Sheer Folly

by Carola Dunn

  “I doubt if Sir Desmond ever sounds desperately anything. Either he’s naturally detached or he cultivates detachment.” Even, or perhaps especially, with regard to his wife.

  “Yes. There was something in his voice. . . . But I may have imagined it. You know what the telephone lines are like.”

  “What sort of something?”

  “I just suspected he wasn’t quite as indifferent as he wanted to sound. I couldn’t pin it down to anything specific. But I hate to believe a man could be so unmoved by his wife being injured, so maybe it’s wishful thinking.”

  “Perhaps. Or a bad connection. He said he’d come straight back, though?”

  “Hmm, not exactly. He said the business was nearly finished and he’d be back shortly. But we can’t guess what was in his mind from a brief telephone conversation over a bad wire. What was in your mind when you wanted to know how Lord Rydal’s chauffeur left the house?”

  “Not so much how as whether.”

  “Ah, yes, a different question altogether, now we know the explosion wasn’t an accident.”

  Daisy hadn’t expected him to catch on so quickly. She should have. He impressed her more and more with his astuteness. She hoped Alec wasn’t going to be annoyed with her for letting Pritchard see her suspicion of the chauffeur. To distract him, she said, “You looked relieved when Charles Armitage said it looked like murder.”

  Prichard was dismayed. “Oh dear, was it obvious? I’m afraid relief was my first reaction. After all, if the explosion had been caused by a gas leak, I’d have been to some degree responsible; whereas, though it may be unpleasant to have a murder on the premises, I can hardly be blamed if some idiot chose my grotto as a suitable place to blow up Lord Rydal.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Leaving Pritchard to try to reach Sir Desmond on the phone, Daisy went to the drawing room. She was halfway across the hall when Mrs. Howell came out. She was muttering to herself, distracted, and didn’t notice Daisy. She hurried away and Daisy went on in.

  “Darling!” Lucy greeted her. “I thought you’d quite abandoned me to that madwoman.”

  “Lucy thinks Mrs. Howell’s gone completely off her rocker,” said Julia.

  “Why?”

  “She never was completely normal, if you ask me,” said Lucy. “All that fuss about fish.”

  “No more fuss than Rhino made.”

  “Would you call Rhino completely normal?”

  “Well, no. But not crazy.”

  “He seems crazy to me,” said Julia. “Swearing he adores me and will do anything in the world for me, and then going off for an assignation with Lady Ottaline.”

  “That’s men for you,” Lucy averred. “Though he could at least have waited till you accepted him! But to be fair, it was she who made the running.”

  “You knew he had an assignation, Julia?” Daisy asked. “Lady Ottaline could just have followed him to see where he was going.”

  “Why on earth should he go to the grotto,” Lucy demanded, “if not to meet her? That divan bed is quite comfortable—I sat down on it. And much more private than anywhere in the house.”

  “Willett told me.”

  “I knew I should have brought my maid,” said Lucy. “We’d have known all about it, too.”

  “Did Willett tell your mother?”

  Julia gave a very Gallic shrug. “I’ve no idea. Probably. She’s on my side, though she’s only been with us a few weeks, so she’d pass on anything that might change Mother’s mind about him.”

  Daisy wondered why Lady Beaufort hadn’t already told her daughter she had changed her mind about Lord Rydal. “If Willett knew, probably all the servants did, too, at least the upper servants. Hmm.”

  “Daisy, are you sleuthing?” Lucy said suspiciously.

  “As far as we know it was an accident,” Julia reminded her.

  “That I could believe of anyone else, but not of Rhino. Besides, I recognise that look of Daisy’s.”

  “What look! I don’t have a special ‘sleuthing’ look.”

  “Yes, you do. You know it wasn’t an accident, don’t you?” Lucy accused.

  Lucy wouldn’t believe her if she denied it. “You won’t tell Alec I told you, will you,” Daisy begged.

  “You didn’t tell us, darling. I guessed, all by my little self.”

  “Well, don’t breathe a word to anyone else, for pity’s sake.”

  “Our lips are sealed, aren’t they, Julia?”

