Chapter 8
Shortly before ten o’clock, Alec and his men arrived at Edge Manor. The door was opened by a uniformed constable. A screen hid the high-ceilinged room beyond.
“Detective Chief Inspector Fletcher,” Alec announced himself.
The young man came to attention with a smart salute. “Blount, sir. Cor, I’m that glad you’re here, sir,” he added in accents of profound relief.
“What’s up?”
Blount lowered his voice. “Well, sir, aside of two dead bodies, we’ve got a Lord Lieutenant and a Chief Constable which can’t agree on nothing, a visiting engineer, and Mrs. Fletcher, sir, which is the only one seems to know what needs to be done.”
“Good for Mrs. Fletcher!” said Piper, not quite sotto voce, his boundless faith in Daisy once more renewed.
“Then there’s the Squire’s family, him being of one of deceased, which is gathered upstairs.”
“They’ll have to wait until I’ve talked to my wife and the CC. This is DS Tring. Take him to the scene and stay to give him a hand photographing and fingerprinting, as he directs.”
Blount paled and gulped but said manfully, “Yes, sir. This way, Sergeant.” He took the camera, tripod, and magnesium lamp Piper handed him. Tom Tring was carrying the precious Murder Bag he took everywhere. One could never be sure what equipment provincial police forces would be able to provide.
As they headed for the stairs, Alec moved around the screen, knowing Ernie Piper was at his heels with his notebook and his ever-ready supply of well-sharpened pencils.
A group of people, seated in easy chairs by the fireplace on the far side of the large hall, were all gazing his way with varying degrees of anxiety. They rose as he appeared.
“Alec, at last!” Daisy came to meet him, looking decidedly wan. She held both hands out and he clasped them, wishing etiquette did not proscribe taking her in his arms in front of other people.
“Come and sit down, love. You look worn to the bone.”
“You look rather toil-worn yourself, darling. No rest for the wicked! Hullo, Mr. Piper.”
“Evening, Mrs. Fletcher.”
“Sir Nigel, you remember my husband?” Daisy introduced Alec to the other two men, Dryden-Jones and Miller, and how-d’you-do’s were exchanged.
They all sat down by the fire, Daisy and Alec together on a sofa, the others in chairs facing them, with Ernie Piper slightly behind the rest. They would speak more freely if not reminded that their words were being recorded.
“Sir Nigel,” Alec began, “would you mind telling me what’s happened? Assume I know nothing at all, which is pretty much the truth.”
“Harumph!” Dryden-Jones cleared his throat testily, his reddish mop of hair bristling like an irritated hedgehog. “Not Wookleigh’s county, don’cha know.”
“By all means go ahead, my dear fellow.” Wookleigh’s tone was cordial, but the gleam in his eye was malicious. “I should think you’d better start with the appearance of the bodies and why it led you to believe a crime had been committed.”
The Lord Lieutenant’s cheeks puffed and turned purple.
“Most improper subject in the presence of a lady!” Tugging on the Albert chain stretched across his round belly, he produced a gold hunter watch from his fob, snapped it open, and checked the time.
“Dash it, look at the time. The wife will be wondering where I’ve got to.
Besides, the chauffeur came back to wait for me after he took her home, and it doesn’t do to keep servants waiting these days.
Don’t need to tell you, Chief Inspector, I’m ready to answer any questions you may want to put to me, but I trust tomorrow will do. ”
“Certainly, sir.” With equal courtesy and curiosity, Alec stood up as Dryden-Jones took his leave, then turned with raised eyebrows to the Chief Constable. “What was that about, sir?”
If Wookleigh were not such a distinguished gentleman, his expression might have been described as a smirk.
“As a matter of fact, Dryden-Jones didn’t actually see anything.
To give him his due, he followed my instructions impeccably in ringing up Herriott and insisting that he send for you, Fletcher.
He’s right about one thing, though. I shan’t describe the scene in Mrs. Fletcher’s presence. ”
“Nor I,” Miller agreed.
“No, it can wait,” Alec said, wondering where the devil Miller came in. Had he discovered the bodies? What had Blount meant by “visiting engineer”? Had he come to repair the electric plant? “My sergeant has gone to take a look.”
“As for the rest, Mrs. Fletcher ran the show and she can best tell you the story—if you’re not too tired, young lady.” Wookleigh’s glance at Daisy was full of concern.
Ran the show? Alec’s glance at Daisy was full of suspicion. What had she been up to?
