Damsel in Distress

by Carola Dunn

  Half-way back to the house, she saw him coming to meet her, very long-faced.

  “Tom can’t get away till noon tomorrow,” he reported. “Some beastly court case. And Binkie was out seeing a client when I rang up. I sent him a wire.”

  “That will give us time to make plans,” Daisy consoled him. “We need maps, and bicycles, and as I said, there may be places easier to explore on horseback. You told them all to bring riding togs, as well as asking Lucy to bring me some more clothes?”

  “Yes, and I said to motor down, not take the train, so we’ll have their cars, too.”

  “Good. But I’ve no idea what, if anything, Edgar has in the stables, so you’ll have to check, and if there’s nothing suitable, arrange to hire a couple of hacks when and if we need them. Or you could beg, borrow, or steal them from your people. Now that we’re a duly constituted house-party, it won’t matter if they know you’re here. Is Geraldine back yet?”

  “I saw the Vauxhall drive up. That’s why I ducked out the back way to meet you,” Phillip admitted sheepishly. “At least I don’t have to worry about the mater. She’s taking Fenella up to town for a few days.”

  Daisy laughed. “Ready to face any dragon for your damsel in distress,” she said, “but not Cousin Geraldine or your mother? Tut, tut!”

  8

  As predicted, Cousin Geraldine was outraged to discover, on her return from a pleasant jaunt to Worcester, that her husband had committed her to a house-party. Daisy had made Phillip stay with her to share the brunt of her ladyship’s displeasure. However, Geraldine was scrupulously, if stiffly, polite to them.

  Later, Daisy squirmed when she overheard Geraldine berating Edgar for inviting a horde of rackety modern young people. Her guilt faded when she realized Edgar was not humbly excusing himself but burbling rhapsodically and with magnificent irrelevance about the hatching of a Dingy Skipper.

  Erynnis tages, she gathered as she moved out of earshot, though not actually rare was usually found on chalky soils. She must remember to congratulate him at a suitable moment.

  She managed to keep Phillip busy enough that evening to stop him brooding. Binkie rang up to say he and Lucy would arrive at Fairacres by tea-time the next day. Daisy was glad the reticent young man had ’phoned—not Lucy, who would have demanded explanations.

  Shortly before they went to bed, Mr. Arbuckle telephoned to speak to Phillip. His arrangements for the ransom money were under way, Phillip reported in a whisper in the hallway outside Daisy’s bedroom. Though he would not have the cash till the end of the week, he’d leave his secretary, who had stayed in London all along, to deal with that end of things. He himself hoped to be back in Malvern by Wednesday evening to receive any further messages from the kidnappers.

  “The end of the week!” Phillip repeated in anguish. “Suppose the brutes demand the money sooner? They might think he wasn’t going to pay up and take it out on Gloria.”

  “Bosh,” Daisy said in a heartening voice, thinking fast and furiously. “They’ll allow more time. Once she’s dead, their chance of striking it rich is gone. They wouldn’t be so stupid.”

  “They might hurt her.”

  For the first time a shiver of real apprehension ran down Daisy’s spine. A glimpse of what it might be like to be utterly in the power of evil men flashed through her mind.

  “The Yank’s not stupid,” she argued. “He guessed her father wouldn’t be able to produce a large amount of cash on demand. He must realize it takes time to convert even securities into cash, especially as the certificates or what-not are in America, I presume.”

  “Oh yes, I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Besides, since they threatened dire revenge if he contacts the police, they must be watching him. They know he’s doing what he can.”

  “Of course,” Phillip said gratefully.

  Bidding him good-night, Daisy could only hope she was right.

  Tuesday! The thought brought a surge of drowsy happiness as warm as the sunbeam on Daisy’s face. Tuesday lunch, Alec had said. If he could get away, to be sure, but it was no use anticipating bad luck.

  Unlike many people, she had always enjoyed being awakened by the morning sun. Vi and Gervaise had been more than glad to let her have this east-facing bedroom. She had arranged the bed specially to catch the rays as often as possible, and it had not been moved.

  Moved? she thought, sleepily confused.

  Oh yes, years had passed and this room was no longer her own.

