Chapter 7 #2
Which still left a lot of ground to be covered.
Even if enquiries pinpointed a general area, Daisy had little hope of finding Gloria Arbuckle before her father paid the ransom.
The crooks surely wouldn’t want to hang around for longer than necessary.
But the searchers just might strike it lucky, and the quest would be worth the effort just to stop Phillip sinking into despair.
It might even be quite amusing, rather like the treasure-hunts so popular among young people at house-parties.
She came to the gate in the high, neatly-trimmed beech hedge around the Dower House.
The garden inside was equally neat and flourishing.
One thing the Dowager Lady Dalrymple hadn’t grumbled about for some time was the young Welsh gardener Daisy had foisted on her.
Owen Morgan was a hard worker who knew his stuff.
Seeing him up a ladder picking cherries, she begged a handful and asked after his family before going on into the house.
Her mother was in the sitting room, seated at the satinwood Sheraton bureau, writing a letter. Daisy regarded her oblivious back with fondness mingled with anticipated exasperation.
A short, plumpish woman in her mid-fifties, the dowager viscountess was never happy without something to moan about.
In her eyes, the charming and very comfortable Dower House was utterly inadequate.
Its mere five bedrooms—not counting servants’ quarters—made guests other than family out of the question.
Even her elder daughter Violet’s family could only be squeezed in with the greatest difficulty.
It would be unbearably cramped if her younger daughter came to live with her, yet she strongly objected to Daisy’s working to support herself in London.
Both daughters neglected her terribly, their rare visits always much too short. What she would say when she discovered Daisy was in Worcestershire but staying with the enemy up at the big house remained to be seen.
“Hello, Mother.”
Lady Dalrymple started and swung round. “Good gracious, Daisy, what a horrid shock you gave me! I suppose it’s too much to expect you to give me a few hours’ notice if you mean to come down.”
Daisy kissed her. “I hoped it would be a nice surprise.”
“Of course I’m always glad to see you, dear, but I have the Waddells and Miss Reid coming to dinner and bridge tonight.”
“I shan’t upset your numbers, or put you out in any way. Edgar and Geraldine have invited me and several friends to stay for a few days.”
“Indeed! So now the encroaching parvenus are attempting to alienate my children from me? How could you accept?”
“It was very kind of them. One can’t refuse all their olive branches, Mother. I’ll be able to pop in to see you now and then without upsetting your bridge evenings or your other engagements.”
“If only you would learn to play bridge, Daisy. It’s very awkward not being able to call on you to make up a table.”
Having sedulously avoided learning the game, Daisy had no intention of starting now. “I’d never meet your high standards,” she said. “I think my mind works the wrong way.”
“You take after your father. He never did play well.” This, by an inevitable progression, called to mind another of the late viscount’s faults. “It’s a great pity he didn’t leave you better provided for, so that you would have no excuse to work.”
Though she knew it was pointless, in defence of her father Daisy trotted out the old arguments.
“You know he always assumed Gervaise would inherit Fairacres and give me a home and an allowance. And he was too shattered after Gervaise … afterwards to get around to making a new will at once. He was still comparatively young and healthy. He thought he had plenty of time.”
“I can’t think why he went and succumbed to the ’flu,” the dowager fretted, as if her husband had deliberately died to inconvenience her. “If you only had the sense to get married, like Violet.…”
“As a matter of fact,” Daisy said cautiously, “there’s a man I want you to meet.”
Her mother brightened. “Who is he?” she asked eagerly. “He’ll be at your house-party, at Fairacres?”
“No, actually.…”
“I knew it. He’s unsuitable!” she lamented. “Since you will insist on working, you’re bound to mingle with hoi polloi. What is he? Some scruffy, penniless intellectual? A wealthy upstart with pretensions? Oh, Daisy, not a foreigner?”
In comparison, a middle-class police detective just might come as a pleasant surprise, Daisy hoped. Let Mother worry for a few days. “You’ll find out when you meet him,” she said. “I was going to write and ask if this coming weekend would be convenient.”
“Let me look in my diary. For you, yes, but I really cannot have a stranger staying in the house, especially if he’s not one of us. Besides, it’s quite impossible to entertain properly with only three indoor servants.”
“He’s booking at the Wedge and Beetle.”
“Well, at least he has the decency not to thrust himself in where he’s not wanted.”
“Mother! I don’t expect miracles of cordiality, but unless you promise to be polite, I shan’t bring him. We’ll get married quietly in a Registry Office and…”
“My daughter marry in a Registry Office? Over my dead body!”
“You wouldn’t know about it until afterwards,” Daisy pointed out. “Do be reasonable, Mother.”
“Naturally I shall be polite,” the dowager sniffed. “I trust I am never otherwise. I can only hope seeing the bounder among well-bred people of your own class will make you see sense.”
Daisy bit her tongue to hold back a futile retort. “Yes, well, I’d better be getting back,” she said. “I’ll drop by again tomorrow. Oh, by the way, Phillip Petrie sends his best regards.”
“Phillip? Is he at Fairacres? You’d do well to marry Phillip,” her mother lamented. “The Petries are an excellent family.”
“Phillip may be neither scruffy nor an intellectual but he hasn’t a bean, and anyway, he’s in love with someone else. Cheerio, Mother. See you tomorrow.”
Phillip was in love, Daisy reflected as she made her way back across the park, and he believed his beloved was in danger.
Daisy could not help wondering whether he had unwittingly exaggerated Miss Arbuckle’s peril, or altogether misunderstood the situation.
On this peaceful June day, the notion of a band of murderous thugs marauding about the countryside was awfully hard to credit.
Still, he was afraid for his Gloria, and for some reason he had chosen Daisy to come to the rescue. She, in turn, wanted nothing more than to lay the burden on Alec’s broad and admirably competent shoulders. That expedient being ruled out, she’d have to do her best without him.
She had set things in motion. With any luck, reinforcements would arrive tomorrow. In the meantime, she needed to prepare a plan of campaign.
“Maps,” she said aloud. Her father had kept two inch to the mile Ordnance Survey maps of the county in the desk in his den.
To judge by the lack of change in the parts of the house she had seen, they were very likely still in the same drawer.
Ferreting them out would keep poor old Phillip occupied for a while.
Half-way back to the house, she saw him coming to meet her, very long-faced.
“Tom can’t get away till noon tomorrow,” he reported. “Some beastly court case. And Binkie was out seeing a client when I rang up. I sent him a wire.”
“That will give us time to make plans,” Daisy consoled him. “We need maps, and bicycles, and as I said, there may be places easier to explore on horseback. You told them all to bring riding togs, as well as asking Lucy to bring me some more clothes?”
“Yes, and I said to motor down, not take the train, so we’ll have their cars, too.”
“Good. But I’ve no idea what, if anything, Edgar has in the stables, so you’ll have to check, and if there’s nothing suitable, arrange to hire a couple of hacks when and if we need them.
Or you could beg, borrow, or steal them from your people.
Now that we’re a duly constituted house-party, it won’t matter if they know you’re here. Is Geraldine back yet?”
“I saw the Vauxhall drive up. That’s why I ducked out the back way to meet you,” Phillip admitted sheepishly. “At least I don’t have to worry about the mater. She’s taking Fenella up to town for a few days.”
Daisy laughed. “Ready to face any dragon for your damsel in distress,” she said, “but not Cousin Geraldine or your mother? Tut, tut!”