Chapter Thirteen
THIRTEEN
After a visit to the nursery, during which she was told all about Daddy coming home, Daisy went reluctantly to visit Mrs. Gilpin. She was still angry at the nanny for abandoning her charges, apparently on a whim. However, the woman was suffering and—for good or ill—Daisy was still her employer.
To her relief, Nanny Gilpin was asleep. On a small table was a tray with the remains of breakfast for two. Mrs. Tring, in an old rocking chair, knitted placidly.
“How is she?” Daisy asked in a low voice.
“Doing nicely, Mrs. Fletcher. She’s in her right mind and got her appetite back, though she still don’t remember a thing that happened after she went off to the ladies’.”
“Is the doctor calling again today?”
“Yes, he said he’d drop in this morning after his surgery. Unless things change, she won’t need me no more. ’Less you want me to stay, I’ll pop off home and see how my Tom’s doing without me.”
“Of course, Mrs. Tring. It’s been very kind of you to help out, and I wouldn’t dream of keeping you. I’ll talk to the doctor after he’s seen Nanny.”
She went down to her office, bracing herself for the next unpleasant task. A letter from Angela Devenish had been among her post at the breakfast table. She hadn’t opened it, but she couldn’t put it off any longer. Worse, in the circumstances she’d have to write back right away.
Angela was her usual brusque self. She was coming up to town immediately. She would stay at Teddy’s flat and ring up Daisy when she arrived.
Daisy’s first thought was that at least she didn’t have to answer the letter.
Expressing her sympathy would be easier in person.
She hoped. Her second thought was to wonder whether the police would let Angela stay in her brother’s flat.
Though it wasn’t exactly a crime scene, they might reasonably expect to find information there that would suggest where to look for the murderer.
After the long train ride from Yorkshire, the poor woman would be in no condition to go hunting for a hotel, even if she had enough money.
Despite a legacy from the great-aunt who had left the bulk of her large fortune to Teddy, Angela was always pinching pennies to scrape together the funds for her dog refuge.
Daisy groaned as she realised where that train of thought was leading. Like it or not—and Alec for one was not going to like it—she’d have to offer Angela a bed, if only for the first night.
She picked up the telephone receiver and asked the operator for New Scotland Yard. Surely just this once Alec would thank her for ringing him at work.
Alec was out, and so was Mackinnon. Daisy was put through to DS Piper. She had known him since he was newly promoted to the detective branch, as long as she had known Alec.
“Good morning, Ernie. Left behind to mind the shop?”
“As usual, Mrs. Fletcher. Keeping track of the details. They do let me out now and then.”
“It’s what comes of being best at the job.”
“Flattery will get you a long way. What can I do for you?”
“With your head for details, you probably remember Teddy Devenish’s sister Angela?”
“Dogs.”
“Exactly. She’s arriving this afternoon—”
“With dogs?”
“I shouldn’t be surprised. The thing is, she wrote that she’s going to stay at her brother’s flat. I’d hate her to turn up, perhaps with dogs in tow, and find a guard at the door. Are you—the police—finished with it?”
“Yes. We had his solicitor in and with his permission carted off anything that looked hopeful. But I’ve just been through it for the second time without much luck. He hardly kept any papers. Secretive sort of bloke.”
“Judging by what I’ve heard, he had a lot to be secretive about. So it’s all right for Angela to move in to the flat?”
“From our point of view. She’d better get in touch with the solicitor pretty quick, though. He’s in charge there at present. Cranford, Quentin Cranford, of Lincoln’s Inn.”
“Thanks, Ernie. I’ll let her know.”
“I’ll have to tell the Chief she’s coming.”
“Try to keep my name out of it.”
“I’ll do me best, Mrs. Fletcher. No promises.”
“Of course. I take it their parents are in town? Angela and Teddy’s, that is.”
“Lady Devenish is staying at Brown’s, prostrated with grief.
Sir James came up for a day, officially identified the deceased, and went back to Leicestershire to supervise the drainage of some field or other.
