Sitting on the arm of Tish's chair, Alec handed her his handkerchief. “Have a good blow,” he said. “At least, that's what I say to my daughter. Perhaps it's not quite proper to a young lady.”
“It's what Cherry used to say when I was little.” A tentative smile hovering on her lips, she looked up at him with tear-drenched eyes. “I didn't know you had a daughter. Daisy did mention that you had been married before.”
“Yes.” He moved to the desk. Not sure whether he was putting a prospective witness at ease or improving his acquaintance with his fiancée's cousin, he went on, “Joan died in the influenza epidemic in 'nineteen, like Daisy's father. Belinda's nine. She adores Daisy.”
“Daisy's wonderful, isn't she?” Behind her, Ernie Piper nodded vigorouslyâAlec was relieved to see he hadn't started taking notes yet. “One feels one can tell her
anything.
I wish I'd known her better growing up. I don't know what I'd have done last night if she hadn't been there.”
“Do you feel able to talk about it now? I haven't had much chance to get the details from Daisy. In any case, it helps to have two witnesses. One often notices what the other misses.”
“Wh-when do you want me to start?” Tish asked tremulously.
“Let's go back to the river-bank yesterday. I've plenty of witnesses to DeLancey's ducking Bott, but none of them was there when he first took it into his head that Bott might damage the fours boat. Daisy just mentioned it in passing. Were you there?”
“Oh yes. It was later, in the General Enclosure. Dottie and Cherry and Rollo and I were having something to drinkâit was beastly hot. Daisy was with us. She had gone off with Bott and his girl, and we'd been a bit worried about where she'd got to. I remember ⦠Oh!”
“What?”
Tish blushed. “Oh, just that Dottie told her we nearly called in the police but weren't sure whether to get the local chaps or Scotland Yard. Just joking, you know. Daisy said you'd have wrung her neck.”
“I might have,” Alec agreed, laughing. “Did Bott and his girl turn up with her?”
“No, thank heaven. Because just then the DeLanceys came up, looking as if they'd been squabbling ever since we last saw them. Mr. DeLancey apologised for the scene with Bott, but not as if he meant it. It was obvious Lord DeLancey made him say it. That was when Basil DeLancey started to worry about the boat.”
“Were Frieth and Cheringham worried?”
“Not a bit,” Tish said quickly. Too quickly? “Cherry said, âBosh'âno, âWhat rot!' and Rollo said they wouldn't share
guard-duty with him. Then Lord DeLancey told Basil not to be an ass, he'd make himself a laughing-stock sitting in the boat-house all night. So that was the end of that.”
“You didn't hear any more about it? Your cousin and Frieth didn't discuss it?”
“After the DeLanceys had gone, Rollo said something like that was the last we'd hear of that. Cherry said if Lord DeLancey was capable of making Basil apologise, it was a pity he didn't exercise his authority more often. Then we went to watch a race.”
“What about in the evening? At dinner and after?”
“At dinner no one talked about any of the business with Bott. Even Basil DeLancey behaved himself pretty well when my mother was there.” Again the quick colour flooded Tish's cheeks. “After dinner, we were out on the terrace, and the rest were inside. Did DeLancey say he was going to the boat-house after all?”
“Not in so many words, I gather.”
It sounded as if Cheringham and Frieth expected Basil DeLancey to be ruled by his brother. Tish did not seem to grasp that they therefore had a motive for checking on the boat themselvesâthough a quick check would hardly do much good unless Bott happened to be caught sneaking down there, Alec realised.
He blamed the heat for his slowness to reach that conclusion. Frieth and Cheringham were intelligent men who would surely have worked it out for themselves. On the other hand, DeLancey and Bott were supposedly highly intelligent, and look at their idiotic behaviour. Intelligence was no guarantee of common sense.
Or common sense could be overborne by emotion, Alec
thought, regarding Tish's tear-stained face. However, that would be more to the point if Frieth or Cheringham had known DeLancey was in the boat-house and had deliberately gone to confront him.
Which seemed unlikely, since they had no lack of opportunity for a confrontation. Only intentional murder would require the cloak of night, and Basil DeLancey had not been intentionally murdered.
Alec saw that his long pause was making Tish apprehensive. “All right,” he said, “tell me about DeLancey coming to your room.”
She looked relieved. “Daisy heard him and turned on the bedside light. I was scared to death. Someone must have told you how he kept ⦠badgering me, and wouldn't take no for an answer?”
“Yes.”
“I thought he'd come to ⦠to ⦔
“To seduceâor perhaps assaultâyou?” Alec said gently.
