Chapter 10
Should she wake him? Alec had lots to do, but he would be much more efficient after a nap.
Daisy sat down opposite, her feet on a petit-point footstool embroidered by her great-grandmother.
Things would be just the same when they were married, she knew.
She’d never be sure when he was coming home, and often he’d arrive too tired to be sociable.
Sometimes he would share his cases with her, and sometimes shut her out.
If she was ever involved in a crime again, a highly unlikely circumstance whatever he and Tom said about propensities, he’d be angry, Fate or no Fate.
Belinda and Mrs. Fletcher would go on sharing his time and attention.
Daisy would not have it any other way—at least as far as Bel was concerned, she admitted to herself.
Not that she had any intention of displacing Mrs. Fletcher.
Alec’s mother might disapprove of her working, as well as of her noble birth, but her mother-in-law’s presence would allow her to go on writing.
Alec had no intention of trying to stop her. That was one of the reasons she loved him. Few men recognized a woman’s right to a career.
She contemplated the sleeping man, recalling their first meeting.
From the first, even while she was still surprised to find a policeman so gentlemanly, he had impressed her as forceful and determined.
From the first she had been attracted by the way his dark hair sprang crisply from his temples, and by the way his smile warmed his grey eyes.
The dark, heavy eyebrows between, skeptically raised or wrathfully lowered, had not intimidated her. Not for more than a moment, anyway.
Knowing him had healed the raw wound of Michael’s death in the War, blown up by a landmine with his Friends’ Ambulance Unit. Daisy would always have a place in her heart for the memory of her first love, but she wanted to marry Alec. She wanted to marry him soon.
Ay, there’s the rub, she thought. How were they to escape the combined toils of her mother and Scotland Yard?
Alec yawned, settled more comfortably, then stiffened and opened his eyes. “Great Scott, have I been asleep?”
“Only for a few minutes. I hoped a nap would do you good, but it’s barely been a catnap.”
“I think it’s helped, all the same.” He sat up straight. “Your notes?”
She handed them over. “The first bit’s what you asked for. The rest is just trying to sort out my thoughts.”
To her gratification, he read the whole thing before, returning to the beginning, he said, “So the Grand Duke did draw Grange’s attention to the ruby. I agree it’s unlikely he’d have done so if he was responsible for the substitution.”
“I can’t believe he’d have gone on visiting the museum, let alone fussing over that blasted jewel. I don’t think he’d have pinched the rest, either, whatever Sergeant Jameson says about ruses and wily foreigners. What about Grange? He need not have taken any notice of Rudolf Maximilian’s
concern, let alone have insisted on examining the rest of the collection.”
“They’re both low on my list at present, though Grange was in a good position to manage the theft, as was Randell. The Grand Duke is still near the top of the murder list.”
“If murder and theft are unconnected. Alec,” Daisy cried, as inspiration struck, “has it dawned on you that the person who could most easily have stolen the gems was Pettigrew himself?”
“It had crossed my mind,” Alec said, with a grimace. “That would be the very dickens of a complication, which I haven’t time to think through just now. I must be on my way, love.” He heaved himself to his feet, waving the papers. “May I take these?”
“Yes, I have a fairly readable carbon copy.”
“Then will you type out the first couple of paragraphs alone—the facts, not the speculation—and sign and date them, for an official statement?” Folding the two sheets, he slipped them into his jacket pocket.
“By the by, it had not dawned on me that Pettigrew’s last words might have referred to the jewel theft, or have been misunderstood by the thief to do so.
That would tie everything together very neatly, which would please the super no end. ”
“Really, darling?” Daisy flung her arms around his neck and kissed him. When he reluctantly let her go, some minutes later, she said, “I’m frightfully glad my idea helps. Are you going to tell Superintendent Crane it was mine?”
“Credit where credit is due. But Daisy, don’t take it as encouragement to put your oar in. You’ve finished at the museum, haven’t you?” he asked hopefully.
“Gosh, nowhere near. I got a bit on Mineralogy today, despite the disturbance, but I’ll need more. I haven’t even
started on Entomology, and I was just getting my teeth into Geology when the fossils started crashing about my ears.”
“Great Scott, I though you were done with Geology at least! All right, if you must go back you must, but for heaven’s sake limit your questions to scientific matters. There’s a murderer on the loose, remember.”
