Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
Daisy had led her three policemen up the extra staircase put in for Humphrey’s convenience. It took them up towards the front of the house to a landing just outside Ruby’s bedroom.
Feeling like a traitor to her kind hostess, Daisy opened the door and stood back. “Mrs. Birtwhistle’s room.”
Worrall went in and stood looking about him.
Tom stood on the threshold, blocking Daisy’s view, for a minute, then joined him.
Daisy and the uniformed constable stayed at the door, awaiting instructions.
The room, its walls white, was well-lit by windows in two walls.
Summer-sky blue curtains matched the bedspread.
The furniture was Arts-and-Crafts of the plainer sort, double bed, night tables, chest-of-drawers, wardrobe, and a couple of straight chairs.
A blue-and-beige rug covered part of the wood floor, picking up the colours of a couple of paintings of New Mexico scenery hanging on the walls.
“Mrs. Fletcher,” said Worrall, “what’s through there?” He gestured at a door in the north wall.
“Mrs. Birtwhistle’s sitting room. I think it used to be a dressing room.”
He went over, opened the door, and glanced in. “A desk,” he observed. “Well, you’re the great Scotland Yard expert, Mr. Tring. How would you go about the search?”
“Ah,” Tom ruminated. “It’s not a question of fingerprints at present, not till we find something that needs checking. Mr. Fletcher would likely say divide up the task so’s we’re each of us responsible for a part of it.”
“Do you want to take the desk?”
“Not me! I’m no great shakes at paperwork.”
“All right, I’ll do that. Wardrobe, chest-of-drawers, and bedside drawers for you. Mrs. Fletcher, would you mind keeping an eye on the corridor and letting me know if anyone tries to get into any of the rooms?”
“Isn’t the constable in the hall supposed to keep everyone together?”
“Yes, but there’s only one of him and quite a few of them. If someone claims to need to … er … visit the cloakroom and tries to sneak up—”
“Oh, of course. I’ll stand guard.”
“Thank you. Bagshaw,” he said to the constable, “all the usual places in here. Then come through to the other room.”
“It’s a medicine bottle we’re looking for, sir?”
“That’s right.”
“Inspector,” said Daisy, “I’ve just thought. You’re looking for a typical brown glass medicine bottle, right? But mightn’t the chloral have been transferred to some other container before it was brought to the farm?”
“You’ve got a point there, Mrs. Fletcher. Any small bottle that has no obvious purpose, I suppose. Even if it’s been washed out, the cork or stopper might still have traces of chloral.”
Daisy watched the swift but meticulous search, with an occasional glance along the passage, though she was sure she’d hear if anyone came up.
PC Bagshaw stripped the bed, including taking pillowcases off the pillows, swept his hand under the mattress from both sides, and made it up again with a speed and neatness that any housemaid might do well to emulate.
He lay full length on the floor to peer under the bed, climbed on a chair to look on top of the wardrobe, and pulled the chest away from the wall in case anything had been slipped down the back.
Then he rolled up the rug. He tested the end of every plank with his foot, presumably to make sure none were loose enough to make a hiding place.
He took a sheet of newspaper from his pocket and emptied the wastepaper basket onto it, poked through the ashes in the fireplace, and even looked behind the pictures.
Meanwhile, Tom went through every pocket of every garment in the wardrobe, pushing aside the hangers to check behind them, even pulling the two drawers at the bottom all the way out to look into the cavity.
Daisy was particularly impressed by the care he took to return everything to as near its original state as possible.
He gave the bedside tables the same treatment, and flipped through the three books on top of one of them.
If anything were hidden anywhere in the room, they would find it, Daisy reckoned. What “it” might be, other than the bottle that had held the chloral, she wasn’t certain. No one could hide a bottle between the pages of a book or behind a painting.
“I’m about done, Sergeant,” said Bagshaw. “Need any help?”
“No, thanks,” said Tom. “You can go next door.” He turned to the chest-of-drawers, now back against the wall.
In the top left drawer, beneath a pile of undies, he found a bulging manilla envelope.
“Not Ruby!” Daisy exclaimed, shocked.
Tom opened the unsealed envelope and took out a thick wad of papers.
He shook his head benignly. “Fivers. Must have a couple of hundred quid here. You wouldn’t believe how many women keep a cache of cash or jewellery in their lang-jerry drawer.
” Tom had a notable vocabulary, but French pronunciation was beyond him.
“I hope you don’t, Mrs. Fletcher. It’s the first place a burglar looks. ”
“So Alec told me.”
