Die Laughing

by Carola Dunn

  “Poor Mummy, have you been at the dentist all this time?” cried Belinda, ginger pigtails flying as she ran to hug Daisy.

  “Sort of, darling. Hello, Deva. Hello, Lizzie. Sakari, too sweet of you to bring the girls from school.”

  “Thank you very much, Mrs. Prasad,” said Belinda, echoed by Lizzie.

  “Go on into the house, girls,” Daisy said. “I hope you’ll stay for a cup of tea, Sakari?” She touched cheeks with the plump Indian woman, conscious of the exotic fragrance of her.

  Sakari murmured, “Ulterior motive, I am afraid, Daisy.” She spoke excellent English, her accent making her sound formal even at her most colloquial. Her dark eyes sparkled with mischief. “I brought Melanie, also. She is cowering in the car, hoping you will not think us too vulgarly inquisitive for words.”

  “So you’ve heard already.” Daisy sighed, going to peer into the hooded back of the car. “Mel, come along, do. I’m getting wet. I’ll tell you what I can, and probably more than I ought.”

  “Oh, Daisy dear, how dreadful for you!” Melanie Germond’s husband was the local bank manager, as Alec’s father had been. As his wife, Mel was eminently acceptable to St. John’s Wood society, but she was frightfully shy.

  Despite this handicap, she had championed the Prasads’ entrée into the social life of the neighbourhood, though there were still plenty of houses where the Indian couple were not invited. These had, until Daisy’s marriage, included the Fletcher household under old Mrs. Fletcher’s sway. Daisy had met both women through Belinda’s school, and had grown very fond them.

  “Kesin,” Daisy said to the chauffeur, “if you go to the kitchen, Dobson will give you a cup of tea.”

  “Sank you, madam.” He bowed to her, hands folded together, and looked to Sakari, who nodded. He went off to the kitchen door while Daisy took her friends into the house.

  The girls were already in the dining room, chattering over a lavish spread laid out in advance by Dobson. Daisy, pausing in the doorway, hoped the cook-maid had saved some cake and biscuits for the grown-ups.

  Belinda saw her. “I told Gran I’m home, Mummy, and I said you are too, so she needn’t bother with us.”

  “Right-oh, darling. Don’t forget to take Nana out, between showers.”

  So Bel had neatly evaded a confrontation with her grandmother over Deva, leaving Daisy to face her unprepared mother-in-law with Sakari in tow. Daisy wondered whether Mrs. Fletcher had already heard about the murder. Her involvement was bound to be another bone of contention. Not that there would be a vulgar row, just pointed arrows sent her way at every opportunity.

  Swallowing a sigh, she led the way to the sitting room.

  Mrs. Fletcher’s lips tightened when she saw the Indian woman. Her cold “How do you do” was aimed somewhere between Sakari and Mel. Placing a bookmark in the book she had been reading, she stood up. “I’m glad you’re home at last, Daisy. Will you keep an eye on the children? I have one or two errands to run.”

  “Have you had tea, Mother?”

  “I shall have mine at the tea shop in the High Street.” Thus making it plain—and no doubt telling any cronies she met there—that she had been driven from her home by her daughter-in-law’s insistence on entertaining unsuitable people. She stalked out, her drab silk skirts rustling reproachfully.

  The room seemed the warmer for her absence. It was a pleasant room, looking southwest over the back garden, now sunny again. Alec’s first wife had had the ponderous “good” Victorian furniture reupholstered in gay prints and the walls painted white. A cheerful view of Paris hung over the fireplace, in front of which, on a low table, Alec and Belinda’s unfinished chess game from last night awaited them.

  “Sit down,” Daisy invited. “I simply must ring up Alec, but I won’t be a moment.”

  “Clues!” Sakari pronounced gleefully. “You have thought of some clues which he missed.”

  “I’m sure Detective Chief Inspector Fletcher wouldn’t miss any clues,” Mel protested.

  “I can’t be sure, that’s why I must ring him. I’ll tell Dobson to bring tea.”

  “Then you will return and tell us all.”

  “Some of it, anyway,” Daisy promised, laughing.

  Tom Tring answered the Talmadges’ ’phone. London operators were usually too busy to listen in, but she chose her words with care, just in case, as she told him about the alley and the errand boy and the incinerator.

