Chapter 20
As Miller left, Daisy sat down wearily on the chair the Constable had vacated, and for the first time she gave the patient a proper look.
Gooch’s head was practically mummified, only his closed eyes, one ear, nostrils, and mouth visible.
One arm was splinted, and a frame holding up the eiderdown suggested one or more broken legs.
He was breathing strongly, though, and the pulse in his neck beat visibly.
“He’s a bit of a mess, isn’t he.”
“It’s awful,” said Gwen, “but it could have been worse. Dr. Prentice says the arm and leg are clean breaks. His neck and spine seem to have escaped intact, and his rib cage is just bruised. His face was cut by broken glass, not too badly, though. It’s the head injury that’s worrisome.”
“No way to predict the outcome,” Alec said.
“None. He’ll likely survive, but in what condition.
. . . Reggie and Adrian are lucky we all have other things on our minds at present.
When this is all cleared up, they aren’t going to know what hit them.
Daisy, if you’re going to be on duty for a while, you ought to have a more comfortable chair. ”
“Mind reader!”
Gwen rang for a maid, and soon Daisy was ensconced in an easy chair, with her feet on a footstool and a rug over her legs.
“Don’t fall asleep,” Alec warned with a grin.
“I shan’t let her,” Gwen promised. “Now, what did you want to ask me?”
“Rather more than a few questions, I’m afraid. Last night, we only talked about your meeting with the Gooches at the Three Ravens. Before we revisit that in the light of what’s happened since—”
“It can’t be true about Jack!”
“We’ll come to that later. This morning, events overtook us and I haven’t had a chance to talk to you about your movements and observations last night. Let’s start with the arrival of the Gooches.”
Despite her reassurance to Miller, Gwen was plainly nervous, her hands clenched together in her lap.
Busy elsewhere, she had not noticed the Gooches’ entrance.
“You can’t hear Jennings announcing people unless you’re standing right beside him,” she explained.
When she did catch sight of the Australians, she made a point of welcoming them.
Later, she had seen Jack talking to them for a short time, but none of the rest of the family.
Shepherding guests, Gwen had been one of the last out to the terrace. As she tried to recall whom she had spoken to, Daisy felt her eyelids growing heavier. She struggled to stay awake—and realized she had failed only when she was roused by a maid ushering in a couple of uniformed nurses.
Alec and Gwen rose to greet the newcomers, leaving Daisy uncertain as to whether they had observed her dereliction of duty.
She glanced at Gooch. He didn’t appear to have stirred so much as a finger.
If he’d been quietly muttering to himself while she slept, it was too late to worry about it now.
She was sorry, though, that she’d missed what Gwen had been saying.
The nurses had received instructions about their patient from Dr. Prentice via their agency, but no one had mentioned that the police were involved.
The younger, with a bush of frizzy dark hair attempting to escape her cap, was inclined to be indignant.
“Well, I never! I must say, it’s not a very nice position to find yourself in, being mixed up in a murder case.
If you ask me, they ought to’ve told us and let us choose if we wanted the job. ”
“Now we’re here, there’s no sense making a fuss,” said the other.
Middle-aged, she was lean but strong-looking, the severe lines of her face offset by a gleam of excitement in her eyes.
She listened eagerly as Alec explained that he must be called at the slightest sign of their patient rousing, and anything he said must be written down at once.
“We always do that in any case when there’s been a motor-car smash-up,” she said.
“You’d be surprised what they say sometimes.
Not a bit like what the other driver’s said. Quite funny it is sometimes.”
“Well,” observed the younger nurse, “murderer or no, one thing’s for sure: He’s not going to be attacking us when he wakes up, not in the state he’s in.” Resigned, she went off to rest in the bedroom already shown her by the maid.
The older shooed Gwen, Alec, and Daisy out of the sickroom. They left her straightening the already-neat bedcovers into rigid perfection.
Standing in the passage, Alec said, “We’re nearly done. Let’s adjourn to the schoolroom.”
“Please come, Daisy,” Gwen begged.
No mention was made of Daisy’s lapse, so she assumed hopefully that they hadn’t noticed. Alec should have asked her to take notes if he expected her to stay awake.
They went upstairs and sat down at the table. Apparently, while Daisy slept, the others had finished with the fireworks show and moved on to Jack’s quarrel with Adelaide.
