Chapter 10
Daisy, having seen with her own eyes that Miranda and Oliver were safe and sound, woke them by kissing them, to Nanny’s displeasure.
However, she was permitted to give each a bottle.
Feeding them made her realize she was ravenous.
Somehow, between one thing and another, she had had no breakfast, though she was wallowing in tea.
She went down to the kitchen. Mrs. Dobson was pinning on her second-best hat, to go to the shops, while giving the daily help instructions for what was to be accomplished during her absence. They both looked round and said, “Good morning, madam.”
“Good morning, ladies. Mrs. Dobson, I missed breakfast. I’ll just get myself some bread and butter and marmalade.”
“That you won’t, madam!” The hat came off with a swish. “Sit yourself down right there and I’ll have eggs and bacon for you in a trice. Well, what are you waiting for?” she said severely to Mrs. Twickle. “You can get on with the bathroom while I’m busy in here.”
Cowed, the charwoman went off with her pail and mop and scrubbing brush.
Daisy also did as she was bade. She had no qualms about eating in the kitchen. As children at Fairacres, her family home, she and Violet and Gervaise had popped into the labyrinthine kitchens for a picnic or a snack whenever they escaped their nursemaids, governesses, and tutors.
Melanie Germond would have been shocked. It was one of the odd differences between the customs of the aristocracy and the professional middle classes that Daisy felt she had at last more or less mastered.
At first, when Daisy married and came to live in St. John’s Wood, Alec’s mother had been a complicating factor.
The elder Mrs. Fletcher held so stringently to the most restrictive rules of Victorian propriety that Daisy found it difficult to distinguish between her quirks and the somewhat more relaxed etiquette of modern middle-class life.
A year ago, Mrs. Fletcher had moved to Bournemouth.
Daisy felt she now grasped which commandments were carved in stone and which she could safely ignore, at least as long as she didn’t draw her lapses to anyone’s attention.
Her struggle made her sympathize with Fay’s and Brenda’s confusion over appropriate manners.
They had been very sweet earlier when she returned to the King’s House in a state of shock.
She was sorry she had abandoned them. Perhaps she should go back—but Alec would be furious if she reappeared in the middle of his investigation.
Mrs. Dobson emerged from the larder and set about preparing breakfast. “Weren’t it a general you was going to stay with, Mrs. Fletcher?” she observed. “You’d think a general’s household could spare a body a bite of breakfast before you left.”
“It wasn’t their fault. There was . . .” Daisy hesitated.
She really didn’t care to discuss the murder with the housekeeper, though Mrs. Dobson was used to the subject, given the master’s profession, and would read about it in tomorrow’s newspaper.
“They had some trouble at the Tower,” she said vaguely.
“Mmm, the bacon smells heavenly, much better than when one actually eats it.”
“It’s the best back bacon,” said Mrs. Dobson, bridling, then conceding the point. “But it’s like coffee and frying onions—the taste’s always a bit of a letdown after the smell.”
Having served Daisy, she put her hat back on, adjured Daisy to leave the washing up for Mrs. Twickle, and set off to do the shopping. Daisy enjoyed the bacon; it tasted better in the kitchen, where the smell lingered, than in the dining room, she decided.
With a slightly guilty feeling for disobeying Mrs. Dobson’s orders, she put her eggy plate into the sink and ran water onto it.
In the days between the War and marriage, when she had shared a bijou residence in Chelsea with her friend Lucy, she had scrubbed many a plate on which egg yolk had congealed.
It didn’t seem fair to leave such a mess for poor bullied Mrs. Twickle.
She went to the office she shared with Alec now that the house was full of babies.
Her article was nearly finished, but she had to add a bit about the Ceremony of the Keys, now that she had seen it.
Americans seemed to believe London was always smothered in fog, so her description should please them.
People always liked to have prejudices confirmed.
Writing about the ceremony inevitably brought vividly to mind its chief figure. She couldn’t concentrate on the proud yeoman bearing his part in the ancient tradition. All she could see was the man she had found crumpled at the foot of the steps.
She did, after all, need to talk to someone about it, though not Mrs. Dobson.
Melanie would be ideal. She knew some of the people involved. But Mel would be shocked to the core that Daisy was mixed up in another murder. Sakari, on the other hand, would be interested and sympathetic, and would be a calming influence on Mel.
Daisy abandoned her typewriter and went out to the hall to telephone her friends.
Mel was free and delighted to come over for morning coffee, as she wanted to discuss the forthcoming tennis party for the Carradine girls.
