Chapter 18
Fay chattered all the way up the stairs. As they entered the Council Chamber, Daisy turned back to Alec and whispered urgently, “I’ve just thought of something. Did you know—”
“My dear Mrs. Fletcher,” Mrs. Tebbit interrupted, “how nice to see you again.”
“Bother!” she whispered. “Tell you later.” Raising her voice, she went on. “It’s not exactly a visit of condolence, Mrs. Tebbit, but I felt I simply had to come and see how you’re all doing. Not to mention thanking you for reviving me with tea and sympathy.”
“What a terrible shock you had!” Miss Tebbit twittered. “A terrible shock for all of us.”
“I still think brandy would have worked quicker,” Mrs. Tebbit grumbled. “Mr. Fletcher, may I offer you a glass of something? Or are you not permitted to drink on duty?”
“Thank you, Mrs. Tebbit, but it’s frowned upon. Especially at this time in the morning.”
“Presumably you’re allowed coffee. In any case, I always have coffee at this hour, so you may please yourself. Brenda, you did order coffee and biscuits?”
“Of course, Aunt Alice. As always. You said one should not allow untoward events to interfere with one’s regular habits or social obligations.”
“Very true, my dear. Ah, here it is.”
A maid brought in a tray. Alec waited impatiently while the social niceties ran their course. Seeing it would not delay matters significantly, he accepted a cup and a gingersnap.
As soon as the maid departed, he said, “I gather you have something to tell me, Mrs. Tebbit. No doubt you’d like to speak privately?”
“On the contrary. Secrecy breeds hypocrisy, and a host of other ills. Everything is better out in the open.”
Brenda and Fay exchanged one of their looks.
“Not absolutely everything,” Daisy protested, injecting—in Alec’s view—a note of sanity into the proceedings. What was the alarming old woman up to?
“Not absolutely everything? Well, perhaps you’re right, Mrs. Fletcher.” She took a sip of coffee, an apparently innocent act, which had the effect, no doubt deliberate, of heightening the tension.
Miss Tebbit was obviously on tenterhooks. “Mother, what is it?” she pleaded.
Mrs. Tebbit ignored her. “Mr. Fletcher, am I correct in believing that man Rumford to be an extortionist?”
“So it would seem.”
“Then I must inform you that I believe he is blackmailing Jeremy Webster.”
“No, Mother, I’m sure you’re mistaken!” Miss Tebbit’s cheeks turned pink in agitated outrage. “Mr. Webster would never do anything wicked, anything that couldn’t bear the light of day!”
“What’s it to you, Myrtle?” enquired her mother with interest.
Alec decided she had started this hare more to tease her daughter than to enlighten the police. However, he couldn’t ignore it.
Pinker than ever, Miss Tebbit cried, “I can’t let you malign a good man. He’s not even here to defend himself.”
“You’re defending him very nicely.”
The girls looked befuddled, Daisy amused.
“Nonetheless,” Alec said dryly, “I shall need to hear his own defence, if you have anything more than imagination to go on, ma’am.”
“Naughty boy! As a matter of fact, I do. This is a strange old house, as you may have realized. Bear with me—I’m getting to the point.
There are any number of small interconnected rooms, which, I gather, were once used to house prisoners of high status or full pockets, and their yeoman guards.
Would you believe the Governor of the time used to charge them to dine with him? ”
“Mrs. Tebbit, I—”
“I know, I know! You’re a busy policeman with no time to listen to the maunderings of an old woman,” said Mrs. Tebbit mournfully.
“Well, then. I was exploring my cousin’s interesting residence, shortly after we first came to live here, when I overheard voices in an adjoining room.
I recognized Mr. Webster’s voice at once.
The other I was not able to identify at the time.
However, at a later date, when I came across the Rumford man, I at once realized it was he whom I had heard. ”
“You’re quite certain?”
“Oh yes. Most definitely a northerner, though with the edges smoothed by rubbing shoulders with all and sundry in the army.”
Alec glanced at Daisy, who looked up from scribbling in her notebook and nodded. Rumford’s first words in the hospital had certainly been North-country.
He still thought Mrs. Tebbit had her own agenda, which had nothing to do with his, but that didn’t mean she had nothing of interest to reveal, even if the decrepitude of the balcony ruled out Webster as murderer. “What was said?” he asked.
“Rumford said something about Mr. Webster being very interested in the Crown Jewels. Anyone would think, he said, that he was plotting how to pinch them.”
“Jeremy wouldn’t!” Miss Tebbit exclaimed.
“It was his duty to draw the Governor’s attention to the danger, Rumford said,” Mrs. Tebbit continued remorselessly. “But some piece of good fortune, such as unexpectedly finding a couple of pounds in his pocket, might distract him and make him forget what he ought to report.”