  “Maybe I should have come back to the house to tell you right away. If there was anything burning, it might be gone by now.”

  “I shouldn’t worry, Mrs. Fletcher. Those things burn slow. We’ll have a look, but—I’ll tell you, though the Chief may have my hide for it—we found what I expect you’re thinking of in the waste bin in the surgery.”

  “Oh, good. I nearly looked in there, but I couldn’t face it.”

  “Nor you should have,” he said in what was supposed to be a reproving voice. Daisy could practically hear his splendid moustache twitching as it covered a grin. “The Chief sent young Ernie off with the stuff to the lab at the Yard, to make sure it’s what we were looking for.”

  “I should think it must be. Dentists can’t have much use for that sort of thing.”

  “Not unless they let the drill slip and—”

  “Don’t, Tom!” Daisy exclaimed, reminded that she still had to see a dentist. “Did the servants have anything interesting to say?”

  “Now, that I can’t tell you, Mrs. Fletcher, or the Chief really will have my hide. If that’s all, I’d better go and see to that incinerator. There might be something in it we haven’t thought of.”

  “Just one thing more. Gladys told me Hilda Kidd and Cook—Mrs. Thorpe—often stopped talking when she went into the kitchen.”

  “So Miss Gladys told me.”

  “Right-oh, Tom. Cheerio, then.”

  “‘Bye, Mrs. Fletcher, and thanks for the tips.”

  Daisy said good-bye, hung up, and returned to the sitting room. Dobson had brought tea and biscuits, but Daisy was not allowed to enjoy them in peace. Though she tried not to tell her friends more than she ought, she was too tired to guard her tongue. She most definitely should not have let slip that Alec was looking for patients who might have been having an affair with Raymond Talmadge.

  “Oh dear, I hope neither of you was a patient of his?”

  Sakari and Mel exchanged a look.

  “We both went to him once or twice,” said Sakari. “And we both, independently, disliked his attitude more than we liked his expertise.”

  “His attitude?”

  “Condescending,” Mel said in her soft voice.

  “He thought he was the cat’s pyjamas. What is more to the point, he did not trouble to hide his contempt for those of us who have not been blessed with perfect teeth. I am sure—do you not agree, Mel?—that Raymond Talmadge would never make love to a woman with whose rotting teeth he was intimately acquainted.”

  7

  The telephone bell rang in the front hall. Daisy heard Belinda go to answer it, and a moment later her stepdaughter appeared in the doorway.

  “It’s for you, Mummy. Mrs. Grantchester. I told her you are entertaining guests.” Belinda pronounced this newly acquired phrase with pride. “She said it’s urgent.”

  “Thank you, darling. What on earth can she want? I hardly know her. Excuse me a minute,” Daisy said to Mel and Sakari. She went out to the hall. “Hello, this is Daisy Fletcher.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Fletcher, I do hope you’ll excuse the short notice. I was wondering whether you could possibly come to luncheon tomorrow, quite informal, just a few local ladies, I’m sure you know most of them.”

  Daisy’s immediate impulse was to hunt for an excuse. She didn’t particularly like Mrs. Grantchester, a large, gushing woman, and she suspected her company was wanted mostly for what she could tell of Talmadge’s death. On the other hand, she might pick up useful gossip about the Talmadges for Alec, though middle-class matrons didn’t gossip half as much
as she had expected before becoming one of them. Also her usual excuse was invalid: she had just finished an article and her next was not due for a fortnight.

  Her pause for thought had lasted long enough to be noticed.

  “Oh, please say you’ll come,” Mrs. Grantchester begged. “I know you write—so adventurous of you—I always read your articles—but we won’t keep you long, just an hour or so. All work and no play … you know what they say.”

  Definitely Daisy didn’t like Mrs. Grantchester. She started to beg off: “It’s very kind of you, but—”

  “Splendid!” the beastly woman overrode her. “We’ll see you at one o’clock. Oh, and I nearly forgot, of course your dear mama-in-law is invited too.” She rang off before Daisy could protest.

