by Carola Dunn
She should have tried to keep him talking until Alec arrived, and then hidden in a corner to listen while they brought each other up to date.
THIRTY-TWO
During Daisy’s absence from the kitchen, Myra had retrieved a large vegetable marrow from the larder and put it on the draining board. She was contemplating it with an apprehensive air.
“It won’t take much washing,” she explained, “and it’s easy to cut up, and I know Aunt Ruby just puts it in a big pan with some butter and salt and pepper, but I don’t know how long to cook it.”
“If it’s done too soon, we’ll put it in the warming oven to stay hot. But shouldn’t it be peeled?”
“Oh yes, I forgot. But I’ve done that before. If it’s cut in slices first, it’s not difficult.” She looked wistfully at her fingernails.
“Did Walter desert you?”
“Yes. He said he didn’t know anything about cookery and we’d do better with him out of our way. Which is true. Even Simon isn’t quite as useless. Besides, I hardly know anything about cookery, either. Are we going to have the ham hot or cold?”
“Cold,” Daisy said. “And your uncle Norman can carve it.”
“Did Uncle Norman ever come home for lunch?”
“No, apparently today is Quarter Day, Michaelmas, and he went off collecting rents from the other farms.”
“Is it?” Myra said, surprised. “I didn’t realise. I’d lost track of the date.”
“So had I. Now do concentrate on dinner. Cold ham, that’s easy—”
“Doesn’t it have to be boiled first?”
“Does it?”
“It certainly does.” Ruby’s voice made them both jump. “It’s salted not smoked. Mrs. Fletcher, it’s very kind of you to be willing to help Myra, but I shouldn’t dream of expecting a guest to do the cooking.”
“Aunt Ruby! Are you feeling better?”
“Not exactly.” She smiled wryly. Her eyes were red and puffy, her face drawn, but her squared shoulders expressed determination. “Life must go on and people must eat.”
Myra ran to her and hugged her. “Aunt Ruby,” she whispered just loud enough for Daisy to hear, “I’ll still be able to visit you, won’t I?”
“Of course, my dear.” Her arms encircled the girl. “Always.”
Daisy slipped away. In the hall, she met Simon.
“Mrs. Fletcher, have you seen Mother? I went up to her room and she’s not there.”
“In the kitchen.”
“She’s supposed to be in bed!”
“Well, she’s rallied round. Why don’t you go and help? You can lift and carry, if nothing else.”
“Oh, I can chop and stir with the best, as long as someone’s looking over my shoulder. I’m not utterly useless, you know, in spite of the impression you may have been given. I don’t mind lending a hand in the kitchen. It’s sheep on the hoof I can’t stomach.” Over his shoulder as he went off, he delivered a parting shot: “Father couldn’t stomach the brutes, either.”
Daisy decided to go up to her room and fetch Halfbreed Hero. The shenanigans in the Wild West would take her mind off the shenanigans at Eyrie Farm for a while—at least until Alec arrived. Which should be any minute, come to think of it, if he’d started out soon after Simon had reported calling in Roger Knox.
By the time she realised this, she was at the top of the stairs, so she went to powder her nose and tidy her hair. She took the book back down with her just in case Alec for once succeeded in shutting her out of his deliberations.
She was upstairs only briefly, but when she went down, Carey and Ilkton were in the hall, apparently in the middle of an angry dispute about Myra.
“No bloody bog-trotting Irish sponger can expect to understand a delicate, sensitive girl—”
“Raiméis! What bilge! Your trouble is, you don’t even try to understand her. You’ve stuck her up on that clichéd pedestal, and if she’s fool enough to marry you, the little idiot will regret it all her—”
“She’s going to marry me. She needs to be taken care of. There’s not a chance in hell that she’d give a moocher like you a second glance. If you can’t keep your jealousy under control—”
“Jealousy!” Carey burst out laughing.
Ilkton gave him a look of utmost disdain and stalked away, unfortunately to the stairs, where he met Daisy coming down. “Insufferable!” he exclaimed, standing aside to let her pass and then stamping upwards.
Carey grinned at Daisy. “It’s not myself is jealous,” he observed. “Sorry you heard his disgraceful language.”
