by Carola Dunn
“What piffle, darling!” Madge’s merry laugh rang out. “It was just the other day you were grumbling like billy-o about some nosy policeman who wanted information you regarded as confidential. Don’t be an old stick-in-the-mud.”
“That was a matter of privileged communication between client and solicitor, my pet, not to be confused with aiding and abetting, let alone committing …”
“This is a matter of life and death!” burst forth from Phillip.
“It could be,” Daisy confirmed with more caution. “At least I can promise you we’re trying to foil a crime, not commit one. I can’t say more unless I have your word to keep mum. If you don’t feel able to give it, Tommy, then we must apologize for dragging you all the way here for nothing.”
“Count me in,” Binkie said tersely.
“I’m with you.” Lucy covered a delicate yawn with a wellmanicured hand. “As long as it isn’t too frightfully fatiguing.”
“I’ll help as much as I can.” Madge’s rosy cheeks grew pinker. “I can’t ride a horse, though, I’m afraid. You see, I’m preggy.”
“Darling, how marvellous,” cried Daisy, jumping up to kiss her.
“Congratulations, darling,” Lucy said dryly, “or do you prefer condolences?”
“Actually, we’re rather pleased,” Madge admitted, “aren’t we, pet?”
Daisy and Lucy both turned to look at Tommy. He was quite pink-faced himself, self-consciously proud.
“Time to bring another little solicitor into the world,” he said half mockingly, then sighed. “Right-ho, I’ll rally round. Can’t let the side down, don’t y’know. Unless your scheme is actually criminal, I’ll lend a hand.”
“Spiffing!” said Daisy, and got down to brass tacks.
Dinner was over and the long Summer Time evening waned. Swifts swooped over the gardens, wreaking devastation on the clouds of midges. All her plans laid and approved by the others, Daisy was glad to relax at last. In the twilight on the terrace, chatting about indifferent subjects since her cousins were there, she could almost pretend nothing had changed since she was a girl.
Lowecroft came out of the house. “Telephone call for Miss Dalrymple. A Mr. Fletcher, miss.”
“The Drinker!” cried Edgar. Before Daisy could object to his casting utterly unwarranted aspersions on Alec, he seized his butterfly net, never far from his side, and dashed down the steps to the lawn. The spaniel, Pepper, loped after him. “Philudoria potatoria,” came floating back.
Daisy hurried in to the telephone. “Alec?”
“Hello, Daisy.” He sounded tired. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”
“Oh no. We were just sitting out on the terrace. I’m glad you rang. I’m so sorry I didn’t manage to let you know in time about lunch.”
“You tried. I take it I wasn’t abandoned for a common or garden house-party?”
“As though I would!”
“You’re not in trouble, are you?”
“No, honestly.”
“Petrie is?”
She hesitated. “Not exactly,” she said. Strictly speaking it was the Arbuckles who were in the soup.
“Daisy, I know how far you’ll go to help someone you’ve taken under your wing. Don’t go and land yourself in a hole trying to pull him out.”
“It’s nothing like that.”
“What is it? Why don’t you tell me? Perhaps I can advise, if not help.”
“I’d like to tell you, Alec, but I can’t.”
“Can’t, or won’t?”
“Mustn’t. Don’t worry, I shan’t do anything stupid.” Time to change the subject. “It feels frightfully peculiar staying at Fairacres as a guest.” She went on to describe the eerie effect of the changed residents and the unchanged furnishings. “I’ll show you around this weekend,” she finished. “I’m sure Edgar won’t mind. You can come, can’t you?”
“You still want me to?”
“Of course! I just wish you were here now,” Daisy said with fervour.
“I’ll be there. The Super’s promised to cope without me even if a second Guy Fawkes blows up the Houses of Parliament. Belinda sends her love.”
“Give her mine. Good-night, Alec.”
“Good-night, love. Sweet dreams.”
Daisy held the earpiece to her ear for several moments after the click of Alec hanging up came over the wire. He had called her ‘love,’ even though she could tell from his voice that he was hurt by her refusal to confide in him.
If Gloria was not free—rescued or ransomed—by the weekend, she would insist on telling him everything.
