Sheer Folly (33 page)

“What's your next move?”

“My next move? Not to say
move
, but you and me and Sergeant Gaskell here are going to make sure we've all of us got all the information, seeing we've been working separately. Then Sergeant Gaskell is going to drive me home, and on the way we're going to have a bit of a think and a bit of a chat. I hope you'll have a think, too. I daresay you'll have a chat with your missus. I'd rather you didn't, but I can't stop you. Tomorrow I'm going to let them all stew in their own juice for a few hours. First thing in the morning, I'm coming back with every man I can muster and search the hole and what's left of the grotto.”

“I hope it'll have stopped raining by then. It's going to be a hell of a job even if it's not pouring. You're looking for the gas taps, are you?”

“If we can find 'em all and see how many were turned on, it might—might, mind you—narrow down the time.”

“Did you test the ones we found for dabs?”

“Not yet. As a matter of fact,” Boyle said sheepishly, “Thomkin seems to have gone off with it in his pocket. How he can have failed to notice it . . . !”

“I expect Lucy—Lady Gerald was rushing him.”

“Do you really think fingerprints would tell us anything? We know they were all in there at one time or another.”

“Except Mrs. Howell, I believe. Hers would be definitive. It seems to me unlikely that anyone other than Pritchard, Howell, or Appsworth would touch the taps in the ordinary way of things.”

“So Appsworth's wouldn't amount to proof.”

“If they were smudged?” Gaskell contributed his first mite. “Meaning someone else touched them after he did.”

“Or he did it wearing gloves to mislead us,” the inspector pointed out. “Let's wait and see what we've got before we start speculating. I hope Lady Gerald gets a move on bringing back my only concrete clue, my sergeant, her photographs, and that young man who did a bunk.”

“Yes,” said Alec thoughtfully, “I'd like a word with Carlin. I can't help feeling we're missing something somewhere.”

 

Considering all
that had happened at Appsworth Hall on Saturday, Sunday breakfast was amazingly normal. Daisy was surprised, however, that both Mrs. Howell and Lady Ottaline, both of whom usually breakfasted in their rooms, came down to join the rest, as did Lady Beaufort.

Mrs. Howell was very subdued and avoided meeting anyone's eyes. She was all in black, not—it transpired—in mourning for her deceased noble guest, but for Chapel. Her son and Pritchard wore black suits for the same reason.

“I'll go with Winifred and Owen,” Pritchard said to Lady Beaufort. He didn't seem to hold any grudge against his sister-in-law. “Madison will be waiting to drive you down to the village to Church when you're ready.”

“Thank you.” She beamed at him. “Daisy, you'll come with us, won't you?”

“Er, I think not, Lady Beaufort. I have to make a fair copy of some notes I took yesterday. Besides, I'd better be here when Lucy gets back, in case . . . um . . . in case she needs my help explaining her photographs to the inspector.” Not for the world would Daisy miss Boyle's reaction to a certain one among the photos.

Lady Beaufort seemed a little puzzled, and Alec gave Daisy a suspicious look. Julia and Charles, knowing just what she was referring to, exchanged a glance. Daisy smiled at them all sunnily and spread marmalade on another piece of toast.

Outside the sun was peeping through the last ragged remnants of the storm. A beautiful day for a walk, and Daisy was keen to inspect the damage to the grotto—not the bit that had caved in on Rhino, but the entrance. She decided that would be pushing Inspector Boyle too far. He was searching it this morning, she vaguely remembered Alec telling her when at last he came to bed last night. She had been half asleep.

What on earth did he hope to find there?

Her thoughts returned to the present as Julia said, “I'm glad you've recovered so quickly, Lady Ottaline. You've really been in the wars the last couple of days.”

“I'm not an old crock yet!” Lady Ottaline snapped. Then she pulled herself together and said with a strained smile, “Sorry. I'm nervy and I ache all over but the doctor said there's nothing very wrong and if I stay in bed too long I'll stiffen up like a board.”

“Did he really?” said Daisy. “I wouldn't have thought he was capable of stringing so many words together.”

