Gunpowder Plot (19 page)

“You wouldn’t rather a murderer went unpunished!”

“No,” she agreed, but doubtfully. After all, no punishment would bring back the dead, and the arrest of any of the suspects would cause immense heartache to the innocent. “Though if it weren’t that he might decide to kill someone else next . . .”

“That being the case, how would you feel about taking the constable’s place at Gooch’s side for a while? I shamelessly shanghaied Blount, but it’s just dawned on me that he must have his own duties, his rounds to make.”

“I can’t nurse Gooch!”

“Of course not. Just in case he wakes and says something, or even speaks without regaining consciousness, which sometimes happens. Gwen will stay till the nurses arrive.”

“If Gwen has to be there anyway . . . No, I suppose you can’t trust her not to invent a confession to keep her family out of the picture.”

“Sorry.”

“That’s all right.” She sighed. “I know it’s necessary.”

Alec knocked on the door of the late baronet’s dressing room and opened it. PC Blount was sitting by the bed, notebook and pencil on the small table at his elbow. Gwen and Miller stood by the window, deep in low-voiced conversation.

Blount sprang to his feet and saluted as Alec entered. “He ha’n’t stirred, sir, nor yet made a sound.”

“Thank you, Constable, you’ve done me a great favour by taking over here. You must be behind on your usual rounds. If your superiors give you grief, send them to me, and I’ll refer them to the Chief Constable if necessary.”

The Constable looked awed and gratified. “Don’t ’ spect that’ll be needed, sir,” he said with regret. “I’ll just tell the Sergeant I were giving Scotland Yard a hand.” Grinning, he saluted again.

Accompanying him to the door, Alec said, “There’s something more you can do for me while you’re out and about.” He closed the door behind them, and strain as she might, Daisy couldn’t hear anything more than a brief murmur of voices before he came back in.

“Are you taking the bobby’s place, Chief Inspector?” Miller asked.

“No, Daisy will for the present. I appreciate your offer to fetch DS Tring from the Ravens.”

“I hope all the Gooches’ bags will fit in my little bus. Their Vaux-hall was much bigger.”

Daisy could tell Alec was pondering the addition of his mountainous sergeant to a mountain of luggage. Tom could always walk up— But no, that would leave Miller in sole possession of what might be valuable evidence.

“If not,” he said, “Tring can have the landlord store the less important stuff, or hire a cart to bring it up. I’m going to ask you to await his telephone call downstairs, if you please. I have a few questions for Miss Gwen.”

Miller frowned. “I can just as well wait here. The servants will let me know when he rings.”

“It’s all right, Martin. Daisy will be here if I need protection. Which I don’t anticipate,” she added hastily as his frown deepened and Daisy opened her mouth to protest.

He smiled ruefully. “No, of course not. I beg your pardon. I’ve never had anything to do with the police before, barring a summons or two for speeding. I promise I won’t speed with your sergeant aboard, Mr. Fletcher.”

“What with Tom and all the Gooches’ belongings and that narrow lane and the hill,” said Daisy, “I doubt you could speed if you tried.”

20

A
s Miller left, Daisy sat down wearily on the chair the Constable had vacated, and for the first time she gave the patient a proper look. Gooch’s head was practically mummified, only his closed eyes, one ear, nostrils, and mouth visible. One arm was splinted, and a frame holding up the eiderdown suggested one or more broken legs. He was breathing strongly, though, and the pulse in his neck beat visibly.

“He’s a bit of a mess, isn’t he.”

“It’s awful,” said Gwen, “but it could have been worse. Dr. Prentice says the arm and leg are clean breaks. His neck and spine seem to have escaped intact, and his rib cage is just bruised. His face was cut by broken glass, not too badly, though. It’s the head injury that’s worrisome.”

“No way to predict the outcome,” Alec said.

“None. He’ll likely survive, but in what condition. . . . Reggie and Adrian are lucky we all have other things on our minds at present. When this is all cleared up, they aren’t going to know what hit them. Daisy, if you’re going to be on duty for a while, you ought to have a more comfortable chair.”

