Heirs of the Body(98)
As Daisy reached the door, the kids arrived. They had all-too-clearly already been out, somewhere particularly muddy. Perfunctory efforts at cleaning themselves up had not much improved matters.
“It’s all right, Mummy, we just came to say good morning to everyone. We’re too mucky to sit at table.”
“We had breakfast in the kitchen, Aunt Daisy,” said Derek.
“Poor Cook! All right, say your good mornings from the door. Don’t step on that carpet!”
Greetings were exchanged.
“Mummy, where’s Daddy?”
“Busy, darling.”
“Where’s Uncle Frank?” Ben asked, slightly worried.
“Right here,” said Frank from behind them. “You revolting creatures, what have you been up to?”
“We went down to the river, sir,” Derek explained, “to see if it’s gone down enough for boating.”
“No boating till I’ve had a look,” said Daisy, “and the boat’ll have to be checked in case it was damaged by the flood.” Or by sabotage. “Off you go now. If you’re staying in the house you’d better wash a bit more thoroughly.”
“We’re going out again, Aunt Daisy. The sun’s coming out. It’s going to be a capital day!”
“Off you go, now, and enjoy it,” said Frank.
“I’ll come and join you at the boat in half an hour,” Edgar proposed. “I’ll bring Truscott to give it a thorough inspection.”
“Thanks, Uncle Edgar!”
As they ran off, Frank turned to Daisy and said in a low voice, “There’s a couple of bobbies roaming about, did you know? I’ve asked one of them, a young chap, to keep an eye on the kids. On Ben in particular. He said he’d do his best.”
Daisy approved. At present, Frank was the suspect with the most opportunity to carry out every attack, but some incidents were by no means proven to be attacks rather than sheer accident. The kids were the most vulnerable. They should be the first protected now that manpower was available.
Frank went into the breakfast room and Daisy headed for Edgar’s den. She found Alec eating bacon, sausages, kidneys, fried bread, and fried tomatoes at the desk, surrounded by telegram forms, various papers, and a couple of volumes of an encyclopaedia.
“Nothing like exercise before breakfast to give you an appetite,” she said. “Ernest said you didn’t find the weapon?”
“No,” he said gloomily, “nor any footprint, what with gravel on the paths and leaf litter under the bushes. It must have been the sound of a step onto the gravel that made Vincent start to turn.”
“And saved his life.”
“Possibly.” He mashed a tomato on the fried bread, the way he did at home but not in polite company.
“And the telegrams?”
“What about the telegrams?”
“There’s no need to be disagreeable, darling. You said the weapon probably wouldn’t help anyway. Did you get responses from all those places?”
“Believe it or not, the farthest away have answered already: Trinidad and Jamaica—admittedly they’re a few hours behind us—but Cape Town as well, and I believe they’re an hour ahead.”
“Ahead? I always get confused.…”
“When I wired them, it was already an hour or two later in the day there than here. Like Paris. In the West Indies it was still morning.”
“Paris? Why Paris?”
“Your ancestor, the one responsible for this troublesome lot, was married to a Frenchwoman. His son, Vincent’s grandfather, was sent to live with her family in France. And Vincent married a Frenchwoman. Doesn’t he even use his wife’s surname in his professional career?”
“His great-grandmother’s, I think.”
“The ties to France are very strong. I asked Geraldine—she was still up, writing letters—if she knew which part of France, and she told me Paris.”
“Yes, that’s right. But I still don’t see—”
“The more I can get to know about each of them, the better chance I have of working out who’s trying to do what to whom.”
“Yes, I can see that. Did you find out anything about Vincent from Scarborough?”
“They’re the others who haven’t answered yet.”
“Scotland Yard is more impressive the farther away from it you are?”
“That’s the way it looks!”
“What did Trinidad and Jamaica and South Africa have to say?”
“Crowley’s known to Port-of-Spain police. He’s had a couple of drunk and disorderlies, and thirty days for illegal gambling. All a good few years ago, before he married Benjamin’s mother. No violent offences on his record. He’s a master mechanic, started in the asphalt business—”