  This room had nothing to do with Alec, in place or time. He was in London and she was back at Fairacres, where nothing had changed. She opened her eyes to see the sun pouring in at the open window, between the pulled-back blue chintz curtains printed with meadow flowers, buttercups, ox-eye daisies, poppies, faded now. More faded than she remembered, but otherwise unchanged.

  Perhaps Edgar and Geraldine could not afford to change things. She hadn’t considered the possibility before, though these days everyone complained about death duties.

  Edgar and Geraldine: still half dozing, she wondered what she was doing in their house, in her old bedroom, when she was supposed to be going out to lunch in town with Alec?

  Suddenly remembering, Daisy sat bolt upright. Phillip’s girl was being held by kidnappers. She shook her head in disbelief. Surely a dream … but it couldn’t be, or she wouldn’t be at Fairacres when she badly wanted to be in London.

  She’d have to ’phone Alec. The trouble was, if she rang him at home, she would interrupt the bustle of his preparations for work and Belinda’s for school. Resenting the disturbance, his mother would see it as further proof of Daisy’s unsuitability for her son. Mrs. Fletcher no more approved mixing the classes than did the Dowager Lady Dalrymple.

  Yet Daisy hated to telephone Alec at Scotland Yard. He was a busy man. She didn’t want to disrupt his work or try his patience—or embarrass him before his colleagues and subordinates.

  While she wondered which was the lesser of two evils, a maid brought her early morning tea. Sipping it, she decided to ring up Alec’s home. If he did not answer the ’phone himself, she wouldn’t ask for him, just leave a brief message.

  In the event, Belinda answered. “Sorry, Miss Dalrymple, Daddy’s already left,” she reported.

  “Oh bother! He hasn’t been called out of town, has he?”

  “No. He said he had lots of work to do and he wanted to get an early start because of meeting you for lunch. So it’s no use me taking a message, is it? Because you’ll see him first.”

  “I can’t make it. I’ll try to get hold of him at work, but just in case, will you tell him I’ll ’phone this evening to explain?”

  “All right.” Her voice faded momentarily: “Coming, Gran. I’ve got to go, Miss Dalrymple. ’Bye.”

  “’Bye, darling. See you soon.”

  Daisy held down the earpiece hook for a moment, realized Alec was probably en route from St. John’s Wood to Whitehall, and reluctantly hung up. She went to join the others for breakfast.

  Her telephone call to Scotland Yard later was equally fruitless. Alec and his sergeant, Tom Tring, had both been called out, though not, she was glad to hear, to the farthest ends of the kingdom. The police operator didn’t know how long they would be gone. Would she like to speak to another officer?

  “No, thanks,” Daisy said hastily.

  Very likely Alec was going to have to call off lunch anyway, a not unusual occurrence. He wouldn’t arrive in Chelsea to find her missing.

  All the same, she wished she had at least heard his voice. Though she had promised not to mention the kidnapping, she felt the very sound might give her confidence and encouragement in the task she had taken on.

  The maps she and Phillip consulted last night had pointed out the magnitude of that task. Where was Gloria Arbuckle?

  “She’s not here? Where is she?” Alec demanded of Daisy’s cool, faintly antagonistic house-mate. Though the tall, elegant Miss Fotheringay had softened towards him a trifle recently, she
could not be described as approving. “Will she be back soon? We were to go out to lunch.”

  “She won’t be back for lunch.” Nothing so homely as a frown marred the smooth, expertly made-up face, framed by a sleek, dark bob, yet the amber eyes held a shade of anxiety. She appeared to come to a decision. “Actually, she’s at Fairacres. Perhaps you’d better come in for a minute, Mr. Fletcher.” With a languid gesture she waved him past her into the narrow hall, made narrower by a pair of large suitcases.

  “At Fairacres? With her mother?”

  “No, not at the Dower House, at Fairacres itself. Her old home. Here, read this.” Miss Fotheringay picked up a yellow telegram from from the hall table and handed it to him. “See what you make of it.”

  “‘Urgent emergency,’” Alec read with alarm. “‘Come Fairacres house-party pronto Binkie too bring riding togs and Daisy’s clothes.’ Signed ‘Daisy,’ but that’s an odd way to word it if she wrote it. Why not ‘my clothes’?”

