by Carola Dunn
“Sorry!” He leaned forward and dropped a kiss on her nose, then checked his wrist-watch. “But I haven’t time for leisure just now. I still have ffinch-Brown and your Grand Duke to see. Incidentally, Grange confirmed that the Grand Duke visits the Mineralogy Gallery several times a week, to stare at the ruby. Now what’s this about ffinch-Brown?”
“Ffinch-Brown claimed to be confident of picking out a new-made flint tool, but what if he actually had doubts?”
“Then Pettigrew waving a flint he claimed to have shaped himself might well upset him. ‘I know how it was done,’ he said?”
“Yes, that part Katy was sure of.”
“I’ll have to tackle ffinch-Brown about Pettigrew’s challenge. Thank you, love. If any more nuggets come to the surface, do write them down, will you? I must run.”
He glanced up and down the street, pulled Daisy into his arms, and gave her a kiss which left her breathless despite its brevity. Before she could pull herself together, he had hopped into the Austin, pressed the self-starter, and tootled off.
“Whew!” said Daisy.
It was either kiss her or shake her, Alec thought ruefully as he drove toward the café where he had left Tring nd Piper. He did not for a moment believe she had gone to Mrs. Ditchley’s with nothing but sympathy in mind.
On the other hand, she might well have got more out of the children than any policeman could. Only last year the force had admitted it needed women officers, not just the grim guardians known as police matrons. In April, twenty female constables had been sworn in, but they were still inexperienced and whether they would ever be allowed to join the detective branch was doubtful. Still, someone must see Mrs. Ditchley and her flock tomorrow. He wondered whether he should go, or whether Tom would manage it better.
Picking up his troops, he drove on into Hyde Park and across the bridge over the Serpentine.
“My apologies to Mrs. Tring for keeping you out another evening, Tom,” he said as Tom coughed cavernously. “That cold still doesn’t sound quite vanquished.”
“Seems to be worse evenings. I can’t say I’m feeling up to par but I’ll manage.”
“I’d let you go, but a certain retinue may help to gain the respect of a Middle-European grandee.”
“Might help,” Tring agreed sourly, “though what we really need is fancy-dress uniforms. Just wait till you see this laddie, Chief. Enough gold braid for half a regiment, though a bit moth-eaten.”
“And he’s living in lodgings in Bayswater,” Alec reminded him.
“Poor bloke,” said Piper unexpectedly, from the back seat. “Paddington Terrace, Bayswater, is no great shakes after a swish castle in a country where he was the top dog, even if it was a little tiny country no one’s ever heard of.”
“True, laddie,” Tring rumbled, “too true.”
“I just hope the Special Branch isn’t interested in him,” said Alec, stopping at the Victoria Gate before crossing the Bayswater Road. “Tangling with them once was enough. Paddington Terrace, Ernie?”
“Nineteen B, Chief.”
Piper had an amazing memory for numbers, names, addresses, maps, and things of that sort. He provided directions through the maze of streets. Respectable late Georgian and early Victorian terraces had come down in the world, like the Grand Duke. Now divided into maisonettes or even odd rooms, by daylight they would reveal peeling paint and missing railings. Daisy and Lucy had shared a flat in Bayswater, Alec recalled, before moving to Chelsea, before he met her.
Number 19, Paddington Terrace, was not too badly run down. A half-barrel of bedraggled Michaelmas daisies attempted to bloom beside the front door. If the brass letterbox and knocker were tarnished, at least the door’s dark blue paint was in good shape, as was what stucco was visible by the lamp-post across the way.
There were two bell-pushes. The lower had a card drawing-pinned below it. Protected by cellophane, it said FERRIS in blunt block capitals. Above the upper bell, an unprotected card rather the worse for damp announced grandiosely:
TRANSCARPATHIA
Regierung in Exil.
“Government in Exile,” Piper guessed as Alec rang the bell. “D’you reckon, Chief?”
“I do. Let’s hope he hasn’t got some kind of diplomatic immunity!” Alec held up his hand as he heard a door close somewhere inside. Heavy, halting footsteps descended stairs.
The door opened. Instead of a slim, fair young man, a grizzled veteran faced them. Within his ill-fitting uniform tunic, his large frame was gaunt, slightly stooped. Half-hidden by a grey, white-flecked cavalry moustache, a scar slashed across his hollow cheek.
