Chapter Six #2
“Oh, all right. Are we going to have lunch soon? I’m awfully hungry.
Aunt Sakari got two picnic baskets, each for four people.
People buy them to picnic in the park. There’s different kinds of sandwiches and cold chicken and hard-boiled eggs.
Cakes and biscuits, too, and bottled lemonade and ginger beer. ”
“As far as I’m concerned, everyone had better eat when they have a moment, but ask Sakari, darling, I’ll leave it to her.”
Daisy went out to the passage. The local police had left, she was glad to see.
An unknown bobby was moving on the curious onlookers.
Two plainclothesmen, one with a camera and the other with a satchel, stood looking bored.
Tom, Mackinnon, and a third man, who carried a doctor’s black bag, were talking together in quiet voices. She went over to them.
“Mrs. Fletcher.” Mackinnon greeted her with a smile and a handshake. “We meet again. This is Dr. Merriam, a local practitioner.”
“How do you do, Doctor. We spoke on the telephone. Thank you for coming so quickly.”
He nodded acknowledgement. “I should like to see my patient as soon as possible, Mrs. Fletcher.”
“Of course. Please go right in, Doctor—at least, that’s all right, isn’t it, Inspector?”
“Certainly. My police surgeon is on his way. When are we to be allowed in?”
“Mrs. Tring said five minutes. But as Dr. Merriam will be examining Mrs. Gilpin, I’d better check before you all troop in there.”
“Nae dout, nae dout. I can’t call to mind ever having to invade a ladies’ sanctuary before. Ye’ve talked to yon nanny?”
“A little. She seems not to be able to remember anything after leaving the twins to go to the ladies’.”
Mackinnon pounced on the doubtful word, just as Alec would have. “‘Seems’?”
“I didn’t really mean anything by it.” Daisy considered. “She says she can’t remember. I have no reason to doubt her. But it’s hard to believe she could forget walking all the way to the other end of the park and falling in a pond.”
“Not surprising,” rumbled Tom. “It’s often the case with head injuries.”
“Then, will she remember later? I’m not just being nosy. If I’m going to continue to trust her with my children, I want to know whether she had a good reason to go off when she was supposed to be looking after them. A really good reason.”
“Understood,” said Mackinnon. “I’ll keep it in mind. Would you go, please, and find out if it’s all clear?”
Daisy returned to the retiring room. Dr. Merriam was bending over Mrs. Gilpin.
Sakari, Mrs. Tring, and Belinda had all seized the momentary calm to possess themselves of sandwiches.
Still no sign of the boys: Daisy wondered briefly if they were having trouble with their togas. Then the doctor came over to her.
“Mrs. Fletcher, you’re my patient’s employer?”
“Yes. How is she?”
“I don’t foresee any major problems, except possibly the memory loss. But she will need to keep very quiet for a few days, with someone keeping an eye on her. Will that present any difficulty?”
“Not at all.”
“I’ll tell the detective to postpone talking to her, if possible, and if not to treat her with the utmost consideration.”
“He’s not here because of what happened to her. He may not want to question her at all.”
“That would be ideal. You may, of course, call me in if need be, though I have no objection to your consulting your own doctor.”
“We live in Hampstead. It would be frightfully inconvenient for you. I won’t bother you unless my doctor wants to consult you. Here’s my card. Send the bill to me, please.”
He bowed and took his leave. Daisy followed him to the door.
“You can come in now, Inspector.” She stepped back and he came through into the retiring room, with his plainclothesmen at his heels and Tom bringing up the rear.
At the other end of the room, the boys appeared, precariously draped in roller towels. Ben’s was slipping off his shoulder. Charlie’s dangled round his feet, in imminent danger of tripping him.
“Aunt Daisy, we need pins!”
“So I see.” She also saw that Mackinnon was valiantly striving to keep a straight face.
“Don’t worry, Daisy.” Sakari hefted her handbag. “I have pins. Boys, come into this corner out of the way.”
Charlie had spotted the food. “I’m ravenous!”
“You shall eat as soon as you’re safe from indecent exposure.”
“What’s—”
“Come on, Charlie,” his brother urged. “Don’t keep Mrs. Prasad waiting.”
“My cousins,” Daisy explained to Mackinnon. “They got soaked to the skin.”
He grinned. “Boys that age have a knack for it. Just as you have a knack for—”
“Please don’t say it!”
“All right. I shall want some details from you, though, so don’t fold your tent and steal away.”
“I shan’t.”
“Mr. Tring?”
Tom led the three detectives into the inner room. Mrs. Hatch was too cowed to protest as the four large men passed into the inner sanctum.
Daisy seized the momentary lull to snabble something to eat. The boys came to join her, looking, after Sakari’s efforts, as if they’d just stepped off the stage of Julius Caesar. “All secure?” she asked.
“As secure as a sari, Aunt Sakari said,” Ben assured her.
“And I have never lost one yet, Daisy, I promise…”
“It feels funny,” said Charlie, squirming.
