Die Laughing

by Carola Dunn

  But would that release the gas into the room and put them all under? She glanced back. Mrs. Talmadge stood stock-still, eyes wide, her hand to her mouth. Where was the nurse when she was needed? “Call Miss Hensted,” Daisy ordered, and reached for Talmadge’s wrist.

  The dentist’s skin was chill to the touch, and try as she might, she could find no pulse.

  “He’s killed himself!” shrieked Mrs. Talmadge.

  2

  Nurse Hensted arrived at last. “What’s going on? Oh lor, is …?”

  “I think he’s dead,” Daisy faltered.

  Pushing past Mrs. Talmadge, who seemed incapable of movement, Miss Hensted scanned the anaesthetic apparatus. “He didn’t turn on the oxygen. I knew he’d bungle it sooner or later.” She turned a couple of valves, then reached for the wrist Daisy had dropped.

  “Shouldn’t we take off the mask?” Daisy asked.

  “No. I’ve turned off the nitrous. He’s getting pure oxygen now, or would be if he was breathing. It’s the only antidote, but the gas bag’s full and the dial’s not moving. It’s too late.” Grim faced, she laid the limp hand on the arm of the chair. “He’s long gone.”

  “Dead!” Mrs. Talmadge burst into noisy sobs, mixed with hiccuping laughter.

  The nurse slapped her face, hard. The laughter stopped abruptly, but she started gasping and clutching at her throat, while tears ran down her face, streaking her face-powder and making her eye-black blotch.

  “Hysteria. I’ll deal with her,” said Miss Hensted, “if you wouldn’t mind ringing up the doctor, Mrs. Fletcher. Not that he can do anything, but it’s got to be reported.”

  Not waiting for an answer, she hustled Mrs. Talmadge out. Daisy heard her in the passage, calling, “Gladys! Gladys, come and help me get your mistress upstairs.”

  Accident or suicide? Daisy wondered. Why had Mrs. Talmadge jumped to the conclusion that her husband had killed himself? Whichever, Talmadge’s death had to be reported to the police as well as to his doctor. Alec wouldn’t believe his ears when he heard she’d found herself mixed up in another unnatural death.

  Accident or suicide, not murder. She nerved herself to take another look at the dead man’s face. He looked too cheerful to have committed suicide, but of course that was the effect of the gas. Odd how he had a discoloured, pinkish brown patch around that horribly smiling mouth, in the otherwise pallid face. A rectangular patch.

  Steeling herself, Daisy bent to sniff at the discoloration. The cinnamony odour of benzoin tincture was faint but plain.

  Suddenly cold, she looked again at Talmadge’s arms, laid so neatly on the arms of his chair. Wouldn’t a man who was going to kill himself, or one who planned a few minutes of gas-induced euphoria, relax with his hands in his lap? And what were those creases in the sleeves of his white jacket, an inch or two up from the wrists? The sleeve she and the nurse had not disarranged, in feeling for a pulse, also showed a sort of dent or furrow, as if something had compressed the material.

  Daisy wildly scanned the room, hoping for something—anything—to dispel her suspicions. She saw all the paraphernalia of a dental surgery: adjustable light, electric drill, a rack of vicious steel implements, sinks for spitting and hand washing, a sterilizer, a mahogany cabinet with dozens of miniature drawers for supplies, a waste bin, and a small table with a blank loose-leaf ledger page on it, headed with her name, waiting in vain for notes on the state of her teeth.

  The cupboard with a red cross on the door presumably held a first-aid kit, a kit containing the simple tools necessary for this particular murder.

  The evidence might be in the waste bin, but Daisy couldn’t bring herself to look. That was a job for the police. No one must touch anything until they arrived. She checked that the key was in the keyhole on this side of the locked connecting door to the waiting room. Without another glance at the dead man, so much more pathetic now she thought of him as a murder victim, she went to the door to the side passage.

  The door stood wide open. The key was on the inside. With her gloved hand, Daisy took it out and put it in the outside. She pulled the door closed and locked it, doing her best not to smudge any “dabs.” Sergeant Tring would be proud of her, she hoped. Then she wrapped the key in her hankie and dropped it in her handbag.

