Daisy stared down at DeLancey’s body. Lying there in his sodden crew shorts and shirt, he looked pathetically harmless. His poisonous tongue was stilled, but not, it seemed, by poison.
With a shudder, she turned away. Alec’s arm went about her shoulders for a quick squeeze.
Releasing her, he glanced around. Daisy followed his gaze. She picked out faces in the crowd: horrified, curious, excited. Cherry was aghast, the other four Ambrose men pale and frozen in place. Further along the bank, she saw Tish sitting hunched on the grass with her head buried in her hands. Daisy wondered if she should go to her cousin, but Dottie had her arms around her and seemed to be coping admirably.
The constable stood with his mouth open, looking stunned.
Alec sighed. “I’m a police officer,” he announced in a resigned voice. “Detective Chief Inspector Fletcher, Scotland Yard. This isn’t my pigeon, but I’ll take charge till a local man arrives. Constable … ?”
“Rogers, sir.” His relief obvious, the man saluted. “Inspector
Washburn’s on duty up by the stands. Will I go fetch ’im?”
“No, I need you here.” Alec turned to the Ambrose crewmen. “Would one of you gentlemen mind going for the Inspector?”
“I’ll go.” Leigh stripped off his blazer and handed it to Meredith. “Here, you’d better use this to cover him.” He set off along the towpath at a fast lope.
Meredith stood still with the blazer in his hands. “Dead?” he said in a queer voice. “DeLancey’s dead?”
“I’m afraid so.” Daisy took the blazer from him and, trying not to look at the dead face, helped the doctor cover DeLancey’s head and torso. The doctor looked vaguely familiar, though she was pretty sure she had never seen him before.
Alec finished talking to Constable Rogers, who started to move the crowd along, dispersing them upstream and downstream. As Alec turned back, Cherry said to him, “If you don’t mind, sir, I’ll take the ladies home.” Shivering, he gestured towards Tish and Dottie.
“Yes, you’d better go and get changed. Don’t go anywhere, please. They’ll need to talk to you. By all means take your cousin and Miss Carrick, but I want Daisy here.”
His tone was not such as to give Daisy joy. She wished she had not burst out with her theory about tobacco poisoning. Thank heaven she was wrong. It would have been simply frightful to discover that an antidote administered last night could have saved DeLancey’s life.
Alec requested Poindexter, Wells, and Meredith to stay nearby in case they were needed, then he turned to the doctor, only to be interrupted by a hail from the river.
“Hi, there!” The stewards’ launch had pulled up to the boom. “What the deuce is going on?”
“Police! We’ve got a body here.”
“What about the next race?” demanded a purple-faced official in a gold-braided nautical cap.
“Go ahead and row it. He won’t mind. But I must remind you—you must have seen with your glasses—you have two men rowing a four-man boat up the course, with the rudder swinging out of control. I imagine they have no choice but to go on to the finish.”
“They can’t turn between the booms, nor leave their lane,” another official confirmed. “We’ll give them a few minutes more to get clear. Everything under control here?”
“More or less,” Alec said ironically.
“We’ll carry on, then. Sorry, and all that, but we can’t very well call a halt to things.”
The launch went into reverse and put-putted back towards the starting line, where the next two boats waited.
Once again Alec turned to the doctor. “Thank you, Dr … ?”
“Mr. I’m a surgeon. Fosdyke’s the name. My boy’s one of the two rowing the four-oar boat.”
“Thank you, Mr. Fosdyke. May I ask how sure you are of your diagnosis?”
“I’m not usually concerned with initial diagnoses, but I’ve operated on a number of patients with subdural haematoma and haemorrhage. Naturally, their physicians discussed their symptoms with me beforehand. This unfortunate young man appeared to suffer from an acute headache, did he not?”
“That’s what it looked like,” Alec agreed.
“He vomited, without preceding nausea, one would assume, or he’d not have embarked upon the race. And the pupils of his eyes are of different sizes, a significant indicator. In my view, the contusions on his head virtually clinch the matter. The autopsy—there will be an autopsy, I assume?—will provide definite proof. Or disproof.”
“I see. He couldn’t have fallen?”
“Unless he fell twice,” said the doctor quizzically, “landing first on one side of his head and then on the other, I incline to the opinion that he was hit, sufficiently hard to make him fall. I trust I am not unduly influenced by the fact that what my son has told me about the character of the deceased makes such an eventuality not unlikely.”