“Mind reader!”

Gwen rang for a maid, and soon Daisy was ensconced in an easy chair, with her feet on a footstool and a rug over her legs.

“Don’t fall asleep,” Alec warned with a grin.

“I shan’t let her,” Gwen promised. “Now, what did you want to ask me?”

“Rather more than a few questions, I’m afraid. Last night, we only talked about your meeting with the Gooches at the Three Ravens. Before we revisit that in the light of what’s happened since—”

“It
can’t
be true about Jack!”

“We’ll come to that later. This morning, events overtook us and I haven’t had a chance to talk to you about your movements and observations last night. Let’s start with the arrival of the Gooches.”

Despite her reassurance to Miller, Gwen was plainly nervous, her hands clenched together in her lap. Busy elsewhere, she had not noticed the Gooches’ entrance. “You can’t hear Jennings announcing people unless you’re standing right beside him,” she explained. When she did catch sight of the Australians, she made a point of welcoming them. Later, she had seen Jack talking to them for a short time, but none of the rest of the family.

Shepherding guests, Gwen had been one of the last out to the terrace. As she tried to recall whom she had spoken to, Daisy felt her eyelids growing heavier. She struggled to stay awake— and realized she had failed only when she was roused by a maid ushering in a couple of uniformed nurses.

Alec and Gwen rose to greet the newcomers, leaving Daisy uncertain as to whether they had observed her dereliction of duty. She glanced at Gooch. He didn’t appear to have stirred so much as a finger. If he’d been quietly muttering to himself while she slept, it was too late to worry about it now. She was sorry, though, that she’d missed what Gwen had been saying.

The nurses had received instructions about their patient from Dr. Prentice via their agency, but no one had mentioned that the police were involved. The younger, with a bush of frizzy dark hair attempting to escape her cap, was inclined to be indignant. “Well, I never! I must say, it’s not a very nice position to find yourself in, being mixed up in a murder case. If you ask me, they ought to’ve told us and let us choose if we wanted the job.”

“Now we’re here, there’s no sense making a fuss,” said the other. Middle-aged, she was lean but strong-looking, the severe lines of her face offset by a gleam of excitement in her eyes. She listened eagerly as Alec explained that he must be called at the slightest sign of their patient rousing, and anything he said must be written down at once.“We always do that in any case when there’s been a motor-car smashup,” she said. “You’d be surprised what they say sometimes. Not a bit like what the other driver’s said. Quite funny it is sometimes.”

“Well,” observed the younger nurse, “murderer or no, one thing’s for sure: He’s not going to be attacking us when he wakes up, not in the state he’s in.” Resigned, she went off to rest in the bedroom already shown her by the maid.

The older shooed Gwen, Alec, and Daisy out of the sickroom. They left her straightening the already-neat bedcovers into rigid perfection.

Standing in the passage, Alec said, “We’re nearly done. Let’s adjourn to the schoolroom.”

“Please come, Daisy,” Gwen begged.

No mention was made of Daisy’s lapse, so she assumed hopefully that they hadn’t noticed. Alec should have asked her to take notes if he expected her to stay awake.

They went upstairs and sat down at the table. Apparently, while Daisy slept, the others had finished with the fireworks show and moved on to Jack’s quarrel with Adelaide.

“I was pretty upset,” said Gwen. “Jack had every right to be furious, but to burst into the dining room when guests were still helping themselves at the buffet . . . Daisy can tell you, they left in a hurry.”

“Not I,” said Daisy. “I was starving.”

“As usual,” Alec interjected sotto voce.

“And Mr. Gooch and Mr. Miller nobly stood by me in spite of being a bit embarrassed. It was an awkward moment, I must say.”

“Mother was awfully upset. She was already tired, and that made her quite ill.”

“Just a minute— Gooch was with you in the dining room during the row, Daisy? No one else has mentioned his presence.”