They both turned as the front door opened, admitting a gust of damp air, Dr. Knox—black bag in hand—Alec, Ernie Piper, and, unexpectedly, a young woman wearing glasses, who carried a canvas satchel.
Knox looked grim. “Daisy, Ruby’s in her room, I take it?”
“As a matter of fact, she’s in the kitchen, making dinner. And I shouldn’t stop her, if I were you, Roger,” she advised his back as he strode towards the back of the hall. “It takes her mind off…”
He was gone.
Alec also looked fairly grim. “Daisy, where’s Worrall?”
“Last I saw of him, he was in Humphrey’s office.”
“Thanks. Oh, this is Miss Stott,” he added with a wave at the bespectacled young woman. “From Derby. My wife, Miss Stott.”
He turned towards the east wing. Miss Stott and Ernie Piper each gave Daisy a friendly wave and followed.
Daisy thought she could guess what was in the satchel: typed reports. Alec had somehow acquired a stenographer, and her own services would not be needed. She sighed.
“Do you ever feel as if you didn’t exist?” Carey asked plaintively. “I’m going to put a character in my next play, a meek, inoffensive little man who’s always on the stage but whom no one ever notices, far less speaks to.”
“Inoffensive, I dare say, would depend on the circumstances,” Daisy retorted, “but no one could ever call you meek.”
“I might become meek if constantly ignored. From time to time he’ll make a feeble effort to accost someone but they’ll just brush past him. Yes, all the other characters will be Very Important People, and he’ll represent Everyman. No, the Man in the Street. Mr. Smith? No, too obvious. Excuse me, Mrs. Fletcher, I must go and make a few notes.”
Daisy settled by the fire with Halfbreed Hero. She had read half a chapter and the unfortunate hero was about to be thrown out of a saloon—he probably wished no one ever noticed him—when Ernie Piper came to summon her to join the police confab.
“What’s going on, Ernie?”
“Well, I don’t suppose the Chief’ll mind if I tell you Miss Lorna Birtwhistle’s been arrested. Couldn’t stop talking once she started, blaming the victim, like some of them do. Just aggravated assault, though, not for murder, more’s the pity.”
“And now Alec suspects Dr. Knox of the murder?”
“I’d better let him tell you about that, if he wants to, Mrs. Fletcher.”
They entered Humphrey’s office. It seemed full to bursting with large men, most of them damp. Miss Stott sat quietly to one side on a straight chair, a shorthand notebook in her hand, her satchel limply empty at her feet. The desk was covered with reports, both originals and carbon copies. With both Miss Stott and Piper available, Daisy was sure she would have no rôle in the coming interviews.
She opened on the offensive. “Why do you suspect Roger, darling? I thought you’d more or less decided he was out of it.”
“More or less. Less, as it turns out. We haven’t been able to tie anyone to a prescription for chloral hydrate, but he keeps a supply in his surgery and always carries some with him in his little black bag, in case of need. He was here at the relevant time.”
“He was the one who declared that Humphrey’s death wasn’t natural.” Daisy at last recognised her rôle: She was playing devil’s advocate, for the benefit of Alec’s team. “No one would have asked questions if Roger had just written out a certificate. Everyone k
new Humphrey was ailing. And the last I heard, you hadn’t come up with a serious motive. Yes, he wants to marry Sybil; yes, she’ll probably marry him now she’s lost her job, though I do think she would have anyway. But though I do believe he truly loves her, it’s not as if he’s absolutely besotted with her, as Ilkton is with Myra.”
“We did wonder if there might be a financial incentive for the marriage. Mrs. Sutherby will continue to receive royalties—”
“And he’ll be taking on a stepdaughter, with associated expenses, including private school fees.”
“True. In any case, he freely showed us his financial documents. He inherited his house, freehold, and it’s a comfortable one. He’s a panel doctor with a lot of panel patients, but enough well-off private patients, too. His bank balance is healthy and he has investments that appear to be sound. No sign of gambling problems—half-a-crown each way on the Derby is about his limit, he says.”
