Gunpowder Plot (5 page)

“Judging by the displays I’ve seen, she does a wonderful job. Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Good gracious no. You’re a guest. But I can tell you, if Father did the catering instead of setting up the fireworks, he wouldn’t be so keen on his Bonfire Night party! It’s not just the buffet supper here: We provide sausages and potatoes for the village people to cook in the bonfire embers, and gingerbread and drinks and so on.”

“You mustn’t feel you need to entertain me. I’m not a guest today, I’m a journalist. I’ll just poke around and try not to get in anyone’s way.”

“Bless you, Daisy!”

“It won’t upset Sir Harold if I go down to watch him setting up, will it?”

“I dare say he’ll be delighted. Jack and Martin are down there, too.”

“I think I saw your nephews.”

“I expect so. I hope Father isn’t letting them mess around with the fireworks . . . and that he’s not snubbing Martin too badly. Yes, Jenny, what is it?”

Leaving Gwen to deal with whatever was making the young maid twist the corner of her apron in nervous fingers, Daisy slipped away. She went on into the billiard room, which had a door to the outside and was less likely than the dining and drawing rooms to be overrun by hordes of servants with brooms and dusters.

The room smelled faintly of tobacco smoke. Though smoking rooms weren’t necessary these days, now that everyone smoked all over the place, Jack and Sir Harold probably lit up while playing billiards.

At least, she hoped they didn’t indulge while handling the firearms racked on the walls alongside the billiard cues. A landowner’s daughter, she recognized a couple of rook rifles and half a dozen double-barrelled shotguns of different bores. Less conventional was a glass-fronted case of pistols. There were antique duelling and horse pistols, family heirlooms from the days of highwaymen and duels, but also modern, efficient-looking automatics like the one her brother had worn as an army officer. Apparently, the family’s fascination with fireworks extended to firearms.

The scarred, stained table would be for cleaning and oiling the guns and filling cartridges and such chores. The nearby cabinet must hold ammunition, Daisy assumed. It was as a policeman’s wife, not a landowner’s daughter, that she noted with disapproval the key left in the lock.

5

F
rom the billiard room, French doors led out onto the paved terrace. Before she opened one, Daisy buttoned up the jacket of her warm tweed costume and put on the gloves she had brought in a pocket. Nonetheless, she recoiled as the icy air reached for her. The sunshine was misleading.

A couple of shabby, nondescript mackintoshes hung on hooks near the door. Deciding they were the sort that don’t belong to anyone in particular, she donned one. She eyed the adjacent tweed caps and mufflers, rejected the former and chose one of the latter, striped in navy and white. With that over her head and wound around her neck, she ventured out.

The flags of the terrace were still frosted. The sun wouldn’t reach this west side of the house for some time. Daisy trod with care as she crossed to the steps. Pausing at the top, she realized what a splendid view the guests on the terrace would have of the firework display.

What did they do the years when it rained? She must remember to ask.

Holding the stone rail, she descended to the second terrace, laid out in flower beds with lots of roses. At this time of year the bushes were bare and straggly, though here and there a bloom flaunted, de fying the frosts. The third terrace had a gazebo at the north end and a lily pond at the south.

The next terrace was the last, where Sir Harold, Jack, and Miller were erecting a complicated metal framework and a sort of wooden gibbet, “for the Catherine wheels,” as Sir Harold later explained. Reggie and Adrian were taking rockets from a big wooden crate and carefully inserting the sticks into bottles. No messing about under Grandfather’s stern eye.

Actually, the baronet was in a cracking good temper and greeted Daisy effusively. “What ho, Mrs. Fletcher!” he shouted as she came down the last steps. “We’re going to have a ripsnorter of a set piece tonight. ‘ Ripsnorter’— that the right term, Jack?”

“That’s it, sir. Morning, Mrs. Fletcher. As you see, we big boys get to play with big Meccano.”

The struts they were bolting together did look rather like giant pieces of Meccano. Miller stopped tightening a nut to wave to Daisy with an adjustable spanner. “Good morning, Mrs. Fletcher.” Even he looked cheerful.

“Useful fellow,” Sir Harold confided in a low voice, “when it comes to this sort of thing. Once I’d explained the effect I’m going for, he got the layout worked out in half the time it usually takes me. Quarter!” he added with a burst of generosity. “And drew up a neat little plan, too. This here, that there, we’ll be done in no time.”

“It looks very complicated. I can’t wait to see the result this evening.”

“Want me to explain it to you?”

“No, never mind, thanks. I don’t want to get too technical for my readers. Besides, I’m really more interested in the party and the guy, and all the history. I’m afraid the fireworks are somewhat of a sideline as far as the article is concerned. According to my editor, they rather go in for big fireworks displays in America, especially on their Independence Day in July.”

“July! Hmph, silly time to have fireworks, if you ask me. What about the children, eh?” He cast a fond glance at his grandsons, who

promptly stopped squabbling about which bottle to use for a particularly large rocket. “It doesn’t get dark till ten o’clock at night.”

