Chapter 6 #2
“I’m perfectly all right, honestly. I wish Lucy hadn’t told everyone.”
“I expect she hoped they’d fuss over you instead of her,” said Angela with unexpected insight.
“Now poor Grandmother’s murder has put everything else out of people’s minds.
Almost everything. Daddy wanted to go fishing, but Mummy won’t let him, though he says he can mourn just as well with a rod in his hand. At least there’s a few
less fish suffering today. Daisy, do you think my grandmother suffered much?”
“No, I think it was very quick.” She did her best to suppress the memory of those desperate, bulging eyes, so horribly like a fish out of water gasping away its life. “Lady Eva lived mostly in town, didn’t she?”
“Yes. It wasn’t because she’d quarrelled with Mummy or Daddy, or anything like that. She used to come down for weekends, but except for house-parties she found the country dull. Not enough gossip about the right sort of people. I expect you know about her collection?”
“It isn’t exactly a secret.”
“No. She was quite open about her ferreting. Do you think someone killed her because of something she found out?”
“It’s possible.” Daisy wondered whether Angela was trying to divert suspicion from herself.
She seemed the soul of candour, of an almost childlike frankness, but that would not sway Alec.
He was bound to put her near the top of his list; just above Lucy, no doubt.
“It will be something Alec has to take into account.”
“I suppose he’ll have to go through her memoranda, reading about people’s beastly secrets. Almost as bad as seeing what they do to dumb, helpless creatures. Ugh! Here we are. Jennifer said we should use this room.”
The small sitting room set aside for the bereaved Devenishes was on the second floor at the front of the house. As Angela opened the door, Daisy heard Lady Devenish’s discontented voice: “I didn’t bring a black dress, of course. Teddy, you must have brought a dark suit for church on Sunday.”
“I wasn’t intending to stay on after the wedding on Saturday.”
The north-facing room was quite chilly, though a fire burned in the hearth. Lady Devenish was sitting in a chair by the fireplace, holding out her hands to the flames. Opposite her, a lissome young
man lounged against the mantelpiece, his hands in his trouser pockets, looking both bored and sulky.
“Mummy, I’ve brought Daisy.”
Sir James, who appeared to have been pacing up and down the confined space, came eagerly to meet Daisy. “Mrs. Fletcher, can you tell us—”
Lady Devenish cut off her husband. “So kind of you to come, Mrs. Fletcher,” she said, her voice as chilly as the room.
“Please accept my condolences. It’s a dreadful thing to happen.”
“Daisy, I don’t think you know my brother, Teddy.”
“No, I don’t believe we’ve met. How do you do, Mr. Devenish.”
Edward Devenish was several years younger than his sisters Angela and Veronica, not much over twenty-one, Daisy guessed, and the spoilt baby of the family.
Expensive, too: his sloppy posture did nothing to conceal the exquisite cut of his light grey tweeds.
At least he had manners enough to straighten when he was introduced and take his hands out of his pockets.
“I hear you married a copper, Mrs. Fletcher.”
His tone was so indifferent as to be almost offensive, but Daisy saw a spark of emotion in his eyes.
Fear, perhaps; she couldn’t be sure. He had not been at dinner last night, had not come into the drawing room before she went to bed.
When did he arrive at Haverhill? Was he on the list Jennifer had given the Chief Constable?
“Won’t you sit down, Mrs. Fletcher?” Lady Devenish interrupted her thoughts. “We wish to consult you. Angela informs us that Lord Haverhill has sent for your husband.” Her condescension was much more offensive than her son’s ambiguous indifference.
The Dowager Vicountess Dalrymple, though in general she disapproved of her younger daughter, would have applauded the steel that entered Daisy’s voice. “I won’t sit down, thank you. I can only spare you a few minutes. Uncle Oliver has asked me to … talk things over with Lucy.”
“Poor Lucy!” exclaimed Angela, much as if Lucy was an abandoned dog.
“What exactly is it you want to know, Sir James?”
He glanced at his wife. “Josephine and I just wondered whether Mr. Fletcher—Detective Inspector Fletcher—”
“Detective Chief Inspector, Daddy,” Angela corrected him.
This threw him off his stride, and his wife again took over. “I suppose Mr. Fletcher will want to ask a great many questions of everyone in the house?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“This places us in a thoroughly invidious position.”
“What the mater means,” said Teddy, “is that being Grandmother’s nearest and dearest, we are liable to be blamed for the whole show when people are asked questions they’d rather not answer.
Worse, in newspaper reports and detective stories the immediate family are always the prime suspects, so everyone’s going to avoid sitting next to us at lunch in case we put arsenic in the soup. ”
His mother let him finish his rant before saying acidly, “What I should like to know is how long we are to be subjected to such conditions. How long will it take the police to arrest the murderer?”
“That depends mostly on how much cooperation they get,” said Daisy, “particularly from the immediate family. So when you’re asked questions you’d rather not answer, I suggest you tell the truth, the whole truth, right away. And now, if you’ll excuse me, Lucy needs me.”
As she turned to leave, Sir James hurried to open the door for her. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “Should be thinking of my poor mother, what?”
Daisy gave him a regal nod as she passed. Behind her she heard Lady Devenish again: “I wonder if Maud has a black frock I could bear to wear.”
Angela followed her out. “So put that in your pipe and smoke it!” she observed. “Well said, Daisy. Of course what Mummy really
wanted to ask, but didn’t quite dare after you got on your high horse, is whether Mr. Fletcher is going to think one of us did it.”
“You’ll be on the list he starts with, at least. By the way, when did your brother arrive?”
“Last night, well after one. He motored over—he has a sporty little Lea Francis. He rang me up yesterday evening and asked me to go down and let him in at one, but I hung about on the terrace for ages, waiting for him. I didn’t quite dare leave a door unlocked and go back to bed in case a burglar chose that moment to try all the handles. ”
“You were wandering about the house in the middle of the night? Didn’t you hear or see anything suspicious?”
“I went down the back stairs, nowhere near Grandmother’s room. That’s my room, there—Teddy spent the rest of the night with a couple of pillows and a bedspread on my floor—and that’s the door to the stairs I used.” Angela pointed at a baize-padded swing door.”
“All the way from the ground floor to the top?” Daisy asked.
“Yes, the Victorians liked their servants to be invisible. Hence all those ridiculous pillars in the entrance hall, for servants to hide behind with their mops and pails. Gosh, the murderer could have been right there when I crossed the hall. I don’t know whether to be glad I didn’t meet him creeping about or to wish I had.
I might have been able to save Grandmother. ”
“Or you might have been done in too,” said Daisy.