Chapter 12 #2
“He didn’t threaten the boat, he threatened DeLancey. The boat business was all DeLancey’s imagination.” Fosdyke paused, forehead wrinkling. “At least, I suppose he was right, wasn’t he? I mean, Bott hit him down there, and why was Bott there if not to bash in the boat?”
“We have absolutely no evidence of Bott’s presence in the boat-house last night,” Alec said repressively, as he had already stated four times in various ways. He asked a few more questions, but he was inclined to give young Fosdyke the benefit of the doubt.
“I told Father I’d go and find him when you had finished with me.”
“You’re free to go, but please telephone if for any reason you don’t come back here for the night. Piper, I’ll see Miss Cheringham next, in case she wants to retire to bed again.”
As Fosdyke and Piper left, Tom came in. “Didn’t want to interrupt, Chief, case you was getting a confession.”
“No such luck. What about you?”
“I been talking to Mr. Gladstone. DeLancey barely noticed the servants existed, so there’s no motive there. He had a telephone call from his brother about quarter to eleven.”
“Yes, Lord DeLancey told us. What did Gladstone have to say about it?”
“All the rest went upstairs while Basil DeLancey was talking on the telephone. Gladstone went into the drawing-room to tidy and lock up. DeLancey was angry when he came in, ‘cause he’d been deserted, I s’pose.
He told Gladstone not to lock the French doors as he was going to step out for a cigar.
Said he lock’em himself, then rushed off upstairs.
Gladstone finished tidying and was just leaving when DeLancey came back dressed in a jersey.
Looks like the boat-house is it, don’t it, Chief? ”
“Oh yes, we can be pretty certain of that. Have you checked the dabs on that oar?”
Tom’s reply was forestalled by the sound of an argument just outside in the hall. Piper came in.
“Mr. Frieth and Mr. Cheringham want to come in with Miss Cheringham, Chief, but she …”
Tish burst in, turning on the threshold to say vehemently, “Do go away, the two of you. I don’t need you to hold my hands. I don’t want you to hold my hands.”
From the hall came Miss Carrick’s musical tones, unruffled. “Cherry, come along, do. Mr. Fletcher doesn’t bite, you chump.”
“Little does she know,” came sotto voce from Piper as Alec strode towards the door.
Turning as he approached, Tish shut the door firmly behind her. Pale and wan, she looked up at him apprehensively, as if Piper’s words were closer to her expectations than Miss Carrick’s.
“I don’t bite,” Alec reassured her. “Come and sit down. I
imagine you don’t want them here when we talk about DeLancey being in your bedroom last night.”
“No,” she said with a little gasp. “They know now, but talking about it … . It was too awful … .” And she started to cry.
Dearly wishing Daisy was there, Alec took her hand and led her to the chair. He had coped with many a weeping woman in his time, and more than a few weeping men, but never one who was shortly to become a close relative.
At that inopportune moment, the telephone bell rang. Of course, it might be for anyone in the house, but it was about time Bott turned up. Alec glanced at Tom, who nodded and trod silently from the room.
Sitting on the arm of Tish’s chair, Alec handed her his handkerchief. “Have a good blow,” he said. “At least, that’s what I say to my daughter. Perhaps it’s not quite proper to a young lady.”
“It’s what Cherry used to say when I was little.” A tentative smile hovering on her lips, she looked up at him with tear-drenched eyes. “I didn’t know you had a daughter. Daisy did mention that you had been married before.”
“Yes.” He moved to the desk. Not sure whether he was putting a prospective witness at ease or improving his acquaintance with his fiancée’s cousin, he went on, “Joan died in the influenza epidemic in ’nineteen, like Daisy’s father. Belinda’s nine. She adores Daisy.”
“Daisy’s wonderful, isn’t she?” Behind her, Ernie Piper nodded vigorously—Alec was relieved to see he hadn’t started taking notes yet. “One feels one can tell her anything. I wish I’d known her better growing up. I don’t know what I’d have done last night if she hadn’t been there.”
“Do you feel able to talk about it now? I haven’t had much chance to get the details from Daisy. In any case, it helps to have two witnesses. One often notices what the other misses.”
“Wh-when do you want me to start?” Tish asked tremulously.
“Let’s go back to the river-bank yesterday. I’ve plenty of witnesses to DeLancey’s ducking Bott, but none of them was there when he first took it into his head that Bott might damage the fours boat. Daisy just mentioned it in passing. Were you there?”
“Oh yes. It was later, in the General Enclosure. Dottie and Cherry and Rollo and I were having something to drink—it was beastly hot. Daisy was with us. She had gone off with Bott and his girl, and we’d been a bit worried about where she’d got to. I remember … Oh!”
“What?”
Tish blushed. “Oh, just that Dottie told her we nearly called in the police but weren’t sure whether to get the local chaps or Scotland Yard. Just joking, you know. Daisy said you’d have wrung her neck.”
“I might have,” Alec agreed, laughing. “Did Bott and his girl turn up with her?”
“No, thank heaven. Because just then the DeLanceys came up, looking as if they’d been squabbling ever since we last saw them.
Mr. DeLancey apologised for the scene with Bott, but not as if he meant it.
It was obvious Lord DeLancey made him say it.
That was when Basil DeLancey started to worry about the boat. ”
“Were Frieth and Cheringham worried?”
