Chapter 5
Alec opened the passenger door of the Austin Chummy. Daisy stepped out onto the pavement. A whiff of petrol fumes ceded to the lingering smell of his aromatic pipe tobacco and the fragrance of the roses in the front garden.
“It’s been a lovely evening,” she said, not wanting it to end. “Will you come in for a nightcap? Only South African sherry, I’m afraid, unless Lucy’s splurged on Spanish ‘cognac.’”
“I’d better not.”
“Binkie might have left some whisky, or there’s always coffee, or cocoa.”
Alec laughed. “Fear of South African sherry couldn’t stop me, though I’d hesitate to drink Lord Gerald’s Scotch.
Unfortunately, crooks don’t cease operations over the weekend.
It’s early to rise for me tomorrow. If anything is certain in this life it’s that the stack of paper on my desk will have grown since I last scowled upon it. ”
“My stacks of paper are all ready to be posted,” Daisy said with satisfaction as he escorted her up the short path to the front door. She stopped on the step, fumbling in her evening bag for the key by the light from the street lamp.
“Well done. The best I can say is that there are a couple of cases I can close and send down to Files.”
Key in hand, Daisy paused. “Alec, I don’t suppose you could get away next weekend for a day or two?
” Was she being frightfully presumptuous?
She had ragged Phillip about being slow to introduce Miss Arbuckle to his parents, and she had known Alec much longer.
These days a girl didn’t have to wait for a man to make all the running, she reminded herself.
“I’m going down to Fairacres, to Mother at the Dower House, and I’d like awfully for you to meet her. ”
Without warning, she found herself enveloped in an ardent embrace. The key clinked on the step as she put her arms around his neck and kissed him back with great enthusiasm.
“Gosh!” she said shakily when at last forced to come up for air, “can all coppers kiss like that?”
“I hope you have no intention of trying to find out.” He let her go and stepped back, running a hand through his thick, dark hair. “Daisy, that was shockingly ungentlemanly of me,” he said ruefully.
“What rot! You can’t say that without implying that I was unladylike.”
“In that case, I withdraw the apology.” He smiled. “Do you mean you won’t withdraw the invitation?”
“Of course not, idiot,” Daisy said lovingly. “Can you accept?”
“I have a few days’ leave due. I can’t…”
“… promise—I know. A second Jack the Ripper might be on the prowl at this very moment.” Her involuntary shiver led Alec to put his arm around her shoulders. She looked up at him. “But you’ll try?”
“That I can promise. You’d better give me the name of the nearest hotel so that I can ring up and book a room.”
“There are lots of hotels in Great Malvern, but the inn in the village is nearer, and I’m told it’s quite comfortable. The Wedge and Beetle at Morton Green.”
“The Wedge and Beetle it shall be. I’ll try to get away for lunch one day this week, too.” He bent his head.
This time Daisy was prepared to be kissed. To her frustration, a motor-car promptly pulled up behind the Austin and she heard Lucy’s penetrating soprano.
Alec’s lips brushed hers. “I really must be off,” he said regretfully. “Lunch on Tuesday, if I can make it?”
“Spiffing. Wire me if you can’t.”
She watched him walk down the path, a broad-shouldered figure in the lamplight, with a spring in his step despite the lateness of the hour. He paused at the gate to exchange good-nights with Lucy and Binkie, turned to wave to Daisy, then was eclipsed as the other two approached.
“What-ho, Daisy,” said Lord Gerald Bincombe, a large, taciturn ex-rugger Blue.
“Solved any mysteries tonight, darling?” Lucy asked sardonically.
“No, darling, but you can help me solve one. I’ve dropped my dratted key.”
“Aha!” Lucy sounded amused. “I wonder what made you do that?”
Feeling herself blush, an outdated affliction she was mortifyingly prone to, Daisy stooped to search. She said crossly, “Give us a hand, do.”
“Hullo, here it is.” Binkie bent down, retrieved the key from the path, and presented it to Daisy with a slight bow.
“Thanks.” She opened the door and flipped the electric light switch. A yellow envelope lay on the mat inside. “Oh, there’s a telegram. For me,” she added, picking it up and dropping it on the hall table while she took off her hat and gloves.
They all went down to the semi-basement kitchen for cocoa. Sitting at the kitchen table, Daisy opened the telegram.
“Who’s it from?” Lucy asked, pouring milk into a saucepan with the utmost care to avoid splashes on the hip-waisted yellow silk georgette clinging to her slender figure.
“Phillip. How odd! ‘Urgent emergency,’” Daisy read. “‘Come pronto Fairacres not Dower House need you now please.’ With his name, it’s one word over the twelve—the ‘please’ was an afterthought.”
