Chapter Two
TWO
“What I want to know,” said Daisy, “is why Alec’s great-uncle’s solicitor is nervous about having a policeman move into that house.”
Alec and Tommy Pearson had just joined her and Madge in the sitting room. It was a pleasant, comfortable room, half the size of Mr. Walsall’s drawing room and without a scrap of the Jessups’ flamboyance.
Tommy liked his glass of port after dinner, but Alec had promised Daisy they wouldn’t discuss Mr. Walsall’s will in her absence. They hadn’t kept the ladies waiting more than a quarter of an hour.
Daisy’s demand brought a frown to the face of the stocky, bespectacled solicitor. “That, I can’t tell you,” he said, accepting a cup of coffee. He helped himself to a lump of sugar. Tongs poised to take a second, he glanced at his wife and regretfully forbore.
Madge’s blond curls nodded approval, but as he sat down beside her, she said tartly, “He won’t tell you, more likely. Tommy’s refused to say a word to me about why you invited us to dinner tonight.”
“For the pleasure of your company, of course, darling,” said Daisy.
“Well, of course! But I know he has business to discuss with Alec, too. Do you want me to go and powder my nose while you talk? Or I could go up and admire the babies. They’re always so angelic when they’re asleep.”
“As far as I’m concerned, you’re welcome to stay, Madge,” Daisy assured her. “Only it’s really Alec’s business….”
“There’s no reason you shouldn’t stay,” said Alec, “but it’s not particularly interesting business, unless Pearson’s going to drag some hitherto unsuspected family skeleton out of the cupboard?”
“Good Lord, no!” Tommy was shocked. “Nothing like that.”
Daisy was always somewhat taken aback by evidence of Tommy’s earnest outlook on life.
She had heard tales of his derring-do during the War, in the course of which he had been badly shot up.
In fact, he had met Madge—then Lady Margaret Allinston—in the military hospital where she had been a VAD nurse and Daisy had worked in the office.
Since returning to the long-established law firm of Pearson, Pearson, Watts & Pearson, Tommy had reverted to the conventions with a vengeance.
Although he had been extremely helpful in that extremely unconventional business in Worcestershire, Daisy reminded herself.
Doubtless his retreat into stolidity was his way of coping with the horrors he had lived through.
People had different ways of dealing with the memories, some more efficacious, some less so.
Tommy and Madge and their little boy were a happy family, and he was doing well in his profession.
A certain degree of gravity was required of solicitors, as well as of policemen.
Alec wasn’t being a policeman this evening, though, just a hopeful heir.
Tommy took some papers out of an attaché case. “Let me say right away,” he stated, “that William Walsall was a very wealthy man. He left considerable sums to various charities—”
“Buying his place in heaven,” said the irrepressible Madge.
Her husband gave her an affectionately exasperated look.
“There’s no reason to suppose so. He made generous provision for his butler and housekeeper, a married couple, though given their advanced ages, the annuities could not have been expensive.
Be that as it may, I can assure you, Fletcher, your income from investments will be quite sufficient to cover the increased cost of a larger household, without—”
“That’s what Mr. Irwin told me,” said Daisy, “but with the utmost reluctance, which I don’t understand at all.”
“Perhaps he’s been misappropriating funds,” Madge suggested.
“My dear, you mustn’t say such things, even in jest,” Tommy remonstrated. “Phelps, Irwin, and Apsley is a highly regarded firm. Besides, the sale of the property would be equally likely to bring to light any discrepancy in the accounts.”
“We might not have delved deep, as we’d be happy to get the funds from the sale,” Daisy pointed out. “It would have been the horses he cheated, and they’d not likely complain.”
Madge had to be told about the Home for Superannuated and Superfluous Carriage Horses. “No,” she agreed, laughing, “they’d never look a gift horse in the mouth.”
“Probably not,” said Alec. “Whereas if he’d left us skint, or without sufficient funds to keep up the house—”
“Either way, I shall have everything checked by an accountant, though I’m sure Madge is quite mistaken. Still, it is odd that Irwin appeared not to want you to move in.”
“Entirely Daisy’s rampant imagination, I expect,” said Alec.
“It was not! Don’t be beastly, darling.”
He grinned at her. “You were saying, Pearson, ‘without’ …?”
“Without? Oh yes, without considering the leases.”
“Leases? Mr. Irwin didn’t mention leases, only investments. I told you he was holding out on us, Alec.”
“Land is an investment,” Tommy said patiently. “Assuming you keep the house, you appear to own the freehold of the whole of Constable Circle.”
“Constable Circle!” Madge burst out laughing. “You’ll have to change it to Chief Inspector Circle.”
