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Authors: Carola Dunn

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BOOK: Rattle His Bones
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“I wouldn't mind stretching my legs, but isn't that an artists' haunt?” he asked with caution.
“Used to be. The Bohemians have abandoned it as old-fashioned, but it still serves good, cheap food, and quickly. A starving artist who's scraped together the price of a meal can't wait to be fed. How did it go at the museum?”
“I didn't learn much of significance,” Alec said gloomily. “As Tom says, the place is a regular rabbit warren, connecting doors and back-stairs everywhere. Even with the plans, it took me an hour to sort it out. All the suspects could quite well have been where they claimed to be, but they also could have got to the reptile gallery and back without being seen.”
“Does that mean you think Pettigrew had an appointment to meet someone there?”
“It's possible, but the murderer may have met him by chance.”
“I can't see why Pettigrew should have been there by chance,” Daisy objected. “He despised fossils.”
“Witt suggested he might have been on his way to the General Library, perhaps to look up something about prehistoric flint implements. I gather he had recently developed an interest in the subject.”
“Yes, that was what he was on about when he dragged Mr. Witt bodily from my side.”
“Witt admitted to that incident. He claimed not to have taken offence. Pettigrew being such a mannerless boor, it would be a fruitless waste of energy.”
“Fruitless to protest, I dare say,” Daisy observed, “but he didn't exactly look as if he took being manhandled at all kindly.”
Alec was equally sceptical. He neither trusted nor liked Calvin Witt, who appeared suspiciously eager to be of assistance. The Fossil Mammal Curator was too smooth, his manner suave, his hair sleekly pomaded. His face was too young for the years his curatorship suggested, especially as he was of an age to have fought in the War, which should have taken several years from his work experience. Or perhaps he had gained the position at an early age through family influence, which would not make Alec like him any the better.
It was
not
jealousy, Alec told himself. He must not succumb to the niggling worm which still now and then reminded him that he was ten years older than Daisy and not of her class. She had been joking when she described Witt as handsome and charming.
Alec looked down at her as they turned into King's Road. As if she felt his gaze, she glanced up, smiling happily, and slipped her hand through his arm. They might have been discussing sitting-room wallpaper, not a brutal murder.
He
ought
to be discussing wallpaper with her, not murder—but it was damnably difficult to avoid a topic in which they had a mutual interest.
He was about to change the subject when she said, “I suppose Ol' Stony could have been on his way to consult Witt about the flints. Or rather, to demand information. That was more his style.”
“Yes, Witt actually proposed that possibility, too, though he seemed to think Pettigrew would be more likely to send for him. The route is the same as to the library. There are private stairs next to Pettigrew's office which go all the way down to the basement, but on the ground floor they debouche only into Smith Woodward's office. So Pettigrew would go either down the main stairs and through the mammal gallery …”
“In which case I would certainly have seen him.”
“ … Or down the private stairs at the east end of the mineral gallery.”
“And then through to the reptile gallery where he died,” Daisy said. “Mummery's domain. How did your interview with him go?”
“You warned me he was explosive.”
Alec made a funny story of Mummery's temper. The fossil reptile curator started out furious at having his work interrupted
by police with nothing better to do than pursue the benefactor of humanity who rid the earth of Pettigrew. Especially as Pettigrew had ruined his Pareiasaurus, which, if repairable, would take months of hard work to restore.
Diverted to the question of what he was doing in the General rather than the Geological Library, he was provoked to another outburst: He was consulting an obscure German text comparing modern with ancient Crocodilia; it obviously ought to be in Geology but Zoology also claimed it, so it was relegated to General.
Asked to suggest why the mineralogist's corpse was found in his gallery, Mummery had snapped that he certainly did not belong there. He then embarked on an irate and very technical lecture on why—unlike Pettigrew—the dinosaurs did belong among the reptiles.
“So I gave up on him,” Alec confessed ruefully, “for the present. Here we are.”
He pushed open the door of the Good Intent. A pug puppy danced forward to welcome them to the small, quiet restaurant, its chequer-clothed tables mostly empty. While Daisy greeted the little dog, Alec glanced around at the once avant-garde paintings on the walls. One was a portrait of a smug pug with a violet ribbon round its neck, perhaps the present tutelary canine's predecessor.
