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Authors: Carola Dunn

BOOK: Damsel in Distress
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“They aren't expecting me? And they think they've rid themselves of you? Phil, you hopeless ass, I can't just march in as if I still lived there. We'd better go to the Dower House if you don't want to go home yet.”
“No, I can't stay at your mater's. You'll think up a story to tell your cousins, old bean. I know you can if you'll just put your mind to it. After all, isn't that what writers do for a living?”
Reluctantly flattered by his confidence, Daisy bit back a vigorous protest and a reminder that she wrote factual articles, not fiction. She put her mind to it.
The final details fell into place as they rolled past the Dower House, a charming red-brick Georgian residence set in its own gardens at the edge of the park.
“You promised to call on Mother,” she said.
“I haven't had half a chance!”
“No, that's the basis for our story. You asked Bill to stop while you popped in to say hullo and … .”
“He knows I did nothing of the sort.”
“No one is at all likely to ask him, and if they do, he won't mind telling such a little fib for me. I'll ask him.” She leaned forward. “Bill, you remember stopping at the Dower House on your way to the station, to let Mr. Petrie call on my mother?”
“If you say so, miss.” He flashed a grin over his shoulder. “Won't be the first taradiddle I've told for you or poor Mr. Gervaise. Quite like the old days.”
Coming to the lodge, they turned in through the open gates and proceeded up the elm avenue, while Daisy rapidly explained the rest to Phillip.
“Mother asked you to pick me up at the station, because her car wouldn't start.”
“
She
won't fib for you.”
“She hardly speaks to Edgar and Geraldine. She still resents their getting Fairacres. Listen, we're nearly there. When we got back to the Dower House, you were dead-beat … .”
“Oh, I say, a feeble sort of chap that makes me out!”
“Do you or do you not want to go on staying at Fairacres?” Daisy snapped, thoroughly peeved. “If you want me to make up a farrago of lies for you, just let me get on with it. You were feeling pretty rotten because of your head so I insisted on you coming back here, Mother being what she is. Like it or lump it, it's too late to change,” she added, as the Vauxhall drew up before the front door.
Coming back to Fairacres now it was no longer home was too painful for her to have much sympathy with Phillip's chagrin. Memories, which might have been exorcised had she gone on living there, haunted every nook and cranny.
She had no time to dwell on the spectres. Geraldine, looking disconcerted and somehow dowdy despite her smart tailored
costume, was coming down the steps beneath the pillared portico.
“Hello, Daisy,” she said. “I didn't know you were down here. I'm always happy to see you, naturally, but if you have come to call, I'm afraid I'm on my way out. I have an appointment in Worcester and I've just been waiting for Truscott to return with the motor.” She frowned at the chauffeur as he opened the door for Daisy.
“You mustn't blame him for taking longer than intended.” Daisy stepped down and brushed cheeks with her cousin's wife. Glancing back, she saw Phillip leaning heavily against the Vauxhall, with one hand pressed rather theatrically to his bandaged head. He was going along with her story. She just hoped he wouldn't overdo it and groan.
Geraldine greeted the tale with annoyance visibly repressed. “Of course you must stay, Mr. Petrie.” She spoke to the butler who stood on the threshold, then turned back to Daisy. “You'll have to excuse me, though, and Edgar is out after butterflies. Will you do the honours? Make yourself at home. You know Edgar and I wish you would look upon Fairacres as a second home.”
“Thanks, Geraldine. I'll try to make Phillip comfortable,” Daisy said diplomatically. “I expect a spot of brandy will buck him up.”
“Spirits? I hardly think … .” The arrival of a footman to help Phillip into the house mercifully cut her short. “Well, dear, I'll have to leave it to you. Worcester, Truscott.”
Daisy and Phillip settled in the formal drawing-room since Daisy was reluctant to make herself sufficiently at home to use the family sitting room. The drawing-room's furnishings, an eclectic mix of the best of the past two centuries, hadn't changed a bit. It gave Daisy an eerie feeling, as if her father or Gervaise might walk in at any moment.