Alec matched his dryness. “So I gather. I must assume he was not hit since he got into the boat, as he couldn’t have fallen after that. So his death was a delayed reaction to a blow. How long ago could it have happened?”
“Weeks, theoretically. From the condition of the contusions, anywhere from four to twenty-four hours. Two to thirty-two, perhaps. I’m no expert. No doubt a police surgeon will be able to narrow the time period.”
“I hope so! Will you be so kind, Mr. Fosdyke, as to wait until the local man arrives?”
“By all means.”
Daisy scarcely heard the doctor’s answer. His previous words had just sunk in. Two to thirty-two hours ago!
“Mr. Fosdyke,” she said, her voice trembling with dread, “is mental confusion another symptom? And incoherence, and loss of balance?”
“Yes, indeed, Miss …”
“Dalrymple,” Alec put in, seeing Daisy was incapable of speech.
“And disturbances of vision,” the doctor added. “Symptoms vary according to the areas of the brain affected.”
Daisy sat down rather suddenly on the grass, feeling decidedly queer. “We thought he was drunk,” she said faintly, as Alec crouched beside her and took her hands in a comforting clasp.
“A most natural assumption,” said Mr. Fosdyke.
“But if we had ’phoned for medical help—no, Alec, I must know!—if DeLancey had seen a doctor at once, he would have survived?”
“Time is of the essence. However, the prognosis is poor even in cases where the haemorrhage is stopped by prompt surgery, and in those who survive, full recovery is far from assured. You have no cause to reproach yourself, Miss Dalrymple,” the doctor said kindly. “The symptoms are easy for the layman to confuse with overindulgence in alcoholic beverages.”
Daisy gave a shaky nod. “Alec,” she said urgently, “I’d much rather tell you what happened than a stranger. Then you can tell the detective in charge.”
“You know better than that, my love. If you have significant information, you’ll have to repeat it to the local people.”
“I suppose so. But you can tell me what is significant.”
“Now, Watson, you know my methods. Any detail may turn out to be significant. You can’t withhold anything from the investigators.”
“All right.” Daisy sighed. “Let me tell you just to help sort out my thoughts. Only I’m afraid, if I’m right, they will probably ask you to take charge.”
“No, this is our weekend!” Alec exploded, rising to his feet and pulling Daisy with him into a bear-hug.
The doctor tactfully turned his back, unfolded his shooting-stick, and sat down to watch the start of the next race.
Revelling in Alec’s annoyance at the prospect of their weekend being spoilt, Daisy nonetheless said sadly, “I rather doubt Scotland Yard will agree to send someone else when you’re already on the spot and actually witnessed DeLancey’s demise. You see, he appears to have died in Berkshire, but I’m pretty sure he was biffed in Buckinghamshire.”
“Damn,” Alec groaned, “if you’ll pardon the expression. You’re right, they’ll probably call in the Met. And with you involved, the A.C. is bound to insist on my handling it.”
“I don’t see why your Assistant Commissioner considers me his bête noire,” she said with some indignation. “I’ve given you loads of help.”
He grimaced. “Daisy, how is it you keep falling over bodies? Do people see you coming and promptly decide to do someone in?”
“I can’t help it! It’s like when one comes across an unfamiliar word, and for the next week, everything one reads—there it is. Or meeting an acquaintance one hasn’t seen for years and then one keeps running into them everywhere one goes. It happens to lots of people.”
“Not with bodies, it doesn’t, thank heaven! Right-oh, you’d better tell me all.”
“Must we stay here, right on top of him?” Though Daisy had her back to DeLancey, whose face was covered, and his eyes closed, she felt his dead, reproachful gaze fixed on her.
“No, just within calling distance. We shan’t be interrupted if we move over into the field a bit.”
The towpath was growing busier. The curious stared at the maroon blazer and the bare legs protruding from beneath it, already drying in the sun, but Constable Rogers kept people moving.
“There’s been a h’accident,” he repeated stolidly to all questions.
Already a new group of spectators had gathered, somewhat down-river from the start, beyond the constable’s range, intent only on a good view of the crews they had come to support.
While Alec had a word with Rogers and asked Meredith, Wells, and Poindexter to move closer and stand guard over DeLancey’s body, Daisy moved back into the meadow. The grass had been mowed for hay but already ox-eye daisies and purple knapweed raised their heads. She found a slight bank and sat down.
Alec joined her. “You’d better sit on my jacket,” he said, starting to take it off.
