Chapter 6
SIX
The dining room was furnished with heavy Victorian mahogany.
At the vast sideboard, Norman Birtwhistle stood carving a rosemary-scented leg of lamb, having apparently taken over the task from his reluctant nephew.
The aroma, together with walls painted a modern pale green somewhat relieved the gloom induced by large quantities of dark wood.
On the walls hung several Wild West paintings: a cowboy on a bucking bronco; a stern, sad-faced Indian chief; a vista of craggy mountains spreading behind a herd of cattle fording a stream—
“Oh, of course,” said Daisy, “it’s one of those American cattle you’ve got over the mantelpiece in the hall. I thought you must have been shooting, very badly, in the Highlands!”
Humphrey Birtwhistle laughed. “Yes, a Texas longhorn. And I didn’t shoot it.
” He sobered. “After a few years of drought, there were all too many to be found, though the longhorns did better than other stock. I hope you’ll sit beside me, Mrs. Fletcher, though I’m afraid I’d better not try to hold your chair for you. ”
With the host a sick man, formal procedure was obviously impossible—and they were, after all, in a farmhouse, not a mansion.
His own chair, at the head of the table, was managed for him by a solicitous Walter Ilkton.
He subsided limply, while Dr. Knox seated Daisy next to him and sat down beside her.
Ruby Birtwhistle had taken her place at the far end of the table.
Daisy noticed a round pill-box and a brown bottle by Birtwhistle’s water and wine glasses.
He saw the direction of her gaze and shook his head sadly. “Patent nostrums,” he said, and she laughed.
“Made from ‘the best butter.’”
“The very best butter. It wouldn’t surprise me. The good doctor has experimented with every conceivable drug in the pharmacopoeia. But we’re not going to discuss my health over dinner. Do you find time in your busy life to read as well as write, Mrs. Fletcher?”
“I do, though not as much as I’d like. I’m afraid I haven’t read any of Eli Hawke’s books. I’d like to borrow one this evening, if I may.”
“You may, naturally, but please don’t feel obliged to.”
“Not at all. Having seen a bit of Western America from above, I look forward to reading about it at ground level, so to speak. I can’t think why I never have.”
“Most readers of Wild West fiction are men, as are the writers, though B. M. Bower is a woman, I gather.”
Simon Birtwhistle interrupted. “A glass of wine, Mrs. Fletcher? It’s Bordeaux, red or white. Nothing special in the way of vintage, I’m afraid.”
“Red, please.” Daisy hoped the claret would be drinkable, but the sherry had not been a good omen—not that she cared much for even the best sherry.
Her palate had been somewhat refined by association with the Fletchers’ next-door neighbours, a family of very superior wine-merchants.
The Wild West and a sheep farm respectively were not likely places for Humphrey and Norman to have learned about wines, and Simon probably considered the subject effete.
Walter Ilkton, gravely playing wine waiter, brought her glass, along with a pink gin Simon had poured for his father. She took a sip. Not too bad. Before knowing the Jessups, she wouldn’t have thought twice about it. Sometimes ignorance was bliss.
Lorna and Myra passed plates of lamb, roast potatoes, carrots sprinkled with chopped chives, and cauliflower in white sauce. Gravy and mint sauce were handed up and down the table. Daisy assumed that a soup course was just too much trouble in the evenings, after the servants had left for the day.
Birtwhistle ate well. Daisy noticed Dr. Knox watching with approval. In fact, his patient was too occupied with his dinner to add more to the conversation than an odd word here and there. Daisy chatted with the doctor, beside her, and Sybil, sitting opposite.
They were divided from those at the other end of the table by Norman and Lorna, both consuming their dinners in morose silence.
Daisy couldn’t see Simon, who was on her side of the table; not hearing his voice she assumed he was as taciturn as his uncle and aunt.
From beyond them, she caught occasional gusts of laughter from Myra and her two admirers.
Myra was in high spirits. The two men indulged her in persiflage, though Ilkton’s voice had a slight edge that hinted at rivalry between them.
Was Myra aware that they were competing for her favour, Daisy wondered? Perhaps she found it exciting, but she was young enough to be simply enjoying the attention.
When her uncle originally fell ill, she couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen.
The notion that she had, at that age, thought up a scheme to keep him under the weather was ridiculous.
To judge by what Daisy had seen of her, she wouldn’t even have realised it might be to her advantage.
If someone had been systematically poisoning Birtwhistle for three years, it wasn’t Myra.
What about Simon? He’d have been eighteen, and he was much brighter than his cousin, whatever one’s opinion of his literary ambitions. Still, his character seemed more inclined to angry outbursts than to a long, insidious campaign to undermine his father’s competence.
