by Carola Dunn
“I hope you slept better than I did,” she said, unloading the teapot, cup and saucer, and milk jug onto the bedside table while Daisy sat up.
“Well, I managed to get a lot of work done in the middle of the night.”
“You’re going on with the article, then? After . . . everything?”
“Yes, if you don’t mind. It’s only going to be published in America, and not for months. Of course I shan’t mention . . . anything.”
“No, of course, that’s all right. I don’t suppose Jack will care. I’m sorry you didn’t get much sleep. It’s important for the baby that you get enough rest, isn’t it?”
“Oh, once I’d got my ideas sorted out on paper, I slept quite soundly. I didn’t hear Alec get up.”
“I gather he and his men had breakfast an hour and a half ago. Shall I pour?”
“Would you, please?” Daisy took the cover off the plate on the tray Gwen had settled on her knees. “Mmm, this looks good. I’m famished, as always. At least I have an excuse these days. Do sit down. Would you like a piece of toast?”
“No, thanks.” Gwen perched at the foot of the bed. “Everything is so awful, I have absolutely no appetite.”
“I must seem heartless, eating.”
“Oh no, it’s not your family that’s in trouble. At least Martin is staying on. But I can’t even be glad about that, because it must mean your husband suspects him.”
“Not necessarily. He’s a witness, after all. Here, do eat a bit of toast. You won’t feel half so dire with something in your tum.”
Gwen took the buttered toast and nibbled at it without enthusiasm. “I suppose the police have to suspect everyone. I can’t see how it can be anyone but Mr. Gooch, though goodness knows why. If only we knew why Father invited Mrs. Gooch up to his study! They must have known each other before, don’t you think? Before she went to Australia?”
“I can’t think of any other way to explain it, though Alec’s always ragging me for speculating wildly. What’s more, I think that’s the only reason the Gooches came to Didmarsh.”
“Because she wanted to see him?”
“Yes. Gooch didn’t seem very keen on the whole enterprise.”
“More as if he didn’t want to come up to the house at all, and only agreed to please her. But I liked him, didn’t you?”
“He seemed a nice chap,” Daisy agreed, only too conscious of Alec’s repeated reminders that her liking a person did not mean said person was innocent—which applied to the Tyndalls as well as to Mr. Gooch.
After Gooch identified his wife’s body, Ernie Piper had to give him a hand down the stairs from the study. He moved like an old man.
Sinking onto the chair Alec placed for him, he muttered, “We should never’ve come! What’m I going to tell the boys?” He seemed unaware that he was speaking aloud, repeating, “What’m I going to tell the boys?” Elbows on the table, he buried his face in his hands.
“Brandy,” Alec told Piper in an undertone, and the DC slipped out through the door to the passage.
From above came bumps and thumps. As soon as Gooch was out of the way, the mortuary men had gone in from the upstairs corridor to remove the bodies. Raising his voice, Alec asked, “Why did you come, sir?”
Gooch lifted his head but he stared blankly ahead, not looking at Alec. “A holiday, that’s bloody all. ‘Let’s go home,’ she said. ‘It’ll be fun showing you the old country, and boarding for a term won’t hurt the boys.’ Oh my word, how’m I going to tell them their mum’s dead?”
“It was Mrs. Gooch’s idea to come to England?”
“ ’Sright. I’d never have thought of it for meself, being Orstrilian-born and -bred. But we’re not short a quid, which is her doing as much as mine, and I thought, if that’s what she wants, good-oh. I’d’ve done anything for Ellie.”
To Alec, the man’s shock and grief appeared perfectly genuine. He loved his wife and had come to England to please her. However, husbands who murdered their wives in a fit of passion often bitterly regretted the deed. Sometimes they simply regretted the loss of the woman they loved, sometimes what they perceived as the necessity of killing her.
Piper returned with a bottle and glass. Gooch was more collected now, but Alec poured an inch of brandy and leant across the table to put it beside him. Gooch took a sip, then pushed it away.
“I’m orright. So, what happened up there?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out, Mr. Gooch. I’m sorry to trouble you with questions at such a time, but that’s my job. You say you came to England for a holiday. What brought you to Didmarsh-under-Edge?”
