Gunpowder Plot (15 page)

“Felt to me like it’s got another envelope inside, Chief,” said Piper, opening and offering the penknife with which he kept sharp his endless supply of pencils.

Alec carefully slit the top of the envelope. “Yes, there’s another one inside. That’s odd, it’s addressed to ‘ Jack.’ Just ‘ Jack,’ no surname, no Mr. or Esquire. Here’s the covering letter.”

He unfolded the single sheet. The sprawling handwriting was easy to make out and Daisy read silently as he read aloud: “‘ Dear Harry, I don’t want to upset anybody you needn’t wory I’m going to tell nobody else. But I thoght I better let you know I’m going to tell Jack. Its no good tryng to stop me. I’ll do it weather you say yes or no but if you say yes you can give him this letter I writ for him so as it don’t come like a shock when I tell him. Its my right. Yrs truly, Ellie Gooch (Mrs).’ ”

They gazed at each other with a wild surmise, silent (though not, thought Daisy, upon a peak in Darien. It wasn’t only Shakespeare haunting her today). Dying of curiosity, she was about to ask Alec if he felt justified in opening the second envelope, when Jack came in from the drawing room, followed by Wookleigh and Miller.

“Mr. Fletcher! Sir Nigel tells me Mr. Gooch ran his car off the road, on our land. Is he badly hurt?”

“I’m afraid his injuries appear to be serious.”

“I
told
Father that turn into the lane was an accident waiting to happen. I’m going to take down the gateposts and straighten it out. I wouldn’t have had this happen for anything! First Mrs. Gooch, and now this! Where is he? Upstairs?”

“Dr. Prentice is here,” Daisy said soothingly, “and Gwen and Babs are doing what they can to help.” It was not the moment to tell him about the rocket.

“I’d only be in the way,” Jack said in frustration.

“Come and sit down, Mr. Tyndall,” said Alec. “Mr. Gooch was carrying this, addressed to you.”

Still standing, Jack took the envelope and stared at it blankly.

“What on earth?”

“I’d like you to open it now, in my presence. I must warn you that anything you choose to say will be written down and may be produced in evidence. You are not obliged to say anything, and you are entitled to legal representation.”

Jack gave no sign of hearing the ominous words. With a frown, he ripped open the envelope, unfolded the letter, and started to read. Utter astonishment was succeeded by shock as he turned the page. Ashen, he dropped into the nearest chair. He read on to the end, then folded the double sheet with automatic fingers. Leaning forward, he held it out to Alec without a word.

Alec took it. Jack slumped against the high back of the chair, his eyes closed, still deadly pale.

“Whisky?” Sir Nigel said in a loud whisper to Miller, who nodded and went off.

Alec unfolded the letter and started to read, silently this time. As before, Daisy read it with him.

My dearest boy,

You will be suprized to get this from me seeing we never met before last night but I’ll explain. You are 21 and a man and you can deside for yourself. I waited all these yrs till you was old enogh to deside for yourself. This is hard to writ and I want you to be shure I’m not going to do anything to upset things. I won’t never tell anyone else, I promise faithfuly. I come all the way from Australia to tell you and becaus I just wanted to see you and tell you and make shure your alright. Becaus my Jimmy is a good man and if theres anything you need he’ll spring for it and won’t never say nothing. Even if its a lot of money he’s not short a penny, long as it don’t take away from our boys you see you got three brothers. Half brothers I shuld say. You see, Jacky dear I’m youre real mother. Your dads youre real dad don’t wory he wanted a boy so badly and him and me, well, you know about the birds and the bees your 21 like I said. And I coudn’t a brung you up propper all on my one and he give me enugh money to start over in Australia and her ladyship promised she be a propper mother to you from what I seen she kept her promis you been happy, so what could I do? But I cried and cried when they took you away and now I’ve come back to make shure your alright like I said and dont hold it agin me Jackie, I just want to see you and talk to you and for you to know I love you and that’s all. And I won’t tell no one else, like I said and me and Jimmy ll go back to Australia and leave you be don’t wory. But if you coud just come down to the Three Ravens tomorrow just to talk a bit more, you was so nice to me last night. O Jackie I love you dearly tho I wasn’t a good mother to you so please come.

Youre loving mother

Ellie Gooch

16

A
lec saw that Daisy was blotting her eyes with her fingertips. Dammit, he shouldn’t have read the letter where she could see it. He gave her his spare handkerchief, the one he kept for weeping witnesses and suspects.

