Edition : April 2011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dunn, Carola.
A mourning wedding: a Daisy Dalrymple mystery / Carola Dunn.—1st ed.
p. cm.
EAN 978-0312-32627-2
1. Dalrymple, Daisy (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Women journalists—Fiction. 3. Police spouses—Fiction. 4. Counry homes—Fiction. 5. Nobility—Fiction. 6. Weddings—Fiction. 7. England—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6054.U537M68 2004
823’.914—dc22
2004048181
First Edition: October 2004