Chapter 2 #2
“Lord DeLancey? No, I’ve never met him, but I know he’s the Earl of Bicester’s eldest son, quite a bit older than dear Basil, and Cherry told me … .” Tish stopped and smiled coolly at Bott as he marched up to the table, cup and saucer in hand.
“More tea, Mr. Bott?” she offered. “You prefer Indian, don’t you?”
“What if I do?” the cox growled belligerently.
Daisy escaped. She found Lady Cheringham at the front of the house, tying a delphinium to a stake. Nearby Bister, erstwhile smart chauffeur, dressed now in shirtsleeves, distinctly disreputable trousers, and a dilapidated straw hat, mowed the circle of lawn enclosed by the carriage-sweep. The
green smell of fresh-cut grass vied with the flowers’ mingled scents.
“Oh dear, have I missed tea again?” Lady Cheringham gingerly picked her way out of the herbaceous border. “Thank you, Daisy dear.” She gulped tea.
She still had the tobacco-stained blouse on, probably irremediably stained by now, though its wearer seemed to have suffered no ill effects.
The wet patches must have dried fast on such a warm day, Daisy thought.
It might be an idea, though, to see if she could find any information about the toxic effects of nicotine, so as to warn her aunt to take care.
After chatting for a few minutes, she went into the house and invaded Sir Rupert’s library.
Opposite the drawing-room at the back of the house, it had a long library table down the centre, with several straight chairs.
Comfortable leather-covered armchairs were grouped about the windows at this season, with small tables beside them.
A large walnut kneehole desk stood between the windows, where the light from both would fall on it.
Except for the fireplace, the two walls opposite the door and windows were entirely lined with bookshelves.
Though the books were well organised by subject, Daisy had no idea where to start looking and searched the shelves for some time without success.
About to give up, she glanced at the volumes lying on the library table.
There was Henslow’s Poisonous Plants, the section on tropical poisons bristling with bookmarks.
Consulting the index, Daisy found tobacco, turned to the page, and skimmed through the details. Nicotiana was related to deadly nightshade, she discovered. The long list of horrible symptoms of nicotine poisoning included headache, nausea,
dizziness, incoherence, and convulsions, leading to death. Most alarming, as she had vaguely remembered, the stuff was highly dangerous when absorbed through the skin.
She ran to find her aunt.
“Yes, dear,” said Lady Cheringham absently but not at all incoherently, stooping without apparent dizziness to pull an intrusive groundsel from among the pinks, “I’ll go and change.
And I’ll remind Bister to be sure to keep the shed locked, though I’m sure he already does.
Arsenic, you know, for rats, and cyanide for wasps’ nests, I believe. Nasty stuff.”
Daisy felt she had done what she could to preserve Aunt Cynthia from a dreadful death.
Even more than tea-time, dinner was devoted to refuelling the crew. Daisy was astounded by the amount of food that disappeared. In the circumstances, conversation was vestigial.
By now, aided by one slight stammer, one fair, wispy moustache, and one set of altogether enviable long, dark, curling eyelashes, Daisy had put names to faces. The four secondyear men were Poindexter (the stammerer), Wells (eyelashed), Meredith (moustached), and Leigh.
Daisy sat next to Fosdyke, the only fresher in the crew—in both crews, in fact.
A first-rate oarsman, according to Rollo, he had rowed for St. Paul’s School before going up to Oxford, and he was a member of the Ambrose four as well as the eight.
The double exertion and the presence of his elders no doubt accounted for his being the most taciturn of a taciturn company.
“Please pass the salt,” was the longest speech Daisy got out of him throughout the meal.
However, as they rose at the end, he stifled an enormous
yawn, apologised, and went on, “I’m for bed. You can’t get these chaps to do any serious training, but I like to run a few miles before breakfast.”
“Good for you,” said Daisy with a smile and a suppressed shudder. While she admired those who excelled, she considered sports a torture to be avoided if at all possible.
She felt much the same about bridge, though her mother’s passion for the game had forced her to learn. When, as they headed for the drawing-room, Leigh, Meredith, and Wells invited her to join them in a rubber, she shook her head in feigned regret.
“It’s kind of you to ask, but I don’t play.”
“We’ll teach you,” Meredith proposed.
“I’m hopeless at cards. I’m afraid my partner would murder me.”
They protested, but weakly. She held firm, so they shanghaied Poindexter, who wanted to write a letter, promising him the first dummy hand.
Lady Cheringham had already settled down with a gardening book. Daisy strolled out through the French windows onto the terrace. The sun had set, but the western sky was a blaze of colour, reflected in the shimmering pink river, and it would be light for an hour or more yet.
Tish and Rollo, Dottie and Cherry were all on the terrace, very plainly paired off. Daisy didn’t want to disturb them. She ambled down to the river-bank, missing Alec.