Tish nodded. “He was ⦠he seemed to be drunk. He could have forgotten Daisy was sharing my room. Did she tell you I was sleeping on a camp-bed? He staggered in and fell over it, and it collapsed.” A slightly hysterical giggle escaped her. “I'm sure it was funny, if I hadn't been terrified. He just lay there, though. Daisy thought he was probably just drunk enough to have turned the wrong way at the top of the stairs. She sent me to wake Nick Fosdyke. She said she didn't mind being alone with DeLancey. She's so brave!”
“Foolhardy,” Alec muttered, then said aloud, “Fosdyke was asleep?”
“Fast asleep. I didn't dare knock very hard on the door, in case I woke the whole house, so I went in and called to him.
He didn't stir. I had to shake him awake, and then he was still half-asleep until he actually saw DeLancey in our room. He was an absolute angel.”
“Yes, I don't believe I've properly expressed my appreciation.”
“He thought DeLancey was drunk, too.”
“Mr. Fosdyke Senior and Dr. Dewhurst, the police surgeon, both assure me you couldn't possibly have guessed he was injured. You really must stop blaming yourself, Tish.”
The only result of his reassurance was that she started crying again. Alec began to feel a bit impatient. Why couldn't she pull herself together, like Daisy? Admittedly, she had known DeLancey better, and many people felt guilty when someone died whom they had detested, as if ancient superstitions about ill-wishing lingered in the modern unconscious.
He didn't think Tish bore the additional burden of fear that Cherry or Rollo was responsible for DeLancey's death. Those two young men looked less and less likely as suspects. Alec could only hope something decisive would come out in his interviews with them.
If they didn't decide to sock him in the jaw first for making Tish cry.
“Shall I send Piper for your mother?” he asked.
Mopping her eyes with his handkerchief, she shook her head. “No, I'll be all right, honestly. I'm just rather tired. I think I'll go back to bed. It's awful of me after inviting everyone, but I just don't feel up to ⦠.”
“Don't cry! I'm sure no one expects you to be the perfect hostess after such a shock. Off you go, now. Nothing will seem quite so bad in the morning, I promise you.”
As Tish left, Tom returned. “That was Henley Police rang
up, Chief,” he reported. “Bott's back at Miss Hopgood's lodgings. They've got a man watching, but they can't spare him for long. Things are starting to get lively in town.”
“You'd better take the Austin and bring Bott along.”
“Right, Chief. D'you want Miss Hopgood too?”
“I'd forgotten her. No, I'll see her tomorrow if I need to. Oh, you'd better stop at the White Hart on the way and pick up my things, would you? But first tell me about the dabs on the oar.”
“All accounted for, Chief. Mr. Cheringham's freshest, like he said; Miss Cheringhamâsâhe told me the young ladies often help put 'em away, remember; the deceased; Mr. Meredith; Mr. Wells; and a whole lot of old 'uns underneath. Then there's Mr. Frieth's on the blade, where you'd expect him to touch when he looked at the damage.”
“None of Bott's?”
“None as match what I got off his hairbrush, Chief.”
“And he'd hardly wear gloves for a bit of mischief-making on a warm summer night.”
“No gloves among his things, Chief.”
“Damn!” said Alec.
L
eigh, recalled, was pretty sure he'd have noticed if Bott had been wearing gloves with his flannels and college blazer when he crossed the river that morning.
“He does get things wrong, but not quite that wrong. He'd have looked abso-bally-lutely Victorian setting off for a picnic on a hot day in gloves. I'd remember.”
Thanking him grimly, Alec saw his likeliest suspect fading before his eyes. Was the oar a red herring? Was he on the wrong track altogether, unable to see the wood for the trees? Had Basil DeLancey in fact been drunk enough to fall down twice?
The abrasion on his head and the blood on the floor in the boat-house argued against it. A man might skid along the ground if he fell while running, but one doesn't run in a boat-house.
Alec decided he needed to inspect the boat-house and to consult Dr. Dewhurst. But first he'd finish the interviews. He had kept people waiting long enough.
“Fetch Miss Carrick, please, Piper.”
Dorothy Carrick had changed into a navy-blue linen skirt
and pale blue blouse which suited her much better than her flowery dress. She wasn't over plump, just sturdily built, and Alec, who vastly preferred Daisy's curves to the fashionable boyish flatness, saw nothing much amiss with her figure. To be sure, her face would never launch a thousand ships, but she had a charming smile, with perfect teeth. Add intelligence, and the kindness she had shown to her distraught friend on the river-bank, and Cheringham's choice was not to be cavilled at.
And then there was that marvellous voice: “I'm afraid your weekend has been ruined, Mr. Fletcher. Daisy was so thrilled that you'd escaped from Scotland Yard for a whole two days. Rotten luck!”
“Rather rotten luck for Basil DeLancey, too,” Alec said dryly.
“I shan't pretend I'm sorry he's gone. I'm only sorry the Erinyes caught up with him now, involving us. It was bound to happen some day.”
