Murder on the Flying Scotsman (6 page)

‘Come in, my boy, come in and shut the door.’ McGowan raised his bushy eyebrows at Daisy and she nodded. ‘Miss Dalrymple, Miss fletcher, allow me to introduce Dr.
Jagai.’

After an exchange of courtesies, Daisy said, ‘We’ll leave you to your business, gentlemen. Come, Belinda?’

‘Thank you very much for the stories, sir,’ said Belinda, ‘and the game, and everything.’

‘Not at all, young lady. Come back and have tea with me this afternoon at half past four and we’ll see if I can come up with some more stories. Make sure you’re on time, now, I
have to eat at regular intervals. And take this, my dear.’ He folded the chequer-board with the men inside, fumblingly fastened the little brass catch, and handed it to her. ‘It’s
yours. I shan’t be taking many more journeys.’

‘Golly, thanks! And I’d love to come to tea. May I, Miss Dalrymple?’

Seeing no harm in the unlikely friendship, Daisy assented – then wondered what Mrs. Fletcher would say if she found out.

Belinda impulsively kissed the old man’s wrinkled cheek. ‘Off with you, baggage!’ he said, beaming. ‘And off with your jacket, Chandra,’ he was saying as Daisy
closed the door after Belinda. ‘I know your blood has grown accustomed to Scottish temperatures.’

‘He’s
not
an ogre,’ said Belinda. ‘I like him, don’t you?’

‘Yes, but I can imagine him being quite ogreish to people he dislikes!’

‘P’raps. What’s indigent mean?’

‘Poor.’

‘Mr. McGowan was poor when he went to India, even though his twin brother’s rich? That’s not fair! He had more fun, though. He told me some ripping stories about India.
What’s intexual indigestion?’

‘Intexual?’

‘Something like that. He said he didn’t want me to get it from too many stories.’

‘Intellectual indigestion? It’s what your mind gets from too many new ideas at once.’ Particularly if they were hard to swallow, Daisy thought.

Their compartment was now empty. Daisy proposed a game of draughts, but Belinda was tired of sitting.

‘May I stand in the corridor for a while?’ she begged.

‘To watch the cows and trees on that side for a change? Yes, but don’t wander off again, please! Oh, wait a minute, you have a smut on your cheek. Here, let me get it off.’
Daisy delved in her handbag for a handkerchief, spat on the corner the way her nanny used to, and wiped away the fleck of soot, feeling very motherly. ‘That’s better.’

Belinda hugged her, blushed, and went out to the corridor.

Anne had lent Daisy two or three magazines. Now and then she glanced up from the glossy pages of the
Tatler
to check the whereabouts of her impetuous charge. A quarter of an hour or so
later, she heard Belinda say, ‘Hallo, Dr. Jagai.’

The young doctor joined her, shrugging into his jacket. ‘Hallo, Miss . . . Fletcher, is it?’

‘Yes, but you can call me Belinda. I’m not really quite old enough to be Miss Fletcher yet.’

‘I’ll tell you a secret, Belinda: I’m such a new doctor that whenever someone addresses me as doctor, I still look round to see to whom they are talking.’

Belinda laughed. So the earnest Dr. Jagai had a sense of humour, Daisy thought. With a quirk of the lips for her own impetuosity, not to mention curiosity, she invited him in.

Now that she saw him properly, he looked tired. From her hospital days during the War, she remembered witnessing the exhausting life of a lowly houseman, always on call.

‘I shouldn’t really be in first class,’ he said.

‘Oh, never mind. The ticket inspector won’t come again till after York Do come and sit down. Are you going to Edinburgh?’

‘Yes, ma’am. I have friends there, and since I must go as far as York, I might as well go on to see them. Mr. McGowan told me to catch this train. I’ve been on duty since he
learnt of his brother’s illness, and he wanted to speak to me.’

‘A dictatorial gentleman!’

Jagai smiled. ‘Undeniably, but who am I to complain after all his kindness and generosity? Especially in this instance.’ His solemn face lit up and he leaned forward in his
enthusiasm. ‘Mr. McGowan summoned me to tell me he’s going to rewrite his will to leave his brother’s wealth to found a medical clinic in India!’

‘Not to you?’

‘I shall be named as director of the charitable trust, and of the clinic. It’s my dearest dream, but I thought I should have to work and save for years before I could afford it.
He’ll set it up that way, rather than as a personal bequest, to make it more difficult for his family to contest the will.’

‘Clever!’ Daisy applauded. ‘It must be much harder to find grounds to object to a charity inheriting than a non-relative.’

