Chapter 28 #2
“In his lordship’s study, madam.” He didn’t add that Alec would like to see her.
Slightly peeved, she finished her coffee, excused herself, and went to find him anyway.
Seated at the desk, he was talking on the telephone, dictating a telegram by the sound of it.
He looked up when the door opened and a shade of irritation crossed his face at the sight of her, but he waved her to a chair.
To her disappointment, there was no bloodstained knife on the desk, nor anything that might conceal it.
“Repeat that, please, operator.” Alec listened, corrected a word, and added sternly, “Remember, this is police business. It is highly confidential.” Hanging up, he leant back wearily and ran his hand through his hair.
“I don’t know why I bother to tell her to shut up about it.
I imagine the whole household knows by now, and the village will by morning. ”
“I just hope we don’t have the press round our ears by morning.”
“Not till midday at the earliest, I should think.” He took a swig from a glass of pale amber liquid—whisky, no doubt.
“Truscott had better close the main gates. No doubt one or two of the most persistent will eventually find the footpaths, or conceivably arrive by water, but most will head for the pub and pick up what they can there. Which will be plenty.”
“Geraldine is pretty well-respected in the village, and they think Edgar is barmy but they like him. Not to mention Mother.”
“Of whom they are all scared to death.”
“So they may keep their mouths closed—unless the reporters think it’s a big enough story to start handing out bribes.”
“We can but hope.” Alec finished his whisky and looked into the delicate demitasse coffee cup that stood on a tray next to it.
“More coffee, darling?”
“I need a large mug of the stuff. I may be up most of the night. Ernest can bring me some when he comes back. I sent him to put in an appearance in the drawing room and then to fetch the papers from our room.”
“I hid them in your drawer, under your clothes.”
“First place a burglar would look, love, I’ve told you before. A footman shouldn’t have any trouble.”
Daisy wrinkled her nose at him. “You didn’t find the knife, I take it.”
“No. Unless it was immediately obvious, it was pretty hopeless searching at night, particularly as both torch batteries were failing. And as Ernest pointed out, it wouldn’t have taken a minute to run down to the backwater and chuck it in, or just dump it in the woods between the end of the laburnums and the backwater.
It’s all blackberry brambles and stinging nettles. ”
“Butterflies like nettles.”
“I daresay.”
“Another pointer to Frank, don’t you think? I mean, he’s the one who knows about the wood and the inlet. He’d know it would be easy to dispose of the weapon.”
“Unless Sam’s been in England prospecting the lie of the land. One of the cables I’ve got to send tonight. Or two or three. What was his ship’s name?”
“You should have let me take notes. Juliet?”
“Julianna, that’s it.” He reached for the phone. “I’ve sent another request for Tom and Piper, by the way.”
“Citing the attack on Vincent.”
“And the Chief Constable’s request for help. I’m hoping the night superintendent will send them by the first train, not wait for Crane to put his oar in in the morning. But I must make sure Sir Nigel went ahead and called in the Yard. Is it too late to ring him?”
“Shouldn’t think so.”
“Sir Nigel Wookleigh, police business,” Alec told the operator.
He was put through remarkably quickly. While he was talking to the Chief Constable, Ernest came in with the document case.
He set it on the desk and picked up the tray.
Quietly, Daisy asked him to bring Alec more coffee, in large quantities.
He bowed acknowledgement, once again the very proper footman, and went out.
“Yes, very shocking,” Alec was saying. “Thank you, sir. I appreciate your cooperation. Good night.”
“He’s already wired the Yard?” Daisy asked.
“Just a few minutes ago. The local super wasn’t keen and had to be persuaded.
He’s agreed to send a couple of constables at first light to search for the knife.
” He opened the case and took out a thin manilla envelope and a fat folder with a handwritten note clipped to it.
He gave Daisy a speculative look. “It would save a lot of time if you’d go through the police reports for me.
Frankly, I’m not expecting to learn much from them.
The Worcester police are quite capable of digging out anything of real significance and I can’t do anything about it till tomorrow anyway.
If you see anything even remotely promising, set it aside. ”
Opening the folder, Daisy groaned. “Third carbon copy. I need more light.” She moved to a chair with a reading light on a table beside it.
