Chapter 14 #2
“Three quid and change, in a tobacco jar on the mantelpiece. If he’s been extorting cash, he must’ve hidden it in one of those secret dungeons.”
“Darling!” Daisy stopped shaking the rattle as she looked up from the nursery floor, where she was sitting. “I’m so glad you’re home in time to see how clever our babies are.”
“Should they be on the floor with the dog, Daisy? My mother would have forty fits.”
“That’s what I told Nanny. That’s what persuaded her to permit it. We always had a dog or two wandering in and out of the nursery when I was little. I’m sure it’s good for them. They won’t grow up afraid of dogs, and by the time they’re old enough to pester her, she’ll be used to them.”
Alec sank wearily into a chair. “All right, if you say so. Show me what brilliant things our offspring are doing.”
“Watch. They both raise their heads and gurgle when I shake the rattle. Miranda keeps her eyes on it when I move it across in front of her, and Oliver grabs at it.”
“I wonder if that’s a prognostication of their future attitudes to life. Miranda will be contemplative and Oliver will be grasping.”
“He won’t!” Daisy said indignantly. “It could just as well mean he’s going to be good at sports.
Oh dear, Nana’s sniffing his little bottom.
I expect his nappy needs changing. Nanny’s having her supper—that’s why she let me play with them—but she’ll be up in a minute, thank heaven.
I’m glad you’re home in time for dinner, darling. ”
“So am I, but I’m going to change out of these shoes first.”
“There’s an awful lot of walking at the Tower, isn’t there? Though I don’t suppose you had to go up and down all those winding stairs. Put on your slippers—I’m not expecting anyone to drop in this evening.”
“Good. Nana, come! We appreciate the alert, but excessive interest is unwholesome and unbecoming. Perhaps I can teach you to bring me my slippers. You know, Daisy, I think we’re going to have to start calling either Nana or Nanny something else before the twins begin to talk, or we’ll have the most unholy confusion. ”
Daisy let Alec finish his soup before she said, slightly reproachfully, “I assume you’d have told me if you’d arrested anyone. I expected you to come home really late if you were still baffled.”
“Not so much baffled as frustrated. We’ve interviewed just about every inhabitant of the Inner Ward, except the rank and file Guardsmen not on sentry duty, whose whereabouts are pretty well attested to by their NCOs.
Tom and Ernie and I spent hours going over our notes of the interviews, and where do you think it all leads? ”
“Rumford,” Daisy said at once. “Won’t he talk?”
Alec shook his head, but he waited until Mrs. Dobson had cleared the soup plates and brought in the veal cutlets before he said, “Not so much won’t as can’t.”
“Whatever do you mean? Don’t tell me he’s been murdered, too!”
“No, no, nor died of his chest complaint. I’d still be afraid he’d managed to get away somehow if you hadn’t told me about his coughing. In the end, I put two and two together and ran him to earth in the hospital.”
“Heavens, I never thought of that. That must have been where he was making for when Crabtree and I met him at the top of the steps. Oh, darling, does that mean he got there before Crabtree was killed?”
“Officially signed in at quarter past ten,” Alec said gloomily. “The police surgeon puts the murder at around midnight, certainly not before eleven.”
“What a nuisance! Rumford would have been the perfect murderer. He really couldn’t . . . ?”
“He really couldn’t. Dr. Macleod is trying some new kind of treatment that involves knocking him out with drugs.”
“Not permanently?”
“ ‘Permanently’?”
“I mean, an experimental treatment would be a good way for a doctor to do away with a blackmailer.”
“Great Scott, Daisy . . .” Alec flung down his napkin and started to stand up. Then he calmed down. “No. If he was going to do it, he’s had plenty of opportunity. He knows I’m aware of why he’s being blackmailed, if such is the case.”
“Why?”
“I can’t tell you that. But in spite of Macleod’s failings, he’s an intelligent man.
He knows that if Rumford dies under his care, I wouldn’t let it pass as a natural death.
Another thing: Rumford put himself into Macleod’s hands.
He wouldn’t have done that if he wasn’t sure he could trust the doctor, which probably means he’s not blackmailing him, in spite of knowing his secret.
After all, it’s never difficult for a doctor to do away with a patient, and I’m sure for the few we catch, there must be others we never even suspect.
All the same, I ought to have considered the possibility, and I didn’t. ”
“You can’t think of everything, darling. Eat your dinner before it gets cold.”
“Yes, Mother.” He forked in veal, potatoes, and Brussels sprouts.
“You’re right: Rumford would be a fool to blackmail the doctor who treats him for a chronic condition. Even if Macleod wouldn’t go so far as to kill him, he could easily mess up his treatment on purpose, without anyone guessing.”
“Leaving him in even worse health.”
“If Rumford’s not the murderer,” Daisy continued, ruminating aloud, “then Crabtree must have been killed because someone mistook him for Rumford. Have you found out what he was doing at the steps at midnight? If Rumford was on the way to the hospital, he wouldn’t have made an appointment to meet him.
I bet you anything you like he asked him—Rumford asked Crabtree, that is—to do some job for him, something he was supposed to do at midnight.
It must have been something official, because of both of them wearing their fancy dress. ”
Alec stopped with knife and fork poised and stared at her. “Yes, of course. Something that Rumford normally did every night at midnight. Now why does that ring a bell?”
“I can’t imagine. I think you’re drowning in a sea of information.
But whatever he was supposed to do, he can’t have done it, and someone ought to have noticed.
Not that it really matters where he was going.
What matters is that he took over Rumford’s routine without anyone knowing, so the murderer thought he was killing Rumford. ”
“That’s still pure speculation.” He resumed eating. “In fact, it sounds to me suspiciously like one of your circular arguments.”
“No, darling, is it? How disappointing. It all fits together so nicely.”
“That is the nature of circles. For one thing, it all depends on Rumford being a blackmailer, which is sheer guesswork.”
“Well, never mind, you’ll find out tomorrow when you talk to him.”
“I hardly think he’s likely to admit to it. Ernie didn’t find any proof in his house, no list of names and amounts or anything of the sort. I’m going to need some evidence before I can tackle his supposed victims. And failing that, I have absolutely no other theory to fall back on!”