Chapter 7 #2
“My fault.” Alec gave her a one-armed hug, to the imminent danger of the cup of tea in his other hand. “I shouldn’t have mentioned that particular aspect of the investigation. I don’t suppose you noticed which direction Crabtree went after handing over the keys?”
“No. General Carradine was asking me where Fay and Brenda had got to. They went with me to watch the ceremony, you see, and their aunt, too—”
“Their aunt?”
“Mrs. Duggan, the one who brought them up and then married an officer, the man who happens to be in charge of the garrison at present. The girls decided to escort her home because of the fog. The Officers’ Quarters are on the far side of the White Tower.”
“So the Carradine girls were also wandering about the place in the night.”
“You can’t suspect them, darling. They’re just a pair of rather silly, though quite nice, girls. Besides, they weren’t gone more than half an hour. A couple of young officers escorted them home. I didn’t see them, and the girls didn’t mention their names.”
“So now we have two unknown officers wandering about the place in the night!”
“There are soldiers about all the time. They change the guard at regular intervals, though they’re marched from place to place by the sergeant of the watch, not wandering freely. But it doesn’t seem likely to me that the feud has anything to do with the murder.”
“Great Scott, what next? What feud?”
Daisy explained about the ill feeling between the general and the colonel who had stolen his sister-in-law, and how it had spilled over into relations between garrison and warders.
“I don’t think it was ever very serious, though.
In any case, Mrs. Tebbit sabotaged it by inviting the Duggans to dinner last night.
That’s why Mrs. Duggan was with us at the ceremony. ”
“Damn the ceremony! Carradine says the keys were put into his hands at ten o’clock. Does that agree with your recollection?”
“It always happens at ten. Duke of Wellington’s orders. It will still happen at ten in a hundred years, or a thousand, for all I know. Tradition is sacrosanct.”
“We have to find out what Crabtree was doing between ten and eleven, or later.”
“Fay and Brenda might have seen him.”
“Yes, I’d better talk to them now, while I’m here.” He finished the last of his tea and got up to ring the bell.
“You will see Mrs. Tebbit, won’t you, darling? She’ll be so disappointed if you don’t.”
“My job does not include giving old ladies a thrill! But yes, I’ll have to ask her a few questions at some point. No hurry. I just hope she doesn’t insist on chaperoning the girls.”
“Gosh, no,” Daisy agreed with a giggle, “I can’t imagine trying to interview them with her sitting in—and butting in.” She gave him her guileless look, the one that so often encouraged people to tell her their inmost secrets. “I’m sure she’d be satisfied if I stayed with them.”
“Unfortunately,” Alec said, grimacing, “you’re probably right.”
“I won’t say a word, and I’ll take notes for you.”
When the maid arrived, he told her to ask the young ladies to join Mrs. Fletcher and himself. Fay and Brenda bounced in a few minutes later.
They sat down and regarded Alec with eager expectation.
“Can we really help, Mr. Fletcher?”
“What do you want to know?”
“I gather you two young ladies were out and about after the Ceremony of the Keys?”
“Yes, we took Aunt Christina home.”
“But we didn’t push Mr. Crabtree down the stairs.”
“We liked him.”
“He was a nice old buffer.”
“Not like—”
Alec broke into the double act. “But did you see him?”
“Not after he went off with Mrs. Fletcher.”
“To take the keys to Daddy.”
“Did you see anyone else out and about?”
“We couldn’t see much at all.”
“Visibility was extremely limited,” said Brenda grandly.
“One could have got lost crossing the parade ground.”
“So we went round the side.”
“Keeping close to the wall of the White Tower.”
Alec consulted his map.
“And we heard footsteps behind us.”
“So we hurried up.”
“ ‘Like one, that on a lonesome road—’ ”
“ ‘Doth walk in fear and dread—’ ”
“ ‘Because he knows, a frightful fiend—’ ”
“ ‘Doth close behind him tread.’
” “Fay looked back.”
“And it was only one of the warders.”
“All she could see was his silhouette against the last lamp.”
“But I could tell, because he was wearing their fancy dress.”
They glanced at each other.
“Which was odd, come to think of it.”
“They usually change into mufti as soon as the public leaves.”
“At five o’clock.”
“Except the Chief Warder, because of the Keys.”
“He has to stay dressed up for that.”
“And the Byward Tower guard does, too, come to think of it.”
“You and your aunt went straight from the ceremony to her residence? No stopping on the way?”
“There isn’t anywhere to stop,” said Fay.
“We walked pretty briskly because of the cold.”
“Even before the frightful fiend.”
The yeoman they saw couldn’t have been Crabtree, Daisy thought. The old man couldn’t have caught up with them after going with her to the King’s House.
Alec’s frown suggested he had come to the same conclusion. “You didn’t notice where your frightful fiend went?”
“No, we lost him after the White Tower.”
