Chapter Thirteen
THIRTEEN
After her bath, Daisy wanted to talk to Felicity.
The poor girl had been too distraught last night to make much sense, but by now she was probably dying for someone sympathetic to talk to.
She might be ready to spill all sorts of beans.
Unless, of course, she had had a hand in the killing of Calloway, in which case Daisy could not decently count herself as a sympathetic listener.
Either way, Felicity was quite likely still asleep. Daisy didn’t want to wake her, especially when she remembered that Jemima was sharing her room. Jemima was not the person she would choose as an audience for a heart-to-heart.
Breakfast first, Daisy decided. With luck Miles would be there and could tell her more about what had happened last night than Alec had managed before falling asleep. She went downstairs. Godfrey and Dora and Jemima were in the dining room.
“Good morning, Mrs. Fletcher,” Dora greeted Daisy. She looked as if she had slept on pins and needles, if at all. “Jemima says you helped Felicity to bed last night…”
“She ricked her ankle rather nastily, but not a serious sprain, I’m sure.”
“Oh, I see. Thank you so much for taking care of her. Can you tell me,” she went on apprehensively, “is it true Mr. Fletcher has made an arrest already? And locked the murderer in the wine cellar?”
“I’m afraid I haven’t had a chance to ask Alec exactly what’s going on,” Daisy prevaricated, “but you may be sure he would not put the household in danger.”
“No, of course not. I didn’t for a minute … Jemima says it’s the man Felicity has been seeing on the sly!”
“I’m afraid my husband will not be very happy to hear Miss Jemima has been spreading rumours,” Daisy said severely.
“Obviously, the only people with a motive for murder are the Helstone Norvilles,” Godfrey snapped, standing up.
He looked no more rested than his wife. “And if Felicity has been carrying on with one of them, she is utterly lacking in loyalty to her own family. Excuse me, Mrs. Fletcher, I must get to work. No Bank Holidays for those of us whose work is measured in decades.” He stalked out, retreating to the comfort of the antiquities he loved.
“I know two more detectives have come,” said Jemima, uncowed by Daisy’s stricture, “and that’s not a rumour ’cause it’s true.”
“Jemima, take a cup of tea up to your grandmother and see what she’d like to eat.” Dora turned back to Daisy as Jemima left, pouting. “My mother-in-law is such a frail little thing, we take the best care of her we can.”
Daisy murmured polite agreement, wishing she had the sort of mother-in-law she could take pleasure in cosseting. “I hope Mrs. Norville isn’t too upset by what has happened,” she said.
“Naturally she’s distressed, but at her age I believe the sorrows of the past have more weight than those of the present.
Besides, as Godfrey said, all of us here had nothing to gain and everything to lose by this horrible crime, so the Helstone boy is clearly the culprit.
My one prayer is that my poor Felicity is not desperately in love with the brute.
” She ended on a sad, questioning note, as if she suspected her daughter had taken Daisy into her confidence in preference to herself.
“I’ve no idea of her feelings,” Daisy assured her, not adding that she meant to do her best to find out. Felicity would need support if, as seemed probable, her father was right and Cedric Norville was the murderer.
“Good morning, good morning!” The captain came in, a trifle heavy-eyed but with much of his jaunty bearing restored.
“I hear Fletcher has nabbed the villain already. Now that’s quick work, if you like!
Dora, my dear, since the police have sewn up the case, and the other business is sunk too deep for salvage—no use crying over spilt milk!
—I’ll be off back to my ship tomorrow. She’s in the yard, but things will move along faster if I’m there to chivvy them along. ”
“We’ll be sorry to lose you, Victor. Especially Mother.”
“Never fear, I’ll come back for a day or two before we sail. Well, now, Mrs. Fletcher, I’m sorry to say you haven’t had quite the merry Christmas we would have liked to give you.”
“The children are enjoying themselves no end,” said Daisy, “and that’s what really matters, isn’t it? Besides, from your perspective we’ve been uninvited guests. We’re very appreciative of everything you’ve done.”
“I’m afraid her ladyship is quite put out,” Dora said, and gave her lower lip an anxious, rabbity nibble.
Daisy could have told them that the Dowager Lady Dalrymple was never so happy as when she had good cause to be put out.
A murder in the house where she was staying would give her fuel for months, if not years, of complaints.
