Chapter Sixteen #2
“Or Ireland, Mrs. Fletcher. You said Mrs. Jessup was Irish. Patrick could have been visiting relatives, or maybe calling on breweries and distilleries.”
“Or talking to Irish Republicans about bombs,” she said darkly.
“Not impossible,” said Alec, “and I’ll keep it in mind, but I’m inclined to believe your original notion was right, Daisy.
” He grinned at her look of triumph. “I think Patrick was in America, on business concerned with outwitting their forces of law and order. Tom, if he was still on board when he cabled, the Jessups didn’t know what train he’d catch? ”
“No. The men came home about four o’clock, she said, which agrees with what the servants told me. Just in case Patrick disembarked and got through Customs quickly, to be there to welcome him.”
“Or—I wonder—to meet Castellano? I’m assuming Castellano refused to go to the shop because he knew Prohibition agents were over here on the watch. Suppose Jessup had at last agreed to talk to him at home, to find out what he wanted? And when they found out, they didn’t like it.”
“But they wouldn’t kill him,” Daisy protested, “not deliberately.”
“Pending the autopsy report, I’m afraid we’re virtually certain he was killed deliberately.
I’m not yet prepared to swear he was killed by one of the Jessups, but with the information we have, I have no choice but to work on that basis.
I realise it’s no earthly use trying to tell you what to do, but I hope you’ll steer clear of the family, all of them, until we have this sorted out.
And while we’re on the subject, how did you happen to be chatting to Mrs. Jessup this morning? ”
Tom, who in the middle of this peroration had gazed up at the ceiling as if trying to pretend his considerable bulk was elsewhere, returned his attention to the proceedings.
“She came round,” said Daisy, feeling somewhat subdued but on the whole heartened that Alec seemed at last to have grasped that he couldn’t order her about. “She told me Audrey was just leaving to visit her sister, and before she went, she wanted to know what was going on in the garden.”
“What did you tell her?”
“That I couldn’t enlighten her because you never tell me anything.”
A muffled snort emerged from the depths of Tom’s moustache.
Alec visibly relaxed. “Good. What did you make of her manner?”
Daisy thought back. “As far as I remember, she seemed perfectly relaxed. Or at least as relaxed as one can be with hordes of policemen quartering the neighbourhood. But don’t forget, darling, she was an actress.”
“Ah, was she now?” said Tom. “Then it’s no good reading anything into her reactions.”
“How did she seem to you, Tom?”
“Just the right amount of concern if there’s hordes of policemen quartering the neighbourhood and you don’t know what’s going on and one of them comes to ask you nosy questions about your family’s movements.
And you can’t give satisfactory answers, and you have to admit you recognise the victim.
I wish I’d seen her on the stage. She must have been pretty good. ”
“Or else she doesn’t know what’s going on,” Daisy suggested.
“That’s always a possibility,” Alec agreed, “but I think I have enough to apply for search warrants for the house and shop. He looked around as Mackinnon came in. “Did you find out where Aidan is?” he asked.
“No such luck, sir. Apparently this chap Dalton lives in some godforsaken part of the country. Aidan’s the only member of the firm who’s ever been there. He has the address and telephone number in his address book—”
“Which he took with him.”
“Which he took with him. What’s more, he took the only list of the customers he has to call on, all of whose names and addresses are only to be found in his address book.
All they know is that they’re scattered all over the North, including Scotland.
He takes the train up and then hires a car and driver.
Mr. Jessup said he could probably come up with a few names if he put his mind to it, but he can’t recall any with unusual names we might be able to run to earth. ”
“They must have an order book with the names and addresses of people they ship stuff to.”
“Yes, but a lot of them just write with their orders; they dinna insist on a visit from a knowledgeable representative.”
“There should be letters in their files, Chief,” said Tom. “It may take a bit of digging, but we should be able to sort it out. Course, that won’t tell us where he’ll be on any particular day.”
“Search warrants,” said Alec crisply. “Tom, I’m leaving you to find a friendly magistrate. Mackinnon, you come with me to take notes. It’s about time I had a word with Mrs. Jessup for myself.”
Not five minutes after Alec went over to the Jessups, the doorbell rang.
Daisy was still sitting in the dining room, writing down everything she had heard, which she hadn’t dared to do with Alec present.
She ignored the bell, thanking heaven that Elsie had proved quite capable of dealing with nosy reporters.
However, the parlour maid showed in DC Ross, who had returned from his errand.
“You’ve been quick,” said Daisy. “If I remember your instructions correctly, that means the Bennetts’ servants confirmed the existence of Miss Bennett’s old school chum. What a pity.”
“Is it?” Ross asked. “To tell the truth, Mrs. Fletcher, I don’t feel I’ve really got the hang of this case, coming in on it late, so to speak. I don’t s’pose you’d be kind enough to explain what’s going on?”
“I’d be glad to. It would help get it straight in my own head.
” About to add that she didn’t actually know everything, as Alec refused to tell her, she realised just in time that nothing could so effectively cut off future confidences from Ross.