“We could hardly see the lamp on the Officers’ Quarters building.”
“Where Aunt Christina and Uncle Sidney live.”
“Uncle Sidney sent a couple of officers to escort us home.”
“Or rather, they volunteered.”
“Do you know their names?”
Fay and Brenda exchanged an amused look.
“Oh yes, Mr. Fletcher, we know all the officers.”
“They were Lieutenant Jardyne and Captain Devereux.”
“Thank you.”
“Do you think they might have seen the murderer?” asked Brenda, wide-eyed.
“On their way back?”
“After they left us here?”
“It’s always possible. I take it you didn’t see anyone as you walked back from your aunt’s?”
“Not a soul.”
“The fog was thicker than ever.”
“Thank you,” Alec said again. “That’s all for now. I may have more questions for you later.”
“Anytime!”
The girls departed, but the door had not quite closed behind them when Fay turned to ask, “Mr. Fletcher, are you going to interrogate Aunt Alice—Mrs. Tebbit?”
Brenda’s face appeared over her sister’s shoulder. “Because she’s simply dying to be interrogated.”
“Does she have something specific to tell me?”
Fay glanced back at Brenda, who said, “I don’t think so.”
“But you never know.”
“Aunt Alice is a dark horse.”
“It’s no use trying to guess what she might have to say.”
Alec looked at Daisy, who shrugged and gave a slight shake of her head. It seemed to her unlikely that the old lady, a recent arrival at the Tower, could know anything useful.
“Please tell Mrs. Tebbit,” he said, “that I may need to speak to her later. If she has specific, relevant information to offer, a message to the Warders’ Room in the Byward Tower will reach me.”
“Right-oh.” They disappeared.
Alec asked apprehensively, “Is that what the twins are going to be like when they’re older? Reading each other’s mind and finishing each other’s sentences?”
“I’ve heard that some twins develop their own private language. But perhaps that’s only identical twins.”
“Let’s hope!” He stood up. “Next stop the Duggans, I think. He’s a colonel?”
“Lieutenant colonel. Risen from the ranks, I gather.”
“In a Guards regiment? I’d have said it was impossible!
Surely unprecedented. ‘The Gentlemen’s Sons,’ they call themselves, or used to.
Before Waterloo, the other regiments called them ‘Hyde Park Soldiers,’ but they gave a good account of themselves there.
” Alec had a degree in history, specializing in the Georgians.
“And in our latest little shindig, too.”
“He must have done something truly spectacular, not merely competent.”
“It would have been a field commission, probably a lot of officers killed in his unit. I’d have thought they would have made him transfer to a different regiment, though.
And then to keep promoting him, even if he never makes it to full colonel!
Hmm, this could make him easier to deal with, or harder. ”
“I wouldn’t have said he’s the sort to stand on his dignity. I see you have on your RFC tie.”
“Every little bit helps. I’m off. You’re free to go home to Oliver and Miranda, love. If you think of anything else you need to tell me, it can wait until I get home this evening.”
“Right-oh,” said Daisy. “I’ll pop up and say good-bye to the Tebbits. Only think, if I’d waited until a decent hour this morning to do just that, someone else would have found poor Crabtree.”
Mrs. Tebbit brushed aside Daisy’s apologies for her unceremonious early departure.
“Young women are excessively maternal these days,” she said.
“In my young day, one left babies strictly to the nurse. Oh, don’t look at me like a dying cow, Myrtle.
I don’t suppose it would make a ha’p’orth of difference to you if I had turned myself into a milch cow for your benefit. ”
“Mother, how can you!”
“With the greatest of ease. Has your husband left the house already, Mrs. Fletcher?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so. The girls mentioned that you wanted to speak to him, but he has to deal with the basic stuff first. He’ll come and see you later. Was there some specific information you wanted to give him? Because I could probably pass it on.”
“No,” said Mrs. Tebbit regretfully. “I did think . . . But after all, it wasn’t Crabtree who was making a nuisance of himself; it was the other fellow, the one who looks just like him.”
“Rumford?”
“That’s the one. A nasty piece of work if ever I saw one.”
“Making a nuisance of himself to you, Mrs. Tebbit?”
“Certainly not. To Arthur. However, since Rumford has not been murdered, it’s of no significance.”
Miss Tebbit was shocked—again. “Mother, surely you wouldn’t have told the police about Cousin Arthur and that horrible man!”
“I was of two minds about it,” Mrs. Tebbit conceded.
“It would have been a great bore to have to move back to St. John’s Wood so soon if Arthur had been arrested.
I’m happy not to be faced with that choice.
Well, Daisy, you have presented your apologies very prettily, and by now you must be more anxious than ever to dandle your infants. Off you go.”
On her way downstairs, Daisy tried to decide whether Mrs. Tebbit had been speaking merely for effect, as she was wont to do. In any case, her information seemed irrelevant as well as unreliable, and not worth relaying to Alec.