Death at Wentwater Court (10 page)

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Authors: Carola Dunn

BOOK: Death at Wentwater Court
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Quietly Lord Wentwater apologized to his guests and thanked Wilfred and Phillip for their intervention.
Wilfred brightened, then visibly braced himself. “It was nothing, sir, but I say, Geoff was right. Jimmy shouldn't keep spouting off like that, not quite the article, don't you know.”
“Thank you, Wilfred, I do … Annabel!”
Annabel, who had been sobbing on Daisy's shoulder, had broken free and was hurrying from the room. Her husband's appeal failed to slow her pace. He strode after her.
“Oh dear,” said Lady Josephine, and turned to Sir Hugh, her plump chin trembling.
With Sir Hugh comforting his wife, Phillip comforting his bewildered sister, and Wilfred righting the card table, Daisy decided she had had enough for one evening. Even her promise to Alec to keep watch was insufficient to detain her in the drawing-room.
“I believe I shall go to bed now,” she announced and, receiving no response, did a bunk.
Yet she was too het up to concentrate on her neglected writing, or even to read, let alone to sleep. Instead, she went to the darkroom-scullery. Though it was absolutely freezing, at least concentration on the mechanical process of printing her photos kept her mind off the Beddowes and their problems.
She was astonished when a knock on the door presaged the arrival not, as she half hoped, of a kitchen maid offering hot cocoa, but of Lord Wentwater.
He apologized again for the scene in the drawing-room.
“How is Annabel?” Daisy asked. She refused to enquire after James, and thought it unwise to enquire after Geoffrey.
“She is asleep. I persuaded her to take half of one of the bromide powders Dr. Fennis left for Marjorie.” Standing there with unfocussed eyes fixed on her pictures, he said absentmindedly, “You are very diligent, Miss Dalrymple.”
“I haven't worked on my article all day.”
“No, I suppose not. The policeman didn't believe me, did he?”
“I beg your pardon?” she said, startled.
“Chief Inspector Fletcher.” The earl's harrowed gaze met hers. “He thought I was lying when I told him I didn't believe Annabel was Astwick's mistress. It's true. I know her. I trust her. But she's keeping something from me.”
Obviously the secret Astwick used to threaten her, Daisy thought.
Did he imagine she knew it, or that she'd tell if she did? Did he even know Annabel was being blackmailed? Daisy wasn't going to be the one to tell him. “I'm glad you trust her,” she said. “I like her, very much.”
“She needs a friend.” He hesitated, then went on sombrely, “I expect you feel I've handled everything badly. Besides the sheer impossibility of demanding Astwick's departure, I never realized—I swear I did not realize!—that James was behaving so abominably.”
Reflecting on the past two days, Daisy said, “No, as I recall he always did his worst when you weren't there. Geoffrey told you what he's been up to?”
“Yes. It is true, then? I find it so very difficult to credit that my own son could be so cruel.”
“I can't honestly blame Geoffrey for attacking him.”
“Nor I, though it's past time he learned that fists are rarely an effective solution.”
“He's the strong, silent type. He takes after you.”
“After me?” Lord Wentwater exclaimed, startled. “Good Lord, is that how you see me?”
“Not resorting to fisticuffs,” Daisy hastily assured him.
He shook his head, frowning. “Perhaps I have been too silent, and not strong enough. Since their mother died I've not had much interest in society or entertaining. I have divided my time between estate business and the House, leaving my children very much to their own devices. I suppose I relied on their schools to form their characters, and on Josephine to chaperon Marjorie after she left school.”
“Marjorie's no sillier than a hundred other debutantes with nothing to occupy their time or their minds but their amusements and their emotions. I must say I jolly well admired Wilfred when he stood up for Geoffrey this evening.”
“Yes, possibly Wilfred is not without redeeming traits.”
“If you ask me, they both need an occupation,” she said severely, then bit her lip. “But you are not asking me. I beg your pardon, Lord Wentwater.”
“There's no need.” He smiled ruefully. “I've been rattling on at you about my troubles, so how can I resent your advice? I can't imagine why I've disburdened myself into your patient ears. It's for me to beg your pardon.”
“Not at all.” Daisy decided it would be untactful to tell him that he was by no means the first to confide in her.
“No doubt you will feel obliged to repeat what I've said to the detective.”
“Not unless it's relevant to Lord Stephen's death. If you wish, I'll tell him you really do trust Annabel.”
