Murder on the Flying Scotsman (12 page)

‘Daisy, can
you
tell us what’s going on?’ she said, coming over with her husband.

‘Not much. Have you seen Belinda?’

‘No. Perhaps she went up to her room. Mother says Mattie’s taken to her bed with a hot water bottle. She’s in a rotten state. I was never like that when I was
pregnant.’

‘A rotten funk, if you ask me,’ Bretton put in. ‘It’s my belief she knows something.’ He gave a significant nod.

‘Poor Mattie,’ said Daisy with rather perfunctory sympathy. ‘Excuse me, I must find Belinda.’

She went over to the Smythe-Pikes. Neither had seen the child. Nor was she in the bedroom she and Daisy shared.

Daisy started worrying. Where on earth had she got to?

Dismissed from the conference, Belinda trailed unhappily back to the lounge. She liked Dr. Jagai, but just now she wanted Daddy, or at least Miss Dalrymple.

She cheered up when she saw Kitty and Judith and Ray talking to the doctor. She’d be safe with all her friends. She joined them.

‘Bel, have you got any sweets left?’ Kitty greeted her. ‘Mine are all gone and they say it’s going to be ages till they can serve dinner. They weren’t expecting so
many people.’

‘They’re up in my room. I’ll fetch them.’

‘Get your coat and hat, too. We’re going out to explore the city walls and bastions. Hurry up, we’ve all brought our outdoor things down already.’

‘I don’t know if I ought,’ said Belinda doubtfully. ‘Sergeant Barclay said the walls are dangerous.’

‘Don’t be a baby.’

‘Don’t be rude, Kit,’ her brother admonished. ‘Belinda doesn’t have to come if she thinks she shouldn’t.’

‘My father wants to see me soon, too.’

‘Oh well, never mind, then,’ Kitty said. ‘I’ll find the best bits and show you in the morning. Come on, let’s go.’

By the time they, had all muffled up and departed, Belinda was beginning to think better of her refusal. No one else was in the lounge. No one came to light the gas. It was dreary and even a bit
scary. Sudden footsteps in the hall outside made her jump.

Daddy might go on talking to Miss Dalrymple for ages. Miss Dalrymple had told her to go to Dr. Jagai, and he was out on the walls. Sergeant Barclay had told her not to explore
alone
, but
all the others would be there.

Belinda raced upstairs for her hat and coat and gloves.

She slipped out of the front door and round to the steps Sergeant Barclay had pointed out. There were just a few steps, then a path led upwards between stone walls. Soon she passed a gate on the
left leading into the Raven’s Nest Hotel’s back garden.

Oh dear! she thought. If the others came that way, they might be far ahead. She hurried on.

The sun had set but the wind had blown away the clouds and it was still quite light outside, the sky above a clear blue. Lamps were lit, though, in the windows of the big house behind the hotel.
Their friendly glow heartened Belinda. As the path levelled off and swung to the left around the front of the house, she glanced back at it, then stopped to look. On its gate-posts perched stone
lions with long manes and lots of big teeth. They gazed out over Belinda’s head, and she turned to see what they were staring at.

Ahead of her, the path met another running along the top of a steep, grassy bank, patched white and yellow with daisies and dandelions. The bank curved into the distance in both directions.
Belinda guessed it must be the city wall, though it wasn’t at all what she had expected.

One branch of her path led down to a narrow tunnel under the wall. As she took the other branch, she saw the sea beyond the wall, straight ahead. To both her left and her right, not too far
away, high, square sort of mounds, grass covered, rose above the level of the bank. She couldn’t see any of her friends.

Seagulls cried overhead. It was a lonely sound.

Reaching the wall path, Belinda stopped again. Nearby were steps going down to the tunnel. On the other side of the path, the grass sloped down a short, slippery way and then fell absolutely
straight to the ground, an awfully long way below.

It did look dangerous. Perhaps she ought to go back to the hotel.

Then she heard Kitty’s penetrating voice away to her right and saw a figure on top of the mound, silhouetted against the darkening sky.
That
was all right, then. She started off
along the path, walking carefully.

As she approached the mound, she saw that it was actually a series of mounds and banks on top of a bit jutting out from the bank she was on. It must be a bastion, she decided, remembering
Kitty’s word. The base was a smooth stone wall as high as where she was walking, nearly as high as a three-storey house.

Just beside her, below her, was a sort of open room or courtyard with walls all around. One wall had barred windows. A dungeon? she wondered, stopping to look. Maybe there had once been a
roof.