“I must admit the name was something of a shock,” said Alec with a smile. “It’s called after the painter, of course.”
“John Constable lived in Hampstead,” Daisy confirmed. “In Well Walk, actually, just around the corner. There’s a Gainsborough Gardens nearby, too.”
“As I was about to say,” Tommy continued, “the ground rents don’t amount to much in modern terms, as the ninety-nine-year leases were signed in the mid-1890s, when prices were much lower than since the War. Under certain circumstances, you can raise them, of course.”
“What circs?” Daisy enquired.
“It’s a complicated subject, as leases are all different.
I’ll have to have time to study them before I can explain properly.
But if you were ever in need of capital, you could sell the freehold.
It must be worth a pretty penny. Not that I’d recommend such a course unless you found yourselves in desperate straits. Land is an excellent investment.”
“How clever of your great-uncle to buy it up,” Madge congratulated Alec.
“He didn’t actually buy it,” said Tommy.
“Aha, the skeleton in the cupboard!” Madge crowed. “He was a gambler and won it in a game of cards.”
“Stuff and nonsense. No one could have been more respectable. Jonathan Irwin’s father was Walsall’s solicitor back then, and knew him quite well. Irwin told me his history—in confidence, of course.”
“Tell all,” Daisy commanded. “Do you know what caused the breach with Alec’s grandmother?”
Tommy looked at Alec, who shrugged. “Surely you can tell me, and Daisy will find out one way or another. I gather the next-door neighbour—”
“The one with the Versailles sitting room?” Madge interrupted. She exchanged a glance with Daisy, who had described the Jessups’ sitting room to her as a miniature Galerie des Glaces.
Not that Daisy had ever seen the original, but she’d read descriptions. “That’s the one,” she said. “Mrs. Jessup told me her husband used to visit the old man regularly.”
“So it’s quite likely Mr. Jessup and perhaps his wife know all there is to know about my forebears, in which case Daisy’ll have it out of them in no time. You may reveal the worst, Pearson.”
“It’s not so bad. More old-fashioned, really, though I have plenty of clients who still have the old attitudes.
Mr. Walsall acquired the land that became Constable Circle in payment of a debt.
He owned the majority of shares in a bank, which he sold when he retired, to one of the bigger banks. Barclay’s, if I remember correctly.”
“Never mind that,” Daisy said impatiently. “What about Alec’s grandmother?”
“It’s all tied together. His sister—your grandmother, Alec—married his chief clerk, against his bitter opposition.”
“I suppose he gave my grandfather the sack,” Alec guessed. Tommy nodded.
“That’s disgraceful!” Daisy burst out. “Even my mother didn’t behave as badly as that when I married Alec. Darling, we ought to reject his house and his blasted money!”
Aghast, Tommy was speechless. Madge intervened. “Daisy, don’t you think Mr. Walsall was trying to make amends when he left everything to Alec?”
“Ha! When he was already dead and it didn’t cost him anything!”
“Calm down, love. My grandparents did all right, and my mother ended up as a bank manager’s wife. You could call that a revenge of sorts.”
“Besides,” said Madge, “it would be cutting off the twins’ and Belinda’s noses to spite their great-great-uncle’s face, and he won’t even know about it.”
Daisy laughed ruefully. “True. As a gesture, it wouldn’t give the same satisfaction as throwing a bag of gold in his face. But what—” She stopped and listened. “That’s the doorbell. Who on earth, at this time of night …? Darling, you promised—”
“I told them we’d be out. Anyway, the Yard would telephone, not send someone to my doorstep. Mrs. Dobson’s getting it.”
The heavy footsteps of the cook-housekeeper were heard in the hall.
Called from the washing up, she was probably wiping her hands on her damp apron as she went and tucking wisps of hair behind her ears.
Soon, perhaps, they’d have a neatly uniformed house-parlour maid…
. Still, Mrs. Dobson was more than capable of getting rid of unwanted visitors.
They heard the rattle of the chain, the murmur of voices, a door closing with a decided thud, then Mrs. Dobson’s footsteps again, coming to the sitting room.
The door opened. “It’s an American with a carpetbag, madam. He says you know him, you and the master. ‘Mr. and Mrs. Fletcher,’ he said. It’s pouring cats and dogs, it is,” added Mrs. Dobson, “and he’s ever so wet. Sopping wet.”
Another mysterious American visitor? “Didn’t he give his name?” Daisy demanded.
“No, madam. I ast him, and he looked behind him, sort of shifty like, and said he better not tell. So I shut the door on him.”
“Very wise,” said Tommy.
“Shall I tell him to go away, madam?”
“Heavens no!” Daisy started to get up. “I’ll go and see who it is.”