“I don't want you to think I'm trying to make excuses, but let me explain the circumstances.”
“Go ahead,” said Daisy.
Â
The field hospital was swamped by casualties from the Third Battle of YpresâWipers, as the Other Ranks wryly called the ruinous remains of the Belgian town. From snug pill-boxes surrounded by a sea of mud, the Boches poured forth machine-gun fire and mustard-gas to wipe out mired British troops by the hundred thousand.
Exhausted medics stitched and amputated, and evacuated those who survived back behind the lines as fast as transports were available. No less overtaxed, the hospitals in the rear tidied up the human wreckage sent to them, and watched helpless
as their patients died in droves, of infections and gas-corroded lungs.
Naturally, Major Lord John Frobisher received the best care available. The last scraps of shrapnel were dug out of his body. Nothing could be done for the crudely sewn-up wound on his face other than to keep it clean.
He was shipped home to England to recuperate, his cheek still swollen, the gash a lurid purple brand.
“I didn't care much as long as I was with the rest of the fellows,” Johnnie told Daisy. “It didn't seem to matter when so many were so much worse off. Then we landed at Dover and everyone else went off on the troop train to London. I took the local to Oakhurst.”
“Vi and the baby were in Worcestershire,” said Daisy, “at home with us, at Fairacres.”
“Yes, but I was very tired and tense, not fit for civilized society. I needed a day or two to put myself straight before I saw Violet. I felt I hardly knew herâwe weren't married much more than a year, remember, before I went off to France, and I'd had only one fortnight's leave since then.”
“Spent at Fairacres,” Daisy recalled, “with Derek afraid of the stranger who claimed to be his Daddy, and Violet having to look after him because half the men were called up so the maids were doing their work. And Mother being Mother.”
She exchanged a commiserating glance with Johnnie. Lady Dalrymple, now the Dowager Viscountess, would find something to complain about in Heaven. At the time, Daisy seemed to remember, the burden of her mother's song had been the injustice of her son-in-law's obtaining leave when her son, Gervaise, as yet had not. Gervaise had his fortnight later. He chose to spend half of it in London before returning to Flanders, to his death.
Some of the wounds of war were invisible, and slow to heal.
Daisy shook her head, shook the memories away. “You had to come to Fairacres,” she said. “Kent was too dangerous, too close to the Continent, getting bombed regularly. Father wouldn't have let Vi go to Oakhurst.”
“By George, no. I don't hold Lord Dalrymple to blame.”
“But I understand why you wanted to go home first, after the hospitals and everything.”
“I nearly didn't make it that day,” Johnnie said. “Three changes, and I kept drowsing off. The trains were practically empty, what with so many women and children having been evacuated. When I reached Rotherden Halt, there was no station fly. Our chauffeur was in the service, of course, but no one was expecting me, anyway. I left my bags in the ticket office and walked into the village. It was just after opening time, so I decided to drop into the Hop-Picker to fortify myself for the slog up to the house.”
“A mile from the station if it's an inch, and uphill all the way. A pick-me-up was just what you needed,” Daisy agreed.
“The landlord's daughter, Maisy, whom I'd known all my life, screamed when she saw me. She pulled herself together and served me, but she couldn't bear to look at my face. Believe it or not, until that moment I hadn't considered what the effect would be on women. On Violet.”
“Oh, Johnnie!”
“I'd only seen nurses, who were used to much worse.” He fingered the thin white scar. “It's nothing now, but then it was hideous, loathsome, and I didn't know how it would heal. I finished my whisky pretty quick, glad I'd ordered a double because I didn't have the nerve to ask for another. It was raining, luckily. I more or less slunk through the village without meeting anyone. Then the rain stopped and all at once the sun came out, just as I passed the Vicarage. You remember Rotherden?”
“Yes, of course.” Since the War, Daisy had visited often.
“The Vicarage is next to the church, which is right across the street from your gates, so you were safe.”
“So I imagined.”
Opposite the Vicarage, on the other side of the Oakhurst gates from the lodge, stood a small Queen Anne house, weatherboarded and hung with tile in the local style. A pleasant residence, quite close to the street but with a large garden behind, it had been bought a year or two before the War by a childless widow. Mrs. LeBeau was then about thirty, an attractive and sophisticated woman.
