Chapter 12
A discussion of the tent-peg had to wait. The door opened again and Lady Cheringham came in, bearing a vase of pink and white phlox and followed by Gladstone with a tray.
“Gladstone told me you are interviewing in here, Mr. Fletcher. I thought a few flowers would brighten the place up for you.” She set the vase on the desk, while Gladstone silently deposited the tray on the long table and withdrew.
“Rupert never lets me put any in the library,” she continued. “They make him sneeze, poor dear.”
“Lovely, Lady Cheringham. This is Detective Constable Piper, one of my assistants.”
“How do you do, Mr. Piper. I’ve met Mr. Tring, a charming man. My dear Mr. Fletcher, do you want to ask me any questions? You mustn’t be shy, you know. After all, you’ll soon be my nephew-in-law.”
“That’s hardly a qualification for interrogating you,” Alec said with a smile. In fact, while shy was not the word, the relationship definitely made things more difficult. “There is one question only you can answer: Do you know of anyone leaving the house last night after you went to bed?”
Lady Cheringham shook her head. “I sleep very well after pottering in the garden all day. I wouldn’t hear unless someone made enough noise to wake me, say by starting a car under my window. Is that all?” she asked, slightly disappointed.
“For now. How is Patricia?”
“She insists on coming down for tea,” said her ladyship, frowning, “but she’s still in a state of shock, if you ask me. I’d never have guessed she was so oversensitive.”
“Witnessing sudden death, even of a stranger and without the shadow of violence, is a severe shock to many people,” Alec said.
“When it’s an acquaintance, and there’s a suspicion of murder, it’s naturally much worse.
” He gathered neither Tish nor Daisy had informed Lady Cheringham of DeLancey’s incursion and their consequent feelings of guilt.
“I suppose so. I can’t decide whether it’s just as well we didn’t take her to Africa, considering the delicacy of her nerves, or whether it would have done her good, braced her backbone, so to speak. Still, it’s too late now. Are you going to have to interview her?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
“I’m sure I don’t need to ask you to be gentle with her.”
“Great Scott, no! After all, she will soon be my cousin-in-law.” Which would make him nearly Cheringham’s cousin, Alec realised, dismayed. Should he ask to be taken off the case?
“You are so nearly a relative,” Lady Cheringham reflected, “it doesn’t seem right that you are staying in town.
The house is practically bursting at the seams, so I can’t offer you a proper bedroom of your own.
There’s Mr. DeLancey’s bed, sharing a room with Mr. Fosdyke, but I wonder if you would prefer to sleep on the sofa in Rupert’s dressing-room?
Would the convenience outweigh the discomfort? ”
“As a matter of fact, it most definitely would,” said Alec, whose bed at the Old White Hart had felt almost as ancient as the fifteenth-century inn.
Without a qualm he consigned Tom Tring’s well-padded bones to its torturous embrace.
“I’ve been wondering what to do with Tring and Piper tonight.
They can have my room at the White Hart, if you’re sure I shan’t be in the way? ”
“Not at all.”
“Sir Rupert isn’t coming back?”
“I haven’t tried to get in touch. He was an excellent administrator, but since retiring, he has been obsessed with that blessed book of his.
He wouldn’t be the least help to you, to me, or to poor Patricia.
I’ll have the bed made up in the dressing-room, and you must come and stay again, some time when we don’t have a murder in the house. Such a disconcerting business!”
“I’m afraid it tends to be,” Alec apologised, thinking he’d seldom seen anyone less disconcerted. Life in Africa must have inured her to shock.
She patted his arm. “I’m so glad it’s dear Daisy’s young man who’s in charge, not a stranger. Well, I’ll leave you to your tea and your business.” With a smiling nod to Piper, who had tactfully withdrawn to the far end of the room, she departed.
“Nice lady,” said Piper, with a depth of admiration he usually reserved for Daisy.
Alec agreed, especially when he recalled the daunting disapproval of her sister, the Dowager Lady Dalrymple, Daisy’s mother.
Used to hurried meals, Piper managed to devour two Gentleman’s Relish sandwiches, three biscuits, a slice of
Dundee cake, and half a cup of tea before Alec sent him running again.
“I’ll see Poindexter next,” he said, pouring himself a second cup.
Daisy was having tea—or perhaps champagne and strawberries—in the Stewards’ Enclosure with her friends, Lord and Lady Fitzsimmons, and His Royal Highness Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester.
