Chapter 11 #2
“I did. To see if the rest had arrived. Perhaps I shouldn’t have left Mrs. Fletcher alone outside?
I thought she might feel uncomfortable being the only woman inside.
The Ravens isn’t a haunt of vice or anything, but it’s usually just men in the tap.
And she agreed. I say, she is a brick, isn’t she?
There we all were, falling to pieces, and she kept her head and told us all what to do. ”
“I’m glad she was able to help.” Alec avoided looking at Piper, sure he was grinning, hoping he had the grace to hide his grin behind his notebook. At least he could be relied upon not to write down the suspect’s adulation of Daisy.
“It was just like that poem, the one they make you learn by heart at school. ‘If,’ it’s called. Kipling, I think. ‘If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you . . .’ Not that we did blame Mrs. Fletcher, of course.”
Unlike Superintendent Crane and the AC, Alec thought. “How long were you inside the pub on that first foray?”
“Just a minute or two. I glanced around to see if the others were there, said hello to the fellows at the bar, and told the chaps waiting for Babs that she was on her way. Let’s see .
. . Oh, then I asked Dawson, the landlord, if he would build up the fire a bit because of the ladies coming in from the cold. That’s about it, as far as I remember.”
“Did you speak to the Gooches?”
“Not then. I can’t say I even really noticed them, just saw in a vague sort of way that a couple of strangers were having dinner at the other end of the room. The Ravens doesn’t have a separate dining room.”
“You didn’t recognize either of them, I take it.”
“No, how should I? It was his first trip to England, and she told me she hadn’t been home since she went out in ’03, when I was a mere babe in arms. Even Babs was only ten or eleven.
I don’t suppose I’d ever have given them a second thought if Mr. Gooch hadn’t spoken to me when I was at the bar getting drinks. ”
“He spoke first? What did he say?”
“Something on the lines of ‘Am I right in thinking you’re a Tyndall of Edge Manor, mate?’ I’ve met Australians, at Cambridge, and I knew at once that was where he was from.”
“Can you describe his manner?”
“ ‘His manner’?” Jack said blankly.
Alec racked his tired brain to come up with adjectives that might describe a con man or a blackmailer making first contact with a prospective victim. “Hearty, smooth, furtive, confidential, uh . . .”
“Bright and breezy,” Piper put in, “or reserved, mysterious, ominous, menacing.” He must have been studying a dictionary, determined to match Tom Tring’s unexpectedly erudite vocabulary, Alec guessed, amused.
“Good Lord, no. Nothing like that. He seemed embarrassed. Nervous and apologetic, and as if he’d rather be somewhere else.
He said his wife used to live in Evesham and had heard of our Guy Fawkes fireworks; would we mind if they went to the meadow to watch.
That’s down below, where the village and farm people go to watch the show and the bonfire. ”
“He didn’t push for an invitation to the house?”
“On the contrary. He said his wife would be very grateful. They weren’t ‘flash’ folk, he said, and they didn’t want to push in where they weren’t wanted. Of course, after that, I felt I ought personally to assure Mrs. Gooch it was perfectly all right.”
Which was exactly the result a confidence trickster would hope for, but it didn’t sound like a blackmailer’s approach.
Jack, hitherto a model of apparent frankness, appeared to be awaiting the next question with some uneasiness.
Alec remembered that both Miller and Gwen had hesitated over this part of the evening’s events.
But Jack’s discomfort could be caused by a gentlemanly reluctance to disclose Daisy’s part in furthering the Gooches’ acquaintance with the Tyndalls.
Alec decided to wait until he had heard Daisy’s side of the story before pressing the issue.
“Tell me what was said when you went to the Gooches’ table.”
Relieved, Jack said, “I told Mrs. Gooch they were very welcome to watch the fireworks, and she thanked me. I asked if they’d care to come and have a drink with us. She said that was a ‘bonzer’ idea. Then she laughed and added, ‘as Jimmy would say.’ ”
“She laughed? She wasn’t ‘embarrassed, nervous, and apologetic,’ like her husband?”
“On the contrary, she was happy and excited.” Jack seemed puzzled. “More as if she were going to Buckingham Palace to hobnob with royalty than across the taproom of a country inn to hobnob with the offspring of a country baronet.”
“And Gooch?”
“Was not happy. Thought it wasn’t a good idea. Didn’t want to intrude. But she persuaded him and they came over. As far as I could see, Mrs. Fletcher and Gwen and Miller pretty much put him at his ease. Mrs. Gooch was mostly talking to me.”
“What did the two of you talk about?”
“Actually, mostly I was blathering on to her. She said she had three sons at school in Perth and she’d like to take them stories of life at an English school, if I wouldn’t mind telling her about my school days.
And she asked if I’d been to university, as her eldest is considering attending the college in Perth.
And now—Oh God!—she’s dead and they’ll never see her again!
” He dropped his forehead on his folded arms on the table, taking deep breaths as though to fight back tears.
If it was a performance, it was a very convincing performance. All the same, Jack had to top the list of suspects, if only because he stood to inherit from his father the title and presumably the estate.
With a last shuddering gasp, Jack sat up. “Sorry. I’m all right now. It’s just that I liked her awfully. It’s too horrible!”
“Murder is always horrible.” Alec was sure he sounded sententious, but it was true nevertheless. “Are you ready to continue?”
“Yes. What happened next? Babs finished her business and came over, and Dawson called for last orders. I can’t remember which happened first, but we all decided to have one last drink.
Oh, I know—Babs said it was time to go, and I said no hurry, we could all squeeze into my bus to drive home.
It’s a two-seater but there’s a dickey. My sisters are on the skinny side and Gw—one of them could have sat on Miller’s knees.
But Mrs. Gooch said her husband could run the ladies up in their hire car. ”
“Did he object?”
“Not at all. It was jolly decent of them. That was when I had what seemed a brilliant idea at the time,” Jack said bitterly. “I hadn’t had all that much to drink, but Dawson’s home-brewed draught is pretty potent stuff, and I suppose I must have been a bit tiddly.”
“You invited the Gooches up to the house for the fireworks party.”
“Precisely. He didn’t want to accept, but she begged him and he gave in. And she went upstairs smiling. Smiling!”