Souvenir of a sword duel, Alec guessed. Dashing young Germans still went in for such proofs of manhood and bore the marks proudly.
But was this man the real Grand Duke? Had the young fellow led Daisy—and Tring—up the garden path?
“Detective Chief Inspector Fletcher of Scotland Yard, to see Grand Duke Rudolf Maximilian,” he said noncommittally, presenting his warrant card.
A flame leapt in the other’s eye, but he bowed slightly, stiffly, and said, “His Excellence expects you. Come.”
The shared hall was cluttered with two bicycles and a pram. The shared staircase was dingy, its maroon flocked wallpaper unchanged in decades. Alec followed the limping Transcarpathian, and behind him came Tom, lightfooted, and Ernie, clumping a bit in his police boots but no longer thumping along like a copper on the beat.
In one of the ground floor rooms, a baby began to wail.
The electric light went off as their guide reached the landing. It must be on a timer: another humiliation. Piper stumbled, muttered something fortunately indistinguishable.
The old man did not bother to press the switch. By the faint light from outside, coming through a high window, Alec saw him cross to a door. As he opened it, light spilled from an entrance hall scarcely bigger than a cupboard. The Transcarpathian opened an inner door to the right.
“Exzellenz, die Polizei,” he announced in tones of ineffable disdain.
With no idea what to expect, Alec moved past him into the room.
The young man who stood on the hearth was a peacock in a world of sepia and grey. Every surface in the room, every spare inch of wall, was covered with photographs. Alec’s gaze flickered over them, picking out Queen Victoria and the Kaiser, noting the cheap deal frames, before his attention returned to the peacock.
And the crow sitting near him in a shabby armchair, a sallow woman in black with a back as straight as a ramrod. Her regal carriage somehow transformed the old-fashioned wisp of black net covering her fading fair hair into a crown.
Did Grand Dukes/Duchesses wear crowns? How the dickens did one address them? Alec, a free Englishman though a commoner, was damned if he’d stoop as far as the subservient “Excellency.”
Inclining his head in a courteous acknowledgement of the woman’s presence, to which she failed to respond, Alec turned to the Grand Duke and said, “Good evening, sir. I’m Detective Chief Inspector Fletcher. I hope I shan’t need to keep you long, but I have one or two questions to put to you.”
“I told dis man everysing,” the Grand Duke said petulantly, pointing at Tring. “Dis sergeant, he has not reported mine answers?”
“Detective Sergeant Tring has presented a full report, sir. It’s a matter of routine for the officer in charge of a case to hear a possible witness’s evidence for himself.” Especially when new information had come to light—information which the young man might prefer not to have broadcast to his family and old retainers. “No need to disturb anyone else. Is there somewhere private we can go?”
The woman said something sharply in German. Rudolf Maximilian answered in the same language, his tone sulkily argumentative. The old soldier moved forward and interjected a few pacifying words.
The Grand Duke explained to Alec. “Mine muzzer, de Grand Duchess Elizaveta Alexandrovna, she wish to hear, but is not women’s business, I say. Instead comes viz us mine Chancellor, General Graf Otto von Cze
rnoberg.”
Count Otto clicked his heels with a minuscule nod.
The Grand Duchess rose. “Komm’, Gertrud!” she snapped, and swept from the room, followed by a pale girl in grey who rose from a table by the window, a book in her hand. Alec had not even noticed her, colourless but live, amongst all the photos.
“She believes not I am not longer child,” said Rudolf Maximilian, glaring after them with a sullen, distinctly childish pout.
However, with the ladies out of the way, they quickly got down to business. On Alec’s suggesting that they would be more comfortable seated, Grand Duke Rudolf ungraciously waved them to threadbare chairs, while he himself took a nervous perch on the arm of his mother’s seat. Piper, in a corner by the door, unobtrusively took out his notebook and ever-ready pencil. Alec glanced at Tring.
“Now, sir,” said the sergeant in an officious voice, “please describe for the Chief Inspector your whereabouts from five o’clock yesterday until the constable discovered you lurking behind …”
“I vas in de museum visiting! It is no crime, nicht wahr, Herr Inspector? You are a reasonable man.” He cast a resentful look at Tring. “I was not lurking.”
