Die Laughing (16 page)

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Authors: Carola Dunn

BOOK: Die Laughing
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T
he quantity of luggage loaded into Mrs. Fletcher's taxi next morning showed a lamentable lack of faith in her son's ability to solve the dentist's murder. As well as her large trunk, the basket and overnight case and three hatboxes, she added a Gladstone bag at the last minute. Daisy almost hoped the latter contained the family silver, such as it was, as that must surely indicate a lack of intent to return.
The last half hour before her departure Mrs. Fletcher spent giving orders to Dobson and advice to Daisy. The advice differed from the orders only in being couched in slightly more conciliatory language. Daisy listened, willing to learn, horrified at how much there was to learn, and resentful of her mama-in-law's smug certainty that she would do it all wrong.
Daisy went out to the kerb to wave good-bye. The moment the square black back of the cab disappeared around the corner of the street, she hurried back indoors to consult Dobson.
The cook-housekeeper was seething with indignation.
“I'm sure I don't need to be told how to do things after all these years, madam,” she burst out. “And there's no call for you to worry your head about what to have for dinner, 'less you want to, nor yet when to send the sheets to the laundry!”
“Really?”
“As if Mr. Wu don't send his boy to pick 'em up reg'lar as clockwork, for all he's a heathen. And no one knows better'n me what Mr. Fletcher and Miss Belinda likes to eat and what veg is in season and where to get the best lamb chops. And Mrs. Twickle knows as well as me what rooms to turn out when, and if there's summat needs doing different she'll do it as I says, won't you, dearie?” she added menacingly as the daily help came in through the kitchen door.
“Yes, Mrs. Dobson,” said the stout charwoman timidly. “Whatever you says.”
“I know I can rely on you, Mrs. Twickle,” said Daisy.
“Yes, m'm.” Looking to Dobson, who nodded a regal permission to leave, Mrs. Twickle scuttled to the scullery for a bucket and scrubbing brush.
“So you go do your typewriting, madam, and don't you worry about a thing.
Some
ladies haven't got nothing better to do than poke their noses in where they're not w—needed, but them as has talent didn't ought to waste it on ordering liver and bacon for dinner!”
“Thank you, Mrs. Dobson,” Daisy said, much moved. “Fried onions with the liver and bacon, I hope?”
“If onions is what you like, madam, onions there'll be. Mrs … T‘other Mrs. Fletcher couldn't abide 'em. I hope you don't think I meant you wasn't to tell me what you like, madam. You've only to give the word. But Mrs. I'm not, not if it was ever so, never having been married.”
“Married or not, a housekeeper is always addressed as Mrs.”
“Well, thank you, madam. I've heard that's what real ladies do. I dare say it's a compliment.”
“It's meant to be.”
“Thank you, madam. And if I was to try summat a bit different, like as if it was a recipe Mr. Kesin gave me, I'd be sure to ask you first,” Mrs. Dobson promised.
“Oh, Mr. Fletcher and Miss Belinda and I have all had Indian food at Mrs. Prasad's and liked it, as long as it's not too spicy-hot. But you'd better not try serving it to Mrs. Fletcher.”
“As if I'd dare, madam! I'll make this recipe of Mr. Kesin's tomorrow, shall I? He brought me a little jar of the curry mixture.”
“Oho, did he indeed? Perhaps we'll end up calling you Mrs. Kesin!”
“I couldn't marry a heathen, madam,” said the housekeeper regretfully, “not but what Mr. Kesin is ever so gentlemanly in his foreign way. Well, I'd best be getting on if there's to be anything got done today.”
Thus dismissed, Daisy went up to the spare bedroom, where her Underwood typewriter sat incongruously on an elegant Regency writing table from Fairacres. Her conversation in the kitchen had sparked an idea for an article on “the servant problem.”