Seated, Daisy gave her attention to the menu, which offered a solid rather than exciting choice. Selecting Scotch broth and shepherd's pie did not occupy her for long. Alec plumped for celery soup and Lancashire hot pot. By the time he had given the waitress their order, Daisy's thoughts had returned to the museum murder.
“Who else did you see? The commissionaires, I expect, and Dr. Smith Woodward, though he's out of it, and Dr. Bentworth, though he couldn't possibly have done it. What
about Ruddlestone? He's far too cheerful to commit murder, isn't he?”
“Being under suspicion certainly didn't cow him,” Alec said dryly. “Far from it. He presented us with his theory that detective work and palæontology have a great deal in common, in the painstaking following up of often insignificant-appearing clues. The notion amused him.”
Daisy smiled. “He's easily amused, and quite amusing. You didn't winkle out any particular reason for him to hate Pettigrew?”
“No, nothing beyond the general dislike.”
“And Steadman?”
“Again, nothing specific. He struck me as a nervy type, and the sort of chap to hold a grudge, but you were right, his animosity is directed at the museum trustees and at Americans who send plaster models instead of real fossils.”
Their soup arrived. Daisy took a few spoonfuls in meditative silence, then said, “Perhaps Pettigrew jeered at Steadman about his biggest dinosaur being plaster, until it was beyond bearing. He was obnoxious enough about the uselessness of real fossils. I can't imagine what he might have had to say about a fake.”
“I asked,” said Alec. “According to Steadman, Pettigrew never said a word about the model because he didn't have a leg to stand on. The biggest diamond in the mineralogy collection is a fake.”
Daisy laughed. “Oh yes, I'd forgotten. The Cullinan is paste. I have an appointment with one of Pettigrew's assistants tomorrow, Alec. Grange, his name is. You're not going to make a fuss, are you, darling? I really must get on with my research.”
“That's all right, Grange and Randell are in the clear. They left on time and went together to the Crooked Elm in
Old Brompton Road. They claim always to need a drink after a day with Pettigrew.”
“Oh dear, no one mourns him, do they? At least, did he have any family?”
“He was a widower, with two grown sons. One's in the army, stationed in Ireland at present. The other's a solicitor in Truro.”
“So you didn't have to break the news to them.”
“No, thank heaven.” Alec found informing bereaved relatives of a murder far more distressing than dealing with a corpse no longer capable of feeling pain. “The Truro police and the soldier's C.O. had to cope with that. Both sons are on their way, and I'll have to see them, but parricide isn't on the cards.”
“Two fewer suspects to worry about,” Daisy said blithely. “How was your soup?”
“Soup?” Alec looked down at his empty bowl, and confessed sheepishly, “I didn't even notice eating it. Or drinking it, if you prefer.”
“Well, it can't have been too dreadful, at least. Eat or drink rather depends on whether it's thick soup or thin, I suppose. Supping is really the best word: to sup one's soup. A pity it's dropped out of use.”
Over the second course they talked about language. Alec entertained Daisy with examples of eighteenth-century slang, picked up while studying the Georgian period at Manchester University. She blushed adorably when he reminded her that the little mole by her mouth was placed just where Georgian ladies used to stick the face-patch known as the “Kissing.”
Had the A.C. meant it when he ordered Alec to marry Daisy with all possible speed? Would he really expedite leave, the difficulty of obtaining which being the main obstacle in setting a date?
Pondering, Alec fell silent over his Double Gloucester and biscuits. Daisy, engaged in demolishing a dish of Queen of Puddings, was too stickily occupied to talk.
He had got away without telling her much about the case, he congratulated himself. Then it dawned on him that she had not actually asked much, not even the claimed whereabouts of the suspects at the time of the murder. His uneasy suspicion of collusion between Daisy and Tom Tring reawoke. He nearly taxed her with it, but decided on the whole it was best to let sleeping dogs lie.
She remained quiet as he paid the bill and helped her on with her coat. Leaving the Good Intent, they turned down King's Road, past illuminated shop windows—many displaying artists' supplies, one or two showing artists' works—and an extraordinary number of pubs. They were passing a milliner's, filled with amazingly diverse variations on the basic cloche all women seemed to wear nowadays, when Daisy spoke.
