Rattle His Bones

by Carola Dunn

  “No skin off my nose. Er, Mr. Tring, the Chief Inspector doesn’t blame us, does he?”

  “You do the best you can with what you’ve got, don’t you?” Tom Tring said, a trifle evasively to Daisy’s ears. “He might have a suggestion or two about safety measures after he’s talked to you and seen what’s what.”

  Looking as unhappy as Grange, Jameson trailed off.

  “Does the Chief blame the museum police?” Daisy asked. “For not preventing the robbery, that is. I don’t see how he can for the murder.”

  “Not to say blame. Time enough for recriminations when we know how it was done. Now, Miss Dalrymple, the Chief says he hopes you’re done here for today and he won’t keep you, but seeing when the discovery was made you were on the spot …”

  “As usual,” put in Daisy with a sigh. “I bet he said ‘as usual.’”

  Tring twinkled at her. “That’d be telling. He wants to talk to you about just what was said between the Grand Duke and Mr. Grange before we arrived. He’ll ring up when he’s done here—no knowing when that’ll be, I’m afraid—and he’ll come round to your house.”

  “Tell him ‘right-oh,’ please, Mr. Tring. I’ll be there.”

  “Cheer up. He could have told me to take a statement from you.”

  “Thus depriving himself of a chance to tick me off,” said Daisy gloomily.

  Walking homeward, she started to wonder again about a possible connection between the theft and the murder. It seemed altogether too much of a coincidence that the burglary in the Mineralogy Gallery should be uncovered within a couple of days of its Keeper being bumped off. The obvious answer was that Pettigrew died because he had noticed the substitution of false for real gems.

  Yet if so, why had he not reported the theft to the police? He could have rung up on the telephone in his office. Or supposing he wanted to go in person to the museum police post, the direct way was through the fossil mammal gallery, not the reptile gallery.

  Had he somehow worked out who the thief was? Had he arranged to meet him among the reptiles (an unlikely spot, Daisy thought, unless Mummery was the villain), or had he been on his way to confront the culprit and happened to encounter him?

  Either would point to someone in the Geology Department being the cause of his sudden death.

  What exactly had his last words …

  “Watch out, miss!” A helpful hand jerked Daisy back from sudden death beneath the wheels of an omnibus.

  She decided to postpone further pondering until she reached the quiet streets nearer home, but Pettigrew’s words, as reported by Katy and Jennifer, popped into her head: “You think you’re so clever, but I know how it was done.” They had assumed he was referring to the flint-chipping business, but he might equally well have meant the theft of a fortune in jewels.

  Or the thief, labouring under a guilty conscience, might have thought so.

  Daisy wished she knew whether the flint which killed Pettigrew had been shaped by his own hand or that of some Neolithic hunter. Had the weapon which killed him been wrested from him in a panic or brought to the meeting with malice aforethought? Or had the murderer happened to have it on him when he met the mineralogist, which would point inexorably to Witt or ffinch-Brown?

  Not ffinch-Brown. His involvement with fossils was peripheral, and Pettigrew had addressed his assailant as a fossilized fool—or something similar. The murderer was surely someone in the Geology Department.

  And the thief?

  With this question as unanswered as the rest, Daisy somehow reached home unsquashed. She found Lucy down in the kitchen, heating up tinned oxtail soup for lunch.

  “Mmm, that smells good. I’ll make some toast.”

  “Not for me, darling. Mrs. Potter brought me a biscuit with my elevenses tea and I actually ate it. I shan’t be able to get into any of my clothes.”

  “That’s the trouble with being fashionable.” Daisy took out a loaf and cut a couple of slices, saying defensively, “I shan’t butter them. Darling, what do you know about Queen Vic and rubies?”

  Lucy, though she had defied her family to take up a career in photography, remained much more interested than Daisy in the customs and quirks of the upper echelons of society. “Queen Victoria and rubies?” she said. “What on earth … ? Oh, is it something to do with your dashing Grand Duke? Daisy, he isn’t mixed up in the museum murder, is he? Too, too frightful!”

  “Sort of.” The newspapers would undoubtedly report the jewel theft tomorrow, if not this afternoon, but she didn’t want Alec to be able to blame her for breaking the news. “I’d just like to know a bit more about the subject.”

