Die Laughing (15 page)

Read Die Laughing Online

Authors: Carola Dunn

BOOK: Die Laughing
7.95Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
“It's my pleasure to drive Daisy, Mother. What's that you have there, Dobson? It smells delicious.”
“It's a rag-out, sir. Leastways, what I'd call it's a fancy stew, but I cut out the recipe from the ladies' page in the
Sunday Graphic,
and rag-out's what they call it, with a little squiggle over the
u
.”
“That's because it's French, Dobson,” said Belinda. “I think it's pronounced rag-goo, isn't it, Mummy?”
“More or less, darling.”
“Well, fancy you knowing that, Miss Bel, and you just starting French at school last September. Rag-goo, I'll remember that.”
“It smells heavenly,” said Daisy. “I wish I wasn't going out.”
“I'll make it again, madam, when you're home for dinner.”
“I see,” said Alec, laughing, “you're just trying it out on the rest of us to see if it's good enough for Daisy.”
“Well, madam's used to the best, isn't she. I wouldn't want to let her down.”
Alec's mother sniffed, and it wasn't a sniff of appreciation
of the savoury aroma. “There's nothing wrong with a good Irish stew. I believe I ordered stew for supper today. That will be all, Dobson.”
“I love Irish stew,” said Daisy pacifically, “but a change is nice. And anything is a change for the better after the eggs and sardines and cheese I survived on in Chelsea. Thank you, Dobson.”
“My pleasure, madam.”
The ragout tasted as good as it smelled, but Alec was not allowed to enjoy it in peace. His mother poked and prodded suspiciously at the small helping she had taken, though such indecorum in Belinda would have drawn instant censure. She ate a boiled potato uncontaminated by the sauce, then laid down her knife and fork.
“Alec, I suppose you will be far too busy in the morning to give
me
a lift in the motor-car.”
“Where to, Mother? I'm not quite sure what I'll be doing first thing tomorrow, but if you're leaving early and it's not too far out of my way, you know I'll be happy to take you.”
“Waterloo Station.”
“Waterloo! Why on earth—?”
“I'm going to Bournemouth.”
“I hope my aunt hasn't fallen ill?”
“Darling, your mother is uncomfortable with an investigation so close to home, so to speak.” Daisy's eyes begged,
Don't kick up a dust!
“Impertinent questions! And Daisy in the thick of things—it's intolerable!”
“Of course, Mother,” Alec soothed, “there's no reason why you should have to suffer. I'll get you to Waterloo in plenty of time for your train, never fear.”
“Gertrude Harbison is going with me.”
“Then we shall pick up Mrs. Harbison on the way, unless you're taking a lot of luggage. It's a small car, remember.”
“Granny's packed her big trunk,” Belinda announced, “and a basket and an overnight case and three hatboxes.”
“There's no knowing how long I'll have to stay,” her grandmother said defensively. “If Gertrude has to take a taxicab, I might as well share it with her.”
“I think you'll find it more convenient all around,” Alec agreed. He certainly would.
He finished his dinner—a staid rolypoly pudding followed the ragoût—and while hastily drinking a cup of coffee he read Belinda's story. It made him laugh, to her delight.
“Maybe I'll be a writer like Mummy,” she said, handing him his hat. “You will come and kiss me good night in bed, won't you, Daddy, however late you get home and even if I'm fast asleep?”
“Of course, pet. Ready, Daisy? Let's go.”
As he settled behind the wheel and reached for the self-starter, Daisy heaved a gigantic sigh.
“What's up, love? You know, if you really desperately don't want to go to this dinner party, I'd hate you to feel you must just because you might happen to find me a witness. The chances are pretty low. I could ring up Mrs. Randall and say you've broken your leg, or more believably that your tooth is agony. They all know all too well that you didn't manage to see the dentist.”
“Well, I can't say I'm looking forward to being interrogated about the murder, but I shan't cry off. Isn't it extraordinary
that the blasted tooth hasn't given me a single twinge since then? Simply being in his waiting room seems to have cured it.”
“Most extraordinary.” The car, kept in good order by Scotland Yard's mechanics, started smoothly. Letting out the clutch and moving off, he asked, “If the sigh wasn't for the dinner party, what's bothering you?”
“Guilt,” she said mournfully. “It's all my fault that your poor mother's running away from home.”
“Great Scott, Daisy, don't talk such bosh!” Not that it wasn't true, but red-hot wild horses—as Belinda had once proclaimed—would never draw that admission from him.
“No, it's true, darling. She doesn't like the way I do things, and I ought to have tried to compromise more than I have. After all, it's been her home for simply ages, and I've just moved in and changed things. No wonder she's not happy.”