“We was coming this direction anyhow. Ellie’s from this part of England. She never kept up with her family in Evesham—her dad was a right wowser—but she wanted to go see if any of ’em’s still around. After London, we wanted a coupla days to catch our breath before we went to see would he put down his hymnbook long enough to be glad to see her. She’d heard about the fireworks show here when she was a kid. She thought it’d be fun. Fun!” he said bitterly.
His explanation sounded rehearsed. Nonetheless, it rang true, especially the bit about the father who was a “wowser”—puritan? The truth, but not the whole truth, Alec decided. This was what Gooch and his wife had decided to tell anyone who enquired.
Gooch’s mouth was set in a determined line, the man who had made his fortune in the rough, tough gold fields coming to the fore. Getting the rest from him would be no picnic.
“Tell me about your meeting with the Tyndalls at the Three Ravens.”
“Nothing to it. I bumped into the lad at the bar. He invited me and the missus to join him and his friends, and we chatted for a while. Turned out three of ’em had walked down, so I gave ’em a lift home. We hired a Vauxhall, me and Ellie, a beaut, comfy and plenty of room, seeing we was touring. Ellie . . .” He picked up the glass at his elbow and gulped down the brandy. “Strewth, I can’t believe she’s gone!”
“Who first mentioned the possibility of you and Mrs. Gooch coming up to the house for the party?”
“The boy. Young Jack. I didn’t like it, and I could see Miss Tyndall and Miss Gwen weren’t too happy, but Ellie accepted and it weren’t no sense them or me making a fuss.”
“Why didn’t you like the idea?”
Gooch’s lips pressed together, curbing his instinctive response. After a moment, he said, “The ladies didn’t like it, him inviting strangers with the wrong accents, so it seemed like a crook idea to me. And it was a crook idea. Look what came of it!”
Alec decided to move on. “All right, tell me about last night. You drove up from the village?”
“I can’t talk about last night!” Gooch choked out. “Not yet!” Abruptly he pushed back his chair, seized his hat, and rushed out by the French doors.
“Reckon it’s a good job we’ve got his passport, Chief,” said Piper.
When Daisy went downstairs, Gwen was in the hall conferring with the housekeeper. She broke off to say, “Daisy, I’ll be with you in half a tick.”
“That’s all right. I want to take another look at the lie of the land now I’ve seen the whole show.”
“Jack and Martin are down below, dismantling the framework. They both felt in need of something physical to do. Babs went off to the estate office as usual. I think it helps to keep busy. Poor Mother’s in no state to come down, though. She’s always knocked up after a party, and with everything else as well . . . I expect Addie will arrive at any moment. Thank heaven she’s a late riser.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’m sure you’ve lots to do in the house.”
“Well, Sergeant Tring’s been talking to the maids, which has set us back a bit. Alec’s interviewing Mr. Gooch in the billiard room.”
“I’ll just stay out of your way, Gwen.”
Daisy went out to the terrace and looked down at Jack and Miller on the bottom terrace. They were obviously talking as they worked, but she couldn’t hear their voices, let alone what they were sayin
g. She wondered whether they were discussing murder or carefully avoiding the subject.
She might learn something useful if she joined them. However, the steps looked even longer and steeper today than they had yesterday. It was too cold to stand about outside. If she went in, Gwen would feel obligated to entertain her. Besides, gentle exercise was supposed to be good for her. She decided to walk along the drive, which was fairly level.
Turning the corner of the house, she saw the Gooches’ dark blue Vauxhall parked in the cobbled forecourt. Beside it was a plain black van. The mortuary people? she wondered with a shudder, and hurried past.
Who had shot Mrs. Gooch and Sir Harold? And why?
Alec might know by now, but Daisy decided to put her mind to going through all the obvious suspects one by one.
Husbands and wives were always top of the list. Maybe Mr. Gooch had a reason for killing his wife, though they had seemed so fond of each other. Lady Tyndall certainly had suffered years of bullying, which might have driven her to violence, though she had seemed to bear Sir Harold’s temper with equanimity. Daisy simply couldn’t believe either of them would bump off the other’s spouse just to get rid of their own.