  “There speaks the dedicated writer—all is grist to her mill. I know she was given a couple of famous rubies. One once belonged to the wife of the Indian rajah who built the Taj Mahal. An emperor, I think, not a mere rajah, but it wasn’t he who gave it to the Queen.”

  “Hardly. The Taj Mahal was built centuries ago.”

  Lucy sniffed. And sniffed again. “Your toast’s burning.”

  “Oh blast! It’s rescuable if I scrape it. Is the soup ready?”

  Stirring, Lucy said, “Not quite. The other ruby I’ve heard of was given by a maharani who was presented at Court. My grandmother still fulminates about the impropriety of presenting natives at the Court of St. James.”

  “I dare say. What happened to the rubies?”

  “The Queen left that one to the Duchess of Albany, who left it to Princess Alice. She often wears it, as you’d know if you read the right magazines. As far as I know, Queen Mary has the other one.”

  “Victoria didn’t give any away during her lifetime, though?”

  “Not that I know of. It is odd that she disposed of the Transcarpathia ruby to a museum, especially as it was given to her by a European ruler, undoubtedly distantly related.”

  “They all are,” Daisy agreed, sitting down at the kitchen table as Lucy ladled soup into bowls. “It’s hardly surprising Rudolf Maximilian resents the rebuff and wants it back, quite apart from his need for money.”

  “I’ll see if I can find out any more,” Lucy offered. “Gosh, darling, don’t let me forget I owe your Alec half a crown. Lady Bitherby wants a portrait in a new gown this afternoon and she’s usually pretty good about paying on the spot.”

  After lunch, Daisy went to her study, with the noble intention of typing up the latest lot of shorthand notes for her article. Fingers poised over the keyboard, she stared blankly at her notebook for several minutes.

  It wasn’t that she could no longer read her own shorthand, though she sometimes wondered if that moment would come. Her mind was not on the doings of the Mineralogy Department, but on what had been done to it, to its keeper and its collection. She decided to write down the chain of reasoning she had followed on her way home. Putting it into black and white ought to clarify her thoughts, and it just might be of some use to Alec.

  The exercise failed to provide any brilliant insight or inspiration. She set it aside and got on with her work.

  Just when Daisy was beginning to long for a cup of tea and to wonder if Mrs. Potter had left any biscuits, the doorbell rang. Rushing to finish the sentence she was in the middle of, she heard Lucy go to answer the door.

  “Ah, the debt collector,” Lucy drawled. “Daisy told you I expected to be paid today?”

  “I raced round at once,” Alec responded lightly.

  “Daisy’s typing away, judging by the rattle. I’m on my way to put on the kettle for tea. Will you have a cup?”

  “Yes, please. I didn’t manage any lunch today.”

  “I can take a hint. Scrambled eggs? Come on down to the kitchen, if it’s not too infra dig for a Chief Inspector. Daisy will come as soon as the kettle whistles.”

  Daisy was glad to hear them on such friendly terms. When she took up with a middle-class policeman, Lucy had been almost as sticky as the Dowager Viscountess, and there had been a memorable row or two.

  Reaching the end of the paragraph, she we
nt to join them. The kettle was burbling happily to itself, butter sizzled in a frying pan, and Lucy was whisking eggs in a bowl while Alec kept an eye on the bread toasting under the grill. He looked tired, Daisy thought. Perhaps a meal would restore his energy.

  As the burble rose to a screech, she took charge of the tea-making.

  “Darling, I was just going to tell your pet copper about the Transcarpathia ruby,” said Lucy. Pouring the eggs into the pan, she did not notice Alec’s dismay, or his positively inquisitorial look at Daisy. “I popped in to see Aunt Eva. She knows absolutely all there is to know about royalty.”

  “I just wondered why the Queen gave it away,” Daisy said defensively.

  “It seems your Grand Duke’s grandfather was a boon companion of Bertie’s—King Edward’s. He thought it very funny that the ruby once belonged to a famous courtesan, and when he presented it to Queen Victoria, he was so unwise as to make a little joke about it. Needless to say, our good Queen was Not Amused. She gave it to the museum even before he left the country, which I must say I think was a bit thick. Do you like them runny or set, Alec?”

