Chapter Twenty-Seven
TWENTY-SEVEN
By the time Daisy, Audrey, and Mr. Irwin reached the Manchester Royal Infirmary, Aidan had been pronounced out of danger. He would have to forswear Rugby football for at least a year, preferably forever. But if, after another night in hospital, there was no relapse, he might go home.
The consultant was not happy to learn that home was two hundred miles away. A train journey was out of the question. But he conceded that a private automobile driven with the greatest care at a moderate rate of speed could do his patient no harm.
Mr. Irwin’s hired car could not accommodate everyone in comfort if Aidan was to have room to lie down on one of the seats.
Alec announced very firmly that he and Patrick would take the train.
Daisy expected to go with them, but Audrey announced equally firmly that she wanted Daisy to travel with her and Aidan.
She knew, she said, her father wouldn’t mind going by train, so as not to crowd the invalid.
Her father did mind, but he gave in after a little grumbling. Audrey explained to Daisy later that Aidan would go mad shut up hour after hour with his father-in-law, unable to escape his homilies.
In the meanwhile, the only time Daisy saw Alec alone was back in their bedroom at the Station Hotel.
By then he was so exhausted, he hadn’t the energy to rag her for going to Lincolnshire and then proceeding to Manchester.
He did ask whether she had learnt anything useful from Audrey or Irwin, but when she said, “No, nothing,” he promptly fell fast asleep.
She was glad to be able to tell the truth.
She didn’t know what she’d have done if Audrey had told her, as a friend, something she really ought to pass on to the police.
But Audrey did know she was married to a policeman, she reminded herself drowsily.
She wasn’t—wouldn’t have been—hearing confidences under false pretences… . She, too, fell asleep.
The next day was a different matter. As the Lanchester purred southward, the strictly admonished chauffeur doing an excellent job of avoiding bumps, swerves, and sudden stops, Aidan told his wife what had happened on that fatal night.
Daisy couldn’t help but hear. When he started talking, she pointed out that she was, to some degree at least, the ear of the Law. Aidan said it didn’t matter.
“I’ve already told your husband everything,” he said wearily.
Audrey listened in increasing distress, Daisy with interest that turned to puzzlement. Something was missing, though she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. She didn’t mention it. Audrey would only assume she was accusing Aidan of deliberately concealing the worst.
The story was bad enough. Aidan expected to be prosecuted for involuntary manslaughter, or something of the sort, and Patrick was in trouble for moving the body and concealing a crime.
“But they won’t send you to prison, darling?” Audrey asked in anguish. “You didn’t mean to kill him! And he would have shot Patrick.”
“They can’t find the gun,” Aidan told her sombrely. “I don’t know whether they believe Castellano really threatened Patrick’s life. If they can persuade a jury I attacked him without immediate cause, even not meaning to kill him …”
Audrey got a bit weepy. Daisy pretended not to notice Aidan comforting her and not to hear her promising to wait for him forever.
The missing gun—was that what was bothering her?
More crucial was Alec’s certainty that Castellano had been murdered with cool deliberation.
Was Aidan protecting Patrick still, with lies now, rather than with action?
Was Patrick protecting Aidan, similarly, by lying about the cause of death, as he had previously hidden the body and rushed his brother out of town?
Did neither of them know the police had evidence of purposeful murder?
Would Alec have let her travel with Aidan and Audrey if he believed Aidan to be a cold-blooded murderer?
With a brave attempt at normalcy, Audrey started to talk about how much the children were enjoying her sister’s farm.
They had helped feed chickens and collect eggs, watched the milking from a safe distance, and even taken brief rides on the broad backs of the cart horses.
Her description of the last, with Marilyn hanging on like grim death and Percy blithely waving with both arms, made Aidan smile.
But his eyelids soon drooped and he slipped into sleep.
Daisy and Audrey stared silently out of the windows at the endless drab industrial towns of the Midlands.
At least it wasn’t raining. Daisy was still plagued with a feeling that she had forgotten some vital fact.
As so often happened, the harder she tried to pin it down, the less certain she was that she hadn’t imagined the whole thing.
It was late when they reached Hampstead.
They were all exhausted. Brief good nights were said on the pavement, then Daisy plodded up the steps to her front door, followed by the driver with her suitcase.
At the top, he set it down. She tipped him, and as he ran back down to help the others, she rang the bell rather than dig for the key in her bag.
Elsie opened the door. “Oh madam, I’m ever so glad you’re back.”
“So am I,” said Daisy fervently, hurrying into the warmth of the hall.
