Chapter 16
Alec saw that Daisy was blotting her eyes with her fingertips. Dammit, he shouldn’t have read the letter where she could see it. He gave her his spare handkerchief, the one he kept for weeping witnesses and suspects.
The letter, he passed to Tom Tring for him and Piper to read.
Jack Tyndall had handed it over after receiving the warning.
It was now an item of evidence. However, Sir Nigel Wookleigh had no right to see it, since—as Struwwelpeter correctly, if maddeningly, kept insisting—this was not his county.
Fortunately, the Chief Constable realized this.
“Hmph,” he said, tugging on his whiskers, “like to have a word with Lady Tyndall before I leave, assure her of any assistance I can properly offer. But this isn’t the moment. Don’t want to get in the way. Believe I’ll take a turn on the terrace.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Alec with heartfelt appreciation. An interfering CC could be the very devil.
In the doorway to the drawing room, Wookleigh met Miller bearing a half-full glass and a soda siphon. “Just the ticket,” he said approvingly, and went on.
Miller touched Jack’s shoulder and, when he opened dazed eyes, put the glass into his hand.
He took a gulp, spluttered, and mutely held out the glass for soda water.
Alec watched the colour begin to return to his face.
He couldn’t possibly be acting. But the shattering surprise might have been the existence of the letter, not its contents.
In that case, his handing it to the police rather than trying to conceal it could be considered a brilliant move.
While observing his chief suspect, Alec had not forgotten the third victim, who was still himself a suspect. “Piper, you’d better go and sit with Gooch until I can organize a uniformed replacement.”
“Yes, sir.” Ernie Piper was bright enough and had worked with Alec long enough not to need his task spelled out for him: He was to catch any words Gooch might utter and to guard him from further harm.
They had no proof the rocket had been a small boys’ prank.
The letter he had carried was enough to throw the Tyndall family into turmoil.
He might have proof of its claims, or he might have further revelations equally unwelcome.
Tom, having folded the letter and consigned it to a capacious inner pocket, was watching Jack Tyndall equally closely. Alec had a job for him, too. But first he leant close to Daisy and asked in a low voice, “Does Wookleigh know about the rocket?”
“No, I’m pretty sure not.”
So he couldn’t have told Tyndall or Miller about it. Alec crooked his finger and Tom came over. “Tom, see if Miller can give Tyndall an alibi for the past couple of hours.”
“I don’t think Tom knows about the rocket, either,” Daisy whispered. “He wasn’t here.”
“Rocket, Chief?”
“A firework which probably caused Gooch’s accident.”
“Ah.” No more than Piper did Tom need t’s crossed or i’s dotted.
Alec raised his voice. “Mr. Miller, if you wouldn’t mind accompanying Sergeant Tring, he has a couple of questions for you.”
Miller gave young Tyndall a dubious look. “Going to be all right, Jack?”
The boy nodded.
“All right.” He went with Tom into the drawing room.
Which left Daisy to take notes, as Alec didn’t want Tyndall’s attention drawn to the fact that his words were being written down. She was already taking out her journalist’s notebook. Alec moved to a chair directly opposite Tyndall.
“She . . . I don’t understand. Is it true? What she wrote?”
“That Mrs. Gooch was your natural mother?”
“Yes. I don’t understand! It can’t be true?”
“That remains to be seen. You had no inkling?”
“How could I? I’ve always been Jack Tyndall of Edge Manor. Father, M-mother, three sisters. No one’s ever called me a . . . bastard, at least not to my face. But if it’s not true, why should she write it?”
“Good question.” Not one Alec intended to answer, though he could come up with a number of reasons.
First, back to the blackmail theory, as Tom had said: An unfounded report of that nature could do almost as much damage as a true one.
Second, Alec thought Mrs. Gooch had been a bit young to have reached the climacteric, but perhaps she had suffered some other type of mental instability—possibly triggered by a baby lost in the past and a meeting with a charming young man of the right age, or by delusions of grandeur: “My son the baronet.” Was it significant that the letter had been in her husband’s possession?
He wasn’t at present available to be asked.
Jack was recovering his composure and beginning to think.
“Another thing I don’t understand is why Gooch had the letter on him.
Why didn’t Mrs. Gooch give it to me when she arrived?
I talked to her, to both of them, for several minutes.
Do you suppose he’d just found out what she’d written and took it away from her? ”
“Did they behave as if that was the case?”