John, newly married, settling down to wedded life and learning to run the estate left him by an uncle, had scarcely noticed her existence.
“She came out of her front door just as I passed. I knew her to pass the time of dayâwe'd been introduced at someone's house and I think Violet had invited her to morning coffee once or twice. That sort of acquaintance. At any rate, she called a greeting, asked was I home on leave. I couldn't very well ignore her.”
He had turned his head to return her greeting. She swallowed a gasp as the westering sun struck full on his face.
“You poor man, you look exhausted,” she said. “Are they expecting you up at the house? Lady John isn't there, I know. Come in and have a cup of tea and a biscuit before you go home. I was just going to return this book to Mrs. Molesworth, but it can wait.”
After a chocolate bar from a station slot-machine for lunch, and a double whisky drunk much too fast, John felt greatly in need of tea, not to mention sympathy. He went in.
“You'll have guessed by now,” he said to Daisy, staring down unhappily at his hands, “that I stayed the night.”
Daisy didn't know what to say. Living in Bohemian Chelsea, she was acquainted with any number of people whose marriage
vows were more honoured in the breach than the observance. She supposed it didn't matter much as long as neither husband nor wife minded. But it was different when her brother-in-law had been unfaithful to her own sister.
How would quiet, self-contained, self-possessed Violet, always unimpeachably correct, take it if she ever found out?
“Violet mustn't find out!” Johnnie broke into Daisy's silence. He looked at her with a sort of pleading defiance. “Especially now. Yet ⦠I told you I repented long since, but it was only half a repentance. I was not Mrs. LeBeau's first lover since she lost her husband, so I'd nothing to reproach myself with there. And she gave me the courage to face Violet.”
Unwillingly, Daisy nodded. “Yes, I see that. It was just the once, and you've never told anyone else?”
“Not a soul.”
“Then Mrs. LeBeau must have written the letters.”
“That was my first assumption, but I can't believe it of her. I've met her quite often in company since the end of the War, and she's never let drop so much as a hint. Not even a sidelong glance. Besides, whatever your opinion of her morals, in other ways she's a lady through and through, well-bred, cultivated. The letters are badly written and spelled, as well as ⦠pretty filthy.”
“That could be a disguise,” Daisy pointed out. “Did you bring them to show me?”
“No. I wouldn't want them found on me if I was knocked down by a 'bus crossing the street,” Johnnie said wryly. “I burnt the first one, but it's difficult to find an excuse to burn things in August. The rest are in a locked drawer in my bureau at home. Will you come?”
Suppose the next letter went straight to Vi? Daisy sighed. “Yes, I'll come. Give me a couple of days to research the London Museum, so that I can write the article at Oakhurst. I must
get going, I've an appointment with the curator at three.”
“I'll run you there.” He pushed back his chair and came around the table to hold hers. “Er, where is it? I'm not much of a hand at museums.”
She laughed. “Lancaster House, right next to St. James's Palace. No distance. I'd rather walk across the parks, thanks all the same. I need a few minutes to get my thoughts on the right track.” As they left the restaurant, Daisy asked, “Did you mean it about inviting Belinda to Oakhurst?”
“Certainly. We'll be glad to have her.”
“Her grandmother won't approve of âgiving her ideas above her station,' but I'm sure Alec will be pleased. I'll leave it to him to persuade Mrs. Fletcher. I'll telephone when I've settled on a date and train.”
“I'll pay the fares, of course,” Johnnie said gruffly.
Daisy stopped on the hotel steps and kissed his cheek. “You're a dear, Johnnie. I'll do my best to sort things out for you. Cheerio. See you soon.”
“Cheerio, Daisy. Oh, by the way, I don't think I'm the only one getting letters. Something Lomax said made me think he might be another victim.”
By the time she turned into Buckingham Palace Road, Daisy realized her folly. She groaned. In the first place, she hadn't the foggiest how to set about finding a Poison Pen. In the second place, if somehow she succeeded, how was she to stop the culprit broadcasting the victims' peccadillos to the world?
