by Carola Dunn
Too maddening that he had buzzed off! And taken Tom Tring with him, as well. She would willingly have told Tring her deduction, but she hesitated to approach whomever Alec had left in charge at this end, let alone—heaven forbid!—Superintendent Crane.
There was always Sergeant Jameson. Strictly speaking he was not involved in the investigation, but on the other hand, he was right on the spot.
Daisy decided to pop into the museum and have a word with Sergeant Jameson on her way to St. John’s Wood for tea. She worked hard for a couple of hours, then walked to the Natural History Museum. Fate was against her. It was Jameson’s day off.
“He’ll be in tomorrow, miss,” his substitute promised her. “Ten till six, same as usual, but the museum opens at ha’ past two, Sundays.”
Sighing, she thanked him and went out to catch a Number 74 ’bus.
By the next day, Daisy had demoted her educated deduction to guesswork. She was in two minds whether to trouble Jameson with it, or wait till Alec came back, or simply abandon it.
It was a bleak day, autumn showing its teeth. Sitting at the typewriter, Daisy grew chilled, her feet frigid. She decided a brisk walk was what she needed, and once outside, her steps turned of their own volition towards the museum.
When she arrived, the constables on duty were just dispersing on their regular patrols about the halls and galleries. “And keep an eye on that Grand Duke,” Jameson admonished them as they departed, leaving him alone in the police post.
“Be with you in a minute, miss,” he grunted, and filled in some figures on a duty sheet. “There we are. Now, what’s up? I heard you was asking for me yesterday.”
“I expect you’ll think I’m a fearful ass,” said Daisy tentatively, “but I’ve had an idea, and I decided you were the best person to try it on.”
“Go ahead, miss. Nothing venture, nothing gain.”
Thus encouraged, Daisy explained her reasoning—omitting its dream source. The sergeant listened intently, whether from politeness or interest, she could not tell. “So, you see,” she finished apologetically, “it’s not much more than a guess.”
“Blimey, miss, sounds good to me! It’s true Mr. Steadman won’t let the housemen go near his skellingtons. Course, I’m not a detective officer, and I’m bound to ask, have you told Detective Chief Inspector Fletcher?”
“He’s gone out of town. Looking for Constable Westcott, actually. He hadn’t heard of him till I mentioned him.”
Jameson blenched. “Flippin’ ’ell, if you’ll excuse my language, miss. He already thinks we’re blinkin’ idiots, letting a murder and a burglary go on under our noses. And now no one told him about Westcott retiring!”
“I’m afraid not.” Daisy saw her chance and seized it. “But if you were to find the jewels, when everyone else has missed them … Of course, if they’re not there, no one need know we looked.”
“We?”
“You’d let me go with you, wouldn’t you?” she coaxed. Without her to egg him on, she thought, he might get cold feet. “It’s only fair.”
“That’s as may be.” He gave her a harassed glance. “In the dinosaur skulls, you think they are. We couldn’t go while the museum’s open.”
Careful not to show her triumph at his choice of pronouns, Daisy glanced around. She had not noticed that the museum was busier than usual. A stream of visitors was still pushing in through the doors, and through the arches she saw crowds around the African elephant and wandering from bay to bay of the Central Hall.
“No, not till closing time,” she agreed. “I could come back just before six o’clock.”
“That’s the ticket,” said Jameson, his relief suggesting he doubted that, when it came to the point, she would actually return. “I’ll have to clear it with Sergeant Drummond, that takes over at six, but I don’t s’pose he’ll mind.”
“Right-oh, then, Sergeant, I’ll see you at ten to six,” Daisy vowed.
She decided to go and have a quick look at the dinosaur gallery, just to make sure the ladders were still there, she told herself. As she rounded the police post, she came face to face with Rudolf Maximilian.
“Hello,” she said, “are you still hoping they’ll let you cut up the animals?”
“Mine ruby is somevhere,” he said sulkily. “I try to see vhere might it be, so to tell police.”
