Chapter One #3
Daisy wished her mother and Alec’s could bring themselves to enjoy Belinda, Miranda, and Oliver instead of always finding fault. She also envied the easy relationship between the two Mrs. Jessups, so different from her own with her exacting mother-in-law.
She finished her second cup of tea and was about to say regretfully that it was time she was going, when the maid came in.
“There’s someone to see the master, madam. A foreigner. On business, he says. I told him Mr. Jessup don’t do business at home, but he said the master wouldn’t take kindly to him turning up at the shop, and it’s not my place, ’m, to tell him the master’s gone abroad. So!”
Mrs. Jessup looked dismayed, even alarmed. “Didn’t he give his name, Enid?”
“No’m. I ast for his card, but he didn’t have one. He’s a foreigner.” In the maid’s eyes, this fact clearly explained any and all peculiarities of conduct.
“I suppose I’d better speak to him. Please excuse me, Mrs. Fletcher.” She stood up.
Daisy also rose. Her curiosity aroused, she had to force herself to obey the dictates of manners. “I really must be off,” she said. “Thank you so much for tea. I’m looking forward to our being neighbours.”
Mrs. Jessup went out. Daisy stayed chatting to Audrey for a few minutes before going into the hall, where the maid waited to usher her out.
A door towards the front of the hall was slightly ajar.
Stopping at the looking glass hanging over the hall table to straighten her hat and powder her nose, Daisy heard a man’s voice.
He spoke too low to make out his words, but something about the intonation sounded to her distinctly American, rather than any more exotic incarnation of English.
On the other hand, Mrs. Jessup’s voice, when she spoke, was unmistakably Irish.
That brogue was what she had caught a hint of earlier, Daisy realised.
“As it happens,” Mrs. Jessup said coldly, “my husband is travelling on the Continent. He moves about a great deal from country to country—France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, even Germany. I have no way to get in touch.”
The visitor’s voice rose. “Aw, don’t give me that, lady! You must know when you’re expecting him home at least.”
“I don’t. His plans often change, so he sends a telegram when he’s on his way home.”
“OK, if you say so.” He sounded disgruntled, almost threatening. “But you better tell him I came looking for him, and tell him I’ll be back.”
The door swung open. A short, wiry man in a blue suit strode out into the hall.
In passing, his dark eyes gave Daisy a sidelong glance.
Something about it made her shiver. She glimpsed black slicked-back hair before he clapped a grey-blue fedora on his head, pulling it well down over his swarthy face.
A black-avised devil—the phrase surfaced from somewhere in the depths of Daisy’s memory.
He reached the front door before the maid could open it for him. Letting himself out, he failed to shut it behind him. He ran down the steps and walked quickly away around Constable Circle.
“Well, I never!” the maid exclaimed. “Manners!”
“Born in a barn,” Daisy agreed with a friendly smile. “I take it he’s not a frequent visitor?”
“Never set eyes on him before, madam, and I’m sure I hope I never do again.
We get plenty of foreign visitors, the family being in the importing business, but most of ’em are polite as you please, in their foreign sort of way.
Begging your pardon, ’m, but is it right what I heard, that you’re taking the house next door?
If you was to be wanting a parlour maid, my sister’s looking for a new situation… .”
Daisy promised to let her know as soon as their plans were certain. Down the steps she went and started across the street, intending to cross the garden by the path.
“Excuse me, madam!” A man came towards her, hurrying up the path. Well dressed in an unobtrusive dark grey suit and carrying a tightly rolled umbrella, he looked very respectable, a banker perhaps, in no way an alarming figure.
Daisy paused. The man came closer, raising his hat politely. He was quite young, early thirties at a guess, though his dark hair was already greying a little at the temples.
“I beg your pardon for accosting you, ma’am. I saw you come out of my house. I’m Aidan Jessup.”
The staid, sensible older son? Lucy’s Gerald would have let himself be boiled in oil before he’d have accosted in the street a lady to whom he had not been introduced, even having observed her departure from his house.
Unless the house was going up in flames …
But a quick backward glance showed Daisy such was not the case.
However, she was not the sort to cut off a possible source of information just because of a certain disregard of etiquette.
“Afternoon tea,” she explained, and added encouragingly, “Can I help you?”
“You noticed the fellow who came out just before you? Who dashed off at such a pace?” He stared frowning after the American, now out of sight. “I don’t suppose you know who he was?”
“I’m afraid not. I didn’t meet him. I imagine Mrs. Jessup—your mother—can tell you.”
“Mother spoke to him?”
“I believe so. I did hear his voice, and he sounded as if he came from America.”
