Chapter Eight
EIGHT
Kesin turned off the High Street at the Cross Keys, an ancient half-timbered building with an overhanging first floor, where Daisy had often taken Belinda for lunch or high tea.
She would have liked to stay there, but Sakari preferred the larger and grander Rose and Crown, in the Market Place.
As far as age was concerned there wasn’t much between them, the Cross Keys being fourteenth century and the Rose and Crown fifteenth.
The latter’s flat three-story facade was plastered over and painted white, however.
To Daisy’s eye, it might be grander but it lacked the older inn’s charm.
King Street was brightened by window boxes overflowing—inevitably—with red geraniums and blue lobelia.
The Rose and Crown was straight ahead, half hidden by the projecting upper stories of another half-timbered building, these a fake frontage added by the Victorians, for inscrutable Victorian reasons, to the Georgian Town Hall—or so Sakari’s guidebook had informed them.
The Market Place opened out on their left. It was a market day, the square full of stalls selling farm produce and all sorts of second-hand goods. Crowds of shoppers swirled about the Victorian drinking fountain in the centre.
Kesin edged the car forwards, saying something in Hindi. Sakari answered in the same language.
There was no room to park in front of the hotel, but the chauffeur paused for long enough to let the ladies out. As they went up the steps to the entrance, he turned into a narrow alley, running along the side of the building, with a sign pointing to the Rose and Crown Yard.
“He will unload our bags,” said Sakari, “and then go to the school to await the girls.” She pushed through the door.
The interior of the hotel had been modernised—just as well when it came to bathrooms, Daisy admitted—but the bedroom to which she was shown had an uneven floor to proclaim its age.
Her window looked over the market. After unpacking and putting away her clothes in the wardrobe, she washed her face and hands and brushed her shingled curls.
Then she leant against the sill, watching the bustle below, until she heard a knock on the door.
“Come in!”
Sakari came in, with Melanie following. “It is nearly one o’clock. Kesin will arrive with the children at any moment. Are you ready to go downstairs?”
They met the girls in the lobby. Belinda, skinny as ever but pink-cheeked and healthy, appeared to have grown at least an inch in the six weeks since Daisy last saw her. She gave Daisy a hug, but after politely greeting Sakari and Melanie, her first words were: “Daddy couldn’t come?”
“No, darling. He came home very late last night and went off again very early this morning.”
“Poor Daddy! But you’re staying till tomorrow?”
“Yes. We’re all staying to take you out to tea tomorrow. We’ll have lunch together and the whole afternoon.”
“Wizard!”
“Daddy sent you some chocolate peppermint creams.”
“Oh, goody!”
“They’re up in my room, and they’d better stay there until you’ve finished with your racing. You can have them after tea.”
“All right. How are the twins? I miss them.”
Daisy told her about her brother and sister’s latest brilliant feats as they all went into the hotel restaurant.
All too soon, it was time to drive up the hill to the school, so that the girls could change into gym bloomers for their races. Daisy had always disliked participating in sports at school, and she was not much keener on watching them, but she did her best to share Bel’s enthusiasm.
At the top of the High Street, they passed the War Memorial.
It reminded Daisy of her vague hunch that Alec’s case might somehow be connected with the War.
A faded wreath was propped against the base.
Next to it, a sad little bunch of drooping scarlet poppies, half their petals already fallen, was proof that the pain of loss was still acute.
But … murder? Three murders? More particularly, those three murders? Which of the doubtless myriad injustices of wartime could have led to such brutal revenge after so many years?
Daisy wondered whether Alec was following up the possibility, then dismissed the thought as the car turned into the school drive.
A few other motor-cars were parked at the side, and a couple of station taxis were disgorging passengers near the main entrance, at the foot of the central tower.
The red brick building was massive, but its varied facade and roofline, many windows, and a few trees prevented an oppressive, institutional appearance.
The gravel drive curved round a close-mown lawn.
Between the lawn and the street grew a copper-beech hedge and a belt of trees, fresh spring-green leaves contrasting with dark evergreens, including a huge pine.
A bed of crimson peonies, now fading to pink, dropped petals on the dark earth beneath—reminiscent of the poppies at the War Memorial.
“I wrote a poem about the peonies for English, Mummy,” Belinda announced. “Mr. Pencote said it wasn’t bad, for my age. I got an A.”