“The Furies were on his trail? Wouldn't you say death is too severe a punishment for what, as far as I can gather, was little more than a thoroughly unpleasant tongue?”
“He made Horace Bott ill, assaulted him, and publicly humiliated him. The Furies had worse punishments for what we might consider lesser sins. Daisy mentioned that you're a student of Georgian history. Wasn't the death penalty applied then to what we'd call misdemeanours?”
“For shop-lifting goods worth five shillings,” Alec admitted. “So you think Bott hit DeLancey?”
“Mr. Fletcher,” said Miss Carrick earnestly, “Horace Bott has a brilliant mind. He's a mathematician and a scientist, which requires a logical mind. In the heat of the moment he
threatened vengeance. Once he cooled down, he could not but come to his senses and see the illogic of damaging the boat, which would penalise Cherry and Rollo as much as DeLancey. He had no quarrel with them.”
According to Daisy, Bott's feelings towards his fellow collegians in general were none too kindlyâthough hadn't she said something about Rollo Frieth sticking up for him? Where was she? Shouldn't she be back by now? Alec wanted to talk to her.
She wouldn't make the mistake of believing Bott's brilliance at applying logic to numbers meant he would do the same to life. Alec reminded himself that, for all Dottie Carrick's knowledge of ancient Greece, she was very young, not more than twenty, with little experience of the world.
“What did Cheringham and Frieth make of Bott's threats?” he asked her.
“They both thought it was bravado. They have a rather low opinion of him, I'm afraid.”
“And what was their opinion of DeLancey's concern over the boat?”
“Sheer rubbish,” said Miss Carrick decidedly. “Cherry said DeLancey didn't really believe it himself, he was just getting at Bott again, trying to turn everyone else against him.”
“They both disliked DeLancey.”
“Who didn't? But as Rollo said, we never had to see him again after this weekend, so why worry?”
“An eminently sane point of view.” Alec asked Miss Carrick a few more questions, but she merely confirmed what he had already learnt. He ushered her out, and Piper fetched Frieth.
As the crew's captain dropped wearily into the chair Alec
indicated, Ernie Piper announced, “Lord DeLancey's here, sir.”
Alec groaned. “He'll have to wait.”
“He doesn't want to see you, sir. I asked. He said he came for his brother's stuff, and I told him he couldn't take it yet. Right?”
“Right.”
“He seems to want to talk about his brother,” said Frieth. He was more mature than the others Alec had interviewed, a combination of years and War experience. With the light from the window on his face, he looked anxious, discouraged, and just plain tired. “Deucedly awkward, when no one has a good word for him except for his rowing. I'm afraid some of the fellows have been rather going on about Bott and the boat-house, for want of anything else to say.”
“It can't be helped, I suppose,” Alec said with a grimace. “I thought they were going to watch the rest of the Regatta.”
“They decided it was too much bother, what with the heat and ⦠everything. They're playing croquet on the front lawn. They'll have another chance to be part of the Regatta next year.”
“And you won't?”
“No. I didn't pass the final exams, and if I decide to go back and try again, I'll have to concentrate on swotting, not rowing.”
“So winning this year was important to you?”
“It would have been nice to have a trophy to take back to Ambrose, but it all seems pretty unimportant compared to a man's life, even a swine like DeLancey.” Frieth dropped his head in his hands. “Oh God, why did I let him row?” he groaned.
“Why did you?” That was a question Alec ought to have explored with the others. With his War service, Frieth must have some understanding of head injuries. Hitting DeLancey was one thing, seeing his symptoms and still permitting him to exert himself was quite another.
Frieth raised his head. “I never guessed for a moment it was anything but a hangover.”
“Weren't you afraid his rowing would be affected? You could have substituted one of the others.”
“DeLancey was both stroke and steersman, not just an oarsman. I could have taken his position and put Meredith or Wells in at bow, but DeLancey was absolutely determined to race. It would have meant a hell of a row if I'd kicked him out. Besides, he'd turned up with a bit of a head before and always been all right on the water. In fact, he had no trouble rowing up to the start this morning. He'd eaten well at breakfast, too. How could I guess anything was seriously wrong?”
Reasonable, and easy enough to check, Alec thought. “You didn't hear his carrying on in the middle of the night?”
“Not a whisper. Poor Tish! I wish she'd come to me.”
“What would you have done?”
Frieth looked taken aback. “Well, actually, I couldn't have done much that Fosdyke didn't doâmaking a big fuss of it, then or later, would only have upset Tish even more. She's just had too much to cope with, what with one thing and another. At least I could have comforted her, assured her I didn't for a moment suppose she'd given that bastard any encouragement, if I'd woken up.”
“You slept soundly throughout the night?”
“As a matter of fact, no. DeLancey can't have made much noise or I would have heard, because I had a rotten night.
