Styx and Stones

by Carola Dunn

  Belinda stood by the table, dressed in shorts and a yellow, short-sleeved shirt. She turned as Daisy came in.

  “There’s this for you,” she said, handing over a folded sheet with “Miss Dalrymple” neatly printed on the outside. Daisy opened it and saw that the butler had taken a telephone message from Lucy. “But not one from Daddy,” Bel continued. “He promised he’d write. D’you think it could have got into Uncle John’s pile? I didn’t like to look.”

  “We only left town yesterday! Still, I’ll sneak a quick peek. You were quite right not to.” But it gave Daisy a perfect excuse for checking Johnnie’s post. She riffled through the envelopes: blue, buff, white—but not cheap white addressed in capitals in pencil, nor anything in Alec’s neat hand. Doubly disappointed, she straightened the pile. “No, I expect there will be one tomorrow, darling. You look very nice in those shorts. Where’s Derek?”

  “He went upstairs to get his pea-shooter. He said he’d let me have a go with it, but it’s hidden in a secret place he doesn’t want me to know so I waited here. Here he comes.”

  The last words were unnecessary, as Derek and Tinker Bell thundered across the landing and down the stairs. They swept up Belinda in their passing and disappeared through the front door.

  Daisy started reading the lengthy message from Lucy as she headed for the terrace. There she found her sister talking to a youngish, muscular gentleman in a natty heather-mixture tweed suit. He rose at the sound of her footsteps.

  “Daisy, I don’t think you’ve met Dr. Padgett. He kindly drops in once a week to make sure I’m behaving myself. My sister, Daisy Dalrymple, Doctor.”

  “How do you do, Dr. Padgett.” Daisy liked the look of his open face and charming smile. “I hope Violet obeys your orders.”

  “Oh yes, Lady John is an excellent patient—not really a patient at all, she’s so healthy. I’m here under false pretences. My wife goes up to town every Tuesday, and as I generally have time to spare between my rounds, I’m free to cadge a good meal where I may.”

  Daisy laughed.

  “No joke,” he said with a comic grimace. “It’s Cook’s day off.”

  “Dr. Padgett will lunch with us, Daisy,” said Violet, smiling. “Since he has that prospect of your company, I don’t suppose he’ll mind if you read your note. Since Lucy telephoned, I expect it’s important.”

  “If you’ll excuse me,” Daisy said apologetically. “It’s a message from my American editor.”

  “Editor?” queried the doctor in surprise. “You write, Miss Dalrymple?”

  “As a way to pay the bills, it’s more fun than digging ditches.”

  “You mean you work for a living?” His tone was disapproving.

  Daisy suppressed a sigh. “I do. So if you don’t mind, in case it’s urgent …” She moved away to lean against the stone balustrade, her back to the terrace, and finished reading the note. It reported the lengthy text of a telegram from Mr. Thorwald, which Lucy had forwarded by telephone. “Oh bother!”

  “What is it, Daisy?”

  “He wants a potted biography of the Duke of Gloucester to go with my article about the Henley regatta. I told you I met him there.”

  “You met Prince Henry?” Dr. Padgett was all agog.

  “Yes, but all I know about him is that he’s a soldier. Mr. Thorwald wants a bit more than that, and he wants me to telegraph it! At least he says he’ll pay for the cable. But I’ll have to do some telephoning, Vi.”

  “After lunch,” said Violet firmly. “An hour won’t make any odds. Sit down and relax, darling.”

  Daisy obeyed, but after lunch she went back out to the terrace with them only to collect a cup of coffee to take to the library with her. Derek and Belinda were outside already, playing a quiet game of draughts after their nursery meal, Tinker Bell sprawled at their feet, while Peter took his nap upstairs.

  Tinker came to greet the new arrivals, bestowing lavish licks on Vi’s and Daisy’s hands. Daisy noticed that the doctor hastily put his hands behind his back when the dog approached him, perhaps from motives of hygiene; but she thought he looked as if he didn’t much like dogs. Another flaw in the charm!

  At the telephone in the library, when Mrs. Burden’s daughter came on the line, Daisy asked for her own Chelsea number. Lucy, the granddaughter of an earl, was far more mindful than Daisy of her aristocratic background, though she too worked for her living. If she was in, she could probably produce enough information about His Royal Highness to fill the necessary three or four paragraphs.

