Chapter 8
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, palaeontological, 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.