“But I am, love, and so is Belinda.”
“And that's another thing: She's brought Belinda up since she was four and now Bel tends to turn to me before her. It must seem frightfully unfair.”
“Daisy, I wasn't going to tell you this, because it seems to me unfair to you to talk about Joan, as well as not quite fair to Mother, but—”
“In that case, perhaps you shouldn't tell me.”
“But I can't have the situation making you unhappy. The fact is, Mother went to Bournemouth a few months after Joan and I married and didn't come back except for visits till Joan died.” He stopped the car outside the Randalls' house and turned to her.
“Really?”
“Mother is old-fashioned and not very flexible in her ideas. She didn't get on with Joan any better than she does with you. And grateful as I am to her for her care of Bel, to see Bel blossoming since you became her mother has been a pure joy to me.”
“Oh, darling!” Teardrops sparkled on her lashes in the light of the streetlamp. “Right-oh, I'll stop feeling guilty, except for a little bit because I'm relieved that she's going. After all it's only for a few days, this time, isn't it? Till we catch Talmadge's murderer. I haven't driven her away for good.”
“Well, we can always hope—”
“Alec!” She put her hand across his mouth. “Don't say it. I'm very sorry for her. It's much the same with my mother. I love her, but in a dreadfully dutiful sort of way and I'd rather not have to spend too much time with her. I hope I won't be like that when I'm older.”
“You couldn't possibly!”
“Thank you, darling, and thank you for telling me about Joan. I suspect I'd have liked her no end. I'd better enter the lions' den now or they'll start the soup without me.”
He went round to open the car door for her, kissing her as she stepped onto the pavement. “Don't walk home alone in the dark, love. Ring for a taxi.”
“I expect someone will give me a lift home. Toodle-oo, darling, don't work too hard. My best to Tom and Piper.”
He watched her go up the garden path and ring the doorbell. Joan would have liked her, too, he thought, and loved her for being a loving mother to Belinda. She was having a hard time trying to adjust to life in St. John's Wood. Thank heaven she had her writing to fall back on.
His mother, who disapproved of the writing, was not helping Daisy's adjustment. As he drove towards Whitehall, Alec started to calculate. Suppose she were tactfully encouraged to go to live permanently with his aunt. His father had died young, in his early forties, but heavily insured. Alec had never allowed his mother to pay any of the household expenses while she resided with him, and she was not an extravagant person. She must have been living well below her income for years. She could well afford to share with her sister or even to live independently if she chose.
His father had left the Gardenia Grove house to him, unmortgaged, along with a decent sum in debentures. With Daisy earning her own spending money, they could promote Dobson to housekeeper and hire another maid to help her, thus relieving Daisy of numerous dull chores.
Then they might think about starting a family. Turning into the Yard, Alec wondered how Daisy felt about having children of her own, and how he did. Babies again, at his age? At least these days it was possible for even respectable women to avoid having them if they didn't want them.
Which made him wonder about Mrs. Talmadge and her pregnancy—intentional or accidental? His thoughts turned back to the case of the murdered dentist.
A
lec reached his office a few minutes early for the meeting he'd set up. Tom Tring was already at his desk, reading the pathology report.
“Any luck, Tom?”
“If you're talking about the canteen coffee, Chief, no.” He waved a disgusted hand at the disgusting dregs in the mug at his side. “If it's them cheeky buggers I've been after all day you mean, well, in a manner of speaking.”
“Stop being oracular.” Alec sat down at his desk, on which reposed several discouragingly large piles of papers. “You've been at it all day. What have you got to show for it?”
“Have a heart, Chief. I managed to nab eleven likely lads that use the shortcut, and there's a few more I've heard about but didn't get ahold of. It's like trying to catch minnows with your bare hands.”
“And?”
Tom grinned. “And one of ‘em saw a veiled lady going in through the Talmadges' back gate at about one o'clock.”
“A veiled lady? He's sure of the time and place?”
“Sure of the time, within a few minutes either way. He'd just delivered a pair of lamb cutlets and got a wigging because it was too late to cook 'em for lunch. And sure of the place because I took him to the alley and he picked out the right gate. But he couldn't see her face because of the veil on her hat, and all he can say about her hat and coat and shoes is that they were sort of brown.”
“So near and yet so far,” Alec groaned. “Tall, short, fat, thin?”
“He was in a hurry, being late back to the shop, too. He remembered her because it was unusual to see a lady in the alley and because of her surreptitious behaviour—acting sneaky, he called it. He particularly noticed the veil because it added to the impression of furtiveness.”
“Watch it, Sarge,” said Ernie Piper, coming in, “your fancy vocab's showing.”