“There’s messages,” announced the parlour maid, lugging the suitcase in and closing the door. “The master rang up, and he may be very late tonight. And that Mr. Lambert called twice, and I know it was him, even if he did have his collar up and his hat down and wouldn’t give his name.”
“Oh no!”
“Yes’m, it was him for sure.”
“What did he want?”
“He wouldn’t tell me, ’m. Said he needed to speak to you or the master, so I told him you was in the North and if he wanted the master, he’d better go to Scotland Yard, and he said he wasn’t going there, thank you very much, the way they treated him last time.
He said to tell you it was urgent, but he wouldn’t leave an address or telephone number. ”
“Oh dear, I wonder what’s wrong!”
“Not to worry, madam. He said he’d keep coming back till he got hold of you. And there’s one more.”
“One more what?” Daisy asked blankly, her mind on Lambert’s gyrations.
“Message, ’m.” She went to the hall table. “My sister brought round this note. They’re in a terrible state over there, she said, but she wouldn’t tell me what about, and I reckon she don’t really know.”
Daisy’s heart sank. On the whole, she would have preferred to remain in ignorance. Trying to hide a sigh, she said, “Thank you, Elsie. Take my suitcase up, would you, please.”
She opened the note. It was from Mrs. Jessup.
Patrick had been asked to go to Scotland Yard to “assist the police with their enquiries.” What did it mean?
Mr. Irwin was no help at all, since all he did was reiterate that he “took the gravest view” of the situation, which she and her husband were quite capable of doing for themselves.
Would Daisy please come—when she had recovered from the journey, of course—and explain the significance of those ominous words.
There was a blotch that looked alarmingly like a tearstain.
Daisy couldn’t imagine Mrs. Jessup crying.
Had the note sounded even remotely accusatory, she would have sent a refusal, wrapped decently in mentions of fatigue and the lateness of the hour.
But nothing suggested Daisy or her policeman husband was responsible for the Jessups’ plight.
She decided she’d better go right away. If she took off her coat and sat down, or went to see the babies, she might never get moving again. With a sigh she made no effort to conceal, she called up the stairs to Elsie. “I’m going next door!”
“The only question I want you to ask him,” Alec said to Tom Tring, “is, ‘And then?’ I want you to hear his story just as he chooses to tell it. With any luck, we might learn something from comparing it with what he told me in Manchester. I want it word for word, Ernie.”
“Don’t I always, Chief?” Piper asked, injured.
Alec grinned. “On the whole, unless my wife is present.” Ernie Piper was expert at omitting from his notes the bits of Daisy’s interventions that were best omitted.
On this occasion, close similarity of wording would suggest Patrick was reciting a tale he had learnt by heart.
On the other hand, if minor details varied, odds and ends he’d surely remember if they’d actually happened, the presumption would be that he was making it up and had forgotten exactly what he had said before.
Tom and Ernie went out. Alec turned to the pile of reports on his desk. On top were those compiled during his absence.
Mackinnon had returned from Lincolnshire.
According to his official typed report, Mrs. Aidan Jessup appeared to have been kept in ignorance of her husband’s and brother-in-law’s activities.
A paper clip appended a single pencilled sheet: He had not tried to find out from her the whereabouts of her husband because Mrs. Fletcher had assured him that was already known.
Alec crumpled the paper into a ball and chucked it in the wastepaper basket. Mackinnon was getting as good as Ernie Piper at covering up Daisy’s meddling.
Tom had talked to Whitcomb, who had returned home from the City at about twenty to seven, by taxi because of the rain. He had seen nothing and no one in the garden. It had been dark and wet and he had not been looking.
No one knew where Lambert was, but his landlady, going into his room to dust (so she claimed), thought he had come back while she was out shopping and taken his razor, toothbrush and hairbrush, and some clothes.
Alec was relieved that he had shown signs of life.
The man was an incompetent, frequently irritating idiot, but one wouldn’t want any harm to come to him, not least because of repercussions from the Americans. Daisy would be glad.
And speaking—or rather, thinking—of the Americans, next in Alec’s pile was a lengthy tirade from Superintendent Crane explaining exactly what the U.S.
State Department had said to the U.S. embassy had said to the Foreign Secretary had said to the Home Secretary had said to the Assistant Commissioner (Crime)…
. Alec skimmed through it. They were all unhappy.
He sent for a cup of tea.
The last of the new reports was Tom’s interview with the Bennetts. They had not changed their story in any material way. They had seen Patrick Jessup, accompanied by—
“Bloody hell!” Alec swore aloud. The constable just entering with his tea slopped it in the saucer. “How could I have forgotten?”