Daisy thought he looked rather shifty, and she wondered whether he had been giving the extinct mammals a rather closer examination than was permitted to the public. Going through into the gallery, she saw that Sergeant Hamm had his hands full—his one and only hand, anyway—with the multitudinous visitors. In the midst of those swarms of locusts, he might not have noticed what the Grand Duke was about. Contrariwise, swarms of visitors could hardly have helped observing him if he had indecently molested the sabre-tooth or a mammoth.
In the reptile gallery, a crowd had gathered around the Pareiasaurus, though it was still hidden by dust-sheets. In the dinosaur gallery, a lesser crowd stared at the dust-sheets concealing the Saltopus stand and the bone table.
For a moment, Daisy thought the ladders were gone, but then she saw them, folded and laid on the floor against the wall. Steadman would not have to risk arousing suspicion by asking the Superintendent of House Staff to have a ladder brought up specially, perhaps with the excuse of dusting his dinosaurs. He must have done that, she supposed, when he hid the jewels, but no one knew then that they had been pinched. Now all he had to do was stay late after work tomorrow.
Assuming she was right, once he had retrieved the jewels, what then? Daisy pondered as she left the museum and walked briskly homeward through the dank afternoon.
Then all he needed was patience. If he realized he was being watched, he must also realize the police could not spare the men to follow him forever. The police circular describing the gems would disappear into the backs of files or piles of papers, and jewellers would forget the details.
If Steadman waited long enough, and failing other evidence, he might get away with his crimes.
Daisy was pleased with this conclusion, since it meant she and Jameson were justified in looking for the jewels tonight, before Steadman had a chance to get there first. Whether Alec would accept her argument was another matter, but in his absence, she had to do what she thought best.
As Daisy approached home, and thus neared the Thames, she noticed wisps of mist curling up the street and lurking Grand-Duke-like between the houses. Cold air over the warm river was the breeding ground for London’s famous pea-soupers, but it was early in the season for a full-scale fog. Most people in the megalopolis cooked with gas nowadays, and as yet few would have lit the coal fires whose smoke and soot nourished the river mists.
Shutting the front door firmly on the ominous vapours, Daisy hoped a breeze would come up and blow them away. Anyway, she wasn’t going to let a fog stop her going back to the museum. She might be wrong about Steadman and his dinosaurs, but if she was right, she did not want Sergeant Jameson hogging all the glory.
She might be wrong. As Daisy sat down at her desk, she frowned absently at the sheet she had left half-typed in the machine.
Whatever Steadman’s place on Alec’s list, she had not rated him highly as a suspect. A passion for dinosaurs need not exclude a passion for money, she supposed. If only she knew something of his private circumstances. Alec had kept to himself whatever he had discovered.
Witt said Steadman had a rotten home life. A nagging wife, perhaps? Did he want money to be able to leave her? How would desertion affect his position at the museum, and thus his work with his precious dinosaurs?
Unable to answer any of these questions, Daisy tried to concentrate on her own work, but she was writing a passage about dinosaurs, so her thoughts kept returning to Steadman.
Steadman and his precious dinosaurs. Precious stones stolen. What was the connection, if any? The Grand Duke’s motive was far more understandable. He was as mad about his lost country as Steadman was about dinosaurs.
&n
bsp; His lost country and his lost ruby, doubly lost—unless he had pinched it—now that only a fake gem remained. Rudolf Maximilian left with a fake gem, Daisy mused, and Steadman with his fake Diplodocus. She remembered his chagrin as he explained to Derek and Belinda that the pride of his collection was just plaster of Paris.
Daisy sat bolt upright. Suddenly she remembered so clearly she practically heard Steadman’s voice: “The Diplodocus was found in America. The American museums bag all the best. They have the money …”
… The money to send out their own expeditions. The trustees of the British Museum (Natural History) had been debating setting up an expedition for years, without a decision. Was that what Steadman wanted money for, pots of money—his own dinosaur-hunting expedition?
In Steadman’s eyes, Daisy suspected, that would be motive enough for robbing the mineralogy gallery. After all, as his colleagues agreed, compared to once-living fossils, what importance had mere inanimate stones?
Of course, coming up with a credible motive still didn’t mean she was right, but it made her more determined than ever to find out.
