Chapter 7
The telephone bell rang in the front hall. Daisy heard Belinda go to answer it, and a moment later her stepdaughter appeared in the doorway.
“It’s for you, Mummy. Mrs. Grantchester. I told her you are entertaining guests.” Belinda pronounced this newly acquired phrase with pride. “She said it’s urgent.”
“Thank you, darling. What on earth can she want? I hardly know her. Excuse me a minute,” Daisy said to Mel and Sakari. She went out to the hall. “Hello, this is Daisy Fletcher.”
“Oh, Mrs. Fletcher, I do hope you’ll excuse the short notice. I was wondering whether you could possibly come to luncheon tomorrow, quite informal, just a few local ladies, I’m sure you know most of them.”
Daisy’s immediate impulse was to hunt for an excuse. She didn’t particularly like Mrs. Grantchester, a large, gushing woman, and she suspected her company was wanted mostly for what she could tell of Talmadge’s death. On the other
hand, she might pick up useful gossip about the Talmadges for Alec, though middle-class matrons didn’t gossip half as much as she had expected before becoming one of them. Also her usual excuse was invalid: she had just finished an article and her next was not due for a fortnight.
Her pause for thought had lasted long enough to be noticed.
“Oh, please say you’ll come,” Mrs. Grantchester begged. “I know you write—so adventurous of you—I always read your articles—but we won’t keep you long, just an hour or so. All work and no play … you know what they say.”
Definitely Daisy didn’t like Mrs. Grantchester. She started to beg off: “It’s very kind of you, but—”
“Splendid!” the beastly woman overrode her. “We’ll see you at one o’clock. Oh, and I nearly forgot, of course your dear mama-in-law is invited too.” She rang off before Daisy could protest.
Her mama-in-law’s inclusion in no way reconciled her to the luncheon, but now that her acceptance was assumed, it was impossible to back out without giving offence.
Sighing, she jiggled the hook on the telephone apparatus to call the operator.
She must let Alec know that Talmadge’s mistress, if any, was probably not a patient.
“Hello, caller, you have an incoming call. Do you want to take it or make your own call?”
“I’ll take it,” said Daisy. “Hello? St. John’s Wood 2351.”
“Hello, Mrs. Fletcher? This is Marianne Randall. I do hope this isn’t a bad time to ring?”
Mrs. Randall, with apologies for the short notice, wanted Daisy and Alec to come to dinner tomorrow. Alec might
well have to work late? Never mind, her brother could always be called in at the last minute to make up the numbers if necessary. Daisy simply must come anyway.
On the spur of the moment, Daisy failed to think up a better excuse.
Marianne Randall hung up at last and Daisy phoned Alec. He groaned when he heard that Talmadge’s lover probably was not a patient.
“The prospect of digging through his files was bad enough. We’ll still have to do that, but if your friends are right, the field is wide open. We’ll just have to hope someone will report having seen him with a lady-friend.”
“Don’t despair, darling. I’ll see what I can find out.”
“Daisy, don’t—”
“I must run. They’re waiting. Bye-bye, darling.” Prohibition averted, Daisy returned to the sitting room.
In the next hour, she received another five invitations for the next two days. She manage to decline three, only because they arrived in the form of servant-borne notes, not telephone calls.
“Gosh! I’ve never been so popular in my life,” she said as she penned an answer to the latest note. “I thought the ladies of St. John’s Wood were unnaturally immune to gossip, but this puts paid to that theory.”
“It is the murder of one of their own,” Sakari declared. “It has overcome their inhibitions.” She was an inveterate attender of public lectures, including a recent series on Freud.
“Few of them have any inhibitions about gossiping,” said Mel. “If you haven’t heard much, Daisy, it’s because they don’t indulge when you’re around.”
“Why?” Daisy demanded, astonished. “Do they think I’m not interested? A writer is always interested in people.”
“That’s one reason I’ve heard mentioned,” Mel told her. “That you’re a writer, I mean. A journalist, if not a reporter. I think they’re afraid you might write about them.”
“What else?”
“Well, I know you don’t like it mentioned, but you are an Honourable.”
“This I have heard,” said Sakari: “‘Servants talk about people, ladies and gentlemen talk about things.’”
“So my nanny used to tell us,” Daisy admitted, “but if it’s true, I know very few true ladies and gentlemen.
I can’t believe people think I’d disapprove, just because I’ve got an honorary title in front of my name, which I don’t even use.
Except when my editors insist, but I insist on still using Dalrymple with it, not my married name. ”
“There is another reason people are reticent, Daisy. You are married to a police detective.”