His already-pale face blanched. “Oh Hades!” he groaned. “I knew it was a terrible idea. Thank you, madam, and once more, my apologies.” He raised his hat again and made for the Jessup house at a hasty pace.
Interesting! Daisy thought, making her way back to the car.
There seemed to be enough secrets and mysteries at number 5 to furnish a half-ruined Gothic mansion. They ought to have an old crone for a housekeeper, instead of a smart young parlour maid.
She had liked both the Jessup ladies, though. If they were aware of her aristocratic background, they had showed no signs of toadying. In fact, their unaffected manners were very much at odds with the flamboyance of their interior decorating. Could it be Mr. Jessup’s taste that ruled?
If anything, the mysteries associated with the Jessups made Daisy keener to get to know them better.
Who was the intrusive, aggressive American whose arrival so alarmed Aidan Jessup?
What was the “terrible idea” that had apparently led to his arrival?
Was the younger brother in trouble with the law?
Could that explain Mr. Irwin’s reluctance to have a CID detective move in next door to his daughter?
FIRST SEA INTERLUDE
There was three men came out of the west,
Their fortunes for to try,
And those three made a solemn vow,
John Barleycorn should die.
They ploughed, they sowed, they harrowed him in,
Throwed clods upon his head,
And these three men made a solemn vow,
John Barleycorn was dead.
—OLD ENGLISH BALLAD
“‘It was a dark and stormy night …’ ”
Clinging to the rail, sleet streaming down his neck, Patrick muttered the words to himself. He’d have had to shout to be heard above the howl of the wind in the rigging, and in any case, he doubted his present companions would appreciate the literary allusion.
At the best of times, the seamen had little regard for the supercargo.
Bulwer-Lytton’s London couldn’t possibly have been as dark and stormy as the North Atlantic in a September gale, at night, on board a ship with all lights extinguished.
The best that could be said for the situation was that the U.S.
Coast Guard was not likely to find the Iphigenia.
If they had any sense, they wouldn’t even be afloat tonight.
On the other hand, nor would Iffie’s customers find her.
Captain Watkins had insisted that the supercargo must be on deck, ready to keep tally of the merchandise handed over when the inshore boats arrived.
Teeth chattering, Patrick suspected—to the point of near certainty—that Watkins had been having him on.
Surely on a night like this the captain couldn’t even guarantee that the black ship was in the vicinity of Rum Row.
If she was, one could only hope that a dozen—or a score or more—unlighted ships were not circling blindly in the area, waiting for the storm to ease.
At least they were not likely to be blown ashore, Patrick was glad to realise. Last year, in May 1924 to be precise, the old three-mile limit had changed to twelve, so Rum Row was now some fifteen miles from the coast.
A song ran through his head:
Oh, ‘twas in the broad Atlantic,
Mid the equinoctial gales,
That a young fellow fell overboard…
His frozen hands gripped the rail tighter. Not that he was afraid. He had, after all, chosen to come, in search of adventure. But he was so cold, he hardly felt the touch on his arm until the bo’sun’s voice bellowed in his ear, “You’d best come below, lad. The runners won’t be out tonight.”
Turning, he was grateful for the man’s steadying hand on his elbow. Thank heaven he wasn’t seasick. That would have been the ultimate humiliation.
A faint light glimmering through the downpour showed the position of the open deckhouse door. Finding his feet on the heaving deck, he made for it, the bo’sun a step behind.
Once sheltered from the storm’s savagery, Patrick felt the steady, reassuring thump of the engines.
His breath caught in his throat as he stepped into the cabin.
After the bracing air outside, the fug seemed thick enough to scoop with a ladle.
On the outward voyage, everyone but the captain slept, ate, smoked, and drank in the narrow space, to allow room for more bottles and barrels of their precious cargo—of which one cask had been broached since he went on deck.
The watch below greeted him with a steaming tankard.
“Not to worry, mate,” said one bewhiskered mariner, grinning. “‘T ain’t the ten-year-old Haig and Haig.”
He reached for the toddy eagerly. “Th-thank you.” His teeth were still not quite under control. He took a swig and started to warm up inside. “I’ll put it d-down as lost overboard.”
“That’s the spirit.” The bo’sun’s witticism raised a laugh.
One of the men threw Patrick a towel. “Better get out o’ them wet duds.”
The ordeal outside seemed to have been some sort of test. Apparently, he had passed. The son of the cargo’s owner could never really be one of the crew, though someone made room on the steam pipes for him to hang his dripping clothes among theirs.
But he remembered the story of the Norwegian black ship Sagatind: The crew had broken into the cargo, drunk their fill, quarrelled and fought, and, when the Coast Guard seized the ship, were found blotto and bloody belowdecks.