  “The combination of an urgent emergency with a house-party isn’t exactly normal either, would you say?” drawled Miss Fotheringay. “I’ll be damned if I can make head or tail of the business.”

  Alec tried not to wince too obviously at her language. He was all for women working if they chose to, but he was old-fashioned enough not to care for their swearing. “An urgent house-party does seem to be something of a contradiction in terms,” he agreed dryly.

  “The first two words echo the wire Phillip Petrie sent her, which took her haring down there in the first place, so I suspect he wrote or dictated it.”

  “Petrie? She went because he sent for her?” Alec firmly squashed a pang of jealousy. Daisy had often enough described the young man as an amiable ass. Socially he was of her class; intellectually a definite also-ran. “Judging by the baggage, you too are obeying the summons. You haven’t telephoned for an explanation?”

  “Binkie rang up last night to say we’d go. He spoke to Daisy, but the old dear’s the strong, silent type. He didn’t ask any questions. I tried ’phoning this morning, but the butler said both Daisy and Phillip were out and he didn’t know when they’d be back. I’ve been too busy to keep buzzing down to the telephone box. I haven’t the foggiest what clothes Daisy wants so I’ve just guessed.” She waved at the bags. “Too, too maddening!”

  “You don’t know anything about this emergency, I take it?” He ran his hand through his hair as she shook her head with a rueful moue. “At least it appears to be Petrie’s problem, not Daisy’s.”

  “To start with, anyway. Knowing Daisy, whatever it is, she’s taken it to heart. But where Binkie and I come in, I simply can’t imagine. Of course, it may be some sort of lark, in which case I’ll kill both of them. I’ve had to put off half a dozen clients.”

  “You’re leaving now?” Alec took in her motoring dust-coat, fashionable as well as practical, and the veiled hat sitting on the hall table.

  “As soon as Binkie arrives with the Alvis. His wire asked him to drive, not go down by train. Curiouser and curiouser, is it not?”

  “It is. Dash it, I wish I could go with you, but I can’t get away for at least a couple of days, quite possibly not till the weekend. Will you tell Daisy I’ll telephone this evening? Lateish. I’ll be working late.”

  “Right-o, Chief Inspector. Heaven knows what it’s all about, but to tell the truth I’m quite glad to know you’re hovering in the background.”

  “Even coppers have their uses,” Alec said mildly, recalling past battles. “Don’t let Daisy get into too much trouble if you can help it. I shan’t hold you responsible, though. I know only too well how impossible it is to stop her once she has the bit between her teeth!”

  “Riding togs,” he brooded as he returned down the path to his little yellow Austin Seven. Of course all Daisy’s set rode horses, practically from birth. Was it too late for him to learn?

  Daisy might like to teach him, and Belinda.

  What had she got herself into this time? What on earth sort of trouble could Phillip Petrie have landed himself in which would require not only her help but that of their mutual friends to extricate him?

  And why disguise it as a house-party?

  As the hour of the house-party’s assembly approached, Geraldine asserted her right as nominal hostess and waited in the drawing-room to greet her guests. Daisy and Phillip couldn’t very well hang about in the front hall to waylay them.

  “They’re bound to demand explanations right away,” Daisy said in a low voice.

  “Don’t I know it! I’d have had a hard time with Tom yesterday if he hadn’t been called away from the ’phone just in the nick. Lady Dalrymple’s going to wonder what the deuce is going on.”

  “We’ll just have to stand behind her and shake our heads madly. Lowecroft will think we’re potty, but it’s just too bad.”

  “He already does,” Phillip averred.

  Geraldine called for their attention. “Since I find myself giving a house-party,” she said a trifle acidly, “suppose you tell me something about my guests? Who are the Pearsons?”

  “Madge was Lady Margaret Allinston,” Daisy informed her. “She doesn’t use her title because Tommy doesn’t have one. She was at school with Lucy and me, but a year older, so we didn’t know her awfully well. Then quite by chance she VAD’ed in the same military hospital in Malvern where I worked in the office, so I saw a lot of her.”

