Chapter 18 #2
“That he’s not, sir, nor like to be soon, and just as well. If you was to see the crack he took on his noddle …”
“Thank you, Officer,” Oliver repeated firmly.
“Thank you, Mr. Stebbins,” said Daisy, earning a beam for recalling his name. “I should think you’d better hurry back to see if the Chief Inspector needs you.”
Stebbins gave his agonizing new boots a meaningful glance, as if to say, “I’m not hurrying nowhere in these.” But he saluted and tramped off, meeting Mrs. Maple in the doorway.
Daisy was pleased to see the housekeeper, less because of the tray she carried than because her arrival postponed the moment when they’d have to talk about Gerald.
“Dr. Arbuthnot’s come,” Mrs. Maple announced. “I don’t know what the world’s coming to, Mr. Oliver, and that’s a fact. Here’s your
cocoa, Mrs. Fletcher. Will you take something, Mrs. Oliver? Miss Lucy?”
“I’m going to bed,” said Lucy, and walked out.
Her mother burst into tears.
“The girl is quite impossible!” said Oliver angrily.
“Don’t cry, Aunt Vickie! It isn’t that she doesn’t care. But there’s nothing she can do for Gerald—I’m sure Alec wouldn’t let her near him anyway—and she can’t face explanations just now. Don’t you understand?”
“You just listen to Mrs. Fletcher, Mrs. Oliver,” the old retainer advised. “That’s good, sound, common sense. I’ve seen bad news take people like that before. Miss Lucy just needs to be let alone to take it all in, that’s all.”
“They’re right, my dear. Best leave her alone for the moment. And I think the best thing for you would be to go up, too, with one of Marjorie’s powders to help you sleep. We’ll go and find her right away. You’re going to be all right, Daisy?”
“To tell the truth, I’ve a very good mind to go to bed, too. This seems to have been an extraordinarily long day. I’ll just finish my cocoa and write a note to Alec—I don’t want to disturb him. Then I’ll follow you up.”
Oliver led Aunt Vickie out, while Mrs. Maple fetched a pencil and note-paper for Daisy, and a blotter to lean on. “You keep your legs up for a bit before you go facing the stairs,” she advised. “Not but what there’s a bit more colour in your cheeks now, madam.”
“That’s the cocoa. Thanks! Mrs. Maple, I’ve been thinking.”
“Well, I’m sure I can’t think when you’ve had a chance to do that, madam!”
“No, but this is a pretty easy think. Assuming Lord Gerald doesn’t …
doesn’t die in the next little while, they’re not going to want to leave him lying on the cold, hard slates.
But I’m sure he should be moved as little as possible, certainly not carried upstairs.
Is there somewhere you could have a bed made up? ”
“Why yes, the little room near the front door—the antechamber some call it. I’ll go and ask Mrs. Walsdorf … . No, then, I won’t It’ll only make trouble. And ask Mrs. Rupert I won’t neither! Nor call her my lady till his poor father’s properly buried.”
“I’m sure no one can possibly mind your putting Lord Gerald in there. After all, he’s the son of a marquis. Oh dear, someone’s going to have to break the news to Lord and Lady Tiverton!”
“Not you, my dear,” said Mrs. Maple firmly. “Leave it to Mr. Fletcher, who’s a gentlemanly man, for all he’s a policeman, and well up to the task.”
“And the Haverhills …”
“I’ll go and speak to the Reverend about that this minute.”
“Oh yes, Timothy’s the one for that. Poor Tim! Everyone’s counting on him and Nancy.”
“And who better, madam? There’s two that’ll have their reward in Heaven, sure enough, bless them.”
The housekeeper left and Daisy, sipping the cocoa, pondered just what she needed to say to Alec.
In the end, she wrote: “Darling, I can’t think of anything else I can do to help, so I’m going to our room.
I shan’t sleep, though, until I hear how Gerald is, and I have things to tell you, so please come up when you can. All my love, Daisy.”
She folded the paper in three and three again, tucked the ends in, and wrote “DCI Fletcher” on the front.
Then she thought of Belinda, who would have come home from school to be told by Mrs. Dobson, the cook-housekeeper, that her daddy had been called away.
Bel was used to such eventualities, and she had been going to stay with a school friend for the weekend while both Alec and Daisy were away for the wedding.
But, reliable though Mrs. Dobson was, Bel would be happier if she could go to the Prasads a day earlier, or if that was not possible, to the Germonds.
