Mistletoe and Murder

by Carola Dunn

  “I haven’t had a chance to talk to Felicity.” Dora turned a reproachful gaze on Daisy. “No one informed me last night that anything had happened, and she was still sleeping when Jemima got up this morning.”

  “She may be awake by now,” said Daisy. “Shall I take her up a cup of tea and some toast?”

  “That would be very kind.” Apparently Dora was not as keen to confront her erring and possibly heart-broken daughter as her previous words had suggested. “I’m afraid Godfrey is quite angry with her. She’s been very naughty. Girls are so difficult!” she lamented helplessly. “How could I ever have guessed that she’d take up with a murderer, and behind my back?”

  Daisy had no answer she cared to pronounce. Leaving the utterance of soothing platitudes to the captain, she departed with tea and toast for the miscreant.

  Cedric Norville was a convenient scapegoat, she thought, as she negotiated the passage and the glass-paned door to the entrance hall. Naturally the Brockdene Norvilles were eager to believe him guilty. Perhaps they were right. He and his father had an undeniable motive for wanting Calloway out of the way, and thanks to Felicity he knew it.

  When Daisy came to the foot of the stairs, Jemima was halfway down. She obviously had no intention of standing to the side to let Daisy get by on the not-very-wide flight, so Daisy waited at the bottom.

  As Jemima reached the last two steps, she turned on Daisy a glare of startling malignity and hissed, “I wish you’d never come to Brockdene!”

  Daisy stared after her. In her ears rang the echo of what Jemima had said of Calloway: “I wish he’d never come … I wish he was dead!”

  And Calloway was dead.

  In the young girl’s mind, the present trouble the clergyman had been causing might well have outweighed the possibility of future, ill-understood gain. She was in the habit of wandering the woods at night, spying on her sister. Well-grown, sturdy, she was physically quite capable of driving a knife home into the back of an unsuspecting man.

  Physically … but mentally? Daisy shuddered. Jemima was odd, but surely not so disturbed mentally as to murder a man who was, after all, no worse than a wet blanket.

  No, the Reverend Calloway had posed a threat to no one but Cedric Norville and his family. Cedric must have killed him.

  Daisy stopped at the top of the stairs, which she had climbed mechanically. She remembered her dream. It had seemed so unhelpful: crowds of Mr. Norvilles rowing across the river with knives instead of oars—could it have been a warning rather than her brain’s attempt to solve the mystery? Not that she believed a dream could foretell the future, but perhaps her unconscious mind had put two and two together and tried to tell her that Alec should not embark in a small boat with a murderer.

  A tussle in a boat had begun this whole train of events, a tussle in which both participants had drowned.

  Alec was a good swimmer, Daisy reminded herself. Ernie Piper was with him, and anyway it was too late to stop him. Perhaps, without asking leading questions, she could find out from Felicity enough about Cedric to reassure herself as to Alec’s safety.

  And now Felicity was coming from the lavatory, in an old brown flannel dressing-gown, limping slightly and making an unhappy attempt to smile at Daisy.

  “How are you feeling this morning?”

  “My ankle’s much better, thanks.”

  “I’ve brought you this. No, I’ll carry it to your room. You’re still a bit wobbly.”

  “Thanks, Daisy.”

  Jemima’s camp-bed, neatly turned back to air, took up most of the floor space in the small bedroom. Without waiting to be invited, Daisy perched on the foot of Felicity’s bed. The furniture was good and well cared for, probably the earl’s property and therefore regularly polished by the servants. In contrast, what Daisy could see of the bedding was patched, darned, and sides-to-middled.

  A couple of paperbacked novels lay on the bedside table beside the lamp. On the whitewashed walls hung a couple of paintings obscured by sketches tucked into the frames, views of the exterior of the house. Drawing-pins supported more sketches, of elegant frocks and hats.

  “Did you do those? Are they your own designs? They look rather good to me.”

  “Honestly?”

  “Yes, but I’m no fashion expert. Still, have you ever thought of going into the trade?”

  Felicity shrugged. “There’s no money for training, or to set up in business.”

