Die Laughing (Daisy Dalrymple Mysteries #12)

Chapter 1

As Daisy took her hat from the wardrobe shelf and turned to the looking glass, Nana capered hopefully around her heels. Daisy looked down and sighed.

“Sorry,” she said. The little dog’s feathery tail and ears drooped.

“Believe me, I’d much rather take you up Primrose Hill than go to the dentist, but I’ve put it off too long already.

I can’t pretend I’ve forgotten the appointment when the blasted tooth aches like billy-o.

” With the tip of her tongue she probed the hole—big enough to swallow a dinosaur, or at least to trip one.

Setting the cloche on her shingled curls, she straightened it and admired her reflection. Lilac coloured, with a cluster of pale yellow primroses to one side of the narrow brim, it was new for spring, “And rather dashing, don’t you think, Nana?”

She had acquired vast quantities of new clothes since her wedding six months ago. Her mother-in-law and her friend Lucy, though disapproving of each other on sight, agreed on one thing: Daisy’s wardrobe was a disgrace. She had

gone from the nursery to earning her own meagre living via school uniform and the exigencies of wartime shortages, and fashion had never been one of her priorities.

It was difficult to be enthusiastic when today’s styles stressed the straight-up-and-down boyish figure which one would never attain. She did have decent legs, though, and the latest spring hemlines for 1924 had risen again to near the knee, to the elder Mrs. Fletcher’s outrage.

Still, Daisy felt she had quite successfully split the difference between the expectations of her mama-in-law, widow of a bank manager, and Lucy, a smart young woman-about-town.

At least, Lucy considered her new clothes dowdy, while Mrs. Fletcher thought them far too modish for a respectable suburban matron.

Alec seemed satisfied, and in the end that was all that mattered.

Belinda had chosen the hat. Daisy, always clad in daisyprint dresses and daisy-decked hats in nursery days, had continued to follow the path of least resistance in that regard.

Her ten-year-old stepdaughter was more adventurous on her behalf.

On a joint shopping expedition, she had spotted the lilac cloche with its primroses and insisted that it was perfect for Daisy.

Its purchase had necessitated the ordering of a new spring costume to match, in lilac jersey, with a pale yellow silk blouse.

Though it was tailored instead of off-the-rack in Selfridge’s Bargain Basement, Alec had not even blinked at the bill.

“Worth every penny,” he had said appreciatively the first time she wore it.

“Yes, quite fetching,” Daisy said now, and powdered her nose. Lip rouge? No, it would only come off all over the dentist’s hands.

The dentist … ugh! At the thought, the tooth gave a particularly vicious twinge. She moaned, and Nana licked her hand anxiously.

“I’d better get going. Mustn’t risk annoying Mr. Talmadge by being late when I’m going to be entirely at his mercy. What a way to start off a new week!”

She hurried downstairs. The sun was shining outside, but the April morning had alternated between sun and showers so she took a light coat from the coat cupboard at the back of the hall.

On the way to the front door, pulling on her gloves, she stuck her head into the sitting room to say, “I’m just on my way to the dentist, Mother. ”

It still felt strange to call Mrs. Fletcher Mother.

Not for any sentimental reason—her own mother, Lady Dalrymple, had rarely visited the nursery, and now Daisy visited the dowager viscountess as rarely as she could get away with.

Mrs. Fletcher, on the other hand, was ever-present.

Admittedly, having her continue to run the household allowed Daisy to pursue her journalistic career, but she was definitely a damper.

“Don’t forget your umbrella,” Mrs. Fletcher said, looking up from the menus she was planning for the next day.

“You’ll have to hurry if you’re not to be late for your appointment.

You won’t want to offend Mr. Talmadge. He’s a neighbour as well as a dentist, remember.

An excellent dentist. Where’s the dog? Put it out before you go, please, Daisy.

I don’t want it making a mess in here, burying bones under the carpet. ”

The bone burying had been a single incident, several weeks ago, but Nana was a bone of contention. Mrs. Fletcher regarded her every misdeed as entirely Daisy’s

fault, since she had persuaded Alec to let Belinda adopt the puppy. Daisy took her to the kitchen, where Dobson, busy with the lunch dishes, welcomed her with a crust of toast.