The letter, he passed to Tom Tring for him and Piper to read. Jack Tyndall had handed it over after receiving the warning. It was now an item of evidence. However, Sir Nigel Wookleigh had no right to see it, since— as Struwwelpeter correctly, if maddeningly, kept insisting— this was not his county. Fortunately, the Chief Constable realized this.

“Hmph,” he said, tugging on his whiskers, “like to have a word with Lady Tyndall before I leave, assure her of any assistance I can properly offer. But this isn’t the moment. Don’t want to get in the way. Believe I’ll take a turn on the terrace.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Alec with heartfelt appreciation. An interfering CC could be the very devil.

In the doorway to the drawing room, Wookleigh met Miller bearing a half-full glass and a soda siphon. “Just the ticket,” he said approvingly, and went on.

Miller touched Jack’s shoulder and, when he opened dazed eyes, put the glass into his hand. He took a gulp, spluttered, and mutely held out the glass for soda water. Alec watched the colour begin to return to his face. He couldn’t possibly be acting. But the shattering surprise might have been the existence of the letter, not its contents. In that case, his handing it to the police rather than trying to conceal it could be considered a brilliant move.

While observing his chief suspect, Alec had not forgotten the third victim, who was still himself a suspect. “Piper, you’d better go and sit with Gooch until I can organize a uniformed replacement.”

“Yes, sir.” Ernie Piper was bright enough and had worked with Alec long enough not to need his task spelled out for him: He was to catch any words Gooch might utter and to guard him from further harm. They had no proof the rocket had been a small boys’ prank. The letter he had carried was enough to throw the Tyndall family into turmoil. He might have proof of its claims, or he might have further revelations equally unwelcome.

Tom, having folded the letter and consigned it to a capacious inner pocket, was watching Jack Tyndall equally closely. Alec had a job for him, too. But first he leant close to Daisy and asked in a low voice, “Does Wookleigh know about the rocket?”

“No, I’m pretty sure not.”

So he couldn’t have told Tyndall or Miller about it. Alec crooked his finger and Tom came over. “Tom, see if Miller can give Tyndall an alibi for the past couple of hours.”

“I don’t think Tom knows about the rocket, either,” Daisy whispered. “He wasn’t here.”

“Rocket, Chief?”

“A firework which probably caused Gooch’s accident.”

“Ah.” No more than Piper did Tom need
t
’s crossed or
i
’s dotted.

Alec raised his voice. “Mr. Miller, if you wouldn’t mind accompanying Sergeant Tring, he has a couple of questions for you.”

Miller gave young Tyndall a dubious look. “Going to be all right, Jack?”

The boy nodded.

“All right.” He went with Tom into the drawing room.

Which left Daisy to take notes, as Alec didn’t want Tyndall’s attention drawn to the fact that his words were being written down. She was already taking out her journalist’s notebook. Alec moved to a chair directly opposite Tyndall.

“She . . . I don’t understand. Is it true? What she wrote?”

“That Mrs. Gooch was your natural mother?”

“Yes. I don’t understand! It can’t be true?”

“That remains to be seen. You had no inkling?”

“How could I? I’ve always been Jack Tyndall of Edge Manor. Father, M-mother, three sisters. No one’s ever called me a . . . bastard, at least not to my face. But if it’s not true, why should she write it?”

“Good question.” Not one Alec intended to answer, though he could come up with a number of reasons. First, back to the blackmail theory, as Tom had said: An unfounded report of that nature could do almost as much damage as a true one. Second, Alec thought Mrs. Gooch had been a bit young to have reached the climacteric, but perhaps she had suffered some other type of mental instability— possibly triggered by a baby lost in the past and a meeting with a charming young man of the right age, or by delusions of grandeur :“My son the baronet.” Was it significant that the letter had been in her husband’s possession? He wasn’t at present available to be asked.

Jack was recovering his composure and beginning to think. “Another thing I don’t understand is why Gooch had the letter on him. Why didn’t Mrs. Gooch give it to me when she arrived? I talked to her, to both of them, for several minutes. Do you suppose he’d just found out what she’d written and took it away from her?”

“Did they behave as if that was the case?”