She wouldn’t want to talk about tennis when she heard the news, but Daisy cravenly didn’t warn her.
Sakari knew at once from Daisy’s voice that something was wrong. “What is up, Daisy? Is it Belinda?” Sakari’s daughter, Deva, was one of Bel’s best friends, along with Melanie’s daughter, and the three were at the same boarding school.
“No, Bel’s quite all right.”
“That is fortunate. I was about to offer to lend you the car and chauffeur to go to her, and my lord and master claims to have some pressing need for them later today.” Mr. Prasad was something important at the India Office.
“But you are troubled. I will come at once, of course. Shall I pick up Melanie on the way?”
“Yes, please, Sakari. Bless you.”
Daisy went to put on the percolator. Looking in the biscuit tin, she found only crumbs. She hoped Mrs. Dobson would be back before the others arrived. One couldn’t invite one’s friends to have their shoulders cried on and not offer biscuits to go with their coffee.
Not that she meant to cry on anyone’s shoulder, but she just couldn’t get the picture of Crabtree’s body out of her mind. With any luck, talking about it would help. Thinking back over the various cases she’d stumbled into, she couldn’t remember ever having felt so isolated.
The feeling ended the moment Sakari walked through the door and enfolded her in an exotic-scented rose-and-gold embrace. “Dear Daisy, we have decided that you must have discovered another body.”
“Sakari has decided.” Mel kissed Daisy’s cheek. “I can’t believe it.”
“I’m awfully afraid it’s true. Come and sit down, and I’ll tell you about it. If you don’t mind.”
Mel couldn’t suppress a quiet sigh.
“She cannot help it, Melanie,” Sakari said as they followed Daisy into the sitting room.
“I know. It’s just that . . . these things never happen to other people.”
“I’d much rather they didn’t happen to me, I assure you. I won’t talk about it if you’d rather not, Mel, but you’ve been to the Tower and met some of the people, so I thought perhaps you could help me get things straight in my mind.”
“Oho, you are sleuthing, Daisy!” Sakari made herself comfortable on the sofa, a plump bird of paradise in her colourful sari, and accepted a cup of coffee. No Mrs. Dobson; no biscuits.
“Not really sleuthing. I’ve finished my work there, so I have no excuse to go back. Let’s talk about something else. Your tennis party, Mel.”
“Daisy, I’m sorry. I can see you’re upset and you need to talk about the .
. . the murder. I’m sure otherwise you’ll develop inhibitions, or something.
” Mel smiled at Sakari. The Indian woman was a devotee of lectures on all subjects under the sun and still occasionally brought forth words of wisdom from a talk on psychology she had attended eighteen months ago. “It happened at the Tower?”
“Who was killed?” Sakari asked.
“The Chief Yeoman Warder.” Daisy told them about the ceremony and how Fay and Brenda had coaxed Crabtree into escorting her through the fog to the King’s House.
“Not the one who showed us the way!” Mel exclaimed. “The one whose manner we didn’t care for? I remember he had some special insignia on his costume.”
“The oily one? No, he’s Yeoman Gaoler. He’s second in charge, but he doesn’t play any r?le in the ceremony.”
“My dear Daisy,” said Sakari, “I see no difficulty. Clearly, the murderer is this oily man, of whom even Melanie speaks ill. He wishes to be Chief.”
“Well . . .” Daisy hesitated. “He was out and about, in spite of the frightful fog. But if he was planning murder, surely he’d have kept out of sight.”
“Ah, I see what it is.” Sakari laughed. “This obvious solution is too simple. You want a mystery!”
“Of course not! I just don’t think he’s stupid.”
Melanie hastily intervened to keep the peace. “How did you come to be mixed up in the affair, Daisy?”
“I found him.” She explained about getting up early because of her urgent need to see the twins. As mothers, they quite understood, though Melanie was rather shocked that she had departed without taking leave of her hosts.
“I know, it was disgraceful of me. I found the Tower disturbing from the first, I must admit, so perhaps spending the night there was just too much for my poor nerves.”
“Nonsense,” said Sakari briskly. “You do not suffer from nerves, nor from an excess of inhibitions!”
“I did leave a note,” Daisy pleaded in exculpation, “and I apologized profusely when I returned, once I’d recovered a bit from the shock. They almost drowned me in tea. Another cup of coffee?”
As she poured, Melanie asked, “You don’t think Miss Carradine and Miss Fay are suspected, do you? I should hate to be responsible for introducing someone suspected of murder to my friends, especially the young people at the tennis club.”