  “Of course. Who do you think did it, Daisy?”

  “The obvious person is Sir Desmond.”

  “But he was in Swindon,” said Julia.

  “Lady Ottaline was right on the spot,” Lucy mused. “Perhaps she was hoist by her own petard? I’ve always wondered what a ‘petard’ is.”

  “Some sort of bomb,” said Daisy.

  “It’s in Shakespeare,” Julia elaborated. “Hamlet, isn’t it, Daisy?”

  “I wouldn’t like to swear to it. Why should Lady Ottaline want to blow up Rhino? He came to heel very nicely, for a rhinoceros.”

  The picture this conjured up made them all laugh for a moment. Then Lucy returned doggedly to the subject.

  “He came to heel, yes, but unwillingly. You could see that, Daisy, or you wouldn’t have used the phrase. I could see it. So it’s not likely Lady Ottaline didn’t realise, too. She must have been furious to be supplanted by a beautiful younger woman. That’s you, Julia.”

  “I didn’t want him!”

  “No, so she had no cause to be angry with you. All her fury—what’s that thing about ‘hell hath no fury’?”

  “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” said Daisy.

  “ ‘Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn’d,’ ” said Julia.

  “Whichever, that’s Lady Ottaline to a T, isn’t it? It’s Rhino she had it in for. All the same, Julia, when she’s recovered enough to get out of bed, you’d better watch your back.”

  “You’re assuming she set up the explosion,” Julia protested, “but she was caught up in it herself.”

  “She wanted to see him blown up,” Lucy said as if it were obvious. “She miscalculated and got too close.”

  “It’s possible,” Daisy said reluctantly. “I suppose we’d better keep an eye on you when Lady Ottaline comes down, unless Alec arrests someone before then.”

  “I hope he does, though I can’t believe you’re serious!”

  “Well, it wasn’t necessarily Lady Ottaline. Lucy, what were you saying about Mrs. Howell having a screw loose?”

  “Religious mania. She told me Rhino was evil and deserved to be blown up, but it was all her brother-in-law’s fault for putting pagan statues in the grotto. They’re bound to attract evil people—and I’m telling you, the look she gave me was enough to make one believe in the evil eye!”

  “You’re the ones who were attracted by the grotto,” said Julia, not without satisfaction. “So while I’m waiting for Lady Ottaline to stab me in the back you two will be waiting for Mrs. Howell to stab you in the back. But I still can’t see how Lady Ottaline could have forced Rhino to go to meet her in the grotto, if he was really unwilling.”

  Daisy looked at Lucy. The gossip about the unlikely couple’s long-standing affair was her story, and it was up to her to decide whether to enlighten Julia.

  Lucy didn’t hesitate. “People have been talking about them for months. We wondered whether she threatened to tell you about their affair if he didn’t cooperate.”

  “Did you know about it before she arrived here at Appsworth?” Daisy asked.

  “No. But I gather you did.”

  “Not me. Lucy did.”

  “I do think you might have told me, Lucy.”

  “I would have, if there’d been the slightest sign you might accept him. Or if I’d had the slightest idea she was going to turn up here. When she arrived, I did consult Daisy. She said as I wasn’t an eyewitness and the evidence wouldn’t hold up in court—”

  “I never did!”

  “Near
as makes no difference. Anyway, the way Lady Ottaline was behaving, you’d have had to be blind not to notice.”

  “But Rhino,” said Daisy, “being completely oblivious to everyone else’s feelings, could easily be brought to believe you remained unaware. Even he, though, could hardly hope that he’d still stand a chance with you if she told you he was her lover.”

  “Yes, I see. You almost make me feel sorry for him.”

  “No!” said Lucy, revolted.

  “I said ‘almost.’ ”

  “It’s all speculation,” Daisy pointed out. “Perhaps he had some other deep dark secret she was holding over him. It would have to be very deep and dark for him to deserve to be blown up. You’re allowed to feel a bit sorry for him.”

  Lucy shook her head. “Not yet. We don’t even know yet if he actually was blown up, or if so, whether he was killed.”

  “Stone dead,” said Alec, “and I use the word stone with due deliberation.”