“I was pretty upset,” said Gwen. “Jack had every right to be furious, but to burst into the dining room when guests were still helping themselves at the buffet . . . Daisy can tell you, they left in a hurry.”
“Not I,” said Daisy. “I was starving.”
“As usual,” Alec interjected sotto voce.
“And Mr. Gooch and Mr. Miller nobly stood by me in spite of being a bit embarrassed. It was an awkward moment, I must say.”
“Mother was awfully upset. She was already tired, and that made her quite ill.”
“Just a minute—Gooch was with you in the dining room during the row, Daisy? No one else has mentioned his presence.”
“Yes. You apologized to him, Gwen, remember?”
“I only remember Martin.”
“Gooch was there,” Daisy said positively.
“Martin—Mr. Miller—and I tried to find some plain food for him. He said . . .Oh, what was the word he used? He said that in Australia they don’t muck about with their tucker.
We found some cold meat for him, but then he decided he wasn’t really hungry and went off to the drawing room to look for Mrs. Gooch. ”
“You say he seemed embarrassed by the family argument, and he’d lost his appetite. How else would you describe him?”
“He was rather fidgety, but no more so than earlier. Inattentive when Mr. Miller talked about rocket propulsion, though he’d asked about it, I think.
He really wasn’t at all comfortable with coming to the Manor.
” Daisy suddenly realized what Alec was driving at.
“He was concerned that Mrs. Gooch might be wondering where he was, and that she might not have anything to eat. Honestly, darling, he didn’t behave at all like a man who’s just shot his wife, or anyone else. ”
“Miss Gwen, would you agree?”
Gwen bit her lip. “I can’t say I really noticed. What with the squabble and Mother taking ill, I wasn’t paying attention. Does this mean it wasn’t Gooch? That one of us did it?”
“I wouldn’t go so far. If he had been in a state of extreme agitation, it might have been more helpful.”
“He was absolutely shattered when he heard Mrs. Gooch had been shot,” Daisy said. “If you’d seen his face . . .I don’t believe the best actor in the world could turn that colour. I’m sorry, Gwen, but when I think back to that moment, I simply can’t believe he did it.”
Daisy felt as if she was betraying Gwen.
She knew Alec would take her words the more seriously because she was not protecting a friend—he always complained about her shielding people she liked when she found herself mixed up in his cases.
Not that he’d cross Gooch off his list of suspects on her say-so, but he’d probably move him down a notch or two.
Which left Jack very much in the centre of the picture, especially if he really was Mrs. Gooch’s son.
Gwen buried her face in her hands, making Daisy feel even worse. “Sorry,” she said again, inadequately.
“No, you have to say what you saw.”
“It’s not what Daisy saw,” Alec pointed out, “it’s her opinion of what she saw. You were there. What’s your opinion?”
After a long hesitation, Gwen shook her head.
“No, I can’t say. It’s not that I’ve forgotten, it’s that I was too distraught myself to notice, as I said before.
Believe me, I wish I could tell you I thought he was acting, but it wouldn’t be true.
All I could think about was having to tell him she had had an accident.
I was too cowardly to say she was dead, let alone that Father had shot her. That was what we thought had happened.”
“Because that’s what your brother told you?”
“Of course. Didn’t it look that way, at a quick glance? Martin and Dr. Prentice went up there and didn’t say anything to contradict that impression. Oh, and Sir Nigel, and he’s a policeman.”
“A courtesy policeman. No, I don’t imagine Jack lingered at the scene to analyse the evidence. How long was he gone?”
Gwen looked questioningly at Daisy, who said, “Just—”
“No, I want your opinion, not Daisy’s. I presume none of you were checking the time.”
“Just a couple of minutes, if that. He must have run up the stairs. He was still livid about the stolen rockets and he wanted to tell Father what those wretched boys had done. Father would have made them give them up, and then Mr. Gooch wouldn’t .
. .” Her voice trailed away as the futility of this line of wishful thinking struck her.
“He was still livid,” Alec repeated. “Let’s go back to the beginning of the quarrel with Mrs. Yarborough. You said Jack came in when most of your guests had helped themselves at the buffet and moved into the drawing room or on to the hall. Would you please describe his arrival?”
“He came dashing in, positively fuming, and immediately accused Addie of letting Reggie and Adrian run riot. He was quite sure they had pinched the rockets. I can’t recall his exact words, I’m afraid.”
“No matter. What next?”