Chapter 3
THREE
With all its lamps lighted, a heavy curtain drawn across the front door to keep out draughts, and the fire built up, the hall was more cheerful and a few degrees warmer than on Daisy’s arrival.
Coming down the stairs, she was surprised to see, hanging over the mantelpiece, what appeared to be the skull of a Highland bull.
Or did the cows also have those huge, wide-spread horns?
In any case, it was an odd sight where a heavily antlered red deer buck would be unremarkable—stuffed, not skeletal.
Perhaps Mr. Birtwhistle had gone shooting in the Highlands and bagged a cow by mistake. In that case, the trophy showed an ability to laugh at himself. Did he write humorous novels, ironic, droll, witty, or facetious?
Somehow funny fiction didn’t chime in with Sybil’s sense of foreboding. Daisy could imagine, though, how working constantly with someone else’s sense of humour might destroy one’s own.
Sybil came to meet her at the foot of the stairs.
Behind her, three men stood up: Ilkton, impeccable but for the Woolworths pearl; a younger man, equally tall, lean, with wavy, very dark hair; and a slender youth whose crimson velvet smoking jacket, silk cravat in a red-and-blue paisley pattern, wispy moustache, and rather long hair, fair and untidy, suggested artistic leanings.
Watercolours or poetry, Daisy surmised. Mrs. Birtwhistle and Myra were seated by the fireplace.
“Daisy,” said Sybil, “I’m so sorry I wasn’t available when you got here. When I’m in the throes of … typing, I get muddled if I’m interrupted, so there’s a rule that no one is to disturb me. I forgot to tell people that it didn’t apply when you arrived.”
“Do you have trouble reading your own shorthand if you don’t transcribe it at once? I do. But no, you couldn’t keep a job like yours if you were as hopeless as I am.”
“No, it’s not that. Have you met everyone?”
It struck Daisy that she was still being evasive about her employer’s literary endeavours.
Was it possible Lucy had been right? If Mr. Birtwhistle was indeed writing obscene stories, or ribald, combining raciness with humour, Sybil might have just found out that she could be prosecuted for merely typing them.
Surely, though, she wouldn’t have stayed for years in such a job, however badly she needed to earn her own living.
As these thoughts crossed Daisy’s mind, she said, “I met Mrs. Birtwhistle, in passing. And Miss Olney and Mr. Ilkton. Miss Birtwhistle, too, but she’s not here.” Unless she was lurking in some dim recess. “And an aged sheepdog, though we weren’t introduced.”
“Scurry. Not very appropriate now he’s growing old. Retired from the farm, of course.”
“He’s bagged the hearth rug, I see.” The dog had raised his head and looked round at the sound of his name. Realising he wasn’t being summoned, he sank back into paw-twitching dreams of rabbits, or of sheep.
Sybil smiled. “His favourite spot at this time of year.”
They crossed the room to the group by the fireplace. Sybil introduced the black-haired, slightly shabby Neil Carey, who turned out to have sparkling-blue Irish eyes. The artistic young man turned out to be the son of the house, Simon Birtwhistle.
“For God’s sake, call me Simon,” he said. His voice had nothing of his mother’s or his aunt’s accents. “I can’t abide that horrible mouthful.”
“Don’t blaspheme,” said his mother in fond reproach. “Simon is writing a literary novel, Mrs. Fletcher. The younger generation seems to find it necessary to use bad language, I can’t think why. I’m not referring to your work, of course. I read your articles with a great deal of pleasure.”
“Thank you,” said Daisy. Bang went that theory. Surely Mrs. Birtwhistle couldn’t remain in ignorance of the content of her husband’s books, and he could hardly produce salacious stuff without using “bad”—if not blasphemous—language.
“So you also write, Mrs. Fletcher?” asked Carey.
“Yes, mostly magazine articles about places and family history, that sort of thing. Someday I’d like to try my hand at a novel, but I never seem to find the time to settle down to it.
I have toddler twins, you see, as well as an older daughter.
There are too many interruptions. Do you find that a problem, Simon? ”
“Certainly. One needs sustained periods of quiet thought to produce anything of literary value.”
Daisy laughed. “I don’t expect to produce anything of literary value. Something more on the lines of detective fiction.”
“Oh, that rub—” Simon caught his mother’s admonishing eye and coughed. “That kind of stuff. Carey has written a brilliant play that was put on in Dublin.”
“For the one night, before the censor was after closing it down,” the Irishman drawled, grinning. “Sure our government have set up what they call the Committee on Evil Literature.”