The earl put on his mask of hauteur. “He chose to disbelieve my statement. Reiteration will not make him believe.”
“Probably not,” she conceded. “I'll have to tell him about Geoffrey, though I'm sure he'd hear about it one way or another even if I didn't.”
“And James's filthy accusations?”
“Didn't you know? James himself made Mr. Fletcher a present of those.”
Lord Wentwater looked stunned. Then, his jaw set, his mouth a stern line, he strode from the darkroom.
He had had three purposes in coming to her, Daisy realized: to assure her of his trust in Annabel; to find out whether what Geoffrey told him of James's conduct was true; and to persuade her not to repeat James's accusations to the Chief Inspector. But any damage James could do was done.
Suddenly exhausted, Daisy cleared up the darkroom. Heading for bed, she was returning along the servants' wing corridor when a footman came through the green baize door from the Great Hall.
“Oh, miss, I was just coming to find you. There's a telephone call for you, a Miss Fotheringay.”
Hurrying to the hall, Daisy picked up the apparatus from the table in the corner and sat down in the nearest chair.
“Lucy? Hello, is that you, Lucy? Darling, how too heavenly of you to ring up. Are you in a call-box?”
Lucy's voice came tinnily over the wire. “No, I'm at Binkie's flat and he's treating me to the call so we can blether on forever. Don't worry, it's perfectly proper, Madge and Tommy are here too. We had supper at the Savoy. Daisy, darling, you sound positively desperate. Is Lord Wentwater too frightfully stuffy for words?”
“Good lord, no!” “Stuffy” was now about the last word she'd think of applying to the earl, but she couldn't possibly tell Lucy all that had been going on. Quite likely a switchboard-girl or two was listening in, but in any case, what she had learned in confidence was not to be betrayed even to her dearest friend. “The earl's been quite friendly,” she said lamely.
“And what about that mysterious new wife of his? Who is she?” Though living independent of her family, Lucy was inclined to dwell on family trees.
As far as Daisy knew, Annabel had no noble connections. “Annabel's a dear,” she said. “Guess who's staying here. Phillip Petrie.”
“Oh yes, his sister's marrying James Beddowe, isn't she? Has Phillip taken up the pursuit again?”
“In a desultory way. He's fearfully disapproving of my writing. But Lucy, I've met a simply scrumptious man.”
“Darling, how spiffing! Who is he?”
Too late she realized the trap she had dug for herself. “He's a detective.”
“A 'tec? An honest-to-goodness Sherlock Holmes? My dear!”
“No, a Scotland Yard detective.”
“A policeman! Surely not a guest at Wentwater?”
“He's investigating Lord Flatford's burglary. You must have read about it. The people here were at the New Year's ball.” Daisy congratulated herself on telling the truth without giving away the real reason for Alec's presence at Wentwater.
“Too, too exciting, but there must be something wrong with the line. I thought you said the policeman was scrumptious.”
“He is.”
“But Daisy darling, isn't he frightfully common? I mean, people one knows simply don't go into the police.”
“He's not at all common,” she snapped, then sighed. “But for all I know he has a wife and seven children tucked away in some horrid semi-detached in Golders Green.”
“Cheer up, darling.” Lucy sounded relieved. “I'll find someone for you yet. Just a moment—yes, Madge, I'm coming. I have to go, Daisy. Madge and Tommy are giving me a lift home. They send their love, and Binkie, too. When will you be back?”
“I'm not sure, I'll send a wire. Thanks for ringing, Lucy, and thank Binkie for me. Toodle-oo.”
“Pip-pip, sweet dreams.”
Daisy hung up the receiver and put down the set. Talking to Lucy had brought a welcome reminder of the outside world, but had done nothing to dispel the day's tensions.
She went up to bed. Tired as she was, she lay awake for what seemed hours, memories, doubts, and speculations racing through her mind. The drama in the drawing-room that evening played itself out on the screen of her closed eyelids. Why had Geoffrey violently attacked his own brother in defense of his stepmother? Why had he begged his father not to believe James? The anguished look he had cast at Annabel as he left the room suggested an all too reasonable answer.
Geoffrey was in love with his beautiful young stepmother. Nor was it a selfish infatuation such as Marjorie had felt for Astwick. The quiet youth doubtless saw himself as a chivalrous knight, worshipping his lady from afar yet always ready to rush to protect her.