“Well done. You must read it to me sometime.”
“It’s quite short. I can recite it.”
“Not now, Bel,” said Deva firmly, as Kesin pulled up behind the taxis. “We must run.”
“We have to run to put on running togs so that we can run races,” Lizzie said. She was the quietest of the trio but she wasn’t going to turn out half such a prim and proper lady as her mother, Daisy thought with a smile.
All three giggled as they bounced out of the car and dashed off towards the pupils’ entrance at the girls’ end.
The visitors’ entrance stood open. On the doorstep, parents were greeted by a senior boy in a school blazer and tie. He directed one of a cluster of juniors to escort each group of new arrivals to the playing fields.
Folding chairs had been set out in a row along the first hundred yards of the quarter-mile circular track. In the middle of the circle was the cricket pitch.
“Thank goodness we don’t have to sit through a game of cricket!” Daisy exclaimed as they sat down. “It was bad enough having to play it at school.”
“Robert took me to Lords’ once,” confessed Melanie. “I fell asleep right there in the stands and disgraced him. Never again!”
“The Marylebone Cricket Club is to tour India in the autumn,” said Sakari. “I shall keep an eye on the scores in the newspaper, but I must admit that I have never understood the finer points of the game.”
“I’m sure you can find a lecture course to enlighten you,” Daisy suggested, laughing, “if you’re sufficiently interested.”
“I am not,” Sakari affirmed. “Now, explain to me what we are to see today. I have never attended a sports day before.”
Daisy and Melanie explained—or tried to explain—sprints versus long-distance races and hurdles, laps and heats and relays, and the house system, which pitted Lister, Mennell, and Tuke against one another.
Since the three “houses” were purely hypothetical, with no relation to bricks and mortar, Sakari wore a slightly befuddled look when the headmistress, Miss Priestman, came over to say hello.
She introduced the games mistress, Miss Bascombe, whom none of them had met before as she had joined the staff at the beginning of the summer term, when her predecessor left to get married.
Miss Priestman moved on. Miss Bascombe was a hefty but pretty-faced young woman in a tennis dress, clutching a sheaf of papers.
She said a few encouraging words in a doubtful tone about Belinda and Deva’s athletic abilities.
With more enthusiasm, she turned to Melanie, but Lizzie’s prowess was destined to remain unsung.
“Miss Bascombe!” The man who hailed her was even heftier, with overdeveloped muscles and a stentorian voice to match.
Dressed in shorts and singlet, he had a toothbrush moustache and hair clipped so short it bristled like a nailbrush.
“I want a word with you about the ridiculous way you’ve scheduled the races.
I can’t have my chaps sitting about getting chilled while your little girls toddle along the track.
” He waved a matching sheaf of papers at her.
“If he’d helped me work out the schedule…” Miss Bascombe muttered resentfully. “Excuse me, Mrs. Germond. Coming, Mr. Harriman.” She stalked off.
“A mistake, I fear,” said a soft voice behind Daisy. Glancing back, she recognised the headmaster, Mr. Rowntree.
“The Committee had little choice,” the man with him pointed out, sounding harassed. “Since the War we’ve had few applicants to be games master, and as you know very well, none of the Quaker applicants has been fit enough to fill the position adequately.”
“I know. But still, an ex-sergeant major! I hate to say it, but Harriman has turned out to be something of a bully. It’s a great pity…” They moved on and Daisy heard no more.
The girls came up just then. They had changed their shoes for canvas plimsolls, but they were wearing heavy, baggy serge bloomers and blouses with sailor collars and floppy bows.
It was definitely not a convenient costume for running, though better than skirts.
At least all the girls were at the same disadvantage, but it was just as well they didn’t have to compete against the boys, who wore shorts and singlets like Mr. Harriman’s. They sat down on the grass.
Kesin turned up bearing three large green silk umbrellas.
Bowing, he handed one each to Daisy and Melanie, and then opened the third and stood behind his mistress, holding it over her head to shade her from the sun.
The day was growing quite warm, but so far Daisy was enjoying it.
The brim of her hat kept the direct rays off her nose, reducing—she hoped—the threat of freckles.
“I hope the children won’t suffer from sun-stroke, running on a day like this,” said Melanie anxiously.
“Oh, Mummy!” Lizzie protested. “We’ll be perfectly all right. It’s running in the cold and wet that’s horrid.”