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Authors: Carola Dunn

BOOK: Dead in the Water
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Daisy felt she had done what she could to preserve Aunt Cynthia from a dreadful death.
 
Even more than tea-time, dinner was devoted to refuelling the crew. Daisy was astounded by the amount of food that disappeared. In the circumstances, conversation was vestigial.
By now, aided by one slight stammer, one fair, wispy moustache, and one set of altogether enviable long, dark, curling eyelashes, Daisy had put names to faces. The four secondyear men were Poindexter (the stammerer), Wells (eyelashed), Meredith (moustached), and Leigh.
Daisy sat next to Fosdyke, the only fresher in the crew—in both crews, in fact. A first-rate oarsman, according to Rollo, he had rowed for St. Paul's School before going up to Oxford, and he was a member of the Ambrose four as well as the eight. The double exertion and the presence of his elders no doubt accounted for his being the most taciturn of a taciturn company.
“Please pass the salt,” was the longest speech Daisy got out of him throughout the meal.
However, as they rose at the end, he stifled an enormous
yawn, apologised, and went on, “I'm for bed. You can't get these chaps to do any serious training, but I like to run a few miles before breakfast.”
“Good for you,” said Daisy with a smile and a suppressed shudder. While she admired those who excelled, she considered sports a torture to be avoided if at all possible.
She felt much the same about bridge, though her mother's passion for the game had forced her to learn. When, as they headed for the drawing-room, Leigh, Meredith, and Wells invited her to join them in a rubber, she shook her head in feigned regret.
“It's kind of you to ask, but I don't play.”
“We'll teach you,” Meredith proposed.
“I'm hopeless at cards. I'm afraid my partner would murder me.”
They protested, but weakly. She held firm, so they shanghaied Poindexter, who wanted to write a letter, promising him the first dummy hand.
Lady Cheringham had already settled down with a gardening book. Daisy strolled out through the French windows onto the terrace. The sun had set, but the western sky was a blaze of colour, reflected in the shimmering pink river, and it would be light for an hour or more yet.
Tish and Rollo, Dottie and Cherry were all on the terrace, very plainly paired off. Daisy didn't want to disturb them. She ambled down to the river-bank, missing Alec.
Tomorrow evening she'd have him to herself, for the whole weekend. Fond as she was of his daughter, Belinda, the prospect was heavenly. He had promised not to give Scotland Yard a telephone number for contacting him.
Only one thing could spoil their weekend: a vital case arising
tomorrow, before he got away. Daisy knew and accepted that marrying a detective was not going to be easy. She didn't have to dwell on that aspect of things, though. She started to plan their time together.
A single-sculler slid by up-river with long, lazy-looking strokes, setting a family of grebes bobbing on the V of dark ripples on the rosy water. Then a motor-launch
put-putted
round the bend from Hambleden Lock, bound for a mooring in the town. Its whistle shrieked a warning at the sculler. As the engine noise died away, the raucous music of a steam calliope, mellowed by distance, floated down the river from the fairground. Daisy was glad they hadn't been able to go this evening. Now she had an excuse to get Alec onto the Ferris wheel, where a kiss at the top was practically
de rigueur.
“Damn!” She slapped her bare arm, squishing a mosquito. Too late—it left a bloody splodge.
A couple more whined about her head. Scrubbing her arm with her spit-dampened handkerchief, she hastened back towards the house.
Two figures stood at the balustrade, at opposite sides of the steps, darkly silhouetted against the drawing-room windows. Two red points of light glowed in the growing dusk.
The form to Daisy's right was rather smaller than the other. Horace Bott, she thought, and his Woodbines. A whiff of cheap cigarette smoke fought its way to her nostrils through the heavy perfume of the roses.
She sighed. She couldn't very well march past without exchanging a word or two, but at least the smoke would keep the mosquitoes at bay.
As she ascended the steps, the other man turned slightly to
watch her. By the light from the windows, she recognised Basil DeLancey, and a moment later the choking stench of his cigar hit her. An expensive cigar, no doubt, but the smell was perfectly beastly, quite capable of slaying mosquitoes in flight by the thousands.
She coughed. Instantly, two red-glowing points arced down to land among the rose-bushes.
“Oh
blast!
” Daisy muttered to herself.
It looked as if both of them wanted to speak to her. If she paused at the top and let them converge on her, she'd find herself acting as a shield against DeLancey's Bottshots. Perhaps she could sail through between Scylla and Charybdis with a “Heavenly evening! Good-night.”
“Heavenly evening,” she managed.
“The forecast for tomorrow's on the hot side for rowing.” Bott got his word in first. “But it's better than rain or a cross-wind,” he conceded.