Which added Geoffrey to the list of those with excellent motives for wishing Astwick harm. Moreover, he might well have considered a ducking sufficient punishment and warning, without seeing any need to dispose permanently of his beloved's persecutor. Yes, if Astwick's death was the result of mischief gone wrong, Geoffrey was definitely a suspect. Who else?
Lord Wentwater? Impossible to imagine a haughty gentleman, so
bound by convention that he refused to ask an unwelcome guest to leave, doing anything so undignified as wielding an axe on the lake at midnight. The earl had confessed himself stymied, unable to deal with the situation, yet he seemed too dispassionate to resort to such desperate measures.
Phillip? Daisy couldn't believe it. If he knew he'd been defrauded, Phillip would grumble ineffectually and convince himself that the next silver mine he invested in would turn into a gold mine. If he did go so far as to hunt out an axe and cut a hole in the ice, he'd have been there to see no serious accident occurred. Surely not Phillip!
Marjorie? Wrapped up in her emotions, the silly girl would never consider the possible dire consequences. Marjorie had to be considered a likely suspect.
The Mentons? Dismissing Lady Josephine and Sir Hugh out of hand, Daisy plumped up her pillow and turned on her other side. James was really the most satisfactory villain, she thought drowsily. She wouldn't mind at all if James went to prison for manslaughter for a few years.
Sleep still evaded her as the image of Lord Stephen's drowned body came to haunt her. That frightful gash on his temple—if it hadn't been for that he might have pulled himself out. What was it Alec had said? Something about a romantic tryst by moonlight and Annabel biffing him on the head—the weather kiboshed that—no, it was Daisy herself who had said perhaps the manservant met him and biffed him, but he wouldn't have been wearing skates. Whatever had happened to his blasted boots, he must have drowned when he went down to skate in the morning.
His death was mischance—Annabel couldn't have risked his surviving—Annabel wasn't responsible—so it must be one of—
Daisy slept.
I
'm sorry, sir, I can't let you leave.” Detective Constable Piper, barring the open front door, sounded nervously determined.
“Bosh, my good fellow, you can't stop us.” That was Phillip, at his most pompous. Dressed in his drab motoring coat, he slapped his gauntlets impatiently against his hand. Beside him stood Fenella in a blue travelling costume, the dust veil of her hat thrown back, plucking timidly at his sleeve.
As Daisy reached the bottom of the stairs, she called to him. “Phillip! What's going on?”
He swung round. “This confounded chappie is bally well trying to stop me taking Fenella home. You have a word with him, Daisy. You're in cahoots with the ruddy coppers.”
“Do be reasonable, Phil. He's only doing his duty. I heard Chief Inspector Fletcher tell him not to let anyone leave. Will you shut that door, please, Officer? There's a frightful draught through here, though at least it's a bit warmer today, thank heaven.”
“Right away, miss!” Piper threw her a look of worshipful gratitude and turned to close the door.
“Mr. Fletcher's coming back this morning,” Daisy assured the Petries, “and I expect he'll let you go, but I do think you ought to wait till he arrives.”
“The pater said to take Fenella home,” Phillip said obstinately. “I didn't catch him on the 'phone till quite late last night, after that nasty mix-up, and he said to bring her home straight away.”
“It's fearfully early still. Have you had breakfast? Why on earth do you want to leave so early?”
“It's a deuce of a way.”
“The roads will be perfectly ghastly with this thaw. You're sure to get bogged down on the way. Haven't you some relative or other a bit nearer than Worcestershire where Fenella can stay for a few days?”
“There's Aunt Gertrude and Uncle Ned, Phil. Reading isn't far, is it? I'd like to stay with Aunt Gertrude, and I'd like more than a cup of tea before we leave. You rushed me so.” Fenella took off her gloves, and Daisy noticed her engagement ring was missing.
“Oh, right-ho,” Phillip grumbled. “I'll have to ring up Aunt Gertrude and make sure it's all right. Hang it, Officer, you'd better tell Lord Wentwater's man we'll be leaving later and he's to put the car back in the garage.”
“Yes, sir.” Piper saluted and opened the door just wide enough to slip out, closing it firmly again behind him.
“Come on, Fenella,” said Daisy, “to the breakfast-room. I'm starving.”
Already on his way to the telephone table in the corner of the hall, Phillip turned, frowning. “You'd better order a tray in your bedroom, Fenella.”
Daisy raised her eyebrows quizzically. “I promise I'll not let her be either murdered or corrupted at the breakfast table, and she can stick to me like a leech till Mr. Fletcher comes. You'll join us, won't you, when you've finished telephoning?”