‘So he hopes. He’s going to consult brother Alistair’s solicitor this afternoon about the best way to do it. I gather Mr. Braeburn is on his way to Dunston Castle with the
rest.’

‘So I’ve heard. You have considered, haven’t you, that Alistair McGowan may change
his
will first?’

‘Yes.’ Jagai’s face lost its brightness and settled back into lines of tiredness. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘If so, if old Alistair disinherits his brother, I
shan’t be any worse off than I was before.’

‘I hope you get it
all
,’ said Belinda, who had been listening in silence.

‘So do I,’ said Chandra Jagai, giving her a weary smile, ‘but after all, Alistair has as much right as Albert to do what he wants with what’s his.’

CHAPTER 5

‘Bel!’ Kitty appeared in the doorway. ‘It’s nearly . . . Oh, hallo. Who are you? Never say you’re the infamous Chandra Jagai?’

‘Kitty, really!’ Daisy exclaimed.

‘Oops, sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude.’ She studied the Indian with interest. ‘But are you?’

Jagai laughed. ‘I am. You are a McGowan descendant, I take it.’

‘Yes, I’m a Gillespie. Kitty Gillespie. How do you do?’ She shook hands. ‘You aren’t a bit like I expected.’

‘He’s a doctor, Kitty,’ Belinda informed her.

‘Golly, really? And everyone’s been saying . . .’ She caught Daisy’s admonitory eye and cut herself short. ‘Yes, well, I’m happy to make your acquaintance,
Dr. Jagai.’ Her momentary grand manner evaporated. ‘But it’s time for lunch and I came to see if Bel may sit with me. Please, Miss Dalrymple?’

The steward’s voice sounded in the corridor. ‘Lunch is now being served. Lunch now being served!’

‘Have you asked your mother, Kitty?’ Daisy asked.

‘At first she said no, but then Raymond told her you’re an Honourable so she changed her mind,’ Kitty said with her usual devastating frankness.

‘Oh dear!’ Daisy had never understood why her courtesy title should be regarded as a guarantee of respectability. It was no more reasonable than Mrs. Fletcher’s antipathy.

‘Now she’s just glad I’ve found a friend to keep me from pestering her,’ said Kitty.

Daisy laughed. ‘Right-oh, run along, Belinda. I’ll come in a minute.’

‘I shan’t eat much,’ Belinda said anxiously. ‘I know it’s awfully expensive eating on a train.’

‘You eat as much as you want, darling. We can’t have your grandmother accusing me of starving you. Just don’t order the smoked salmon!’

The girls said good-bye to the doctor and went off.

‘If you are short of funds, Miss Dalrymple,’ the young Indian said hesitantly, ‘I should be happy to lend you . . .’

‘That’s very kind of you, Dr. Jagai, but I can manage a few shillings for lunch. I wasn’t expecting Belinda to travel with me, you see, or I should have gone third class and
brought sandwiches.’

‘As I have.’ He grinned, his teeth gleaming in his dark face. ‘And more than ready for them I am.’

‘Good-bye, then. Perhaps we shall see you again later.’

Daisy powdered her nose and regretfully put on her hat. The restaurant car was altogether too public to be seen without one. She made her way thither.

Belinda, solemnly studying the menu, sat with Kitty at a table set with white napery, silver cutlery, sparkling glasses, and a small vase of spring flowers. Peter and Jeremy
Gillespie, at the next pair of tables, introduced their respective wives to Daisy. She felt sorry for Matilda, who was very pregnant and whose blotched face and red eyes suggested recent tears.
Beyond them were Anne and Harold Bretton, without Tabitha and the baby.

Anne waved to Daisy, pointing to the table across the aisle from them, but Daisy shook her head and mouthed a polite refusal. She took a seat directly opposite Belinda, so that she could help in
case of difficulties. Belinda gave her a relieved smile.

A steward in railway uniform and bow tie brought Daisy a menu. As she looked it over, the other tables gradually filled. The Smythe-Pikes sat across from the Brettons.

‘Blasted lawyer says we’ll come a cropper,’ boomed Desmond Smythe-Pike, ‘haven’t a leg to stand on. Sneaky sort of fella, wouldn’t look a man straight in the
eye.’

The thin, bald man just coming along the aisle turned to glare at him. Braeburn, the solicitor, Daisy thought. She had seen him in the compartment next to hers when she was hunting for Belinda.
Stalking stiffly like an offended heron, he continued to the only remaining empty table.

Smythe-Pike lowered his voice minimally. ‘I’ll have to set my own chap on the scent when we get back to town.’