  “I should think there must be apprenticeships or something similar. My friend Lucy would know. I could ask her, if you like. Though if you’re going to marry the future Earl of Westmoor, I suppose you wouldn’t be interested.”

  “I shan’t be marrying Cedric if he’s hanged for murder!”

  “So you think he might be?”

  “Oh, Daisy, I just don’t know,” Felicity said wretchedly. “I simply can’t imagine him stabbing someone in the back. He’s always seemed such a perfect gentleman, so much so that I’ve often teased him about it.”

  “Any kind of murder isn’t exactly the correct, gentlemanly thing to do,” Daisy pointed out.

  “No, but if—oh, say some rotter was blackmailing his sister, or something like that, Cedric might confront him and shoot him, face to face. Do you see what I mean? There would be something gallant, at least, about risking being hanged for that, not like stabbing an elderly clergyman in the back because he threatened one’s inheritance. No, I can’t believe Ceddie did that!”

  “But you can believe he was there, up at the chapel, on Christmas Eve?” A matter of opinion, so not a leading question, Daisy hoped. She was a bit vague about what exactly constituted a leading question.

  “I wasn’t expecting him. When I saw him on Saturday night, I told him about Calloway and said I didn’t think I’d marry him after all, so he needn’t come the next night. He said he probably wouldn’t have anyway because the weather forecast was for high winds. And on Christmas Eve he couldn’t come, though he wouldn’t tell me why. I thought either he just said it because I’d told him I didn’t want to see him again, or maybe he was going to a party with Bella Sidlow and some of that crowd. He used to be quite keen on Bella, before we met.”

  “I see.”

  “So when he said he’d be there on Christmas night, I said, well, I wouldn’t. But he came then anyway, so he might have come the night before, mightn’t he?”

  Daisy absorbed the gist of this, not bothering to sort out which night was which. “Are you in love with him?” she asked bluntly (a leading question, no doubt, but not directly concerned with the murder).

  “I don’t know!” Felicity wailed. “I want to get away from here, and the only way seems to be to get married, and I don’t meet many men. And after being a poor relation all my life, the prospect of becoming Countess of Westmoor doesn’t exactly disgust me. But how can I tell if that’s what attracts me to Ceddie, or if I’ve found my soul-mate?”

  “Did you really mean it when you told him you wouldn’t marry him because he wasn’t heir to the earldom after all?”

  “I don’t know! I was teasing him, of course, partly. But I wouldn’t even have thought of such a thing if I wasn’t a horrible mercenary person, would I?”

  “It’s something one has to consider,” Daisy said judiciously, “the sort of life the future will hold. It would be—would have been—no good marrying Cedric if you were going to spend the rest of your life resenting the fact that you were still a poor relation, your uncle’s, your father’s, your brother’s. I would have been an ass to marry Alec if I hadn’t been pretty sure I could put up with being a policeman’s wife.”

  “Because you love him. But do I love Ceddie? Enough?” Felicity sighed. “Never mind, it’s all water under the bridge, now. Either he is going to be an earl, in which case I may as well marry him and find out whether I love him, if he still wants to marry me after I was so beastly. Or else he’ll be arrested for murder, and that’s the end of that.”

  “Ye-es. You don’t seem very upset to think
he might be a murderer.”

  “I suppose that really, at the back of my mind, I find it absolutely impossible to believe he killed Calloway. Daisy, your husband wouldn’t make a mistake about it, would he? He wouldn’t arrest Ceddie if he didn’t do it?”

  “Certainly not,” said the loyal wife, wishing she had met Cedric Norville to judge him for herself. Could Felicity’s perfect gentleman actually be an utter rotter who would stab an innocent, if irritating, clergyman in the back? And if so, could Felicity herself be his accomplice, and her talk of confused emotions no more than a smoke-screen?

  All in all, Daisy had learnt nothing to reassure her that Cedric would not attempt to escape justice by drowning the detective who was on his trail.

  14

  The walk down the steep drive to Brockdene Quay revived Cedric. He was almost jaunty as he led Alec and Piper across the cobbles to a small fishing dory moored to the wharf.

