The Winter Garden Mystery (15 page)

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Authors: Carola Dunn

BOOK: The Winter Garden Mystery
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“She wasn't when I left.”
“I'll have to leave her until tomorrow, then. I must see what Piper has to report, and this evening we're hoping to pump the villagers.”
“The pump being a beer-pump, no doubt,” Daisy said tartly.
Alec grinned. “Yes, of course. Alcohol lubricates tongues. I'll come back up here as early as is decent in the morning.”
“If your head allows.”
“Mine's a hard head. As I was saying, I'll be here early because there's the funeral later on.”
“I don't think I'd better go. It would look a bit pushy as I didn't know her. Not that I'm exactly keen on funerals at the best of times.”
“Unfortunately, attending the funeral of murder victims is one of the inescapable duties of a detective. Someone just might break down and confess.”
“You're out of luck if you're hoping to catch anyone from the Hall. Lady Valeria has said no one's to go, neither family nor servants. It's a bit thick really, considering Grace worked here for several years and the other maids were her friends.”
“It does seem rather harsh. Well, I'll have to go anyway. We can't be sure yet it was someone from the Hall, and I want to catch Moss for a word afterwards. He sounds like a thoroughly awkward customer—a rude mechanical, you might say—but … .”
“A rude mechanical?” She looked at him enquiringly, her head tilted in a way that for some reason made him want to kiss the tip of her nose.
“
A Midsummer Night's Dream,”
he said briefly. “But I hope his daughter's funeral will make him anxious to cooperate in catching the murderer.”
Daisy took her hand from his arm as they reached the shelter of a small back porch. “I should think Moss'll be overjoyed to find you suspect Lady Valeria!” she observed.
“I'm
not.” He groaned. “Why do I always end up dealing with the nobs?”
“According to Piper, because you have a degree and talk posh.”
Laughing, Alec shook and closed the umbrella. “There are occasional compensations,” he conceded with a smile.
“Some
of the nobs are really quite nice to know.”
They went into the house and made their way to the Long Hall. Before going to look for Piper, Alec once more warned Daisy against meddling, thus ruining the effect of his compliment.
Piqued, she went off to the Yellow Parlour. She was glad to find Phillip there. Having called to thank Lady Valeria for last night's dinner, he had been pressed to stay for afternoon tea. His presence did much to lessen the inevitable sense of constraint.
Neither Bobbie nor Ben came in, but Sebastian appeared to have recovered his equanimity, at least outwardly, and Lady Valeria had donned a veneer of cordiality. As she sat there dispensing tea and cake, no one would have guessed how recently she had freely dispensed hints of an improper relationship between Daisy and Phillip.
Her ladyship's assumed complacency was not destined to last. Phillip started talking about his motor-car, always one of his favourite subjects of conversation. Stan Moss had not only tuned up the Swift so that the engine ran as smooth as silk, he had taught Phillip how to do it himself. Stan Moss was a mechanical genius. Stan Moss could make a fortune if he just had a proper service-station with modern equipment.
Lady Valeria's face regained its familiar thunderous aspect. Sebastian looked more and more amused, and Daisy had to avoid his eye or she'd have burst into fits of giggles.
“Dash it,” said Phillip, “just think how convenient it would be for you to have a petrol pump on your doorstep instead of having to drive into Whitbury to fill up.”
“Never,” pronounced Lady Valeria in tones of doom, “never shall there be a petrol pump in Occleswich as long as I … that is, as long as Sir Reginald owns the village!”
“Right-ho,” Phillip obligingly agreed. “Smelly things, what? The whole village belongs to the estate, does it?”
“Sir Reginald was unwise enough—before we married—to dispose
of the leasehold of the smithy and the inn in order to finance modern equipment for his dairy. Even with a clause forbidding material alterations without permission, it has caused nothing but trouble.”
Phillip nodded. “You lose control,” he said. “The gov'nor sold quite a bit of the freehold of Malvern Green to pay the death duties when my grandfather died.”
A discussion of the iniquities of death duties and the income tax so far restored him to Lady Valeria's favour that she invited him to Sunday lunch. “If you are still in the neighbourhood, Mr. Petrie,” she added with a peevish glance at Daisy.
Phillip also looked at Daisy, but anxiously, as he answered, “Thanks awfully, I'll be here and I'm happy to accept, but I'm going to have to toddle off back to town on Monday. Business, and I didn't bring my man with me. Simply can't do without him much longer, don't you know.”
He was reluctant to leave her here with Alec and with the murder unsolved, Daisy guessed. However, she didn't see how she could decently prolong her own stay at the Hall beyond the weekend, whatever Sebastian and Bobbie wanted. Alec's insistence on her remaining didn't really hold water, and the dairy excuse was not simply wearing thin but already in rags—she'd had plenty of time to inspect the place. And though considerations of propriety wouldn't stop her staying at the inn, she couldn't really afford even the Cheshire Cheese's modest tariff.
