Chapter 8 #2
“It is. Dash it, I wish I could go with you, but I can’t get away for at least a couple of days, quite possibly not till the weekend. Will you tell Daisy I’ll telephone this evening? Lateish. I’ll be working late.”
“Right-o, Chief Inspector. Heaven knows what it’s all about, but to tell the truth I’m quite glad to know you’re hovering in the background.”
“Even coppers have their uses,” Alec said mildly, recalling past battles. “Don’t let Daisy get into too much trouble if you can help it. I shan’t hold you responsible, though. I know only too well how impossible it is to stop her once she has the bit between her teeth!”
“Riding togs,” he brooded as he returned down the path to his little yellow Austin Seven. Of course all Daisy’s set rode horses, practically from birth. Was it too late for him to learn?
Daisy might like to teach him, and Belinda.
What had she got herself into this time? What on earth sort of trouble could Phillip Petrie have landed himself in which would require not only her help but that of their mutual friends to extricate him?
And why disguise it as a house-party?
As the hour of the house-party’s assembly approached, Geraldine asserted her right as nominal hostess and waited in the drawing-room to greet her guests. Daisy and Phillip couldn’t very well hang about in the front hall to waylay them.
“They’re bound to demand explanations right away,” Daisy said in a low voice.
“Don’t I know it! I’d have had a hard time with Tom yesterday if he hadn’t been called away from the ’phone just in the nick. Lady Dalrymple’s going to wonder what the deuce is going on.”
“We’ll just have to stand behind her and shake our heads madly. Lowecroft will think we’re potty, but it’s just too bad.”
“He already does,” Phillip averred.
Geraldine called for their attention. “Since I find myself giving a house-party,” she said a trifle acidly, “suppose you tell me something about my guests? Who are the Pearsons?”
“Madge was Lady Margaret Allinston,” Daisy informed her.
“She doesn’t use her title because Tommy doesn’t have one.
She was at school with Lucy and me, but a year older, so we didn’t know her awfully well.
Then quite by chance she VAD’ed in the same military hospital in Malvern where I worked in the office, so I saw a lot of her. ”
“You worked in a hospital office? Mrs. Pearson was with a Voluntary Aid Detachment?” Geraldine seemed surprised, as if she had not realized many of today’s bright young things had actually done their bit during the War.
“And Lucy was a Land Girl. She didn’t mind the work so much, but she claims wearing that hideous uniform nearly killed her. She still has nightmares about finding herself on a dance floor in it.”
“I was VAD.”
“You can swap stories with Madge, then. She met Tommy in the hospital—he was pretty crocked up.”
“Pearson was in our outfit,” Phillip put in, “with Gervaise and me. He finished up a major.”
“His family are Pearson, Pearson, Watts & Pearson, one of the top solicitors’ firms in London, old-established and frightfully respectable.
” Daisy paused, suddenly wondering whether Tommy was too respectable and too legally-minded to be dragged into a scheme which involved concealing a crime from the police.
Geraldine interrupted her fruitless speculation.
“I’m glad to learn you have friends in respectable professions,” she said austerely.
“You were at school with Miss Fotheringay, were you not? And now you share lodgings, in Chelsea.” Her tone of voice equated residence in that district with the worst excesses of Bohemia.
“Yes. She’s a photographer. Her grandfather is the Earl of Haverhill.” A good splodge of blue blood nicely balanced out the artistic profession, Daisy hoped. She was about to move on to Binkie’s pedigree when voices and footsteps approached the drawing-room.
Lowecroft appeared on the threshold. “Mr. and Mrs. Pearson, my lady.”
Geraldine rose and moved towards the door. Daisy and Phillip hung back behind her. They shook their heads vigorously and Daisy put a finger to her lips as Madge and Tommy entered the room.
Tommy, bespectacled, brown-haired, and stocky, looked startled and rather bewildered. Madge, whose froth of blond curls and effervescent manner often misled people into taking her for a bubble-head, was quicker on the uptake. She deftly steered her husband through conventional greetings.
“Explain later,” Daisy hissed at the first opportunity.
She and Phillip went through the same pantomime when Lucy and Binkie arrived, a few minutes later. They both caught on at once.
Lowecroft’s face simply grew stiffer and more wooden. “Tea, my lady?” he enquired.
“Yes, on the terrace, please, and inform Lord Dalrymple that our guests are here.”
Edgar’s presence at afternoon tea to some extent relieved the frustration of the delay in clarifying matters.
He discoursed with his usual knowledgeable enthusiasm on the annual migration from Africa of Vanessa cardui, the Painted Lady butterfly.
Since Geraldine kept casting sidelong, scandalized glances at Lucy’s skillfully painted face, everyone but she and Edgar was in a state of barely repressed hilarity.
Even Phillip relaxed, once he realized what the joke was. Daisy was glad to see his lips twitch. His anxiety returned soon enough when Edgar and Geraldine went into the house. The four newcomers sat up and looked expectant.
“Right-o,” said Lucy, “this Painted Lady is simply dying to hear what’s up. Let’s have it. Oh, before I forget, darling, your tame copper’s going to ’phone this evening.”
Phillip blenched. “Chief Inspector Fletcher? You haven’t told him what’s happened, have you?”
