Chapter 12
On her way upstairs, Daisy thought of another possibility. Even if Daphne was herself innocent, she still could know, suspect, or simply fear that Lord Henry had killed her husband, in which case she must be desperate to protect him.
Daisy tapped on the bedroom door and was invited to enter. In spite of her resolve, she felt a pang of sympathy at the sight of Daphne’s wan face, pale as her pillows, with its pitiful attempt at a smile.
“I’m so glad the baby is all right.”
“Yes, we managed to save the poor, fatherless little mite,” said Miss Hensted complacently.
Hilda Kidd glared at her. The maid’s face was creased with fatigue after the emotions of the past hour following her watchful night. She opened her mouth to retort, but Daphne forestalled her, her tone authoritative despite the weakness of her voice.
“Hilda, you really must get some rest. Bring that chair over here for Mrs. Fletcher, then off to bed with you. And
Nurse, you can leave me with Mrs. Fletcher. I promise I won’t try to sit up.”
“I’ll stop her if she does.” Daisy reopened the door she had closed behind her and stood holding it to usher out the reluctant pair.
The door firmly shut again, Daisy went to sit on the chair Hilda had moved close to the bed.
“I suppose I must be grateful to Nurse Hensted,” said Daphne, “much as I dislike her. Dr. Curtis says she may have stopped me bleeding to death, as well as saving my baby. Oh, Daisy, what must you think of me?”
“I think you’ve got yourself into a fearful mess,” Daisy said candidly. “And I know that now you’re no longer under sedation, you’re going to have to talk to the police.”
“Even if I tell you everything?”
“Gosh, yes. I may have given Alec a hand with one or two cases, and he does occasionally listen to what I have to say, but I have no official standing. You’ll have to see him.
Or he’d send someone else if you prefer, I expect.
I can see it might be a bit awkward baring your soul to a policeman you’ve been socially acquainted with for ages. ”
“Very, but probably no worse than to a stranger. On the whole I’d rather have your husband, especially if you can stay with me. But I want to explain to you first anyway. You’ve been so kind.”
Daisy thought guiltily of her ulterior motives. “Not really,” she felt obliged to demur.
“Kinder than anyone else.”
“There are stacks of condolence cards downstairs.”
Daphne pulled a face. “All of which I’ll have to answer politely though I can guess what some of those cats are saying
behind my back. I can’t imagine you going off and repeating what I’ve told you to the neighbours.”
“No, I wouldn’t do that.” Daisy recalled with distaste Miss Cobb’s glee as she passed on her tidbit of gossip, while Mrs. Grantchester watched avidly. “I wouldn’t even tell Alec in ordinary circumstances, but—”
“Poor Raymond! I still can’t quite believe it’s happened.” She sounded more bewildered than shattered. “Are the police absolutely sure it wasn’t an accident?”
“Pretty sure. You said something before about it happening just when you thought you’d sorted everything out. Did you mean he’d agreed to let you divorce him?”
“No, on the contrary. Divorce would have ruined his practice, and having a divorced mother would be a rotten start in life for my baby. No, he’d agreed to accept the child as his own.”
“Did he really?”
“Noble of him, wasn’t it?” Daphne’s smile was twisted. “He wasn’t a bad man. I was madly in love with him once. And, you know, not having children was one of the things that drove us apart in the first place. No, not drove. We weren’t driven, we drifted. Don’t let it happen to you, Daisy.”
Daisy couldn’t imagine drifting apart from Alec, but she said, “I’ll do my best.”
“We were going to try to put our marriage back together. He promised to drop his latest mistress, and I told Harry I couldn’t see him again.” Her eyes filling with tears, Daphne turned her head away.
“Oh, please, you mustn’t upset yourself. Dr. Curtis said … I’d better go.”
“No, please stay. I’ll go mad if I can’t talk about it. I’ll try to be calm. Only it was perfectly awful, you can’t imagine.”
“You told him everything? I mean, about why you and your husband were going to try to salvage the marriage? About the baby?”
“His baby, as I expect you must have guessed. Yes, I told him. We’ve known each other for nearly twenty years, you see. I would have married him, but Father wouldn’t let me. He said he was an effete aristocrat barely capable of tying his own shoelaces.”
“Oh dear!”
“It’s not true. And I can tell Harry anything, knowing he’ll understand. He was so kind, and so sad.”
“It must have been very painful.” Daisy tried to imagine the dilettante-about-town finding himself in that awkward situation.