“She can go out while it’s sunny, ma’am. If she does trample a few daffies, well, there’s plenty, and at least she isn’t a digger, I’ll say that for her. I’ll call her in if it rains.”

“Thank you, Dobson. I shan’t be more than an hour or so. I hope.”

“The dentist, isn’t it, ma’am? Rotten luck, but Mr. Talmadge is ever so good. Everybody says so.”

Everyone said Raymond Talmadge was a good dentist, Daisy thought as she hurried, pillar-box red umbrella in hand, down the front path to the tree-lined street.

In his middle thirties, Talmadge was presumably experienced at his profession without being out of touch with the latest techniques.

He was also extremely good-looking, in a pale blond, square-jawed, rather Nordic way.

She had met him and his wife at someone’s dinner party, and again for cocktails at someone else’s house.

Also, the Fletchers had been invited to their house once, for drinks before Sunday lunch.

The demands of Alec’s profession enabled the two of them to avoid a good deal of the St. John’s Wood entertaining circuit. The demands of Alec’s mother ensured that they did not escape altogether. Mrs. Fletcher was determined to introduce Daisy to her circle.

Good neighbourliness also played a part.

Daisy didn’t want to be thought above her company, labouring as she did under the disadvantage of the “Honourable” before her name.

It had inevitably become known, though she rarely used it.

(After all, a distant cousin was now Viscount Dalrymple of Fairacres, since Gervaise was killed in Flanders

and their father had succumbed to the flu pandemic.) So, while reserving her mornings for work and declining invitations to morning coffee, she accepted those for lunch and afternoon tea when her schedule allowed.

Naturally, these were usually hen parties, their unstated purpose the exchange of gossip.

Daisy was quite surprised at the innocuous nature of the gossip. Apparently the professional middle class were as solidly respectable as their reputation.

She had made two new friends, mothers of school friends of Belinda, but she didn’t feel she had come to know any of the other women well. Mrs. Talmadge, the dentist’s wife, she recalled as one of the smarter set, always impeccably dressed.

Daisy returned to the present as she turned into the street where they lived.

Mr. Talmadge’s surgery was in his house.

Many of the large, detached houses were halfhidden from the street by laurels and hollies, behind railings.

The Talmadges’ was separated from the pavement by a low brick wall fronting a lawn with a big chestnut, not yet in bloom.

Brick gateposts framed the gravel carriage drive, and on one of these was a brass plate: Raymond Talmadge, Dental Surgeon LRCS 9:30—12:30, 2:00—5:30.

The sight of it made Daisy’s tooth throb, and butterflies started frisking about in her stomach.

She glanced at her wristwatch. Dead on two. She was just in time. She crunched up the drive, flanked by a neat bed of daffodils and crocuses. A paved path led off to the front door, but a sign on the corner of the building sternly admonished her to continue around the side for the surgery.

Ahead, the drive continued past the house to a garage at

the bottom of the garden. To Daisy’s left, the house had two side doors, some yards apart. She stopped at the first, which announced Surgery—Enter. The door was unlocked so she obeyed.

The waiting room was deserted. The chairs against the white-painted walls looked reasonably comfortable, but Daisy felt much too fidgety to sit still.

She noted without interest a rack with a selection of magazines, including a Punch she hadn’t read and an old Town and Country with one of her articles.

The view from the window was less than engrossing: the yellow gravel drive and a high brick wall, covered with greenish bronze Virginia creeper, just beginning to leaf out.

Daisy turned back to the room. The wall to her right had a door in it, guarded by a desk with a modern, glass-fronted cabinet full of files behind it. On the desktop were a telephone, an open appointment book, and a stack of three or four manila folders.

She went to look. The top folder had her name on it, so she flipped it open.

Inside was nothing but a blank invoice form.

Naturally—she hadn’t seen Talmadge before.

She wondered vaguely whether she ought to try to track down the dental records from her childhood and get them sent to him. It was ages since she’d seen a dentist.

And now she was here, she wanted to get the horrid business over with. Her watch said nearly ten past. She knocked on the door of the torture chamber.

No response. At that moment, she realized that the nagging pain which had driven her hither had vanished. Obviously the hole in her tooth was nowhere near as large as her tongue had led her to believe. Anyway, no one was here to

deal with it, so she might as well go home. If the ache returned, she could always make another appointment. She’d better make her escape while the going was good, and ring up from home to explain why she had left.