Chapter 7 #2
Gwen and Jack returned their attention to Gooch. His colour was slightly improved, but his face revealed his hopeless misery. He stood with his arms hanging, as if he didn’t know what to do with them.
“How’m I going to tell the boys?”
He didn’t know yet that Sir Harold was also dead, Daisy realized.
She couldn’t leave it to Gwen and Jack to break that bit of news to him.
But they were going to have to rally round.
Babs undoubtedly needed their help with the guests, who mustn’t be allowed to leave without giving details of their whereabouts for the next couple of days.
Gooch needed somewhere private to sit down, and he probably could do with a drink before he spoke to the doctor.
Someone had to start getting things organized. Miller appeared to be willing and competent, but he was otherwise occupied just now and presumably inexperienced in police investigations.
Daisy was unwilling, and Alec would doubtless question her competence, but she was on the spot and more experienced than even Wookleigh might guess. Wearily, she gathered her remaining energy and stood up.
Detective Sergeant Tring, enormous in his bottle green and maroon check suit, hoisted his pint in the direction of Detective Constable Piper. Light gleamed equally on the glistening tankard and the shiny dome of his bald head. “Well done, laddie!”
“Cor, Sarge, you feeling all right?”
“Never better.” He wiped froth from his luxuriant moustache. “It’s back to the Smoke and the old woman’s steak and kidney pud tomorrow.”
“I mean,” Piper said, appealing to Alec, “how often d’you hear him giving me any credit, Chief?”
“Rarely.” Alec smiled and sipped the whisky he’d treated himself to after the conclusion of a difficult and exhausting case.
“Don’t want him getting too big for his boots, do we, Chief?”
“Heaven forbid. But there’s credit enough for both of you in this one.”
Ernie Piper’s eye for detail had discerned a pattern in the string of pawnshop robberies, and Tom, much speedier on his feet than his bulk suggested, had bagged the villain on the brink of escape. The Birmingham Chief Superintendent was duly grateful. Favours were owed, to be called in at need.
And tomorrow Alec would see Daisy. He hadn’t been keen on her going off on one of her writing outings in her condition, but he knew better than to say so.
The timing had worked out very neatly. Tom and Ernie would hop on the London express in the morning, and he’d drive his Austin Chummy via Didmarsh-under-Edge to pick her up on the way home.
The weather forecast looked set fair for at least another day, promising a pleasant journey.
In the meantime, he was enjoying his whisky and the easygoing teasing between his men.
“Telephone for Mr. Fletcher!” The Buttons hurried straight across the hotel lounge towards their table.
He had somehow penetrated their incognito, and the name of Scotland Yard was a potent one to a fourteen-year-old.
“Trunk call for Mr. Fletcher!” Arriving, slightly out of breath, he added in a conspiratorial whisper, “It’s from Lunnon, sir. The Yard, I bet!”
Piper groaned. “Where to now? Timbuktoo?”
At the words “trunk call,” Alec’s first thought was that something had gone wrong with the pregnancy. Relieved that the call came from London, not Didmarsh, he overtipped the boy a florin and went to the telephone cubby in the lobby.
“Fletcher here.”
“London, I have your party,” said the girl. “Go ahead, please.”
“Fletcher, you there?” Superintendent Crane’s ire sizzled down the wire in spite of a bad connection. “How the deuce does she do it? That’s what I want to know! You’d better get over there right away.”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“Your wife, man, your wife! Murder-suicide at Edge Manor, where I gather Mrs. Fletcher is a guest. The Lord Lieutenant of Gloucestershire personally instructed Herriott, the CC, to ask the AC for you. Also present is the CC of Worcestershire, who was acquainted with Mrs. Fletcher’s late father.”
“Sir Nigel Wookleigh?” That gentleman’s friendship with the late Lord Dalrymple had been responsible for saving Alec’s bacon. Wookleigh had been remarkably forgiving last year when Alec, dragged in by Daisy, had operated in a flagrantly unofficial manner in his jurisdiction.
“That’s the chap,” the Super confirmed. “You know him, don’t you?
But you’re out of luck—it’s not his county.
You’ll be dealing with Herriott, and he can’t give you much help till tomorrow.
Some gang blew up a vault in a Customs warehouse at the Gloucester docks under cover of the fireworks and he’s got all available men onto that. Did you know Gloucester is a port?”
“No, sir.”
“Nor did I. The village bobby is on his way to Edge Manor, but knowing village bobbies, you and your chaps can probably get there almost as quickly.”
“About an hour, sir. I have my car here. We’re on our way.”
“Good. I needn’t tell you the Assistant Commissioner is breathing fire. How does she do it, Fletcher?”
“If I knew, sir, I might have some hope of stopping it. I don’t exactly like having my wife mixed up in murder cases.”
“No.” Crane sounded somewhat mollified. “I don’t suppose you do. Off you go then; Good luck, and my best regards to Mrs. Fletcher.”
“Thank you, sir.”
How did Daisy do it? Alec mused on the perennial problem as he hurried back to the lounge.
It wasn’t as if she was the kind of siren who swanned through life leaving flaming passions in her wake.
The crimes that beset her way had nothing to do with her, but her personal combination of sympathy and curiosity invariably led her into the heart of the matter.
She simply couldn’t help meddling—or “assisting,” as she preferred to call it.
The truly extraordinary part was the way people rushed to tell her things they would never reveal to the police. Those deceptively guileless blue eyes of hers . . .
Alec couldn’t wait to see them again.