She told him all she had already told the others, as well as what she had learnt from them, adding to her notes as she spoke.
He had his notebook out, too, but unlike Ernie Piper, he didn’t have an endless supply of well-sharpened pencils.
She had to wait while he shaved one into the fireplace.
He did know shorthand, though, like Ernie, and unlike Daisy’s version of Pitman’s, his was probably legible to anyone who had studied the subject.
“Thanks,” he said when she finished her exposition. “That was very clear. I see what you mean about the Bennetts. I wish I could report no one had ever heard of Miss Lagerquist.”
“Lagerquist—is that the friend’s name? They could never have invented that, alas.
Pity her name’s not Smith. Of course, even if she’s real, she’s just an excuse, giving the Bennetts time to make up a credible story.
But if Miss Lagerquist were a figment of their imaginations, then the police could dismiss the Bennetts’ story as another figment.
Now they’ll have to take it seriously, whatever they come up with. ”
“With a pinch of salt, Mrs. Fletcher, seeing they didn’t see fit to come to us right away.”
“Oh, the Chief will take anything they say with a pinch of salt. He knows them. It’s because he knows them that he’ll have to act on what they’ll say they saw.”
Ross looked somewhat confused. Daisy was about to elucidate when the doorbell rang again. Poor Elsie was going to be run off her feet, Daisy thought, but it was DC Warren who ushered in DC Ardmore.
“Hope it’s all right, madam,” Warren said, “if I answer the door. Miss Bristow passed a remark when Ross here arrived and I offered to do it for her.”
“Thank you,” Daisy said warmly. “With all of you coming and going, I was beginning to worry about Elsie. What about the telephone? No one has rung up yet?”
“Not yet. D’you mind if I leave this door open a bit? Then I’ll be able to hear it ring from here, and the front doorbell, too. I’d like to know what’s been found out.”
“Of course, leave it ajar. Mr. Ross found out that Miss Bennett’s school friend is real.”
“And Miss Bennett spends a day with her in town every month, and sometimes doesn’t come home for the night.”
“What about you, Mr. Ardmore?” Daisy enquired.
“Bad news, I’m sorry to say, Mrs. Fletcher, him being a friend of yours. Mr. Lambert didn’t take his toothbrush with him, nor his hairbrushes or anything else he’d need for a night away. Any way you look at it, it don’t look good.”
“Oh dear, I wonder what can have happened to him! He’s so helpless and hopeless and hapless, I can’t help feeling a bit responsible for him. Surely Castellano’s murderer can’t have got him, too.”
The three men exchanged glances.
“We’ve no reason to think so,” Ross said soothingly.
Warren inevitably looked on the gloomy side. “‘Cepting he was int’rested in the Jessups, same as Castellano.”
Ross frowned at him. “Mr. Lambert was … is a sort of policeman, and it looks like Castellano might’ve been a crook.”
His slip of the tongue didn’t make Daisy feel any better. Clearly he, too, had a feeling Lambert was dead. Equally obviously, he assumed the Jessups were responsible. Daisy refused to believe any of them was a cold-blooded killer.
She had to remind herself that she had never met Patrick Jessup.
He had been described to her as “adventurous,” often a euphemism for reckless, or even for aggressive.
Was it possible that he had come home from America to find his family being persecuted by Castellano, and decided to do something drastic about it?
Yet Aidan, not Patrick, had done a moonlight flit. Staid, sober, sensible Aidan, father of two small children—and adept of the rugger field. Rugby football was above all a game invariably associated with physical aggression.
Daisy felt she was going round in circles again. Then suddenly a new idea struck her. Whichever brother was a murderer, if either was, she would expect the family to rally round to protect him. Could Aidan have left to draw suspicion away from Patrick?
There were too many unaswered questions. She wished she knew how Castellano had been killed, not in too much gruesome detail, of course. And she wished she knew what he had been doing in England.
“It’s all very well saying Castellano may have been one of a bootlegging gang,” she interrupted the subdued discussion of the others, “and that they’ve started sending people to England to coordinate codes with their suppliers.
It doesn’t explain why the Jessups didn’t want anything to do with him, does it? ”
“It would if they’re not selling booze to America,” Ross pointed out, “and he’s been trying to persuade them to join the trade, and they don’t want to.”
“Oh. Yes.” Daisy had been assuming Jessup & Sons were rumrunners, if the word could be applied to British wholesalers.
It fitted so well with her theory that Patrick had been in America.
Or had she first guessed that they were shipping to America and from that deduced Patrick’s whereabouts?
She couldn’t remember. And then there was Mr. Irwin’s nervousness, suggesting some sort of illegal carrying-on.
Perhaps evasion of duty owed was behind that after all. How dull!
Whichever, it didn’t make sense for Patrick to be sent over to arrange the deal while the bootleggers sent an envoy in the opposite direction on the same business.
She badly wanted to meet Patrick. Normally, she would expect to have him introduced to her shortly after his return from abroad, but circumstances were anything but normal. After this, innocent or guilty, the Jessups might never again want to have anything to do with the Fletchers.
“Tea,” she said, and rang the bell.