At least she'd be able to bag a lift with Phillip and get a refund on her return ticket, she thought, brightening. Of course she'd pay him back the difference between first and second class, but she'd still come out a few shillings ahead. A new pair of silk stockings?
Phillip rose to take his leave.
Sebastian stopped him. “I say, won't you hang about a bit longer and give me a game of billiards?” He was like a little boy begging for a treat.
“Right-ho, old man.”
A flash of dread crossed Lady Valeria's heavy features, so quickly suppressed Daisy wasn't sure she hadn't imagined it. Her ladyship's mouth opened, but if she meant to voice a protest she was forestalled as Phillip went on, “What d'you say we make it snooker and ask Daisy to play with us? She's not bad, for a girl.”
“Not bad!” Daisy squawked. “I've jolly well trounced you more than once.”
Sebastian laughed. “I'd have asked you before, Daisy, as a change from backgammon, if I'd known you play. Come on.”
Could that possibly be relief on his mother's face now? Disconcerted, Daisy went off with the men, feeling thoroughly perplexed.
Lady Valeria's curious reactions faded from her mind as she struggled to persuade both Sebastian and Phillip not to cheat in her favour. The result of her efforts was that they continued to do so with more and more outrageous openness, until they were all so helpless with laughter they could barely hit the balls.
Daisy had never seen Sebastian so relaxed and happy; she was pretty sure he rarely had the opportunity to enjoy himself with his peers. It was criminal the way his mother kept him mewed up at her side. No wonder he had turned to an unsatisfactory affair with a sympathetic parlourmaid, with such disastrous results.
She couldn't believe he was a murderer. He simply hadn't the spunk. Someone else had done the deed.
Lady Valeria? Bobbie? The mysterious commercial traveller? Surely not Bobbie. Girls one had been to school with didn't turn out to be murderers, especially forthright, sporting types like Bobbie. Murder just wasn't cricket.
Yet murder had been done, and its daunting effects settled once more on Daisy and Sebastian when Phillip departed. They went up to change for dinner in dispirited silence.
The grey silk frock matched Daisy's mood. Anticipating another long and uncomfortable evening, she went down to the drawing room. As she approached the door, she heard Moody's cheerless accents within and hesitated a moment.
“No, my lady, Miss Roberta hasn't come in yet. Miss Gregg asked me to give your ladyship this note she left for you.”
“Note? Roberta left a note? And Gregg has only just decided to give it to me?” Lady Valeria sounded astonished, indignant, and apprehensive all at once.
“I understand, my lady, that such were Miss Roberta's instructions.”
“What does it say, Valeria?” Sir Reginald asked, mildly curious.
Daisy couldn't have stopped eavesdropping to save her life. Fortunately Lady Valeria didn't send Moody out before she read Bobbie's note and in her shock she relayed the contents to her husband without considering the butler's presence.
“Good heavens above! Reggie, she's staying away tonight!”
“Where?”
“She doesn't say, and she can't say for sure when she'll be able to come home!”
Bobbie fleeing the police? But she had nearly fainted when Daisy told her Grace had been murdered—or was it because Grace's body had been discovered?
However treacherous she felt, Daisy had to tell Alec.
W
hen Alec and Ernie Piper left the Hall, the rain had stopped and a streak of red from the setting sun showed below the clouds in the west. Petrie's elderly Swift was parked beside the Austin, which looked nice and new but very staid next to the nifty two-seater. As Alec started up his practical family car, Piper pulled out his notebook.
“I covered the lot, Chief,” he said with satisfaction. “All them questions you had.”
“They actually talked to you, in spite of Lady Valeria?”
“That butler said they was told not to talk to the police, so I up and says we're not just police, we're
Scotland Yard
and we don't pay no heed to country bigwigs. So he looks gloomier than ever and tells the rest to cooperate.”
Alec grinned. “A bit of an exaggeration, but well done. Just run through what you've written down. We'll sort it out later.” It was no good asking Piper to pick out the relevant bits, as he would with Tring. The lad hadn't enough experience to know what might be significant.
“Moody, that's the butler, after dinner he served coffee to Sir Reginald and Miss Parslow in the drawing room and her ladyship and Mr. Goodman in the library. Then he went to his pantry and put his aching feet up till he went round locking up at half eleven.”
“He locked up at half past eleven?”
“Yes, Chief, same as always. There's a side door with no bolt, just a Yale lock and the family all has keys, so I didn't reckon much to that.”
“Except that if Grace came back into the house at all, it must have been before eleven thirty—unless for some reason she came in with one of the family. Suppose young Parslow met her in the village and took her for a drive in hopes of sorting things out, then returned home and told his mother or sister he'd failed. How many motors do they own, and were any out that night?”