A twitch of Tom’s moustache gave away his grin. “You used to.”
“Just a few pounds, for emergencies. No one ever found it. But then, we never had a burglary.”
“And I hope you never do.” He tucked the notes back into the envelope and returned it to the bottom of the drawer.
As he started to fold Ruby’s plain cotton undies, Daisy offered, “Would you like me to do that?”
“You’re s’posed to be watching the hallway, Mrs. Fletcher.”
“Oh, yes.” Daisy turned and stared along the hall. “I have been, honestly.”
“I’ll tell you what, I’ll put one of these chairs out there for you to sit on while we do the rest of the rooms.”
“Thank you,” she said meekly.
“If you want to leave before we’re done, just let DI Worrall know. That Bagshaw can take care of it. Not but what he’s a fair hand at a search,” Tom conceded, setting down a bentwood chair facing the length of the corridor. Returning to work, he closed the door behind him.
Daisy could hear the sounds of Tom finishing off the chest-of-drawers and going through to Ruby’s sitting room, from which came voices and the clomp of Bagshaw’s boots. After a couple of minutes, the door to the corridor opened and Tom and Bagshaw came out.
“Enough stuff in that desk to keep the inspector busy for a while yet,” Tom said to Daisy. “Whose is the next room?”
“Simon’s, I’m pretty sure. The victim’s son.”
“Ah,” said Tom.
“He’s a budding author, so you may find a lot of papers in there.”
“Ah,” said Tom with a note of gloom.
He and Bagshaw disappeared into the room. Daisy sat on her chair, which grew harder and harder as she grew more and more bored with watching an empty passage. The only movement was a couple of crows flapping past the nearest window and a pigeon strutting on the bit of roof within her view.
She was tempted to tell Worrall she was ready to abandon her post. However, in the past she had been forbidden to take part in enough investigations to appreciate being given a task at least potentially useful.
Admittedly, the prohibitions had rarely had much effect on her subsequent involvement. Still, it was nice to be asked.
What would she do if someone did come up?
Simon might turn tail if warned that the police were in his room.
If not, he could go in and try arguing with Tom Tring.
Myra, Daisy thought she could deal with.
But if Lorna appeared … Well, Lorna was not the sort of person one would choose to try to dissuade from a course of action she had set her mind on.
The other constable was watching them, she reminded herself. And if Lorna did escape him, Daisy could always call for help.
In fact, Worrall had instructed her to inform him, not to deal with an intrusion herself.
No doubt he’d be annoyed if she sent Simon or Myra back downstairs with a flea in his or her ear.
She would have liked to be able to tell Alec she’d been really helpful, but come to think of it, Worrall might well want to question an interloper on the spot.
The only person who appeared was Worrall himself, coming out of Ruby’s sitting room.
“The others are still next door, in Simon’s room,” she told him.
“No one…?”
“Not a soul.”
He thanked her and joined the others. A few minutes later they all came out. If they had found anything incriminating, they hid it well.
“The next is Myra’s,” Daisy said.
The monotony continued. No one came up Humphrey’s stairs. No one came through the door from the hall stairs. The chair turned into an instrument of torture. Daisy decided Worrall wouldn’t mind if she strolled back and forth for a while.
Myra’s room didn’t take them very long. Daisy was halfway along the passage when they came out.
“Just marching up and down on sentry-duty,” she explained. “The end room is Lorna’s. Miss Birtwhistle.”
“And the three doors in the opposite wall?” Worrall asked.
“They open into the old house. If it’s the same layout as the west wing, the one at the end is the bathroom, then the lav, and this one is Sybil’s—Mrs. Sutherby’s—bedroom and sitting room. They used to be the nurseries and before that, before the wings were built, the main bedrooms.”
“Miss Birtwhistle’s first,” the inspector decided.
Daisy couldn’t help herself—she followed them and glanced through the doorway as they trooped in. She had seen Lorna’s bedroom only in the middle of the night, by candlelight. By daylight, it looked just as drab but the plain iron bedstead had a spring mattress and a thick eiderdown.
Tom glanced back at her. The door closed as she hastily resumed her patrol.
When she returned to that end of the corridor, she noticed that the door was slightly ajar. The latch must not have caught. She could hear their voices. Stopping where she couldn’t possibly be seen, she listened.
“She’s been burning paper in the grate, Mr. Worrall,” said Bagshaw.
“Anything identifiable?”
“Naw. It’d crumble if you touched it.”
“What about the w.p.b.?”
“Just getting to it.”