The Winter Garden Mystery (5 page)

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Authors: Carola Dunn

BOOK: The Winter Garden Mystery
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“Oh God! Oh God!” He flung himself backwards onto his heels, his arms across his face. “It's her. It's my Grace.”
T
he young Welshman's racking sobs shuddered through the sunny garden. Daisy froze in the doorway.
“What's the matter?” Ben Goodman came up behind her.
“I think … .” Her voice shook. She moistened her lips. “I think they've found a body.”
“A
what?
”
Of course he was incredulous. But Daisy had a horrid sense of history repeating itself. She turned to him, heart-sick.
“She can't still be alive if she was buried, can she?”
“She? My dear Miss Dalrymple, what on earth are you talking about?”
“Grace. Owen says it's Grace.”
“Good Lord!” With a hand on her arm he gently moved her aside, limped past her, and stood staring. “They've found Grace Moss buried in the flowerbed? The poor child.”
Something in his tone caught Daisy's attention. Behind the sincere pity, did she hear the merest hint of relief? No, she had imagined it. His face was sober, compassionate, as he took in the sight and sound of Owen Morgan's grief.
She had placed Grace Moss now. The gardener's dead sweetheart was the blacksmith's missing daughter, the pretty, fun-loving parlourmaid
Ted Roper had told her about. Missing how long? Daisy's brain began to work again. Buried when? By whom? Why?
Murdered?
Ben Goodman recovered from his shock and took charge. Making his halting way around the corner of the bed, he called, “Bligh, is it true? You've found a body?”
The old man started. His mesmerized gaze fixed on the trench beneath his feet, he seemed to have shrunk. “Aye, sir. A corpus it is, sure as eggs is eggs. Dead as a doornail, poor creetur.”
The secretary bit his lip. “Miss Dalrymple, please go and telephone the police. The 'phone is in a closet off the Long Hall. And not a word to Lady Valeria until the authorities have been informed. Not a word to anyone, in fact, if you can help it, unless you can get hold of Sir Reginald.”
Daisy quite saw the point of not enlightening Lady Valeria before it became absolutely necessary. “All right, but I'd better take some photographs first. I was mixed up in a police investigation just a little while ago, and they really appreciated my pictures.”
By that time Mr. Goodman had reached the trench. He glanced down. His already pale cheeks whitened and he shook his head. “No. Leave the camera and I'll take a few snaps.”
She didn't argue. The previous occasion had not exactly been a pleasure, and a young girl who had been buried, perhaps for weeks, must be much worse. Setting the camera and tripod on the North Wind's pedestal, she once more hurried to the house.
The temptation to ring up Alec was almost irresistible, but she had learned enough of police procedures to know Scotland Yard could not intervene unless called in by the county's Chief Constable. Not the village bobby, she decided, even if he had a telephone. Anyway, he'd very likely be out on his bicycle making his rounds. Chester was probably the nearest sizable police station.
She found the Long Hall without difficulty, and the fourth door she opened was the telephone cubby-hole. The narrow, confined space, inevitably panelled, held only a Windsor chair, a small table,
and the apparatus. Daisy wondered what on earth it had been used for before the telephone was invented.
Closing the door, she was plunged into a sepulchral darkness. Hastily she opened it again. Grace
was
dead before she was buried, wasn't she?
She forced the thought from her mind. There was a gas-light fixture high on the wall and a box of matches in a drawer in the table, along with a pad of paper, a pencil, and a directory listing local subscribers. She lit the gas, adjusted the flame, and closed the door again. Either there was some invisible source of ventilation, or sooner or later someone with a desire for privacy was going to be found asphyxiated. Asphyxiated. Buried. Dark and airless … Her breath came in frantic gasps.
Sternly she stopped her involuntary movement towards the door handle. Lifting the receiver, she jiggled the hook.
“Hullo, operator! Please get me the main police station in Chester.”
“Yes, madam. I'll ring you back when your call is through.”
“No, it's urgent. I'll hold the line.”
A sharply indrawn breath warned her that the girl was going to listen in. She'd recognize the Parslows' number, and an urgent call from Occles Hall to the police was too good to miss. Well, Grace's death couldn't be kept secret for long. Circumstances at Wentwater Court had been entirely different.
Buzz, click, fizzle, hum. “Hullo, Chester exchange. Police station, please.” Click-click, ring. Ring once; ring twice.
A bored voice: “Chester police.”
“Go ahead, please, caller.”
“Officer, I'm ringing from Occleswich.” Daisy admired the steadiness of her own voice. “I want to report a”—a murder? a body in the flowerbed?—“an unexplained death.”
“Unexplained death?” The voice sat up and took notice. “I'll put you through to Inspector Dunnett, ma'am.”
A moment later she repeated her report.
“Unexplained death?” Inspector Dunnett queried, then, suspiciously, “Who is speaking?”
“This is the Honourable Miss Dalrymple, ringing from Occles Hall. I'm a guest here. The owner hasn't yet been informed about it.”
“About this here ‘unexplained death,' miss?”
Daisy was beginning to hate the phrase and to wish she had never used it. “About the dead body in the Winter Garden,” she said flatly. “I thought it was more important to telephone you at once than to waste time hunting for Sir Reginald or Lady Valeria.”
“Lady Valeria!” the inspector exclaimed in alarm. Her ladyship's reputation stretched as far as Chester, it seemed. “That'll be Lady Valeria Parslow? You won't mind, miss, if I just confirm where you're phoning from. We do get these young people playing their little jokes.”
Fuming, she waited while he checked back through the Chester operator to the local operator. When he spoke to her again, he had become deferential.
“Beg pardon, miss, but we can't be too careful these days. It don't do to disturb Lady … the gentry for nothing. The Honourable, did you say, miss? Dalrymple—that's D, A, L … .”
She spelled her name for him.
“And you haven't told Lady … Sir Reginald yet?”
“I was in the garden with his secretary when the gardeners discovered the body. I came straight in to phone you.” And how she wished she had made Ben Goodman do the phoning while she took photographs. “I can't really tell you any more. Are you coming to investigate or not?”
“Yes, we're coming, miss.” Inspector Dunnett sounded injured now. “We'll be there inside the hour. I … er … it'd be a good idea if Lady Valeria was to be informed before we arrive. And Sir Reginald, of course.”
“I'll see that
he's
told,” she snapped, and hung up. The coward, expecting her to do his dirty work for him! She'd be dashed if she was going to be the one to break the news to Lady Valeria.
The coffinlike walls of the cubicle closed in on her again. In her annoyance with the policeman, she had almost forgotten the horror of the poor girl lying out there in her makeshift grave. With a shiver, she opened the door, but she stayed seated there in thought.
Sir Reginald was probably at his dairy, wherever that was. She understood he usually went to supervise the early milking, returned to the house for breakfast, and then retreated to his refuge for the rest of the day. Taking the pad and pencil from the drawer, she wrote him a brief note saying no more than she had told Inspector Dunnett.
As she folded it, she had a sense of someone watching her. She looked up. Moody stood there regarding her with despondent disapproval.
“There's writing paper in the library, miss.
And
a writing desk. Also in the Red Saloon, the … .”
“Thank you, I have all I need. Is Sir Reginald at the dairy? Have someone take this to him, please.”
He took the sheet of paper from her as gingerly as if it were a small creature of uncertain but probably distressing habits. “With your permission, miss, I shall enclose your communication in an envelope. Unfortunately the lower servants all learn to read these days.”
“Do what you want,” Daisy said impatiently, “only see that Sir Reginald gets it within the next twenty minutes. If he asks for me, I shall be in the gardens.” She was dying to escape from the house before Lady Valeria crossed her path.
She ought to go back to the Winter Garden to tell Mr. Goodman the police were on their way. In any case, she had left Lucy's precious camera there.
 