“He succeeded in conveying his meaning in two or three brief phrases. I gather you and Miss Beaufort rescued me from my second mishap, Mrs. Fletcher.”

“Not really, did we, Julia? Charles carried you halfway. When he met us, he left you with us and went back to help Alec and Gerald. We were expecting servants to come along after us, you see. But you were getting awfully chilly, and we were just wondering whether we'd be able to carry you between us when Madison arrived. So he carried you till we met the gardeners, then he handed you over to one of the gardener's boys. Fred was his name, wasn't it, Julia?”

Julia laughed. “No, that was what Madison called him, and the head gardener got shirty about the chauffeur giving his lads orders, remember? The one who actually carried you to the house, Lady Ottaline, was Billy.”

“I seem to have been passed round like a parcel. You'd better hand out a few hefty tips, Des.”

Sir Desmond grunted. He looked, if anything, less well than his wife, as if he had spent a sleepless night. It didn't seem to have affected his appetite, however, and what little he said was as suave as ever.

Neither he nor Lady Ottaline made any mention of church-going, but Charles said he would join the ladies. At once Gerald looked up from the heaped plateful he was methodically demolishing, and caught Alec's eye.

“I'll accompany you, if I may, Lady Beaufort,” Gerald said. “It's been a while, I'm afraid. You won't mind guiding me through the Prayer Book. I bet I remember the hymns, though. Had them thoroughly drummed into us at school.”

Daisy guessed that Alec had asked him to keep an eye on any suspects who left Appsworth—which meant Charles was still on the list, alas. She wondered about the chapel-goers. She was pretty sure Pritchard and Howell were in the clear. Perhaps Alec had asked Pritchard to make sure Mrs. Howell didn't flit. He might not hold a grudge, but he had no cause to love his sister-in-law. In any case, her chances of getting far under her own steam appeared slight.

In fact, she was such a wishy-washy person, Daisy simply couldn't believe she had the gumption to blow up the blasphemous grotto, with or without the immoral Rhino and his mistress in it. Her outburst against Pritchard, if not a fit of madness, had been more spite than a deliberate attempt to implicate him.

People dispersed. Daisy felt she ought to have a go at the few notes she had made for Boyle, having given them as an excuse for skipping church. She had been too tired to tackle them last night. She took her notebook to the library, where she sat and stared at the hieroglyphics. Her mind was elsewhere. She had a familiar feeling she was missing something vital, some clue, some observed quirk of character or behaviour, that would change the picture entirely. The more she sought it, the more elusive it became.

Alec came in. “I'm going over to the diggings, love, the place where the hillside collapsed, to see if Boyle's found anything. Want to come?”

“Seriously? Don't you think he'll throw a fit if I turn up?”

“He can't stop you going for a walk. He can keep you at a certain distance, and of course he doesn't have to tell you anything. Or if he makes you shake in your shoes, you could hide behind a tree—”

“Darling, honestly! I'm not
afraid
of the man. I just don't want to queer your pitch. But I'd like to come. I was thinking earlier that it's a beautiful day for a walk.”

“Let's go, then.”

They went out by the terrace. As they crossed the paving stones, Daisy's nagging sense that she was forgetting something returned.

“Your forehead's all wrinkled,” Alec said. “Better hope the wind doesn't change. What is it?”

“That's the trouble, I don't know. I'm sure I do know something helpful, something important, but what it is . . .” She shrugged helplessly.

“You, too? It's far more likely to be valid in your case than mine, though. You've known these people longer than I have, and you were here yesterday morning.”

“Yes, but you know much more than I do about what they claim they were doing, and what they say about each other. I missed lots of it.”

“I told you pretty much everything last night.”

“I was half asleep, darling. Suppose you start again from the beginning now. Perhaps it will spark an idea in one or t'other of us.”

Alec sighed but obliged. In general, he was much more obliging in this investigation, which wasn't his own case, than when she “meddled” in an affair for which he was responsible.

“That's the lot, I think,” he ended. “Why don't you give me your views of all the people involved and their relationships with Rydal? Come to think of it, I missed a lot of it the first time
round. When you were telling Boyle, I was trying to wash the chalk out of my hair.”