“I expect they’re allowed to stay up late. It’s a holiday, unlike Guy Fawkes.”

“My great-grandfather tried to have the fifth of November proclaimed a holiday. I didn’t tell you this bit, did I?”

“No,” said Daisy, busy scribbling in her idiosyncratic version of Pitman’s shorthand. “What happened?”

“Sir John, that was. Jack’s named after him. He actually went up to Parliament and proposed a bill, or whatever it is they do. Not a very political family, I’m afraid, but that was before Reform, so he had no trouble getting elected. Getting his bill passed was another matter. No one else was interested. I suppose . . .” Sir Harold huffed and puffed a bit. “I suppose it just goes to show the Americans were happier to be rid of King George than the English were
not
to be rid of King James, what?” He chortled, very pleased with himself. “I say, Jack, Miller, listen to this!”

While he repeated his joke, Daisy wrote it down. It ought to appeal to her American readers, though Jack’s and Miller’s laughter was at best polite.

“You’re putting that in your article, eh, Mrs. Fletcher?” Sir Harold was delighted. “Respectable hobby for a lady, writing. You might have a go at talking my Barbara into trying her hand at it, instead of sticking her nose into men’s business.”

Daisy had no intention of sticking her nose into Babs’s business.

“I’d like to take a look at the bonfire,” she said, “and the guy.”

“The guy’s up at the house. We’ll set it out on the front porch for people to see as they arrive; then Biddle will bring it down to the fire. He’s in charge of setting off the fireworks. I’d like to do it myself, but can’t desert my guests, what? Here he comes now. Hi, where have you been?” he shouted to the grizzled man coming down the steps. “You’re late!”

“Sorry, sir,” Biddle said soothingly. “Her la’ship needed more greenery for her vases. Here I be now, sure enough.”

“So I see, you fool. Jack, give Mrs. Fletcher a hand down the steps.

She wants to see the bonfire.”

The lowest terrace was separated from the meadow by a ha-ha. Unlike the broad, shallow flights between terraces, the steps down the ha-ha wall were much narrower and quite steep, with the wall itself on one side and no railing on the other. The drop from the top was only ten or twelve feet. Normally, Daisy would have taken the steps in her stride, but unbalanced as she felt these days, she was glad to have Jack going down in front of her, half sideways, his hand steadying her.

“Thanks!”

“My pleasure. Any questions about the bonfire?”

“I’ll ask these chaps, thanks.”

“Right-oh. I’ll go back to playing with the Meccano, then.” He grinned. “When you’re ready to come up, call out and I’ll come down to push from behind.”

“You still are a horrible, cheeky schoolboy, I see,” she retorted with a smile.

The bonfire was a good fifteen feet tall by now. The farmhands were climbing ladders to add fuel to the top. Daisy spent twenty minutes talking to them, learning how they used a framework of timbers and netting to pile the stack of wood and brush high so that it didn’t fall over.

Ready to return to the house, she eyed the hill with misgivings. It was all very well coming down, but as she had said last night, going up was a different kettle of fish. She was about to hail Jack to request his aid on the ha-ha steps, when a “Hulloo” came from behind her, from the direction of the village. Miller appeared on the footpath through the belt of trees.

“I’ve brought my car down to give you a lift, Mrs. Fletcher. It didn’t seem like such a good idea you climbing all those steps.”

“That’s awfully kind of you, Mr. Miller. I was just thinking I didn’t much fancy the climb.”

Miller’s car was a Jowett. “Not the most elegant of vehicles,” he said, apologizing, “but the engine is unusually reliable, and when you build aeroplanes, reliability is what you tend to look for in an engine. Mrs. Fletcher, may I ask you something?”

Daisy turned on him her “misleadingly guileless blue eyes,” as Alec persisted in describing them. “Ask away,” she said hopefully, as she had said to Jack last night. “I won’t promise to answer until I’ve heard the question.”

“It’s no good asking any of the family, because they’ve got their own axes to grind, one way or another. You’re looking in from the outside, yet you grew up with all this tradition stuff, father to son in an unending line century after century.”

“Well, the Dalrymples didn’t quite manage that, but I know what you mean.”

“Do you think it’s wrong of me to encourage young Tyndall to break with tradition?”

“Oh dear, I’m not really the best person to ask. I’m not exactly a traditionalist myself. If you’d heard what my mother said when I decided to work for a living . . .”

“Your writing isn’t a hobby?”

“Certainly not!”

“Sorry! Sir Harold seems to think—”

“It’s not worth the trouble of correcting him. Not that I
need
to write for money now, but it paid the bills before I married. And that’s another thing: Mother was just as upset by my choice of husband. Alec isn’t at all ‘ suitable.’ ”

“You mean you . . . No, I’d better not ask.” After a glance at her, Miller drove on in a thoughtful silence. A slight smile played about his lips.

While Daisy hadn’t exactly intended to encourage him to pursue Gwen, she was not at all sorry if that was the result. She liked him and didn’t believe he was only after Gwen’s money— not that she’d have any if Sir Harold carried out his threat.