“But …” Daisy stared at Sakari. “As if Alec would care about common or garden gossip! Honestly, anyone would think they were all criminals.”
“I suppose lots of people have something they’d rather the police didn’t know,” Melanie murmured.
“In that case, it’s very odd of them to come out of the woodwork just when Alec will be interested in their secrets, in case they have some bearing on the murder. Maybe they expect to pump me without giving anything away.”
Sakari shook her head. “That is part of it, perhaps, but I suspect it is rather that they look on you as an intermediary. If I had possibly useful information, I should much prefer
to reveal it to you rather than the police. Many people know that you have assisted Mr. Fletcher in a number of his murder cases.”
“How?” Daisy demanded indignantly. “I’ve never breathed a word, not even to you two, and Alec certainly wouldn’t, let alone his mother. Oh—Belinda?”
“I’m afraid she told Lizzie,” Mel confirmed.
“And Deva.” Sakari smiled, in a friendly way enjoying Daisy’s discomfiture.
“The girls told us. Naturally, we haven’t spoken of it, but they must have chattered to other friends. You know what girls are.”
At least they could know only about the few cases Bel had been involved in, Daisy realized with relief. “No use crying over spilt milk,” she said. “The only question is, will it make people more likely or less likely to tell me things?”
“Then you are sleuthing?” cried Sakari. “What did I tell you, Melanie? May we help?”
“Sorry, Alec would kill me if I let you get mixed up in it. He’s always trying to keep me out.”
“Men are so often unreasonable, even Englishmen,” the Indian woman sighed.
“I’m sure Mr. Fletcher is only trying to keep Daisy safe,” said Mel, the peacemaker. “After all, there is a murderer somewhere about. I hope people won’t give you information which will endanger you, Daisy, but I rather think they’re all secretly thrilled and dying to bare their souls.”
When Daisy hung up on him, Alec nearly rang her right back to order her not to meddle in the case. That was
undoubtedly what Superintendent Crane and the AC would expect him to do. What they didn’t comprehend was that at the best of times a modern young woman like Daisy didn’t take kindly to orders. Now, with the bit between her teeth, there wasn’t the slightest hope of Alec’s reining her in.
He consoled himself with the thought that she had so far remained somewhat aloof from such society as St. John’s Wood afforded.
Not that Daisy was a snob. Alec had seen her take up arms on behalf of an undergardener and chat happily with a shop girl. But her only real friends in the neighbourhood were Mrs. Germond and Mrs. Prasad, neither of whom he expected to find on his suspect list—though one could never be sure.
The rest of the Talmadges’ social circle were mere acquaintances. Daisy couldn’t very well approach them with leading questions about Raymond Talmadge’s mistress. For once she would have to stay out of his investigation in spite of having found the body.
Alec surveyed the study where he had been when Daisy’s call came through.
It was really an office, not the sort of place where a man could retire to smoke a pipe and sip a glass of whisky and soda with a friend.
The bookcase contained only dental reference books and journals.
A quick look through the drawers of the desk had turned up nothing but stationery supplies, bank statements, and a locked cash box small enough for any burglar to pocket.
The cabinet held ledgers with the financial records of Talmadge’s practice.
Sooner or later, someone would have to go through the records, looking for a financial motive for murder. It was a
job for Ernie Piper, who was good with figures, good at spotting numbers that didn’t quite fit. Fraud seemed improbable in a dental practice, but blackmail was always a possibility.
“Any love letters, Chief?” Tom came in, his bulk making the small room seem even smaller.
“Nothing but business as far as I can see. No locked …” Alec sniffed. “Tom, what have you been doing?”
“Raking through a bonfire Mrs. Fletcher came across at the bottom of the garden. I didn’t touch anything, just raked it over, but the smoke must’ve got into my clothes. Pongs a bit, doesn’t it?”
“Just a bit.” Alec fanned the air with the blotter. “I suppose it will wear off. Did you find anything of interest?”
Tom shook his head. “Garden rubbish and kitchen scraps. No luck in here?”
“Not even a locked drawer. I doubt there’s much in this.” He pushed the cashbox across the desk. “You have the keys we found on the body.”
The box contained a cheque-book and nearly fifty pounds in coins, notes, and cheques. “Cor, that the morning’s take, d’you think? I’m in the wrong job.”
“He probably doesn’t go to the bank every day. Is that the lot?”
“Not a love letter to be seen.”
“Hilda Kidd confirmed that Talmadge had a lady friend, did she?”