  He was in Pritchard’s den, sitting in front of the big mahogany leather-topped desk, instead of in his accustomed place of power on the other side. This was not his only disadvantage. The detective inspector from Swindon had arrived just as Alec and his crew returned from the excavation. Alec had judged it best not to linger to take a bath before speaking to the local police. His hair, his nostrils, his fingernails, and his clothes were clogged with grey-white dust that, dampened by rain, took on the consistency of partly set plaster of Paris.

  The butler had been swift to provide a dust sheet for him to sit on.

  In response to DI Boyle’s raised eyebrows, Alec elaborated. “He was buried in a pile of chunks of limestone and pieces of marble statuary. One hit him on the temple and appears to have despatched him pretty nearly instantaneously. Just as well, perhaps, as he was badly burnt, probably prior to death. The doctor is a GP, not a police surgeon, and unfamiliar with having to make such determinations.”

  “You didn’t call in a police surgeon? Sir?”

  “At the time I was in a position to send for help, I had no reason to suppose a crime had been committed. The explosion could have been caused by a gas leak.”

  “But now, you say, you have evidence of intent. Are you telling me,” said Inspector Boyle sceptically, “you’re here on the spot purely by chance?” Boyle had the sort of face that is naturally inexpressive and a flat voice to match. Nonetheless he managed, when he chose, to make his feelings perfectly plain.

  “It happens to be the truth,” Alec insisted. “My wife is down here to write about the grotto—”

  “The one that got blown up.”

  “It’s the only one, to my knowledge. Look here, man, I’m as unhappy about this as you are.”

  “Oh, I doubt it, sir. I doubt it very much.”

  “All you have to do is treat my wife and me as ordinary witnesses. In fact, you’re in luck. She was here for a few days before the incident, so she knows the people concerned, including the victim. I arrived just as it happened, but I went straight to the scene and I was there when the body was discovered, so I can tell you all about it. You could do worse than to. . . . Sorry.”

  “You see my difficulty, sir.” There was a glint of what might have been humour in Boyle’s small, pale eyes.

  “Yes. I beg your pardon. I’m already telling you the best way to start the investigation, and that Daisy and I are your best witnesses.”

  “I’m not saying you’re wrong, mind,” Boyle conceded.

  A muffled snort came from his detective sergeant, a pale, plump young man in a green bow-tie and wire-rimmed glasses. Boyle turned on him a stare worthy of a basilisk. He coughed and fidgeted with his pencil.

  “Unfortunately,” said Alec, “it’s already too dark for you to see much out there.”

  “It might have been helpful if Constable Endicott had seen fit to notify us somewhat earlier.”

  “Endicott’s not to blame. He didn’t know until he joined us at the site that the explosion was no accident, and then I discouraged him from leaving to telephone before we knew for certain there were victims. He’s a good man with a shovel, your PC Endicott.”

  “Is he indeed! I’ll have to remember that.”

  Alec sent a mental apology winging towards Endicott. In defending him, he’d probably let him in for all sorts of unpleasant jobs in the future. “We needed every man available. Wait till you see the mess. And we couldn’t be too aggressive about clearing it for fear of causing further injuries, or further collapse.”

  Boyle looked him up and down, sighed, and said, “Perhaps I should be grateful to have arrived late. You’d better tell me the whole thing from the beginning, if you’d be so kind, sir.”

  “My part started when I arrived here. My wife was eager to show me the grotto before it started raining. We had just gone out to the terrace at the rear of the house when the explosion occurred.”

  “It was heard this far, then?”

  “Believe me,” Alec said dryly, “it was not only heard, it was seen and felt.”

  Concisely, he described finding Lady Ottaline and exploring the outer grotto. He explained his decision that digging in the tunnel was too difficult and too dangerous.

  “Just a minute, sir. You haven’t mentioned why you considered it necessary to dig. That is, what made you suppose someone might be underneath.”

  “In the first place, gas doesn’t explode by itself. There has to be a spark to ignite it, which suggested someone was there. Lady Ottaline was nowhere near the scene of the actual explosion. She was obviously caught in the blast, and she must have been outside the grotto or she’d have fallen twenty or thirty feet and probably be dead. So she hadn’t provided the spark.”