Victims
, plural. Brigadier Lomaxâand how many others?âmight prefer not to risk having their persecutor unmasked. Daisy could very well find herself treading on more toes than a centipede's!
YOU'RE A STINKING HIPPOCRITT, A WHITED SEPULKER! YOU'VE GOT A NERVE, SITTING AS A MAJUSTRATE AND SENDING POOR FOLK TO PRISON FOR POACHING, WHEN YOU'VE BEEN CONSERTING WITH A WHORE.
Â
FILTHY ADULTORER, YOU BETRAYED YOUR WIFE. FILANDERERS MUST BE PUNISHED.
Â
FORNYKATION IS A SIN. YOU THINK YOU GOT AWAY WITH IT, BUT YOU'VE BEEN CAUGHT OUT AND YOU WILL SUFFER, YOU FOUL LECHER.
Â
YOUR AFFAIRE IS KNOWN. YOU CAN'T HIDE FROM JUSTICE. YOU DESERVE TO BURN IN HELL.
“
T
hat's the lot,” said Johnnie, “except the first. I chucked the envelopes, but they were all addressed in the same writing and postmarked in the village. I'm sorry to subject you to such beastly stuff. Sometimes I feel I must have imagined the whole business, and then I look at them again, and ⦔ With a bewildered
expression, he glanced around the library.
The crude letters were startlingly out of place in that staid room. Two walls were taken up with bookshelves, crammed with calf-bound volumes collected over the centuries and seldom if ever opened since their purchase. The chairs were similarly aged and leather-covered, but worn to a comfortable shabbiness, as was the faded Turkey carpet on the oak-planked floor. The mahogany and satinwood Sheraton roll-top bureau at which Johnnie sat seemed defiled by the papers strewn on its well-polished surface.
“There's nothing worse than one can find in lots of modern novels, other than the spelling.” Daisy shook her head. “And that doesn't ring true.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look: Every word with more than two syllables is spelt wrong, yet every apostrophe is correct.” She scanned the notes, printed in block capitals with a blunt pencil on cheap notepaper. “In fact, all the punctuation is all rightâmost unnatural.”
“I'm a bit shaky on commas, myself,” Johnnie conceded.
“And it's equally unnatural that only long words are misspelled. A girl in my form at school who was a rotten speller hardly ever got long words wrong, because she was unsure of them so she looked them up. What tripped her were âyour' and âyou're,' or âthere,' âtheir' and âthey're.'”
“Maybe, but someone uneducated might not think to check the spelling, or even own a dictionary.”
“No,” Daisy agreed, “but he'd get short words wrong as well, things like f-o-w-l for âfoul,' or l-e-t-c-h-e-r for âlecher.'”
“Or n-o-n-e for âknown,'” said Johnnie, entering into the spirit of the thing. “W-i-t-e-d for âwhited.'”
“Or goodness knows what for âcaught,' which is brief but frightfully peculiar. It looks to me as if the writer simply
stopped whenever he came to a long word and thought up a way to spell it wrong.”
“What about âaffaire' with an âe'?”
“That's the most suspicious of all. What's the odds against misspelling the English âaffair' in such a way it just happens to be right for the French spelling so often used for an
affaire de coeur?
No, I think your Poison Pen wrote that word without thinking, which seems to me to imply a certain degree of sophistication.”
“Dash it all, Daisy, I hate to believe one of our sort of people wrote this ⦠this
filth,
” Johnnie said gloomily. “I suppose it must be someone I know. How will you set about finding her?”
“Or him.”
“Aren't these things usually written by frustrated spinsters? Or him,” he added in haste as Daisy frowned. “Do you think you have the slightest chance of ⦠?”
“Daddy! Aunt Daisy!”
Johnnie swiftly scooped the letters into the bureau drawer, shut it, and locked it, as his son and heir bounded into the library. Derek, a wiry nine-year-old with hair bleached to straw by the summer sun, was followed at a more decorous pace by a skinny girl half a head taller, with ginger pigtails. Alec's daughter Belinda came shyly to stand beside Daisy, while Derek skidded to a halt before his father.