Phillip refused with loathing to put his legs up on an elegant
Regency sofa but condescended to raise his feet onto the footstool solicitously provided by the footman. Luckily his face was tanned enough from sporting weekends to conceal the absence of invalidish pallor.
“Coffee, miss?” inquired the butler, who had followed them in.
“Yes, please.”
“Ernest, coffee.”
“Right away, Mr. Lowecroft.” Passing Daisy, he whispered, “I'll bring the brandy, too, miss.”
“Thank you, Ernest,” said Daisy, noting for future need his willingness to brave her ladyship's disapproval, though she did not intend to let Phillip drink a drop. She wanted a straight explanation from him, unclouded by a spirituous haze.
He would not say a word until the young footman had departed, returned with brandy, coffee, and strawberry tartlets, and left again. Then he kicked away the footstool.
“Right-ho,” he said, accepting the cup of coffee Daisy handed him and absently helping himself to two tarts. “Here we go.”
B
efore Phillip's story had progressed far, Daisy whipped a notebook and pencil from her handbag. In her own peculiar brand of Pitman's shorthand, indecipherable to anyone else, she made notes as he spoke. It allowed her to listen to the terrifying tale without interrupting.
“So that's it,” he said at last. “Arbuckle's gone up to town to see about getting hold of the ransom money. He insists Gloria's in no danger as long as he pays up and doesn't involve the police, but he's not acting as if he believes it. He's like a cat on hot bricks.”
“Having met—if that's the right word—the villains, do you believe it?”
“Well, they kindly didn't do me in, but then there's the Yank … .”
“One does read awful stories about American kidnappers taking the ransom and leaving a body,” Daisy admitted.
“Don't!” Phillip shuddered, his face pale in spite of the tan. “In any case, Gloria's alone and frightened and in their power. I
can't
sit back and do nothing. That's why I wired for you.”
“I can't see what you expect me to do, old dear. The police are the ones to tackle it—not the locals, Scotland Yard. I should
think a foreigner being involved would be a good enough excuse for them to butt in. You can trust Alec to investigate without letting the world know.” She put down her coffee cup and rose. “I'll ring him up right away.”
“No!” He jumped up and grabbed her arm. “I gave Arbuckle my word not to contact the coppers. He won't like it that I've brought you in.”
“Are you afraid he won't let his daughter marry you? He may not
have
a daughter if she's not found.”
“It's too big a risk, Daisy. He showed me the letter. The slightest whiff of the police and the Yank will kill her.”
Sighing, Daisy sat down and took another strawberry tartlet. Breakfast had been a cup of tea and a slice of toast, snatched on the run.
“All right, let's see what, if anything, we can do without them. I have half a hundred questions.” Ruminatively munching, she studied her notebook. “But first, I'd say the cottage they took you to must be quite nearby, within a few miles.”
“Why?”
“Simply because they dropped you off here after snatching you not far away. It would make less than no sense to bring you back to the same area from a distance. Was the van plain, or did it have a tradesman's name on it?”
“It had a butcher's name painted on the side.”
“What name? Was it a local firm? We might be able to trace it.”
“No address. The name began with P, I think. Potter, Parslow, Paget … Ah, I have it: Ferris, or maybe Farris.”
“Never heard of him,” Daisy said, disappointed. “Not local, then, though the police might be able to trace it.”
“No! Besides, they could easily paint over the words.”
“I suppose so. It was a long shot at best. You said the van driver sounded Cockney.”
“Yes, definitely, and so were the others.”
Daisy perked up. He hadn't mentioned the accents of the other men before. “All of them?” she asked eagerly.
“All those I heard talking.” Phillip was puzzled. “What difference does it make?”
“For a start, Londoners don't understand the countryside. Imagine being used to the East End, all the back-to-back buildings, people swarming everywhere. A few streets away you're in a completely different district where no one will recognize you.”
