by Carola Dunn
“Yes.” Alec stared at her bemusedly. “Of course. Yes, of course! I must be tireder than I thought not to realize that. Tired enough to be grumpy enough for none of my men to point it out to me! But there is still a dickens of a lot to do. I really must go, love. I’ll ’phone when I can.”
Daisy saw him out. The sun had sunk below the houses in the cross street, casting Mulberry Place into shadow. A chill in the air felt more like autumn than summer. Shivering, Daisy closed the front door and went upstairs to fetch a cardigan before going back to work.
Now that Alec was gone, she thought of all sorts of questions she wished she had asked while he was in a communicative mood—or too tired to resist. Who, for instance, were his suspects?
As far as the murder was concerned, it seemed to boil down to the four curators, Mummery, Ruddlestone, Steadman, and Witt, plus ffinch-Brown and the Grand Duke. Daisy wrote down their names. The theft was much more complicated. Without knowing when it took place, no one could be eliminated for lack of opportunity.
Pettigrew, Grange, and Randell had the most opportunity, assuming theft and murder were not connected. If they were connected, the curators had more opportunity than ffinch-Brown and the Grand Duke. Daisy was prepared to eliminate Rudolf Maximilian—from the theft, not the murder—but Sergeant Jameson’s notions about skeleton keys and hiding when the museum closed could apply to ffinch-Brown.
And to any jewel-thief in the kingdom, habitual or onetime, assuming the murder was unconnected.
Daisy felt her mind going cross-eyed. No wonder Alec was tired! If she was going to get anywhere, she had to concentrate on two entangled crimes and leave other possibilities to the police. Of course, she really ought to leave the whole lot to the police and get on with her article, as Alec would heartily agree. But it was jolly hard to come up with interesting questions about insects when a double mystery waited to be solved.
She wished she had asked Alec how he imagined the theft had been accomplished. It was not a simple burglary. Somehow the thief had substituted false gems which looked sufficiently like the real ones to deceive a casual glance from people who knew them well.
Good quality strass glass jewelry, though vastly less valuable than genuine stones, was not cheap. Daisy’s mother had muttered ominously about having her jewelry copied when she was first reduced to the penury of the charming Georgian Dower House, with its mere five bedrooms (excluding servants’ quarters) and delightful garden. Discovery of the cost had allowed the Dowager Viscountess to back down gracefully.
The thief had had to pay for the paste gems. If he had not yet sold them, Alec should look for someone who was suddenly poorer, not suddenly richer.
The Grand Duke?
Alec also needed to look for the jeweller who copied the gems, not only for possible purchasers. Daisy wondered whether he had realized. Should she drop a hint?
Surely the police would not miss anything so obvious.
What was less obvious was how on earth the thief had accomplished the substitution. It must have taken more than one visit, and even then it could not have been easy. More difficult of course for ffinch-Brown and the Grand Duke than for the four curators, who at least had good reason to be in the museum after closing hours.
Oh blast, she was going round in circles again. The sound of the telephone bell ringing out in the hall came as a relief.
She gave her number.
“Aunt Daisy?”
“Belinda! Hello, darling.”
“Aunt Daisy, is Daddy there?” Belinda sounded on the verge of tears.
Only a dire emergency would make the well-trained child telephone in search of her father, Daisy thought in alarm. “No, darling, he left quarter of an hour ago. What’s the trouble? Can I help?”
“Oh, Aunt Daisy!” A sob broke through, then the story poured out. “It’s Nana. She chewed up one of Granny’s slippers and Gran’s awfully angry and she says … she says Nana has to go!”
“Oh dear!”
“And I know this isn’t your house yet and you’re not my mummy yet but could you please, please talk to Granny and tell her Nana didn’t mean to be naughty?”
Daisy quailed at the prospect of trying to persuade an irate woman who disapproved of her that the puppy should be forgiven for destroying a slipper because she did not mean to be naughty. And over the ’phone, too.
“Darling, I think I’d better come round. I’ll hop on a bus and be there in no time. Hang on, I’m sure your grandmother won’t throw Nana out without speaking to your father first. I’ll be there in two ticks.”