No love lost between father and son, I gather, but the Chief doesn’t reckon him for filicide. ”
Daisy hooted with laughter. “Even if he’d wanted to do his son in, the thought of Sir James dressing up as a nanny … No, too outré for words.”
“I daresay, Mrs. Fletcher. If there’s nothing else, I’d best get back to work.
By the way, that young lad Ben—Miss Bel’s cousin, is he?
—he’s a marvel with a map. No end of help narrowing down the search.
DI Mackinnon was thinking he’d somehow have to get hold of dozens more men. He’s gone off happy, I can tell you.”
“I bet Ben’s cock-a-hoop.”
“Pleased as Punch with himself, right enough.”
“Are the children still at the Yard?”
“I sent ’em off to the waxworks in one of our cars just a few minutes ago.”
“Thank you.” Ringing off, Daisy instantly thought of lots more questions she should have asked while Ernie was being communicative. Just as well she hadn’t, though. She didn’t want to get him into trouble.
She was struggling with her reply to Violet’s letter, trying to avoid any mention of the events in the Crystal Palace, which would only upset her sensitive sister, when Elsie came in to tell her Dr. Ransome was ready to see her.
Daisy welcomed him with open arms and a cup of coffee from the pot the parlourmaid had brought in a few minutes earlier.
The young doctor, who had recently taken over the practice, was cheerful. “Another day or two of peace and quiet and Mrs. Gilpin should be quite restored to health.”
“In body and mind?” Daisy asked hopefully.
“Well, no. That is, I’m no expert when it comes to memory loss occasioned by trauma, but I’ve been reading up about it.
There doesn’t seem to be any cure, or even any widely accepted treatment.
Sometimes the memory comes back, and sometimes it doesn’t.
Of course, if you want to call in a brain specialist… ”
“No, I’ve heard the same from other people.”
“You could take her back to where she was the last thing she remembers before the gap. However, there’s always a risk that the shock might do more damage.”
“That’s out, then.”
“In fact, I recommend that she go away to somewhere quiet, the country perhaps. Not that it’s likely to help her fill in the gap, but a complete rest can’t but do her good.
As long as she’s at her place of employment, she’s bound to feel she ought to be busy, quite apart from worrying about the memory loss. ”
“She has a married sister in Somerset. Unless it’s Dorset. If she can’t go there, I’m sure my cousin Lord Dalrymple would take her in for as long as she needs to convalesce. I’ll see what I can arrange. Thank you, Doctor.”
“I popped in to see Oliver and Miranda,” he mentioned. “They seem to be as healthy and happy as ever without their nanny, ungrateful creatures! The nursery maid is a sensible girl. You needn’t worry about the twins.”
He finished his coffee and left. Abandoning her letter to Vi in midstream, Daisy hunted through her address book for Mrs. Gilpin’s sister and wrote her a note. There was no point troubling Nanny about it before she knew whether the woman agreed to the visit.
With several letters to post, Daisy and Bertha walked the twins and Nana to the letter box in Well Walk.
Both Miranda and Oliver were endlessly fascinated by the lion and the unicorn fighting for the crown on the royal coat of arms. Miranda liked to be lifted up to put the letters in the slot, but Oliver wasn’t convinced the box wouldn’t swallow his hand along with the letters, and then pull the rest of him in after it.
Daisy had much the same feeling an hour or so later, as she stepped from Regent Street into the Café Royal with Sakari.
The huge room was dingier than ever, its proliferating gilt tarnished, the green pillars dulled by smoke, though the many mirrors were well polished.
They reflected a clientele that varied from the famous—Daisy recognised Hugh Walpole and Jacob Epstein—to the would-be famous to smart onlookers, and a coterie of obvious foreigners.
Though once a denizen of Chelsea, she had little frequented Bohemian circles since her marriage, and not at all since the birth of the twins.
As a journalist, she had little in common with the literary and political writers who flocked to this mecca along with artists and musicians of all stripes.
Add the fact that she had come in search of a murderer, and it was hardly surprising that she felt like a fish out of water.
Not so Sakari. The head waiter hurried to her and she followed him into the cacophonous throng and swirling tobacco smoke as if into her natural element.
