Chapter 9
The first phase of Daisy’s plan was for her and Phillip to enquire after strangers in the villages where they were known and could therefore expect people to talk to them.
She had decided they would be less conspicuous—in case the kidnappers were on the watch—if they bicycled rather than motored.
She and Binkie were to circle around Fairacres, Phillip and Lucy around Malvern Grange, where he was better known.
All four were to meet for a picnic lunch in a copse on the boundary between the two.
Though Madge’s doctor had banned only horseback riding, Tommy absolutely forbade her to bicycle. Daisy therefore sent them in their Lagonda to investigate some villages rather further out, beyond convenient cycling distance.
At that distance, she hoped, they were unlikely to be connected with the Fairacres party, should the villains be aware of Mr. Arbuckle’s visit to Phillip.
Strangers themselves, they would be regarded with some suspicion if they made direct enquiries, but they could ask whether many visitors came that way.
“Don’t ask about deserted cottages, though,” Daisy said. “It’s a pity, but that’s the sort of thing which might get back to the kidnappers.”
Tommy nodded. “‘Someone’s interested in that old place you’re staying in,’ that sort of thing. We’ll steer clear.”
They all set off. As soon as the others were out of earshot, Daisy confided to Binkie, “I rather doubt this search is any use, but I can’t think what else to do.”
“Pretty hopeless,” he confirmed tersely.
Having hoped for encouragement, Daisy consoled herself with a reminder of his generally pessimistic outlook on life.
“Still,” she said, as much to herself as to him, “I can’t really believe Miss Arbuckle is in danger of anything worse than a few days of discomfort.”
“Regular brutes, these American gangsters,” said Binkie. “Wouldn’t put anything past ’em.”
Daisy turned her head to glare at him. She wobbled as her bicycle wheel went over a stone, and thereafter concentrated on where she was going.
It was a beautiful morning for a ride. Garlands of pale pink roses and yellow honeysuckle in the hedges perfumed the air.
Foxgloves, campion red and white, and yellow toadflax flourished on banks and verges.
A cock pheasant scurried down the road ahead of them for a few yards before diving beneath a gate.
Small birds warbled, whistled, and twittered.
Impossible to envisage a girl locked up in a dingy room and in fear of her life!
Ahead of Daisy and Binkie a tower, stone horizontally striped with red brick, protruded above a knot of green trees.
Like many local villages, Morton Green was dominated by its church, built on a slight rise.
The village straggled around its namesake green.
Cottages of brick with lichened tile roofs, whitewashed stucco with slate, red sandstone, yellow Cotswold stone, or half-timbering, mingled higgledy-piggledy.
The largest building was the Wedge and Beetle Inn, foursquare, whitewashed, with scarlet geraniums in window-boxes. Daisy decided to tackle it first. The bar was not open yet, but she had an excuse for enquiries.
She and Binkie leant their bikes against the wall and stepped through the open door out of the sunshine into the dimness of the lobby.
“Hullo, there!” Binkie called.
Mrs. Dennie, the landlord’s wife, came bustling through from the back. “Why, if it’s not Miss Dalrymple.” She gave Binkie a curious look. “Come down for a visit, have you, miss? What can I do for you?”
“Good-morning, Mrs. Dennie. A friend of mine mentioned that he hoped to stay here. I just wondered whether you had room for him, whether he’d made a reservation.”
“We’ve got a couple of fishermen—anglers they likes to be called, bless their hearts—and a young pair, honeymooners by our reckoning, the way they spoon, if you’ll pardon the expression.
The other room, well, there’s casuals dropping in.
The odd commercial, like, and the touring season’s well under way already this year, what with the weather we’ve been having. ”
“Isn’t it marvellous?”
“Not for the farmers, miss, but it don’t hurt our business, I must say.”
“People like to get out of town when it’s hot. Do you have many Londoners?”
“Can’t say we do, miss, not being a beauty spot like some. Mostly from Birmingham way. No, I don’t believe as we’ve had a Londoner in the house, nor yet in the bar even.”
“Nor many foreigners, I expect.”
Mrs. Dennie laughed heartily at the notion of foreigners patronising her modest establishment. “This friend of yours, miss,” she went on, “what’s the name? I’ll check and see if he’s booked.”
“Fletcher, for this weekend.”
Alec had a room reserved for both Friday and Saturday nights. “Seeing he’s a friend of yourn, miss,” said Mrs. Dennie, “I’ll move him to the back corner room. It’s bigger and quieter, not being over the public bar.”