How old was the Prince? Twenty-two or three, Alec thought, not so much younger than Daisy.
Of course, she actually expected just to be presented to him, not to take tea with him. And it was all in the way of business, Alec consoled himself.
He’d better return to his own business. Glancing at his brief notes of the interview with Leigh, he pondered the significance of what DeLancey had been wearing when he fell.
His jacket at least, and probably his trousers, should show some signs of the fall.
A dinner-jacket smirched or damaged would not indicate where he fell.
But if he had worn some other article of clothing, then he had changed after dinner, and why should he do so if not for a vigil?
It would be another piece of evidence pointing to the boat-house as the scene of the crime.
Bott hadn’t come in for dinner. Even if he came back earlier in the day to change out of his rowing shorts, no one would tell him of DeLancey’s intention to guard the boat, would they?
He had no reason to suppose the coast would not be clear when he crept down to the boat-house in the middle of the night.
Tent-peg in hand? How much damage could he do to a racing boat with a tent-peg? Why toss it aside, outside the boat-house? Why not plan to use a boat-hook in the first place?
“Ah, Mr. Poindexter. Take a seat.”
Poindexter confirmed much of Leigh’s report, but added little.
The same was true of Wells and Meredith.
Each claimed to have slept soundly, not leaving his room after going to bed, and not hearing his room-mate stir until morning.
They all agreed that no rowing man worth his salt would leave an oar lying about on the ground.
They also agreed that the annual “bumping” races at Oxford proved the boats were pretty sturdy. Holing one with a tent-peg would not be easy, at least not without a mallet.
Tom could hardly have missed a mallet lying in the bushes.
Why not hit out with a mallet one was carrying instead of putting it down to pick up an oar?
Perhaps the tent-peg was nothing to do with Bott.
It matched his, but tent-pegs were much of a muchness, after all.
Analysis of the wood might prove something.
No good counting to see if one of Bott’s was missing—anyone in his right mind would take extras in case some split.
Where was Bott?
Alec dismissed Meredith and sent for Fosdyke.
The surgeon’s son was higher on the list of suspects than the four already interviewed, but not by much.
As a member of the fours crew, he had a reason to check the boat in the night, but no one had suggested he had any particular reason to quarrel with DeLancey.
The possibility remained of DeLancey having become obstreperous when Fosdyke was putting him to bed, but the evidence all pointed to the boat-house, not a bedroom.
“What was DeLancey wearing when you went to his assistance last night?” Alec rapped out as Fosdyke entered the library.
“His sweater, and flannels. I was glad, because I’d have had a job getting him out of a dinner-jacket.”
“He was being difficult?”
“Just limp.” The eyes that met Alec’s were as guileless as Daisy’s.
He reminded himself that he would never describe Daisy as guileless.
“As it was, I didn’t even bother to undress him,” Fosdyke continued, sitting down as Alec waved him to the chair.
“But it wasn’t him, it was Miss Cheringham whose assistance I went to, and Miss Dalrymple.
She’s a brick, isn’t she? I thought DeLancey was drunk.
The pater says it was a natural mistake, but I still feel bad about it. ”
“DeLancey was a friend? You chose to share a room with him?”
“Crikey, no! I don’t think he had any real friends, just a few toadies.
The others all teamed up, and I got stuck with him.
I kept pretty much out of his way, getting up early and going to bed early.
He didn’t pick on me much, anyway, because I took no notice.
People like that soon quit if you ignore them. ”
“Very true.”
“The pater taught me that before I went away to prep school. The pater’s a good egg,” Fosdyke said defensively, with an air of embarrassment. Perhaps in his circles fathers were generally regarded as antediluvian antiques.
Alec decided the young man was probably just as ingenuous as he seemed. What had Daisy said about him? A nice, obliging boy who lived to run, row, eat, and sleep.
“Were you awake, or did you wake up, when DeLancey came up to change his clothes?”
“He woke me. That was typical—he turned on the overhead light and didn’t attempt to be quiet. Though I think he really was a bit tipsy then.”
“What time was that?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t want him to know he’d woken me. When he went off again, I had to get up to turn off the light, but I didn’t look at the time.”
“Where did you suppose he was going?”
“To the boat-house, I assumed. He’d been talking about it earlier, though I didn’t believe he’d do it.”
“Were you concerned about Mr. Bott’s threats against the boat?” Alec asked.