  She mustn’t give herself time to think about what she had shut away. Time to ring up the doctor and the police. She recalled seeing a ’phone in the waiting room, but by now more patients might have arrived and she didn’t feel up to coping with them. Surely there was one in the house.

  As she passed the stairs, the maid came dashing down, pink faced with excitement, the ribbons on her cap floating behind her. She slowed to a more decorous pace on seeing Daisy.

  “Can I help you, madam?”

  “Yes—Gladys, isn’t it?—I’m looking for a telephone. Do you know who is the Talmadges’ doctor?”

  “Dr. Curtis, m’m. There’s a telephone in the study, in there. The mistress is in such a state, I never seen the like in all me born days! Miss Hensted sent me to put on a kettle for tea and Miss Kidd said fetch the brandy, but I’m sure, m’m, she ought to have the doctor to her, right enough.” Her voice sank to a whisper. “Screaming and crying she is that the master’s dead!”

  “I’m afraid Mr. Talmadge has met with an accident. When you have done as Nurse Hensted told you, you had better go around to the waiting room and tell people there will be no appointments because of an emergency. Put up a notice.”

  “Yes, m’m.” The girl bobbed a curtsy.

  “Thank you, Gladys.” Daisy nodded dismissal and hurried to the study.

  More of an office than a comfortable retreat, this was apparently where Talmadge did the business of his practice. Daisy sat down at the utilitarian desk, pulled the telephone apparatus towards her, and asked the operator to put her through to Dr. Curtis. The doctor was another local man she had met socially, an elderly GP who had been the Fletchers’ family practitioner for donkey’s years.

  The phone rang and rang. At last Dr. Curtis’s maid answered. The doctor was out on his rounds.

  “Blast!” Daisy muttered. But it wasn’t really an emergency. Raymond Talmadge was beyond help, and Miss Hensted was surely capable of coping with Daphne Talmadge’s hysterics. The police would send their own doctor anyway.

  The police. Taking a deep breath, Daisy asked the operator for Whitehall 1212. Alec was not going to be happy when he heard that after four peaceful months—well, three and a half—she had once again enmeshed herself in a murder enquiry. Or was she imagining the whole thing?

  “Scotland Yard.”

  “I’d like to speak to Detective Chief Inspector Fletcher, please.”

  “Who’s speaking?”

  “This is Mrs. Fletcher. It’s urgent.”

  “Right you are, ma’am, I’ll see if the Chief Inspector is in.”

  Over the wire came the sound of whispering and a snicker. Daisy felt herself blushing, a despicable affliction even when there was no one to see. The whole Metropolitan Police force probably knew by now that she was in the Assistant Commissioner (Crime)’s black books for her meddling in a number of cases.

  “Sorry, ma’am, the Chief Inspector’s out.”

  “Sergeant Tring?”

  “Went with him. If it’s police business, ma’am, not personal, you’d better tell me about it and I’ll put you through to someone else.”

  “I …” Daisy hesitated. She didn’t want to speak to someone else, she wanted Alec. “It’s … I’m afraid it’s a suspicious death.”

  “Where are you, Mrs. Fletcher?” the voice asked sharply.

  She gave the address. “It’s …”

  “You need to ring division HQ, Mrs. Fletcher. Have you got a pencil? Here’s the telephone number. I’ll see a message gets to the Chief Inspector when he comes in.”

  A message and a lot of ragging, Daisy thought resentfully as she wrote down the number and thanked the officer. It wasn’t her fault, let alone Alec’s, that dea
d bodies bestrewed her path through life. She’d much rather they didn’t.

  She clicked the hook a couple of times to disconnect the call and summon the operator, and gave the girl the new number. On the first ring a bored voice asked her business.

  “I want to report a suspicious death.” It sounded sillier and less likely each time she said it.

  “Suspicious?”

  “Well, unnatural, anyway.”

  “Your name, please, madam, and the number you’re ringing from.”

  “Mrs. Fletcher.” Daisy gave the Talmadges’ number, and added their address.

  “Is that your residence, madam?”

  “No, it’s the victim’s residence, and his dental office. I’m just a patient. A would-be patient, rather. Mr. Talmadge, Raymond Talmadge, has died of an overdose of laughing gas. Or maybe suffocation,” she said doubtfully, remembering the turned-off oxygen.