Daisy thanked her, enquired after her family, and preceded Binkie back out into the sunshine. He hadn’t said a word after his halloo. An inarticulate companion was useful in the circumstances, Daisy decided. Pessimist he might be, but at least he didn’t lengthen the already-chatty interrogation.
Mrs. Dennie’s chatter was nothing to what Daisy met with in the tiny, overflowing shop they called at next.
POST OFFICE, NEWSAGENT, TOBACCONIST, AND SWEETS proclaimed the sign over the door.
Miss Hibbert had once sold pennyworths of dolly-mixture and bull’s-eyes to Daisy and Gervaise.
Older and greyer now, she happened to have seen one of Daisy’s articles in Town and Country, and she was dying to hear about her writing career.
In exchange, she passed on a vast quantity of village gossip.
Interrupted by two or three customers, half an hour passed before Daisy and Binkie escaped with the information they sought: neither Cockneys nor Americans had bought tobacco or newspapers from Miss Hibbert, not recently.
There had been a touring couple last year, or was it the year before, who might have been American.
Gentlemen from London staying at Fairacres occasionally popped in for cigarettes.
And East Enders came down from London for the hop-picking in August, of course, though not, Miss Hibbert thought, in such swarms as went to Kent.
Dismayed, Daisy wondered if she had been too optimistic in believing the kidnappers would not know the country.
She had forgotten the hop-pickers. It dawned on her, too, that some of the Cockneys among the wounded soldiers in the Malvern hospitals during and after the War might well have roamed the countryside while convalescing.
“Blast!” she said, mounting her bicycle.
“You didn’t expect anything so close to where Phillip was dumped,” Binkie reminded her.
She decided not to reveal her fresh qualms. “No, but one always hopes,” she said vaguely. “It would have been so convenient. Do you think we ought to try the general store, too? They could have gone in for supplies.”
“Might as well,” grunted Binkie.
The general store, which purveyed flour and baking-pans, cheese and mousetraps with equal enthusiasm, provided as little information at almost as great a length.
The day was already growing hot when Daisy and Binkie rode out of Morton Green.
They were glad to plunge into the green shade of Bellman’s Wood, just beyond the village.
“Don’t we explore?” Binkie asked as they pedalled along the lane.
“No, not here. I know every inch of this wood. It belongs to one of the Fairacres farms, actually. There are plenty of squirrels and woodpeckers but no buildings, deserted or otherwise. At least, there could be something recently built, but what Phillip described sounded like an ancient cottage.”
All too soon they left the shade of the trees. A motor-car passed them, raising clouds of dust. By the time they had pursued their fruitless enquiries in the next two villages, Daisy felt as if she had cycled across the Sahara, and the afternoon was yet to come.
Meeting the others for their picnic by the stream in Boundary Copse, she dismounted on leaden legs.
“I’m out of form,” she confessed ruefully to a maddeningly cool-looking Lucy. “Maybe one never forgets how to ride a bicycle, having once learnt, but it must use different muscles from walking, and mine are telling me they’re out of practice.”
“We got here half an hour ago, darling, and I’ve had my feet in the water. Try it, it helps. No luck, I take it?”
“No. You?” Daisy asked, taking off her shoes.
“Not a bite. Phillip’s frightfully pipped, the poor old fish.”
Daisy glanced at Phillip, who was helping Binkie unpack the picnic from the bicycle bags.
She sighed. Much as her thighs cried out for the afternoon off, she couldn’t let him down.
Sitting on the grassy bank with her feet dangling in the lukewarm stream, she dipped her hankie in the water and wiped her face.
Ginger-beer and sandwiches revived her somewhat, but better still was the thin layer of clouds which came up to cover the sky.
It was still hot, but at least the sun would not blaze down on her head.
A breeze rose as they left the shelter of the copse, cooling if not cool.
With renewed vigour she and Binkie set off for the next village on their list.
The afternoon’s circuit was wider flung than the morning’s. There were more villages, and Daisy was less well known if recognized at all. This proved a mixed blessing.
Each interview was shorter, because less encumbered with gossip.
On the other hand, it was more difficult to find an opening for her questions, and they had to purchase something at each stop as an excuse to ask.
The saddlebags emptied of food were soon packed with cigarettes and pipe tobacco, fast-melting chocolate bars, and miscellaneous odds and ends.
Of useful information they collected none.