“By Jove, so they may have thought they'd taken me a long way!”
“Quite possibly. Besides, this must seem like a desert to them. I shouldn't be surprised if they left you under that hedge half expecting you'd never be found. They may have regarded it as a compromise between disobeying the Yank and actually doing you in.”
“They didn't sound at all keen on actually doing me in. The one who hit me boasted of his skill at knocking people out without killing them.”
“It's the Yank we really have to worry about, but the others may lead us to him, or to Gloria. Even if they've laid in supplies, you can bet they'll be popping into the nearest village for cigarettes or a pint. With Cockney accents they'll stand out like a sore thumb.”
“Won't they realize that?” Phillip suggested dubiously.
“I doubt it. We had lots of Cockneys in the military hospitals in Malvern during the War. If they paid any attention at all to how people spoke, they tended to think they were normal and everyone else talked ‘funny.' Whereas country people notice like a shot when they hear an accent that's not local.”
Phillip grinned. “Anyone from more than ten miles off is a furriner.”
“Exactly. Of course, the Yank might warn the men.”
“He may not even have noticed their accents. Gloria said we all sound plain British to her.”
“That's a point! I suppose their boss really is an American, by the way? It could be just a nickname, we have no way of knowing.”
“He wants the ransom half in pounds, half in dollars. Arbuckle showed me the note.”
Frowning, she refilled their cups and helped herself to yet another tart. “He's probably American, then, unless he's an Englishman planning to do a flit. It's more of an American sort of crime. I wonder if it's just for money, or does Mr. Arbuckle have enemies?”
“He said not. Daisy, what's the point of all these questions? I want to
do
something, not sit here chatting and scoffing pastries.”
“If I've learnt anything from Alec,” Daisy said severely, “it's the importance of seemingly unimportant details. I've already dragged a whole lot of helpful stuff out of you that you didn't bother to mention. There could be more.”
“Oh, right-ho,” he said, abashed. “If it's helping you decide what to do, fire away.”
“I still think the best thing to do is to tell Alec everything, but don't worry, I won't without Mr. Arbuckle's permission. I must say I'm rather surprised you didn't telephone the police as soon as you reached the house, even before you spoke to him. You didn't know about the threat in the first note until he arrived.”
“I didn't want to bring the local force in unnecessarily. The Chief Constable's a pal of the pater's.”
“Aha,” said Daisy understandingly.
“As a matter of fact, I thought of trying to get hold of Fletcher, but then I got through to Arbuckle and he told me not to breathe a word to a soul.”
“You haven't told anyone at all but me?” She raised her eyebrows as he shook his head. “Not even Edgar and Geraldine, I
gather. You must have said something to them, after turning up under a hedge trussed like a chicken!”
“Dalrymple didn't seem interested in the least in how I got there.”
“As you said, his head is full of butterflies. Anyway, I expect it's a relief not to have to know what everyone is up to all the time as he did with his schoolboys. Geraldine's another kettle of fish.”
“She didn't see me trussed up, and all Dalrymple told her was that I'd had an accident. She assumed I'd cracked up the old bus, and that Arbuckle had caused the crash and came to set things right. Her brother and his family were here for the weekend, but luckily they left last night. I didn't even see them.”
“I wonder what happened to your car. If the police find it abandoned, they're going to want an explanation.”
“Oh lord!”
“Well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. So you and I and Arbuckle are the only people who know about the kidnapping, besides the villains?”
“He told his assistant. The poor fellow was driving them and ended up tramping all over the countryside when the Studebaker disappeared. But he didn't tell him I'm involved, in case word might get back to the kidnappers.”
“They know you're involved,” Daisy pointed out.
“They don't know I survived, nor that I'm going to pull out all the stops to find Gloria.”
Ernest stuck his head around the door. “Telephone call for you, sir.”
“Mr. Arbuckle?”