“Yes. You apologized to him, Gwen, remember?”

“I only remember Martin.”

“Gooch was there,” Daisy said positively. “Martin— Mr. Miller— and I tried to find some plain food for him. He said . . . Oh, what was the word he used? He said that in Australia they don’t muck about with their tucker. We found some cold meat for him, but then he decided he wasn’t really hungry and went off to the drawing room to look for Mrs. Gooch.”

“You say he seemed embarrassed by the family argument, and he’d lost his appetite. How else would you describe him?”

“He was rather fidgety, but no more so than earlier. Inattentive when Mr. Miller talked about rocket propulsion, though he’d asked about it, I think. He really wasn’t at all comfortable with coming to the Manor.” Daisy suddenly realized what Alec was driving at. “He was concerned that Mrs. Gooch might be wondering where he was, and that she might not have anything to eat. Honestly, darling, he didn’t behave at all like a man who’s just shot his wife, or anyone else.”

“Miss Gwen, would you agree?”

Gwen bit her lip. “I can’t say I really noticed. What with the squabble and Mother taking ill, I wasn’t paying attention. Does this mean it wasn’t Gooch? That one of us did it?”

“I wouldn’t go so far. If he had been in a state of extreme agitation, it might have been more helpful.”

“He was absolutely shattered when he heard Mrs. Gooch had been shot,” Daisy said. “If you’d seen his face . . . I don’t believe the best actor in the world could turn that colour. I’m sorry, Gwen, but when I think back to that moment, I simply can’t believe he did it.”

Daisy felt as if she was betraying Gwen. She knew Alec would take her words the more seriously because she was not protecting a friend— he always complained about her shielding people she liked when she found herself mixed up in his cases. Not that he’d cross Gooch off his list of suspects on her say-so, but he’d probably move him down a notch or two.

Which left Jack very much in the centre of the picture, especially if he really was Mrs. Gooch’s son.

Gwen buried her face in her hands, making Daisy feel even worse.“Sorry,” she said again, inadequately.

“No, you have to say what you saw.”

“It’s not what Daisy saw,” Alec pointed out, “it’s her opinion of what she saw. You were there. What’s your opinion?”

After a long hesitation, Gwen shook her head. “No, I can’t say. It’s not that I’ve forgotten, it’s that I was too distraught myself to notice, as I said before. Believe me, I wish I could tell you I thought he was acting, but it wouldn’t be true. All I could think about was having to tell him she had had an accident. I was too cowardly to say she was dead, let alone that Father had shot her. That was what we thought had happened.”

“Because that’s what your brother told you?”

“Of course. Didn’t it look that way, at a quick glance? Martin and Dr. Prentice went up there and didn’t say anything to contradict that impression. Oh, and Sir Nigel, and he’s a policeman.”

“A courtesy policeman. No, I don’t imagine Jack lingered at the scene to analyse the evidence. How long was he gone?”

Gwen looked questioningly at Daisy, who said, “Just—”

“No, I want your opinion, not Daisy’s. I presume none of you were checking the time.”

“Just a couple of minutes, if that. He must have run up the stairs. He was still livid about the stolen rockets and he wanted to tell Father what those wretched boys had done. Father would have made them give them up, and then Mr. Gooch wouldn’t . . .” Her voice trailed away as the futility of this line of wishful thinking struck her.

“He was
still
livid,” Alec repeated. “Let’s go back to the beginning of the quarrel with Mrs. Yarborough. You said Jack came in when most of your guests had helped themselves at the buffet and moved into the drawing room or on to the hall. Would you please describe his arrival?”

“He came dashing in, positively fuming, and immediately accused Addie of letting Reggie and Adrian run riot. He was quite sure they had pinched the rockets. I can’t recall his exact words, I’m afraid.”

“No matter. What next?”

