Chapter 22 #2
Daisy laughed. “Suppose I told you Bourton-on-the-Water?”
“Then I would say, I hope you can tell Kesin how to get there. What an adventure.”
“Just to the Walkers’ house,” Daisy said, sobering. “She wants to talk to me, and I don’t feel quite comfortable going alone.”
“Aha. I cannot blame Mrs. Walker if she prefers to confess to you rather than to Alec. He can be quite formidable, I think.”
“Yes, he can. But I don’t know that she intends to confess. She may want to convince me that she’s not guilty, perhaps in the hope that I can persuade Alec. And she may decide not to speak at all with you and Mel present.”
“That would be a pity.”
“Yes. I expect it’s silly of me, only I’ll feel safer with you there.”
“I am certain you are wise to bring us with you,” Sakari said with a smile, “if only to appease Alec.”
They picked up Melanie and drove on to the Walkers’ house. The cook-housekeeper opened the door.
“Mrs. Walker is expecting me,” Daisy told her.
“You, madam.” The woman glowered at Sakari and Mel.
“Mrs. Fletcher!” Gwen Walker, her face pale and unpowdered but still beautiful, came into the hall. She caught sight of the others. “Oh!”
“I hope you don’t mind my bringing my friends. You know Melanie Germond and Sakari Prasad, don’t you?” Daisy was pretty sure the Walkers’ house was one the Prasads were invited to.
The polite, commonplace words seemed to calm Mrs. Walker. “Of course. Do come in.”
“Coffee, madam?”
“Yes. No. Perhaps later.” She led the way into the sitting room and looked rather helplessly around. “Do sit down.”
A burning cigarette, balanced on the edge of an ashtray, showed where she had been sitting. Melanie, murmuring
“Don’t let us intrude,” firmly led Sakari to the other end of the room. Daisy chose a chair far enough from Mrs. Walker’s not to be smothered in cigarette smoke but close enough to hear if she spoke softly.
Gwen Walker sat down and stubbed out the smouldering end, then picked up a cigarette box and offered it to Daisy.
“No thanks.”
“You don’t? How wise. They turn everything yellow, fingers, teeth … Raymond wouldn’t touch them. I didn’t smoke while …” She put the box down on the low glass table and pushed it away from her. “You know about us?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t kill him! I swear I didn’t.”
“Why can’t you tell Alec where you really were that lunchtime? If you have a good reason for keeping quiet about it, he’ll keep it confidential.”
“Good reason? Yes, the best of reasons. I went to see Raymond.”
“Oh dear!”
“He wrote saying he had to talk to me, and I was to go in the back way. We didn’t usually meet in his house, but I’d done it once before, when we first …
I knew the way, through the alley and the garden.
He was waiting at the door, and he hurried me into his surgery.
What a place to be told you’re not wanted any longer! ”
“Why didn’t he just write to tell you it was over?”
“He wanted to see me one last time. He was really rather keen on me. I liked him a lot, and we had lots of fun together, but on my part it wasn’t exactly a grand passion. I suppose that makes it worse, in a way.”
Daisy’s agreement remained tactfully unspoken. “Fun” didn’t seem to her an adequate excuse for infidelity. “What happened?” she asked.
“He was in a bit of a dither, because he’d had some difficult patients and the last had only just left.
He kept telling me to speak quietly because he wasn’t sure whether the nurse was still in the waiting room, and the servants might come downstairs at any moment.
Of course, they could have seen me coming up the garden path—he hadn’t thought of that.
” She shrugged. “Actually, he was pretty upset about having to say good-bye, so I dare say he wasn’t thinking too clearly at all. ”
“Having to say good-bye?”
“His wife was going to have a baby. Is going to. Ray said he had to stand by her, it was the only decent thing to do. That was all right with me. All good things come to an end. But poor Ray was frightfully hangdog about the whole business, so I thought it might make it easier for him if I wasn’t too kind and understanding.
I told him in no uncertain terms that I’d had enough of him and never wanted to see or hear from him again.
” She bit her upper lip. “And I never did. I flounced out, and he must have gone straight to his ‘cheerer-upper.’”
“His …?”
“That’s what he called that damned gas.” Her voice rose.
Her back was slightly turned towards the other two, and she seemed to have forgotten their presence.
Daisy could see Sakari, who was listening avidly, but not Mel, who was no doubt trying not to listen.
Gwen Walker continued, more and more agitated.
“When I heard he was dead, I hoped it was an accident but I was afraid he’d killed himself. Why do they think he was murdered?”
“They have evidence,” said Daisy. This was not the moment to boast that she had discovered the evidence.
“I never even dreamt it was murder until your husband started asking questions. After that, Francis couldn’t pretend any longer that he didn’t know about Raymond and me.
I told him it was all over before Ray died, and that was when he convinced himself that I’d killed him.
He wouldn’t believe me.” She bowed her head and covered her face with her hands.
“He wouldn’t believe me, so why should anyone else? I can’t prove I didn’t.”
“It’s a pity you lied to the police. It makes it harder for them to believe anything you tell them now.”
“I realize that now. I haven’t been able to think straight for days. But lying about where I was is the least of it.” She reached for the cigarette box, took one out and lit it, then left it to die in the ashtray. “I’ve been abysmally stupid.”
Stupid seemed a peculiar way to describe murdering one’s husband. “What have you done?” Daisy asked.
The sitting-room door opened. In came Mrs. Bates with a tray. “Coffee, madam.”
“But—”
“I asked if you wanted coffee and you said yes, madam.” She set the tray on the table and departed.
Blast the woman, Daisy thought, hoping the interruption was not going to put an end to the flow of confidences.