It was too dark way down at the bottom to see much. Peering down, Belinda stepped onto the grass beside the path, careful not to go beyond the narrow flat strip onto the sloping part. It would
be a nasty fall, might even kill her, and if it didn’t she didn’t want to be stuck down there in the gloom with night coming on.

Dusk was falling fast, she realized. Maybe she shouldn’t try to catch up with the others. She turned to look back at the town.

Close behind her loomed a muffled figure, dark, menacing, with arms outspread as if to herd her over the precipice. Silently it moved forward.

Belinda ducked under one arm and ran, screaming.

Her heart drummed in her chest.
Thump
,
thump
,
thump.
Her, shoes thudded on the path. Was he following? She couldn’t hear.

She risked a glance backwards. Her feet swerved, then slid out from under her. Suddenly she was slithering helplessly down.

CHAPTER 10

Daisy stood in the lobby, wondering where one small girl might hide – and why. Should she knock on all the bedroom doors, question the hotel staff, or send for Alec right
away?

Before she had made up her mind, footsteps and excited voices approached from the nether regions of the hotel. Kitty Gillespie appeared, dressed for outdoors, pink-cheeked and windblown.
Raymond was visible behind her.

‘Come on,’ cried Kitty. ‘She’s right here, Bel.’

A moment later, Belinda cannoned into Daisy’s arms and raised a face streaked with mud and tears, a long scratch down one cheek. ‘I thought I was going to die,’ she wept.

‘Die?’ Daisy gasped. ‘What happened, darling? What on earth have you been up to?’

Kitty and Raymond burst into simultaneous explanations. Dr. Jagai’s prosaic tones cut through. ‘I think it would be best, Miss Dalrymple, if we retired to somewhere rather more
private.’

‘Undoubtedly,’ said Judith Smythe-Pike, her voice languid but the look she bent upon the doctor approving.

Her arm around Belinda’s thin shoulders, Daisy led them to the room set aside for police use. Judith raised delicate eyebrows at the magenta plush sofa. She was the only one in pristine
condition. Belinda’s coat was smeared with mud like her face, one black lisle stocking was laddered, one braid had lost its ribbon and the other was coming loose. The doctor, Kitty, and
Raymond were almost as bedraggled.

‘Dr. Jagai,’ said Daisy firmly as the brother and sister started gabbling again, ‘if you please.’

Ray grinned and put his hand over Kitty’s mouth.

‘We decided,’ Chandra Jagai began, ‘we four, to inspect the Elizabethan wall before dark. Belinda turned up just before we left and was invited to go with us, but she refused
because she expected her father to send for her shortly. So we went on, to the bastion known, I believe, as the King’s Mount. We had been there for some time – a quarter of an hour, per
haps, I’m not sure – when we heard screams. Naturally, we ran.’

‘They ran,’ Judith put in dryly. ‘I walked fast.’

‘It takes more than a few screams to knock Judith off her dignity,’ said Raymond with an affectionate look. ‘We found Belinda stuck in a bramble bush at the bottom of the wall,
luckily on the town side.’

‘Jolly lucky!’ Kitty exclaimed. ‘That side’s just a steepish slope, not too high. The other side’s a sheer drop, miles high.’

‘About thirty feet,’ Dr. Jagai qualified this gross exaggeration. ‘Far enough to cause serious injuries, certainly.’

‘I thought I was falling on that side.’ Belinda’s voice quavered. ‘When my feet slipped, I thought I was going to die.’

Daisy hugged her and frowned at her all at once. ‘You knew it was dangerous up there. The sergeant told you not to go alone.’

‘I wasn’t alone, not really. I didn’t realize how far ahead the others were. And I was being ever so careful, honestly, till . . . till . . .’ A sob shook her.

‘Shall I tell Miss Dalrymple what you told us?’ Dr. Jagai asked gently. Belinda nodded and he went on, ‘Someone frightened her. In the dusk, she got the impression that he was
trying to make her fall over the edge, the high edge. She was running away when she lost her footing.’

‘He
was
going to push me!’

‘Did he touch you, Belinda?’ Daisy asked.

‘No, but he was right behind me, with his arms stretched out.’

‘You said you were standing quite near the edge,’ said Raymond. ‘I dare say he intended to pull you back to safety.’

Belinda stubbornly shook her head.

‘Did you see his face? Did he speak? Would you recognize him?’

‘No, he was just a big black shape.’