“Yes. As a matter of fact, I only had a cup of coffee and a muffin and I'm still dashed peckish,” he admitted with a sheepish grin.
Daisy and Fenella found Sir Hugh in the breakfast-room, ensconced behind
The Financial Times
, which he lowered briefly to bid them good morning. His plate and cup were already empty, Daisy
was glad to see. By the time the girls had helped themselves from the sideboard, he was folding the paper and standing up.
“Nothing about this business in the papers yet,” he said approvingly. “That's a good man they sent down from Scotland Yard.”
“Is there any more news of the jewel robbery at Lord Flatford's?” Daisy asked.
“Just a paragraph in my paper, saying the police are holding a man for questioning and expect an imminent arrest.
The Financial Times
doesn't go in for that sort of news, though. You'll find the
Daily Mail
on the table in the hall.”
Daisy thanked him, but she knew she'd find out more from Mr. Fletcher than from the
Mail.
Besides, at present she was itching to discuss Fenella's departure.
The moment Sir Hugh left the room, she said, “So your parents want you to go home?”
“I want to go! I simply can't marry James after all.”
“Very sensible of you. He is not a nice person.”
“Phillip called him a deuced rum fish,” Fenella revealed, glancing over her shoulder at the door. “What shall I do if he comes in?”
“You'll say good morning and then preserve a dignified silence,” Daisy advised, spearing a piece of sausage. “Did you love him very much?”
“I don't really know. I think not, because I am more shocked than upset. He was always perfectly polite and kind, and when Mummy told me he wanted to marry me I thought I should like to be a countess one day. Only, he was quite horrid to Lady Wentwater, so I could never be sure that one day he might not be horrid to me, too, could I?”
“Quite right. These are jolly good sausages.”
“The cook makes her own. James showed me the pigs on the home farm. He's frightfully keen on farming, and I like animals. I did think we might be happy together.” She sniffed unhappily. “Suppose no one else ever wants to marry me?”
Daisy hastened to support her resolve. “I'm not married and I'm perfectly happy,” she pointed out. Seeing Fenella blench, she quickly added, “But I'm sure you'll easily find a husband. The boys your age weren't in the War, after all. You haven't even spent a season in London yet, have you?”
“No. James and I met at a house-party last summer.”
“There, you see? Engaged before you're even out. You don't need a brute like James.”
They had nearly finished breakfast before Phillip came in to report that all was well. “Aunt Gertrude will be pleased to see Fenella, and I talked the parents into agreeing. Actually, Daisy old bean, it was a dashed good idea of yours, because I'll be able to get back here this evening to look after you. I was pretty worried about leaving you on your own for the best part of two days.”
Daisy did her best not to snap at him. “Thank you for the kind thought, though I assure you I can look after myself.”
“Come to think of it, old thing, I expect the inspector chappie would let you go, too. You'd be better off buzzing back to town out of this fishy business.”
“I'm not leaving, Phillip,” she informed him through gritted teeth, “so you might as well save your breath to cool your porridge. Fenella, I'm going to the darkroom. Do you want to come or will you hang about with Phil?”
Fenella chose to accompany her and fiddled quite happily with magnifying lenses while Daisy printed a few more shots. Some kindly soul had put a paraffin heater in the scullery so they were reasonably comfortable once their noses grew accustomed to that smell on top of the developing chemicals.
Finishing her printing, Daisy studied the prints she had made last night, thoroughly dry by now. They included the shots she had taken by magnesium flash, and she was anxious to see how they had come out.
“I didn't print the two disastrous ones, of course,” she explained to Fenella. “The one where your beastly brother accused me of trying
to blow up the house, and the one that fizzled. But look, this isn't bad, nor this.”
As she had expected, Marjorie's black-and-white dress inevitably drew the eye. Though she couldn't do anything about that, the background of the Great Hall fireplace, carved frieze, tapestries, and ancient weapons had come out surprisingly clearly. Even Queen Elizabeth's dagger was plain to see. Through a magnifying glass, she could make out the details of the frieze and the solemn faces of the family group.
“They're jolly good,” said Fenella. “Are they really going to be in a magazine?”
“Yes, though I don't know which ones the editor will choose.” She picked up another of the Great Hall shots. Studying it through the lens, she gasped, then threw a quick glance at Fenella.