  “You can leave that to the medicos to decide, madam.” Boredom banished, the voice was quite cheerful now. “I’ll send the police surgeon and one of our detective officers round right away. Hold on a minute, please, madam.”

  This time, no whispers or snickers reached Daisy’s ears. Either the Yard gossip had not reached the divisions, or they had not realized that she was that Mrs. Fletcher.

  “Mrs. Fletcher? You stay right there, if you please, madam. Detective Sergeant Mackinnon is on his way and he’ll want to ask you a few questions. Can you keep everyone away from the scene of the … incident?”

  “I’ve locked the surgery.”

  “Good for you! DS Mackinnon will be with you shortly. I need to clear the line now, but you ring me right back if you need to.”

  Daisy hung up the earpiece. She considered ringing up her mother-in-law to say she’d be delayed, but then she would have to explain why. Mrs. Fletcher knew she had been mixed up in several of Alec’s cases, though they had managed to keep some from her. Not unnaturally, she strongly disapproved. What she would feel about Daisy’s involvement in the local murder of an acquaintance didn’t bear thinking of.

  In fact, Daisy really didn’t want to think at all, but she had run out of useful things to do. She longed for a cup of tea.

  Gladys had probably made a pot and taken it upstairs by now. Mrs. Talmadge was only a slight acquaintance so it would be frightfully improper to invade the upper reaches of the house. To barge into the kitchen to make tea for oneself would be almost equally unacceptable. Not quite, though, and she might get away without being caught: Cook’s day off, Mrs. Talmadge had said. Daisy headed for the kitchen.

  She had just reached the stairs when she remembered that the kitchen door was right opposite the door to the surgery. Feeling sick, chilled, and weak at the knees, she sat down on the next to bottom step and hugged herself.

  “Are you all right, Mrs. Fletcher?” Miss Hensted’s voice came from behind her.

  She looked back to see the nurse coming down the carpeted stairs. “Yes. Yes, quite all right.” She stood up to let the woman by. “How is Mrs. Talmadge?”

  “In a bad way. If that Hilda Kidd, that’s her maid, thinks she can cope without my help,” she said resentfully, “well, all I can say is she’s got another think coming. All she is is a glorified parlourmaid, and the silly woman needs a doctor.”

  The nurse, as a medical professional, should give a decent show of sympathy, Daisy felt. “She’s had a terrible shock,” she pointed out, “finding her husband dead.”

  “It’s little enough she cared when he was alive, so she’s got no call now to carry on like the end of the world. And slandering him, saying he killed himself when it was obviously an accident! Dr. Curtis’ll have to give her something good and strong to calm her down.”

  “Dr. Curtis was out. I left a message. I expect the police surgeon will be able to help Mrs. Talmadge when he arrives.”

  “Police! Don’t say you called in the police?” Miss Hensted looked quite put out. After a frowning moment she said, “That’ll do her a lot of good, that will, having them stirring things up, making a mountain out of a molehill. It’s bound to convince her it actually was suicide. Dr. Curtis could have given a certificate nice and quiet, kept it out of the papers. She’ll have reporters hounding her and—”

  “Accident or suicide, it had to be reported to the police,” said Daisy. “I’m sure Dr. Curtis would have insisted, in the circumstances.”

  “Oh well, least said, soonest mended, and it’s no good crying over spilt milk.” She gave Daisy a critical appraisal. “You’re looking a bit seedy yourself. Better go and sit in the drawing room and I’ll make you a nice strong cuppa.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Daisy said gratefully.

  She sat down at the American-cloth covered table, while Miss Hensted filled a kettle, set it on the gas stove, and struck a match. At that moment a bell rang. They both looked up at the bell board over the kitchen door.

  “Front door,” said Daisy.

  “That’ll be the police.”

  As the nurse made no move, Daisy stood up. “I’ll get it.”

  “No need for that, Mrs. Fletcher. It’s Gladys’s job and if she doesn’t go it won’t hurt him to—Ouch!” She dropped the match on the stovetop and rushed to stick her fingers under the tap. For all her veneer of professional coolness, she was more upset than she wished to let anyone see, Daisy thought.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, going over to light the gas under the kettle.