“Alec, how was he killed? I've been putting off asking, because part of me doesn't really want to know.”
“Then I shan't tell you.”
“Do. Please do, darling. It can't be worse than the frightful things one imagines.”
“No, maybe not. In effect, it was no different from any stabbing, but it's quite extraordinary, nonetheless. The pathologist found a sharpened flint in Pettigrew's chest.”
A
flint! Daisy's first thought was that she should have guessed. The second was, “But how did it get there? I mean, if he was stabbed with it, surely the whole thing couldn't have disappeared inside him—ugh! But you know what I mean. Enough should have stuck out to hold onto. Could it have been bunged with a sling or something?”
“Unlikely,” Alec said. “Even if it hit hard enough to penetrate, according to our ballistics man, the odds against its striking the right spot point first are astronomical. Well, palæontological, anyway.”
“Biblical, rather. Doubtless David could have done it,” Daisy commented. “So you don't have to worry about delivery from a distance. Then how … ?”
“There's a dab of glue at the rounded end of the flint. We think it was stuck onto some sort of shaft to make a spear, or perhaps a dagger. The museum uses every glue known to mankind, but none makes a strong bond between wood and stone, apparently. When the shaft hit the skin—there's a suggestive bruise—the bond broke. The shaft came away, while the head stuck in the wound and impeded leakage of blood.”
“Ugh!” Daisy said again.
“Sorry, love, but you did ask.”
“Yes, I know. Does it mean Witt and ffinch-Brown are at the top of your list?”
“Not necessarily. Witt was messing about with flints in the work room behind the General Library. Anyone could have picked one up. But Pettigrew himself was experimenting with them, too. He might have brought it with him, perhaps to show Witt.”
“Gosh,” said Daisy, “I wonder if that's what he was talking about?”
“Talking about?” Alec said sharply. The lamp-post at the corner of Mulberry Place illuminated lowered brows over glinting ice-grey eyes. “When?”
Daisy sighed. The moment of truth was upon her. Confession could no longer be postponed. Besides, Alec would probably go to see Mrs. Ditchley tomorrow, and she was bound to mention Daisy's visit.
“To start at the beginning, I called on Mrs. Ditchley this afternoon,” she admitted, and crossed her fingers in her coat pocket before fibbing, “just to make sure she and the children had recovered from the shock.”
“I trust they had?” His politeness had a dangerous edge.
“Oh yes,” she said airily. “The children came home from school while I was there, and of course they wanted to talk about it.”
“Of course. Without a single question from you.”
“Do you want to know what they told me or not?”
“If you please.” But leaning back against his Austin Chummy, Alec regarded her with unmistakable grimness. “Go on.”
“It came out that Katy, the littlest, had wandered off from the others toward the arch to the reptiles. She didn't see anything, but she heard a man say, ‘You fossilized fool, you think
you're so clever, but I know how it was done!' He might have been referring to a flint he'd chipped himself, don't you think?”
“Possibly,” Alec conceded. “It hardly seems so inflammatory a claim as to lead to murder, even prefaced by an insult. Are you sure of his words? Is the child?”
“Not exactly,” Daisy conceded in her turn. She explained Jennifer's part in the reconstruction, and the uncertainty over the precise terms of the insult. “And of course there's no way to know for absolute certain whether it was in fact Pettigrew Katy heard. But, Alec, ffinch-Brown told me Pettigrew meant to challenge him to distinguish between genuine ancient flints and one he'd chipped himself.”
“He did? Great Scott, Daisy, what else haven't you revealed yet?”
“‘I tell thee everything I can. I've little to relate,'” Daisy misquoted the White Knight's song.
“I hope you're not going to produce another ‘aged aged man,'” Alec said somewhat sourly. “Bentworth's as much as I can cope with. He fell asleep in the middle of our interview.”
“I don't know of any more. But honestly, darling, you did rather rush me along, with Piper popping up with a new name every thirty seconds. At a more leisurely pace, bits and pieces have a chance to come to mind.”
“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 Czernoberg.”
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.
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