  “A bit primitive,” he apologized, as Alec climbed down into the boat, whose accommodation consisted of two rowing benches. “Belongs to a man I know. Hope he didn’t want to go fishin’ this mornin’. I keep a sailin’ dinghy on the river in the summer, but this is actually better for just buzzin’ across now and then.”

  He followed Alec, and held the boat to a ring on the wall with the boathook while Piper cast off and joined them. Alec and Piper squeezed onto one bench. Cedric sat down facing them on the other and pushed off. As he fitted his oars into the rowlocks, it crossed Alec’s mind that with one good swipe of an oar in the middle of the river Cedric might be able to dispose of both his captors at once.

  Piper had quietly possessed himself of the boathook, Alec noted with approval. He himself watched Cedric’s expression, alert for any sign of increasing tension which might prelude an attack.

  The effort of rowing the heavy-laden boat showed, yet the young man’s expression grew more relaxed as they drew out into the stream. The river was still as brown as when Alec had looked down on it yesterday from the site of the murder, but it was less turbulent. There was less debris, too, he thought, sparing a mite of his attention from Cedric’s face.

  The odd branch still floated by, though, including one large enough and close enough for Piper to shove it away with the boathook.

  “Wasn’t it rather dangerous rowing across on your own in the dark last night?” Alec asked.

  “This old tub’s strongly built, and for these waters.” Cedric grinned. “But you’re right, I was probably a bally ass to do it so soon after the storm. Still, when a fellow’s keen on a girl, you know …”

  “Swimming the Hellespont,” said Piper unexpectedly.

  “That’s the ticket,” Cedric agreed with approval, glancing over his shoulder to check his course. “Those old Greeks knew a thing or two. Wasn’t that the one with the hero called Henley?”

  “Leander.” Piper sounded uncertain, whether about his facts or about contradicting a gentleman.

  “I believe the Henley rowing club was named after him,” Alec put in, fascinated by the contrasting results of Piper’s board school and Cedric’s public school education.

  Or was Cedric deliberately trying to appear a fool? “Ah yes, knew it was somethin’ to do with rowin’. So this hero chappy rowed across the Hellespont, whatever that may be but I gather it was a longish trip, to see his girl, who had a funny sort of name, if I’ve got the right one.”

  “Hero,” said Piper.

  “The hero was Leander; we’ve got that straightened out.”

  “And the heroine was Hero,” Piper insisted.

  Cedric stared, rowing rhythmically the while. “No, you don’t say so? Dashed funny name for a girl. I expect you know what the Hellespont was, too, eh?”

  Piper blushed. “It’s part of the Dardanelles, where we fought the Turks. But Leander didn’t row, he swam across.”

  “Well, you jolly well wouldn’t catch me swimmin’ the Tamar in December, even for Miss Norville, especially after a storm. Come to that, I don’t know that I’d have risked rowin’ it on Christmas Eve, right after the gale, even if I’d been able to get away. Which I couldn’t, and now I can tell you why, Mr. Fletcher.”

  “Why you couldn’t get away, and why you couldn’t tell me, and why you can tell me now, I trust?” Alec said dryly.

  “You can blame that dashed brat, Flick’s sister. Little sneak, always listenin’ at doors, Flick says, and tellin’ tales, too. I dare say that’s how you got onto me, isn’t it? I’d swear Flick never told, even if she is givin’ me the boot.”

  “I can’t reveal my sources of information.” An automatic response, not only rather pompous, Alec thought, but in this case futile since Felicity would tell him Jemima had given them away, assuming they got back together. “What did you not care for Jemima to hear?” he asked irritably.

  “It wasn’t so much that I didn’t want Jemima to hear, but she was bound to tell Flick and the rest of the family and I didn’t—don’t want them to know. You’ll keep it under your hat, my dear chap, won’t you? Oh, hold on a mo’. Here we are. Grab that rope, would you, old man?”

  As he shipped his oars, Piper grabbed the rope. It was tied to a stake stuck in the river bed on the edge of the reeds. A narrow channel cut through the shoulder-high reeds, which rustled and creaked in the breeze. Pulling on the rope, Cedric hauled the boat along the channel until they came to a rickety wooden landing stage.

