Gunpowder Plot (18 page)

“For pity’s sake, Daisy, what facts?”

“That came later.” Daisy explained about the inner envelope, how Alec had given it to Jack and he, after reading it, had handed it back. “So of course he read it. Oh Babs, it was heartbreaking! Mrs. Gooch said she’d come all the way from Australia to see him. She wasn’t going to upset his life, but she wanted to make sure he was happy, and when he was so friendly to her at the pub she simply had to tell him the truth. She said she and Sir Harold had an affair and she’s Jack’s mother.”

“Good Lord,” said Babs blankly, “can it possibly be true? Or was it some sort of attempt at blackmail?”

“It could have been.”

“But it would fit, wouldn’t it, with Father dragging Mother off abroad and coming back months later with baby Jack? Father was so desperate for a son! And I’ll tell you what, it would explain why Gooch shot both of them. It must have been just plain old jealousy!”

19

A
s Daisy entered the billiard room, Alec, Tom, and Ernie looked up from the papers spread out on the gun table.

“Sorry, darling, I must have drowsed off. I didn’t mean to. But here are the notes I took for you, all typed and legible. And also a report of what Babs told me.” She couldn’t keep a touch of triumph from her voice.

“Daisy, you haven’t been asking questions—”

“Gosh no. Well, not exactly. You see, Lady Tyndall asked me to tell Gwen and Babs about Mrs. Gooch’s letter. I couldn’t very well refuse, could I? By the time I reached Gwen, Mr. Miller had told her already, at Jack’s request. He really is quite a nice man. I think he’ll do for her.”

“What did Miss Tyndall say?” Alec demanded with precarious patience. “Cut the cackle and get to the horses.”

“We were talking about”— Daisy blushed, a Victorian affection she despised, and avoided looking at Tom and Piper, but continued stoutly—“about pregnancy, and about how children aren’t told a baby is expected until it arrives. You know, they’re given that myth about storks bringing them. And I said Babs was ten or eleven when Jack was born, so surely she’d had some idea. Belinda knew without ever being told, remember, darling?”

“I remember.” Alec was now interested, Tom’s moustache was twitching in the way than meant it hid a grin, and Piper was frankly admiring.

“Babs said perhaps she would have found out, if it hadn’t been that Sir Harold— you see, Lady Tyndall had difficult pregnancies with the girls and never quite recovered her health, so when he took her abroad to a sanatarium, everyone assumed it was for her general health. But when she came home, she brought Jack with her.”

“Great Scott! How long was she away?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t like to ask questions,” Daisy said virtuously. Tom’s grin was open. “Of course, it don’t prove anything, but it would explain how they fiddled it without anyone finding out. He takes his wife and his mistress— begging your pardon, Mrs. Fletcher— abroad, makes sure the girl’s well cared for till the baby’s born, gives her enough money to start a new life in Australia, and comes home with a brand-new son and heir.”

“A bit chancy, Sarge,” Piper observed. “What if she’d had a girl?”

“Nothing lost. She could take the baby with her to Australia, or he could arrange for it to be adopted on the Continent. No, the fly in the ointment, as I see it, is how does he persuade his missus— her ladyship, that is— to go along with the hoax? To bring up the boy as her own?”

“She was accustomed to trying to please him,” said Alec, frowning, “to avert his fits of bad temper. But she certainly gives the impression of being very fond of the lad.”

“I’m sure she is,” said Daisy decidedly. “She may not have liked it at first, but I bet she forgets most of the time that he’s not her own. I sometimes do with Belinda, and I’ve only known her a couple of years, since she was nine. Lady Tyndall’s had Jack since he was a little tiny baby, for twenty-one years. I’m sure she loves him as much as her daughters, or even more.”

“More?” Tom asked, eyebrows crawling up his limitless forehead.

“Because he’s the youngest, and one boy among three girls. Just because he’s a boy. My brother was always my parents’ favourite, though he wasn’t nearly as well behaved as my sister.”

“I’ve known it to happen,” Tom admitted, “though not with what you might call a cuckoo in the nest.”

“But cuckoos push the other babies out of the nest, don’t they? Jack got on very well with his sisters. Except Addie perhaps, though I don’t know about when they were children. But he was especially close to Gwen, who’s nearest to him in age. What’s more, as far as I can gather, he never gave Sir Harold and Lady Tyndall any trouble, until he decided he wanted to be an engineer.”

“Which a lot of parents would give their eyeteeth to see their sons aiming for. A very respectable profession.”

“But one which Sir Harold strongly objected to,” said Alec.“Don’t let’s lose sight of that in the middle of this panegyric. I wonder whether he was angry enough to throw the boy’s illegitimacy in his face in the course of that row yesterday afternoon, which you so unfortunately missed, Daisy.”

