Chapter 17
“I’ve just remembered,” Daisy said in dismay. “Crawford’s met Phillip. What if he recognizes him?”
“Not likely.” Lucy adjusted the cloche to a jaunty angle on her smooth, dark head. “I won’t let Phil get too close, and I’ll see he keeps his hat on. With the Alvis’s hood up he’ll be practically invisible.”
“Having the hood up will look suspicious.”
“Hardly, darling, when it’s drizzling.”
“Oh, is it?” Daisy looked out of Lucy’s bedroom window. A light but steady rain was falling. Odd; for the past couple of hours she’d have sworn the sun shone. “That’s lucky. Phillip really needs something to keep him busy.”
With quick, expert fingers, Lucy touched up her make-up. A last dab of powder on the nose and they went downstairs. The men were waiting in the front hall, Phillip twitching with impatience.
Alec smiled at Daisy but addressed Lucy. “I’ve asked Petrie to ring up at once if Mr. and Mrs. Pearson are gone when you reach Cowley. They’ll be following Crawford, so don’t waste time trying to find out if he’s still there. Bincombe will stay within reach of the ’phone.”
“Hold the fort, darling.” Lucy kissed Binkie’s cheek, then turned and kissed Daisy. “Good luck, darling. Cheerio. All right, Phillip, you can stop fidgeting. Let’s go.”
Alec gave Binkie a few last-minute instructions about what to do in various contingencies. “Don’t telephone the Dower House unless you absolutely have to,” he finished.
Binkie grinned and nodded. “Right-oh. Best of luck, old man.”
“Anyone would think Mother was an ogre,” Daisy said crossly as she and Alec went out under a shared umbrella to the Austin, brought round from the stable-yard by Bill Truscott.
Everyone’s good wishes had the perverse effect of making her more nervous than she already was.
“She may be a bit difficult at times, but I’ve seen you cope with much worse. ”
“And cope I shall,” he soothed her, opening the passenger door. She was grateful for his forbearance in not pointing out that she had never seen him dealing with a prospective mother-in-law.
He went round, got in beside her, and saying, “First things first,” he kissed her.
“First things” thoroughly accomplished, Daisy settled back in her seat with a satisfied sigh as Alec pressed the self-starter, engaged the gear, let off the brake, and started down the avenue.
“When we’re married,” she said, just for the sake of saying the words, “will you teach me to drive?”
“I’m not sure it’s a good idea for husbands to teach wives.”
“Binkie taught Lucy.”
“They’re not married. We’d better not wait for the wedding. Daisy, are you quite sure your mother really invited me to lunch?”
Daisy melted at the evidence that he was nervous too. “Of course,” she assured him. “When I rang up to see if it was convenient for us to pop in today, she actually offered of her own accord.”
“She wants to vet my table manners,” he said with conviction, adding ruefully, “Fairacres is rather larger and more impressive than I’d expected.”
“There’s nothing wrong with your table manners, dearest. Fairacres is a bit different from the house in Chelsea, isn’t it? I dare say that’s why it came as a shock.”
“What I don’t understand is how you came to be penniless when your father owned so much. The house and land are entailed on the male heir, of course, but still…”
“It’s because of Gervaise dying in the War. Father had always assumed he’d take care of me, you see, until I married or if I didn’t marry. When he was killed, Father was too heartbroken to think about changing his will, and then he died in the ’flu epidemic before he got around to it.”
“I know how it took people by surprise,” Alec said softly. “Joan left things undone. Dear love, you mustn’t mind if I speak of Joan now and then. I love you differently, but just as much.”
“I don’t mind. I know Belinda will need to talk about her mother. Alec, I have to tell you about…” She stopped as the car turned into the Dower House’s short drive. “Oh, bother, here we are. It will have to wait.”
He put on the brake and turned to her, his grey eyes serious. “I hope you will always feel able to tell me absolutely anything.”
She squeezed his hand. “Oh, Alec, I do love you. No, don’t kiss me.
Mother wouldn’t do anything so vulgar as peer through the window, but she might just happen to be standing by it.
Alec, when Edgar inherited Fairacres, he offered me a home, and when I refused he offered to settle some money on me.
I refused that, too, but I’ll tell him I’ve changed my mind if you want me to. ”
“Great Scott, no! I shall expect you to help support the family by writing, not by cadging off your relatives.”
Laughing from sheer lightness of heart, Daisy waved gaily to the gardener, who was pulling the crop of weeds already springing up after the rain.
“You remember Owen Morgan, from Occles Hall?” she asked Alec. “If we need another man to help rescue Gloria, I’m sure he’d do it.”