Two ticks was overoptimistic. Possessed by a feeling of urgency, Daisy hurried to the Fulham Road and soon caught a Number 74. The rush hour was in full swing, but at first she was going into town, so the worst of the traffic was heading the other way. Hyde Park Corner was the first check. At last the bus escaped from the jam and rumbled up Park Lane, only to be thoroughly entangled at Marble Arch. The right turn into Oxford Street took forever. From there on it was standing room only, up Baker Street and Park Road, till Daisy thankfully disembarked just beyond St. John’s Church.
The bus rolled on towards Camden Town. Daisy left behind the busy Prince Albert Road and plunged into the quiet residential streets of St. John’s Wood.
Gardenia Grove was a dead-end street lined with early Victorian semi-detached houses. Any pair would have fitted easily inside one wing of Daisy’s childhood home, and their gardens, set down in a corner of Fairacres’ park, might easily go unnoticed. On the other hand, compared with the tiny Chelsea house, they were spacious.
To Daisy, the Fletchers’ house sometimes seemed spacious, sometimes cramped. It was always very clean and tidy, almost excessively so, or had been until Nana’s irruption into the quiet household.
Mrs. Fletcher blamed Daisy for the puppy’s arrival. Daisy was, in fact, to blame. She was not at all sorry—Belinda’s devotion to Nana precluded that—but she acknowledged that perhaps her future mother-in-law deserved a bit of sympathy for the inevitable disturbance.
Walking up the garden path, past the silver birch and beds of Michaelmas daisies and honey-sweet alyssum, she decided to start on the right foot by expressing her sympathy with Mrs. Fletcher. Belinda surely already knew Daisy was fundamentally on her side.
Belinda answered the door, red-eyed. Daisy hugged her, saying, “Where’s the culprit?”
“Granny made me tie her up in the back garden. She’s awfully sad.”
“I expect she knows she’s in disgrace, though she doesn’t understand why. Come along, let’s see what I can do.”
Hanging on Daisy’s arm, Belinda took her to the sitting room, which faced south, overlooking the back garden. It was a pleasant room, for which Daisy credited Alec’s first wife. The furniture was rather heavily Victorian, but chairs and sofa had been reupholstered in cheerful prints. The walls, doubtless once covered with murky wallpaper, were painted white. If the Stag had ever stood grimly at Bay over the mantelpiece, he had been replaced with a colorful view of Montmartre.
Mrs. Fletcher, an angular woman of about sixty with a set face, sat knitting by the fireplace, where a gleaming Benares brass tray hid the empty grate. Her hair, worn confined by a hairnet in the fringed style favoured by the Queen Mother, was of that greyish blond which suggests a red-headed youth. Skinny, ginger-pigtailed Belinda might well grow up to look very like her grandmother. Daisy was determined, however, that the child should not develop the older woman’s rigid, stifling attitude to life.
“Hello, Mrs. Fletcher,” she said. “I’m so sorry to hear Nana’s in hot water.”
“It’s kind of you to come,” snapped Mrs. Fletcher, her tone making plain that “interfering” would be a more accurate reflection of her thoughts. “But the dog will have to go. It has completely ruined a perfectly good slipper.”
“Too maddening!”
Taken aback by Daisy’s commiseration, Mrs. Fletcher said, “It’s not the slipper so much—one can always purchase another pair—as
the possibility that next time it will chew up something more valuable.”
“Yes, of course. Puppies can be a bit destructive, especially when they’re teething. Like babies. I expect Alec chewed things like mad when his baby teeth were coming in.”
“So did I,” Belinda put in eagerly. “Daddy said I used to gnaw his finger.”
“Neither you nor your father ever destroyed anything,” Mrs. Fletcher pointed out, her mouth pursed. “Nor left hair all over the carpets.”
“No,” Daisy agreed, “and there’s no reason why Nana should be allowed to. She shouldn’t be left alone in a room where there are things she can damage, Bel. When no one can be with her, you should shut her in the kitchen or the scullery. Make sure she has sticks and hard rusks to chew. But mostly she will chew only when she’s bored and hasn’t had enough exercise. Did you play with her and walk her today?”