  “Yes, it was nothing. I was just saying, it won’t hurt him to wait while I make the tea.”

  The bell rang again.

  “It looks as if Gladys is otherwise occupied.” Though the Dowager Lady Dalrymple would have strongly objected to either course, in the circs Daisy decided making tea was less infra dig than answering the door. “I think you should go and let him in. I’ll do the tea.”

  Lips pursed, Nurse Hensted regarded Daisy with a slight frown. “Yes, perhaps I will,” she said, and went off, her rubber-soled shoes squeaking slightly on the linoleum in the passage.

  Daisy found a big brown earthenware teapot and a pair of japanned canisters, one smelling of Earl Grey, the other of Darjeeling. There was a packet of a cheap brand of tea, too, but she didn’t feel obliged to lower herself to that extent just because she would be drinking from a thick white china cup. She set out cups and saucers for Miss Hensted and Detective Sergeant Mackinnon as well. The kettle was steaming so she poured hot water into the teapot to warm it.

  As she swirled the water in the pot, she heard voices approaching. She moved closer to the open door to listen.

  “ … Mrs. Fletcher, she’s a patient who just happened to be here. Oh, and Gladys, the housemaid. I don’t know where the dratted girl has got to! But there was no need to call you out, Sergeant. It was an accident, for sure.”

  “That’s for the Coroner’s jury to decide, miss.”

  “You see, I’m afraid Mr. Talmadge was in the habit of taking a little sniff of laughing gas when we’d had a run of difficult patients, just to relax. No harm in that!” The nurse gave a forced laugh. “I never thought anything of it, but looking back, I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later, that he’d forget to switch on the oxygen. There’s no reason to think he did it on purpose.”

  “That’ll be for the Coroner to decide, miss.” The rolling Scottish r confirmed the speaker to be Mackinnon. “In here, is he?”

  “That’s right.” Miss Hensted’s hand came into view, reaching for the doorknob. The plainclothes detective officer gripped her white-cuffed wrist.

  “Don’t touch, please, miss. It’ll have to be done for fingerprints.”

  “Why on earth … ?”

  “Standard procedure, miss, in any unexpected death. Did you touch this handle when you found the deceased?”

  “Yes, I—”

  “No,” said Daisy. “Mrs. Talmadge opened the door and I closed it, when you had to help her upstairs.”

  “Oh yes, that’s right.”

  Sergeant
Mackinnon, a tall, rawboned redhead who looked even more Scots than he sounded, eyed Daisy and her teapot askance. “And you are … ?”

  “Mrs. Fletcher. I telephoned.”

  “Ah yes.” He took out his notebook. “I have a few questions to ask you, madam”—he pronounced the last word dubiously, with another look at the teapot—“before I take a look at—”

  “Miss Hensted!” Gladys came tearing along from the front hall. “Miss Hensted, Miss Kidd says if the doctor’s not come yet will you come and see to the mistress. She’s fallen into a fit!”

  “What did I say? I told her she couldn’t manage without me.” Miss Hensted hurried off.

  The maid hesitated, obviously agog with curiosity over the stranger downstairs while not wanting to miss any of the excitement upstairs.

  “This is Gladys, the housemaid, Sergeant,” said Daisy.

  “A pleeceman?” Gladys squeaked.

  “Yes, and I’ll want to have a word with you later, my girl, but you can take yourself off now. You listen out for the doorbell, mind. There’ll be more people coming.”

  With another inarticulate squeak, Gladys scuttled away.

  “I think you ought to go and look at … him first, Sergeant,” Daisy suggested. “The signs I saw may fade. I’ll explain what to look for.”

  Mackinnon cast an uneasy glance behind him at the surgery door. “That can wait till the doctor comes,” he said.

  “But—”

  “I’ll just do things my own way, if you don’t mind.”

  Daisy sighed. “Then you’d better come into the kitchen and sit down. The kettle’s boiling and I really do need a cup of tea. Will you have one?”

  “Not just now, thank you, madam.” He closed the kitchen door and sat down at the table, the notebook before him. “Your full name, please.”

  “Daisy Fletcher.”

  “Mrs. Fletcher, please describe in your own words what occurred leading to your telephone call.”