  Alec opted for set. When he had eaten, he and Daisy took their second cups of tea up to the sitting room. This was furnished with an eclectic mixture of furniture from Daisy’s and Lucy’s family homes. It was all good, but as Daisy had chosen with an eye to comfort and Lucy to elegance, and the upholstery had been intended for different houses, the overall effect was a bit of a hodgepodge. The bookcase and its contents were Daisy’s, the Beardsley prints Lucy’s.

  “I didn’t tell Lucy about the robbery,” Daisy said as Alec sank into a deep, leather-covered wing chair abstracted from the library at Fairacres. “The Grand Duke is mixed up in the murder, too, remember.”

  “How can I forget?” Alec said wearily.

  “Do you think they’re connected? By more than Pettigrew being Keeper of Mineralogy, I mean.”

  “Unlike Superintendent Crane, I’m not convinced. If not, it would be quite a coincidence admittedly, but coincidences do happen. The flint Pettigrew was killed with has been identified by an independent expert as a modern copy. He laughed like a hyena, by the way, over its having been glued to a shaft. Primitive man used to bind them together, apparently.”

  “Mr. Ruddlestone would doubtless call that an educated deduction not much advanced from guesswork. I’m sure there is an expert somewhere prepared to swear they were always stuck together with sap, or pitch, or something. Still, whatever Pettigrew did with it, he made it, so he was probably taking it to show to Witt.”

  “Probably. I haven’t had a chance to consider the implications thoroughly.” He rubbed his eyes. “Only in the disjointed way one does during a wakeful night. And now there’s this blasted jewel theft to be dealt with, too. Though I appreciate your discretion about that, incidentally, it’ll be in the later editions of the evening papers. You might as well tell Lucy.”

  “What are you doing about it?” Daisy asked.

  “Setting up the usual routine. That is, we get a descriptive inventory of what’s missing, notify jewellers, pawnshops, and customs, and put pressure on known fences; we interview all the security staff to find out whether they’ve noticed anything out of the ordinary; and we investigate whether any of the suspects have a particular need for money, or have suddenly improved their standard of living.”

  “Gosh, all that must take an army!”

  “Crane’s given me every man he can spare, in and out of uniform, because of the probable connection with the murder. It takes a lot of organizing. And of course, I have to interview the suspects. I must get moving, Daisy.” He drained his cup. “Tell me what happened this morning before I reached the scene.”

  “You’re not cross because I was there when the theft was discovered?”

  With a rueful grin, Alec reached for her hand. “I’ve decided it’s Fate, with a big F. You can’t help being on the spot. I can’t stop you. And Tom—blast his cheek!—reminded me that I’d never have met you if it wasn’t for your propensity for falling over bodies.”

  “Bless him!” said Daisy, but added indignantly, “When we met, that was the first crime I’d ever been even remotely mixed up in. The ‘propensity’ developed afterwards. Darling, I wrote down what happened this morning while I remembered the exact words. Shall I get my notes?”

  “Yes, do.”

  The two sheets she was looking for were buried under a subsequent blizzard of paper. It took a couple of minutes to dig them out. When Daisy returned to the sitting room, Alec was fast asleep.

  10

  Should she wake him? Alec had lots to do, but he would be much more efficient after a nap.

  Daisy sat down opposite, her feet on a petit-point footstool embroidered by her great-grandmother. Things would be just the same when they were married, she knew. She’d never be sure when he was coming home, and often he’d arrive too tired to be sociable. Sometimes he would share his cases with her, and sometimes shut her out. If she was ever involved in a crime again, a highly unlikely circumstance whatever he and Tom said about propensities, he’d be angry, Fate or no Fate.

  Belinda and Mrs. Fletcher would go on sharing his time and attention. Daisy would not have it any other way—at least as far as Bel was concerned, she admitted to herself. Not that she had any intention of displacing Mrs. Fletcher. Alec’s mother might disapprove of her working, as well as of her noble birth, but her mother-in-law’s presence would allow her to go on writing.