Tomorrow evening she’d have him to herself, for the whole weekend. Fond as she was of his daughter, Belinda, the prospect was heavenly. He had promised not to give Scotland Yard a telephone number for contacting him.
Only one thing could spoil their weekend: a vital case arising
tomorrow, before he got away. Daisy knew and accepted that marrying a detective was not going to be easy. She didn’t have to dwell on that aspect of things, though. She started to plan their time together.
A single-sculler slid by up-river with long, lazy-looking strokes, setting a family of grebes bobbing on the V of dark ripples on the rosy water.
Then a motor-launch put-putted round the bend from Hambleden Lock, bound for a mooring in the town.
Its whistle shrieked a warning at the sculler.
As the engine noise died away, the raucous music of a steam calliope, mellowed by distance, floated down the river from the fairground.
Daisy was glad they hadn’t been able to go this evening.
Now she had an excuse to get Alec onto the Ferris wheel, where a kiss at the top was practically de rigueur.
“Damn!” She slapped her bare arm, squishing a mosquito. Too late—it left a bloody splodge.
A couple more whined about her head. Scrubbing her arm with her spit-dampened handkerchief, she hastened back towards the house.
Two figures stood at the balustrade, at opposite sides of the steps, darkly silhouetted against the drawing-room windows. Two red points of light glowed in the growing dusk.
The form to Daisy’s right was rather smaller than the other. Horace Bott, she thought, and his Woodbines. A whiff of cheap cigarette smoke fought its way to her nostrils through the heavy perfume of the roses.
She sighed. She couldn’t very well march past without exchanging a word or two, but at least the smoke would keep the mosquitoes at bay.
As she ascended the steps, the other man turned slightly to
watch her. By the light from the windows, she recognised Basil DeLancey, and a moment later the choking stench of his cigar hit her. An expensive cigar, no doubt, but the smell was perfectly beastly, quite capable of slaying mosquitoes in flight by the thousands.
She coughed. Instantly, two red-glowing points arced down to land among the rose-bushes.
“Oh blast!” Daisy muttered to herself.
It looked as if both of them wanted to speak to her. If she paused at the top and let them converge on her, she’d find herself acting as a shield against DeLancey’s Bottshots. Perhaps she could sail through between Scylla and Charybdis with a “Heavenly evening! Good-night.”
“Heavenly evening,” she managed.
“The forecast for tomorrow’s on the hot side for rowing.” Bott got his word in first. “But it’s better than rain or a cross-wind,” he conceded.
Daisy turned towards him. He was in many ways the lesser of two evils, and he would be hurt if she ignored him, not just offended. “I suppose a cross-wind must make steering fearfully difficult,” she said.
“With the experimental course a mere seventy-five feet wide, a wind vector of only …”
Daisy laughed. “Don’t get technical on me. My school’s idea of science education was ‘What you can’t see won’t hurt you.’ Your degree is in science?”
“And maths,” drawled DeLancey, joining them. “What would you expect of a shopkeeper’s brat?”
“Better manners than I can apparently expect of an earl’s brat!” Daisy snapped.
To her intense relief, footsteps on the terrace behind them announced the arrival of Poindexter and Leigh, one with a lit cigarette, the other tamping his pipe.
“Marvellous evening,” observed Leigh.
“Easy for you to s-say, you won. I s-say, DeLancey,” Poindexter continued, “you’re a whisky man, aren’t you? Lady Cheringham had her butler bring in a perfectly s-splendid S-scotch. You ought to try a nip, Bott,” he added with kindly condescension.
“I don’t drink spirits.”
“Beer is the drink of the lower classes,” said DeLancey. “Anything stronger goes straight to their weak heads.”
“Oh, I s-say!”
Leigh turned a laugh into a cough.
Furious, Daisy took Bott’s arm. “Shall we go in, Mr. Bott? There seem to be a lot of irritating insects out here.” She tugged him towards the French windows.
“You see,” he muttered angrily, “I can’t do anything right. They even despise me for studying mathematics and physics instead of dead languages. I’m going to accept the fellowship I’ve been offered at Cambridge, where they take maths and the sciences seriously.”
“Going to relieve Oxford of your presence, eh?” said DeLancey, coming up on Daisy’s other side as they stepped into the drawing-room.
Wells and Meredith were sprawled in chairs with glasses in their hands. They struggled to their feet when Daisy entered.
“Miss Cheringham said to tell you she and Miss Carrick have gone up, Miss Dalrymple,” said Meredith of the moustache.
“Thank you. I’ll be on my way, too. Good-night.”
“Good-night,” came a chorus, with a “Sweet dreams,” from DeLancey.
Daisy hoped Bott would follow her example. She glanced back when she reached the door. He had crossed to the drinks table. Behind him, DeLancey looked on, sneering.
With a set expression, Bott poured whisky into a tumbler. Daisy was very much afraid he was going to drink it.