With that decided, she managed to write a few paragraphs before Lucy brought her a cup of tea.
“It’s perfectly beastly out,” Lucy said. “Mrs. Potter laid a fire in the sitting room. I thought I’d light it later. We could turn on the wireless and eat by the fire—tomato soup, fillet of sole, runner beans, potatoes in their jackets—and have a game of parcheesi or something.”
“It sounds lovely.” Glancing at the window, Daisy shivered. The air had taken on a sickly yellowish tinge. A haze blurred the roof of Lucy’s studio and the houses on the other side of the mews. “But I have to go out for a bit first.”
“Darling, must you?”
If the fog set in for several days, Alec’s watchers might easily lose Steadman. She had to go, to keep Jameson up to the mark. “Yes, I’d better,” she sighed.
“Too, too maddening. I won’t light the fire till you get back, so that we don’t have to bring up more coal.”
Warmed by the tea, Daisy went quickly to put on her winter coat, hat, and gloves before the warmth vanished. As soon as she set foot outside the front door, the fog grabbed her by the throat. She coughed.
Breathing through her nose, she set out. The lamp-post at the corner was already lit, murkily haloed. Visibility was not too bad as yet. Turning into Church Street, Daisy saw a ’bus and a motor-car crossing at the top, in the Fulham Road. The few pedestrians she met had hunched shoulders and drips on their noses. They were obviously hastening home. She envied them.
Reminding herself that the game was afoot, she stiffened her sinews and, imitating the action of a sabre-toothed tiger in a hurry, she sped museum-ward.
In the quarter of an hour it took Daisy to reach Cromwell Road, the fog thickened perceptibly. The museum’s towers, which should have loomed above the plane trees, were invisible. The planes themselves were greenish blotches. A lone ’bus moved cautiously down the street, and Daisy crossed in its wake. Sundays were always quiet, but this was morguelike.
A uniformed constable stood at the museum gates. “The museum shuts in a few minutes, miss,” he said. “I’d get on home, if I was you, ’fore it gets any worser.”
“I’m meeting someone,” Daisy told him.
A couple with two children came out of the museum, stopped to stare in dismay, and scurried away. At the top of the steps, Daisy glanced back. The buildings on the far side of the street were vague shapes, details obliterated.
Successful or not, she thought, she would beg Sergeant Jameson to see her home.
A swirl of fog entered with her. Ahead, in the Central Hall, a haze softened the outline of the great elephant, as if it tramped across the dusty plains of Africa. Daisy almost expected it to raise its head and trumpet its disgust in this raw, clammy northern clime.
The earlier crowds had departed. A few stragglers were just leaving, shepherded from the galleries by commissionaires anxious to take their own leave. Each reported to the police post, where Jameson ticked them off by the light of an electric lamp. Not anxious to be seen, Daisy went and lurked out of the way, behind the nearest pillar.
Jameson’s men were in the post, waiting to sign out. The evening shift sergeant leant on the counter, chatting. From the rear of the hall came two constables together, one of them coughing with uninhibited ostentation.
“That don’t sound too good,” said the evening sergeant.
“I’m ever so ill, Sarge. Can I go home?”
“It’s just the fog, Sarge,” the other constable said with a grin. Daisy recognized Neddle.
“Nice try, Mason.” He caught sight of Daisy. “’Scuse me, miss, the museum’s about to close. Hey, don’t I know … ?”
“That’s Miss Dalrymple,” said Jameson. “Here, you lot, clear out. I want a word with Sergeant Drummond, private.”
The day constables were only too glad to get off five minutes early. The two latest-comers strolled to the main entrance and stood gazing out into the gloom. Daisy went to join the sergeants.
Jameson invited her to explain, which she did.
“Well now,” Drummond said cautiously, “I can’t see no harm in it, long as you’re careful not to bust nothing. You’ll have to wait till all the commissionaires have reported everyone out of their galleries, and the front doors are locked.”
Consulting his papers, Jameson said, “Ground floor’s all clear. Just upstairs to go. No staff in today, and who can blame ’em.”
