Chapter 8 #3
“Hmm,” said Alec, turning right on the Bayswater Road. “Bearing in mind that the whole thing could be an elaborate hoax, a con-game to wangle possession of the ruby, I’m inclined to believe he really is … or was … the Grand Duke. If so, it may not be easy to get him on his own.”
“I bet he goes back to the museum,” said Piper, “now he knows we know about the ruby. He can’t keep away from it, even if he sometimes gets bored hanging over it. And like as not he wouldn’t take his mum or the old man with him.”
“A good point, Ernie.”
“Two in a row!” said Tring in a marvelling voice. “Now don’t go getting above yourself, laddie. We can have the commissionaire keep an eye out for Rudolf, Chief, and let us know if he turns up. Pavett may be deaf as a post but he’s not dumb.”
“We’ll do that. Now, ffinch-Brown. He was talking to Witt, the mammal man, in Witt’s office, right, Tom?”
“Right, Chief. He left about five forty, went through the cephalopod gallery, then, he claims, on through the reptile gallery, without seeing Pettigrew nor anyone else, to the east pavilion. He stayed there, studying a giant sloth—would you believe it?—till one of the Chelsea constables found him. Very excitable gentleman.”
“Like Mummery, I gather. Bad luck to have two of them in one case.”
But when they called at Mr. ffinch-Brown’s modern villa on the golf links in Perivale, they found a quite different character from the one Daisy and Tom had described. At home, the anthropologist was a subdued little man.
For this, Alec guessed his wife to be responsible. That
ffinch-Brown had married above his station was obvious, the ffinch likely being added to plain Brown on his marriage.
His smartly marcelled wife had what Ernie later referred to as a posh accent.
Though not openly imperious, she evidently expected to be deferred to, and to be present at the interview.
At this stage in the investigation, Alec did not even attempt to exclude her.
Under her eye, ffinch-Brown repeated unchanged his description of his movements the previous evening. He admitted to a scholarly difference of opinion with Pettigrew.
“But scholars are always prone to differences of opinion,” he said mildly, pushing his spectacles up on his nose.
“That is how knowledge increases, Chief Inspector. I had not the least doubt of my ability to pick out any flint Dr. Pettigrew shaped with his own hands from any number of genuine ancient artifacts. The case is not at all similar to the dispute over bone harpoons in which Dr. Smith Woodward is unhappily enmeshed, far less the Piltdown controversy.”
Fearing a technical lecture on the difference, and unable to see how bone harpoons could possibly figure in his enquiry, Alec hurriedly moved on. “I believe you also differed with Dr. Pettigrew over the gems in his collection, sir?” he said.
Ffinch-Brown flushed, opened his mouth, glanced at his wife, and gave a nervous titter.
“That was a matter for the museum trustees,” he explained, as much to her as to Alec.
“Neither Pettigrew nor I have … had any say as to which department should hold the finished jewels, so though we disagreed, there was no cause for ill feelings.”
“I should hope not,” Mrs. ffinch-Brown pronounced decisively. “Ill feelings have no place in academic circles, which ought to be dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge.”
“They are, my dear. We are.”
“You will undoubtedly find, Chief Inspector, that Dr. Pettigrew’s assailant was an outsider.”
The words were a dismissal. The detectives left.
“We can always catch him at the British Museum,” said Alec. “In the meantime, we’ll have to get the murder weapon to a disinterested expert and find out if it’s ancient or modern.”
“What I don’t see,” said Piper as they drove east, “is why a lady like that’d marry a man like that. Anyone can tell she’s a nob and he isn’t. He’s not even good-looking. Looks like a farmer with them scrappy whiskers.”
“P‘raps that’s the best he can do in the way of an academic beard,” Tring suggested.
He paused to cough hollowly, then went on, “I dare say, when she was a girl, she got bored with all the young nobs without two thoughts to rub together. Can’t you just see him, young and eager, ‘dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge,’ like she said, sweeping her off her fashionable feet? ”
“She’s got him under her thumb now, all right,” said Piper.
Alec could not avoid comparing the ffinch-Browns to himself and Daisy.
Would Daisy grow disillusioned with her middle-class husband and try to remake him to suit?
The doubts he was never quite able to banish raised their heads.
Together with the difficulty of getting leave, they had made him delay even discussing a date for the wedding.
The leave question was no longer a valid excuse.
He dropped Tom and Piper at a tube station and drove home to St. John’s Wood. His mother had already gone to bed, leaving hall and landing lights on for him. Shoes in hand, he crept up the stairs.
“Daddy?” came a sleepy voice from Belinda’s room.
“Did I wake you, sweetheart?” He went in and sat on the edge of her bed.
“No, I woke up anyway, then I heard the car and the door. Daddy, is it true someone was murdered at the Natural History Museum? One of the girls at school said.”
“Yes, I’m afraid so. One of the staff, not a visitor.”
“Oh.” She sounded relieved. “Who was it? Aunt Daisy knows lots of them.”
“Dr. Pettigrew.”
“Isn’t he the stone man? I’m sorry it was him. He was nice to me and Derek … Derek and me, though he was perfectly horrid to the Grand Duke. Poor man! Will you find who did it?”
“Of course, pet,” Alec assured her, though so far he felt he was floundering in mud to the waist, without solid ground in sight. He bent to kiss her. “Nighty-night, sleep tight.”
“Mind the bugs don’t bite,” Bel responded drowsily.
He turned at the door to look at her. She was already fast asleep. She had no doubts of his competence. Nor, he reminded himself, of the rightness of his marrying Daisy.
Sam Johnson described a second marriage as the triumph of hope over experience. He was talking about a bad first marriage, though, and Alec had been very happy with Joan. Yet to be lucky twice seemed too much to hope for.
All life was a gamble, he reminded himself. If Daisy was prepared to take a gamble on him, then how could he not reciprocate?
Besides, he couldn’t live without her, even when her interference in a case was driving him round the bend.
She was not interfering, Daisy assured herself. She could hardly interview the victim’s senior assistant in the victim’s private office without making some reference to the deceased. And it would be rude to cut him off in the middle
of his account of Pettigrew’s determination to master flint-flaking and his malicious triumph in his growing success.
At last Grange exhausted the subject. Daisy embarked on her questions about the work of the Mineralogy Department, and Grange suggested they should go along to the gallery to look at specimens.
For the first time in ages, the sun was shining. Brilliant light flooded through the tall windows on the south side of the gallery, lighting dancing dust-motes and gleaming on polished wood and glass. The fishy mouldings on the rectangular pillars stood out in sharp relief.
With measured steps, Pavett patrolled the gallery.
There were few visitors, several school parties having cancelled trips because of the murder, Daisy gathered.
But over by the windows, the sun picked out a pale blue uniform garnished with a surfeit of gold.
The Grand Duke was leaning over the display case that held the ruby.
“Dash it!” Grange exclaimed. “He’s back. I’d better go and see what he’s up to. Excuse me a minute, Miss Dalrymple.”
Naturally Daisy followed. At the sound of their approaching footsteps, Rudolf Maximilian looked up with a frown. He beckoned imperiously and Grange hurried.
“You work here, nein? Come, see mine ruby.”
“Not yours,” Grange muttered half-heartedly, bending over the case.
Catching up, Daisy saw that the Transcarpathia ruby was in full sunlight. The stone cast a pool of red light, all too reminiscent of blood.
Grange straightened, his face pale. “That’s not beryllium aluminium silicate,” he gasped, with an accusing glare at the Grand Duke. “That’s paste. Strass glass. What have you done with the ruby?”