“Good gracious, I never thought I’d hear you say such a thing, darling! But no, I’m sure he didn’t. It could hardly have failed to upset Jack dreadfully, and he was in very good spirits at the beginning of the evening, when he showed me the guy he’d made for the bonfire.”

“I reckon him inviting the Gooches to the party was the last straw,” Piper ventured. “Sir Harold would’ve been put out just because they were the wrong sort of people, but when he reckernized Mrs. Gooch he’d fly off the handle. That’d be when he told Mr. Tyndall.”

“Oh no, not in the middle of his party. Not a chance.”

“Then maybe
she
told him. Mrs. Gooch.”

“She’d written the letter to Sir Harold, remember. She intended to give him a chance to warn Jack.”

“She might’ve been too excited to wait.”

This, Daisy could not deny. “Then why go up to the study with Sir Harold?” she queried doubtfully. “I suppose she might have felt she owed him an explanation.”

“There’s still the possibility of blackmail,” Tom reminded them.

“I still think Babs’s explanation is more likely.”

“And what is Miss Tyndall’s explanation?” asked Alec, who had been jotting down notes while listening to the other three argue their various theories.

“Well, naturally she’d rather Gooch was the villain than one of the family. She thinks he shot them both in a fit of jealousy. It makes sense, doesn’t it? Not only jealous of the past relationship between Sir Harold and his wife, which for all we know he had only just found out about, but jealous of her love for Jack, for his own sons’ sake.”

“Ah,” said Tom broodingly, “that’d be nice and straightforward at least.”

“Yes,” Alec agreed, “not one of your wilder speculations, Daisy. Though there’s still the oddity of his finding the gun, in the dark, in a house he’d never before visited. But until we know whether Mrs. Gooch’s letter told the truth, we’re theorizing ahead of our facts. Did Miss Tyndall come up with the tale of Lady Tyndall’s sojourn abroad before or after you told her about the letter?”

Daisy thought back. “Before.”

“And you’re as sure as you can be that she didn’t already know about the letter’s claim?”

“I think not, but I wouldn’t swear to it. She was quite calm when I told her, and she saw at once the connection with her mother’s absence. But why should she make it up?”

“The memory’s a funny thing, Mrs. Fletcher,” said Tom. “If Miss Tyndall knew about the letter, after twenty years she could easily mix up some other trip Lady Tyndall took to the Continent and honestly believe it happened just before her brother appeared on the scene.”

“But I’m pretty sure she didn’t know, so it’s probably a genuine memory, so Mrs. Gooch was probably telling the truth.”

Alec shook his head. “It doesn’t follow. Lady Tyndall could very well have given birth abroad.”

“Oh dear.” Daisy sighed. “I’m reasoning in circles again.”

“’ Fraid so, love. Unfortunately, what Miss Tyndall’s story does mean, if true, is that the local doctor didn’t attend the birth, so we won’t get proof one way or t’other from his records.”

“You still want me to look, Chief?” asked Piper.

“Yes, of course. If we’re lucky— if Jack Tyndall is lucky— you’ll find a record of his coming into the world right here at Edge Manor. Then we can start wondering why Mrs. Gooch made up such a convincing tale, and what the connection is with her death and Sir Harold’s. Daisy, let me just look through these notes of yours, and then we won’t keep you any longer.”

“I can tell when I’m not wanted. Oh, before I forget, Gwen asked about getting Mr. Gooch’s luggage from the Three Ravens.”

“Tom’s going to take care of that.”

“I expect Mr. Miller would give you a lift, Mr. Tring. He offered to go and fetch the stuff when Gwen mentioned it, but I said it mustn’t be touched before the police have seen it.”

“Quite right, Mrs. Fletcher. I won’t trouble Mr. Miller for a lift down, as young Piper’s going to drop me off on his way to the doctor’s, but d’you think he’d be offended if I telephoned when I’m ready to come away?”

“I shouldn’t think so,” said Daisy. “He seems to want to be useful, in the spirit of knight errantry.”

“Good. I won’t have to hire a car to bring it all back.”

“Farm cart more like, Sarge,” Piper said wistfully, as if regretful that he’d miss the spectacle of Tom Tring perched on top of the Gooches’ possessions in the back of a hay cart.

Alec looked up from Daisy’s notes. “Knight errantry? And you said something about Miller being all right for Gwen. I gathered earlier that you didn’t believe those two were serious about each other.”

“Are you going to start suspecting them again, darling? I don’t think they were frightfully serious before last night. Coping with a crisis is liable to show people in their best or worst light, and they’ve both come through with flying colours. I’ll go and tell Mr. Miller to expect a telephone call from the Ravens, shall I?”