  “You worked in a hospital office? Mrs. Pearson was with a Voluntary Aid Detachment?” Geraldine seemed surprised, as if she had not realized many of today’s bright young things had actually done their bit during the War.

  “And Lucy was a Land Girl. She didn’t mind the work so much, but she claims wearing that hideous uniform nearly killed her. She still has nightmares about finding herself on a dance floor in it.”

  “I was VAD.”

  “You can swap stories with Madge, then. She met Tommy in the hospital—he was pretty crocked up.”

  “Pearson was in our outfit,” Phillip put in, “with Gervaise and me. He finished up a major.”

  “His family are Pearson, Pearson, Watts & Pearson, one of the top solicitors’ firms in London, old-established and frightfully respectable.” Daisy paused, suddenly wondering whether Tommy was too respectable and too legally-minded to be dragged into a scheme which involved concealing a crime from the police.

  Geraldine interrupted her fruitless speculation. “I’m glad to learn you have friends in respectable professions,” she said austerely. “You were at school with Miss Fotheringay, were you not? And now you share lodgings, in Chelsea.” Her tone of voice equated residence in that district with the worst excesses of Bohemia.

  “Yes. She’s a photographer. Her grandfather is the Earl of Haverhill.” A good splodge of blue blood nicely balanced out the artistic profession, Daisy hoped. She was about to move on to Binkie’s pedigree when voices and footsteps approached the drawing-room.

  Lowecroft appeared on the threshold. “Mr. and Mrs. Pearson, my lady.”

  Geraldine rose and moved towards the door. Daisy and Phillip hung back behind her. They shook their heads vigorously and Daisy put a finger to her lips as Madge and Tommy entered the room.

  Tommy, bespectacled, brown-haired, and stocky, looked startled and rather bewildered. Madge, whose froth of blond curls and effervescent manner often misled people into taking her for a bubble-head, was quicker on the uptake. She deftly steered her husband through conventional greetings.

  “Explain later,” Daisy hissed at the first opportunity.

  She and Phillip went through the same pantomime when Lucy and Binkie arrived, a few minutes later. They both caught on at once.

  Lowecroft’s face simply grew stiffer and more wooden. “Tea, my lady?” he enquired.

  “Yes, on the terrace, please, and inform Lord Dalrymple that our guests are here.”

  Edgar’s presence at afternoon tea to some extent relieved the frustration of the delay in clarifying matters. He discoursed with his usual know
ledgeable enthusiasm on the annual migration from Africa of Vanessa cardui, the Painted Lady butterfly. Since Geraldine kept casting sidelong, scandalized glances at Lucy’s skillfully painted face, everyone but she and Edgar was in a state of barely repressed hilarity.

  Even Phillip relaxed, once he realized what the joke was. Daisy was glad to see his lips twitch. His anxiety returned soon enough when Edgar and Geraldine went into the house. The four newcomers sat up and looked expectant.

  “Right-o,” said Lucy, “this Painted Lady is simply dying to hear what’s up. Let’s have it. Oh, before I forget, darling, your tame copper’s going to ’phone this evening.”

  Phillip blenched. “Chief Inspector Fletcher? You haven’t told him what’s happened, have you?”

  “I don’t know what’s happened. He popped round to take Daisy out to lunch and found her gone—frightfully bad form, darling,” she added in a severe aside to Daisy.

  “I tried to get hold of him.”

  “Well, I was on the point of leaving, too, and it seemed only decent to show him the wire. I think it rather put the wind up him. Anyway, he’s going to ring up tonight to make sure everything’s all right.”

  Turning to Daisy, Phillip said urgently, “You won’t tell him?”

  “I still think it would be best, but I promised.”

  “Gosh, this gets more and more mysterious.” Madge’s eyes sparkled with excitement. “Too, too divine. Do tell.”

  “First,” said Daisy, “what we tell you must go no further. Absolute secrecy is essential.”

  Tommy frowned. “I don’t like the sound of this,” he said bluntly, taking off his horn-rimmed glasses and polishing them with his handkerchief. “I hope I know you both well enough to be sure you wouldn’t do anything you believed morally wrong, but I have to consider the legal aspect, too, don’t y’know. You must admit keeping secrets from the police sounds downright fishy.”