  Her mama-in-law’s inclusion in no way reconciled her to the luncheon, but now that her acceptance was assumed, it was impossible to back out without giving offence. Sighing, she jiggled the hook on the telephone apparatus to call the operator. She must let Alec know that Talmadge’s mistress, if any, was probably not a patient.

  “Hello, caller, you have an incoming call. Do you want to take it or make your own call?”

  “I’ll take it,” said Daisy. “Hello? St. John’s Wood 2351.”

  “Hello, Mrs. Fletcher? This is Marianne Randall. I do hope this isn’t a bad time to ring?”

  Mrs. Randall, with apologies for the short notice, wanted Daisy and Alec to come to dinner tomorrow. Alec might well have to work late? Never mind, her brother could always be called in at the last minute to make up the numbers if necessary. Daisy simply must come anyway.

  On the spur of the moment, Daisy failed to think up a better excuse.

  Marianne Randall hung up at last and Daisy phoned Alec. He groaned when he heard that Talmadge’s lover probably was not a patient.

  “The prospect of digging through his files was bad enough. We’ll still have to do that, but if your friends are right, the field is wide open. We’ll just have to hope someone will report having seen him with a lady-friend.”

  “Don’t despair, darling. I’ll see what I can find out.”

  “Daisy, don’t—”

  “I must run. They’re waiting. Bye-bye, darling.” Prohibition averted, Daisy returned to the sitting room.

  In the next hour, she received another five invitations for the next two days. She manage to decline three, only because they arrived in the form of servant-borne notes, not telephone calls.

  “Gosh! I’ve never been so popular in my life,” she said as she penned an answer to the latest note. “I thought the ladies of St. John’s Wood were unnaturally immune to gossip, but this puts paid to that theory.”

  “It is the murder of one of their own,” Sakari declared. “It has overcome their inhibitions.” She was an inveterate attender of public lectures, including a recent series on Freud.

  “Few of them have any inhibitions about gossiping,” said Mel. “If you haven’t heard much, Daisy, it’s because they don’t indulge when you’re around.”

  “Why?” Daisy demanded, astonished. “Do they think I’m not interested? A writer is always interested in people.”

  “That’s one reason I’ve heard mentioned,” Mel told her. “That you’re a writer, I mean. A journalist, if not a reporter. I think they’re afraid you might write about them.”

  “What else?”

  “Well, I know you don’t like it mentioned, but you are an Honourable.”

  “This I have heard,” said Sakari: “‘Servants talk about people, ladies and gentlemen talk about things.’”

  “So my nanny used to tell us,” Daisy admitted, “but if it’s true, I know very few true ladies and gentlemen. I can’t believe people think I’d disapprove, just because I’ve got an honorary title in front of my name, which I don’t even use. Except when my editors insist, but I insist on still using Dalrymple with it, not my married name.”

  “There is another reason people are reticent, Daisy. You are married to a police detective.”

  “But …” Daisy stared at Sakari. “As if Alec would care about common or garden gossip! Honestly, anyone would think they were all criminals.”

  “I suppose lots of people have something they’d rather the police didn’t know,” Melanie murmured.

  “In that case, it’s very odd of them to come out of the woodwork just when Alec will be interested in their secrets, in case they have some bearing on the murder. Maybe they expect to pump me without giving anything away.”

  Sakari shook her head. “That is part of it, perhaps, but I suspect it is rather that they look on you as an intermediary. If I had possibly useful information, I should much prefer to reveal it to you rather than the police. Many people know that you have assisted Mr. Fletcher in a number of his murder cases.”

  “How?” Daisy demanded indignantly. “I’ve never breathed a word, not even to you two, and Alec certainly wouldn’t, let alone his mother. Oh—Belinda?”

  “I’m afraid she told Lizzie,” Mel confirmed.

  “And Deva.” Sakari smiled, in a friendly way enjoying Daisy’s discomfiture.

  “The girls told us. Naturally, we haven’t spoken of it, but they must have chattered to other friends. You know what girls are.”

  At least they could know only about the few cases Bel had been involved in, Daisy realized with relief. “No use crying over spilt milk,” she said. “The only question is, will it make people more likely or less likely to tell me things?”

  “Then you are sleuthing?” cried Sakari. “What did I tell you, Melanie? May we help?”

  “Sorry, Alec would kill me if I let you get mixed up in it. He’s always trying to keep me out.”