“If you’d be so kind, Mrs. Fletcher,” said Tom.

Reluctantly, Daisy left. It wasn’t that she would ever choose to be mixed up in a murder investigation, but once inadvertently involved, she felt being shut out of discussions was really rather unfair.

As the door closed behind her, Alec said, “We mustn’t forget the others just because young Tyndall and Gooch have such obvious motives.”

“Miller and Miss Gwendolyn,” said Tom. “Mrs. Fletcher is right, of course, that you can learn a lot about a person by watching how they behave in a crisis. But there’s two ways of looking at it. It’s all very well saying Miller makes a good living and don’t care about her couple of thousand quid, but there’s been murder done for a lot less. Sir Harold disapproves of Miller. Sir Harold dies. All of a sudden, Miller and Miss Gwendolyn are all lovey-dovey.”

“We may have to go into Miller’s financial position,” Alec agreed.“Unsound investments or gambling catch even practical chaps like engineers. For all we know, he’s desperate for that couple of thousand. You’d better ask him a few questions on the way back from the village.”

“Right, Chief.”

“And what about Miss Gwendolyn?” Ernie put in eagerly. “Could be her last chance to get married afore she’s too old to have children, and her father’s spiking her guns.”

“Pity he didn’t spike his own,” Tom observed. “But you’re right, laddie. It needn’t be thwarted love, just fear of ending up an old maid.”

Alec was glad Daisy wasn’t present to hear her friend depicted as a desperate husband-hunter. “They could even be in it together, I suppose,” he said, “though the actual shooting was a one-man job. What about Miss Tyndall?”

“Ah, now,” said Tom, “barring Gooch with his Wild West experience, Miss Tyndall’s the only one of the lot I’d reckon has the nerve for it.”

“All the Tyndalls learnt to shoot in the War, Sarge.”

“Shooting at a target’s very different from shooting at a person, young feller-me-lad. On the other hand, her motive’s pretty thin. As long as Sir Harold was alive, there was always the chance he might relent and leave the place to her.”

“Good point, Tom.”

“She’s the only one we know went into the house during the fireworks,” Ernie argued, “not counting the victims. She told Mrs. Fletcher she was going to find sparklers for the kiddies.”

“Which she did.”

“Good excuse if she was seen going in. ’ Sides, she didn’t hand ’ em out till after the show, and she talked to Mrs. Fletcher at the beginning. Isn’t that right, Chief?”

“That’s what she said, but she’d hardly have mentioned it if she’d felt in need of an alibi. She could have counted on Daisy not being sure at what point in the proceedings she spoke to whom. No, Miss Tyndall stays on the list but near—” A knock on the door interrupted him. “Near the bottom. Come in!”

In came a constable in motorcycling gear, bringing the search warrant they were waiting for. Tom and Ernie went off with him, Ernie requesting directions to Chipping Campden. Ernie had become a good driver, which often came in handy, but Alec was always slightly nervous about letting him drive his precious Austin Seven.

To take his mind off it, he decided to go and see how Gooch was doing, make sure Blount was keeping an eye— and more important, an ear— on him, and have a word with Gwen. While reviewing the notes, he had realized he hadn’t yet asked her about anything but meeting the Gooches at the pub. Gooch’s accident and the subsequent revelation of the letters in his pocket had disrupted the intended course of the investigation. Daisy had delivered Tom’s message to Miller, who was still with Gwen in the sickroom. Time to put her feet up for half an hour, she decided as she closed the door behind her. Then Alec came up the steps from the landing. She went to meet him.

“Darling, Mr. Miller says he’ll be happy to fetch Tom when he rings.”

“It’ll be a while.”

“I take it Tom will search all the poor man’s possessions before he packs them up. What’s he looking for? Blackmail letters?”

“Anything anomalous. He’ll talk to the landlord and the inn servants, too. Someone may have heard something.”

“The Gooches quarrelling, you mean? They seemed like the least quarrelsome of couples. I wish you’d seen them together. I can’t believe he shot her.”

“If he didn’t, then almost certainly your friend, or one of her family, or her boyfriend did.”

“I suppose so,” Daisy admitted, troubled. “It’s a trifle far-fetched that someone else Mrs. Gooch knew in her youth happened to be at the party and happened also to have a grudge against Sir Harold.”

“Far-fetched but not impossible. The Gloucestershire police are checking her background. After twenty years, I’m afraid it’s farfetched, though not impossible, that they’ll find something useful. Cheer up, love, you know we’re not going to arrest any of the Tyn-dalls or Miller or Gooch without proof.”

“I know. It’s just that everyone else suffers, too, whether the rest of the family or Gooch’s children in Australia.”