Daisy was about to cross them both off her mental list when she remembered that Alec always required absolute proof of innocence before eliminating a suspect.
She moved them to the bottom instead. Still, she was fairly sure that either the whole business was a figment of Sybil’s imagination, or someone else was responsible.
She started to consider alternative possibilities but lost the thread when Knox said, “Don’t you agree, Mrs. Fletcher?” and she was forced to confess her thoughts had been wandering.
“An occupational hazard with writers,” commented Birtwhistle. He followed his last bite of lamb with the last drop of gin in his glass.
Daisy regretfully refused a second helping of lamb. She asked Norman if it were from the Birtwhistle farms. He grunted what she took for an affirmative, so she told him it was simply delicious.
The compliment cut no ice with Norman. He produced another surly grunt and gave her a look as if he suspected her of trying to turn him up sweet.
Which she was. It was going to be very difficult to do any investigating if people refused to talk to her. Not that—strictly speaking—she was investigating. She wasn’t even sure that a crime was being committed. All the same, Alec would be furious if he knew what she was up to.
Comfort came in the form of apple tart with cream.
“Apples from our orchard,” Norman told her. He looked and sounded truculent. “Cream from our Jerseys. And I grew those potatoes and cauliflower and carrots, too.” Was he trying to prove to her that he didn’t live off his brother’s earnings? And if so, why?
“Norman is a marvel,” said Ruby. “He provides almost all our farm stuff, fruit, vegetables, milk, eggs, meat.”
“There’s still shopping to be done,” Lorna pointed out sharply. “I need to go into Matlock tomorrow.”
“I’ll drive you,” Ruby offered. “I need a couple of things, and we’ll share the household shopping. Mrs. Fletcher, Matlock is rather a beautiful little town and Tuesday is market day. I wonder whether you’d like to go with us, if it’s fine.”
“I’d love to, only … Will you be working, Sybil, or can you spare the morning for an outing?”
“I’d better work in the morning. If I don’t get going first thing, it’s much harder later. If it goes well, I’ll take a couple of hours off in the afternoon.”
“Then I’d love to go with you, Mrs. Birtwhistle,” Daisy said quickly.
Sybil wasn’t much good as a conspirator.
The others must be wondering why she had invited Daisy if she had no time to spend with her.
And the way she had phrased her explanation made her work sound much more like a creative endeavour than mere transcribing of someone else’s words.
“I don’t know this part of the country at all. ”
“Let’s all go,” Myra suggested with enthusiasm. “Walter, you could visit your great-uncle at the Hydro.”
“Cousin. Twice removed.”
“Much too complicated! Your elderly relative. If you drive us up that frightful hill, I can show Mrs. Fletcher the view from the top. It’s simply marvellous, Mrs. Fletcher.
Then while Walter does his duty, we’ll walk down.
There’s a cable tram but I’m certain the cable will snap one of these days and the tram will slide down Bank Road and crash in Crown Square, or even go on down into the river. ”
“How alarming!”
“So it’s much better if Walter drives us up. You’ll come, of course, Neil? What about you, Simon? Do come. It’ll be such fun if there’s lots of us!”
“Oh, all right,” said Simon.
“I’ll tell you what, Myra,” said Carey, “I’ll take you pillion on my motor-bike.”
“Much too dangerous!” Ruby Birtwhistle exclaimed.
Ilkton backed her up. “Those machines cause half the accidents on the roads.”
Neil Carey wasn’t having any of that. “In the narrow lanes round about here, with walls on each side, I’d a sight rather be on my Triumph than in your great Packard, boyo. Not to mention over the bridge.”
“Until you find your legs scraping the walls.”
“Oh no, you mustn’t, Myra,” her aunt insisted.
“I’ll borrow a pair of Uncle Norman’s dungarees. They’ll protect my legs. You’ll lend me a pair, won’t you, Uncle?” she coaxed.
“Happen I might.”
“My dear child, you can’t possibly walk round Matlock in your uncle’s gardening trousers!”
“Gosh, no!” Myra’s face was appalled.
Ilkton sighed. “We could take a change of clothes for you in the car. We could meet outside one of the hotels and you could pop in round the back way.”
“Too sweet of you, Walter.” She beamed at him. “Thanks. What a clever idea.”
Carey’s motor-bicycle versus Ilkton’s sweetness, cleverness, and all-round obligingness: honours even, Daisy decided.
“I still don’t like it,” said Ruby.
“Wasn’t I after bringing an extra helmet, Mrs. Birtwhistle,” Carey said. “It’ll protect her head and make her unrecognisable, both.”