He led them towards one of the small marble-topped tables set along the walls. On the way, three or four people waved in casual greeting to Sakari, then a woman with a thick greying braid tossed over her shoulder called, “Mrs. Prasad, won’t you join us? And your friend, of course.”
Sakari glanced back at Daisy, a mischievous look in her eyes. Daisy nodded. It was just what she had hoped for.
They joined a group at a long table. Several people squeezed together to make room for them, while others greeted Sakari as an old friend.
Two men were arguing vigorously at one end.
One of them, a youngish man with a vast ginger beard that would have done a Victorian pater familias proud, broke off to say, “Miss Dalrymple, isn’t it? We were neighbours a few years ago.”
Daisy searched her mental files. “Mr. Purdue. You sculpted, I think?”
The bald man who had been arguing with him said, “And still does, or so he claims.”
A burst of laughter greeted this feeble sally. Unruffled, Purdue remarked sadly, “The avant-garde is always misunderstood.”
“So is the rear guard.”
“And Futurism is utterly passé.”
“Neo-Romanticism is coming back.”
“Neo-Neo-Romanticism?”
“Modernism, whatever that means in modern terms.”
“Look at this!” A newcomer dropped a newspaper in the middle of the table, an early edition of an evening paper. CRYSTAL PALACE CORPSE IDENTIFIED, blared the lead headline, with a blurred, virtually unidentifiable photo below it. “Guess who!”
As people shuffled up again to make room for him, the woman with the braid—whose name Daisy hadn’t caught in a hurried introduction—seized the paper.
“Teddy Devenish! ‘Only son and heir of the notable hunting baronet.’ Well, well, well, some general benefactor nailed the bastard at last.”
“Don’t be so bitter, Judith,” said a thin dark girl who looked as if she painted watercolours of fairies.
“She has every reason,” the bald man said hotly.
“She’s not the only one,” said someone else, “not by a long chalk.”
Daisy’s head swivelled back and forth as she tried to make mental notes of all those who agreed with Judith.
“But none of us is a homicidal maniac,” protested a man with a Crippen moustache. “The artistic temperament precludes physical violence.”
“That’s debatable.”
“That’s tommyrot!”
The argument swirled away from the personal to the abstract and Daisy’s attention strayed. A couple more people came in with newspapers, but nowhere else did she see the same degree of reaction.
Waiters came and went. Daisy found herself with a drink she hadn’t ordered, which she sipped cautiously, wondering whom to thank for it.
She did manage to order and pay for her own food, choosing a bowl of chicken and vegetable soup.
The menu had some strange foreign dishes on it, but how far could one go wrong with chicken soup?
The newspaper lay forgotten on the table, headline uppermost. Though she would have liked to see what it said, Daisy didn’t want to draw attention to her interest.
The arrival of two bearded men caught her eye.
The younger wore a long, belted shirt over tight-cuffed trousers, a round, peakless cap on his head; the other was very point-device in a dark suit of Continental cut, with a bow tie and a bowler hat.
The latter waved a newspaper and was speaking animatedly in a language abounding in rolling Rs that Daisy was pretty sure was Russian.
Or Ukrainian: She recalled the anger of a certain Ukrainian singer who had repeatedly been referred to as Russian.
But it was Russians who had been involved with Teddy Devenish, so wishful thinking insisted that these were Russians. Even, perhaps, the Russians she was interested in.
Certainly, they were wrought up over the newspaper.
As they passed close by on the way to the far side of the room, Daisy noted that it was definitely the front page that excited them.
She watched them join a group—all men—in a corner at the back.
By then, as far as she could tell, the paper had disappeared into a coat pocket and the pair had calmed down.
Fascinated, she saw them exchange kisses of greeting with their friends.
“Daisy? Are you with us?”
“Uh … Sorry, darling, I was thinking.”
“Judith has invited us to go and see her studio. Do you wish to come or have you another engagement?”
How tactful of Sakari to present a possible excuse—as if she didn’t know Daisy would like nothing better. “Oh yes, I’d love to see your work, Miss … Judith.”