“Not another one who finds an appeal from you irresistible?” Alec said indulgently. “Whatever it is in those guileless blue eyes that persuades people to jump through hoops for you, I hope you’ll try it on your mother.”
“Mother’s proof against it,” Daisy said with regret.
The Dowager Lady Dalrymple acknowledged her daughter’s introduction of the undistinguished stranger with a haughty nod and a cool “How do you do.” But Daisy saw her eyes widen.
Fearing a penniless intellectual, a wealthy upstart, or even, heaven forbid, a foreigner, her ladyship obviously didn’t know what to make of Alec.
He was neither scruffy nor over-smartly dressed; his voice, while not Eton-and-Oxford, was accentless; he was, in fine, the very picture of a perfectly respectable gentleman.
Unfortunately, where a prospective son-in-law was concerned, respectability was a damning word. Lady Dalrymple had set her heart on nobility, or, at worst, the upper ranks of the landed gentry.
“Sherry, Mr. Fletcher,” offered her ladyship stiffly, “or do you prefer one of these modern cocktails? Cook has some gin, I believe.”
“Sherry, please, Lady Dalrymple,” Alec said, and bit his lip.
Catching his eye, Daisy was relieved to see he was biting back amusement, not chagrin.
“Alec prefers medium dry, like me, Mother,” she said. “Shall I pour? Sweet for you?”
“Thank you, dear. You are staying at the Wedge and Beetle, I understand, Mr. Fletcher. I trust you find it comfortable?”
“As a matter of fact, I haven’t tried it yet. I spent last night at Fairacres.”
“Indeed! Of course, Edgar and Geraldine have not yet quite found their feet in their new position.” The dowager’s tone said clearly that she doubted they ever would, as evidenced by their inviting someone like Alec to stay.
Her mastery of the veiled insult had to be admired, but Daisy wasn’t going to let her bully Alec. Not that he was exactly bullyable. He still looked amused, she noted, handing him his glass.
“Edgar and Geraldine seem to have settled in very nicely,” she said brightly.
Her mother sniffed, but she was not to be deflected from her primary target. Sitting down, and inviting Alec to do likewise, she said, “Who are your people, Mr. Fletcher? I don’t believe I’m acquainted with anyone of that name.”
“My earliest ancestors of whom we have any record,” Alec expounded, “were medieval arrow-makers and bowmen. By the sixteenth century, the family took a literary turn. I regret to say we cannot claim John Fletcher, of Beaumont and Fletcher fame, but you have heard, perhaps, of Giles Fletcher the Elder? No? He was a poet and author of a book on Russia, and he passed on his gifts to his sons, Giles the Younger and Phineas, both noted poets and churchmen in their time. Giles’s sermons were much admired, and Phineas’s poems attacking the Jesuits were very well received, though for my part I prefer his delightful descriptions of rural scenery. ”
Daisy felt almost as dazed as her mother looked. Continuing, Alec managed to appear to take pity on them.
“I shan’t bore you with the next few centuries,” he said with a sweeping gesture which seemed to unjustly exclude swarms of distinguished forebears. “My father had no literary aspirations. His vocation lay in the world of finance.”
Mr. Fletcher the Elder had been the manager of a North London branch of the Westminster Bank, Daisy knew. Her suspicious glance at Alec was answered with the suspicion of a wink.
Thinking back over what he had said, she realized the “record” of his early ancestors could well be no more than the name itself. Nor had he actually claimed to be descended from the poetical Fletchers. Oh, the tortuous mind of a detective!
“Finance?” The dowager was at least slightly impressed. “You have followed in your father’s footsteps?”
“No, I decided to dedicate my modest talents to the protection of society.”
“The Army?” Lady Dalrymple asked eagerly. The Army was a perfectly acceptable profession.
“The police,” Alec said blandly.
“Good gracious!” Aghast, Lady Dalrymple stared at him, apparently trying to picture him in a blue helmet, swinging a truncheon. “I must say, I’d never have guessed,” she admitted in a weak voice, looking daggers at Daisy.
“He’s quite presentable for a bobby, isn’t he?” Having thrown this provocation into the ring, Daisy decided her mother was ripe for the dénouement. “As a matter of fact, Alec is a Detective Chief Inspector at Scotland Yard.”
“Oh, plain-clothes!” The elimination of the awful prospect of a son-in-law in police uniform mollified her, just as Daisy had hoped.
In comparison, a high-ranking detective was endurable.
“Chief Inspector? Your father was on very good terms with the Chief Constable, Daisy. Colonel Sir Nigel Wookleigh, a charming man. Perhaps you know him, Mr. Fletcher?”
“Not yet, Lady Dalrymple, but I have every expectation of making his acquaintance very shortly.”