“No, Aunt Daisy,” Belinda admitted, head hanging. She bit her lip. “I went to play with Annette after tea, and she’s afraid of dogs.”
“If you want to keep Nana, you’re going to have to take responsibility for her, you know.”
“I know. I’m frightfully sorry, Granny. I’ll save up my pocket money and buy you some new slippers. And I’ll absolutely walk Nana after school every single day and play with her lots and make sure she’s shut up somewhere safe, and brush her oftener, so please, please can she stay?”
“Sooner or later, you’ll forget,” said Mrs. Fletcher, “or the dog will get out.”
All too likely, Daisy thought, but she said, “It won’t be forever. Puppies grow out of chewing. It just takes patience.”
“Derek’s dog, Tinker Bell, doesn’t chew things up,” Belinda earnestly informed her grandmother. “When she’s not going for walks or playing, she mostly just sleeps, doesn’t she, Aunt Daisy? So please can I keep Nana?”
Mrs. Fletcher sighed. “We’ll see what your father says when he comes home.”
Belinda, knowing perfectly well what her father would say, correctly interpreted this as grudging surrender and beamed. “Thank you, Gran, most frightfully,” she said, and went to give her grandmother’s cheek a decorous kiss. Then she ran to Daisy and hugged her, whispering, “Thank you most even more frightfully, Aunt Daisy, for coming to the rescue.”
At that moment, the Fletchers’ cook-maid came in and announced supper.
Daisy knew that when Alec was not expected, his mother and daughter ate together early. “I must be on my way,” she said, gathering up her handbag.
“If you have no other plans, do join us,” said Mrs. Fletcher, if not exactly gracious then at least not altogether hostile.
Daisy had, after all, given her a way out of an untenable position. She probably had not realized how fearfully upset her granddaughter would be. She did, one presumed, love Belinda in her way.
“Yes, do stay, Aunt Daisy!” cried Belinda with enthusiasm.
“Thank you, I’d like to.”
“Belinda, go and wash your hands and face while Dobson sets another place at table. And the dog is to stay outside until after we have eaten,” commanded Mrs. Fletcher.
Whatever her usual expectations of a child’s table manners in the presence of her elders, over the Brown Windsor soup Mrs. Fletcher encouraged Belinda to talk, perhaps as a buffer. Bel chattered about Derek and Tinker Bell, then moved on to Derek’s inexplicable keenness on dinosaurs.
“He liked the one with the big teeth best,” she said.
“The Megalosaurus,” said Daisy.
“That’s right. Can you imagine what it’d be like to have a baby Megalosaurus instead of a puppy?” Belinda giggled, then glanced at her grandmother and stifled the giggle. “I thought its teeth were horrid. I’m glad the other dinosaurs were so tall you couldn’t see their teeth properly, aren’t you, Aunt Daisy? They’re gigantic, Gran, bigger than a house, some of them.”
“And who dusts them, I’d like to know?” said Mrs. Fletcher. “A gigantic waste of time and money, if you ask me.” Thus having put herself firmly on the late Dr. Pettigrew’s side, she changed the subject back to Daisy’s nephew.
“I must say Derek is a polite child, if rather rumbustious. But then, boys will be boys,” she added tolerantly.
And girls must be young ladies, Daisy completed the hated maxim, one of her mother’s favourites. Really, if Mrs. Fletcher and the Dowager Viscountess ever got to know each other well, they would get on like a house on fire.
While Daisy meddled in his home as a change from meddling in his work, Alec was supervising a search of all the museum staff as they departed for the day.
Fortunately, almost all were men, who could be checked, even asked to remove their jackets, by uniformed constables under the watchful eyes of Tring or D.C.s Piper or Ross. But there were the ladies’ room attendant and the switchboard girl, as well as two saleswomen (what they sold he did not enquire) and four artists under contract to draw or paint botany and entomology specimens.
Alec did not see these as serious suspects in the burglary, but the thief might have inveigled one into carrying his spoils out of the museum. To search them, Alec requested one of the new woman constables. He was sent a police matron.