Daisy turned towards him. He was in many ways the lesser of two evils, and he would be hurt if she ignored him, not just offended. “I suppose a cross-wind must make steering fearfully difficult,” she said.
“With the experimental course a mere seventy-five feet wide, a wind vector of only …”
Daisy laughed. “Don't get technical on me. My school's idea of science education was ‘What you can't see won't hurt you.' Your degree is in science?”
“And maths,” drawled DeLancey, joining them. “What would you expect of a shopkeeper's brat?”
“Better manners than I can apparently expect of an earl's brat!” Daisy snapped.
To her intense relief, footsteps on the terrace behind them announced the arrival of Poindexter and Leigh, one with a lit cigarette, the other tamping his pipe.
“Marvellous evening,” observed Leigh.
“Easy for you to s-say, you won. I s-say, DeLancey,” Poindexter continued, “you're a whisky man, aren't you? Lady Cheringham had her butler bring in a perfectly s-splendid S-scotch. You ought to try a nip, Bott,” he added with kindly condescension.
“I don't drink spirits.”
“Beer is the drink of the lower classes,” said DeLancey. “Anything stronger goes straight to their weak heads.”
“Oh, I s-say!”
Leigh turned a laugh into a cough.
Furious, Daisy took Bott's arm. “Shall we go in, Mr. Bott? There seem to be a lot of irritating insects out here.” She tugged him towards the French windows.
“You see,” he muttered angrily, “I can't do anything right. They even despise me for studying mathematics and physics instead of dead languages. I'm going to accept the fellowship I've been offered at Cambridge, where they take maths and the sciences seriously.”
“Going to relieve Oxford of your presence, eh?” said DeLancey, coming up on Daisy's other side as they stepped into the drawing-room.
Wells and Meredith were sprawled in chairs with glasses in their hands. They struggled to their feet when Daisy entered.
“Miss Cheringham said to tell you she and Miss Carrick have gone up, Miss Dalrymple,” said Meredith of the moustache.
“Thank you. I'll be on my way, too. Good-night.”
“Good-night,” came a chorus, with a “Sweet dreams,” from DeLancey.
Daisy hoped Bott would follow her example. She glanced back when she reached the door. He had crossed to the drinks table. Behind him, DeLancey looked on, sneering.
With a set expression, Bott poured whisky into a tumbler. Daisy was very much afraid he was going to drink it.
T
he mosquito bite had begun to itch in earnest. Rubbing the skin around it, fighting the instinct to scratch, Daisy turned right on the landing at the top of the stairs.
Cherry emerged from the bathroom at the end of the passage, blue-striped pyjamas protruding from beneath his blue dressing-gown.
“Wrong way,” he said, coming towards her. “You're in with Tish, aren't you? Her room's that way, first on the right past the stairs. Aunt Cynthia put all us men in this wing.”
“Oh yes, I forgot. Last time I stayed I was in here.” She indicated the nearest door.
“You don't want to go in there. That's Fosdyke and that bast … blighter DeLancey. Fosdyke sleeps like a log. I wouldn't count on him to wake up and defend your virtue.”
“Is DeLancey really so bad?”
“Well, there was a nasty story about him and a shop-girl, but I don't suppose he'd actually force his attentions on a viscount's daughter. Still, I'd steer clear of him in dark corners if I were you. Tish had some trouble with him at the Ambrose May Ball.”
“And Rollo still put him on the crew!”
“He's a damn good oarsman, and the crew was already picked by then. Dropping him would have caused no end of a dust-up. The invitation to stay here had been issued and accepted too, worse luck.”
“What a frightful mess.”
“Isn't it? I swear I'll do the rotter in if he's rude to Dottie one more time. But not till after the Regatta,” he added hastily.
“Of course not,” said Daisy, laughing. “You have a pretty good chance of winning, do you?”
“Pretty good. Bott's a pill but he's a first-rate cox, and that counts even more than usual with this narrow course, though at least it's straight. The four has a better than even chance in the Visitors', too. I really hope we win one or the other. I mean, it doesn't matter so much to me, but it would buck Rollo up a bit. The poor chap doesn't show it much, but he's frightfully cut up over being ploughed for Schools.”
“I'll be out there cheering for you. I'd better get to bed, now,” she said as footsteps and a burst of laughter approached below. “Nighty-night.”
“Good-night, Daisy. I'm glad you're here. Dottie and Tish don't feel quite so outnumbered!”
Smiling, Daisy turned back. The men were now noisily ascending the stairs.
“Hush!” said a cautionary voice.
