Chapter Fifteen
FIFTEEN
When Daisy, still hunting the children, stepped out through the front door, she saw Jemima standing a few yards away, gazing down the terraces.
“Jemima, have you seen Derek and Belinda?”
Jemima gave her a blank, inimical glance, shrugged, and turned away.
If they were outside, Nana would be with them, her hearing probably the sharpest of the three. Daisy let loose the piercing whistle Gervaise had taught her, seldom employed because thoroughly unladylike. “Nana!” she called.
A yip answered her. From the top of the long flight of steps at the far end of the terrace the puppy bounded towards her.
She had something in her mouth, which she laid at Daisy’s feet, looking up with eyes bright in the expectation of praise.
When Daisy declined to accept the well-chewed, disgustingly sodden wad of blueish grey rag, Nana picked it up, unoffended, and pranced ahead back towards the steps.
As she approached, Daisy spotted Belinda’s ginger and Derek’s tow-head near the bottom of the flight.
They were sitting on the bottom step, so absorbed in sorting through a heap of rubbish on the ground before them that they didn’t notice Daisy’s arrival.
A couple of empty potato sacks lay beside the heap.
Daisy paused at the top, wondering what on earth they were up to. Behind her the gravel crunched. She looked round to find Jemima had followed her.
Once again she had that nervous feeling that she didn’t want to be at the top of anything while the girl was behind her. She started down the steps, enquiring, “What have you got there?”
Two animated faces turned up to her.
“Clues!” said Derek portentously.
“We wanted to help Daddy,” Bel explained. “We didn’t get in the way, honestly. Daddy and Mr. Piper went across the Tamar to Devon, and Uncle Tom’s in the house. We were in the woods.”
Daisy could only wish she had repeated yesterday’s prohibition against going into the woods and made it clear it was separate from the instructions not to get in the way.
“We borrowed a sack, Aunt Daisy, and went to look for clues. Nana’s a ripping bloodhound.
She found this.” Derek presented for Daisy’s inspection an ancient boot, laceless, the sole dangling from the upper by one or two remaining nails.
“It’s our best clue. We think an escaped convict, or maybe a deserter, was living in the woods and Mr. Calloway saw him and he was afraid he’d give him away so he killed him. ”
“And then he started to run away, but the sole of his boot came off so he couldn’t run.”
“So he took it off and Nana found it,” Derek concluded triumphantly.
“She found this, too.” A sardine tin. “And we found a couple more tins. Where did you put them, Bel? Oh, here they are. Look, the labels are all gone and this one’s rusted right through the bottom, so the man must have been living there for simply ages. And a broken beer bottle.”
“We buried that so no animal would cut itself,” Bel said, “but Derek marked the place in case Daddy wants to dig it up for fingerprints.”
“D’you think Uncle Alec’ll want this, Aunt Daisy?” Gingerly, by one corner, Derek held up a filthy, stained cloth, ragged and so faded its original colour could have been anything. “It’s pretty foul.”
Nana disagreed. She dropped one rag in favour of the other, which she seized and ran off with. Derek and Belinda gave chase, tally-hoing and view-hallooing as they galloped along the terraces.
Jemima clumped down the steps from the top, where she had been watching and listening. “What rubbish!” she said scornfully, poking the boot with her toe.
Ignoring her, Daisy cheered on the pursuers and the pursued.
Nana headed back towards her. Dropping the revolting object at her feet, the pup turned to sniff at the boot, then went to sniff around the as yet unsorted heap of junk.
Belinda and Derek arrived, panting. Derek reached down to retrieve the rag, but Nana grabbed it first and dashed off again.
Derek groaned. “She’ll prob’ly bury it.”
“Never mind, let her have it,” Daisy advised. “I doubt if it’s a vital clue. What else have you got?”
“Rubbish,” Jemima said again. She went off back up the steps.
“Why doesn’t she like us, Mummy?” Belinda asked anxiously.
“I don’t think she likes anyone much, darling. Don’t let it worry you. Is that a pair of eye-glasses I see?”
“Yes.” Derek abstracted a celluloid spectacle frame, minus lenses, from the pile and balanced it on his nose. One earpiece was missing. “Bel found it. I don’t think it’s a clue, though.”
“Why not? Perhaps the escaped convict was shortsighted.”
“These wouldn’t have been much use to him then. He couldn’t have seen well enough to kill Mr. Calloway or run away or anything.”
“I think we ought to keep them for Daddy,” said Belinda stubbornly.
“All right, we will. But look at this cigarette packet, Aunt Daisy. It’ll tell Uncle Alec what brand of cigarettes the murderer smokes.”