“I dunno, Chief,” said Piper, anguished. “I didn't even think to see the showfer.”
“No one ever asks all the questions first time round,” Alec told him bracingly. “That's what tomorrow's for. Let's get back to Moody.”
“Right, Chief. He says Mr. Parslow's vally, Thomkins, popped into his pantry for a drop of port after packing for Mr. Parslow. A bit after ten, it was. He remembers acos they was talking about the packing only taking an hour or thereabouts, Mr. Parslow being so easygoing. Seems Thomkins's last master was a fusspot as never could make up his mind. Thomkins agrees it was just after ten.”
“So Parslow has no alibi from ten until eleven thirty,” Alec mused, “and I have only his word for eleven thirty since Scotland Yard fails to impress his mother. Not that I'd believe any alibi she gave him. If he'd been with his sister he'd have said so, for her sake as well as his own. Did any of the servants see him during that time, Ernie?”
“No, Chief. They keeps pretty much to their own quarters after dinner, even the personal servants, unless they're rung for.”
“No maid taking round hot-water bottles?”
“Her ladyship don't hold with hot-water bottles.”
“Curses upon her ladyship! Go on. No, wait a bit,” Alec said, drawing up in front of the smithy. “There's no light visible, but just pop round the back and see if Moss's lorry is there.”
Piper popped, and returned to announce no lorry, no lights.
They reached the Cheshire Cheese and went up to Alec's room long before Piper came to the end of his list of those who had seen nothing and nobody.
No one had seen any of the family after ten o'clock. No one had seen Owen Morgan. The powder old Bligh took for his rheumatics made him sleep so soundly he wouldn't hear a herd of wild elephants, let alone Morgan leaving the cottage. The other three under-gardeners had girlfriends in the village; their only interest in Grace was to tease Morgan about her.
No one had been down in the village after six, when the housemaid whose day off it was had come in.
No one had seen Grace come in, but she could have gone up to her room unseen. She always returned on time because she liked her job and didn't want to lose it. Though she had worked in a shop in Whitbury for a few months after leaving school, five or six years ago, she had been glad to get a position at the Hall. It was nearer her father but at least she didn't have to go home to him every evening. As it was, he took most of her pay and expected her to cook, clean, and launder for him on her days off. She seldom had a chance to go into Whitbury to shop or to the pictures as the others did.
“A right bastard he sounds,” Piper opined, “but he was sitting pretty. He wouldn't want to do away with her.”
In spite of her unpleasant home life, Grace was always cheerful and helpful. She was popular with her fellow-servants, though mildly envied by the young and indulgently frowned upon by her elders for her “way with the fellows.” The only indoor menservants were the butler and two valets, but she flirted with the postman, the butcher's boy, the grocer's and baker's deliverymen. No one believed her relationship with the young master had gone beyond a flirtation. The news of her pregnancy had come as a shock and general opinion in the servants' hall blamed the foreigner, the Welsh gardener, not Mr. Sebastian.
In fact, everyone but Bligh was so sure Morgan was the murderer, they couldn't understand what Scotland Yard was doing at Occles Hall.
“Is Miss Dalrymple wrong this time, Chief?” Piper asked, his faith shaken.
“Not she. Parslow was having an affair with Grace all right. Tell me, were Grace's things missing from her room? Never mind,” he said as Piper's face fell, “we'll find out tomorrow.”
All the same, Tom would never have missed such an obvious question. If Grace had left her belongings behind, why did everyone assume she had run away? If they were gone, someone in the household had removed them, someone who knew she was dead and who wanted people to think she'd run away.
“That's all very well,” Alec said slowly, “but what made them believe she had run away when she liked her job and they didn't know she was in trouble? They said she was always cheerful?”
“Always till the last couple of weeks, Chief. One of the housemaids—lessee—Edna her name is, Grace's best friend like, she says she seemed a bit mopish. This Edna asked what was wrong and Grace said her pa was being even awkwarder'n usual. She didn't like being asked, though, so she tried to behave like normal; only when she disappeared, Edna told the rest she'd been in the dumps.”
“Poor kid.” For the first time Alec was beginning to see Grace as a real person, in some ways an admirable person despite her fall from grace (and that was a bloody awful pun he'd being trying not to make). With an altogether obnoxious father, she had somehow managed to grow up sunny-tempered and kind-hearted, and competent to boot. Whatever her mistakes, she hadn't deserved to die.
He wanted badly to nail her killer. Daisy expected no less. The trouble was, unless he got hold of some real evidence soon, the A.C. was going to call him home. The Met couldn't spare a chief inspector for a two-month-old murder that the locals hadn't even started to investigate properly.
At least he'd see Owen Morgan released. There wasn't a shred of
real evidence against him, and the Parslows had quite as much motive.