“That's vocabulary to you, young whippersnapper. Like constabulary.”
“‘When constabulary duty's to be done, to be done,'” Piper warbled, “‘the policeman's lot is not a happy one.'”
The divisional sergeant entered behind him.
“Evening, Mackinnon,” Alec greeted him. “You're very full of yourself, Ernie.”
“It's the only thing I am full of, Chief. No time for tea, the sergeant and me.”
“You ought to go on the music halls, you ought,” said Tom, reaching for his telephone. “All right if I ring down to the canteen for sandwiches, Chief?”
“Do. Are you starving too?” Alec thought guiltily of his ragoût and jam pudding.
“Not me. I stopped in the canteen before I came up, not
that their steak-and-kidney pud's worth a farthing compared to the wife's.”
“All right, Ernie, your stomach's empty, but I hope your brain's full. What have you got?”
“Three cabbies, Chief. Leastways, I only talked to one of 'em, but I checked the logs of the other two that they turned in to the company at the end of their shifts. One picked up a couple in New Bond Street around twenty past twelve and took them to Oxford and Cambridge Mansions, Old Marylebone Road. The other took one person from the rank in the Edgware Road to the New Theatre, leaving at five to two.”
“And the one you talked to?”
“Took a lady in a veil from the Edgware Road rank to the Talmadge house. Left at seven minutes to two, arrived ten past. The lady was put in the taxi by a tall thin gentleman with a monocle and no chin, who gave him a fiver. He'd not likely forget that! Blimey, Chief, I reckon I'm in the wrong business. Some bloke offers me a fiver, I have to arrest him.”
“Talk to the other two tomorrow and make sure it's our pair, though there seems little doubt. Good work, Ernie, and quick work.”
“But I never found whoever took 'em there and back in between,” said Piper disconsolately.
“Try again tomorrow, but there's another factor. Creighton owns a very nippy three-litre Bentley, royal blue. He wouldn't want to leave it in New Bond Street, but suppose he always intended the stop at the Dixons' flat and then, perhaps, to take Mrs. Talmadge for a spin in the country.”
“He could have driven it over earlier and parked it in one
of those side streets,” said Mackinnon, catching on at once. “With that, he'd have plenty of time to dash over to talk to the victim and finish him off.”
“What about my veiled lady?” Tom demanded.
Piper and Mackinnon stared at him.
Alec gestured to Tom to explain. When he finished, Piper said thoughtfully, “So either Mrs. Talmadge did take a taxi, in which case I'll find it, or she can drive. But it don't seem likely, somehow, that he'd lend her the car to hurry home and murder her old man.”
“Ah,” said Tom, “but he might have driven her there—not gone in himself—so she could tell hubby it was all off and she was going to run off with his lordship. It's always looked like a spur-of-the-moment job to me.”
“Me too, Tom,” Alec agreed. “We'll have to see if we can trace the car. Ernie, add that to your taxi-tracing chores.”
“Right, Chief.”
“Before we discuss any further, let's make sure we all know all there is to know or we'll be talking at crosspurposes. Mackinnon, let's hear from you. Tell them about the interview with Creighton, and then report on the Dixons' flat.”
Skimming the relevant reports on his desk as he listened to his men, Alec gathered together the threads of the investigation. Unfortunately, they showed no sign as yet of entwining in a knot.
The pathology report held no surprises. Talmadge had died of a combination of the suffocating and toxic effects of breathing pure nitrous oxide. Any pressure marks caused by his being bound and gagged had disappeared before the autopsy. However, traces of isinglass and benzoin were
found around his mouth. Also, the lab confirmed moustache hairs on the sticking plaster from the waste bin and an exchange of fibres from his white coat with those of the bandages and chest strap.
Daisy had got it exactly right.
Ernie Piper had gone through Talmadge's personal and business accounts, all very orderly. He had found nothing to suggest blackmail or gambling or any other irregularity. Scanning his list of female patients from eighteen to forty, Alec saw many names of people he knew. It wouldn't be needed, though, unless Gwen Walker was definitively eliminated.
Either she or Daphne Talmadge was almost certainly Tom's veiled lady. Alec was going to have to go down to Denham to check the old-school-friend alibi.
As for Mrs. Talmadge's alibi, Mackinnon had not had to sneak into 6J to study the possibilities. When he knocked on the door of the flat below, to ask if the resident had seen or heard anything at the relevant times, he was invited in. The elderly widow, delighted to have a visitor, had assured him the flats were all identical in design and shown him around her own. Though there was no back door, the rooms all led off a passage and the cleaner could easily have left without seeing Creighton or Mrs. Talmadge.