“Daddy, Mummy's got up from her rest and she says we can have tea in the summerhouse because Mrs. Osborne's coming, so will you come and have it with us and play cricket afterwards, because you don't like Mrs. Osborne? You can come too, Aunt Daisy. I mean,” he corrected himself, “we shall be glad of the pleasure of your company. Mrs. Osborne doesn't like children. She pretends to and pats you on the head and calls you a fine little man.”
“Frightful!” said Daisy, laughing.
“Well, it is. Po-sit-ively hu-mil-iating.” He looked at Belinda, and for some reason they both dissolved in giggles, already sharing a joke which excluded grown-ups. In general, Derek hadn't much time for girls. However, the daughter of a genuine Detective Chief Inspector from Scotland Yard was in a class of her own.
“Derek, you mustn't talk like that about Mrs. Osborne,” his father reproved him. “And what makes you think I dislike ⦠No, don't tell me. I can't think what children's manners are coming to, these days. Do try for a little discretion!”
“All right, Daddy, but will you come? Please!”
“And you, Miss Dalrymple.” Belinda slipped her hand into Daisy's.
“I think not, darling. Mrs. Osborne is the vicar's wife, isn't she?” Who better to know everything going on in the village? “I'm afraid she may be justifiably offended if I make myself scarce.”
Belinda's hand tightened. “I'll come with you. May I?”
“Don't you like to play cricket?” Johnnie asked kindly.
“Oh yes, m-my lord,” the child stammered, shyly raising eyes a greener shade of grey than Alec's.
“Daddy, she doesn't have to call you âmy lord,' does she?”
“By George, no. Uncle John would seem appropriate in the circumstances,” said Johnnie with a teasing glance at Daisy, who felt herself blush, a fearfully Victorian habit she despised but had never managed to control.
Derek added to her confusion. “I suppose,” he said consideringly, “you can't call Aunt Daisy âMummy' until she's married to your father. You'd better call her Aunt Daisy, like I do. Do come and have tea with Daddy and me. Cricket's more fun with three than two, and Peter doesn't count. You can't help being better than he is, even though you're a girl.”
Belinda accepted with equanimity this comparison of her sporting skills with his five-year-old brother's. “All right,” she said.
They all went out to the terrace behind the red-brick Jacobean manor house. The heat, so unbearable in London, was a pleasant warmth here, relieved by a slight breeze scented with hops, though the large black dog who thumped her tail in greeting stayed panting in her spot of shade. Violet looked delightfully cool in a simple cotton voile frock and shady hat. She was seated in a white wicker chair, with Peter playing on the Kentish ragstone paving at her feet.
Daisy's younger nephew was a chubby, silent child, quite capable of amusing himself alone for hours. He looked up from the wooden horse and cart he was trundling around the legs of his mother's chair and beamed at Daisy, whom he had not seen since her arrival, but said nothing. Daisy bent down to kiss him.
“I'm bidden to the summerhouse for tea, darling,” said Johnnie. “Is that all right?”
“Yes, do go with the children. You won't find it at all amusing here. And take Peter, please. You'd better disappear before Mrs. Osborne arrives.”
Her husband glanced back at the house in mock alarm.
“Come on, Belinda, I'll race you!” cried Derek. “Come on, Tinker!”
The big black dog jumped up on hearing her name.
“Maybe I should hold Peter's hand,” Belinda said doubtfully, with a slightly nervous glance at Tinker Bell.
“Go on with Derek,” said Johnnie. “I'll bring Peter. Come along, old man.”
“I'll run too,” Peter announced, and he lumbered off across the lawn after the others. Tinker bounded back to him and licked his face before galloping after Derek and Belinda. Johnnie brought up the rear.
“Oh dear,” Vi sighed, “poor Peter will never be any good at sports, I'm afraid. It's such a handicap for a boy.”
“Bosh,” said Daisy bracingly. “I expect he'll be a brilliant wrestler, or a good, solid batsman, the sort who stays in for hours.”
“Perhaps. Belinda's a nice child. Daisy, I hope you won't mind, I asked her to call me Aunt Violet.”