“All I did,” she said defensively, “was try to make sure that nothing was disturbed in the study, that we had all the guests names and addresses before they left, and that Mr. Gooch wouldn’t leave the country before he’d been questioned.”
“I have his passport.” Sir Nigel, with the air of a conjurer, produced the document from his inside breast pocket and handed it over.
“Australian! Mr. and Mrs. James William Gooch. Just visiting?”
“The fellow’s staying at the Three Ravens in the village.
I didn’t feel justified in keeping him here in the house where his wife was murdered.
Not my county, you know,” he apologized.
“At least, Edge Manor isn’t, but Didmarsh-under-Edge is.
Come to think of it, the village bobby’s outside his district. ”
“I shouldn’t worry about that, sir, now that we’re here. But all I know is what my superintendent told me, that we’d been asked to investigate a murder-suicide. Someone had better begin at the beginning, if you please.”
Wookleigh looked to Daisy, but Miller spoke first: “I’ve been thinking about just that, Chief Inspector.” The touch of Midlands accent made Alec wonder all the more what he was doing there. “It seems to me it all began when we met the Gooches at the Ravens. Wouldn’t you agree, Mrs. Fletcher?”
“Ye-es.” Daisy nodded. “Yes, you’re right. There was something rather odd. . . . But for now, we’d better just stick to telling Alec what happened this evening. Everyone was out on the terrace, darling, watching the fireworks. The moon hadn’t come up yet and it was black as pitch.”
“Tyndall always has the house lights put out for the show,” Wookleigh put in. “I believe the family all carry electric torches for emergencies.”
“No one would have noticed Sir Harold and Mrs. Gooch leaving. When the fireworks went off, at least the brightest ones, you could just about see who was standing next to you, but other people were just bluish faces, or greenish, or whatever, depending on the colour of the lights.”
Wookleigh nodded. “And they were quite noisy. Not like the front line in the middle of a bombardment, of course. All the same, with all the explosions, no one would have noticed a howitzer going off in the house, let alone a couple of pistol shots.”
“At the end of the show, everyone came in from the terrace,” Daisy continued. “Jack Tyndall—”
“Jack?”
“The only son of the house. John, strictly speaking,” she told Piper for the record, then turned back to Alec.
“He got into a row with his sister Adelaide and she went flouncing off to find her father to support her, with Jack in hot pursuit. Or vice versa? I’m not sure.
We were in the dining room, but most guests had already helped themselves and gone to sit in the drawing room or here in the hall.
Jack came back and said they couldn’t find Sir Harold.
Someone—Gwen, was it?—suggested that he might be in the billiard room. ”
“It was Gwen.” Following Daisy’s example, Miller turned his head momentarily to address DC Piper. “Miss Gwendolyn Tyndall. She had heard Sir Harold talking to someone earlier about his antique duelling pistols. She thought he might have gone to show them off. Jack went to look for him.”
“The billiard room is a gun room, too,” Daisy explained. “Sir Harold’s study is above it, with a connecting stair. Up there is where . . .where it happened. Jack came back looking like a ghost and said his father had shot Mrs. Gooch and himself.”
Daisy was beginning to look somewhat ghostlike herself. Alec took her hand. “You didn’t go to see!”
“No.” Her other hand went to her abdomen, where his baby was growing, and he suspected that but for her pregnancy she might have gone up to the study.
He was profoundly grateful that she hadn’t.
“I sent Gwen to find Sir Nigel and a doctor, who were among the guests. She was in a state of shock, but not as bad as Jack. He actually saw . . .” She turned to Miller. “You weren’t there.”
“I came in just then, but I didn’t know what was going on. I’d helped Lady Tyndall upstairs, remember? Handed her over to her maid. She wasn’t at all well.”
“That’s right. She’s something of an invalid, darling, and though Gwen did most of the work, entertaining the hordes was too much for her. There must have been fifty or sixty people here, not counting the children.”
Alec swallowed a groan. Fifty or sixty people to be tracked down and questioned about where they’d been, what they’d done, whom they’d seen and talked to, and when. He’d have to rely on the county forces for most of it. A sudden shocking thought struck him. “Great Scott, not your mother, Daisy?”
“No, thank heaven! It wasn’t really her sort of party.”
“Thank heaven!” Sir Nigel echoed. “Lady Dalrymple and murder—it doesn’t bear thinking of!”
Daisy and Alec exchanged a reminiscent glance. Carrying on a murder investigation with the dowager viscountess in the house was an experience they never wanted to repeat.
“So Miss Gwendolyn fetched you, sir?” Alec asked Sir Nigel.