  The trunk connection went through unusually quickly, and Lucy’s clear soprano voice said, “Hello?”

  “Darling, it’s me, Daisy.”

  “Darling! You got the message? Oh, by the way, your copper rang up not half an hour ago.”

  “Alec ’phoned you? What’s wrong?” Daisy asked in alarm.

  “He’d mislaid a shirt-stud and wondered if he’d lost it here. I searched your room, and lo and behold …”

  “Alec never set foot in my room!” Daisy said vehemently.

  “Keep your hair on, darling,” came Lucy’s amused drawl. “Your study, not your bedroom. Still, one can’t help wondering just what was going on to loosen a shirt-stud.” She paused invitingly.

  “Nothing! There’s no room in my study for anything to ‘go on.’ Never mind that, Lucy, I don’t want to run up Johnnie’s telephone bill for nothing. Tell me, what do you know about the Duke of Gloucester?”

  As expected, Lucy had loads of information at her fingertips. Daisy scribbled notes in her own idiosyncratic version of Pitman’s shorthand.

  “Thanks, darling, that’s plenty. I’m not writing a book on the subject, thank heaven.”

  “Just as well. He’s too young and—dare I say it?—dull for a biography. Lèse majesté!

  “I shan’t report it. Toodle-oo, then, Lucy.”

  “Pip pip, darling. Oh, I nearly forgot, Alec mentioned he was going to ’phone you this evening.”

  “Spiffing!” said Daisy, and hung up the earpiece. She sat for a moment in happy contemplation of talking to Alec this evening. It was amazing how much she missed him just because he was sixty miles away, though she very likely would not see him if she were in London. A Metropolitan Police detective’s hours were irregular, to put it mildly.

  She went up to her room to turn her notes into a couple of print-worthy paragraphs, using the portable typewriter now on semipermanent loan from her English editor. Then she went to see if Belinda and Derek wanted to walk down to the shop with her to send the telegram. She didn’t want to risk ’phoning in such a long cable, in case something got mixed up or omitted even before its transatlantic transit.

  The children, with dog, had gone off to dam the stream. “Because,” Violet explained, “now that Belinda has shorts which it doesn’t matter if she gets dirty, they might as well make sure they’re not wasted.”

  “So says Derek?” Daisy laughed. “I’m off to the Post Office, and I may not be back till after my tea at the Vicarage, depending.”

  “I was just about to leave,” said Dr. Padgett. “May I offer you a lift, Miss Dalrymple? It’s hot for walking.”

  Daisy accepted. They went through the house to the carriage sweep at the front, where his dark blue Humber was parked off to one side in the shade of a sycamore. Not an economy motor-car; his practice must be doing well.

  “Shall I put the hood down?” the doctor asked, opening the door for Daisy. “It won’t take a minute. I was driving along dusty country lanes this morning, but just motoring down to the village, you shouldn’t get too blown about for Vicarage tea.”

  “Yes, please,” said Daisy. “I’ll move your bag to the back seat, shall I?”

  “Sorry, forgot it was there. Yes, just bung it over—gently, please!”

  The black medical bag had been holding down a sheaf of papers. As Daisy scooped them up to deposit them in the back, a couple of envelopes slipped out. One looked unpleasantly familiar. With a shock of recognition, Daisy star
ed at the pencilled words: DR R S PADGETT, OLD WELL HOUSE, ROTHERDEN, KENT.

  Her first impulse was to tax him with it. Reaching for it, she had actually opened her mouth to speak when a second thought struck.

  What had the doctor done to make himself a target?

  A medical man was in a peculiarly sensitive position. The least whiff of scandal might send patients fleeing in droves. A botched diagnosis, a wrongly dispensed prescription, even a rumour of an affair with a patient could destroy his livelihood. Faced with ruin, Dr. Padgett would not take kindly to Daisy’s discovery that he was the victim of a Poison Pen.

  Maybe it was worse than an affair or a fatal mistake. Perhaps he had performed an illegal abortion; perhaps some grateful old lady who had left him money had died under mysterious circumstances. Doctors had undetectable ways to bump people off. In that innocent black bag …

  The hood folded back, exposing Daisy to Dr. Padgett’s view. Hastily she shoved the tell-tale envelope in among the rest of the papers and tucked the sheaf under the black bag on the back seat.