These matrons were more like prison wardresses than police officers. They took charge of arrested females, often drunk and disorderly, and rarely had anything to do with the innocent public. As a result, they tended to be hefty viragos, and to take a jaundiced view of all women they dealt with in their work, automatically regarding them—and inclined to treat them—as criminals. Tom Tring, who was not afraid of anything in trousers, claimed to be terrified of police matrons.
Mrs. Morble, sent round by Chelsea Division, was no exception. Tall and robust, with a red face and very pale eyes, she had a harsh voice and a bovine expression.
Bulls, as Alec reminded himself, are stubborn and belligerent as well as not exceptionally bright. What he needed was a women who was an ordinary officer, accustomed to frequent contact with law-abiding people, but the search could not wait.
He explained to Mrs. Morble what he wanted her to do. “I consider it highly unlikely that any of these women are involved,” he stressed.
“There’s a bad apple in every barrel,” said Mrs. Morble.
“Somewhere in the museum, yes. But I doubt it’s any of the women.”
“The female of the species is more deadlier than the male,” said Mrs. Morble.
“Er, possibly, though it’s quite impossible that any of them murdered Pettigrew. It’s the jewel theft we are concerned with here.”
“Set a thief to catch a thief,” said Mrs. Morble obscurely.
“It’s more a matter of catching the thief and hoping he’ll turn out to be, or at least lead us to, the murderer.”
“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink,” said Mrs. Morble. She elaborated. “If you was to ask me, there’s a lot to be said for what the Yankees call the Third Degree.”
Trying not to quail visibly, Alec stringently reminded her, “However, such methods are against the law in Britain. What is more, these women are not under any particular suspicion. They are to be searched as a general precaution, and they are to be treated with proper courtesy. Understood?”
“Yes, sir. What can’t be cured must be endured. But you can be sure, sir, if any of ‘em’s got so much as a jet bead on ’em, I’ll find it, and let the devil take the hindmost,” said Mrs. Morble.
“No jet has been stolen. Here’s the list.” With deep misgivings, Alec repeated his instructions and let the matron loose on her prey.
Either none of those unfortunates was deeply disturbed by her notion of proper courtesy, or none was brave enough to complain.
Obviously disappointed, she reported back to Alec: “All clean as a whistle. Leastways, far as I can tell without making ’em peel. The which you said not to do, sir,” added Mrs. Morble reproachfully.
Relieved that she had not tried, Alec thanked her and thankfully dismissed her.
Searching the men proved equally unproductive. Alec had not really expected the thief to attempt to walk out with his booty when the museum was under siege by the police, but it was a possibility which had to be covered. Though the museum had yet to be searched, the odds were that the jewels were long gone, either already sold or concealed at home.
Alec had applied for warrants to search his chief suspects’ homes. The only way to bring them down to a manageable number was to assume the thief and the murderer were one, which was Superintendent Crane’s view, fortunately. As Daisy had pointed out in her notes, the assumption simplified matters no end, even if one included the Grand Duke and ffinch-Brown.
Alec did, since the two were high on the murder list, though like Daisy he considered them unlikely thieves. The magistrate agreed, and refused to grant search warrants. He also refused in the case of Grange, who had raised the alarm, but allowed Randell, both added to the list by Alec on the grounds of opportunity.
That left the four curators and the junior mineralogy assistant, too many to cope with in one evening. As Randell was not a murder suspect, Alec sent a detective sergeant and constable from the Yard to his lodgings.
Leaving Detective Inspector Wotherspoon in charge of the cohorts of constables who were to start searching the museum, Alec departed with his own little troop. Little in numbers, not in size: with Tom Tring beside him in the front and both Piper and Ross in the back, the Austin Chummy was heavily laden. He hoped the springs would stand up to the load.
“I’ll leave most of the searching to the three of you,” he said. “I shan’t do any formal questioning this evening, but I want to get a feel for the way they live. Tom, try to manage a word with any servants, just to break the ice. You can go back later to pump them, if necessary. Ernie, you’ve worked out the best route?”
“Mr. Mummery first, Chief, in Wimbledon. Start out across Vauxhall Bridge. I can give you directions when you need ’em. After him, Mr. Ruddlestone in Twickenham, Mr. Steadman in Ealing, then back to Mr. Witt in Mayfair.”