‘It may be unnecessary, sir,’ Harold pointed out. ‘Alistair McGowan may have already decided to change his will in our favour.’

Peter Gillespie, at the next table, turned and said coldly, ‘Or ours. I am, after all, already his heir after Uncle Albert.’

‘Bah!’ snorted Smythe-Pike.

‘Hush, Desmond,’ Mrs. Smythe-Pike said soothingly, ‘We shall all have our chance to persuade Father.’

‘And Uncle Albert,’ Anne put in.

‘A bit off, don’t you think,’ Jeremy said, quite loud enough to be heard at the next table, ‘pestering Uncle Albert about Uncle Alistair’s money with Uncle Alistair
dying upstairs.’

Daisy missed the next bit of the squabble. A frightfully smart woman in a black costume, with a simply heavenly little black hat which Daisy’s fashionable friend Lucy would have killed
for, stopped beside her table. ‘
Pardonnez-moi
,
madame
,’ she said, ‘is this seat taken? May I join you?’

‘No, please do. I mean,’ Daisy corrected herself in careful French, ‘
ce n’est pas occupé Asseyez-vous madame
,
je vous prie.
’

‘Thank you.’ The woman smiled as she sat down. She was expertly made up, her dark hair slashed with silver set in soft, Marcel waves only just too perfect to be natural.
‘It’s all right, English is my native tongue, though I’ve lived so long in France that French tends to slip out first.’

‘If you are used to French food, I hope you will find English railway food edible!’

‘I rarely eat a large luncheon. Do you think an omelette would be safe?’

‘I couldn’t guarantee it, but I shall have the same so we can both complain if it’s too dreadful.’

The steward came to take their order, and Daisy told him to add Belinda’s bill to her own. Over lunch, she and the woman from France chatted about Paris. She caught odd bits and pieces of
the argument raging further along the aisle but she had heard most of it before and took little notice.

The last thing she heard, as she paid her bill, collected Belinda, and started back to the compartment, was Harold Bretton announcing, ‘Well,
I’m
not afraid to tackle old
Albert. I shall go straight after lunch.’

Immediately a dispute broke out over who had the right to see Uncle Albert first. Daisy shook her head in amused disgust. Never in her life had she met such a quarrelsome family!

Just before the train stopped at York, the friendly ticket-inspector popped his head into the compartment.

‘Never fear, miss, I haven’t forgotten your wire,’ he told Daisy, patting his breast-pocket. ‘It’ll be on its way soon as I’ve turned in me numbers and signed
off.’

Daisy thanked him. The train rumbled into the station with a squeal of brakes and the hiss of let-off steam. Opening doors thudded against the carriage sides, porters shouted, barrowboys cried
their newspapers and magazines for sale, as the ticket-man saluted and trotted off. At once Daisy began to wonder if the telegram message was sufficient to reassure Mrs. Fletcher.

‘Belinda safe with me will telephone from Edinburgh.’ She hadn’t used the full allowance of twelve words for a shilling, but what else could she have said?

Ought she to get off and take Belinda straight home? Surely Alec wouldn’t expect her to let his daughter’s naughtiness disrupt her work. His mother might, though – probably
would, in fact. Mrs. Fletcher disapproved of her employment almost as strongly as of her aristocratic background, and she did want to get on Mrs. Fletcher’s right side.

Too late. Daisy sat back with a sigh as whistles and slamming doors announced that the Flying Scotsman was once more on its way.

Through the window, Daisy pointed out to Belinda the towers of York Minster. Then they settled down to look at borrowed books and magazines. Though she owed her reading matter to the McGowan
family, Daisy was thoroughly fed up with their fusses. She avoided raising her eyes from the pages of
Punch
as feet tramped back and forth in the corridor.

She didn’t care who saw Albert McGowan first, second or last; she was only sorry the poor old man was being disturbed. He hadn’t come to lunch in the dining car. She hoped it was
because he was rich enough to pay to have his meal brought to him, not because Belinda had exhausted him.

Belinda grew bored with Kitty’s
School Friend
magazine and she’d already finished
Beano
and
Dandy.
‘May I go and see Kitty?’ she asked. ‘And
Tabitha, if she’s with her mummy?’

‘Yes, go ahead. Just don’t go anywhere else without telling me.’

Daisy was left in peace for some time. She read
Punch
, occasionally glancing out at the green, rolling countryside, patched with buttercup yellow meadows. The sun still shone, but it no
longer hit the window, and the air coming in was still cool here in the North, however warm it was by now in London. Though the heating was still on at full blast, Daisy was quite comfortable in
her short-sleeved frock.