  Alec had no intention of trying to stop her. That was one of the reasons she loved him. Few men recognized a woman’s right to a career.

  She contemplated the sleeping man, recalling their first meeting. From the first, even while she was still surprised to find a policeman so gentlemanly, he had impressed her as forceful and determined. From the first she had been attracted by the way his dark hair sprang crisply from his temples, and by the way his smile warmed his grey eyes. The dark, heavy eyebrows between, skeptically raised or wrathfully lowered, had not intimidated her. Not for more than a moment, anyway.

  Knowing him had healed the raw wound of Michael’s death in the War, blown up by a landmine with his Friends’ Ambulance Unit. Daisy would always have a place in her heart for the memory of her first love, but she wanted to marry Alec. She wanted to marry him soon.

  Ay, there’s the rub, she thought. How were they to escape the combined toils of her mother and Scotland Yard?

  Alec yawned, settled more comfortably, then stiffened and opened his eyes. “Great Scott, have I been asleep?”

  “Only for a few minutes. I hoped a nap would do you good, but it’s barely been a catnap.”

  “I think it’s helped, all the same.” He sat up straight. “Your notes?”

  She handed them over. “The first bit’s what you asked for. The rest is just trying to sort out my thoughts.”

  To her gratification, he read the whole thing before, returning to the beginning, he said, “So the Grand Duke did draw Grange’s attention to the ruby. I agree it’s unlikely he’d have done so if he was responsible for the substitution.”

  “I can’t believe he’d have gone on visiting the museum, let alone fussing over that blasted jewel. I don’t think he’d have pinched the rest, either, whatever Sergeant Jameson says about ruses and wily foreigners. What about Grange? He need not have taken any notice of Rudolf Maximilian’s concern, let alone have insisted on examining the rest of the collection.”

  “They’re both low on my list at present, though Grange was in a good position to manage the theft, as was Randell. The Grand Duke is still near the top of the murder list.”

  “If murder and theft are unconnected. Alec,” Daisy cried, as inspiration struck, “has it dawned on you that the person who could most easily have stolen the gems was Pettigrew himself?”

  “It had crossed my mind,” Alec said, with a grimace. “That would be the very dickens of a complication, which I haven’t time to think through just now. I must be on my way, love.” H
e heaved himself to his feet, waving the papers. “May I take these?”

  “Yes, I have a fairly readable carbon copy.”

  “Then will you type out the first couple of paragraphs alone—the facts, not the speculation—and sign and date them, for an official statement?” Folding the two sheets, he slipped them into his jacket pocket. “By the by, it had not dawned on me that Pettigrew’s last words might have referred to the jewel theft, or have been misunderstood by the thief to do so. That would tie everything together very neatly, which would please the super no end.”

  “Really, darling?” Daisy flung her arms around his neck and kissed him. When he reluctantly let her go, some minutes later, she said, “I’m frightfully glad my idea helps. Are you going to tell Superintendent Crane it was mine?”

  “Credit where credit is due. But Daisy, don’t take it as encouragement to put your oar in. You’ve finished at the museum, haven’t you?” he asked hopefully.

  “Gosh, nowhere near. I got a bit on Mineralogy today, despite the disturbance, but I’ll need more. I haven’t even started on Entomology, and I was just getting my teeth into Geology when the fossils started crashing about my ears.”

  “Great Scott, I though you were done with Geology at least! All right, if you must go back you must, but for heaven’s sake limit your questions to scientific matters. There’s a murderer on the loose, remember.”

  “I’ll remember,” Daisy promised.

  “If I were you, if you don’t absolutely have to be there tomorrow, I’d wait a day or two. We’re searching the place from towers to basement tonight, and it’s going to be chaos for a while.”

  “You think the jewels may still be there?” she asked, surprised.

  Alec shrugged. “Who knows? They may have been taken away two or three months ago, but we have to look. There’s always a chance, too, of finding whatever it was Pettigrew used as a shaft for his spear or dagger. We have to look, however hopeless it may be in that labyrinth.”

  “But you don’t really need to search everywhere, do you, darling? I mean, most places there’d be a risk of someone other than the thief coming across the jewels by accident.”