“No, not really. He was a bit glum. I assumed he wasn’t frightfully comfortable hobnobbing with the nobs, so to speak. She was in high spirits, not at all as if he’d given her a wigging. Of course, if he’d taken the letter, she could have simply told me what she’d written. But why didn’t she?”
“What would you have done if she had made such a claim to you immediately?”
“Oh Lord, I suppose I would have gone into a blue funk, as I did just now, only right in the middle of the party. You must think I’m a hopeless chump.”
“It must be a tremendous shock to find out suddenly that you’re illegitimate.”
“Yes. But is it wishful thinking to say I absolutely can’t believe it?
I mean, surely one must have some inkling if one has been adopted.
For twenty-one years I’ve been part of this family.
I’ve never felt like an ugly duckling, a cuckoo in the nest. Not a soul has ever hinted that I don’t belong.
My sisters always teased me that I was Mother’s pet and Father goes .
. . used to go on and on about how I’d be the next baronet in a long line descending from father to son. I shan’t be if it’s true, shall I?”
“I believe not. The law does not recognize adoption.”
“Not that I care for such fuddy-duddy rubbish. It’s not so important nowadays, is it, and anyway, I’m going to be an engineer. But the parents . . . No, it can’t be true. I liked Mrs. Gooch very much, but she couldn’t possibly be my mother. Why should she have written such stuff?”
“Don’t you have any ideas? What’s your theory?”
“Well, I suppose you’re wondering if it’s something criminal.”
“That’s my job.”
“I suppose it could conceivably have been a sort of threat in a roundabout way,” Jack said doubtfully, “suggesting she would tell people I was her son if Father didn’t pay her off.
It could have been a terrific nuisance. But why write all that about Mr. Gooch having plenty of money?
Besides, she wasn’t at all that sort of person, I’d swear to it.
I say, Mr. Fletcher, do you think he actually wrote it? ”
Daisy looked up, startled. Alec had to admit, “I hadn’t considered that possibility.” Seeing Tom Tring reappear in the drawing room doorway, he added, “Unfortunately, he can’t be questioned.”
“No, and even if he did write the letter, I feel dreadful about his accident. And I didn’t know. I wasn’t there to help!”
“Where were you when it happened? Say for the last couple of hours?”
“Miller and I were taking apart the fireworks apparatus.”
Tom nodded, confirming that Miller had told the same story.
“Down on the lowest terrace?” Much too far for a quick dash up to the far end of the drive to set off a rocket, and he couldn’t have known exactly when Gooch was going to leave.
“Yes. It was just complicated enough to keep my mind off . . . things. I can’t believe this, any of it. It hasn’t really sunk in yet, you know. I mean, Father dead, Mrs. Gooch dead, let alone that she could be my mother!”
“Jack, dearest!”
“Mother!” Looking up at the stairs, Jack jumped up. “Jupiter!” he groaned. “Does she have to know?”
“I’m afraid it can’t be helped.”
Jack went towards the stairs, saying, “Mother, should you have come down? You’re not well.”
“I’m never quite well, dearest, but I’m not an invalid.
” Though she took Jack’s arm down the last few steps, Lady Tyndall didn’t appear to lean on it.
Wraithlike in a charcoal grey costume that emphasized her frailty and the dark circles below her eyes, she glided across the floor in a way evocative of the Victorian ballrooms she must have adorned in her youth.
No modern young woman accustomed to tennis, golf, and the tango could match that ethereal grace.
Alec rose to meet her, and Daisy started to stand, but Lady Tyndall said warmly, “No, don’t get up, my dear.
I’m so sorry such dreadful things have happened while you’ve been staying with us.
I don’t remember much about last night, but the girls tell me you were a veritable tower of strength.
I hope you haven’t suffered for your exertions. ”
“Not at all, Lady Tyndall, not that I did very much. Mostly ordered everyone else about.”
“You were a great help.” She turned to Alec. “Mr. Fletcher, I’m afraid I wasn’t much help to you last night.”
“It wasn’t to be expected, ma’am. But as you seem to be somewhat recovered, I do have a number of questions to ask you.”
“Of course.” She sat down beside Daisy.
“Mr. Tyndall, will you go with Sergeant Tring, please. Tell him again all you can recall about your dealings with the Gooches.”
Jack hesitated, looking at his mother.
“You’d be surprised, sir,” said Tom, his manner fatherly, “how much more you remember second time around.”
“Daisy will stay with me, Jack, if Mr. Fletcher has no objection. She will be a support without hovering, as my children tend to.”
“Certainly,” said Alec.
Still reluctant, glancing back, Jack followed Tom through the door to the passage.