“James doesn't
look
like a rum fish,” Fenella was saying. She hadn't heard Daisy's gasp. “I don't see how I could have guessed.”
“You couldn't. Just be thankful you found out in time.” Daisy remembered James's smug expression after she had taken the first flash photograph that worked right. Wilfred had looked apprehensive, Lady Josephine upset, and Marjorie angry, and when Daisy had turned her head she'd seen Annabel and Lord Stephen.
What she hadn't realized at the time was that while those four of her subjects had reacted after the shot, the other two had reacted quicker. Lord Wentwater's and Geoffrey's faces had been impassive by the time she looked up from the camera. Dazzled by the flash, she had not noticed the turbulent emotions of father and son, so quickly hidden, so clearly visible now in the print.
“It's just another of the same,” she said as Fenella reached for the photograph in her hand. She shuffled it into the pile Fenella had already examined.
As they returned through the kitchen passages towards the main part of the house, they met a footman.
“Miss Dalrymple, her la'ship says if you'd be so kind as to step up for a word wi' her in her boodwah when you has the time.” Well-trained,
the man was as expressionless as if nothing had ever occurred to disturb the peace of Wentwater Court.
“Lady Wentwater? Of course. Fenella, I'll just see you safely back in Phillip's care first.”
“Mr. Petrie's in the billiard-room, miss.”
Fenella delivered to her brother, Daisy headed for the stairs.
Annabel's boudoir—dressing-room was beyond the Wentwaters' bedroom. Daisy heard no response to her knock, but Annabel might be too miserable to call out loudly, she decided. In view of her invitation she went in.
No one was there. From beyond a door on the opposite side of the boudoir from the bedroom came the sound of running water. Daisy hesitated on the threshold, glancing round the room.
The near end held chests-of-drawers, wardrobes, a cheval glass, and a dressing table. At the far end, under the window, stood a small table and two cane-backed chairs, with a roll-top bureau in one corner, a matching glass-fronted bookcase in the other. In the centre of the room, grouped around the fire, were two armchairs and a chaise-longue covered in light brown chintz with tiny butter-cup yellow flowers. The walls were hung with a Regency stripe wallpaper in cream and brown, colours picked up by the Axminster carpet. A pretty, cosy room.
Daisy crossed to the fireplace to examine the picture hanging over the mantelpiece. It was an impressionistic oil painting of a dark-haired girl in a yellow dress descending a flight of steps in a garden full of flowering shrubs and vines.
She swung round as a door closed behind her.
“Yes, that's Rupert's work.” Annabel's red eyes were conspicuous in her pale face. She wore a simple coat-frock of turquoise jersey, so beautifully cut it must be straight from Paris. “Henry insisted on my keeping some of his paintings. Oh Daisy, he's been so kind, so sympathetic, I can't seem to stop crying.”
“Isn't it funny how sympathy does that, much more than someone
being beastly? It was Geoffrey's defence that made you cry last night, not James's attack, wasn't it?”
Annabel nodded, joining Daisy by the fire, and they both sat down. “Henry feels terrible about it. He keeps apologizing for not being the one to protect me, for having been blind to James's spite.”
“James took pretty good care not to let him see it, until last night. And I imagine Geoffrey was brought up not to tell tales on his brothers.”
“Henry says
I
should have told him, but I couldn't, could I? I didn't want to worry him, or to make trouble between him and his son. I hoped in time James would realize I really do love Henry, and then he'd grow accustomed to having a stepmother. But instead I've ruined his life. You know Fenella has broken off the engagement?”
“Yes, I've been hearing about it all morning.”
“So I've ruined her life, too.”
“What rot, Annabel. It's a good thing she discovered in time what James is like.” Daisy looked up as the silvery chime of the Dresden china clock on the bureau began to play. “Quarter to eleven. Are you coming down for coffee?”
“I don't know. Should I? Henry said he'd go down with me, but he doesn't usually join us for morning coffee and I didn't want everyone to think I'm afraid to face them without his support.”
“Are you? Are you afraid of meeting James?”
“No, he's confined to his room. As soon as the police go, he's to be sent to live in Northumberland. Henry owns a small property there, and James is to run the farms. You see why I say I've ruined his life,” Annabel finished despairingly.
“What tommy rot! It's entirely his own fault, and besides, James likes farming. Everyone will think he's buzzed off to the wilds because Fenella jilted him.” Unless he ended up on trial for manslaughter. “What about Geoffrey? Will meeting him upset you?”

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