Chapter 13 #2
“Right-oh, Daddy.” Another of Daisy’s phrases Belinda had picked up, Alec thought fondly.
“Either I’ll be making an arrest,” he told Daisy, “or I’ll pick you up for the concert even if we only make the second half.”
“Right-oh. Good luck, darling.”
Belinda was back with a tin pie-pan draped with a napkin. He kissed her and his mother, who came out of the sitting room, and dashed back out to the car. Setting the pie-pan on the passenger seat beside him, he drove off.
The two Jews were waiting in an interview room.
Alec was pleased to see they had been brought cups of tea, though the old man had not touched his.
With prejudice so prevalent in society, the battle to keep it from affecting the dealings, if not the opinions, of the supposedly impartial police force was never-ending.
“Detective Chief Inspector Fletcher,” Alec introduced himself. “I’m in charge of the museum case.”
The young man jumped to his feet. Short, wiry, wide-awake, he wore a beautifully fitted suit, light grey, in a cheap material and with something subtly foreign about the cut. His shirt was pale blue; in place of collar and tie, he had a blue silk foulard around his neck.
“Joe Goldman.” His slight accent was pure East End with no hint of foreignness. Alec shook his hand. “This is my
Zeyde, my grandfather, Solomon Abramowitz. He’s got something to tell you.”
The old man was dressed in the traditional gabardine and black hat. Apart from that, he could have been Dr. Bentworth’s twin, another bent gnome with thick-lensed, gold-rimmed spectacles through which he peered uncertainly at Alec.
“I appreciate your coming in, sir. I gather you have information about the gems stolen from the Natural History Museum?”
“I t’ink so.” Abramowitz’s gnarled hands fumbled with a grubby sheet of paper on the table before him. Alec recognized the police circular. “Zis list—I have seen zese stones.”
“You bought them?”
“No, no, I do not buy and sell. I make. For men who like to give nice present but not have much money. For peoples who need to pawn good stones and vant no one knows. For ladies nervous to wear real jewels to big public dance. All sorts reasons. Very good glass gems I make; very exact I copy.”
“Zeyde’s a real, old-fashioned craftsman,” said Goldman, proud and affectionate.
“So the stones on the list were brought to you to be copied,” said Alec.
“Yes, all them. I not know is stolen, is wrong,” the old man said anxiously.
“I quite understand that, sir. There is no question of charges, I promise you.”
Abramowitz looked bewildered. His grandson spoke briefly in Yiddish and he nodded. “I am honest man,” he reaffirmed. “I believe Mr. Brown when he say …”
“Brown?” Alec interrupted. “That was the name he gave?”
“Brown,” the old man confirmed, shrugging. “Is not his name?”
“I wish I knew!” Alec wondered if it was ffinch-Brown, or a simple alias, or if he was altogether on the wrong track.
“Smith, Jones, Brown.” Young Goldman laughed.
“Brown,” his grandfather insisted. “I write in my book, so.” He took a diary from a pocket and slowly turned the pages, holding it a couple of inches from his eyes.
“Many people give not own name. He say he has bought gems for investment, but his wife vants to vear. She is careless woman, often loses t’ings, so he comes to me. Here, see, Mr. Policeman.”
He handed over the notebook. The writing was large and shaky and—to Alec—totally incomprehensible, in an unknown alphabet.
Seeing Alec’s blank face, Goldman took the notebook from him. “Brown, evening,” he translated, “and the date is Monday the second of July.”
“Thank you. It fits nicely.” The first day of Pettigrew’s holiday. “But I assume, sir, you can’t have made the copies on the spot?”
“No, no, Mr. Brown stay with me for all night, tell wife he is avay for business. I make many measurements, drawings, photographs, notes of colours. Vas much hurry, but no fancy settings to vorry. Early, very early in morning, he take stones and go.”
“He must have smuggled them back into the museum,” said Goldman admiringly, “and put ’em back so nobody knew they’d been gone, then pinched them again later on.”
“Vun veek and some days he give me to make.”
Goldman found the next entry. “Brown, midday. Friday the thirteenth.”
Not generally regarded as an auspicious date. It had
worked for “Brown.” Pettigrew had returned to the museum the following Monday and noticed nothing wrong.
“Brown” had gone on his lunch hour to pick up the fakes. He must have stayed at work late that evening, made the substitution … and done what with the real gems?
Abramowitz was getting restless, muttering something in Yiddish to his grandson.
“Sorry,” said Alec, “you wanted to be home by sunset.”