“No, why should I mind?”
“Well, if you happened to be having second thoughts ⦔
“None,” Daisy averred. “I simply adore Alec, and Bel, too. Mrs. Fletcher's a bit of a fly in the ointment, but we'll come to an accommodation. Did
you?
Have second thoughts, I mean, when you were engaged?”
“Not really, but that was rather different.”
Daisy raised her eyebrows. “How so?”
“Oh, I was marrying a suitable man, more or less chosen for me by Mother, amid general congratulations, whereas you're not doing at all what is expected of you.”
“You weren't in love with Johnnie?” Daisy demanded, shocked. Fifteen when her sister married, she had believed it the most romantic match conceivable.
“Not then,” Vi said softly. “I liked him very much, better than any of my other suitors, and ⦔
“Mrs. Osborne, my lady,” announced a footman.
A tall, solid woman of forty or so advanced across the terrace with a determined air more appropriate to the Canadians advancing on Passchendaele. Red-faced, she looked stickily hot in a grey silk frock, too dressy in comparison with Daisy's and Violet's light cottons. Daisy recognized her, having met her once or twice on previous visits.
She recognized Daisy. Having greeted her hostess, she said with heavy whimsy, “A little bird whispered in my ear that you
had just arrived in our rural corner of the world, Miss Dalrymple. How d'ye do?”
“It's very pleasant to escape from town in this weather.”
“Indeed, London in the summer is unbearable. I try to avoid going up in August. And even worse for childrenâI heard you brought a little girl with you?”
Obviously, Mrs. Osborne considered it her duty to ferret out every scrap of gossip. Assuming she was equally ready to disgorge the tittle-tattle, she could be useful, so Daisy bit back her annoyance and answered with a smile, “My fiancé's daughter.”
Mrs. Osborne returned her smile, revealing tombstone teeth. “Ah yes, we read the announcement of your engagement in
The Times
. Allow me to offer my felicitations. A Mr. Fletcher, I believe. Would that be the Nottinghamshire Fletchers?”
“Not exactly.” Daisy threw a mischievous glance at Vi. “The connection with Scotland is closer. And how is your family, Mrs. Osborne? I trust the vicar is well?”
“Very
well,” said Mrs. Osborne, with an odd emphasis, as if she was trying to persuade herself. “His brother is staying with us for a few weeks during the long vacation. He's at Cambridge, a Professor of the Classics. He and Osbert have such learned discussions, I'm sure I can scarcely follow a word.” She produced a rather thin laugh.
“How are the children?” Violet enquired kindly.
“I had a letter from Gwendoline just this morning, Lady John. She's having a marvellous time with her cousins. The Cambridgeshire Osbornes, you know, Miss Dalrymple. My son, Jeremy, is climbing in Austria with a party from his school. A public school, of course, and really quite excellent, though one of the lesser known ones. I'm afraid we couldn't afford Eton or Harrow, but one has a certain position to uphold, does one not, Lady John?”
“Quite,” said Vi, whose sons had been entered at Harrow before they were born, automatically and without her having any say in the matter.
“Jeremy and Gwendoline will both be here for the Church Fête, before they go back to school. We hold it at the very end of the month, Miss Dalrymple. So many people seem to go away in August these days,” she added disapprovingly, continuing to talk as a pair of parlourmaids unloaded Georgian silver and Royal Doulton onto the wicker table. “What common farmers and shopkeepers want with a day at the seaside I cannot conceive.”
“A change and a rest, and a bit of fun for their children, I suppose,” said Daisy, trying to keep the tartness from her voice.
“They'd do better saving their money, and so I tell them. Thank you, Lady John, China with lemon, please, and two lumps.”
“Indian with milk, please, Vi,” Daisy said promptly in a spirit of contradiction, “no sugar. A watercress sandwich, Mrs. Osborne?” She handed a plate of crustless brown-bread triangles.
“From your own stream, Lady John?” The vicar's wife took one and delicately nibbled a corner. “Delicious. I always say it's impossible to buy watercress as good as what is grown at Oakhurst.”