Black Ship by Carola Dunn

Author:Carola Dunn [Dunn, Carola]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-312-36307-9
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2008-06-25T16:00:00+00:00

FOURTEEN

“Daisy?”

“Darling! You’ve rung just in time. Tom wants to interrogate me.”

“So do I. Tell him to hold off with the thumbscrews until I arrive.”

“Right-oh. Are you at the Yard still? I’ll give him a cup of tea in the meantime. And all the others, too, I suppose. Mrs. Dobson’s getting a trifle fed up.”

“What are they all doing there? No, don’t tell me! Doubtless I shall find out in due course. I’m on my way.”

Daisy hung up. If he was coming home, surely he wouldn’t then take Tom and Mackinnon back to the Yard, or even to the local station, to give their reports. With any luck at all, she would manage to listen in.

Instead of trying to guess from Tom’s questions what the Jessups had told him, she would hear it from his own mouth. It wasn’t that she intended to lie on their behalf, but nor would she disclose everything unless she was convinced that the police needed to know. In her experience, they were all too apt to read a sinister significance into the most innocent actions.

Tom and Ernie had arrived first. When Elsie announced them, Daisy had told her to show them into the dining room. No sooner had she joined them there than Mackinnon and Warren turned up, looking for Tom. Before Tom had made up his mind whether Daisy ought to leave while he and Mackinnon discussed the results of questioning the Jessups and the Bennetts, the telephone rang.

But Alec’s call had been very brief. Returning to the dining room, Daisy hoped she hadn’t missed anything.

As she pushed open the door, Ernie Piper was saying in an incredulous voice, “Shopping? The biggest gossip in the neighbourhood, with a murder on her doorstep, and she goes shopping? You’re having us on.”

Daisy slipped in and sat down as quietly as possible. Tom and Ernie were staring at Mackinnon, Ernie looking quite indignant.

“Simmer down, lad,” said Tom calmly. “Mr. Bennett told you his sister went shopping, Mr. Mackinnon?”

“So did the servants.”

“Ah. Well, that’d be what they were told.”

“It’s not as odd as it sounds,” Mackinnon protested. “It seems she has a school friend living in the country who comes up to town once a month. The ladies go out to a show and supper, and then, rather than come home late—I gather Bennett objects to being disturbed after midnight—his sister stays at the friend’s hotel. And next day, they go shopping together. Sometimes, if they manage to get tickets for something good, they’ll stay over another night.”

“Sounds to me like a load of codswallop,” said Warren.

Though Daisy would have used a less vulgar term, that was exactly what it sounded like to her. Why on earth had the Bennetts—or Mr. Bennett—invented such a farrago? Surely not to give Miss Bennett time to escape the police? It just wasn’t possible that she had murdered the man in the garden. She wasn’t capable of killing anything but reputations.

“He claims he doesn’t know what hotel she stayed at last night,” Mackinnon went on.

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