Excerpt of Styx and Stones by Carola Dunn

"Darling, I wish I could. But Johnnie's taking me out to
lunch and he'll be here any moment?”

"Johnnie?" The hint of jealousy in Alec's voice tingled
along the wires to Daisy's ear.

With a small, smug smile, she explained: "Johnnie
Frobisher--Lord John--my brother-in-law?'

"Oh, Lady John’s Johnnie." His relief was patent, though
he was several miles away, at New Scotland Yard.

"Lady John's Johnnie!" Daisy laughed. "I'm sure she asked
you to call her Violet, darling. Anyway, he's come up to
town for the day and invited me to lunch with him.”

"The Ritz, I suppose, or the Savoy," Alec said gloomily. A
Detective Chief Inspector's salary did not run to
luncheons at the Ritz.

"Darling, you know I'd rather be with you at Lyons' Corner
House eating Welsh rarebit, but how could I have guessed
you'd be free today? Oh, there's the doorbell, I must
run?' She turned to call down the stairs to the daily char
in the semi-basement kitchen: "I'll get the door, Mrs.
Potter! Alec, I'll ring you up at home this evening.
Toodle-oo, darling.”

Daisy carefully hung up the earpiece of the brand new
telephone apparatus she and Lucy had splurged for not a
week ago. Lucy had paid the whole cost of the extension to
her photography studio in the old mews behind the "bijou"
residence they shared, but Daisy's part of the expense was
quite steep enough. They were back to living on eggs,
cheese, and sardines, so a meal at a good restaurant was
jolly welcome.

All the same, and much as she liked Johnnie, she had
rather lunch with Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher.
She had scarcely set eyes on her fiancé since that
glorious weekend in the New Forest.

The memory brought back the small, smug smile as she
glanced in the looking-glass over the hall table. She
straightened the blue straw cloche garlanded with white
rosebuds, which perched on her honey-brown shingled curls.
The hat's colour matched her eyes, which Alec was wont,
when, annoyed, to describe as "misleadingly guileless,"
though he spoke in more flattering terms when in a softer
mood.

Daisy's linen costume was a darker blue piped with white.
Quite smart, she thought, if only her figure were
fashionably boyish. The straight lines and hip-level belt
could not be said to suit her.

As she wrinkled her nose at the rounded curves Alec
considered delightfully cuddlesome, she noticed three
freckles. All very well in the country but not acceptable
in town--she added a quick dab of powder. She had given up
trying to hide the little mole at the corner of her mouth,
since Alec told her an eighteenth-century face-patch
placed in that position was known as the "Kissing?”

With a sigh, she wished Johnnie had not happened to invite
her to lunch on one of the few days when Alec was able to
escape from the Yard at midday.

Pulling on her gloves, she went to the front door. As she
opened it, a furnace blast met her. Even here in Chelsea,
the August air of the metropolis stank of baking asphalt
and petrol fumes.

"An absolute oven, isn't it?” Johnnie greeted her.

Like Alec he was in his mid-thirties and of middling
height, but--unlike Alec--slight and fair. He was
impeccably dressed in a light grey lounge suit of
unmistakable Savile Row cut. Only the sun-browned face
gave away that he was a country gentleman come up to town
for the day. Against his tanned skin, the white line of a
scar slashing from jaw to brow stood out sharply.
Otherwise, his most distinctive feature was his nose,
passed down in the family from generation to generation.

He fanned himself with the soft hat in his hand.

"Whew!"

"Too frightful!" Daisy agreed. "What on earth tore you
away from the depths of Kent on a day which must be
heavenly among your orchards?" A hint of colour tinted
Johnnie's cheeks. "Oh, 'er, business," he said uneasily,
adding hurriedly as he handed Daisy into his maroon
Sunbeam touring-car, "I thought we'd go to the Belgravia,
it's the closest decent place. Would you like me to put up
the hood to keep off the sun?"

"No, thanks. We'd stifle."

Politeness forbade asking what sort of business was making
him as jumpy as a grasshopper, but it didn't stop Daisy
wondering. She hoped he was not in financial difficulties,
as so many farmers seemed to be these days. His eldest
brother, the marquis, was immensely wealthy, but Johnnie
would hate to have to beg to be bailed out.

Perhaps over lunch he would succumb to the wiles of her
guileless eyes and tell her what was wrong. Daisy never
quite understood why people, even complete strangers,
confided in her, but they did.

As he drove towards the Belgravia Hotel, she enquired
after Vi and the boys.

"I thought you talked to her when you had the telephone
put in," he said in surprise.

"That was nearly a week ago!" Daisy shook her head at his
typically male incomprehension of the female need to
communicate. No doubt he heard from his brothers only at
births, marriages, and deaths.

"As a matter of fact--promise you won't tell Lady
Dalrymple?"

"Cross my heart and hope to die," Daisy said promptly. "I
never tell Mother anything unless I absolutely have to?'

"Violet doesn't want her to know yet" Johnnie said, his
face turning brick-red, "but she's just discovered she's…
er, she's expecting another baby."

"Spiffing! Congratulations. At least, she's not ill, is
she? Is that what's troubling you?"

"No, no, she seems very well at the moment. But it is
another mason why...Well, that can wait. How is your
writing going, Daisy?"

With this suggestion that all was to be revealed, Daisy
managed to restrain the curiosity which was her beset-
ting sin. She told Johnnie about the stately home article
she had just finished for Town and Country magazine, and
the London Museum article she was about to begin for her
American editor.