9
The first phase of Daisy’s plan was for her and Phillip to enquire after strangers in the villages where they were known and could therefore expect people to talk to them. She had decided they would be less conspicuous—in case the kidnappers were on the watch—if they bicycled rather than motored. She and Binkie were to circle around Fairacres, Phillip and Lucy around Malvern Grange, where he was better known. All four were to meet for a picnic lunch in a copse on the boundary between the two.
Though Madge’s doctor had banned only horseback riding, Tommy absolutely forbade her to bicycle. Daisy therefore sent them in their Lagonda to investigate some villages rather further out, beyond convenient cycling distance.
At that distance, she hoped, they were unlikely to be connected with the Fairacres party, should the villains be aware of Mr. Arbuckle’s visit to Phillip. Strangers themselves, they would be regarded with some suspicion if they made direct enquiries, but they could ask whether many visitors came that way.
“Don’t ask about deserted cottages, though,” Daisy said. “It’s a pity, but that’s the sort of thing which might get back to the kidnappers.”
Tommy nodded. “‘Someone’s interested in that old place you’re staying in,’ that sort of thing. We’ll steer clear.”
They all set off. As soon as the others were out of earshot, Daisy confided to Binkie, “I rather doubt this search is any use, but I can’t think what else to do.”
“Pretty hopeless,” he confirmed tersely.
Having hoped for encouragement, Daisy consoled herself with a reminder of his generally pessimistic outlook on life.
“Still,” she said, as much to herself as to him, “I can’t really believe Miss Arbuckle is in danger of anything worse than a few days of discomfort.”
“Regular brutes, these American gangsters,” said Binkie. “Wouldn’t put anything past ’em.”
Daisy turned her head to glare at him. She wobbled as her bicycle wheel went over a stone, and thereafter concentrated on where she was going.
It was a beautiful morning for a ride. Garlands of pale pink roses and yellow honeysuckle in the hedges perfumed the air. Foxgloves, campion red and white, and yellow toadflax flourished on banks and verges. A cock pheasant scurried down the road ahead of them for a few yards before diving beneath a gate. Small birds warbled, whistled, and twittered.
Impossible to envisage a girl locked up in a dingy room and in fear of her life!
Ahead of Daisy and Binkie a tower, stone horizontally striped with red brick, protruded above a knot of green trees. Like many local villages, Morton Green was dominated by its church, built on a slight rise. The village straggled around its namesake green. Cottages of brick with lichened tile roofs, whitewashed stucco with slate, red sandstone, yellow Cotswold stone, or half-timbering, mingled higgledy-piggledy.
The largest building was the Wedge and Beetle Inn, foursquare, whitewashed, with scarlet geraniums in windowboxes. Daisy decided to tackle it first. The bar was not open yet, but she had an excuse for enquiries.
She and Binkie leant their bikes against the wall and stepped through the open door out of the sunshine into the dimness of the lobby.
“Hullo, there!” Binkie called.
Mrs. Dennie, the landlord’s wife, came bustling through from the back. “Why, if it’s not Miss Dalrymple.” She gave Binkie a curious look. “Come down for a visit, hav
e you, miss? What can I do for you?”
“Good-morning, Mrs. Dennie. A friend of mine mentioned that he hoped to stay here. I just wondered whether you had room for him, whether he’d made a reservation.”
“We’ve got a couple of fishermen—anglers they likes to be called, bless their hearts—and a young pair, honeymooners by our reckoning, the way they spoon, if you’ll pardon the expression. The other room, well, there’s casuals dropping in. The odd commercial, like, and the touring season’s well under way already this year, what with the weather we’ve been having.”
“Isn’t it marvellous?”
“Not for the farmers, miss, but it don’t hurt our business, I must say.”
“People like to get out of town when it’s hot. Do you have many Londoners?”
“Can’t say we do, miss, not being a beauty spot like some. Mostly from Birmingham way. No, I don’t believe as we’ve had a Londoner in the house, nor yet in the bar even.”
“Nor many foreigners, I expect.”