“Not a bit,” Tish said quickly. Too quickly? “Cherry said, ‘Bosh’—no, ‘What rot!’ and Rollo said they wouldn’t share
guard-duty with him. Then Lord DeLancey told Basil not to be an ass, he’d make himself a laughing-stock sitting in the boat-house all night. So that was the end of that.”
“You didn’t hear any more about it? Your cousin and Frieth didn’t discuss it?”
“After the DeLanceys had gone, Rollo said something like that was the last we’d hear of that. Cherry said if Lord DeLancey was capable of making Basil apologise, it was a pity he didn’t exercise his authority more often. Then we went to watch a race.”
“What about in the evening? At dinner and after?”
“At dinner no one talked about any of the business with Bott. Even Basil DeLancey behaved himself pretty well when my mother was there.” Again the quick colour flooded Tish’s cheeks.
“After dinner, we were out on the terrace, and the rest were inside. Did DeLancey say he was going to the boat-house after all?”
“Not in so many words, I gather.”
It sounded as if Cheringham and Frieth expected Basil DeLancey to be ruled by his brother.
Tish did not seem to grasp that they therefore had a motive for checking on the boat themselves—though a quick check would hardly do much good unless Bott happened to be caught sneaking down there, Alec realised.
He blamed the heat for his slowness to reach that conclusion.
Frieth and Cheringham were intelligent men who would surely have worked it out for themselves.
On the other hand, DeLancey and Bott were supposedly highly intelligent, and look at their idiotic behaviour.
Intelligence was no guarantee of common sense.
Or common sense could be overborne by emotion, Alec
thought, regarding Tish’s tear-stained face. However, that would be more to the point if Frieth or Cheringham had known DeLancey was in the boat-house and had deliberately gone to confront him.
Which seemed unlikely, since they had no lack of opportunity for a confrontation. Only intentional murder would require the cloak of night, and Basil DeLancey had not been intentionally murdered.
Alec saw that his long pause was making Tish apprehensive. “All right,” he said, “tell me about DeLancey coming to your room.”
She looked relieved. “Daisy heard him and turned on the bedside light. I was scared to death. Someone must have told you how he kept … badgering me, and wouldn’t take no for an answer?”
“Yes.”
“I thought he’d come to … to …”
“To seduce—or perhaps assault—you?” Alec said gently.
Tish nodded. “He was … he seemed to be drunk. He could have forgotten Daisy was sharing my room. Did she tell you I was sleeping on a camp-bed? He staggered in and fell over it, and it collapsed.” A slightly hysterical giggle escaped her.
“I’m sure it was funny, if I hadn’t been terrified.
He just lay there, though. Daisy thought he was probably just drunk enough to have turned the wrong way at the top of the stairs.
She sent me to wake Nick Fosdyke. She said she didn’t mind being alone with DeLancey. She’s so brave!”
“Foolhardy,” Alec muttered, then said aloud, “Fosdyke was asleep?”
“Fast asleep. I didn’t dare knock very hard on the door, in case I woke the whole house, so I went in and called to him.
He didn’t stir. I had to shake him awake, and then he was still half-asleep until he actually saw DeLancey in our room. He was an absolute angel.”
“Yes, I don’t believe I’ve properly expressed my appreciation.”
“He thought DeLancey was drunk, too.”
“Mr. Fosdyke Senior and Dr. Dewhurst, the police surgeon, both assure me you couldn’t possibly have guessed he was injured. You really must stop blaming yourself, Tish.”
The only result of his reassurance was that she started crying again.
Alec began to feel a bit impatient. Why couldn’t she pull herself together, like Daisy?
Admittedly, she had known DeLancey better, and many people felt guilty when someone died whom they had detested, as if ancient superstitions about ill-wishing lingered in the modern unconscious.
He didn’t think Tish bore the additional burden of fear that Cherry or Rollo was responsible for DeLancey’s death. Those two young men looked less and less likely as suspects. Alec could only hope something decisive would come out in his interviews with them.
If they didn’t decide to sock him in the jaw first for making Tish cry.
“Shall I send Piper for your mother?” he asked.
Mopping her eyes with his handkerchief, she shook her head. “No, I’ll be all right, honestly. I’m just rather tired. I think I’ll go back to bed. It’s awful of me after inviting everyone, but I just don’t feel up to … .”
“Don’t cry! I’m sure no one expects you to be the perfect hostess after such a shock. Off you go, now. Nothing will seem quite so bad in the morning, I promise you.”
As Tish left, Tom returned. “That was Henley Police rang
up, Chief,” he reported. “Bott’s back at Miss Hopgood’s lodgings. They’ve got a man watching, but they can’t spare him for long. Things are starting to get lively in town.”
“You’d better take the Austin and bring Bott along.”
“Right, Chief. D’you want Miss Hopgood too?”
“I’d forgotten her. No, I’ll see her tomorrow if I need to. Oh, you’d better stop at the White Hart on the way and pick up my things, would you? But first tell me about the dabs on the oar.”
“All accounted for, Chief. Mr. Cheringham’s freshest, like he said; Miss Cheringham‘s—he told me the young ladies often help put ’em away, remember; the deceased; Mr. Meredith; Mr. Wells; and a whole lot of old ’uns underneath.
Then there’s Mr. Frieth’s on the blade, where you’d expect him to touch when he looked at the damage. ”
“None of Bott’s?”
“None as match what I got off his hairbrush, Chief.”
“And he’d hardly wear gloves for a bit of mischief-making on a warm summer night.”
“No gloves among his things, Chief.”
“Damn!” said Alec.