“I expect the constable exaggerated,” Alec soothed. “It’s an interesting place, isn’t it? You go often?”
The Grand Duke visibly dithered, and decided a lie would be too easily exposed. “Not often. Sometime. Here have I no affairs of state mine time to occupy.”
“None, sir?”
“Little. I try mine contrymen to help, but vhat can I do vhen I have nozzing?” His gesture took in the room and the flat beyond, the chancellor who answered the door, perhaps the chancellor’s wife in the kitchen, for all Alec knew. “Nozzing—only pictures to remind of past life.”
“It’s an unhappy situation,” Alec sympathized. “I expect you would do anything for a chance to regain lost glories.”
“Any—”
“Vorsicht, Exzellenz!” Count Otto warned. Alec silently damned him.
“I vish to fight,” Rudolf said hotly, “to drive de Bolsheviks from Transcarpathia. But vizzout soldiers can I nozzing, and vizzout money, no soldiers.”
“I wonder whether you could raise enough money to hire an army if you regained your grandfather’s gift to Queen Victoria. How valuable is that ruby?”
“Ru—ruby?” faltered the Grand Duke.
Tom Tring’s dry cough, intentional or not, was a masterpiece of skepticism. Clearing his throat, he proceeded in a toneless voice as if reading a report: “A number of witnesses attest to your frequent visits to the Mineralogy Gallery under the direction of the late Ralph Pettigrew, where you were observed to spend what several describe as an inordinate length of time studying the gem commonly known as the Transcarpathia ruby.” He coughed again. “Sir.”
“Oh, dat ruby,” said the Grand Duke unconvincingly. “Vhat is ‘inordanot’? I know not this vord.”
“A purely subjective judgment,” Alec put in, “a matter of opinion. It means longer than might be expected of anyone with no special interest in the object.”
“Of course His Excellence has a special interest!” Count Otto barked. “As you know, this jewel was his grandfather’s gift to your Queen, a magnificent gift, which Her Majesty choosed to discard to be gaped at by peasants. It is worth more than all that we were able to bring from Transcarpathia.”
“And most of zat is sold by now,” the Grand Duke bemoaned.
“If King George for the ruby no use has,” the Chancellor continued, his hitherto excellent English deteriorating in his agitation, “why not give back where it is needed? Has not the Bolsheviks murdered his cousin, the Czarina? But is for the King to decide. How it helps us a museum fellow to murder? To imagine this is foolishness!”
True, Alec thought, but the question remained whether the Grand Duke was foolish enough to believe Pettigrew’s death might help his cause. It was interesting that Count Otto, apparently more intelligent than young Rudolf as well as more experienced, had jumped to the conclusion that the police suspected his ducal master of murder.
“Greed isn’t the only motive for murder,” said Tring offensively. “The young gentleman had words with Dr. Pettigrew, that’s common knowledge.”
“Vords, vords!” cried the Grand Duke, à la Hamlet. “I talk viz him vun time, two time, yes, is true. But is no greed for vanting money for to save mine contry!”
“A bad choice of words, Sergeant,” Alec reproved. He went on courteously to Rudolf, “To have words with someone, sir, means to quarrel. You and the late Keeper had a bit of an argument, I dare say.”
“Dis man not like dat I look at de ruby, but he cannot stop. He is very rude, he shout, but I have not argumented. Vhy argument when he cannot stop me?” said Rudolf reasonably.
“But even if you didn’t argue, I’m sure you must have been angry at his rudeness.”
Rudolf flushed, but shrugged. “In England is many pee-ople rude to foreigners. Dis is vhy I not rush out when de police come in de museum.”
Back to square one. “Ah yes,” said Alec, “you were in the fossil mammal gallery. You went down from the mineral gallery?”
“Yes.”
“Did you see Dr. Pettigrew there yesterday?”
“No! He vas not dere.”
Pettigrew had been busy in his private office most of the afternoon, according to his assistants. He had not yet emerged when Grange and Randell left at five thirty.
“So you did not leave the mineral gallery because Dr. Pettigrew chased you out.”