The packet looked as if it had been in the woods for several weeks, at least. The Woodbine label was almost indistinguishable, and Woodbines were the most popular cheap cigarette.
But Daisy said, “Yes, keep that for him,” and she sat on a step and watched while they went through the rest of the heap.
Not only did she not want to be a wet blanket, it was always possible they really had found something useful.
Alec was always saying one never could tell what might be significant.
Nothing turned up, though, that looked to her in the least useful.
Spreading out one sack, the children laid out on it the oddments they had decided to keep.
The rest they put back into the other sack to take round to the Kitchen Court to the dustbin.
Derek had just heaved it onto his shoulder when they were hailed from the top of the steps.
“Good morning, Mrs. Fletcher!” Tom Tring doffed his hat, his bald dome gleaming in the fitful sunshine. He came down, with the peculiarly light tread which accorded so ill with his bulk. “Hello again, Miss Belinda, Master Derek. What have we here?”
Eagerly the children explained their hunt and showed him the bits and pieces.
He examined each, his small brown eyes twinkling.
Nana rushed up to greet him, muddy feet and muzzle mute evidence of the burial of her rag.
Belinda grasped her collar before she could besmirch the sergeant’s splendid green-and-maroon suit.
“Sit,” she said severely. “You’re going to have to have another bath before you can go in the house.”
“I expect it’ll wear off if she runs around a bit,” said Tom. “You’ve a fine collection here. Put them somewhere safe for the Chief to see, won’t you?”
“Don’t take them into the house!” said Daisy.
“We’ll put them in Nana’s scullery. Come on, Bel.”
They bundled their clues into the second sack and raced off, Nana lolloping alongside. “Wash your hands!” Daisy called after them.
Tom winked at Daisy. “Don’t do no harm,” he said, stroking his moustache. “I dare say we’ll have young Derek joining us in the CID before too long.”
“Don’t tell his father! Maybe by the time Belinda’s old enough, they’ll see the sense in having a few women detectives,” Daisy retorted.
“Ah.” That was Tom’s multi-purpose monosyllable. “I’m off to the chapel to try for dabs. That way, is it?”
“I’ll show you. You’ve been talking to the servants, haven’t you? Did you find out anything useful?”
“Not from that lot. They knew Miss Norville was carrying on with Mr. Cedric Norville right enough, but none of ’em could say whether he came over on Christmas Eve.
Someone down at the Quay might know, they said.
I’ll leave questioning them till I hear from the Chief, though.
Now there’s one interesting thing I did find. ”
“What’s that?”
Tom waited until he had followed Daisy through the tunnel under the lane before he answered. Emerging beside her, he said, “Dabs on the murder weapon. There’s a couple of little ’uns, could be a small woman but more likely a child.”
“Derek! It was his knife.”
“Could be. I’ll have to fingerprint him to be sure.”
“He’ll be thrilled to death,” Daisy said dryly. “Could you possibly fingerprint Belinda too, to be fair?”
Tom’s moustache twitched as he grinned. “For sure. The prints could be hers, after all. But that’d better wait for the Chief, too.”
“Yes. You’ll have to check Jemima’s, too.”
“The younger daughter? She’s known to have handled the knife?”
“No,” said Daisy, troubled. “Not as far as I know, though she may have when the children showed it to Godfrey. Mr. Godfrey Norville. You’d have to ask them, or rather the Chief will.”
“Mr. Godfrey Norville touched it?”
“Probably. He examined it. As did Captain Norville, though I can’t recall whether he handled it. I expect the Chief will remember.”
“There’s what looks like a man’s prints on the haft, but blurred and not in the right position for stabbing, whichever way … Here, hold on, Mrs. Fletcher!”
“I’m all right,” Daisy said, but rather faintly. His words had summoned up the picture she had hitherto managed to hold at bay: the knife raised, then plunging down into the unsuspecting man’s back. Feeling sick, she sat down on the bench Tom had steered her to, under the arbour by the carp pond.
He stood looking down at her. “The Chief’ll give me a flea in the ear for upsetting you,” he growled, “and quite right, too.”
“Bosh!” said Daisy, perking up. “I shan’t tell him, and you’re not to. He’d give me a flea in the ear for meddling. I’m quite all right, truly. It was just a momentary vision…” She concentrated on the vigorous check of his jacket. “Is that a new suit? I don’t recall seeing it before.”
“Christmas present from the wife.”
“It’s spectacular,” she said sincerely, remembering the equally mountainous Mrs. Tring, whom she had met at her wedding.