No one who lamented the difficulty of finding good servants since the War ever seemed to wonder if the cause might be the way they were treated. Daisy's mother, for instance, left everything to her staff and complained constantly and bitterly about the results. Her mother-in-law, on
the other hand, had a finger in every pie, never trusting the housekeeper or the part-time gardener to use their initiative.
Servants were expected to be competent, obedient, deferential, loyal, and hard-working, all for minimal wages and very little free time. No wonder the young women who had cheerfully gone to work in the factories of England during the War were reluctant to re-embrace servitude.
Daisy sketched out an article on the subject. If she managed to sell it, she'd have to make sure the Dowager Lady Dalrymple and Mrs. Fletcher were unrecognizable. Though both heartily disapproved of her writing, both made a point of reading her work so as to be able to criticize it.
Perhaps she should write it pseudonymously, but the sad fact was that it would sell more easily and probably have more impact from the pen of the Honourable Daisy Dalrymple. It was a pity, but no doubt other writers used their connections to get published.
Sighing, she put a paperweight on her notes and went to get ready to go out to morning coffee.
 
 
After nearly three hours clearing the arrears of papers from his desk at the Yard, Alec took the train from Marylebone to Denham.
The station was perched on a railway embankment above the flat surrounding countryside. The village was visible about a mile away. Alec crossed the bridge over the line and asked the ticket collector for Station Row. He was directed to an isolated terrace of tiny brick cottages at the bottom of the station access road, facing the main road.
Probably provided for navvies building the railway, Alec
thought as he approached. The brick might once have been red, but soot smuts had long since blackened it. Every time a train went by up above, the windows rattled in their grimy frames.
Alec simply couldn't see the elegant Mrs. Walker dropping in for lunch in such shabby surroundings, quite apart from the strain on the Crouches' budget of feeding a guest.
No pavement. The blue front door was about a yard from the edge of the road, which continued under a bridge beneath the railway line. In the intervening space, potted pink hyacinths struggled against soot and coal dust and the shadow of the towering embankment. The brick step was neatly swept and some ineffectual effort had been made to wash the smuts off the paint, Alec noted as he raised the iron knocker.
A sharp rat-tat brought no response. He waited a couple of minutes, then knocked again.
The next front door, defiant scarlet beneath its coat of soot, opened and a head tied up in a scarlet polka-dotted scarf poked out to peer around the downspout in between. “It's no good banging away, dear. Miss Crouch went into the village to the shops and the old lady's stone deaf. You can try stepping over to the window and waving. She mostly sits in the front room and there's nothing wrong with her eyes.”
“Thank you, madam.”
The neighbour came out onto her front step, feather duster in hand, to watch. A couple of steps took Alec to the centre of the window. Lace curtains, their original whiteness compromised by age, not dirt, hid the interior. Feeling a bit of an ass, he gesticulated at the glass, which reflected a gibbering monkey in a charcoal grey suit.
It worked, however. A moment later the blue door opened on a chain and an elderly, well-bred voice asked, “Who is it?”
He passed his papers through the gap. The door closed. He heard the chink of the chain and it reopened wide to show a small, wrinkled woman with an amazing quantity of silvery white hair done up on top of her head.
“Police? Has something happened to Jennifer?”
Alec shook his head vigorously. He made a discreet gesture towards the neighbour, who had moved closer on hearing the fascinating word “police.”
Mrs. Crouch put her hand on his arm and drew him forward into the postage-stamp hall. “Come in, Mr. Fletcher.” She closed the door. “Inquisitive as a robin, but she has a kind heart. Come in.”
She led him into a tiny room crammed with overstuffed furniture which had once been good. Not a speck of dust marred the polished wood, but the quantities of crossstitchery failed to hide all the worn patches in the upholstery. Mrs. Crouch sat down in a wing chair to one side of the sole window, waved Alec to the sofa, and offered him a pad of paper and a pencil.
“What can I do for you, Chief Inspector?” she asked, picking up a piece of embroidery.