“You'll see her tomorrow, Tom,” said Alec. “Mrs. Simpson, isn't it, Mackinnon?”
“Simpkins, Chief.”
“That's it.” Another good mark for the sergeant. “On second thoughts, you can deal with her. I want Tom to tackle the Army and Navy Club. If Major Walker lunched
there, he probably signed a chit. Times may be more difficult to establish.”
“What's he look like, Chief?” Tom rumbled. Alec gave a description. “Ah! Sounds like ninety per cent of retired army officers that go on calling themselves by their rank.”
“I'm afraid so. You'll have to hope he's well-known at the club. Any questions or ideas, anyone?”
The discussion continued for another half hour or so, without any new facts or insights emerging. Alec sent the others home. He stayed on for just long enough to flip through the pile of papers marked Urgent, concerned with other cases and general directives. Deciding to come in early to deal with those that really were urgent, he went home.
 
 
Daisy was still up. As he hung up his hat and coat, she came out of the sitting room and into his arms. He kissed her. “Any luck?” he asked.
“Well, in a manner of speaking, darling.”
“Don't you be oracular, too!”
“Too?”
“That's exactly what Tom said when I asked him if he'd learned anything from his errand boys.”
“And what did he say next?”
“One lad saw a veiled lady going through the back gate in a furtive manner. He'll swear to the time, but didn't see her well enough to recognize her. He was in a hurry.”
“Oh dear, Daphne was wearing a veiled hat when she arrived home. Cocoa, darling? Or a whisky?”
“Cocoa, please.” He followed her to the kitchen and sat down at the scrubbed wood table. “What else was Mrs. Talmadge wearing?”
“A fawn coat with astrakhan trimmings.” Daisy fetched a bottle of milk from the larder and took down a small pan with a lip from its hook.
“General description: brownish?”
“Good enough, though I'd have thought he'd at least notice the contrast of light cloth with dark collar and cuffs.”
“Yes, he'll have to be asked about that. I should have found out from you yesterday what she was wearing. What's your news?”
“Another rumour about Gwen Walker and Raymond Talmadge, a new one. They were seen having breakfast together at a hotel in Brighton. No mention of who saw them, I'm afraid, or when, or which hotel, and it may be pure fantasy or even a deliberate fabrication. But I do think it's significant, as it's not just repeating the Soho story.”
“Watch the milk!”
“Oh, blast!” The froth had risen in the pan and bubbled over the sides. Daisy snatched it from the flame before too much spilt, but a smell of burning permeated the kitchen. “Oh dear, I don't think I shall ever be frightfully good at domestic things, darling. There's enough left for half a mug each.”
“Fill mine up with cold. I don't mind it lukewarm as long as it hasn't got a skin on it.”
“Right-oh. Did you see Gwen Walker this evening?”
“Yes. Naturally she denied any more than a casual acquaintance with Talmadge. Not convincingly.”
“Here, try this. Here's the sugar if you want more. You believe she was involved with him, then?”
“Delicious.” A vast improvement on canteen coffee, at least. “I'm working on the assumption that such is the case. I've got to go down to Denham tomorrow morning to check her alibi.”
“I bet she has a hat with a veil, too, if she's been sneaking around seeing Talmadge on the sly. And everyone has a brown coat. I was going to ask you about the major, but Tom's veiled woman must have done it, mustn't she?” Daisy gulped the last of her half cup of cocoa and smothered a huge yawn.
“Seems likely. I've got Tom checking the major's alibi tomorrow, and Creighton's not altogether out of the running yet. Come on, love, time for bed.”
They went upstairs. Alec popped into Belinda's room. His daughter lay sprawled on her back, her loose nighttime braid gleaming redly against the pillow by the light from the landing. Her arms were flung every which way in utter abandon, her face relaxed in a slight smile. Tucking her arms under the bedclothes, he recalled a time when her freckled face in repose had contrasted with her usually anxious expression. Nowadays there was not much difference. Since Daisy moved in, Bel had found less worry and much more fun in her young life.
Dropping a light kiss on her forehead, Alec wondered how he was going to persuade his mother to move out—without her realizing she was being persuaded.

Other books

The Royal Baby Revelation by Sharon Kendrick
Tomorrow About This Time by Grace Livingston Hill
Mark Me by Shawn Bailey
Murder in Moscow by Jessica Fletcher
If You Still Want Me by CE Kilgore
Tenth of December by George Saunders
Heroin Love by Hunter, I.M.
Kiss Your Elbow by Alan Handley
Running Wilde (The Winnie Wilde Series Book 1) by Chambers, Meg, Jaffarian, Sue Ann