“He sounds like a wonderful match. I shall tell Sybil she has my blessing. So you think a doctor who saved his patient, his friend, from death by pneumonia and has tried for two years to pep him up, would suddenly turn about and kill him?”
“The pepping-up failed,” Alec pointed out. “Had it succeeded, presumably Humphrey would have taken over the writing again, leaving Mrs. Sutherby out in the cold.”
“She’d still have had a job, the same as before he was ill. No, I just plain don’t believe he did it.”
“I’m inclined to agree. His reporting his suspicion of the death is a big stumbling block. But if not Dr. Knox, then who? You’ve spent a bit more time with them, now. You’ve seen how they’ve reacted to the situation. Haven’t you noticed any anomalous emotions or behaviour?”
“Well, yes, but all positive. You’ve bagged Lorna. Ruby and Norman have acted just as I would have expected, and Sybil, too, of course. On the other hand, Simon and Myra have come through with flying colours, both much more sensitive and sensible than I would have dreamt possible.”
“That’s not much help.”
“I can’t help it, darling. I’m just reporting what I’ve observed. There is something niggling at the back of my mind, though, that I can’t quite get into focus—”
“Great Scott, Daisy, not now! Inspector, any questions?”
“Mrs. Fletcher, have Simon and Miss Olney talked at all about their futures? Miss Olney about getting married or Simon about his great writing career?”
“Myra’s not going to marry Ilkton. She made that plain before her uncle’s death and she hasn’t changed her mind since. Simon assumes he’ll have to get a job. They’ve both been very worried about Ruby—Mrs. Birtwhistle.”
“Who, the Chief Inspector says, is now cooking dinner?”
“And a jolly good job, too! With Lorna gone, there’s no one else competent to do it. At least, I don’t know about Sybil’s cooking skills but I’m dubious. Myra and I were about to make a tremendous mess of it when Ruby came galloping to the rescue like the U.S. Cavalry in a Western film. Only she didn’t gallop, of course. She’s looking fearfully unwell. I suppose growing up in the Wild West, one just has to get over things and get on with what needs doing.”
“Very likely,” Worrall agreed solemnly. “And Mrs. Sutherby, seeing she’s been writing about the Wild West for years, she’s absorbed a bit of that … Now, what’s the word I want?”
“Ethos?” Tom suggested. His vocabulary never ceased to astonish.
“I dare say, Sergeant. Mrs. Sutherby went back to her typing.”
“‘Like a well-conducted person,’” said Daisy, “‘went on cutting bread and butter.’”
“Ah, that’ll be from a poem, Mr. Worrall,” Tom advised the startled inspector. “A great one for quoting poems is Mrs. Fletcher.”
“In the most inappropriate circumstances,” Alec said impatiently.
“Yes, Sybil went back to her typing,” Daisy confirmed, and in a moment of silence they could hear the typewriter rattling away in the next room. “I have some experience of publishers, and I assure you they can be extremely exigeant. Eli Hawke’s are baying for the next book. Not to mention his readers.”
“Any more questions?” Alec looked at Worrall and, when he shook his head, round the others.
“Just one little thing, Chief,” said Piper. Blushing to the roots of his hair, he asked, “Mrs. Fletcher, Simon Birtwhistle and Neil Carey—they’re not … um … You know?”
“I haven’t seen the slightest sign of it. They’re just friends, drawn together by intellectual iconoclasm. Actual in Neil’s case, if his stories are true; would-be as far as Simon’s concerned.”
“All right, thank you, Daisy. I hate to disturb Mrs. Sutherby, but we’re going to need to use her room, as well as this…”
“She usually stops at five, for tea. It must be about that now. Yes, a couple of minutes past.”
“Any hope of a pot of tea for us?”
“I’ll see what I can do, darling.”
As she left the room, Daisy heard Ernie say, “‘Iconoclasm,’ Sarge?” Closing the door, she didn’t wait to find out whether it was part of Tom’s vocabulary.
Sybil came out of her office.
“How is it going?” Daisy asked.
“Well; surprisingly in the circs. I didn’t expect to be able to concentrate. But all I want now is a cuppa.”
“So do a roomful of police. Let’s go and make it if no one else has.”