Ben Goodman was alone, perched uncomfortably at Boreas' feet. He stepped down and came to meet her, tripod in hand, the camera slung around his neck.
She glanced at the trench, which looked just as before. “You didn't let them do any more digging?”
He gave her a wry grin. “I've read enough detective novels to know one mustn't move or even touch anything. Poor Owen was in a bad way anyway, in no fit state to dig even if I'd been hard-hearted enough to make him excavate his girl.”
“It really is Grace Moss?”
“Oh yes, quite recognizable. She was wrapped in a sheet. It gave old Bligh rather a shock, too, for a man his age. I sent them off to his cottage to have a bracer.”
“I hope he has something stronger than beer.”
“Whisky—strictly for medicinal purposes, naturally.”
Daisy managed to smile. “I hope they don't get squiffy. I'm afraid the police will insist on talking to both of them.”
“They're coming?”
“An Inspector Dunnett from Chester. I thought I'd better bypass the village constable, but I must say the Inspector sounded like a bit of a blister on the telephone. He's petrified of Lady Valeria.”
“A not uncommon condition,” said Mr. Goodman dryly, “and not unreasonable. Her ladyship is not going to be pleased. I take it you didn't tell her or she'd be here by now.”
“No. I sent a note to Sir Reginald.”
“Sebastian?”
She sensed an odd tension in him, which relaxed at her answer. “I didn't see either him or Bobbie.”
But all he said was, “Just as well.” He handed her the camera. “Here. I took half a dozen shots of … the hole in the ground. I wasn't sure what it was you were hurrying to photograph while the light was right.”
“Boreas.” She frowned at the statue. “Too late for the best, but I'll take a couple in case it rains tomorrow. I hope you don't think I'm frightfully unfeeling.”
“Those of us who work for our livings can't afford to be oversensitive.”
“Then I'll go and do the knot garden, if you don't mind being left alone on guard?”
“No. But it's in this sort of situation I'd kill for a cigarette, if a cigarette wouldn't kill me.”
“Jolly hard luck,” she sympathized, though smoking, like bobbing her hair, was a facet of emancipation in which she had not yet indulged. She disliked the smell of cigarette smoke, and cigars were even worse.
Yet Alec's pipe wasn't bad, she mused as she returned to the knot garden. How she wished it was he who was on his way, not the Dunnett blister.
Grace's death was banished to the back of her mind by the complications of photographing the knot garden. In order to look down on it from a sufficient height, she climbed onto the stone balustrade of the terrace and set up the tripod in one of the huge stone urns flanking the steps. Then, to see through the viewfinder, she had to clamber up beside it. There she balanced with her feet on the rim, trying not to step on the bare soil within in case some as yet invisible plant was growing just beneath the surface.
She took several shots she hoped had a fair chance of turning out well. Time to get down. That was when she remembered that, in her tree-climbing youth, descending from trees had always been much more difficult than ascending them in the first place. The ground looked an awfully long way away.
“Allow me to assist you, Miss Dalrymple.”
Cautiously she turned her head. Sir Reginald stood there, in tweed knickerbockers and a disreputable shooting-jacket, gazing up at her with grave kindliness. Beyond, Moody stared in outrage.
“Thank you, Sir Reginald.” She gave him a grateful smile. “If I may pass you the equipment, I think I can manage.”
A moment later her feet were safe on the crazy-paving of the terrace.
“I must admit,” he said, “I had not allowed for the spirit of the modern young woman. I expected to find you prostrate on a sofa, not scaling the heights.”

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