Rattle His Bones (20 page)

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Authors: Carola Dunn

BOOK: Rattle His Bones
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Motives, rather: his humiliating exit in the Keeper's grasp; the business of the flints; and, if he was the thief, the discovery of the theft.
Too much Witt makes the world rotten, Daisy thought, beginning to grow drowsy. Tennyson? If she had learnt nothing else at school, she had had English poetry drummed into her. Lines often roamed through her head, accurately or inaccurately, when she was falling asleep.
But she must not fall asleep yet. She had not considered the case against Mummery.
There was an old fellow called Mummery,
Who fell into a basin of flummery.
He swam to the side
Where he hung on, and cried,
“I'm a victim of jiggery-pokery!”
It didn't quite rhyme, and anyway, Pettigrew was the victim. Mummery would never have killed him within reach of his fragile fossilized fools. Reptiles. Except that Mummery had a whale of a … a
Pareiasaurus
of a temper, and when he lost it he was not apt to consider consequences.
Daisy drifted off with an image of the smashed Pareiasaurus in her mind. It metamorphosed into a Megalosaurus, strolling along on the end of a dog-lead, its ribs rattling. Bits of bone kept dropping off, all over the carpet.
“You mustn't do that,” Belinda scolded. “Gran will be frightfully cross.”
“Who dusts the dinosaurs, I'd like to know?” Mrs. Fletcher demanded angrily. “Don't you realize they have jewels in their heads, like the toad in the fable?”
In her sleep, Daisy smiled.
P
angs of hunger began to distract Daisy from her work. She glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. Nearly lunchtime.
Practically all the planning for the article was done: the headings arranged in logical order, vital and particularly interesting bits of her notes underlined in red ink. Another hour or so and she could begin the actual writing. She needed a break.
Standing up, she stretched and went out into the hall.
Mrs. Potter was straightening her hat in the looking-glass, preparatory to leaving for the day. Artificial cherries bobbed, silk violets nodded, and sequins glittered as she turned to Daisy.
“I'asn't done your study out proper in a month o' Sundays, Miss Daisy,” she said severely. “You'll be able to grow spuds on that desk soon if you don't let me dust.”
“As soon as I finish this article,” Daisy promised, “you can have a whole morning at it. Toodle-oo, then, see you Monday.”
“You take termorrer off, miss. All work and no play, like they say.”
The char departed and Daisy went thoughtfully down to
the kitchen. Dust—she had dreamt about dust, and she had a feeling it was important to remember the dream.
She took a tin of sardines from the cupboard. As usual when she was absentminded, she put the key on crooked, so the lid rolled back crooked and only half way, and she had to extract the fish with a fork. Fish? Dust and fish? What on earth was the connection?
Eyeing the fish on her plate, she decided she wasn't really awfully keen on sardines. For a start, someone ought to be able to invent an easier way to open the tins than those idiotic keys. And then, there were the bones … .
Keys, bones, and fish. Dr. Smith Woodward, who kept losing his keys, was a recognized expert on fossil fish. The fossil fish were in the dinosaur gallery.
Who dusts the dinosaurs?
The dream flooded back.
Who dusted the dinosaurs, those fragile fossils with their heads in the air, out of reach from the floor? Who but their curator? “Has to do it all himself, does our Mr. Steadman,” said Sergeant Wilfred Atkins.
Yet Steadman showed no apparent interest in the police investigation, being almost feverishly engrossed in his Saltopus. Too feverishly, perhaps, Daisy thought. He was a nervy type who, having stolen the jewels, might well lose his head and lash out if he understood Pettigrew to say all was discovered.
Still, why choose what must be a nerve-racking time to start on a new and complex project? There was the
Lost World
man, of course, with the lure of fame and fortune which always accompanied the word Hollywood.
It dawned on Daisy that the man from Hollywood might have arrived like manna from heaven. Steadman himself said he had not yet completed models of all the missing bones,
but O'Brien's interest was the perfect excuse to start assembling a skeleton not really quite ready for display. And for the assembly he needed ladders—
Ladders ready and waiting in the gallery, so that when the right moment came, he could seize his chance to retrieve the stolen gems from the dinosaurs' heads.
Abandoning the sardines, Daisy ran upstairs to the telephone. On the way, doubts arose. She refused to tell Alec that her insight arose from a dream. Was her reasoning good enough to ring him at Scotland Yard, or was there a fatal flaw she had not spotted? He would not be pleased if she disturbed him at work for nothing.
Perhaps he was at home. It was worth trying, though she'd be a bit pipped if he had gone home after seeing Constable Westcott and not 'phoned her to tell her what he had found out. After all, he might never have heard of Westcott but for her.
She dialled the St. John's Wood number. After several rings, she heard Belinda's breathless voice giving the number.
“It's Aunt Daisy, darling.”
“Oh, hello, Aunt Daisy. Sorry I was so slow to answer. I was brushing Nana.”
“Good for you.” Daisy enquired after the puppy and her relations with Mrs. Fletcher, which had improved slightly. Then she asked, “Is Daddy there?”
“No, he had to go to Devon.”
“Devon!”
“It's quite a long way, isn't it? He said he won't be back today. He went to see a man this morning, and the neighbors said he'd gone to stay with his sister in Devon, only they weren't sure of her name or the village or anything, just the name of the farm, near Taviscott. I think.”
“Tavistock?”
“That's it. Daddy decided he really needed to talk to the man, so he and Mr. Tring went right away, in the car.”
“Bother!” said Daisy. She gave Alec the benefit of the doubt and assumed he had rung her when Lucy was on the 'phone, as she had been for some time before going out.
“I'm sorry, Aunt Daisy,” Belinda said anxiously. “Are you awfully cross with Daddy?”
“No, darling, it's no use being cross when he's just doing his job.”
“It isn't, is it? Aunt Daisy, please will you hold on for just a minute?” The ear-piece clicked on the table, then Daisy heard a muffled voice: “Granny, may I please invite Aunt Daisy to tea,
please?
”
The invitation was proffered and accepted, and Daisy returned to her lunch. The sardines looked less appetizing than ever, especially as she was going out for tea. Putting them away in the larder, she vowed never to eat them again once she was married to Alec.
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.

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