She resisted the urge to glance over the banisters. If Bott had allowed himself to be goaded into drinking more whisky than he could cope with, no doubt she'd find out in the morning.
At least he could no longer complain that the others refused to drink with him.
Daisy found Tish seated at her dressing-table, cold-creaming her face. “I'm glad to see intellectual pursuits don't preclude a touch of vanity,” she said.
“I'm not really frightfully intellectual,” Tish admitted, echoing her mother's view, “but my aunt—Cherry's mother—would have been madly disappointed if I hadn't gone up. I'm determined to get my degree if it kills me.”
“As bad as that?”
“No, not really. I can manage, as long as I don't fall behind. But oh, Daisy, I'm desperately worried about Rollo.”
“Cherry told me he's more pipped about failing his exams than he seems.” Foreseeing a lengthy exposition, Daisy plumped down on the bed, glad to see Tish's pink cotton pyjamas laid out on the camp-bed.
“He feels he's let me down by spending time rowing when he should have been swotting. You see, he'd planned to go into the Foreign Service right away and save up so that we could marry when I go down next year. He's frightfully keen on the Foreign Service, but he'd never be more than a clerk without his degree.”
“I suppose not.”
“I want him to stay on at Ambrose and retake his Schools, but he's talking about leaving and trying to find some sort of work that will pay enough to marry on. It doesn't help that he's older than most undergrads.”
“Haven't his people any money?”
“There's an older brother, and two younger. They'll pay for another year of college, but then he's on his own.
We're
on our own,” Tish said fiercely. “I
will
marry him. The fathead refuses
to be properly engaged because he doesn't want to tie me down. I'll have some money from Father, and I'd be happy to get a job too, but he refuses to ‘sponge' on me. He's so damned
noble
!” she said with a sort of half sob.
“If he stayed and got his degree, then … ?”
“Then he'd go into the Foreign Service and I suppose we'd have to wait another year or so. But maybe not. After all, we'd have another whole year together in Oxford and I'd have a chance to work on him.”
“I dare say you'd prevail. What does Cherry think?” Daisy asked.
“Oh, he's all in favour of Rollo staying on, but he doesn't really understand how Rollo feels, especially about the Foreign Service. The university is Cherry's whole life, you see.”
“He's more or less been brought up in it, hasn't he?”
Tish nodded. “He and Dottie are all set to follow in his parents' footsteps, and you simply can't
imagine
how much I envy them!” Tears welled in her eyes and rolled down her woebegone face. She swiped them away. “I'm sorry, I'm being a rotten hostess. Would you like a bath? I'm sure there's enough hot water left.”
“That's all right, I had one this morning. A wash will do me.”
Her cousin summoned up a wavering smile. “Just as well. To be perfectly truthful, I should have said I
hope
there's enough hot water. You've no idea how much the men use. Bister swears he spends all his time stoking the boiler.”
“Just think how unbearable the house would be if they stopped taking baths!” Daisy exclaimed, slipping down from the bed and picking up her sponge-bag from the bedside table.
“Ghastly thought. Thanks for listening, Daisy. I couldn't
talk to Mother or Dottie about it, and I feel better just for getting it off my chest.”
“Good. I'll think about it and see if I can't give Rollo a tactful shove in the right direction. Back in a minute.”
When she returned to the bedroom, Tish was already half asleep on her camp-bed. “Breakfast from nine on,” she mumbled. “G'night.”
“Night, Tish.” Even the mosquito bite and the grievous discovery of three new freckles on her nose could not keep Daisy awake. “
Must
wear a hat,” she told herself as she drifted off.
 
Lady Cheringham wisely avoided all the “early” morning heartiness by taking breakfast in bed. Tish, Dottie, and Daisy were made of sterner stuff. They went down to the dining room together.
Young Fosdyke, pink-cheeked and horrifyingly brighteyed for the time of day, was already half-way through a plateful of eggs and sausages. Rollo and Cherry had also started on their breakfasts, while Wells and Poindexter were at the sideboard, investigating the contents of the covered dishes on the electric hot-plates.
When the girls appeared, the latter two stepped aside. “After you, ladies,” Wells said gallantly.
“Go ahead,” said Tish. “You need to digest yours before your race.”
“Bott's not going to be digesting much this morning,” announced Leigh, coming into the room. “He's not feeling too chipper. Meredith's holding his head under the cold tap.”
“Sick as a dog.” DeLancey followed Leigh in. “I told the ass he couldn't hold his liquor.”
“What?” Rollo jumped up. “Bott got plastered last night?”
“Bott got blotto,” Delancey confirmed smugly.