  Had he seen her staring at it? Surely only a few seconds had passed while he unfastened the hood at the front.

  “There, at least we’ll have some air,” he said with his personable smile.

  Silently Hamlet reminded her, “One may smile, and smile, and be a villain.”

  “I can’t remember when we last had such a hot summer,” she said as he sat down beside her and pressed the self-starter. Nervously anxious to distract him from her nervous anxiety, she seized the first topic that came to mind. “Violet’s finding the heat rather trying, I think. Is she really as healthy as a horse? Johnnie seems a bit over solicitous. I have friends who dance and play tennis, everything but ride.”

  “Lady John has had two miscarriages since Peter’s birth.”

  “Oh, poor Vi! I didn’t know.”

  “And I ought not to have told you, but I didn’t want you to be urging her to exert herself. I hope you won’t give me away.”

  “I shouldn’t dream of it,” Daisy said with fervour.

  6

  Cabling the article to Mr. Thorwald took some time. Mrs. Burden practically bent over backwards to be helpful, but she got flustered when she couldn’t lay her hands on the transatlantic telegraph rates.

  “I’m so sorry, Miss Dalrymple,” she said, scrabbling frantically through the drawer. “We don’t get much call for them—I I don’t know that I’ve ever been asked before—but I know it’s in here somewhere.”

  Daisy hadn’t the heart to upset her further by trying to extract more information about the anonymous letters. Besides, she hadn’t yet come up with an indirect way to find out who had received them, let alone whether the postmistress herself was a victim. A direct question was hardly likely to get a useful response, and it would give away Daisy’s interest, which might be disastrous if Mrs. Burden was in fact the writer.

  It was madly frustrating not being able to question people. Alec, or Sergeant Tring, would wring the truth from her in no time, Daisy was sure. Even the village bobby could demand answers. But no one had reported the epistolary persecution to the police. Apparently all the victims were as reluctant to risk seeing their secrets revealed as were Johnnie and Mrs. LeBeau.

  Which suggested that they all had secrets. The Poison Pen was not spraying venom more or less at random, but injecting it into carefully chosen subjects. Someone had an excellent source of information—though out of date in Johnnie’s case.

  Wasn’t it?

  “Oh, here it is,” said Mrs. Burden in relief, disinterring a sheet of paper from a cache tucked away behind her parcel scales. “It won’t take a moment now, Miss Dalrymple. I’ll be with you in just a minute, Miss Hendricks.”

  While she searched and Daisy ruminated, several customers had come into the shop. Winifred Burden had slouched through from the exchange to wait on the first, someone’s cook-maid with a long list. A pale, thin woman in a badly tailored bottle-green costume stood by the counter, clutching her purse.

  From the far side of the shop came an irate voice: “I’m next!” A well-dressed, hard-faced woman surged forward. “I’ve been waiting for ages. I can’t think why you don’t hire a girl to help, Mrs. Burden. I’m sure you can afford it, the prices you charge.”

  Mrs. Burden quailed, burying her nose in the rate list.

  “Village shops have to charge more than town shops,” the fourth customer intervened pacifically. A stout woman with several chins and a lovely pink and white complexion, she had large, rather cow-like brown eyes, with an un-cow-like twinkle. Her frock was a cotton crepe tent in a cheerful cherry and white stripe, obviously designed for comfort. “They pay extra carriage, Mrs. Willoughby-Jones,” she continued in her deep voice, “besides having fewer customers to rely on.”

  “Nonsense, Mrs. Molesworth, it’s sheer thievery,” snapped Mrs. Willoughby-Jones. “I don’t know why I put up with it.”

  “Because Mr. Willoughby-Jones drives your motor-car to his office, and Mrs. Burden’s shop is much more convenient than taking the ‘bus into Ashford.” Mrs. Molesworth smiled warmly at the cringing shopkeeper. “I don’t know how we’d manage without her.”

  “I wish I had a motor-car,” Miss Hendricks complained in a discontented voice, “but of course I could never afford to employ a chauffeur.”

  “If you can afford to buy a motor-car, learn to drive it yourself,” Mrs. Molesworth suggested genially.