“Nein! He cannot.” The indignation was followed by a shamefaced glance at his Chancellor. “I am sometimes bored viz looking alvays at mine ruby. I decided to look at ozzer sings.”
“Very understandable, sir. What time did you go downstairs?”
The Grand Duke thought he had reached the fossil mammals at about five-twenty, which agreed with Sergeant Hamm’s recollection. He swore he had not left the gallery until the constable discovered him not lurking behind the Irish elk and sent him to the cafeteria.
Of course Hamm could not confirm that, having deserted his post to go and chat with the one-legged Underwood.
Count Otto escorted the three detectives downstairs, and closed the front door behind them with a firm click which said “Good riddance” as eloquently as a slam.
“Without the General’s intervention, we might have got something out of him,” Alec sighed as they climbed back into the Austin.
“Least we know they haven’t got diplomatic immunity, Chief,” said Piper, “’cause the General would have said so straight out.”
“Very true, laddie,” Tring said approvingly. “Living in cloud-cuckoo land, aren’t they, Chief, thinking they could throw the Reds out of their country if they had the ruby to sell?”
“I don’t know what it’s worth, but it doesn’t seem likely,” Alec agreed. “I’m not sure even the Crown Jewels would do it, but that doesn’t make getting hold of the ruby less of a motive. I’m just not sure Rudolf Maximilian is naive enough to believe killing Pettigrew would help. I need to get hold of him without his watchdog—or his mother, who struck me as a formidable lady.”
“Did you see that picture of her with the Czar, Chief?” Tring asked.
“No, but it doesn’t surprise me. Her name is Russian, and I did see Queen Victoria and the Kaiser.”
“They had King Edward and the Emperor Franz Josef up on the walls, too, and some others who looked sort of familiar.”
“Hmm,” said Alec, turning right on the Bayswater Road. “Bearing in mind that the whole thing could be an elaborate hoax, a con-game to wangle possession of the ruby, I’m inclined to believe he really is … or was … the Grand Duke. If so, it may not be easy to get him on his own.”
“I bet he goes back to the museum,” said Piper, “now he knows we know about the ruby. He can’t keep away from it, even if he sometimes gets bored hanging over it. And like as not he wouldn’t take his mum or the old man with him.”
“Two in a row!” said Tring in a marvelling voice. “Now don’t go getting above yourself, laddie. We can have the commissionaire keep an eye out for Rudolf, Chief, and let us know if he turns up. Pavett may be deaf as a post but he’s not dumb.”
“We’ll do that. Now, ffinch-Brown. He was talking to Witt, the mammal man, in Witt’s office, right, Tom?”
“Right, Chief. He left about five forty, went through the cephalopod gallery, then, he claims, on through the reptile gallery, without seeing Pettigrew nor anyone else, to the east pavilion. He stayed there, studying a giant sloth—would you believe it?—till one of the Chelsea constables found him. Very excitable gentleman.”
“Like Mummery, I gather. Bad luck to have two of them in one case.”
But when they called at Mr. ffinch-Brown’s modern villa on the golf links in Perivale, they found a quite different character from the one Daisy and Tom had described. At home, the anthropologist was a subdued little man.
For this, Alec guessed his wife to be responsible. That ffinch-Brown had married above his station was obvious, the ffinch likely being added to plain Brown on his marriage. His smartly marcelled wife had what Ernie later referred to as a posh accent. Though not openly imperious, she evidently expected to be deferred to, and to be present at the interview. At this stage in the investigation, Alec did not even attempt to exclude her.
Under her eye, ffinch-Brown repeated unchanged his description of his movements the previous evening. He admitted to a scholarly difference of opinion with Pettigrew.
“But scholars are always prone to differences of opinion,” he said mildly, pushing his spectacles up on his nose. “That is how knowledge increases, Chief Inspector. I had not the least doubt of my ability to pick out any flint Dr. Pettigrew shaped with his own hands from any number of genuine ancient artifacts. The case is not at all similar to the dispute over bone harpoons in which Dr. Smith Woodward is unhappily enmeshed, far less the Piltdown controversy.”
Fearing a technical lecture on the difference, and unable to see how bone harpoons could possibly figure in his enquiry, Alec hurriedly moved on. “I believe you also differed with Dr. Pettigrew over the gems in his collection, sir?” he said.