“The old people think it’s wrong to travel or work on the Sabbath,” Goldman said indulgently.
“I’ll get you there.” Thanks to Summer Time. Now for the all-important question: “What did Brown look like, sir?”
“Dark clo’es. Hat. Big man.”
Looking at the bespectacled gnome, Alec’s heart sank. “Big wide or big tall?”
Abramowitz gestured vaguely. “Big,” he repeated.
Goldman confirmed Alec’s fears. “Zeyde thinks I’m big. He does close work with a jeweller’s glass, of course, but he’s practically blind without it.”
Alec swallowed an oath. Without much hope, he asked, “What about his voice. Did he have any kind of accent?”
“No, he speak good English.”
At best it was another indication that the Grand Duke was not responsible for the theft. Neither Ruddlestone’s Lancashire nor Witt’s public-school pronunciation would make any impression on an immigrant from Central Europe.
“I hope we haven’t wasted your time, sir,” said Goldman rather anxiously, as if he expected imminent arrest for obstructing the police in the course of their duties.
“Not at all,” Alec reassured him. “The dates and times give us something to work on. It’s always possible the name may prove useful, though it doesn’t seem likely. Most of all, we now don’t need to waste any further effort looking for the
maker of the imitations. No, as I said before, we very much appreciate your coming forward, gentlemen. And now let me drive you home.”
Rescuing his dinner just as Abramowitz was about to sit on it, Alec transferred it to the Austin’s back seat, beside Goldman. He delivered them to Whitechapel just before the sun touched the horizon.
“I’ll have a constable drop in on Sunday, sir,” he said to the old man, “just in case you remember anything else. And we may have to take a formal statement at a later date.”
Leaving Goldman explaining this to his grandfather, Alec hurried back towards Chelsea, eating on the way.
Dobson and Bel had done him proud, with cold chicken and cheese cut to bite size, a raw carrot, an apple sliced and cored, a bread-and-butter sandwich, and two of Bel’s rock buns.
These last were much less rocklike than her first effort, made months ago in Daisy’s honour.
In Mulberry Place, Daisy was watching at the sitting-room window. She dashed out to the car before Alec had time to do more than get out and go around to open the passenger-side door for her.
“No arrest,” she commiserated, “but the concert sounds simply spiffing, darling. What happened?”
He told her about the strass glass maker and his grandson, and she reciprocated with Grand Duke Rudolf Maximilian’s near attack on the cave bear.
As she finished, they reached Langham Place.
Though they had to leave the car some distance from Queen’s Hall, they were not quite the last stragglers to arrive.
“Sorry I’m not in evening togs,” Alec said as they hurried up the stairs to take their seats.
“Darling, it’s such a wonder to have you to myself for half an evening, you could wear bathers and I wouldn’t care.”
Between holding his hand and the waves of music surging into Fingal’s Cave, Daisy had no thoughts to spare for crime for a while.
The unknown Prokofiev piano concerto, his third, proved so spectacularly brilliant as to be all-absorbing.
Yet somewhere in the back of her mind she must have been mulling over the new information, for when the interval came, the questions on the tip of her tongue were all about theft and murder.
Alec got in first, as they went to stretch their legs in the lobby. “How is your article coming along?”
“Very well. I went to the Entomology department this morning. I’ve typed up those notes, and read through the whole lot, and actually started really planning the article. It’s more complicated than anything I’ve done before.”
“But you’re finished at the museum? Good.”
“Pretty much. There are bound to be a few odds and ends to clear up once I start writing. Do you think the jewels are still there, hidden somewhere frightfully clever?”
“It’s possible. Not inside a cave bear, perhaps. Your objections to that seem valid. But finding something so small in a place so large is as good as impossible.”
“And you can’t search everyone every day, of course. So what can you do?”
“It’s a waiting game. We’ve bolted and barred all but one staff exit and we have men watching that and the main entrance. All the chief suspects are discreetly followed from the moment they leave the museum until they return. If any of them goes near a jeweller, we’ve got him.”
“What a pity your fake-making jeweller is blind as a bat! Still, ffinch-Brown—even if he was idiotic enough to give half his real name—is small, and Ruddlestone is surely large enough to qualify as more than merely big.”
Alec laughed. “Yes, that’s a point. The dates may help,
too, though it’s rather a long time ago for people to remember whether they noticed anything odd.”
“I guessed the jewels must have been stolen while Pettigrew was on holiday,” Daisy said smugly. “Oh, darling, that reminds me! I suppose you know that one of the constables who was on night duty then has retired since?”