Mrs. Dennie laughed heartily at the notion of foreigners patronising her modest establishment. “This friend of yours, miss,” she went on, “what’s the name? I’ll check and see if he’s booked.”
“Fletcher, for this weekend.”
Alec had a room reserved for both Friday and Saturday nights. “Seeing he’s a friend of yourn, miss,” said Mrs. Dennie, “I’ll move him to the back corner room. It’s bigger and quieter, not being over the public bar.”
Daisy thanked her, enquired after her family, and preceded Binkie back out into the sunshine. He hadn’t said a word after his halloo. An inarticulate companion was useful in the circumstances, Daisy decided. Pessimist he might be, but at least he didn’t lengthen the already-chatty interrogation.
Mrs. Dennie’s chatter was nothing to what Daisy met with in the tiny, overflowing shop they called at next.
POST OFFICE, NEWSAGENT, TOBACCONIST, AND SWEETS proclaimed the sign over the door. Miss Hibbert had once sold pennyworths of dolly-mixture and bull’s-eyes to Daisy and Gervaise. Older and greyer now, she happened to have seen one of Daisy’s articles in Town and Country, and she was dying to hear about her writing career. In exchange, she passed on a vast quantity of village gossip.
Interrupted by two or three customers, half an hour passed before Daisy and Binkie escaped with the information they sought: neither Cockneys nor Americans had bought tobacco or newspapers from Miss Hibbert, not recently. There had been a touring couple last year, or was it the year before, who might have been American. Gentlemen from London staying at Fairacres occasionally popped in for cigarettes. And East Enders came down from London for the hop-picking in August, of course, though not, Miss Hibbert thought, in such swarms as went to Kent.
Dismayed, Daisy wondered if she had been too optimistic in believing the kidnappers would not know the country. She had forgotten the hop-pickers. It dawned on her, too, that some of the Cockneys among the wounded soldiers in the Malvern hospitals during and after the War might well have roamed the countryside while convalescing.
“Blast!” she said, mounting her bicycle.
“You didn’t expect anything so close to where Phillip was dumped,” Binkie reminded her.
She decided not to reveal her fresh qualms. “No, but one always hopes,” she said vaguely. “It would have been so convenient. Do you think we ought to try the general store, too? They could have gone in for supplies.”
“Might as well,” grunted Binkie.
The general store, which purveyed flour and baking-pans, cheese and mousetraps with equal enthusiasm, provided as little information at almost as great a length. The day was already growing hot when Daisy and Binkie rode out of Morton Green. They were glad to plunge into the green shade of Bellman’s Wood, just beyond the village.
“Don’t we explore?” Binkie asked as they pedalled along the lane.
“No, not here. I know every inch of this wood. It belongs to one of the Fairacres farms, actually. There are plenty of squirrels and woodpeckers but no buildings, deserted or otherwise. At least, there could be something recently built, but what Phillip described sounded like an ancient cottage.”
All too soon they left the shade of the trees. A motor-car passed them, raising clouds of dust. By the time they had pursued their fruitless enquiries in the next two villages, Daisy felt as if she had cycled across the Sahara, and the afternoon was yet to come.
Meeting the others for their picnic by the stream in Boundary Copse, she dismounted on leaden legs.
“I’m out of form,” she confessed ruefully to a maddeningly cool-looking Lucy. “Maybe one never forgets how to ride a bicycle, having once learnt, but it must use different muscles from walking, and mine are telling me they’re out of practice.”
“We got here half an hour ago, darling, and I’ve had my feet in the water. Try it, it helps. No luck, I take it?”
“No. You?” Daisy asked, taking off her shoes.
“Not a bite. Phillip’s frightfully pipped, the poor old fish.”
Daisy glanced at Phillip, who was helping Binkie unpack the picnic from the bicycle bags. She sighed. Much as her thighs cried out for the afternoon off, she couldn’t let him down. Sitting on the grassy bank with her feet dangling in the lukewarm stream, she dipped her hankie in the water and wiped her face.
Ginger-beer and sandwiches revived her somewhat, but better still was the thin layer of clouds which came up to cover the sky. It was still hot, but at least the sun would not blaze down on her head. A breeze rose as they left the shelter of the copse, cooling if not cool. With renewed vigour she and Binkie set off for the next village on their list.