“But I do not wriggle,” Sakari said severely.
Charlie froze, gripping the front of his toga as if he’d been stabbed by Brutus. “I’ll be careful. What is there to eat?”
Belinda came over just then with a request from Mrs. Tring for more soup for the invalid. After dealing with this and making sure Mrs. Tring was well fed, Daisy turned back to the boys to find Charlie with a thick slice of Battenberg cake in one hand and cherry cake in the other.
“He is on holiday, Daisy,” Sakari pointed out.
“So you let him stuff himself with—” She laughed. “Oh, all right. But you must eat some proper food after.”
“I was going to anyway,” said Charlie, injured.
“Mrs. Fletcher?” One of the detectives called her from the attendant’s cubby. “Mr. Mackinnon would like to speak to you, please.”
“In there?”
“Yes, madam.”
“Shall I go with you?”
“No, thanks, Sakari. I’d rather you kept an eye on the children.”
Ben looked as if he wanted to object that they didn’t need to be kept an eye on, but his mouth was too full.
Daisy went through, bestowing a consoling pat on Mrs. Hatch’s shoulder as she passed. The first thing she saw was a small pile of wet clothes in the middle of the room.
“Oh those boys!”
“Never mind those. At least: You confirm that they belong to your young cousins and were not here when you originally came into the room?”
“Yes. You saw them in their togas.”
“Very ingenious, too,” murmured one of the sergeants.
Mackinnon gave him a quelling glare. “I’m sorry to ask this, Mrs. Fletcher, but would you mind taking another look at the deceased?”
Daisy wanted to say that she’d mind very much. However, the inspector knew that if not exactly accustomed to dead bodies, she was by no means inexperienced. “I’d rather not, but if you think it could help…”
“Let me ask this first: Mr. Tring mentioned that you had a vague feeling the face was familiar. Have you had any further thoughts, any brain wave, about who it might be?”
“I would certainly have told you if I had!” she said indignantly.
“I’m not suggesting otherwise. It’s possible that seeing it again might jog your memory.”
“I suppose so. I don’t claim to have looked awfully closely.”
“I can’t blame you. However, our first job is to identify the—”
“One of your first jobs.” The speaker, who had approached unobserved, was a tall, painfully thin man with a stoop and a sharp nose that gave him the air of a cockerel hunting for insects. He carried a black bag. “Ascertaining time of death ought not to be delayed.”
“Hello, Doctor, glad you made it. Our divisional surgeon, Mrs. Fletcher. You can give us two minutes, Dr. Watchett.”
“And not a second longer.”
“Aweel, noo.” Mackinnon looked at Daisy.
“Very well.” She steeled herself as they crossed to the end cubicle. “Her face isn’t … disfigured, is it? I don’t recall…”
“Not a bit of it. Not a mark on it. Did you touch the handle?”
“N-no. No, I didn’t. I noticed the door was ajar and I only had to push.” She put out her hand, stopping short of the polished wood. “About here.”
“Excellent.”
“But dozens of people must have touched the knob. Dabs aren’t going to help much, are they?”
“Very likely not, but you never know.” The inspector reached past her to wrap the knob with a handkerchief and delicately turn it with two fingers. The door swung open. “Do exactly what you did before, as closely as possible.”
Daisy stepped in. Her hesitant glance showed everything just as it had been before.
“With her hat and wig all askew, it didn’t seem possible she was just sleeping.
I couldn’t tell whether the poor thing was ill, unconscious or …
or dead, so I tried to find a pulse. In her neck as she’s wearing gloves.
” Reluctantly she touched the woman’s neck.
It had cooled noticeably. Repressing a shudder, she drew back and turned to the inspector.
“Like that. I can’t be sure of the precise spot. ”
“You couldn’t find a pulse?”
“No, but I often can’t find my own. Her neck felt quite warm, warmer than it is now. I decided it was better to go for help than to keep trying.”
Mackinnon nodded. “Your touch didn’t alter the position in any way?”
“Not at all.”
“Two minutes is up,” came the impatient voice of the doctor.
“Another thirty seconds. Does the face still seem familiar?”
“I don’t know. I honestly can’t say.”
He sighed. “No, a fleeting impression is hard to rediscover. Look more closely, please.”
Daisy complied. She stared at the short blond hair under the wig, at the petulant mouth and obstinate chin. Or was she reading too much into the features of a dead woman? “I still think there’s something odd, but I can’t pin it down.”
“Excuse me.” He joined her in the now-cramped space. Lifting one of the limp hands, he eased off the glove. “And now?”
The hand revealed was square and strong, not really surprising. Nannies needed capable hands. The fingers were blunt-tipped, with short, manicured nails. Daisy couldn’t see any distinguishing mark—ring, scar, or missing finger—by which she might be expected to recognise it.
“No,” she said, puzzled. “But … Good heavens, she’s not—” In spite of a vague suspicion, a glance at the body’s torso startled her. No bosom! How had she failed to notice? “It’s a man? I don’t believe it!”