Chapter 3 #2
“To be fair, sir, it’s been five months since Mrs. Fletcher found herself on the scene of a crime. And that was in America.”
“Four months. Remember Cornwall.”
“I’ve been trying to forget it, sir! How does she do it?”
“I suppose it’s what the young people call an affinity.”
“Isn’t that a term used by young women of unsuitable young men they wish to marry?” Crane asked, puzzled.
“Only in Mrs. Fletcher’s case it’s unsuitable murders she’s involved with. It is murder, is it?”
“The divisional super says his man assumed accident, sir, or at worst suicide, but Mrs. Fletcher suspects it’s murder.”
“Damnation!”
“Yes, sir. In the circumstances, Superintendent Willoughby’s asking for our assistance. I take it you want me to assign Fletcher to the case?”
Heaving a sigh, the AC nodded.
The arrival of Dr. Curtis, a slight, grey-haired GP with gold-rimmed spectacles, drove Daisy from Daphne Talmadge’s room.
She was not unwilling to leave. Having expounded the fairy tale about “poor Raymond’s” disappointment, Daphne had grown teary again.
She developed a tendency to regard Daisy as her only true friend and insisted on first-name terms. Had she not turned down brandy in favour of tea, Daisy would have guessed she was just a trifle tiddly.
Hilda and the tea arrived simultaneously with the doctor, so once again Daisy went without. Dr. Curtis dismissed the maid along with Daisy. They went downstairs together.
“Mrs. Talmadge told me you’ve been with her since she was a child,” said Daisy. “You must be fearfully worried about her.”
“Well, and I am, there’s no denying. She’s ever so upset. Who wouldn’t be?” Hilda demanded, then added sotto voce, “Though there’s some might think she’s well rid of him!”
Pretending not to hear this last, Daisy said, “Of course, she’s had a frightful shock.”
“And it’s not very nice having the police in the house, not at all what we’re used to. Poking and prying when anyone can see it was an accident.”
“So you agree with Nurse Hensted.”
“About that,” the maid agreed grudgingly, “and not much else. The mistress used to beg the master not to use that nasty gas. Have a whisky and soda, she’d say, or gin-and-It, like everyone else.
It was bound to happen sooner or later and we don’t need any police upsetting everybody with their nosey-parkering. ”
Gladys was closing the front door as they reached the hall. “More pleecemen, Miss Kidd,” she said, quite blase by now. “One of ’em’s got a great big camera. I sent them round to the side door.”
“Good girl! They’ve no call to come tramping through the house. But they could quite well get to the surgery through the waiting room. Nurse Hensted should have told them to go that way.”
“The pleece doctor came with Dr. Curtis. He’s in there now, with the sergeant, looking at the—”
“That’s quite enough of that, Gladys, thank you very much! You’d better stay here in the hall to answer the door in case any more of them turn up.”
“Sergeant Mackinnon said he’s going to ask me some questions.”
“No doubt he’ll send for you when he wants you,” Hilda
said repressively. She turned to Daisy. “I expect you’d better stay, madam, till they’ve finished with their questions. If you’d like a cup of tea, I’ll bring a tray to the drawing room.”
As long as there was a chance of learning something new, Daisy was not about to reveal that Detective Sergeant Mackinnon had already said she could leave.
Besides, every mention of tea made her thirstier.
But if she waited in the drawing room, it might never arrive.
“I’ll come with you to the kitchen,” she said firmly.
The door to the surgery was ajar. Daisy kept her face turned away, not wanting either to see or to be seen. As she hurried into the kitchen, the latest arrivals knocked on the door at the end of the passage. Hilda went to let them in.
“Don’t touch that knob!” warned Mackinnon, coming out of the surgery. He was too late.
From the safety of the kitchen, Daisy saw the maid turn and scowl at him. “You’d better open it yourself!” she snapped. “And it’d be a sight easier for everyone if you used the door to the waiting room.”
His handkerchief over his hand, Mackinnon passed Hilda and gingerly turned the handle. “Not locked,” he observed with satisfaction, pulling the door open. “Warren, you’d better check this door for dabs first, though I don’t suppose it’s much use now. Ardmore, bring the camera through this way.”