The afternoon’s circuit was wider flung than the morning’s. There were more villages, and Daisy was less well known if recognized at all. This proved a mixed blessing.
Each interview was shorter, because less encumbered with gossip. On the other hand, it was more difficult to find an opening for her questions, and they had to purchase something at each stop as an excuse to ask. The saddlebags emptied of food were soon packed with cigarettes and pipe tobacco, fast-melting chocolate bars, and miscellaneous odds and ends.
Of useful information they collected none.
Daisy flagged before they finished the list. “It’s tea-time,” she pointed out to Binkie, “and very likely the shops in the next place will be closed before we get there anyway.”
“You want to head back to Fairacres?”
“If we don’t,” she said frankly, “you may have to carry me home, and my bike too.”
Binkie grinned. “Dashed if I don’t think we’ve done our duty for the day. Wouldn’t be surprised if Lucy’s dragged Phil home by now.”
They were the first back, but only by a few minutes. Geraldine had people to tea on the terrace. The weary searchers, four of them far too grimy to join the party, collapsed on the grass under a wide-spreading chestnut. Ernest, obviously bemused by the curious habits of the gentry who exhausted themselves for fun, brought them tea.
All reported equal lack of results. Five pairs of eyes turned to Daisy.
“It’s hopeless, isn’t it?” Phillip blurted out.
Daisy rallied herself. “Not at all, old dear. We’ve barely scratched the surface. Only I think tomorrow we’d better each go out on our own—is that grammatical? You know what I mean. We’ll cover much more ground that way, and it’ll be ground where Phil and I have no advantage. Tommy and Madge will go together, of course. You made it about half-way round your circle?”
“Just about,” Tommy confirmed, “but Madge is finding it pretty tiring even by car, don’t y’know. I think she ought to stay behind tomorrow.”
“Oh no,” cried Madge, “I’ll be perfectly all right after a night’s sleep. You must admit, Tommy, people talk more to me than to you, and I want to do my bit.”
“You can,” Daisy said quickly, “without stirring a step. I’ve been thinking,” she lied, “we ought to have someone here to sort of coordinate things. Each of us
will ring up periodically, so if someone finds out something the others can all be told right away. We’ll work out some kind of code.”
“Good tactics,” said Tommy with a grateful glance. “Definitely the best use of available troops.”
“I hate to be a wet blanket,” Lucy drawled, “but while people talk to Tommy, if less readily than to Madge, is anyone going to say a word to Binkie? Did you open your mouth to anyone but Daisy today, darling?”
“No,” Binkie confessed, blushing.
Daisy hurried to rescue the embarrassed young man. “In any case, Lucy, you don’t look at all the sort who’d be buzzing about on a bicycle without a man at your side. Binkie had better escort you. His moment will come when we find Miss Arbuckle and have to storm the castle, if we decide that’s the best thing to do. Pass the cake, Madge, I’m starving.”
Well fortified with Victoria sponge and Shrewsbury biscuits, Daisy spent the next couple of hours poring over maps and plotting new courses for the morrow. Knowing what had been covered today, she was dismayed to see how long it was going to take to survey even a ten-mile-radius circle. Before she went up to bathe and change, she cornered Phillip.
“You know, old thing,” she said, “we’ll find Gloria, but I’m dead certain the police could find her sooner. I do wish you’d let me consult Alec.”
Phillip stubbornly shook his head. “They’d find out.”
“With the local chaps, I expect so, but Alec will know how to keep things hushed up.”
“Fletcher’s a good chap,” he said unexpectedly. “If I hadn’t given Arbuckle my word, I’d consider putting it to him as a hyp … hypno … what’s the dashed word I want?”
“Hypothetical case?”
“That’s it. But I can’t. You’d have to persuade Arbuckle. He should be in touch,” Phillip added, his brow creased with worry. “You don’t suppose he’s having trouble collecting the money?”
“It just takes time,” Daisy soothed him. “He’d have let you know if there was any difficulty.”