She would expect him to be extremely relieved that his mistress intended to stay with her husband rather than attempting to saddle him with the responsibility for the child.
Nothing seemed less likely than that he should rush off to murder said husband.
Admittedly Daisy didn’t know Lord Henry at all well. His long liaison with Daphne Talmadge was surprising enough in itself. One would have expected him to dally with actresses.
Reaching out a pleading hand, Daphne said passionately, “I have to see him!”
“Oh dear, I don’t see how—”
“I can’t go out, so Harry must come here.”
Daisy tried to work out how to say politely that a man visiting his mistress in her bedroom at home on the day after her husband was murdered was simply not on. Especially
as he’d been murdered in that very house. “I really don’t think—”
“I don’t care what people say. It’s too late to worry about that. Will you go down and telephone him for me?”
“As a matter of fact, there’s a policeman down there for the express purpose of stopping you getting in touch with Lord Henry until Alec has talked to you.
And please don’t ask me to write a note or something.
I may not always agree with Alec, but I couldn’t deliberately thwart him like that.
” At least, not unless she was absolutely certain he was wrong.
At present, the only certainties were that Daphne was tired, upset, and worried about Lord Henry. Daisy hoped she wasn’t deluding herself that he cared equally for her. Or was she worried because she was afraid he might desert her?
She could even be making up the whole story to divert suspicion from herself to him. A reconciliation with her husband eliminated her motive for killing him, but intensified Lord Henry’s—always supposing he really was devoted to her.
“I wish he’d hurry up and come then,” Daphne sighed. “Mr. Fletcher, I mean. But I want you to tell him first what I’ve told you. It won’t be quite so difficult if he already knows the worst.”
“I could try to ’phone him at the Yard, and if he’s not there, leave a message that you’re ready to see him.”
“Would you? Please?”
“Right-oh. Then I’ll wait and come up with him, if you’re sure that’s what you want. He can’t very well object to your having a chaperon.”
“I’m afraid I’m taking up a great deal of your time. I
know you’re awfully busy with your writing.
I do envy you for having something really worthwhile to do, and I admire you for going on with it spite of what people say.
I sometimes think if I had had more to do …
” She sighed again. “You’ve been very kind, and I don’t want to ask anything more of you, but …
I don’t think I can bear the Hensted woman brooding over me any longer.
Her squabbles with Hilda alone are intolerable. ”
“You really must brace yourself to dismiss her. Did Dr. Curtis say you ought to have a nurse on hand?”
“For a few days, at least.”
“Well, if you like I’ll call an agency and get them to send someone, but I can’t chuck Miss Hensted out for you. I don’t see why she should mind, given pay in lieu of notice. After all, the job she was hired for no longer exists, and she told Alec she abhors waiting on an invalid.”
Daphne brightened. “She did? Then maybe I can make it seem as if I’m doing her a favour by letting her go.”
“Try it,” Daisy advised. “I’ll send her in. I’m off to ’phone Alec.”
When Daisy left the bedroom, Nurse Hensted was on the landing waiting to return to her patient. Hilda Kidd, thank heaven, was nowhere in sight.
Lost in thought, the nurse didn’t notice Daisy for a moment.
Judging by her heavy frown and downturned mouth her thoughts were not pleasant.
It must be hard to lose a position she had no doubt expected to keep for years, particularly one where the work was not exactly exacting.
Even if Daphne kept her on, it could only be a few days before she’d have to start pounding the pavements again in
search of a new job. She would probably end up either in a hospital or looking after an invalid.
She looked up, saw Daisy, and started forward. “I hope you didn’t upset her, Mrs. Fletcher,” she said belligerently. “We don’t want another emergency.”
“Mrs. Talmadge is quite calm at present. You’ll see that she stays calm, won’t you?”
“That’s my job. It’s Hilda Kidd gets her all worked up.”
Daisy nodded, but she paused to listen before going downstairs.
Miss Hensted pushed the door to after her, but it didn’t latch, bouncing back to leave a crack.
Daisy heard professionally soothing sounds, but without putting her ear to the crack she couldn’t make out the words.
Not that it mattered; she just wanted to make sure there wasn’t going to be a battle royal.
Daphne’s voice came next, in firm tones. Then the nurse said clearly, “Oh yes, Mrs. Talmadge, I’d be ever so grateful. I didn’t want to leave you in the lurch, but it’ll suit me down to the ground. You’ll write me a reference? I’m sure I’ve always given satisfaction.”