“No, not really. He was a bit glum. I assumed he wasn’t frightfully comfortable hobnobbing with the nobs, so to speak. She was in high spirits, not at all as if he’d given her a wigging. Of course, if he’d taken the letter, she could have simply told me what she’d written. But why didn’t she?”

“What would you have done if she had made such a claim to you immediately?”

“Oh Lord, I suppose I would have gone into a blue funk, as I did just now, only right in the middle of the party. You must think I’m a hopeless chump.”

“It must be a tremendous shock to find out suddenly that you’re illegitimate.”

“Yes. But is it wishful thinking to say I absolutely can’t believe it? I mean, surely one must have some inkling if one has been adopted. For twenty-one years I’ve been part of this family. I’ve never felt like an ugly duckling, a cuckoo in the nest. Not a soul has ever hinted that I don’t belong. My sisters always teased me that I was Mother’s pet and Father goes . . . used to go on and on about how I’d be the next baronet in a long line descending from father to son. I shan’t be if it’s true, shall I?”

“I believe not. The law does not recognize adoption.”

“Not that I care for such fuddy-duddy rubbish. It’s not so important nowadays, is it, and anyway, I’m going to be an engineer. But the parents . . . No, it can’t be true. I liked Mrs. Gooch very much, but she couldn’t possibly be my mother. Why should she have written such stuff?”

“Don’t you have any ideas? What’s your theory?”

“Well, I suppose you’re wondering if it’s something criminal.”

“That’s my job.”

“I suppose it could conceivably have been a sort of threat in a roundabout way,” Jack said doubtfully, “suggesting she would tell people I was her son if Father didn’t pay her off. It could have been a terrific nuisance. But why write all that about Mr. Gooch having plenty of money? Besides, she wasn’t at all that sort of person, I’d swear to it. I say, Mr. Fletcher, do you think
he
actually wrote it?”

Daisy looked up, startled. Alec had to admit, “I hadn’t considered that possibility.” Seeing Tom Tring reappear in the drawing room doorway, he added, “Unfortunately, he can’t be questioned.”

“No, and even if he did write the letter, I feel dreadful about his accident. And I didn’t know. I wasn’t there to help!”

“Where were you when it happened? Say for the last couple of hours?”

“Miller and I were taking apart the fireworks apparatus.”

Tom nodded, confirming that Miller had told the same story.

“Down on the lowest terrace?” Much too far for a quick dash up to the far end of the drive to set off a rocket, and he couldn’t have known exactly when Gooch was going to leave.

“Yes. It was just complicated enough to keep my mind off . . . things. I can’t believe this, any of it. It hasn’t really sunk in yet, you know. I mean, Father dead, Mrs. Gooch dead, let alone that she could be my mother!”

“Jack, dearest!”

“Mother!” Looking up at the stairs, Jack jumped up. “Jupiter!” he groaned. “Does she have to know?”

“I’m afraid it can’t be helped.”

Jack went towards the stairs, saying, “Mother, should you have come down? You’re not well.”

“I’m never quite well, dearest, but I’m not an invalid.” Though she took Jack’s arm down the last few steps, Lady Tyndall didn’t appear to lean on it. Wraithlike in a charcoal grey costume that emphasized her frailty and the dark circles below her eyes, she glided across the floor in a way evocative of the Victorian ballrooms she must have adorned in her youth. No modern young woman accustomed to tennis, golf, and the tango could match that ethereal grace.

Alec rose to meet her, and Daisy started to stand, but Lady Tyndall said warmly, “No, don’t get up, my dear. I’m so sorry such dreadful things have happened while you’ve been staying with us. I don’t remember much about last night, but the girls tell me you were a veritable tower of strength. I hope you haven’t suffered for your exertions.”

“Not at all, Lady Tyndall, not that I did very much. Mostly ordered everyone else about.”

“You were a great help.” She turned to Alec. “Mr. Fletcher, I’m afraid I wasn’t much help to you last night.”

“It wasn’t to be expected, ma’am. But as you seem to be somewhat recovered, I do have a number of questions to ask you.”

“Of course.” She sat down beside Daisy.

“Mr. Tyndall, will you go with Sergeant Tring, please. Tell him again all you can recall about your dealings with the Gooches.”

Jack hesitated, looking at his mother.

“You’d be surprised, sir,” said Tom, his manner fatherly, “how much more you remember second time around.”