Daisy set down her cup on the tray, picked up the note to Alec, the blotter, the unused paper and the pencil, and went over to the desk.
Lying on it was the beginning of a letter, in some foreign language she didn’t recognize. Even the handwriting looked foreign.
She remembered the sheet of paper John Walsdorf had slipped under the blotter when she came in that morning to ring up the police.
He must have family or friends still in Luxemburg.
It was quite natural, of course, but the fact that he had not cut all ties made him seem somehow more foreign.
Perhaps he had foreseen such a consequence from the insular English and that was why he had hidden his letter.
There was no reason to see anything sinister in it.
Daisy wondered if Alec knew. Walsdorf was one of the few he had already seen, before calling Teddy Devenish in for the second time, which suggested that Lady Eva had discovered something about him.
Actually, it was irrelevant whether his continuing connections in Luxemburg were what Lady Eva had ferreted out.
Everything she knew was known to Alec. Anything she didn’t know had nothing to do with her murder.
So Daisy had no reason to tell Alec about the letter, thank heaven.
Not that she had exactly read someone else’s correspondence, as she couldn’t understand a word, but just looking at the thing made her feel guilty.
One simply didn’t nose into other people’s letters.
She set down the blotter squarely on top of it.
What a pity Ernie had taken all the police notes with him!
She hardly knew a thing about the investigation.
Alec hadn’t had time to talk to most of the residents and guests at Haverhill, let alone to listen to her opinions of them, and now he had two murders and an attempted—so far—murder on his hands.
Daisy shivered. No one knew how Lord Fotheringay had posed a threat to the murderer, but when he died Gerald was the first on the scene. And when Gerald was attacked, Daisy herself had been first on the scene. She would lock her bedroom door when she went upstairs.
In the meantime, she sat down at the desk and wrote briefly to Melanie Germond, Sakari Prasad, and Belinda. In a drawer she found stamps and envelopes. If the letters went out first thing in the morning, they should be delivered in time for Bel to spend tomorrow
night with one of her friends. Sighing, she sealed the envelopes. On the whole it was a definite blessing that Alec’s mother had moved to Bournemouth, but there had been a few advantages to having her living with them.
She didn’t feel at all like walking down the drive to the letter-box by the gates. Wondering where to put the letters so that they would be posted as early as possible, Daisy went out into the hall.
John Walsdorf came towards her from the direction of the stairs, a sheaf of envelopes in his hands. He had not come to the drawing room for coffee after dinner, she recalled. He must have been upstairs writing letters—not in the conservatory hitting Gerald over the head. She hoped.
“You have letters to post? I may take them for you? I have written to those wedding guests I failed to reach by telephone or telegraph, and some explanations to others. To those I spoke to only briefly or left messages. I go to walk to the letter-box now. We have missed the last post but thus without fail they will catch the early post.”
“Thanks!”
“I hope you did not consider to walk down yourself. This is too dangerous at this time. Already are two persons lying dead.”
He didn’t know about Gerald? Daisy decided to leave it to someone else to break the news. “Thanks,” she said again, handing over her letters. “Do you think you’ll be safe?”
“I know nothing dangerous to anyone. And besides …” He pulled the butt of a pistol just far enough from his pocket for Daisy to see it. “If the murderer attacks me, Mr. Fletcher may not have to arrest him.”
“But if you killed him, he’d have to arrest you. Be careful.”
Walsdorf bowed and went on his way.
If he was the murderer, he could shoot someone and claim self-defence, Daisy thought. He could have shot her. No, too much chance of someone coming through the hall, and Alec, for one, would never credit that she had attacked him.
She shouldn’t have stayed alone in the library.
Not that she had been alone for long, with everyone popping in and out, but the point was that they had all, in the end, left her alone there, even Ernie.
Maybe they all unconsciously believed she was safe because she was the wife of the great Detective Chief Inspector from Scotland Yard.
She had no such faith in her own immunity.
The stairs looked long and lonely. Someone could push her down them and claim she had turned dizzy and fallen.
Not likely, she assured herself, hurrying up. If she was only hurt, not killed, she’d know who had done it. She went into her bedroom and turned the key in the lock. Then, realizing it was probably not the only key, she shot the bolt, too.
That was when she realized she had given John Walsdorf the note for Alec, saying she had something to tell him.