“No, sir, a lady as won't give her name.”
“Fenella,” Phillip groaned, and hurried out.
“More coffee, miss?”
“No, thanks.”
He came in and started to clear up the coffee-things. “Cook
wants to know, miss, will you and Mr. Petrie be here for luncheon?”
“Yes,” Daisy said absently, her thoughts on the sudden introduction of Phillip's young sister into the affair. Fenella knew he was at Fairacres, if no more.
“Very good, miss.”
Daisy suddenly woke up to the fact that she was no longer at home at Fairacres. “Here” for lunch, the footman had said, not “in.” “Oh, Ernest!” she said as the door closed. He reappeared. “We haven't exactly been invited to lunch.”
He gave her a friendly if unfootmanly grin. “Not to worry, miss. Her ladyship's lunching out and there's no knowing when his lordship'll turn up. 'Sides, you're family, miss. Luncheon for two it is.”
She smiled at him. “Thanks!”
Abandoning for the moment the puzzle of Fenella, Daisy turned over in her mind all she had learnt from Phillip and tried to decide how to approach the problem of Gloria's whereabouts.
They could go from village to village enquiring in shops and pubs as to whether any Cockneys had been sighted—heard, rather. If only one or two villages were so distinguished, that would narrow down the search area. Two would be better, in fact, since one could presume the kidnappers were hiding somewhere in between.
It would be much easier, however, if they could narrow the search before they set out. If only Phillip had some sort of clue as to where they had taken him. She gathered he'd been completely unconscious both coming and going, but she'd better make sure.
What else had she not asked him? Alec would probably come up with dozens more questions. How she wished he was here!
Phillip came back, looking disgruntled. “Sisters!” he said bitterly.
“How much does she know?”
“Only that I'm here and don't want the parents to know. I had to get hold of some clothes from home somehow. She cycled over with a bag yesterday evening.”
“Jolly decent of her. And now she's let the cat out of the bag?”
“What? Oh! No, but she's been thinking and she's decided I must be in trouble, so she wants to help. I managed to put her off, but I bet she'll go on pestering. Dash it, girls shouldn't be allowed to think!”
Torn between umbrage and amusement, Daisy plumped for the latter. Laughing, she observed, “And there I was believing you brought me all the way from London to think for you!”
“I did. I say, old thing, don't fool about,” he pleaded, adding humbly, “I know I'm not much brainier than Fenella. You are. I need you. Gloria needs you.”
“I know, old dear, I know. I was teasing. If Fenella ‘phones again, we'll think of a way to put her off. Phil, you have absolutely no idea where you were taken, where Gloria is?”
“Not the foggiest.”
“You didn't see or hear anything at all, coming or going, even something you don't believe is significant?”
“I was out for the count both ways. It could have been any wood in the county, or outside it.”
“Wood? For pity's sake, you know you were in a wood?”
“It was only an impression,” Phillip said defensively. “I heard what sounded like a woodpecker, and then a squirrel. You know how they sort of chatter when they get annoyed? They might have both been in the only tree around.” He knit his brows in thought. “There was something else, though, which gave me the same impression. What was it?”
“Imagine yourself back there,” Daisy suggested.
He closed his eyes. “It makes my head ache. I've got it! The sunbeam flickered as if it was shining through fluttering leaves—that still could be just one tree, close to the cottage, though, couldn't it?”
“Yes. Nothing else?”
“The air seemed to be sort of damp,” he said doubtfully. “Sort of mouldy—not rotten, just the way woods are. Sort of
green
. I might have imagined it.”
“I know what you mean. It's not a smell you get from one tree. If it seemed damp after weeks of drought, you're probably right about the woods. Anyway, it gives us somewhere to start.”
“I don't see how. There are dozens of woods and copses and spinneys within a few miles.”
“Not many with an isolated, dilapidated, deserted cottage in the middle. Good, we don't have to search all the fields and commons and riverbanks—you didn't hear running water?”

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