“Daisy will stay with me, Jack, if Mr. Fletcher has no objection. She will be a support without
hovering,
as my children tend to.”

“Certainly,” said Alec.

Still reluctant, glancing back, Jack followed Tom through the door to the passage.

“You won’t mind if I take notes, Lady Tyndall?” Daisy asked. “It’s a journalist’s habit, and it helps Alec keep things straight.”

A spasm of indefinable emotion crossed Lady Tyndall’s face. Journalism might be a barely acceptable occupation for an aristocratic young lady, but helping the police question witnesses was not. Alec was glad Daisy was turning to a fresh page in her notebook and didn’t notice. Pencil poised, she looked expectantly at Alec.

“I hope you’ll forgive me if I repeat myself, ma’am,” he said. “I haven’t got my notes from last night with me. I believe you said neither you nor— to your knowledge— Sir Harold had invited Mr. and Mrs. Gooch?”

“How could we have? We had never heard of the Gooches. The children didn’t mention them. Indeed, neither Barbara nor Gwen could have done so without admitting to having visited the public house, which in my day no respectable unmarried lady would have dreamt of doing. Nor would Harold or I have dreamt of inviting people who happened to be staying at the local inn, not without a proper letter of introduction. My son invited them, an act of impulsive kindness and very like him.”

“Did that annoy you?”

“Frankly, I thought it a little bit thoughtless of him. They really didn’t fit in with our other guests. But he’s an adult and it was a family affair. He had a right to issue his own invitations. I’m afraid Harold was quite annoyed.” Lady Tyndall hesitated, visibly steeling herself. “Is it true . . . The girls tell me Harold didn’t kill himself after shooting the woman, that someone else shot them both?”

“Such appears to be the case.”

She gave a little sigh, perhaps of relief. Her husband was still dead, but at least he wasn’t guilty of both murder and
felo-de-se
. “It must have been a burglar. Harold often had money in the study, for servants’ wages and tradesmen’s bills and so on, and he paid them up there. Anyone could have known. And everyone knew we’d all be out on the terrace watching the fireworks, with all the doors unlocked. They wouldn’t have expected to find him there.”

“Nor to find Mrs. Gooch. Suppose it was a burglar. That still leaves the question of why she was there with your husband, in the middle of his party. Have you any ideas on the subject, Lady Tyn-dall?”

“None at all. If it hadn’t been Bonfire Night, she might have said something that captured his interest. He was subject to sudden enthusiasms, like having Daisy write about our Guy Fawkes celebration for an American magazine. I quite thought he’d be appalled when Gwen broached the possibility, but he was very keen, wasn’t he, Daisy?”

“Very,” Daisy agreed with commendable brevity.

“Did you see Sir Harold talking to Mrs. Gooch before the fireworks?” Alec asked Lady Tyndall. “Or to Mr. Gooch, come to that.”

“Only to say ‘ How do you do’ when they arrived. Our guests were spread out through this hall and the drawing room, and I was moving about, trying to have a few words with each of them.”

“Did
you
speak to either of the Gooches?”

“No, I’m afraid I missed quite a few people. I find entertaining quite exhausting these days.” She looked quite exhausted now.

Just a couple more questions, Alec decided, then he’d cut it short. He could always come back to her later. “But you went out with the rest to watch the fireworks?”

“Oh yes, Harold would have been most disappointed if I’d missed his show.”

“Did you see him or speak to him on the terrace?”

“No, I can’t say I did. I spoke to various people, of course, whomever I found myself beside. I doubt I can remember exactly. So many people, all muffled up against the cold, and the light was very variable.”

“Did you—” Alec swung round as the front door opened to admit a young woman in a fur-trimmed coat, Cuban-heeled boots in the latest style, and rather too much makeup for a morning in the country.

“Mother! Oh, hello, Daisy.” She eyed Alec with disfavour.“Mother, what’s going on? I’ve been waiting and waiting for someone to come and tell me. I telephoned, but Jennings refused to put me through or call anyone to the phone or tell me what’s happened. He said the house is all at sixes and sevens, and the line had to be kept clear for police business anyway. Are you Daisy’s policeman?”

Having risen at her approach, Alec bowed.

Her mother frowned at her. “This is Detective Chief Inspector Fletcher, Adelaide. Mr. Fletcher, my daughter Mrs. Yarborough. Mrs. Stephen Yarborough.”