Tossing and turning all night, or that's what it felt like. It's a good job Cherry insisted on taking the camp-bed. I'd have overturned it.”
“He didn't wake?”
“Didn't stir, and how I detested him for his oblivion!” Frieth said wryly. “You know how it is: misery loves company.”
If that was an attempt to provide his friend with an alibi, Frieth was a lot more subtle than he appeared. Alec was inclined to take his words at face value. “What were you miserable about?” he enquired.
“Oh, well, miserable's a bit too strong. I was a bit pipped over DeLancey's mistreating Bott. As captain, I ought to have been able to put a stop to it, especially as it led to us being knocked out of the Thames Cup. And then there's general sort of worry about the future, trying to decide whether to stick out another year at Oxford or to try to get any old job paying enough to support Tish. I'm not getting any younger.”
“You're what, twenty-five?” Alec said with some asperity. “You have thirty or forty working years ahead of you. Do you want to spend them in a job you don't care about?” Great Scott, sorting out people's private lives was Daisy's forteâit must be catching! He shrugged. “It's your choice. You weren't worrying over whether Bott would sabotage the boat?”
“That was DeLancey's fantasy,” Frieth snorted, “whatever the others are saying now. As I told Tish, if Bott had done anything of the sort, everyone would have known exactly who was to blame. Admittedly, he's not exactly popular, but his name would have been mud, and not only at Oxford. There are plenty of Cambridge crews at the Regatta.”
Making his public humiliation at DeLancey's hands that
much bitterer, Alec reflected. “What did you think of DeLancey's plan to guard the boat?” he asked.
“It looks as if he did, didn't he? When his brother laid down the law, we assumed that was the end of it. After all, Lord DeLancey had somehow forced Basil to apologise, to us if not to Bott. Come to that, I don't suppose the notion of begging Bott's pardon so much as crossed Lord DeLancey's mind.”
“I'd say it was highly unlikely,” Alec agreed. He found himself liking Frieth; just as well if they were to be cousins-in-law. Was it influencing his judgement? He could not see the young man as a liar, nor as quick to violence, let alone as a cold-blooded murderer. “You fell asleep in the end, I imagine,” he said. “Have you any idea what time?” Glancing at his wrist-watch, he was dismayed to see how late it was.
“The last time I remember checking, it was past three.”
“You're prepared to swear neither you nor Cheringham left your room before then?”
“Absolutely,” said Frieth with confidence. “He couldn't possibly have left without my knowing. You see, our bedroom is pretty small. The only way he can get out of the camp-bed without tipping it up is to climb over my bed.”
His certainty was convincing. Alec decided to let him go. He could always get back to him later, and he wanted to see Cheringham before Tom returned with Bott.
As Frieth and Piper left the library, Daisy waltzed in. Though her curls were flattened by hat and heat, her blue eyes sparkled and she looked decidedly pleased with herself.
“Alec, darling.” She kissed his cheek. “I've had a too, too marvellous interview with Prince Henry. He actually said it
was a great pity âour American cousins' hadn't entered a crew this year, only two men in the single sculls. My editor will be thrilled to death.”
“Lucky man,” Alec grunted.
“Have you had a frightful afternoon? I would have come back earlier, but Betty's brother was rowing in the last race, the Stewards' Cup final, so I couldn't ask them to drive me home till it was over. It was too frightfully hot to walk. Would you believe, I only had one glass of champagne because it made me even hotter, so I switched to lemonade.”
He smiled. “You're bubbling as if you'd been drinking champagne all afternoon.”
“Well, it's been a most successful day, and if I'd been here, you'd only have said I was meddling. But you haven't heard all of it. The two Americans who rowed in the Diamond Sculls were presented to Prince Henry while I was there, and when he moved on I talked to them, getting their views on the Regatta. They're enjoying it, even though they were both beaten by the same Leander rower. Nice chaps, one from Boston and the other from somewhere called Duluth. Believe it or not, the Boston one's called Codman.”
“âGood old Boston, the home of the bean and the cod,'” Alec quoted.
Daisy giggled. “I didn't like to ask him about it. They've been invited to Phyllis Court this evening. You
will
be able to come with me, won't you?”
“I don't know, love. I don't seem to be getting anywhere.”
“Then it will do you good to get away from the investigation for a while,” Daisy said decisively. “From a distance you'll be able to see the whole picture instead of getting bogged down in details.”
“I do feel as if I'm too close to the trees for a good view of the wood,” Alec admitted. “A couple of hours away may help, and it'll give Ernie a chance to write up his notes so that we can study them. Also, dining here with the people I've been interrogating promises to be uncomfortable, to say the least.”
“Spiffing! I must go and wash my hair. It's positively glued to my head. We ought to leave here by twenty to eight at the very latest,” she added as Piper came in with Cheringham. “Tom will bring the Chummy back by then, won't he? We passed him heading into town.”