Chapter Three
No further progress was possible that first evening. Silas shouted down the table to Alec Osborne to clear up some argument about fishing tackle, and at that the men were lost and the ladies retreated into a huffy but dignified silence which carried us through until we could retreat bodily to the drawing room, the coffee cups and the desultory house party chat which always makes one long for bedtime.
Hugh was up and off at early light the next day, slipping out in his stockinged feet in a way I thought most considerate until I realized that he was headed for his rubber waders in the boot room. I opened my eyes once he was gone and lay with my hands laced behind my head. I was thinking over the evening before and trying to plan a useful day, when the door opened and Daisy came in still in her nightie and the bathing cap she always wears in bed in the hope that it will keep her hair set while she sleeps.
‘Wretched thing,’ she said, plumping down at my dressing table and peeling it off. Her hair underneath was almost grotesque in its dishevelment. ‘As ever,’ she said, sighing, ‘hair by Picasso.’ Then she rumpled it into its naturally mop-like state with both hands and got into bed beside me. I looked straight ahead of me and spoke with no emotion. And it is just as well I did, for here is what happened.
‘Well, I drew out Mrs, as you witnessed,’ I began. ‘She is adamant that the theft took place at the ball and she fully expected, therefore, that Silas would pay out on her claim, even though as she put it there is an irregularity in the paperwork. She seems dreadfully shocked that it’s not simply happening that way.’
Daisy stared at me.
‘An irregularity in the paperwork?’ she said. I raised my eyebrows non-committally and waited for more. ‘Is that how she described it to you, Dan? An irregularity in the paperwork? She must be insane. If anyone were to find out that Silas had done such a thing he would be finished.’ I hoped that my mask continued to function but I feared my face was hardening as I heard this. Daisy’s idea of ‘finished’ was evidently very different from mine.
‘Yes, I suppose his financial chums would look down their noses rather,’ I said, trying to sound as light as I could.
‘Well, that too,’ said Daisy. ‘But from his prison cell, I rather think that would be the least of his worries.’
‘Prison? Surely not?’
‘Of course prison. Fraud, false accounts, embezzlement. Why do you think Gerard Bevan is on the run?’
‘Who?’ I asked.
‘Don’t you ever read the papers, Dandy? She must be mad to think that this could happen hush-hush and no questions asked. She must -’ Daisy sat straight up and glared over her shoulder at the corner of the room, towards, I guessed, the part of the house where Lena’s bedroom lay. ‘She must have some kind of proof.’
Daisy did not seem to notice, so lost was she in the tangle of her own thoughts, that I was silent. I knew no more than that the clear view I thought I had got of the thing had clouded over once more.
‘What I don’t see, though,’ she said, ‘is why on earth they weren’t insured for real. That makes no sense at all.’
‘They weren’t insured,’ I echoed.
‘Which makes no sense at all,’ said Daisy again.
‘They weren’t insured by Silas,’ I said, slowly and carefully, mostly to myself. ‘But she hoped he might fake an insurance arrangement and cover their loss, risking ruin and jail, rather than let whatever it is come out.’ Fortunately my thinking out loud was taken by Daisy to be a helpful summary and she simply nodded. ‘I agree then,’ I said. ‘She must have proof.’ Something was nagging at me, but I was so confused already I knew I should have to think long and hard before illumination came.
‘Yes,’ said Daisy. ‘Nothing else would explain how she could even dream that Silas would…’ I tried again to catch at the nagging thought, the way one does, looking mentally off to the side and pretending one isn’t. It did not work.
‘This is going to do for us, Dan,’ said Daisy, morosely. ‘Oh, I don’t mean there’s anything in it, of course. We shan’t have to pay it. But just a hint, just a whisper. You’ve no idea what they’re like, these bankers. Not to mention the actuaries.’ She shuddered again, just as she had when she had said the word to me over the telephone. I began to wonder with dread what an actuary was, exactly.
‘I think even Lena realizes that,’ I said. ‘And in a way that makes it worse.’ Daisy frowned at me, waiting. ‘She said last night, very clearly, that I should ask you for a little something and then a regular arrangement.’ Daisy’s mouth dropped open.
‘But that’s…’ she began, and then blinked and shook her head. ‘How did you do it, Dan? What on earth did you say to get her to simply pour it all out like that? You are a marvel.’ I hoped Daisy would take my sudden flush and inarticulate gulping as modesty. She smacked her hands down on the bedclothes making me jump.
‘Five hundred pounds,’ she said, cutting into my fizz of shame. ‘Five hundred pounds if you can get to the bottom of it, darling. And, um, a daily retainer. Expenses too, of course.’
‘A daily retainer?’ I echoed. ‘Expenses? Daisy, have you done this before?’
‘I went to an agency last week and sounded them out,’ Daisy said. ‘But I funked it. They would have been hopeless, lumbering around in serge, you know, like having a rhinoceros come to tea and expecting no one to notice.’ She looked piercingly at me. ‘Can you, Dan? Can you spare the time?’ I tried hard not laugh. ‘And more to the point, can you bear to cosy up to Lena enough to find out what she’s up to? Can you do it?’
‘Leave it with me,’ I said, managing not to blush who knows how at my temerity. After all, less than two minutes before I had almost let it slip that I hadn’t a clue. ‘I accept your terms. Now just leave it to me.’
To my great surprise, Daisy fell for it. She sighed with contentment and snuggled down under the blankets with a slow, luxuriating wriggle like a warm dog, then emerged again and, saying she was going to write me a cheque that minute, she dashed off.
My breakfast tray appeared, although it was as hard to concentrate on eggs and toast as it was to force my thoughts to the question of the theft, the fraud or any of it. All I could think of was five hundred pounds, five hundred pounds; the first money of my own I should have had since the last coin had been pressed into my hand by a kindly uncle, and the first money I should have earned in my entire life. Daisy had tossed it casually towards me as though not only was the sum negligible but also the fact of her having it, to do as she pleased with it, was nothing out of the usual way.
Giving up on breakfast at last, I began to dress. Tweed, of course, but I always make sure to have some rather pretty tweed, such is the amount of time one spends in it when one is married to a Scotsman. Today’s were a heathery colour flecked with amethyst, which looked quite acceptable with those purple-fawn stockings in the shade I think of as ‘alcoholic nose’. I have countless other tweed garments, all heathery at heart, but flecked with any number of greens, blues, pinks, yellows even. On one point I am immovable, though: country life is bad enough without wearing brown.
By half-past ten, recovered from my excitement, heathery and flecked, I sat down beside Lena Duffy in the hall. She was installed at the comfortable end of a chaise from where she could keep an eye on Cara and Alec, who were sitting in another corner of the room. (Alec, as an engaged person, was clearly exempt from the day’s sport.) Lena did not exactly welcome me, issuing no more than a curt nod, but she did not actually scowl, so I guessed that matters between us were as we had left them, frosty – no overnight thaw – but at the sorbet rather than the iceberg end of the scale. Besides, although she was reading Vanity Fair she very selfishly had the Tatler, Bystander and Graphic on her lap too, saving them for later. This left only the dreary old Spectator for my amusement and so I swallowed my qualms at disturbing her.