  “So someone else had.”

  “Exactly. Never having been near Appsworth Hall before, I didn’t know the lay-out of the grotto. Mr. Armitage explained it and sketched a plan.”

  “Armitage? Who’s he?”

  “For that, I’ll have to refer you to my wife. Or, of course, any of the residents of the house.”

  “Right. Go on. Please, sir.”

  “With Armitage’s sketch as guide, we started digging in what seemed the most likely spot. I can explain my reasoning, but I’d prefer to postpone it until I’ve had a bath.”

  Another muffled snort came from the sergeant.

  “It can wait,” Boyle agreed.

  “We were trying to get into the central cave of the grotto, which was only partly collapsed. We hadn’t been at it long when one of the men heard a tapping noise. That made us both more determined and more cautious.”

  The inspector nodded his understanding.

  “To cut a long and painstaking story short, we found Lord Rydal’s chauffeur, Gregg, bruised but essentially unhurt. The roof was more or less intact where he happened to be, over by one wall. A toppled statue pinned him down but also protected him from flying debris. He was able to point out to us more or less where he had last seen his employer. Lord Rydal was less fortunate. From the look of it, he was blown backwards against another statue and knocked it down, and then that part of the roof collapsed, killing him.”

  “Lord Rydal’s chauffeur,” said DI Boyle. “What the devil was he doing there?”

  “I decided I’d better not ask,” Alec told him. “After all, officially, it’s none of my business.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  “So he wants me to help him unofficially,” Alec said grumpily, sitting on his dust-sheet on the bed. “The worst of all possible worlds.”

  “No, it’s not, darling.” Daisy, in the adjacent bathroom, raised her voice to be heard over the rush of tap-water. “You’d hate to be treated like an ordinary witness. This way, you can poke your nose in without being actually responsible for finding out who did it.”

  “Poke my nose in!”

  “What about me?”

  “I’m quite sure he doesn’t want you poking your nose in. Isn’t that bath full yet? I hope the hot water isn’t going to run out.”

  “The ho
use belongs to a plumber, remember. No stingy boiler; Mr. Pritchard put modern gas geysers in every bathroom. Endless hot water, regulated by thermostat.”

  “Gas. You did light the thing, didn’t you?”

  “Of course. I’d be dead from the fumes by now if I hadn’t. Can’t you see steam billowing?” She turned off the tap. “There you are. Be careful, it’s really hot. I hope the stuff you wash off doesn’t solidify to cement in the pipes.”

  “It’s plaster, not cement.” Alec picked his way across the carpet, trying to keep the sheet wrapped round him so as to deposit as little debris as possible on the floor.

  “Same difference. They both go solid.”

  “My coat of plaster is as solid as it’s going to get. This house belongs to a plumber. I’m sure he can deal with blocked pipes.”

  “Do you want me to stay and scrub your back?”

  “No, that’s all right, if that’s a loofah I see through the steam. I’m certain you’re dying to go and poke your nose in.”

  “I’ll take that as permission,” Daisy retorted, and left before he could deny it.

  She was halfway down the stairs when a maid caught up with her. “Madam!” It was the same young girl who had summoned her to speak to Pritchard earlier, still—or again—both excited and anxious. “The inspector wants to see you. In the den, madam, right away, he said.”

  “Thank you. It’s Rita, isn’t it? Who else has the inspector talked to so far, Rita?”

  “Just Mr. Fletcher and Mr. Pritchard, madam.”

  “Really! Are you sure?”

  “Yes, ’m. ’Lessn you count Len Endicott, our bobby from the village.”

  Clearly Rita did not count PC Endicott.

  “Is Constable Endicott still with the inspector?”

  “No, ’m. He was sent out to guard the ’splosion.” This was said with such satisfaction that Daisy gathered Endicott was not merely of no account, but had somehow offended Rita. “There’s just ’Tective Inspector Boyle and ’Tective Sergeant Thomkin. Sir Desmond wanted to see them, madam, but Mr. Boyle said he’d have to wait his turn.”