Chapter 5 #2
Bosh, Daisy told herself. Not without risking poisoning everyone in the house, all the men, anyway. Nor had Bott any reason to be aware of the tobacco-water insecticide in the garden shed. Besides, vomiting was another symptom and DeLancey—thank heaven—had not vomited.
No, Bott and poisoning was out. But what about Bott and the boat? Suppose DeLancey had in fact gone down to guard it, and Bott had come and …
She had said herself that would lead to murder.
She been exaggerating, of course, but suppose DeLancey had been drinking to ward off the chill and attacked Bott with more force than he intended.
He outweighed the cox by a good couple of stone.
Might not the shock of having killed a man, added to the whisky, bring on just such a state of confusion as DeLancey had displayed?
Bosh! she told herself again, uneasily. It was two in the
morning—more like half past now—the time when all sorts of horrors tend to descend on the wakeful mind. On top of that, in the past few months she had found herself caught up in investigating several murders, so her brain was bound to run on those lines.
And run and run, round and round in circles.
If Bott was dead, there was nothing she could do to help him. What if he was badly hurt? Even Basil DeLancey surely wouldn’t have abandoned an injured man; but perhaps he thought he had killed him.
Daisy wished she knew where Bott’s linen-room/ bedroom was. She couldn’t go peeking into everyone’s rooms just to reassure herself that the cox was sleeping peacefully.
But she could go down to the boat-house.
An electric torch was kept on the table on the landing in case of a current failure, she remembered as she wrapped her dressing-gown around her and tied the sash. Feeling her way, she tiptoed from the room.
On the landing a faint light from the window, where the curtains had not been closed, enabled Daisy to find her way across to the table.
Light gleamed on the torch’s metal casing.
She reached for it, then hastily drew her hand back.
If there had been dirty work at the crossroads, it just might have significant fingerprints on it.
Alec would kill her if she messed them up.
Kill her? She really must stop thinking in morbid clichés!
Fortunately, she found a hankie in the pocket of her dressing-gown. This she wrapped around the end of the torch, careful not to smudge potential dabs, as Alec’s Sergeant Tring called them. Picking it up, she started down the stairs, step by
step, holding the banister and her breath, waiting for a creak loud enough to bring everyone running. What a frightful ass she’d look!
The house was still. Undiscovered, she reached the front hall. It was pitch-dark down here, but she shuffled across to the drawing-room door without using the torch. The door closed safely behind her, she switched on the electric light.
The curtains at the French windows were drawn apart, and one door was open.
Fear clutched Daisy’s heart. Though she had come so far, she had practically convinced herself she was on a fool’s errand. But someone had been out. Why, and who, if not DeLancey to the boat-house? He was muddled enough to have left it open when he came in.
DeLancey or Bott. DeLancey and Bott? She had to go and see.
A gibbous moon was setting as she crossed the terrace.
Down the steps, across the dewy lawn, silver in moonlight augmented by its reflection off the river.
A plank squeaked as she set foot on the landing-stage.
A scrabble and a splash—a a water rat, she assured herself, not a house rat.
Think of Wind in the Willows, and nice, friendly Ratty.
The boat-house door was open. Daisy stood outside, listening.
The river gurgled around the landing-stage piles, lapped the bank with a soft and constant plash.
Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.
Had Bott’s song ended forever? Old Father Thames keeps rolling along, down to the sunless sea.
No, that was Alph, the sacred river, wasn’t it? In Xanadu:
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted …
How sinister everything seemed by moonlight!
Not a sound from the boat-house. Daisy pushed the torch’s button with her knuckle. The click made her jump.
A wide, comforting beam sprang out. She moved to the doorway. Something brushed her cheek and she jumped again, then realised it was only a stray tendril of clematis.
“Chump,” she apostrophised herself. If anyone was here, they were certainly no threat to her.
She played the torch’s beam around the boat-house.
It seemed much larger inside than its foliage-camouflaged outside suggested.
The light scarcely plumbed the furthest corners.
Her view was obstructed by a rack of oars, too, and by the fours boat, apparently undamaged, upside-down on its chocks.
The boat barely fitted in, its sleek hull stretching the entire length of the opposite wall.
No body hidden in that, at least. But she would have to go in to search the building properly.
The large doors onto the river were closed and barred. The torch-beam gleamed on the still, dark water of the channel in the centre, where the boats entered. No floating body.
No moans or groans, no sound of breathing reached her straining ears.
On tiptoe, swinging the torch from side to side, she passed the gaily striped pillows from the skiffs, piled on the plank floor just inside the door.
Nothing beyond the oar-rack but a coil of rope or two, iron hoops and canvas to turn the skiffs into floating tents, and odds and ends of less identifiable boating clutter.
Nothing in the shadow behind the fours boat.
Daisy returned to the black water. The torch-light could not penetrate its surface. If Bott was at the bottom, he was beyond help. She was not going to start fishing with a boat-hook!