Chapter 22
Daisy had her eyes shut and her fingers in her ears. She had stopped screaming, but her own screams still echoed in her ears.
An urgent voice close beside her penetrated: “Mrs. Fletcher, it’s Devereux. Your husband asked me to help you.” She lowered her hands as the captain continued. “You can’t see anything from here, but you needn’t open your eyes. I’m taking you to the King’s House.”
She produced a sort of gulp, hoping he’d interpret it as thanks and consent. He put his arm around her waist and led her forward.
Their footsteps crunched on gravel, and then they were on grass again.
Sure now that whatever had happened on the steps was out of sight, Daisy opened her eyes.
The sun still shone down on the green and pigeons in iridescent spring finery bowed and cooed to one another under the sceptical gaze of a pair of ravens.
“I’m all right,” she said. “I think.”
He took his arm away but offered it for her to lean on. After a couple of wobbly steps, she was grateful to accept.
By the time they reached the King’s House, the front door was open. Fay and Brenda surged out.
“Mrs. Fletcher, you’re pale as a ghost.”
“What’s going on?”
“Don’t ask,” said the captain grimly. “Take Mrs. Fletcher into the house, and don’t bombard her with questions. She’s had a ghastly shock. I must go and see what I can do to help the police.”
“We thought we heard gunfire.”
“Daddy’s having fits.”
“You will come back, won’t you, Dev?”
“And tell us all about it?”
“No. The Chief Inspector will no doubt report to General Carradine.” He turned on his heel and strode off before Daisy could thank him.
The girls supported her into the house, their solicitude expressed by their unprecedented silence.
After the captain’s command, they didn’t dare ask the questions that were hovering on their lips, and they simply couldn’t think of anything else to say.
In no time, Daisy was once again reclining on a sofa, swathed in a rug, and being swamped with hot, sweet tea.
This time, she gladly accepted Mrs. Tebbit’s prescription of a glass of brandy. It was midafternoon, not dawn, and she had had an even worse shock, she suspected, only she didn’t want to think about it.
“I don’t want to cause any difficulties,” she said, her voice tremulous despite her effort to speak firmly, “but I’d like to go home.”
“I don’t think you should be alone,” Miss Tebbit suggested with a questioning glance at her mother.
“Certainly not. But I do believe you’ll feel better, my dear Mrs. Fletcher, if you get clear away from this unhappy place. Myrtle, telephone Mrs. Germond at once and enquire whether she would be so kind as to go to the Fletchers’ house and await Mrs. Fletcher’s arrival.”
Miss Tebbit scurried off and Mrs. Tebbit turned to the girls. “If Mrs. Germond is available, you two must go to your father and requisition—I believe that is the proper military term, though it sounds more like a noun than a verb to me—yes, you must requisition the motor-car.”
“We will, Aunt Alice.”
“And we’ll go with you, Mrs. Fletcher.”
“To keep you company on the way home.”
“Unless you’d rather not.”
“I will say this for Arthur: He’s not mean about the use of the motor-car. Or his wine. Do have another brandy, my dear.”
Sip by sip, the whole generous tot had disappeared. Daisy decided she felt much the better for it, but, recalling a certain disgraceful episode in her past, she didn’t care to risk another. Though that had been whisky she’d drunk by mistake, and perhaps brandy . . . No, better not.
A few minutes later, Miss Tebbit trotted back, looking flustered.
“Well?” her mother demanded. “Don’t tell me Melanie Germond refused. She’s a kind soul, even if her husband is a bank manager.”
“So was Alec’s father.” Quite irrelevant, Daisy thought. It must be the brandy speaking. She’d never known Alec’s father, but his mother certainly couldn’t be described as a kind soul.
“I wonder if that’s why I have in general a low opinion of bank managers’ wives,” said Mrs. Tebbit outrageously. “Come, Myrtle, what did she say?”
“Oh dear! Mrs. Prasad was taking tea with her when she was called to the telephone. She told her all about it—”
“ She? Her? It?”
“Mrs. Germond asked me to hold the line while she told Mrs. Prasad about Mrs. Fletcher. And Mrs. Prasad insists on coming to fetch Mrs. Fletcher. I couldn’t stop her, Mother.”
“Ninny,” Mrs. Tebbit said dispassionately. “Mrs. Prasad is a close friend of yours, is she not, Mrs. Fletcher?”
“Oh yes! Is she on her way? I must go out to the Middle Tower.”
“In your condition? Most inadvisable. Brenda, Fay, you will go to your father and tell him I say he’s to give instructions that Mrs. Prasad’s motor-car is to be admitted to the Tower and to leave again with Mrs. Fletcher aboard.”
A few minutes later, the front doorbell rang and a maid came in to announce that Detective Sergeant Tring would like a word with Mrs. Fletcher.