As for jealousy as a motive, Daisy dismissed it. Sir Harold might have overlooked Mrs. Gooch’s common accent had she been twenty years younger, or a fashionable matron with a come-hither look in her eye. She was neither. Even if they had once had an affair, perhaps loved each other, that was at least twenty years in the past. Besides, the baronet had looked appalled when he saw the Gooches, not at all in the mood to indulge in a romantic tryst half an hour later while swarms of guests enjoyed the celebration that was his pride and joy.
What about Sir Harold’s children? Daisy remembered Gwen mentioning another row, yesterday afternoon, about Jack’s duty to family tradition. She had assumed it was much the same as the squabbles she had heard earlier, but it could have taken a more serious turn. Suppose Sir Harold had threatened to—
“Daisy!” Babs waved from the farmyard on the downward slope. Dressed in breeches and boots, she came striding up the short cart track which merged with the drive, so Daisy stopped to wait for her. “Do you mind if I walk with you?”
“Not at all.”
Babs moderated her stride to Daisy’s more sedate pace. “I suppose your husband couldn’t have made a mistake about what happened?” she said in her abrupt way. “I mean, is it really impossible that Father shot the woman, whether on purpose or by accident, and then himself?”
“Alec wouldn’t say Sir Harold could not have shot himself if he weren’t absolutely sure.”
“Pity. It would have been so much tidier. We must all be under suspicion, I suppose.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Especially since Father was burbling about changing his will. He’d never have done it. Jack is—was his blue-eyed boy, and in any case he was far too attached to the line of succession. Besides, I’m sure he believed this aeronautical business was the whim of a moment, a substitute for youthful wild oats. But I admit it doesn’t look good.”
“For Jack, in particular.”
“And for me. Assuming he’d made Reggie his heir—the only alternative I can think of—Addie would have moved back to the Manor like a shot. I can tell you, I couldn’t have stood it for long. I’d have had a hard time finding a job. Father wasn’t the only one to doubt a woman’s ability to run an estate.”
Daisy made sympathetic noises.
“But even if there’d been any likelihood of his going through with it, none of us had the slightest motive for doing in Mrs. Gooch. We only met her on Tuesday. It must have been Gooch, don’t you—Watch out, there’s a car coming.”
The belt of yews by the gatehouse was just ahead. Babs took Daisy’s arm and pulled her to the side of the drive as she glanced back and saw Gooch’s blue tourer rushing towards them. A hundred yards behind it was the black mortuary van, following at a properly funereal speed.
“The fool’s driving much too fast,” Babs snapped. “There’s that sharp turn into the lane. I hope he has good brakes.”
The Vauxhall passed them. At the wheel, Gooch looked distraught, but he began to slow down. And then from the trees a rocket whooshed across in front of the car, trailing blue and green stars and erupting in a fusillade of pops and bangs. The car slewed off the road. With a horrid screech of metal, its left front wing crumpled against the gatepost and it came to rest tilted in the ditch.
Gooch was thrown half out of the driver’s side window. When Babs and Daisy reached him, he hung inert, his face a mask of blood.
14
Black as a carrion crow, the mortuary van drew up beside the wrecked car.
“Blimey,” said the white-coated driver, climbing out. “What the bloody hell were that? Looked like something out of The War of the Worlds!”
“You read too much of that rubbidge. It were a flipping Guy Fawkes rocket, idjit,” said his mate, jumping down from the other side. “You better hop it, ladies, afore the motor goes up in flames. We’ll get the poor chap out.”
Distantly, as the world whirled before her eyes, Daisy heard Babs asking the men if they knew what they were doing. Willing herself not to faint—not for nothing had she chosen to work in the military hospital’s office during the War rather than volunteering as a nurse with the VAD—she clambered out of the ditch.
Babs scrambled up beside her, looking over her shoulder. “They claim to be hospital porters and St. John’s Ambulance men.” She glanced at Daisy. “Oh Lord, you’re pale as whey. Sit down, for heaven’s sake, and put your head between your knees.”