  “Oh, I couldn’t! And you’re right, I can’t afford to buy one anyway.”

  “Buy a bicycle.”

  “I’m afraid I’m not strong enough,” Miss Hendricks sighed.

  “Don’t be so feeble,” Mrs. Willoughby-Jones exhorted her.

  Miss Hendricks bridled, her pale cheeks flushing. “I assure you, Mrs. Willoughby-Jones, I deeply regret my frail constitution and envy those who enjoy robust health.”

  “Nonsense! It’s all in your mind, and if you would just …”

  “I can help you now, madam,” Mrs. Burden intervened, having completed Daisy’s business and gone round to the shop counter.

  “About time too!” Mrs. Willoughby-Jones declared.

  Lingering by the Post Office counter, Daisy pretended to read an official notice about the air-mail service to Paris. How long before air-mail to America became commonplace? she wondered idly, but her attention was on the muted voices behind her.

  “I’m sure I was here first,” Miss Hendricks muttered to Mrs. Molesworth. “I’m not one to complain, but no one ever pays any attention to me. I must say, Mrs. Willoughby-Jones was positively rude!”

  “To me as well,” Mrs. Molesworth soothed her. “It’s best to pay no attention to her.”

  “I do believe she deliberately tries to pick quarrels.”

  “Anything for a little excitement. Think how boring her life must be, married to a dull dog like Willoughby-Jones.”

  “My life is dull, too,” Miss Hendricks said with some heat, “but I don’t go about starting fights.”

  Mrs. Molesworth’s laugh rumbled out. “No, thank heaven.”

  “One day she will pick on someone who strikes back. I think someone should ask Mr. Osborne to have a word with her.”

  “Poor Vicar! I’m afraid he probably spends a great deal of time listening to his parishioners complain about each other.”

  “Well, if that’s how you feel,” said Miss Hendricks, her tone offended, “I’m sorry I spoke, I’m sure.”

  Daisy turned, to see Mrs. Molesworth shaking her head in regret as Miss Hendricks moved away with her nose in the air. Excusing herself with a smile, Daisy threaded her way between the fat woman and a pyramid of tinned soup.

  Two more possible villains, she thought as she left the shop. Mrs. Molesworth, “come down in the world” or not, was far too good-natured to be the Poison Pen. However, Miss Hendricks was the sort of frustrated spinster Johnnie had automatically suspected, while Mrs. Willoughby-Jones might have written the letters just to stir up a bit of ex
citement. She would very likely have signed them, though, not being shy of insulting people to their faces.

  Two more female suspects. Too, too maddening if Johnnie proved right! Daisy decided to go and see Mr. Paramount.

  While she was in the shop, the pleasant afternoon breeze had strengthened to a gusty wind, raising swirls of dust from the village street. Between gusts, the air felt muggier than ever. A thin haze of cloud dulled the blue of the sky.

  “Arternoon, miss,” said one of two women with string bags who stood chatting near the door, stepping aside with a friendly nod to let Daisy pass. “Rain by termorrer, I shouldn’t wonder, and we can do with it.”

  Daisy recognized an Oakhurst maid who had married and left service. “Good afternoon,” she responded with a smile. “I just hope it holds off till I get back to the house.”

  “Not to worry, miss.” Turning back to her older companion as Daisy walked on, she asked, “Now what was you saying, Mrs. Basin, about your Sam?”

  “Got a letter, he did, made him mad as hops without he even opened it. Di’n’t look like a bill, neither, but I dunno …”

  Moving—regretfully—out of earshot, Daisy wondered if Sam Basin was another victim. What had he done to attract the malice of the Poison Pen? Derek said he worked at a garage in Ashford and rode a motor-bicycle. Dangerous driving, perhaps, though if he made a habit of it, it would be no secret.

  For the present she dismissed young Basin from her mind, to concentrate on inventing an excuse to speak to Mr. Paramount. An invitation to lunch at the big house would do. In the extremely unlikely event of his accepting, Vi would not leave Daisy in the lurch by denying it.

  The lodge’s blue front door boasted a knocker in the form of a black cast-iron oak tree. Daisy rapped twice and listened for footsteps.

  Silence within. She raised her hand to bang again. Before she touched the knocker, the door swung open.