I am trying to trace the movements of a number of people
, he wrote.
You and your daughter may be able to help me
. He showed it to her.
“I do watch the coming and going to the station,” she admitted. “I rarely go out. It's so difficult when one can't hear what people are saying. Of course I'll help if I can.”
Did Mrs. Francis Walker lunch with you this week?
“Gwen Walker? No, she never comes to lunch. Now and then she'll pop in for a cup of tea, while her husband is playing golf at Denham Golf Club, I understand. She always brings a treat, knowing I have something of a sweet tooth. She was at school with Jennifer, you know, and used to come to stay in the holidays, in better times. Gwennie and Jenny, they called themselves. I hope she's not in serious trouble?”
We're trying to trace
several
people
.
“She's a good girl, Gwen. She never forgets Christmas or birthday cards, and she often gives Jennifer clothes, some of them almost new.”
Have you seen her or heard from her at all this week?
“I have not, but Jennifer might have had a letter without showing it to me. Don't tell me Gwen has disappeared, Mr. Fletcher?” the old lady asked anxiously. A passing train forced Alec to concentrate to catch her next words. “One hears such dreadful stories, and her husband the major is quite an irascible gentleman, Jennifer tells me.”
Mrs. Walker is alive and well. You've known her a long time. Tell me a bit about her background.
Delighted by the opportunity to talk without needing to hear, Mrs. Crouch became garrulous. Gwen Walker's father, James Garrity, was a barrister, she said, a junior partner in her own husband's chambers. They had flourished as acknowledged experts in a certain obscure branch of the law.
Garrity married and his wife was soon expecting a child. Mrs. Crouch, considerably younger than her husband and married for over ten years, had given up hoping for a child but to her joyful surprise found herself in the same condition.
The two girls were born within a few weeks of each other.
Then that obscure law, dating from mediaeval times, was unexpectedly repealed. The practice gradually dwindled away. Mr. Crouch died, leaving his wife and daughter in difficult circumstances.
Garrity, in no better case, quit the law and retired to his family's farm in Ireland, where he still eked out a livelihood of sorts. When the War came, Gwen returned to London to work in a ministry, where she met Francis Walker. Mrs. Crouch did not presume to say whether it had been a love match, on either side. The fact was that Gwen was beautiful and Major Walker had enough money to whisk her back to the sort of life she had grown up enjoying.
“And good luck to her,” said Mrs. Crouch. “I only wish Jennifer … but never mind that. After all I've told you, do you still need to talk to her?”
Alec nodded.
“I wonder where she has got to? Would you care for a cup of tea while you wait?”
He didn't want to put her to the trouble, nor to diminish whatever meagre store of tea lurked in the Crouches' larder. But he was thirsty and didn't want to offend her by rejecting her hospitality. Before he had quite made up his mind, he heard the sound of a key turning in the front door.
The woman who came in looked ten years older than Gwen Walker's thirty years, and had probably never been pretty. She appeared in the sitting-room doorway with a little wave to attract her mother's attention, then noticed Alec as he stood.
“Oh, I beg your pardon. Who … ?”
“This is Detective Chief Inspector Fletcher, dear, from Scotland Yard. He's come to ask you one or two questions.”
Miss Crouch looked at him in astonishment. “What on earth about?”
Mrs. Crouch continued placidly, “I'll go and put on the kettle and put away the shopping while you talk to him.”
“Allow me.” Alec took the heavy basket from Miss Crouch's arm and followed the old lady back to the kitchen. It appeared to be the only other room on the ground floor, no doubt matched by two bedrooms above.
Returning to the hall, he found Jennifer Crouch hanging up her once expensive, now shabby Burberry on a hook behind the front door. She preceded him into the front room, where she sat down in the chair opposite her mother's, on the other side of the window, and picked up a piece of needlework. An automatic action, Alec thought. He wondered whether they supplemented an inadequate income by selling their work.

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