All was well. Daisy went on down the stairs. She found DS Mackinnon perched uneasily on the shield-back chair in the hall. He jumped up when he saw her.
“How is the lady, Mrs. Fletcher?”
“Much better. I was just going to ring up my husband and tell him he can come and see her.”
He flushed. “I already did,” he said guiltily. “The doctor said it was all right.”
Daisy smiled at him kindly. The poor man must hate the
tendency to blush even more than she did.
It would make life very difficult for a police officer, so the fact that he had reached the rank of detective sergeant meant he was pretty competent at his job.
Alec’s keeping a division man on the case when the Yard had taken over also spoke well of Mackinnon.
So he probably had a good grasp of what was going on, and with any luck she might wheedle some information out of him before Alec arrived.
“That’s good,” she said. “When I last spoke to him, he said he was going to see Lord Henry again, so I thought I’d have to leave a message. Lord Henry wasn’t exactly forthcoming last night.” That seemed a fairly safe deduction. “As for his alibi, it sounds pretty vague.”
“Yes,” agreed the obliging sergeant. “DC Piper canna find the restaurant his lordship said he and the lady lunched at. Not a single waiter in any restaurant in or near Oxford Street recognized his photograph.”
“And his looks are rather distinctive,” Daisy mused. So Creighton had admitted to being with Daphne at lunchtime yesterday, and had attempted to give them both an alibi. “Do you know if Tom—Sergeant Tring—managed to get hold of the errand boy I found for him?”
“Yes indeed, easily, with the information you provided, ma’am.
He hadna seen anything useful, but he gave the names of others who use the alley regularly, and some of them provided more names.
Last I heard, Sergeant Tring was working his way through a list as long as your arm, and most of them out and about on their bicycles. ”
“Poor Tom!”
“Dinna fash yoursel’, as we say in my part of the world. He’s sitting still and letting them come to him.”
“While you’ve been slogging round all the neighbours, and I’d bet none of them have seen anything.”
“You’d win the bet hands down, Mrs. Fletcher. This is the worst sort of place from our point of view. The houses are hidden from each other and the servants aren’t local people, as they would be in the country.”
“Each house is an island, entire of itself,” Daisy misquoted, doubtless making John Donne spin in his grave. Compounding the offence, she went on, “Never send to know for whom the bell tolls, they all know by now it tolls for poor Raymond Talmadge.”
“So they do.” Mackinnon, with a thorough Scots education behind him, was less successful than Tom Tring in concealing his amusement, not having a moustache to hide behind.
“However, I did get the names of all the shops that delivered to this street yesterday, and those also are on Sergeant Tring’s list.”
“The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. I hope some of them overlap with the alley users. Oh, there goes the ’phone again.”
Mackinnon was closer to the study and beat her to it. He gave the number, listened, then said, “Detective Sergeant Mackinnon, sir.”
All Daisy could hear was a distant quack-quack.
“The doctor says the lady is out of danger, sir.”
“Danger!” That came through loud and clear.
“Out of danger, sir,” Mackinnon said soothingly.
Quack-quack.
“I havena seen Mrs. Talmadge myself, sir, but I assure you I wouldna dream of bullying her, or anyone else. Nor would Detective Chief Inspector Fletcher … Now just hold on a minute, sir. Hold the line, please.” He put his hand over the mouthpiece and turned to Daisy.
“Lord Henry Creighton, Mrs. Fletcher, as you’ll doubtless have guessed. He says he’s coming right over.”
“Bringing his solicitor?”
“He didn’t say so.”
“Well, that could mean they’re both innocent,” Daisy said thoughtfully, “or it could be an oversight.”
“What do you think the Chief Inspector would want me to tell his lordship?”
“I can’t see it matters if he comes. You and Alec between you should be able to keep them apart as long as you want, and Alec might even find it useful to bring them together.”
The sergeant grinned. “In his presence. Verra well, I’ll say he can come.” He turned back to the apparatus. “My lord? Hello?” Shrugging, he hung up the earpiece. “It seems his lordship didna wait for permission. I hope Mr. Fletcher will get here first.”
“Dinna fash yoursel’,” Daisy said with a smile. “If Alec left right away, he’ll have missed the rush hour, whereas Lord Henry should land right in the thick of it. And if he should somehow happen to arrive first, I’ll be frightfully chatty and clinging and he’ll be far too polite to brush me off.”