Refraining from saying so, Daisy murmured, not quite truthfully, “I’m sure Mother doesn’t hold you to blame for what happened. ”
“It was our young cousin from over the river, of course,” the captain agreed, adding with fervour, “but I wish I’d never found Calloway! The poor fellow would be living today in contented retirement in India, and the family’s peace would not have been all cut up for nothing.”
“You meant it for the best,” his sister-in-law consoled him.
“For Mother’s sake. And if he hadn’t gone back on his word and shilly-shallied so, he wouldn’t have been at the chapel in the wood in the middle of the night. Then that young wretch would have had no opportunity to harm him. Is my niece greatly distressed about Fletcher arresting him?”
“I haven’t had a chance to talk to Felicity.” Dora turned a reproachful gaze on Daisy. “No one informed me last night that anything had happened, and she was still sleeping when Jemima got up this morning.”
“She may be awake by now,” said Daisy. “Shall I take her up a cup of tea and some toast?”
“That would be very kind.” Apparently Dora was not as keen to confront her erring and possibly heart-broken daughter as her previous words had suggested.
“I’m afraid Godfrey is quite angry with her.
She’s been very naughty. Girls are so difficult!
” she lamented helplessly. “How could I ever have guessed that she’d take up with a murderer, and behind my back? ”
Daisy had no answer she cared to pronounce. Leaving the utterance of soothing platitudes to the captain, she departed with tea and toast for the miscreant.
Cedric Norville was a convenient scapegoat, she thought, as she negotiated the passage and the glass-paned door to the entrance hall.
Naturally the Brockdene Norvilles were eager to believe him guilty.
Perhaps they were right. He and his father had an undeniable motive for wanting Calloway out of the way, and thanks to Felicity he knew it.
When Daisy came to the foot of the stairs, Jemima was halfway down. She obviously had no intention of standing to the side to let Daisy get by on the not-very-wide flight, so Daisy waited at the bottom.
As Jemima reached the last two steps, she turned on Daisy a glare of startling malignity and hissed, “I wish you’d never come to Brockdene!”
Daisy stared after her. In her ears rang the echo of what Jemima had said of Calloway: “I wish he’d never come … I wish he was dead!”
And Calloway was dead.
In the young girl’s mind, the present trouble the clergyman had been causing might well have outweighed the possibility of future, ill-understood gain.
She was in the habit of wandering the woods at night, spying on her sister.
Well-grown, sturdy, she was physically quite capable of driving a knife home into the back of an unsuspecting man.
Physically … but mentally? Daisy shuddered. Jemima was odd, but surely not so disturbed mentally as to murder a man who was, after all, no worse than a wet blanket.
No, the Reverend Calloway had posed a threat to no one but Cedric Norville and his family. Cedric must have killed him.
Daisy stopped at the top of the stairs, which she had climbed mechanically.
She remembered her dream. It had seemed so unhelpful: crowds of Mr. Norvilles rowing across the river with knives instead of oars—could it have been a warning rather than her brain’s attempt to solve the mystery?
Not that she believed a dream could foretell the future, but perhaps her unconscious mind had put two and two together and tried to tell her that Alec should not embark in a small boat with a murderer.
A tussle in a boat had begun this whole train of events, a tussle in which both participants had drowned.
Alec was a good swimmer, Daisy reminded herself. Ernie Piper was with him, and anyway it was too late to stop him. Perhaps, without asking leading questions, she could find out from Felicity enough about Cedric to reassure herself as to Alec’s safety.
And now Felicity was coming from the lavatory, in an old brown flannel dressing-gown, limping slightly and making an unhappy attempt to smile at Daisy.
“How are you feeling this morning?”
“My ankle’s much better, thanks.”
“I’ve brought you this. No, I’ll carry it to your room. You’re still a bit wobbly.”
“Thanks, Daisy.”
Jemima’s camp-bed, neatly turned back to air, took up most of the floor space in the small bedroom.
Without waiting to be invited, Daisy perched on the foot of Felicity’s bed.
The furniture was good and well cared for, probably the earl’s property and therefore regularly polished by the servants.
In contrast, what Daisy could see of the bedding was patched, darned, and sides-to-middled.