“Babs came in— she’d been herding the children upstairs— and took Jack’s part. Then Mother arrived, some busybody having told her about the row, and Addie appealed to her, and she said she was afraid Jack was probably quite right. I think it must be worse having thoroughly badly behaved grandchildren than children, don’t you? You have little or no control over their upbringing, and you want to love them and perhaps you just can’t. Anyway, Addie decided to look for Father. She thought he’d support her.”

“Had she any justification for such a hope?”

“Well, he’d never ragged on the boys, but only because he’d never seen their bad side. They were afraid of him, and none of us ever told tales. It must seem odd to an outsider, when he— if anyone— was quite capable of correcting them, but when one is accustomed to not telling a person anything that might upset him, the habit is difficult to break. Jack had reached that point, though. He went tearing after Addie, saying he’d tell Father himself.”

Daisy contradicted her. “No. Now I come to think of it, he went striding off and Addie ran after him. If it makes any difference.”

Alec gave her a look. “Where did they go to search?” he asked Gwen.

“To the drawing room and hall, of course, where everyone had gone to eat. But he wasn’t there, so they came back— No, Jack came back without Addie. She was probably relieved not to find Father. I said maybe he’d popped into the gun room to show off the antiques. Jack glanced in but he wasn’t there, so I said he’d better check upstairs. How I wish I hadn’t!”

“I’m afraid it wouldn’t have changed anything,” Alec said sympa- thetically, “and from my point of view, it’s lucky he was found while the doctor and the Chief Constable were here.”

And even Struwwelpeter, Daisy thought, since it was he who had advised his CC to beg for Alec’s help.

“I suppose it was,” conceded Gwen. “We’d have had to send for Dr. Prentice anyway.”

“Go on.”

“Jack came back, white as a sheet, and said Father had shot Mrs. Gooch and himself.” Gwen was herself nearly as white as a sheet. Daisy took her hand. “That was bad enough, heaven knows, but at least it was over, finished with, apart from the scandal. This— not knowing what happened or who . . . it’s an endless nightmare!”

Daisy simply couldn’t think of anything comforting to say. The Tyndalls’ nightmare could end only with an arrest, and then a different sort of nightmare would begin. Unless she was wrong about Gooch. Was it possible he had committed a double murder and then come to fill his plate looking mildly worried and fussing about his food?

Set him against Jack, bursting into the room in a state of high agitation, and there was no contest for the more likely murderer.

Alec continued asking questions. His gentle tone suggested to Daisy that he had moved Gwen, with or without Miller as her conspirator, to the bottom of his list. He came at last to Mrs. Gooch’s letters.

“Martin came to Father’s dressing room and told me. Jack asked him to. Jack told him the letter was very affecting, but I think it was positively wicked.”

Alec’s raised eyebrows encouraged her to elaborate.

“I can understand, if it’s true, that she might want to see her child and make sure he’s well and happy, but to push herself in, to disrupt everyone’s lives, that was wicked! Just look what it led to.”

“Do you think she was telling the truth?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. At first I thought it was utter rubbish. It’s difficult to imagine one’s father having a . . . a mistress. But if he did, that’s exactly how he might have acted, riding roughshod over Mother for the sake of having a male heir. It doesn’t really matter— Jack’s my brother no matter what.”

“Do you remember Lady Tyndall being away from home at about the time he was born?”

“No. I was six. I remember being told I had a baby brother and being excited and happy. I wasn’t going to be the youngest any longer, and I suppose I thought of him as a sort of living doll at first. I remember dressing him up, playing mother. Babs and Addie weren’t particularly interested and Mother was often ill. He was a nice little boy, and a nice schoolboy, and a nice young man. Nothing,
nothing,
will make me believe he shot Father and Mrs. Gooch!” Gwen concluded, fiercely vehement.

“Most understandable,” said Alec gravely. “That’s all for now. Thank you for your cooperation.”

“Gwen, do go and lie down for a bit. You’ve had an exhausting day.”

Gwen smiled with an effort. “I may do just that. But first I’ll just pop down and make sure Mother is all right and the nurse has everything she needs.”

“Would you mind asking Lady Tyndall when it will be convenient for me to see her?”