Rollo started for the door. “Just let me get my hands on the little swine!”
Daisy sped after him. When she reached the hall, he was already at the foot of the stairs. Pulling the dining-room door shut behind her, she called, “Rollo, wait!”
“What is it?” he said impatiently, turning with one foot on the bottom step.
“Bott's not to blame, at least not entirely. He was provoked into drinking whisky when he's used to beer. It would have taken a saint not to rise to the bait.”
“DeLancey?”
“Who else?”
Rollo groaned. “Bott's a prize chump not to see he's only playing DeLancey's game.”
“Actually, the way DeLancey put it, he won either way. That man seems to delight in causing trouble, even if it means cutting off his own nose to spite his face, though of course he's in the four, too. Will it wreck your eights race?”
“I can't tell till I see how bad he is. Will you ask Tish to send up buckets of black coffee?” Rollo continued on his way, taking the stairs two at a time.
Daisy relayed his request, then helped herself to bacon, toast, and tea. Joining Dottie and Cherry, luckily at the far end of the table from DeLancey, she quietly explained the extenuating circumstances of Bott's hangover.
Fosdyke continued to munch placidly. Leigh, Poindexter,
and Wells, all to some degree implicated in the cox's downfall, were rather shamefaced. They said nothing to the purpose, however, their sidelong glances at DeLancey suggesting that they did not care to risk becoming targets of his malice.
DeLancey, for a wonder, appeared slightly uncomfortable. Could he be having second thoughts about jeopardising the eight's chances? Perhaps he had not thought so far ahead when he wreaked his mischief last night.
The door opened and Meredith came in, followed by Bott. Rollo brought up the rear, holding Bott's upper arm—supportive or custodial, or both. Bott was greenish-pale and walked as if on eggshells.
“You'll feel twice the man after a spot to eat,” said Rollo heartily.
Bott groaned and turned greener as the smells of breakfast assaulted his nostrils. “I can't,” he moaned, stepping backwards. “Let me go back to bed and die in peace.”
“Pull yourself together, old man. We've a race to row in a couple of hours.”
“I can't do it, I tell you.” He clutched his head with both hands. “My head's going to explode. I can't see straight, let alone steer.”
Rollo's lips tightened. “Then I'll phone up the stewards and see if they'll put our heat back till this afternoon. The schedule's pretty tight, though. I doubt they can manage it.”
“Trust a pleb to let the side down,” said DeLancey contemptuously. “I always said it was a mistake picking him to cox. That sort of mushroom not only can't hold his liquor like a gentleman, he has no sense of loyalty.”
“All right, damn you, all right! I'll do it. Now just let me get out of here!” His hand to his mouth now, Bott fled.
“Hair of the dog?” Wells suggested.
“Aspirin and dry toast,” Cherry advised.
“We'll give it a try,” said Rollo grimly, with a black look at DeLancey. “I'd hate to scratch.”
“You come and eat your breakfast,” said Cherry. “Leave him to me.”
 
Daisy, Tish, and Dottie wanted to see the end of the race, so, with the river to cross and a mile and a half to walk, they departed well before the scheduled starting time. They left the oarsmen warming up with physical jerks on the lawn, watched by the limp, still-pallid cox, sprawled in a deck-chair on the terrace.
Tish and Dottie rowed Daisy across the sparkling river in one of the skiffs. Daisy sat in the rear seat, clutching the rudder-lines and doing her best to steer. Last time she had been on a boat, ages ago, she had steered with a wooden tiller, which meant pushing left to turn right. The memory of that clung, confusing her, though it was actually quite easy: pull on the right rope to turn right, left rope to turn left.
Fortunately, the other skiffs, dinghies, motor-launches, canoes, and punts on the water, heading upstream towards the race course, were all under better control. They were shouted at, hooted at, and whistled at, but they made their erratic way safely to the Remenham bank.
Red-faced, Tish tied the painter to a post. “We'll leave the rudder out on the way back,” she said severely, “and steer with the sculls.”
“Please do!” said Daisy, fanning herself with her hat, then, mindful of the fresh crop of freckles, quickly putting it back on. It was new, and for once not from Selfridge's Bargain Basement.
Her always smart house-mate, Lucy, had found a real treasure, a little milliner in the King's Road whose prices were low because she was just setting up in business for herself.
The hat was navy straw, cloche-shaped but widening to a shady brim, with a circlet of daisies around the crown to match Daisy's blue voile frock, which was patterned with daisies. She was rather pleased with it. She didn't aspire to compete with the splendid headwear, created for the Royal Ascot meeting a fortnight ago, which ladies of fashion showed off again at Henley.

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