A stack of paperbacked novels lay on the bedside table beside the lamp. On the whitewashed walls hung a couple of paintings obscured by sketches tucked into the frames, views of the exterior of the house. Drawing-pins supported more sketches, of elegant frocks and hats.
“Did you do those? Are they your own designs? They look rather good to me.”
“Honestly?”
“Yes, but I’m no fashion expert. Still, have you ever thought of going into the trade?”
Felicity shrugged. “There’s no money for training, or to set up in business.”
“I should think there must be apprenticeships or something similar. My friend Lucy would know. I could ask her, if you like. Though if you’re going to marry the future Earl of Westmoor, I suppose you wouldn’t be interested.”
“I shan’t be marrying Cedric if he’s hanged for murder!”
“So you think he might be?”
“Oh, Daisy, I just don’t know,” Felicity said wretchedly. “I simply can’t imagine him stabbing someone in the back. He’s always seemed such a perfect gentleman, so much so that I’ve often teased him about it.”
“Any kind of murder isn’t exactly the correct, gentlemanly thing to do,” Daisy pointed out.
“No, but if—oh, say some rotter was blackmailing his sister, or something like that, Cedric might confront him and shoot him, face to face. Do you see what I mean? There would be something gallant, at least, about risking being hanged for that, not like stabbing an elderly clergyman in the back because he threatened one’s inheritance. No, I can’t believe Ceddie did that!”
“But you can believe he was there, up at the chapel, on Christmas Eve?” A matter of opinion, so not a leading question, Daisy hoped. She was a bit vague about what exactly constituted a leading question.
“I wasn’t expecting him. When I saw him on Saturday night, I told him about Calloway and said I didn’t think I’d marry him after all, so he needn’t come the next night.
He said he probably wouldn’t have anyway because the weather forecast was for high winds.
And on Christmas Eve he couldn’t come, though he wouldn’t tell me why.
I thought either he just said it because I’d told him I didn’t want to see him again, or maybe he was going to a party with Bella Sidlow and some of that crowd.
He used to be quite keen on Bella, before we met. ”
“I see.”
“So when he said he’d be there on Christmas night, I said, well, I wouldn’t. But he came then anyway, so he might have come the night before, mightn’t he?”
Daisy absorbed the gist of this, not bothering to sort out which night was which. “Are you in love with him?” she asked bluntly (a leading question, no doubt, but not directly concerned with the murder).
“I don’t know!” Felicity wailed. “I want to get away from here, and the only way seems to be to get married, and I don’t meet many men.
And after being a poor relation all my life, the prospect of becoming Countess of Westmoor doesn’t exactly disgust me.
But how can I tell if that’s what attracts me to Ceddie, or if I’ve found my soul-mate? ”
“Did you really mean it when you told him you wouldn’t marry him because he wasn’t heir to the earldom after all?”
“I don’t know! I was teasing him, of course, partly. But I wouldn’t even have thought of such a thing if I wasn’t a horrible mercenary person, would I?”
“It’s something one has to consider,” Daisy said judiciously, “the sort of life the future will hold. It would be—would have been—no good marrying Cedric if you were going to spend the rest of your life resenting the fact that you were still a poor relation, your uncle’s, your father’s, your brother’s.
I would have been an ass to marry Alec if I hadn’t been pretty sure I could put up with being a policeman’s wife. ”
“Because you love him. But do I love Ceddie? Enough?” Felicity sighed.
“Never mind, it’s all water under the bridge, now.
Either he is going to be an earl, in which case I may as well marry him and find out whether I love him, if he still wants to marry me after I was so beastly.
Or else he’ll be arrested for murder, and that’s the end of that. ”
“Ye-es. You don’t seem very upset to think he might be a murderer.”
“I suppose that really, at the back of my mind, I find it absolutely impossible to believe he killed Calloway. Daisy, your husband wouldn’t make a mistake about it, would he? He wouldn’t arrest Ceddie if he didn’t do it?”
“Certainly not,” said the loyal wife, wishing she had met Cedric Norville to judge him for herself.
Could Felicity’s perfect gentleman actually be an utter rotter who would stab an innocent, if irritating, clergyman in the back?
And if so, could Felicity herself be his accomplice, and her talk of confused emotions no more than a smoke-screen?
All in all, Daisy had learnt nothing to reassure her that Cedric would not attempt to escape justice by drowning the detective who was on his trail.