“Well…”
“No speeding, I promise. And she can wear my leather leggings over her uncle’s dungarees.”
Ruby gave in, wisely. Daisy doubted she was able to stop Myra having her own way under any circumstances.
Birtwhistle seemed amused. “Just like Ruby when she was a girl,” he murmured to Daisy. “Headstrong—well, she ran away with an Englishman, didn’t she? You’d think they were mother and daughter.”
The last bite of apple tart eaten, Lorna got up and started to clear away the dishes. “Myra, if you’ve nothing better to do…”
Myra jumped up. “I was just coming.”
Ilkton hurried to help stack bowls, and Carey good-naturedly joined in.
“Can I help?” Daisy asked.
Simon, who had been saying something to Sybil, looked round. “No, Mrs. Fletcher, you stay put. I’m just going.”
“Before you disappear, Simon, I’ll have another pink gin,” said Birtwhistle.
“I don’t drink coffee, Mrs. Fletcher. Almost worse than the abominable hooch was the so-called coffee we brewed in cans over a camp-fire.
It put me off the stuff for life. As with whisky, now the very smell is enough to bring back the revolting taste.
A decent cup of tea wasn’t to be had for love nor money, either. ”
Daisy agreed. “It’s hard to get a good cup of tea anywhere in the country. Americans don’t seem to understand about the water having to be on the boil.”
“On the contrary. They associate tea with cold sea-water.” He chuckled, then seeing his brother’s perplexed face, explained, “In Boston Harbour, Norm. The American Revolution and all that.”
Norman grunted.
“We usually have coffee in here, Mrs. Fletcher,” Ruby said. “It makes things simpler. I made the coffee earlier. It just has to be carried in.”
Simon brought Birtwhistle’s drink. “Sorry, Mrs. Fletcher,” he said, “we don’t run to liqueurs, and the brandy’s nothing to write home about. I wouldn’t recommend it.”
“Strictly for medicinal purposes?”
“That’s about it. Ilkton tried it the first time he came to stay and he was horrified. He’s accustomed to the finest Armagnac. He even said next time he’d come prepared. If he has, he’s not sharing. I don’t expect you drink whisky, but if you’d like a gin or another glass of wine—”
“No, no thank you. Just coffee.”
Myra returned from the kitchen, followed by Ilkton carrying a tray of coffee things.
Daisy doubted that he was accustomed to such chores, travelling with his valet as he did.
His eagerness to please was further evidence of his devotion.
In fact Daisy was rather surprised that he hadn’t fought harder against Myra’s proposed ride on Carey’s motor-bike.
Perhaps he realised his cause wouldn’t suffer from her comparing its discomfort with the luxury of his own Packard.
Besides, if he was accustomed to seeing her in London, he must be accustomed to sharing her with any number of other admirers. Myra wasn’t ready to be tied down, and she would not appreciate any attempts to spoil her fun.
Ruby poured the coffee and the cups were passed from hand to hand round the table, followed by a jug of cream and bowl of sugar.
Birtwhistle finished his drink quickly. “You won’t mind if I take myself off now, Mrs. Fletcher?” he said, his articulation slightly slurred. “I’m beginning to run out of steam. Good-night, all.” He started to push himself up out of his chair.
Simon half-rose, but Dr. Knox beat him, jumping up to help his patient. Ruby Birtwhistle followed them from the dining room.
“Never could hold his drink,” Norman remarked snidely.
Sybil rounded on him. “That’s nonsense. He’s ill! And he hardly ever has more than one drink, anyway—rarely any at all.”
Norman relapsed into his usual sullen silence.
Coffee was drunk with a minimum of chit-chat, even Myra subdued. No one wanted refills.
“Your turn to wash up, Myra,” said Lorna.
“It ruins my hands!” complained Myra, spreading rose-pink varnished nails for everyone to admire.
“I’ll wash,” offered Ilkton. “You dry.”
“I’ll dry,” Carey declared.
“Oh, good, then I’ll only have to put away. Bring the tray, one of you.”
Myra waltzed off with great good cheer. Ilkton and Carey between them loaded the tray, with somewhat less good cheer. Then they stopped and stared at each other, each apparently willing the other to pick it up.
“Oh, for pity’s sake!” Simon exclaimed. “I’ll carry the damned thing. What you see in her I cannot fathom!”
Sheepishly, the others went after him.
“One thing’s for sure,” grumbled Lorna, “she won’t remember to come back and put away the place mats.”
As she went round the table gathering them up, Sybil and Daisy exchanged a guilty look and seized their chance to escape.