THIRTY-THREE
Tea was not the social and sociable occasion Daisy had experienced her first evening at Eyrie Farm. Neither Ilkton nor Carey turned up, perhaps dissociating themselves from the family’s troubles, unless Carey was simply in the throes of creation. Simon reluctantly took a tray to the police and didn’t reappear. Myra brought tea to Daisy and Sybil in the hall, then went back to the kitchen. PC Bagshaw tramped through and out to the west wing.
Roger Knox, bringing his own cup of tea, joined Sybil and Daisy. “I followed your advice about letting Ruby get on with the supper preparations,” he said to Daisy. “But I’m trying to persuade her to eat quietly in her sitting room and then go straight to bed. I’ll give her a bromide.” He grimaced. “The stuff has a bad reputation here just now, but it’s exactly what she needs.”
Bagshaw tramped back, escorting a disgruntled Norman carrying a cup and saucer—he must have been taking his tea in the estate office. The dog was missing from the hearth rug, Daisy noted. It usually followed Norman about when he was in the house, possibly the only living creature to want his company.
Roger jumped up. “Is Mr. Fletcher interviewing people again, Officer? If so, I must insist that he sees Mrs. Birtwhistle first, in my presence. Otherwise he’s going to have to wait till the morning.”
“You’d best just come along now and speak to the Chief Inspector yourself, sir,” Bagshaw said stolidly.
The three men disappeared into the east wing.
Sybil gulped the last of her tea. “I can’t stand this. I need a breath of fresh air. Coming, Daisy?”
“It’s raining.”
“I don’t think so. It had stopped when I last looked out of the window. Anyway, I don’t care. Just a quick turn round the garden before it gets too dark.”
“Shall we take Scurry?”
“Where is he? Oh, I bet he followed Norman and they shut the door on him.” She went to the west door and opened it. The dog, patiently waiting, padded through.
Daisy’s coat was upstairs but there were plenty of umbrellas and old mackintoshes in the cloakroom, and several pairs of Wellingtons. She picked out a mac that wouldn’t drag on the ground and a pair of boots that more or less fitted, and they went out.
The rain had ceased. The clouds were being torn into scraps by a chilly wind from the east, where the evening star shone bright in the darkening sky.
“Brrr.” Daisy hugged the coat about her. “Frost tonight, I should think, at least up here in the hills.”
“Yes, and after the rain the road will be icy. I must tell Roger t
o be extra careful when he drives home.”
Despite the chill, the brisk walk twice round the garden—Scurry made it round once—was the high point of the evening. Daisy spent much of it in the hall, reading Halfbreed Hero, while people passed back and forth on their way to being questioned. Ruby didn’t appear at dinner, and Roger had already left for his evening surgery. Myra and Daisy did their best to keep up a bit of chit-chat but the others matched Norman’s taciturnity. The gift of the gab seemed to have deserted even Neil Carey, who sat silent with a faraway look in his eye, though his lips moved occasionally as if he were trying out a phrase for his next opus.
Before she retired, Ruby, typically hospitable, had offered to feed the police. They chose to dine at their desks. Daisy gathered that Alec and Piper were using Humphrey’s office; Worrall and Miss Stott, Sybil’s. Ruby had also invited Alec to stay the night, and he had accepted. The others left for Matlock shortly before nine. Everyone went to bed early.
Infuriatingly, Alec refused to tell Daisy anything. “We’re getting nowhere fast,” he said. “Unless we get a lucky break soon, I might as well get back to the Yard and leave the case to Worrall. My desk was clear when I left, but you can bet it’s already piled high again.”
“If you go, I’m coming with you, darling. I’ll even let you drive. After all, the part of the puzzle I came to help Sybil with has been solved. We could get an early start in the morning and—”
“No, I’ll have to stay at least long enough to discuss everything with Worrall and report to his superior in Derby, and to Aves, the local super, and to their deputy CC, not to mention Crane.”
“At least Mr. Crane-fly-in-the-ointment should be glad to know I’m leaving the scene of the crime.”
Alec produced the obligatory groan at her pun. “All very well, but he expects me to solve crimes I’m sent to solve, not to leave it to the locals.”