Chapter Twelve #2
A few minutes ago on the Heath, when she had tried to put her daughter in the pushchair to give Oliver a turn in her arms, Miranda had produced an eldritch screech that turned all heads for a hundred yards.
The audience included Mr. Bennett and his spaniels.
Daisy was certain he would subsequently spread the word that she was cruel to her children.
She only hoped he wouldn’t go so far as to report her to the NSPCC.
Not likely, she thought. He and his wife preferred “insinuendo” to outright accusations that could be disproved.
Thus, despite Nurse Gilpin’s protests about spoiling the child so that she would always expect to be carried in future, Daisy had Miranda on her hip when they reached the Circle.
Somewhere in the back of her mind she could hear her mother rebuking her, saying she looked like a gypsy, carrying a baby on her hip, but it was quite the most comfortable way to do it.
What with one thing and another, she simply hadn’t much attention to spare for a police investigation just at that moment.
Even with three adults in attendance, steps up to the front door and down to the area door made getting two babies and a pushchair into the house a complicated matter. Daisy kept Miranda until they reached the front hall, by which time she was unhappy even in her mother’s arms.
“She’s hungry, poor lamb,” said Nurse accusingly, taking her.
Daisy felt as guilty as if she had deliberately withheld food from her child, in spite of knowing that was exactly what Mrs. Gilpin intended.
“So’s Oliver,” said Bertha.
“Well then,” snapped Mrs. Gilpin, “hurry and take him upstairs so you can come down for their lunch.”
Lunch sounded like a good idea to Daisy, too, but the parlour maid was hovering at the rear of the hall, having obviously kept a lookout for their return.
“Oh madam!” she exclaimed as the nursery party headed up the stairs.
“What is it, Elsie?”
“Oh madam, a policeman came by while you were out!”
“As we expected,” Daisy pointed out reassuringly.
“Yes’m.” The girl sounded as doubtful as if the possibility had never crossed her mind.
“Come into the sitting room and tell me about it.”
To the left of the stairs was a small sitting room that caught the afternoon sun.
Daisy had furnished it with the chintzes and cheerful paintings of Paris scenes that Alec’s first wife had chosen to brighten the house in St. John’s Wood.
Daisy and Alec used it far more than the formal drawing room at the front of the house.
Daisy sank into a chair, glad that they were the kind of chairs one could sink into. “Sit down, Elsie.”
“Oh madam, I didn’t ought!” She twisted the corner of her apron in agitated fingers.
“It was the Scottish one, madam. Detective Sergeant Mackinnon, he calls himself. He wanted to know exackly what I saw and what I did, and I told him I already told the master, but he said I had to tell it all over again.”
“So you did?”
“Oh yes’m. And the other one, Detective Constable Warren, the one with his eyebrows burnt off—you know?—he wrote it all down. Like as if he thought I might tell it all different next time!”
“Did you happen to think of anything you hadn’t already mentioned to me or to Mr. Fletcher?”
“Oh no’m. I told you every single thing, just like it happened.”
“Good. I’m sure Mr. Mackinnon didn’t mistrust you, Elsie. He was just doing his job, following the rules.”
“Well, that’s as may be. It’s not very nice for a girl to have every word she speaks wrote down.”
“No, it’s never nice being mixed up in a police case.” Not nice, Daisy thought, but always interesting. “Did he ask for me?”
“No’m. I said did he want to see the mistress, because you’d gone for a walk, but he said he was sure you’d told the master all you knew. Like as if I hadn’t!”
“I’m sure you did,” Daisy assured her, and the girl departed soothed.
Daisy, however, was left quite indignant.
She would have liked a chance to go over the whole affair with Mackinnon, or, better still, with Tom Tring.
What she really wanted, she realised, was to be reassured that they knew all about the Jessups’ comings and goings and were certain they had nothing to do with the stranger’s death.
In fact, she was not a little peeved at being ignored. On the other hand, as long as they didn’t want her contribution, she didn’t have to make up her mind what she really ought to reveal about the Jessups.
Her next aim, she decided, must be to meet Patrick Jessup.
Though it was his elder brother who had fled, if the family was somehow caught up in the murder in the garden, could Patrick’s return from America that very night have been pure coincidence, or had it set the affair in motion?
Only by talking to him could she judge to her own satisfaction—if not that of the police—whether the fatal outcome was inadvertent or the result of malice aforethought.
What was the cause of death? Ernie Piper might have had the decency to tell her!
Mackinnon might be an easier mark. He didn’t know her as well, and besides, she would be very careful not to alarm him with a direct question. He must be tired and hungry by now, tramping up and down the hill and all those steps. She would invite him to lunch.