“I’ll remember,” Daisy promised.
“If I were you, if you don’t absolutely have to be there tomorrow, I’d wait a day or two. We’re searching the place from towers to basement tonight, and it’s going to be chaos for a while.”
“You think the jewels may still be there?” she asked, surprised.
Alec shrugged. “Who knows? They may have been taken away two or three months ago, but we have to look. There’s always a chance, too, of finding whatever it was Pettigrew used as a shaft for his spear or dagger. We have to look, however hopeless it may be in that labyrinth.”
“But you don’t really need to search everywhere, do you, darling? I mean, most places there’d be a risk of someone other than the thief coming across the jewels by accident.”
“Yes.” Alec stared at her bemusedly. “Of course. Yes, of course! I must be tireder than I thought not to realize that. Tired enough to be grumpy enough for none of my men to point it out to me! But there is still a dickens of a lot to do. I really must go, love. I’ll ’phone when I can.”
Daisy saw him out. The sun had sunk below the houses in the cross street, casting Mulberry Place into shadow. A chill in the air felt more like autumn than summer. Shivering, Daisy closed the front door and went upstairs to fetch a cardigan before going back to work.
Now that Alec was gone, she thought of all sorts of questions
she wished she had asked while he was in a communicative mood—or too tired to resist. Who, for instance, were his suspects?
As far as the murder was concerned, it seemed to boil down to the four curators, Mummery, Ruddlestone, Steadman, and Witt, plus ffinch-Brown and the Grand Duke.
Daisy wrote down their names. The theft was much more complicated.
Without knowing when it took place, no one could be eliminated for lack of opportunity.
Pettigrew, Grange, and Randell had the most opportunity, assuming theft and murder were not connected.
If they were connected, the curators had more opportunity than ffinch-Brown and the Grand Duke.
Daisy was prepared to eliminate Rudolf Maximilian—from the theft, not the murder—but Sergeant Jameson’s notions about skeleton keys and hiding when the museum closed could apply to ffinch-Brown.
And to any jewel-thief in the kingdom, habitual or onetime, assuming the murder was unconnected.
Daisy felt her mind going cross-eyed. No wonder Alec was tired!
If she was going to get anywhere, she had to concentrate on two entangled crimes and leave other possibilities to the police.
Of course, she really ought to leave the whole lot to the police and get on with her article, as Alec would heartily agree.
But it was jolly hard to come up with interesting questions about insects when a double mystery waited to be solved.
She wished she had asked Alec how he imagined the theft had been accomplished. It was not a simple burglary. Somehow the thief had substituted false gems which looked sufficiently like the real ones to deceive a casual glance from people who knew them well.
Good quality strass glass jewelry, though vastly less valuable than genuine stones, was not cheap. Daisy’s mother had
muttered ominously about having her jewelry copied when she was first reduced to the penury of the charming Georgian Dower House, with its mere five bedrooms (excluding servants’ quarters) and delightful garden. Discovery of the cost had allowed the Dowager Viscountess to back down gracefully.
The thief had had to pay for the paste gems. If he had not yet sold them, Alec should look for someone who was suddenly poorer, not suddenly richer.
The Grand Duke?
Alec also needed to look for the jeweller who copied the gems, not only for possible purchasers. Daisy wondered whether he had realized. Should she drop a hint?
Surely the police would not miss anything so obvious.
What was less obvious was how on earth the thief had accomplished the substitution.
It must have taken more than one visit, and even then it could not have been easy.
More difficult of course for ffinch-Brown and the Grand Duke than for the four curators, who at least had good reason to be in the museum after closing hours.
Oh blast, she was going round in circles again. The sound of the telephone bell ringing out in the hall came as a relief.
She gave her number.
“Aunt Daisy?”
“Belinda! Hello, darling.”
“Aunt Daisy, is Daddy there?” Belinda sounded on the verge of tears.
Only a dire emergency would make the well-trained child telephone in search of her father, Daisy thought in alarm. “No, darling, he left quarter of an hour ago. What’s the trouble? Can I help?”
“Oh, Aunt Daisy!” A sob broke through, then the story
poured out. “It’s Nana. She chewed up one of Granny’s slippers and Gran’s awfully angry and she says … she says Nana has to go!”
“Oh dear!”