‘She’d have seen him against the lighter western sky,’ Judith explained. ‘His face would have been shadowed, and it was already twilight.’

‘Didn’t any of the rest of you see him? Not even a glimpse of his back disappearing into the distance?’

‘It was a few moments before we were in sight of the path,’ said the doctor.

‘You were out of sight?’

‘The bastion has great mounds on it.’ Kitty’s hands described a pyramid. ‘I was on the far side when Bel started screaming.’

‘Miss Smythe-Pike and I were sitting on a bench,’ Dr. Jagai said, ‘looking out over the river mouth to the pier and lighthouse, and the sea.’

Judith nodded. ‘Just talking.’

‘Kitty was being an utter ass,’ said Raymond, frowning upon his sister, ‘racing up and down those slippery slopes. I was kept scrambling after to stop her breaking her neck, or
at least to pick up the pieces.’

‘So if this man hurried,’ Dr. Jagai told Daisy ‘perhaps for fear of being blamed for Belinda’s fright, he could have reached the steps down to the tunnel under the wall
before we appeared. We wouldn’t have noticed him leaving once we reached her and started to extricate her from the briars.’ He examined his scratched hands. ‘No serious damage
done.’

‘I don’t know how to thank you all for rushing to the rescue,’ Daisy said with heartfelt gratitude.

They all made the embarrassed mutters proper to the occasion.

‘I believe Belinda would be the better for a hot bath,’ said the doctor practically.

‘Fortunately,’ Judith drawled, ‘the baths don’t rely on the boiler. They have gas geysers. Kitty, we’d better go up and change for dinner.’

‘So had I.’ Raymond started after them, then looked back. ‘You’ll dine with us, won’t you, Doctor?’

‘Thank you, but I haven’t brought evening togs.’

‘Oh, righty-ho, then I shan’t bother with the best bib and tucker either. Let’s go and hoist a glass.’

The two young men went out together.

‘A bath sounds like a jolly good idea,’ said Daisy, ‘and then supper on a tray in bed, I should think. I expect one of the maids will clean up your things before
morning.’

‘I didn’t bring a nightie,’ Belinda said in a small voice, ‘or a toothbrush or anything.’

‘You’ll just have to brush your teeth with your finger – I’ll lend you toothpaste – and sleep in your combies, darling. Don’t worry, we’ll
manage.’

‘I’m awfully glad I’m sleeping in your room.’ She rubbed her eyes, visibly wilting. ‘Daddy!’

Alec came in, followed by Tring and Piper. He fended off his grubby daughter. ‘Great Scott, Bel, where have you been?’

‘Up on the city walls, Daddy. Someone . . .’

‘The copper at the door didn’t stop you?’

‘I didn’t see any policeman there.’

‘I ’spect Miss Belinda went out before we did, Chief’ Piper suggested. ‘It was when we got back to the police station you asked for a guard on the front door.’

‘There’s a back gate, too,’ said Belinda, ‘only I didn’t know about it then. We came back that way.’

‘Ernie, check that there’s a man on the gate, too. Who’s “we,” Belinda? Not Miss Dalrymple if you left before us.’

‘Tell your father the whole story,’ Daisy said, subsiding once more onto the magenta sofa and resignedly patting the place beside her. She and the sofa had already received a goodly
dose of mud from Belinda, whereas Alec needed to stay professionally neat.

‘Will you tell him? Please?’ Just about dead on her feet, Belinda dropped beside Daisy. The men took chairs.

Daisy related Belinda’s adventure as told to her, from the invitation to go with the others to the rescue from the brambles. Half-way through, Piper returned. By the time she finished,
Belinda was slumped against her, fast asleep.

Alec was troubled. ‘I don’t like it. It’s just possible someone sees her as a threat, though the chances are it was a stranger trying to be helpful, as young Gillespie
suggested. What about him? He was with his sister when this happened? Would she lie for him?’

‘I haven’t the foggiest. But I’ll tell you about them, and the rest, when I’ve got her to bed.’

‘No. I don’t want her left alone, without one of us four, until this business is cleared up.’ He crossed to the sofa and stood a moment looking down at Belinda with his heart
in his face. Then with gentle hands he moved her to a more comfortable position, her feet up and her head on a cushion. She stirred and murmured something but didn’t wake.
‘Besides,’ he said, returning to his seat, ‘I can’t spare the time. Oh, by the way, we found a white thread snagged around the window catch.’

‘Aha!’

‘And no dabs, either there or on the glass or his shoes, miss,’ said Tom. ‘Wiped clean.’