“No!”
By now, Alec observed, Daisy had torn the top leaf from her notebook, folded it, printed “Mr. Webster” on the outside, and passed it to Brenda.
Brenda read the name, mouthed “Now?” at Daisy, and slipped out of the room.
Daisy was apparently going along with Mrs. Tebbit’s plot.
He might as well play his part, though he was pretty sure of what was coming next.
“And what did Mr. Webster say to that?” Alec asked the old lady.
“I didn’t stay to listen,” she said with unconvincing primness. “In my day, young ladies were taught not to eavesdrop.”
“Mother!”
“But as I left, I couldn’t help overhearing Mr. Webster’s response. He said ‘anyone’ had better think again, because his only interest in the jewels was scholarly, as the Governor knew very well.”
“There, I told you so, Mother. Jer—Mr. Webster would never do anything dishonourable.”
“ ‘Jeremy,’ is it? In my day, a young lady didn’t address a gentleman by his Christian name unless they were betrothed. Or he was closely related,” she added, rather spoiling the effect. “Has Mr. Webster asked you to marry him?”
“Oh no, Mother. And I’ve never addressed him as anything but Mr. Webster. It was just a slip of the tongue, because Cousin Arthur calls him Jeremy.”
“And has he ever addressed you as Myrtle?”
“Oh no, Mother. He’s far too much the gentleman.”
“Gentleman, pah! He’s a slowcoach, that’s what he is.”
“I expect the poor man’s scared to death of you, Aunt Alice,” said Fay.
“Slowcoach and coward,” Mrs. Tebbit said with relish.
“He is not! I won’t let you abuse Mr. Webster—”
“Miss Tebbit!” Webster burst into the room.
“Mr. Webster!”
“Myrtle!”
“Jeremy!”
“At last,” said Mrs. Tebbit. “Just like the dénouement of a drawing room comedy. Faugh, I’m quite exhausted. Mrs. Fletcher, thank you for your assistance. Very quick-witted! You’ll stay to luncheon, I trust? . . . Excellent. And Mr. Fletcher?”
Alec begged off. The charade had been amusing, and he had gained more evidence that Rumford was a blackmailer with modest demands.
But he had several actual victims to interview, and it didn’t seem necessary to ask Webster to confirm Mrs. Tebbit’s story.
Besides, if he interrupted the billing and cooing after all Mrs. Tebbit’s efforts to bring the pair together, the formidable old lady would turn her tongue on him.
Brenda and Fay were whispering together, their amazed gazes fixed on the couple, now holding hands.
Daisy and Mrs. Tebbit had their heads together, both with self-satisfied smiles.
Matchmaking instincts prevailed over the maternal today, it seemed.
As Alec left the Council Chamber, Daisy gave him a little wave and he waved back.
So much for romance; now back to blackmail and murder.
Leaving Daisy to lunch with her eccentric friends, Alec returned to the Guard House.
While waiting for Tom and Piper, he made notes on his interviews with the Resident Governor and Fay, and what Mrs. Tebbit had overheard.
He wondered briefly what it was that Daisy had remembered that she wanted to tell him.
It was as likely to be about the babies as the investigation, and if the latter, it was probably one of her wild theories. He put it from his mind.
The others came in together.
“Any luck, Chief?” Tom asked.
“Carradine confessed that Rumford’s been blackmailing him.”
“Blimey, Chief,” said Ernie, “and him a major general and Resident Governor of the Tower of London!”
“The higher the tower, the farther to fall,” said Tom, “not to mention the greater the pickings for an extortionist.”
“Did you find out what Rumford had on him, Chief?”
“No, and I told you not to ask people.”
“I didn’t, Chief. Just wondered if he happened to spill the beans.”
“ ‘Into the valley of death,’ ” Tom quoted. “Maybe he gave the wrong order, like in The Charge of the Light Brigade, and nobody came back alive to tell on him.”
“Then how’d Rumford find out, Sarge?”
“How did Tennyson find out about the Light Brigade? Some little sneak like Rumford was standing by and watching. In the Service Corps, he was. Here today and gone tomorrow.”
Alec quashed the discussion. “I have no idea what Carradine did, only that it may have happened in Mesopotamia. It’s not relevant, at least at present.
But something interesting did emerge. I want to hear about your interviews before I go into that.
Let’s get yours out of the way first, Ernie.
You took the ones living in the Outer Ward, didn’t you?
None of them could have killed Crabtree. ”
“That’s right, Chief, assuming it’s not possible to get over the inner wall. But they were all over the ruddy place today. Just about wore out the soles of my boots hunting ’em down.”
“My fault. Rumours were flying, saying whoever attacked Crabtree must have been crazy and might attack anyone, so I told them to patrol the place.”