She didn’t start on them immediately. She watched Alec remove two sheets of handwritten paper from the envelope, scan them quickly, then go back and read carefully. He looked up.
“The preliminary medical report. Interesting, though not exactly helpful. Pardoe says there’s no external evidence of what killed Raymond.”
“He definitely wasn’t stabbed like the Empress of Austria?”
“No. Given the excess weight he was carrying, Pardoe suspects he had hardening of the arteries, leading to high blood pressure. A spike in blood pressure caused by a sudden shock such as his fall between the trams could have caused a stroke if he happened to have an aortic or intracranial aneurysm.”
“What’s an aneurysm?”
“A weak spot in the wall of a blood vessel. A spike in pressure could make it rupture.”
“Ugh!”
“If he had one. It’s all speculative.”
“And you’re always telling me not to speculate. Dr. Pardoe seems to be oblivious to that rule. Let me get this straight. Strictly within the realm of speculation, the fall caused a shock, and the shock caused a fatal stroke. But what caused the fall?”
“It’s possible that the stroke caused the fall in the first place. However, besides skinned knuckles and bruised knees, he had an odd bruise in the middle of his back, a small round bruise. Its appearance suggests a sudden forceful jab approximately forty minutes before his death.”
“Does Dr. Pardoe suggest what might have made a bruise like that?”
“No pathologist will ever speculate on that sort of thing on paper.”
“He may be the exception that proves the rule.”
Alec laughed. “Perhaps. I’ll talk to him tomorrow after the autopsy and suggest some possibilities, and he’ll tell me yes or no. If I’m lucky.”
“A walking stick,” Daisy proposed. “Poked between the people waiting to cross the street. Vincent probably had his. So did Raymond himself, come to that. Frank didn’t have one, but he could have bought one—”
“In which case we’ll find the seller.”
“Or he could have found one lying about somewhere. Men who carry one as part of their getup, not for support, are always forgetting them, especially in railway stations. I don’t know whether Sam usually carries one, but he didn’t have one when we met him in the park, remember?”
“He could have bunged it into a ditch or under a convenient bush anywhere between here and Worcester.”
“A man dressed like a sailor, as Sam was, would have been conspicuous. Someone would remember him.”
“He could have worn a suit on the train and changed somewhere after the ‘accident.’”
“I suppose so,” Daisy acknowledged. “By the way, I told Sam and Frank that you’d probably want to talk to them this evening.”
“I do, but they’ll be waiting up for me till three in the morning if we don’t get on.”
Thus admonished, Daisy set about puzzling over the appallingly smudged typescript. She had to concentrate too hard to catch what Alec was saying on the telephone. Ernest brought him a pot of coffee and a large cup, and he set down a smaller cup and saucer beside Daisy.
“Mr. Lowecroft thought as you might like some cocoa,” he whispered.
“Perfect, thanks.”
She took a sip, and then forgot to drink as she delved back into the reports. At last she came to the end. She reached for her cup, but the usual revolting skin had formed on the cocoa.
Alec finished dictating a telegram and turned to her. “Well?”
“I’m not much wiser than I was when I started.
None of the bystanders the police managed to nab as witnesses could say more than that the person who prevented Raymond falling under the wheels was ‘an ordinary looking man.’ The same description, over and over.
No one can remember whether he had a moustache, even.
None of them admitted to having been that man.
No one so much as mentioned Raymond’s having been pushed on to the tracks in the first place.
They all assumed he had stumbled on the edge of the kerb. ”
“What about the copper on point duty? He must have had a bird’s-eye view.”
“He saw Raymond falling, out of the corner of his eye, and then he focussed on stopping all the traffic as quickly as possible. I doubt you’ll find anything useful in this lot.”
“As expected. Thanks for reading them, love. You might as well go to—” The phone rang. “Yes, miss, DCI Fletcher speaking.” He listened, made a note. “Thank you, miss.” He hung up with a sigh. “She’s getting quite chatty—pleased that I’ve received a wire after sending so many.”
“Edgar’s telephone bill is going to be enormous.”
“He can forward it to the county constabulary. That one was from the Yard. Tom and Ernie will be on the 8:10 express from Paddington tomorrow morning.”