“You’re all too clever for me,” said Ilkton. “I don’t pretend to be able to put together more than a bread-and-butter letter.”
“But you dance divinely, darling,” Myra assured him. “Simon has two left feet, when he can be persuaded to take to the floor. He can’t hit a ball, either, unlike Walter.”
“You play cricket, Mr. Ilkton?” Daisy asked, more than willing to abandon the subject of writing, which seemed to be making Sybil uncomfortable.
“I got my Blue,” he said modestly. If he really could barely string two words together, it said a good deal about the admission standards at Oxford and Cambridge colleges, which were ruled as much by family connections as by academic brilliance.
“And I played a couple of years for Warwickshire after the War. Not professionally, of course. It’s just the occasional village green match for me nowadays, though. Tennis is more my game these days.”
“Walter and I were partnered at tennis. That’s how we met.”
Daisy could picture him being athletic on the cricket pitch or tennis court; impossible, though, to imagine him getting filthy and bruised playing Rugby, like Lucy’s husband, Lord Gerald Bincombe, let alone galloping across muddy fields after a fox, or tramping the moors with a gun on his shoulder.
He was the man-about-town type, who expected urban amenities on his forays into the country.
He probably had an elder brother who had inherited or would inherit the hunting and shooting.
Ilkton? No, she didn’t know any Ilktons.
“We can’t all be intellectuals,” Simon pronounced indulgently. “Carey has already nearly finished another play. It’s historical and sure to be banned by the Lord Chamberlain.” He spoke with as much pride as if this was admirable and he’d written it himself.
“And by the Committee on Evil Literature? Dare I ask what it’s about, Mr. Carey?”
“Queen Anne and the Duchess of Marlborough.” His blue eyes glinted.
Daisy couldn’t remember anything about Queen Anne except that she was dead, which seemed too obvious to be notable.
Queen Anne’s lace, she thought, but that was a type of cow parsley and hardly relevant.
And there was a favourite mnemonic of her history teacher: Britain Relied On Marlborough, the initials of which were the initials of battles won by the Duke of Marlborough, but the names of the battles, what the war was about, and whom Britain was fighting escaped her.
Probably the French; it usually was. Or the Irish?
“Something to do with Ireland? Oh, William of Orange was her brother-in-law, wasn’t he? Orangemen!”
“William of Orange put the Irish—” Ilkton stopped as Mrs. Birtwhistle held up her hand.
“Not now, if you please. Irish politics has its place, no doubt, but this is not it. Milk and sugar, Mrs. Fletcher?”
The dog, in response to something apparent only to him, plodded to the door to the west wing and stood there till Simon opened it for him. “Uncle Norman must have come in,” he said with a laugh. “Scurry always knows.”
Tea proceeded on its customary course. After an unsatisfactory lunch in a tea-shop somewhere south of Derby, Daisy was glad to see there was plenty to eat, from bread and butter and watercress sandwiches to Mrs. Birtwhistle’s sponge cake, which turned out to be excellent.
If she was the sole mistress of the kitchen, there was no danger of starvation.
Of Sybil’s “troubled atmosphere” Daisy detected little, apart from occasional sniping between Simon, representing the intellectual party, and his cousin Myra, whose outlook on life was frivolous.
These potshots were firmly repressed by Mrs. Birtwhistle before they could escalate into a squabble.
She was less successful in quashing Carey and Ilkton, but they were more successful at concealing animosity with banter—Ilkton urbane, Carey volubly Irish.
Carey was Ilkton’s rival for Myra’s favour, Daisy suspected. Myra flirted happily with both.
Miss Birtwhistle trudged into the hall at some point and accepted a cup of tea, though she ate nothing.
Mr. Birtwhistle in his sickbed was not mentioned, except for a brief reference to the doctor’s expected visit later that evening.
Sybil was taciturn. Daisy had every intention of cornering her after tea and finding out just what she had been so hot and bothered about.
Refusing a third cup of tea and a second slice of cake, Daisy gave Sybil a Look with a capital L.
Sybil got the message. “If you’ll excuse us, Ruby,” she said, “I’ll drag Daisy away for a chat.
We’ll go to my office, Daisy. I have a sitting room upstairs—Monica and I occupy the old nurseries, over this hall—but the office is more convenient, and warmer, because I’ve had a fire all day. One can’t type with frozen fingers.”
Following her towards the right-hand passage, Daisy glanced back at the group by the fire. Mrs. Birtwhistle was gazing after them with a decidedly anxious expression. Odd! Perhaps, after all, there was something in Sybil’s forebodings.