  “Men are so often unreasonable, even Englishmen,” the Indian woman sighed.

  “I’m sure Mr. Fletcher is only trying to keep Daisy safe,” said Mel, the peacemaker. “After all, there is a murderer somewhere about. I hope people won’t give you information which will endanger you, Daisy, but I rather think they’re all secretly thrilled and dying to bare their souls.”

  When Daisy hung up on him, Alec nearly rang her right back to order her not to meddle in the case. That was undoubtedly what Superintendent Crane and the AC would expect him to do. What they didn’t comprehend was that at the best of times a modern young woman like Daisy didn’t take kindly to orders. Now, with the bit between her teeth, there wasn’t the slightest hope of Alec’s reining her in.

  He consoled himself with the thought that she had so far remained somewhat aloof from such society as St. John’s Wood afforded.

  Not that Daisy was a snob. Alec had seen her take up arms on behalf of an undergardener and chat happily with a shop girl. But her only real friends in the neighbourhood were Mrs. Germond and Mrs. Prasad, neither of whom he expected to find on his suspect list—though one could never be sure.

  The rest of the Talmadges’ social circle were mere acquaintances. Daisy couldn’t very well approach them with leading questions about Raymond Talmadge’s mistress. For once she would have to stay out of his investigation in spite of having found the body.

  Alec surveyed the study where he had been when Daisy’s call came through. It was really an office, not the sort of place where a man could retire to smoke a pipe and sip a glass of whisky and soda with a friend. The bookcase contained only dental reference books and journals. A quick look through the drawers of the desk had turned up nothing but stationery supplies, bank statements, and a locked cash box small enough for any burglar to pocket. The cabinet held ledgers with the financial records of Talmadge’s practice.

  Sooner or later, someone would have to go through the records, looking for a financial motive for murder. It was a job for Ernie Piper, who was good with figures, good at spotting numbers that didn’t quite fit. Fraud seemed improbable in a dental practice, but blackmail was always a possibility.

  “Any love letters, Chief?” Tom came in, his bulk making the small room seem even smaller.

  “Nothing but busin
ess as far as I can see. No locked …” Alec sniffed. “Tom, what have you been doing?”

  “Raking through a bonfire Mrs. Fletcher came across at the bottom of the garden. I didn’t touch anything, just raked it over, but the smoke must’ve got into my clothes. Pongs a bit, doesn’t it?”

  “Just a bit.” Alec fanned the air with the blotter. “I suppose it will wear off. Did you find anything of interest?”

  Tom shook his head. “Garden rubbish and kitchen scraps. No luck in here?”

  “Not even a locked drawer. I doubt there’s much in this.” He pushed the cashbox across the desk. “You have the keys we found on the body.”

  The box contained a cheque-book and nearly fifty pounds in coins, notes, and cheques. “Cor, that the morning’s take, d’you think? I’m in the wrong job.”

  “He probably doesn’t go to the bank every day. Is that the lot?”

  “Not a love letter to be seen.”

  “Hilda Kidd confirmed that Talmadge had a lady friend, did she?”

  “Not exactly. That is, she swears he does—says she’s prepared to swear to it in court if she has to—but when you ask how she knows, it all comes down to a ‘feeling.’ Could be she just hasn’t worked out what gives her that feeling, or could be plain spite. She detested Talmadge.”

  “So I gathered. To the point of doing him in?”

  Tom’s boundless forehead creased in a frown. “I don’t think so. I mean, if she’d caught him knocking his wife about she might’ve picked up a poker and whopped him over the head. Not the sort of nasty, cold-blooded business we’ve got here, even if she knew how. But if Mrs. Talmadge did it, Hilda Kidd would cover up for her like a shot. She’s kicking herself for having mentioned Creighton. Tried to make out she’d been joking.”

  “So you didn’t get anything useful from her? What about the other girl, the housemaid?”

  “Quite a bright girl, that. She reckoned she’d have noticed if there was any carrying-on going on here in the house. The Talmadges never had a row, not that she heard, just mostly went their own ways. They never spent an evening at home together unless they were entertaining. She did say Miss Kidd and Cook likely know more than she does. They often stopped talking when she went into the kitchen.”