“Right-oh. As long as you're not going to make a fuss if I go round in circles a bit. Relationships simply can't be described in a straight line.”

“Make it as straight as you can, Daisy. We'll be there in five minutes.”

They had started on the path to the grotto but taken a branch to the right well before reaching the bridge. It climbed more steeply than the other, without any steps to aid the ascent. Now they came to a drystone wall with a stile made of flat stones sticking out. Alec gave Daisy a hand over, but she managed to catch one stocking all the same.

“I'm going to start wearing trousers for country walks,” she said, regarding the ladder with disgust. “I don't care who thinks they're improper.”

On the far side of the stile, the path was no more than a sheep-track across the short, wiry grass of the slope. No sheep were in sight. Doubtless they had made themselves scarce because of the thumps and shouts coming from the excavations, ahead and uphill.

Daisy talked faster and faster and increasingly breathlessly. They stopped for a couple of minutes before they reached the site so that she could finish the story of the night outing and mass ducking, which she hadn't got round to describing to Boyle.

Then they had to wait a couple more minutes for Alec to recover his gravitas.

“It's all very well laughing,” Daisy said severely, “but I wouldn't be surprised if Lady Ottaline was pushed, by either Rhino or Sir Desmond. Lucy's inclined to think that Rhino might have been pushed, by either Sir Desmond or Julia. Of course, by the time he went in they knew it wasn't really dangerous,” she added. “Charles—unless it was Carlin—called up that the water wasn't very deep, just enough to break the fall.”

“No water in the stream-bed now,” said Alec.

“No. But darling, that makes me think—”

“Tell me later. I want to know whether Boyle's chaps have found those gas taps.” He set off over the last rise.

Daisy followed. In her view, her sudden insight made it virtually impossible that Charles had caused the explosion. If only she could be sanguine that Alec and the inspector would be equally convinced.

She caught up as Alec called down into the dell, “Any luck, Inspector?”

Boyle yelled back. “All but one tap, and the chauffeur's bowler.” He climbed the steep, tumbled slope towards them, leaving eight or ten men behind him at the bottom.

The hole in the ground wasn't very large or very deep. About as deep as the hermit's room had been high, Daisy supposed. “Not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door”—a cathedral door, anyway—but it had served to kill Rhino.

“How could anyone have known the roof wasn't too thick to fail?”

“If the blast had been contained,” Alec said, “it would have been much stronger. That alone could well have done for Rydal. As for who could have foreseen the actual effects of the explosion, as far as I can make out most of it seems to have been sheer guesswork.”

“That's what I . . .” But Alec had turned away to give Boyle a hand over the rim of the crater.

“Morning, Mrs. Fletcher. All but one,” the inspector repeated to Alec. He was lightly dusted with white, but didn't look as if he'd played an intimate part in the digging. “Two large, the fireplace and the water-heater, presumably, and two small, two of the three lights. They're all turned on, so the third light probably was, too. We'll have to consult Pritchard and Howell, but we can assume that narrows the time period we have to consider.”

“Good work! The hat's not going to help us much, as we know Gregg was there.”

“No, only if it'd been in the back room, which it wasn't.” He gestured. “Over there it was, which I reckon to be the middle
part, where you found him. We're not likely to find anything more. A proper mess it is. We can't turn over every lump of chalk or limestone or whatever the muck is, hoping it's just a coating on something of interest. The rain last night washed a lot of it off the brass taps and copper tubing and they shone in the sun, is the only reason we found them. Did you talk to Gregg, sir?”

“Yes. Sullen, but of course he can't deny having been there. He swears he just wanted to embarrass Rydal by bursting in on him and his lady-friend. In any case, intending blackmail isn't a crime, and he didn't have a chance to commit it.”

“I can't see how anyone could have proposed to blackmail Rhino,” Daisy said, “when what he was up to was known to everyone at Appsworth Hall and half the population of London.”

“That's a point, Mrs. Fletcher, though villains are often much stupider than you might expect.”