“I'd like to get this cleared up before the magistrate's hearing on Monday,” he said to Piper. “Unless we find something definite against Morgan, he ought to be let out without going to court, for the sake of the reputation of the local police, and police in general. If we can arrest someone else that'll be all to the good, but if we can't manage it, I want to be sure we've left no stone unturned.”
“Not digging up the garden!” said Piper, aghast.
“It may come to that. The murder weapon may be buried there. We won't get prints by now, but just knowing what was used might help. But I hope we shan't need to, and if we do you can supervise a crew of local officers.” He grinned as Piper breathed again. “I wonder whether the locals have dug up George Brown's traces in Whitbury? It's just possible he had met Grace before if she worked there, but it was rather a long time ago. I'd better go and ring up Sergeant Shaw and … .”
“There's one more thing, Chief.”
“Yes?”
“The housekeeper, Mrs. Twitchell, I saw her last and mostly what she said was just the same as the others. Then she asked was it only that night we was interested in, 'cos a week before she saw Mr. Goodman talking to Grace.”
“Goodman deals with the servants' pay and so on,” Alec said impatiently. “He must talk to all of them quite often.”
“But this was different, Chief,” Piper persisted. “She says he was talking ever so serious, and then Grace laughed at him and ran away, so I thought maybe he fancied a bit of slap and tickle and she turned him down and he got mad and … .”
“Bloody hell, another suspect! Just what I need. All right, Ernie, it could be important. We'll have to follow it up tomorrow. Right now, you go and open your ears in the public bar. I'm going to telephone Sergeant Shaw.”
On his way down the narrow stairs, Alec met the plump landlady
puffing up. “I were just coming to fetch you, sir,” she said. “You're wanted on the telephone.”
He thanked her and squeezed past. The telephone hung on the wall in a tiny booth at the back of the lobby. Putting the dangling receiver to his ear, he announced himself into the mouthpiece.
“It's Tom, Chief. We got him. Well, nearly.”
“George Brown? What do you mean, nearly?”
“A Sergeant Shaw rung me up from Chester, said he'd tried to get hold of you but you wasn't there. His laddies tracked Brown to one of his customers in some little town up there … .”
“Whitbury. As a matter of interest, what does he travel in?”
“Ready-to-wear ladies' corsets, Chief.” Tom snickered.
“Great Scott! That explains why he wasn't trying to sell to the village shop and why he didn't announce his line to the people here. Poor chap, I bet he catches a lot of ragging. Shaw found out what company he works for?”
“The Clover Corset Company, known to bosom friends as CCC.” The sergeant's cackle crackled down the wire. “Their head office is in Ealing. I phoned 'em up and talked to the top bloke in the sales department. Brown's territory's the Northwest. Seems he's pretty free to ramble around, hunting down new customers. He's not married and he only gets back to London every couple of weeks, but he rings up on Saturday evening to report in. So they'll find out tomorrow night where he is and let us know.”
“You told them not to warn him we want to see him?”
“'Course, Chief, wotcha take me for?”
Alec smiled at his injured tone. “I beg your pardon, Tom.”
“And I asked 'em to telephone the Chester police if I'm not here.”
The broad hint broadened Alec's smile. “Well, if Brown's up north, you're finished in town, and I need you. Hop on a train in the morning.”
“I c'd come tonight, Chief. There must be a night train.”
“You
are
married, Tom.”
“Worse luck. Proper cramps me style, does the old trouble and strife.”
“I hadn't noticed it.” If Grace had had a way with the fellows, Tom had a way with the ladies, or at least with a certain class of females. Nonetheless, despite his use of derogatory rhyming slang, Alec knew he was deeply devoted to the equally mountainous Mrs. Tring, from whom he was too often reft by the demands of his profession. “Tomorrow will do. Let me know the time and I'll send Piper to meet you at Crewe.”
“Ta, Chief. Miss Dalrymple all right?”
“Miss Dalrymple thrives on trouble and strife,” Alec said acidly. Her annoyance at his repeated warning against meddling had not escaped him.
He rang off.
The sound of voices from the bars was increasing as men came in for a pint after work. Glancing into the public bar, Alec saw Piper sit down with a couple of farmhands. The youthful detective in his brown serge suit looked out of place among collarless, stubble-chinned labourers, and Alec doubted he'd be able to make himself at home as Tom would.
He shrugged. He himself would be still less welcome there. He went into the bar-parlour next door, which was where Grace and George Brown had had their
tête-à-tête.
The small, cosy room, all polished wood and brass, fell silent as he entered. Not only was he a stranger, he'd have bet a month's pay every soul in the place knew he was a police officer. It was inevitable in so small a village, he supposed, but it meant he had little hope of getting anything out of them short of formal questioning. He wasn't likely to do any better than Ernie.
“Good evening,” he said to the room in general, crossing to the bar.

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