A few members of the public trickled down the main stairs, followed by the commissionaires from the non-fossil mammal galleries and botany. Last of all came Pavett, from mineralogy, ushering a larger group than the others. With the stolidity of the deaf, he ignored their comments on the jewel theft.
He came over to the police post. “Everyone out, lights off, inner doors locked,” he reported laconically. Laying two keys on the counter, he took himself off.
“All yours, mate,” said Jameson, coming out through the flap in the counter.
Drummond locked the main entrance doors behind the last visitors, and returned to the police post. “Right, I’m going up to bar and bolt the Mineral Gallery,” he said, “after the horse has been stolen as you might say. The dinosaurs are all yours, miss. I’ll look in to see how you’re doing when I come down. Neddle, you stay here. Mason, go and report everyone out to the chap watching the back door, then come back.”
Sergeant Drummond and Constable Mason tramped off through the Central Hall on their way to the stairs up and down respectively. Daisy and Sergeant Jameson went round to the fossil mammal gallery.
The electric lights, on for the last half hour because of the fog, had been turned off. In the dingy daylight coming through the windows, the mammoths loomed larger than ever. But the fog had not penetrated thus far.
“What a difference!” Daisy exclaimed. “I didn’t realize so much fog had got in back there.”
“Nasty stuff,” said Jameson.
“Beastly. I was wondering if you’d very much mind seeing me home afterwards.”
“Don’t you worry, miss. We’ll get you home right and tight.”
Jameson’s boots echoed hollowly on the mosaic floor as they went through the hall to the fossil reptiles. Empty of people, lit only by the dreary light from the opaque skylights, the gallery seemed a fitting place for murder. Crossing it, they entered the dinosaur gallery.
The far end was lost in gloom. Daisy had taken several steps at the sergeant’s side before she saw that someone was there before them.
“Hey, you!” yelled Jameson.
The figure on the stepladder, just withdrawing his hand from the Iguanodon’s head, turned an aghast face. The Grand Duke!
While Jameson, immobilized by surprise, fumbled for his whistle, Rudolf Maximilian slithered down the rocking ladder and dashed through the arch to the cephalopods. Jameson blew a short sharp blast, then took off after the Grand Duke, his whistle shrilling between his
lips. The sound, designed to call help from streets away, rang on after the sergeant had disappeared.
Daisy was about to follow when she noticed a white blob at the foot of the ladder. It was a handkerchief, embroidered with an elaborate crest, holding several gems embedded in some sort of putty. She was reaching to pick it up when heavy footsteps raced towards her from behind.
“What’s happened?” cried Constable Neddle. “Where’s Sergeant Jameson?”
“They went thataway,” said Daisy, pointing. The picture-shows her brother used to drag her to in Ludlow, before the War, had often included William S. Hart cowboy films.
Neddle galloped off in hot pursuit. Daisy realized that the Grand Duke’s way was blocked by the work room and Geological Library. From invertebrates, he would have to go out into the reptile gallery. She hurried back to the dinosaurs’ main entrance arch, and stepped out into reptiles just as Jameson—still whistling—emerged from invertebrates.
However, instead of doubling back, Rudolf Maximilian had turned left. He was a vague shadow at the far end of the reptile gallery. Jameson tore after him. Daisy followed, meeting Neddle at the invertebrate entrance and continuing at his side.
Rudolf led them through the hall at the end, back along the mammal gallery, and into the Central Hall, now a somber cavern. There he headed for the main staircase, but as he reached the foot, Sergeant Drummond appeared at the top, a hazy figure in the intruding fog. The Grand Duke raced on under the arches to the North Hall, where he disappeared into the eastern enclosed staircase. Jameson, Neddle, and Drummond streamed after him.
Constable Mason, scarcely recognizable in the all-pervading gloom, came out of the stairs on the west side of the hall, roared “What … ?” and joined the hunt.
Daisy did not fancy running up stairs. She knew the North Hall stairs were closed to the public above the first floor, so she went back to stand at the foot of the main staircase, looking up.
A moment later, the Grand Duke arrived at the top of the main stairs, apparently intending to descend. He saw Daisy at the bottom, changed his mind, and sped on along the giraffe gallery, still going strong, intermittently visible between the pillars.