Hilda came to the kitchen door and said to Daisy, “I’ll put the kettle on in half a mo’, madam. I’m just going to tell Gladys to send the rest through the waiting room if there’s more coming.”
Nurse Hensted jumped up from her seat at the table.
“Who goes through the waiting room’s my affair, not yours,” she said belligerently.
“They’ll be going in there in the end anyway,” Daisy pointed out, “from one end or the other, if they haven’t already. Why don’t you go and tell Gladys, Miss Hensted.”
Hilda instantly protested, “She’s got no right to give orders to—”
“She will convey my order.” Daisy employed the tone of voice her mother used at her haughtiest. She tried it rarely, and was always surprised when it worked, as it did now, though she had no conceivable right to give orders to either Gladys or these two.
However, Miss Hensted headed for the door and Hilda for the kettle.
“China or Indian, ma’am?” enquired the latter.
“Indian, please.” Maybe she really was going to get a cup of tea in the end. “I hope you and Nurse Hensted will join me. I’m sure you both need some too.”
“Well, m’m, I can’t say I wouldn’t be glad of it, and I s’pose if I’m making it, that woman might as well have a drop.” Hilda set out one “good” cup and saucer, Royal Doulton, beside the kitchenware Daisy had left on the table earlier.
Miss Hensted came back. “What a lot of fuss and bother over an accident!” she said irritably, plumping down on one of the chairs at the table.
“Mrs. Talmadge doesn’t think it was an accident,” said Daisy.
“I don’t know what call he had to do himself in,” Hilda snapped.
“I gather he was in despair because he’d wanted to buy into a Harley Street practice but couldn’t afford the price.”
“Because she spends every penny he earns,” Miss Hensted asserted.
Hilda bridled. “Rubbish, it was her money in the first place, that he bought this practice with. And what’s he do but waste it on hiring a nurse, like he was already in a fancy practice in Harley Street.”
Red in the face, Miss Hensted demanded, “Are you saying I don’t earn my wages?”
“All I’m saying is you don’t need a Registered Nurse in an ordinary practice like here.
People don’t expect it.” Hilda jumped as the kettle hissed and rattled its lid.
Busy making the tea, she added, “He only married her for her money. She ought to of married Lord Henry, I always said, and I’ll stand by that to my dying day! ”
“Lord Henry?” Daisy queried.
“Lord Henry Creighton, that was courting her before she met Mr. Talmadge. A proper gentleman, he was, treated her lovely. They were mad for each other. But her father wouldn’t hear of her marrying a man-about-town, a useless drone he called him, without two pennies to rub together if it wasn’t for an allowance from his father, and no more idea how to earn his living than a babe in arms.”
Miss Hensted snorted. Daisy, who was slightly acquainted with Lord Henry, tried not to smile at this all-too-accurate description.
“Miss Daphne’s father was a nerve specialist, see,” Hilda continued.
“A consultant. He sent her to a fancy school, and she made friends with lots of toffs and got invited to parties. But he didn’t like the men she met.
He was pleased when she took up with another medical man, even if he was only a dentist.”
“But he couldn’t force her to marry him,” Daisy said.
“He didn’t have to. Raymond Talmadge turned her head, didn’t he.
There’s no denying he’s … he was a smasher.
Poor Lord Henry couldn’t compete in that department, him having no chin to speak of.
Always reminded me of a ferret, he did. But handsome is as handsome does, I say.
He treated her right, and there’s no harm in it if she has lunch in town with him now and then and goes to a show. ”
“No harm!” Miss Hensted’s fist crashed on the table, rattling the cups and saucers. “She goes seeing another man behind his back, and you expect him to take it sitting down? No wonder he needed a bit of gas now and then to keep his spirits up!”
“Gas wasn’t all he had,” said Hilda grimly, “and don’t tell me you didn’t know it. That’s what drove her to it, if you ask me. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander!”
With that triumphant, if somewhat confusing, statement, she poured the tea.