“Certainly not!” said Mrs. Tebbit. “How can he think to trouble you at such a time!”
“Oh, but I must see him.” Daisy started to struggle up from the sofa. “I ought to have thought . . . They’ll need to know what I . . .” Her voice faded, but she knew she had to tell what she had seen and heard. Which meant thinking about it—
“Stay there,” the old lady commanded. “If you must, you must. The sergeant may come in.” The Tebbits sat up straighter and looked at the door with interest. When Tom’s bulk appeared in the doorway, Mrs. Tebbit said firmly, “Sergeant, I will not have you bullying Mrs. Fletcher.”
Brenda and Fay returned just in time to overhear her and intervene.
“It’s all right, Aunt Alice,” said Brenda.
“Mr. Tring is a friend of Mrs. Fletcher’s,” Fay explained.
“Will you tell us what’s happening, Mr. Tring?”
“Please!”
“I’m afraid not, ladies. No doubt you’ll find out in due course. I must speak to Mrs. Fletcher alone.”
“Oh Tom!” Daisy said, holding out both hands, and she burst into tears.
He crossed the room with his, swift, surprisingly light tread, engulfed her hands in his, and pressed them gently.
“You’d better stay here, then, I suppose,” grumbled Mrs. Tebbit, levering herself out of her chair. She led the way out.
Tom checked that the door was shut, then pulled up a chair beside Daisy and handed her a handkerchief. Like Alec, he always carried a spare for weeping witnesses and sobbing suspects. “The Chief said to tell you he’s sorry he can’t come right now, but he’s got his hands full.”
“I’m sure he has.” Daisy blew her nose. “I don’t want to know—not yet—what happened after . . . after I closed my eyes, but I’ll tell you what I can.”
“Can’t ask for more, Mrs. Fletcher.” He took out his notebook.
“I was sitting on a bench there at the top of Tower Green with Dr. Macleod. He was talking quite wildly—I gathered he’d been having nightmares about doctoring in Flanders. He was desperate to escape from the army. I was so sorry for him, though he was a bit unnerving, too.”
“Ah,” said Tom inscrutably.
“He said he had put together a stake big enough for a winning bet to let him buy a practice. And there was something about hedging his bets. It was about then that I noticed Rumford coming out of his house. He looked around, seeming somehow confused, I thought. I don’t know if he recognized the doctor at that distance, but anyway, he saw us and started up the slope towards us at a sort of clumsy jog-trot.
” Daisy tried to put off the bit she didn’t want to remember.
“So I suppose he must have recognized Dr. Macleod, or he would have walked, wouldn’t he? ”
“I dare say.”
“He was carrying his . . . his axe. The ceremonial one, like the yeomen’s partizans.
And he was bellowing as he came. He looked like a bear, but he sounded more like a bull.
When he got closer, I heard him shout. .
. .” She frowned, trying to recall the exact words.
“He shouted, ‘You took it, you . . . something something . . . . You had my keys!’ ”
“Ah!” said Tom, this time with an air of enlightenment. Daisy was glad to have helped, though she hadn’t the foggiest idea how. “Those are Rumford’s exact words?”
“I think so. Except for the ‘something something,’ ” Daisy said primly. The occasional blast might pass her lips, or even, under extreme stress, a damn, but she wasn’t prepared to utter Rumford’s expletives, even under the influence of brandy, even to Tom.
“Ah well, I expect we can do without them.” His eyes twinkled and his moustache failed to hide his grin, but it was momentary. “Did you get the impression Macleod had been saving up bit by bit till he had enough for his stake?”
“Umm . . . not really. Everyone said he was a gambler, so I assumed he’d recently won a lot. It wasn’t anything he said, more the way he said it, the excitement of a sudden win, not the reward of patience, if you see what I mean?”
“I think so. I’m afraid I have to ask you what came next.”
Shutting her eyes only made the picture more vivid, so she opened them again. “Rumford swung at Dr. Macleod with the axe, and the doctor ran away. Rumford ran after him. I . . . I didn’t see how I could stop him—”
“Thank God you didn’t try!”
“So I just yelled for help for all I was worth. I saw the sentry, the one from the King’s House, run across to the wall. After that, I stopped watching. I heard . . . he fired, didn’t he?”
“Both he and the Guard House sentry.”
“And?”
“They stopped Rumford in his tracks.” Tom pocketed his notebook and took her hand. “It was too late for the doctor.”
Daisy forced back tears. “Poor man. He was so unhappy, but so hopeful for the future.”
“Mrs. Fletcher, I’m going to tell you something because I think it’ll maybe make it a bit easier to come to terms with what’s happened. I didn’t ought to tell, and I’d appreciate it if you’d keep quiet about it.”
“The Chief shall never know you told me, I promise. Or anyone else.” He’d already helped alleviate the ghastliness by whetting her curiosity. “What is it?”