“I’m all right,” said Daisy, but she lowered herself to the ground, facing away from the accident. The others didn’t need a second emergency on their hands. “He’s not dead, is he?”
“I don’t think so. I hope not! If he is, the police may never find out what happened and we’ll all be suspected forever. They’ll have to bring him back to the house. The nearest nursing home is half an hour’s drive—three-quarters going carefully as they’d need to. I wonder if there’s a spare stretcher in the van.” She went to the back doors and reached for the handle, then shuddered and let her hand drop. “I can’t!”
Daisy’s mind was working again. “Babs, you’d better get to the house and ring up for a doctor. You’ll go quicker than I could.”
“Yes.” She stood for an indecisive moment before saying fiercely, “So help me, I’ll scalp those boys!” and setting off towards the manor at a swinging lope.
Refraining from looking behind her, Daisy levered herself off the cold ground and approached the back of the van. The doors opened easily. Inside were two stretchers covered with white sheets and strapped down. The poles and canvas of a third stretcher lay on the floor between them. She hauled them out.
By that time, the men had carried Gooch up to the drive. Gently, they laid him down on the chalky surface and started to put the stretcher together.
“Bashed his forrid,” one told Daisy, who was taking care not to look at the injured man’s face. “Broke an arm and a leg, and likely there’s other injuries we can’t see—ribs, I ’spect, for one. But he ain’t bust his neck, far as we can tell, and he ain’t lost much blood. He may pull through. You never know.”
“Miss Tyndall said to take him to the house. She’s gone to telephone for a—”
The sound of a motor-car engine straining up the hill came to their ears. A runabout turned in at the gate and came to a sudden halt. Daisy recognized the youngish man who bounded out, black bag in hand.
“Dr. Prentice! But Babs only just—”
“Mrs. Fletcher!” He glanced at her abdominal bulge. “Go and sit in my car, please.” He was already on his knees beside the injured man.
“Miss Tyndall said to take him to the house,” she repeated before, not too reluctantly, she obeyed.
Peering through the dusty windscreen, she watched the doctor examining Gooch. She was far enough away not to see the details. He sa
id something to the van driver, who shook his head. The two men went to the back of the van, and a moment later, one of the murder victims was lifted out and set unceremoniously by the side of the road. The other followed.
Daisy assumed they were making space inside for Gooch, and possibly for Dr. Prentice to travel with him. She hoped she was not going to be left to stand watch over the bodies.
Behind her a motor-horn blared. A huge gleaming silver Lanchester had stopped half through the gateway, bumper-to-bumper with the doctor’s little car. A uniformed chauffeur climbed out and came round to Daisy’s side of the car.
His gaze turning from the crashed Vauxhall to the scene on the drive ahead, he raised his cap and said, “Mr. Dryden-Jones’s compliments, madam, and what seems to be the trouble?”
Dryden-Jones? . . . Oh, Struwwelpeter, the fiery Lord Lieutenant of Gloucestershire. The last person Alec needed poking his nose into the investigation! Glancing back, she saw his head bobbing about in the back of the Lanchester, ginger hair sticking out on both sides from under his trilby.
“Everything is under control, thank you,” she said, “but it’s going to be some time before the way is cleared. Please convey my thanks to Mr. Dryden-Jones—I’m Mrs. Fletcher—and tell him I hardly think it will be worth his while to wait.”
“Very good, madam.”
The chauffeur looked as if he doubted his employer would be so easily diverted, but he bowed slightly and turned to go. At that moment came a polite toot from beyond the gates. The rear of the Lan-chester must be blocking the narrow lane, Daisy supposed.
Then above the wall rose a tweed motoring cap, followed by a narrow head adorned with white side-whiskers. “I say, Dryden-Jones, what the deuce do you mean by—By Jove!”
Sir Nigel Wookleigh disappeared momentarily as he stepped down from his motor-car. His hat reappeared, bobbing along, and then the whole of him, striding through the gateway.
“Don’t sit there, man, like a stuffed orangutan. Come along and lend a hand! By Jove, Mrs. Fletcher! What’s to do?”