“I don’t know what’s happened. He popped round to take Daisy out to lunch and found her gone—frightfully bad form, darling,” she added in a severe aside to Daisy.
“I tried to get hold of him.”
“Well, I was on the point of leaving, too, and it seemed only decent to show him the wire. I think it rather put the wind up him. Anyway, he’s going to ring up tonight to make sure everything’s all right.”
Turning to Daisy, Phillip said urgently, “You won’t tell him?”
“I still think it would be best, but I promised.”
“Gosh, this gets more and more mysterious.” Madge’s eyes sparkled with excitement. “Too, too divine. Do tell.”
“First,” said Daisy, “what we tell you must go no further. Absolute secrecy is essential.”
Tommy frowned. “I don’t like the sound of this,” he said bluntly, taking off his horn-rimmed glasses and polishing them with his handkerchief.
“I hope I know you both well enough to be sure you wouldn’t do anything you believed morally wrong, but I have to consider the legal aspect, too, don’t y’know.
You must admit keeping secrets from the police sounds downright fishy. ”
“What piffle, darling!” Madge’s merry laugh rang out. “It was just the other day you were grumbling like billy-o about some nosy policeman who wanted information you regarded as confidential. Don’t be an old stick-in-the-mud.”
“That was a matter of privileged communication between client and solicitor, my pet, not to be confused with aiding and abetting, let alone committing…”
“This is a matter of life and death!” burst forth from Phillip.
“It could be,” Daisy confirmed with more caution. “At least I can promise you we’re trying to foil a crime, not commit one. I can’t say more unless I have your word to keep mum. If you don’t feel able to give it, Tommy, then we must apologize for dragging you all the way here for nothing.”
“Count me in,” Binkie said tersely.
“I’m with you.” Lucy covered a delicate yawn with a well-manicured hand. “As long as it isn’t too frightfully fatiguing.”
“I’ll help as much as I can.” Madge’s rosy cheeks grew pinker. “I can’t ride a horse, though, I’m afraid. You see, I’m preggy.”
“Darling, how marvellous,” cried Daisy, jumping up to kiss her.
“Congratulations, darling,” Lucy said dryly, “or do you prefer condolences?”
“Actually, we’re rather pleased,” Madge admitted, “aren’t we, pet?”
Daisy and Lucy both turned to look at Tommy. He was quite pink-faced himself, self-consciously proud.
“Time to bring another little solicitor into the world,” he said half mockingly, then sighed. “Right-ho, I’ll rally round. Can’t let the side down, don’t y’know. Unless your scheme is actually criminal, I’ll lend a hand.”
“Spiffing!” said Daisy, and got down to brass tacks.
Dinner was over and the long Summer Time evening waned.
Swifts swooped over the gardens, wreaking devastation on the clouds of midges.
All her plans laid and approved by the others, Daisy was glad to relax at last. In the twilight on the terrace, chatting about indifferent subjects since her cousins were there, she could almost pretend nothing had changed since she was a girl.
Lowecroft came out of the house. “Telephone call for Miss Dalrymple. A Mr. Fletcher, miss.”
“The Drinker!” cried Edgar. Before Daisy could object to his casting utterly unwarranted aspersions on Alec, he seized his butterfly net, never far from his side, and dashed down the steps to the lawn. The spaniel, Pepper, loped after him. “Philudoria potatoria,” came floating back.
Daisy hurried in to the telephone. “Alec?”
“Hello, Daisy.” He sounded tired. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”
“Oh no. We were just sitting out on the terrace. I’m glad you rang. I’m so sorry I didn’t manage to let you know in time about lunch.”
“You tried. I take it I wasn’t abandoned for a common or garden house-party?”
“As though I would!”
“You’re not in trouble, are you?”
“No, honestly.”
“Petrie is?”
She hesitated. “Not exactly,” she said. Strictly speaking it was the Arbuckles who were in the soup.
“Daisy, I know how far you’ll go to help someone you’ve taken under your wing. Don’t go and land yourself in a hole trying to pull him out.”
“It’s nothing like that.”
“What is it? Why don’t you tell me? Perhaps I can advise, if not help.”
“I’d like to tell you, Alec, but I can’t.”
“Can’t, or won’t?”
“Mustn’t. Don’t worry, I shan’t do anything stupid.
” Time to change the subject. “It feels frightfully peculiar staying at Fairacres as a guest.” She went on to describe the eerie effect of the changed residents and the unchanged furnishings.
“I’ll show you around this weekend,” she finished.
“I’m sure Edgar won’t mind. You can come, can’t you? ”
“You still want me to?”
“Of course! I just wish you were here now,” Daisy said with fervour.
“I’ll be there. The Super’s promised to cope without me even if a second Guy Fawkes blows up the Houses of Parliament. Belinda sends her love.”
“Give her mine. Good-night, Alec.”
“Good-night, love. Sweet dreams.”
Daisy held the earpiece to her ear for several moments after the click of Alec hanging up came over the wire. He had called her ‘love,’ even though she could tell from his voice that he was hurt by her refusal to confide in him.
If Gloria was not free—rescued or ransomed—by the weekend, she would insist on telling him everything.