When they reached the house, Miller handed Daisy out and she thanked him for fetching her from the bottom of the hill.

“Not at all,” he said. “Thank
you.
You’ve given me considerable food for thought.”

“If you really feel obliged to me, may I ask a favour? I was going to ask Jack or Gwen to drive me down to the meadow this evening, just for a quarter of an hour or so, to take a peek at that side of the festivities. But I expect they’ll have their hands full helping to entertain the invited guests and—”

“Not to mention trying to keep the Gooches away from their parents!”

“That, too.”

“I’ll be happy to run you down, Mrs. Fletcher. I’ll make sure the car isn’t boxed in by guests’ motors, and you just tip me the wink when you’re ready to go.”

Daisy had enough information now to plan her article, so she spent the rest of the morning at her typewriter. At lunch, Sir Harold was still in an excellent humour. He told Daisy about some Guy Fawkes disasters of the past, like the time an insecurely fastened Catherine wheel had flown from its place and rolled along a row of rockets, prematurely igniting the lot.

After lunch, she again asked Gwen if she could lend a hand with anything.

“You already have.” Gwen exchanged a meaningful glance with Miller, making Daisy hope her unspoken but clearly implied encouragement of the engineer would not lead to disaster. “This afternoon it’s mostly organizing the moving of furniture.”

“I’m not volunteering for that! Neither the organizing nor the moving.”

“Certainly not,” said Lady Tyndall, giving Daisy her faint, exhausted smile. “Why don’t you take a nap after the morning’s exertions? That’s what I’m going to do.”

“Yes, do, Daisy,” said Gwen, seconding her mother. “Then you’ll be full of beans for the evening’s exertions.”

“Gwen, dear, where on earth did you come by such a dreadful ex pression!” Lady Tyndall gave Miller a look cold enough to turn the lily pond into solid ice.

“At school, Mother. See you later, Daisy.”

Daisy and Lady Tyndall went slowly upstairs together. “I don’t know,” Lady Tyndall said wretchedly. “I really don’t know. Gwen is twenty-seven, and if he’s the only chance she’s going to have to marry . . . But he’s encouraging Jack to go off to Coventry— to be an engineer, of all things!— and I was so looking forward to having him home for good at last. What do you think of Mr. Miller?”

“I like him,” said Daisy, and refused to be drawn further.

The guy propped up by the front door to greet the Tyndalls’ guests wore a long frilly nightgown and a lace nightcap, from which the mask of a wolf peered out.

“Gwen found the clothes when she turned out some old trunks in the loft,” Jack explained to Daisy. “The wolf in ‘ Little Red Riding Hood’ used to terrify me when I was little, so I thought I’d take my revenge. There’s no law says the guy has to be a person.”

“No, and after all, the whole thing is really for the children.”

He grinned. “Don’t let Father hear you pronounce such blasphemy!”

“I shan’t. Your wolf looks quite sinister in the dusk with just the oil lanterns lighting it.”

“Electric light would spoil the effect. Here comes someone. Let’s go in, or we’ll end up exchanging greetings on the doorstep and freezing, and spoiling Jennings’s fun the one time of year he actually opens the door.”

Headlamps approached along the drive. Jack and Daisy slipped into the house. A screen had been set up before the door in an attempt to keep some of the cold air out as guests entered. Jennings waited there, a small, bent figure in his best, slightly less rusty black.

The invitations had stated “Dress for warmth,” and Daisy had done so, wearing a long-sleeved wool frock, lisle stockings, and walking shoes for her projected visit to the meadow. She had brought her coat downstairs. The Tyndalls were equally sensibly dressed, except Adelaide. She was once again backless and sleeveless, elegant but not at all practical. Her boys were there, too, in shorts with jerseys under their school blazers. Several other guests would be bringing children, so lemonade and cocoa were provided along with the cocktails, sherry, and whisky at a long table to one side of the hall.

The hall had been rearranged, with small tables and groups of chairs throughout, ready for the buffet supper. A blaze in the fireplace looked cheerful, even if it did little to warm the air in the distant corners.

Jennings appeared around the screen and announced in his creaky voice, “Mr. and Mrs. Dryden-Jones.”

It was the only announcement Daisy heard, as his voice became totally inaudible once people started talking. She and Miller kept out of the way as the Tyndalls moved forward to welcome a swelling stream of guests. The constant opening and closing of the door chilled the air, and though the gentlemen doffed their hats of course, most people unbuttoned their coats but kept them on.

Gwen brought over Colonel Sir Nigel Wookleigh, Chief Constable of Worcestershire. He was a very tall, very thin man, whose narrow face, fringed with old-fashioned white whiskers, made Daisy think of an Afghan hound. Not only had Sir Nigel known Daisy’s father and been colonel of her brother’s regiment; he had been extremely forbearing when Daisy dragged Alec willy-nilly and very unofficially into a kidnapping in his county. She was happy to see him but hoped he wouldn’t mention Alec’s profession.