“Urgent, emergency, pronto, now; he’s certainly keen to get you there in a hurry.”
“But why? I suppose it’s too late to telephone from a box to find out.”
Binkie consulted his wrist-watch. “Nearly midnight.”
“Too late, and you don’t know where he is,” said Lucy.
A horrid possibility crossed Daisy’s mind. “Oh Lucy, you don’t suppose Mother’s fallen seriously ill? Why should he say to go to Fairacres not the Dower House? He hardly knows Edgar and Geraldine.”
“Surely not, darling. You would have heard from your cousin, or maybe a doctor, not Phillip. You know what an ass he is. No one would leave it to him to contact you. Mysteriouser and mysteriouser—just your line—but I shouldn’t worry about the dowager.”
“No, I expect you’re right.” Could it be that the Arbuckles had met his family by chance with disastrous results? Daisy debated whether to tell Lucy and Binkie about Gloria. Not her tale to tell, she decided.
“Drive you down tonight, if you want,” Binkie offered gruffly. “Back in time to toddle to the office.”
“You’re an angel, but Phillip can’t possibly expect me to leave at this time of night, not to mention what Edgar and Geraldine would say if I turned up on their doorstep at dawn. I’ll take the first train in the morning. Where’s the Bradshaw’s, Lucy?”
“You used it last. Oh drat! The milk’s boiling over.”
Binkie coped manfully with the emergency, and Lucy made cocoa with what was left of the milk. Daisy took her three-quarters of a cupful up to her den to look for the railway timetable, more to give the other two a spot of privacy than because she was in a hurry to find the best train.
On her way upstairs, she wondered what on earth had put the wind up Phillip. He was by nature on the phlegmatic side, not easily excited to more than a bit of minor bluster or a temperate enthusiasm.
Why had he not been more explicit, if not to avoid worrying her?
Lucy was right, of course, about Phillip being the last person anyone would ask to get in touch with her if her mother was ill.
All the same, Daisy could not help being anxious.
She could not imagine why he should tell her to go to Fairacres rather than the Dower House, or even Malvern Grange, if the Dowager Lady Dalrymple were not involved.
Unless he didn’t want her ladyship to get involved—which suggested a row with his family over Gloria.
The question then became, did Daisy want to get involved?
To be present at their meeting, to help smooth the way and prevent a row was one thing.
Landing in the middle when he was already hock deep in the soup was quite another.
Sitting down at her desk, she reread the telegram. “Urgent emergency” sounded positively desperate. She had better go, but she’d really give it him in the neck if all he wanted was his hand held!
The train service to Malvern was excellent, the Victorian spa enjoying a renaissance since the Armistice.
Reading, Oxford, the long, slow pull up into the Cotswolds and the rush down the steep slope into the Vale of Evesham, with Bredon Hill dominating the plain to the south.
A brief stop in Worcester, then over the Severn and Daisy was in her home country.
At the ripe old age of twenty-five, one ought to be blasé, but she still felt some of the excitement of the end-of-term return from school.
The rich, red soil, orchards, hop-fields, and market gardens, streams and pastures, woods crowning the low rises, and always the Malvern Hills to the west—this was home.
She had climbed the hills, walked and ridden through the woods and fields, cycled along the twisting lanes, through the villages of brick and stone and half-timbered cottages.
Puffing and sighing, the train drew into Great Malvern station. The porter who opened the compartment door for Daisy greeted her by name.
“Morning, Miss Dalrymple. Mind the wet paint.”
The pillars and elaborate brackets holding up the roof over the platform had just been repainted red and blue; their fanciful wreaths of ironwork leaves and flowers were glossy green, yellow, and white; men were scrubbing the patina of soot from the walls of the long building, patterned with vari-coloured stone.
Daisy stepped down to the platform with an involuntary sense of civic pride in the uniquely decorative station.
“What-ho, Daisy!” Phillip loped along the platform towards her. “I hoped you’d be on this train, old dear.”
“I had to get up frightfully early to.… Gosh, Phil, what have you done to your head?” she exclaimed as he took off his tweed cap, revealing an encircling bandage.
Hastily he clapped the cap back on his head. “You should have seen me yesterday. I looked like a ruddy native in a turban.”
“What happened? What’s going on? I hope you have a jolly good reason for dragging me all this way!”
“I can’t tell you here.” He glanced furtively over his shoulder, then turned to her porter. “Is this all your luggage?”
“Yes, I don’t expect to stay long and anyway I have a few things at the Dower House. Phillip, Mother’s not ill, is she?”