“Keep it on. You’ll want to look professional when the local coppers arrive. The ground’s quite dry, and anyway it’s too late for my frock.”
Sitting down, he left a couple of feet between them. She made a moue at him, and he said, “It won’t look professional if we’re any closer, and besides, you’ll distract me from what you’re saying. You are over the worst shock, aren’t you?”
“Yes. It was bad enough his dropping dead, but knowing I might have prevented it … .”
He took her hand, distraction or not. “Fosdyke is right,
darling, you couldn’t have guessed. You didn’t see the lumps on his head, did you?”
“No, but I did think he might have been poisoned with nicotine. If I’d called in a doctor for that … but I couldn’t see quite how it could have been done, and it seemed so unlikely, and he had been drinking. His breath smelled of whisky.”
“Daisy, what is all this about nicotine poisoning? And when and where did you see DeLancey in his parlous state? And …”
“I’d better begin at the beginning,” said Daisy firmly, “or I shall get muddled. It started with Aunt Cynthia and the aphids. She was spraying the roses with tobacco-water and I worried about nicotine. I read up on poisons after that horrible Albert Hall affair, you see.”
“Just in case?” Alec suggested.
She pulled a face at him. “I’d forgotten the details, so I looked it up later. There’s such a long list of symptoms I still couldn’t remember them all, but I’m sure DeLancey had some of them. But I’ll get to that in a minute. After talking to Aunt Cynthia, I went down to the landing-stage. The eight was just coming in. I talked to Horace Bott while the others put the boat away.”
“The mysterious Bott.”
“He’s not at all mysterious, you just haven’t seen him because he’s the eight’s cox and the four is coxless.”
“And he didn’t turn out with the rest to cheer the four,” Alec pointed out.
“No, and I can’t blame him. The others don’t like him … Well, I can’t blame them, either. He seems to be in a permanent state of dudgeon. It’s a vicious circle, actually. He has a brilliant mind—he won a scholarship to Ambrose and took a
Double First in Physics and Maths, and he’s been offered a Cambridge fellowship—but he’s the son of a newsagent. From Birmingham.”
“Wrong accent, wrong family,” Alec said wryly.
“Wrong instincts, wrong clothes,” Daisy added. “That’s what he told me. I don’t doubt he was badly treated, and the result is, he looks for reasons to take offence, and of course he finds them, and so he’s permanently up in arms. So even those who’d be willing to take him on his merits can’t get past the prickles.”
“And DeLancey was his chief tormentor.”
“His only tormentor, really. The others just ignore him, mostly. Rollo stood up for him when DeLancey was being quite disgustingly rude, and he and Cherry went to the rescue when DeLancey attacked him.”
“DeLancey actually physically attacked Bott?” Alec exclaimed.
“He shoved him into the river.” Daisy explained about the taunts which had led Bott to drink whisky and to attempt to cox next morning, and the sorry result. “DeLancey didn’t accept any responsibility whatever. He blamed the whole thing on Bott. The ducking was only the climax of a whole string of public insults, and there’s no knowing what he might have done next if Lord DeLancey—his brother—hadn’t taken him away.”
“So Bott had every reason to go for DeLancey.”
“Cherry and Rollo did, too.” Daisy immediately regretted her instinctive defence of the defenceless cox, but Alec’s raised eyebrows demanded elaboration. “Cherry was absolutely livid over DeLancey insulting Dottie and pursuing Tish,” she said reluctantly. “Rollo only just stopped him going for him once.
But Rollo found it hard to restrain himself, as well. He and Tish aren’t engaged yet, but he’s frightfully fond of her.”
“Bott, Cheringham, and Frieth,” Alec mused. “What about the rest of them?”
“I didn’t hear DeLancey provoking any of them, not to fury. They were pretty fed up with his behaviour to Bott when it made them lose the race. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if one of them quarrelled with him over it. Assuming he ignored his brother’s wishes, anyone could have gone down to the boat-house and …”
“Hold on! Where do DeLancey’s brother and the boat-house come into this? Oh, the dickens, here come Leigh and the local constabulary!” He stood up and reached down to help Daisy up.
“Oh blast!” she said. “If you’re not put in charge, I don’t suppose anyone else will be willing to listen to my theory.”
Holding both her hands, he looked down at her with a crooked smile. “I’ll do my best to persuade them at least to listen,” he promised. “You do occasionally come up with the odd fairly bright idea.”
“You’re too kind!” said Daisy.