  Cautiously, Alec stepped out and moved quickly onto firm ground. At the end of his patience, he turned and asked, “Just what do you want me to keep under my hat, Mr. Norville?”

  “Where I was on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, of course,” said Cedric, surprised. “Where we all were, come to that. All the family. It would hurt Flick to know because she and her family weren’t invited. Never are.”

  “Invited where?” Alec bellowed. The sight of Piper suppressing a snicker did not improve his temper.

  Piper also whipped out his note-book and one of the well-sharpened pencils always present in his breast pocket. He apparently believed the moment of revelation was at last at hand.

  “To Tavy Bridge.” Cedric straightened after securing the painter. “My uncle’s place. Or, at least, not really my uncle of course. He’s my second cousin once removed, or somethin’ of the sort, don’t you know. Lord Westmoor. We go every Christmas, and stay the night on Christmas Eve. It’s over beyond Tavistock, on the edge of Dartmoor. Too far to stroll back in the hopes of seein’ Flick, who wasn’t expectin’ me, even if I could have sneaked out amid all the song and dance and general merry-makin’. Which I couldn’t. And didn’t,” he ended on a triumphant note.

  Alec groaned, foreseeing the possibility of having to send someone to Tavy Bridge to check Cedric’s alibi.

  “I say, now that I’ve told you, you don’t need to talk to the parents, do you? Never fear, I’ll row you back across.” He crouched to untie the painter again.

  “Not so fast! I most certainly must see Mr. and Mrs. Norville, and anyone else who went with you to Lord Westmoor’s.”

  “Dash it, can’t you accept a man’s word … ? No, I suppose you can’t. But there’s no need to tell them why you’re askin’, is there?”

  Alec considered, keeping Cedric on tenterhooks for a change. “No, for my purposes it’s probably better if they don’t know exactly what’s going on. You want to keep them in the dark?”

  “No point upsettin’ the old dears over Flick and me if she’s not goin’ to marry me.”

  “If I don’t explain why I want to know about your movements, they’ll surely ask you.”

  “True,” Cedric said gloomily. “Oh well, I expect I’ll think up something to tell them that doesn’t bring her into it, without actually lyin’, of course. Righty-ho, let’s get on with it. If ’twere done when ’twere done, then ’twere well ’twere done quickly, or words to that effect. All those ’tweres, but he had it dead to rights often as not, old Shakespeare, didn’t he? Dashed clever chap. Like the Greeks.”

  On
that cheerful thought, Cedric set out to conduct Alec and Piper across a soggy meadow towards the lane which led to his home. He seemed very sure of himself. Alec sighed. “Too far” was a relative term in these days of motor cars and motor-bicycles. Proving—or disproving—the young man’s alibi was liable to be a hell of a job.

  Leaving Felicity distastefully sipping her now cold tea, Daisy paused on the landing. She wanted to go and look for Sergeant Tring, a great friend of hers. He would tell her not to worry, Alec knew how to look after himself. Or if there really was good reason to worry, he’d do something about it.

  No, if there was any danger, Tom wouldn’t have let Alec go off without him. Besides, he must be in the middle of interviewing the servants; an interruption could throw him off his stride. What Daisy ought to do next was check the whereabouts of Belinda and Derek. Obsessed as they were with secret drawers and passages, they might be pestering Godfrey, who had left the breakfast table in no mood to be troubled by children.

  Daisy headed for the old house, through the dining room. Dora had left and Miles had joined his uncle. The two men were so deep in earnest conversation that they didn’t notice Daisy’s arrival until she shut the door behind her. Then they looked up, both with glum expressions, and gave her strained smiles. She wished she’d heard what they were discussing so unhappily. Or rather, what they were saying about it, for the subject was surely the murder.

  “Good morning, Daisy,” said Miles, beginning to stand.

  “Good morning. Don’t get up. I’m just passing through, looking for the children. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

  “Not at all. Won’t you sit down a minute and have another cup of coffee? Uncle Vic says you went to talk to my sister.”

  Though she sat down, Daisy said firmly, “I can’t tell you what Felicity said.”