Rattle His Bones (11 page)

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Authors: Carola Dunn

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“Now, sir,” said the sergeant in an officious voice, “please describe for the Chief Inspector your whereabouts from five o'clock yesterday until the constable discovered you lurking behind …”
“I vas in de museum visiting! It is no crime,
nicht wahr, Herr
Inspector? You are a reasonable man.” He cast a resentful look at Tring. “I was not
lurking.
”
“I expect the constable exaggerated,” Alec soothed. “It's an interesting place, isn't it? You go often?”
The Grand Duke visibly dithered, and decided a lie would be too easily exposed. “Not often. Sometime. Here have I no affairs of state mine time to occupy.”
“None, sir?”
“Little. I try mine contrymen to help, but vhat can I do vhen I have nozzing?” His gesture took in the room and the flat beyond, the chancellor who answered the door, perhaps the chancellor's wife in the kitchen, for all Alec knew. “Nozzing—only pictures to remind of past life.”
“It's an unhappy situation,” Alec sympathized. “I expect you would do anything for a chance to regain lost glories.”
“Any—”
“Vorsicht, Exzellenz!”
Count Otto warned. Alec silently damned him.
“I vish to fight,” Rudolf said hotly, “to drive de Bolsheviks from Transcarpathia. But vizzout soldiers can I nozzing, and vizzout money, no soldiers.”
“I wonder whether you could raise enough money to hire an army if you regained your grandfather's gift to Queen Victoria. How valuable is that ruby?”
“Ru—ruby?” faltered the Grand Duke.
Tom Tring's dry cough, intentional or not, was a masterpiece of skepticism. Clearing his throat, he proceeded in a toneless voice as if reading a report: “A number of witnesses attest to your frequent visits to the Mineralogy Gallery under the direction of the late Ralph Pettigrew, where you were observed to spend what several describe as an inordinate length of time studying the gem commonly known as the Transcarpathia ruby.” He coughed again. “Sir.”
“Oh,
dat
ruby,” said the Grand Duke unconvincingly. “Vhat is ‘inordanot'? I know not this vord.”
“A purely subjective judgment,” Alec put in, “a matter of opinion. It means longer than might be expected of anyone with no special interest in the object.”
“Of course His Excellence has a special interest!” Count Otto barked. “As you know, this jewel was his grandfather's gift to your Queen, a magnificent gift, which Her Majesty choosed to discard to be gaped at by peasants. It is worth more than all that we were able to bring from Transcarpathia.”
“And most of zat is sold by now,” the Grand Duke bemoaned.
“If King George for the ruby no use has,” the Chancellor continued, his hitherto excellent English deteriorating in his agitation, “why not give back where it is needed? Has not the Bolsheviks murdered his cousin, the Czarina? But is for the King to decide. How it helps us a museum fellow to murder? To imagine this is foolishness!”
True, Alec thought, but the question remained whether the Grand Duke was foolish enough to believe Pettigrew's death might help his cause. It was interesting that Count Otto, apparently more intelligent than young Rudolf as well as more experienced, had jumped to the conclusion that the police suspected his ducal master of murder.
“Greed isn't the only motive for murder,” said Tring offensively. “The young gentleman had words with Dr. Pettigrew, that's common knowledge.”
“Vords, vords!” cried the Grand Duke, à la Hamlet. “I talk viz him vun time, two time, yes, is true. But is no greed for vanting money for to save mine contry!”
“A bad choice of words, Sergeant,” Alec reproved. He went on courteously to Rudolf, “To have words with someone, sir, means to quarrel. You and the late Keeper had a bit of an argument, I dare say.”
“Dis man not like dat I look at de ruby, but he cannot stop. He is very rude, he shout, but I have not argumented. Vhy argument when he cannot stop me?” said Rudolf reasonably.
“But even if you didn't argue, I'm sure you must have been angry at his rudeness.”
Rudolf flushed, but shrugged. “In England is many pee-ople rude to foreigners. Dis is vhy I not rush out when de police come in de museum.”
Back to square one. “Ah yes,” said Alec, “you were in the fossil mammal gallery. You went down from the mineral gallery?”
“Yes.”
“Did you see Dr. Pettigrew there yesterday?”
“No! He vas not dere.”
Pettigrew had been busy in his private office most of the afternoon, according to his assistants. He had not yet emerged when Grange and Randell left at five thirty.
“So you did not leave the mineral gallery because Dr. Pettigrew chased you out.”
“
Nein!
He cannot.” The indignation was followed by a shamefaced glance at his Chancellor. “I am sometimes bored viz looking alvays at mine ruby. I decided to look at ozzer sings.”
“Very understandable, sir. What time did you go downstairs?”
The Grand Duke thought he had reached the fossil mammals at about five-twenty, which agreed with Sergeant Hamm's recollection. He swore he had not left the gallery until the constable discovered him
not
lurking behind the Irish elk and sent him to the cafeteria.
Of course Hamm could not confirm that, having deserted his post to go and chat with the one-legged Underwood.
Count Otto escorted the three detectives downstairs, and closed the front door behind them with a firm click which said “Good riddance” as eloquently as a slam.
“Without the General's intervention, we might have got something out of him,” Alec sighed as they climbed back into the Austin.
“Least we know they haven't got diplomatic immunity, Chief,” said Piper, “'cause the General would have said so straight out.”
“Very true, laddie,” Tring said approvingly. “Living in cloud-cuckoo land, aren't they, Chief, thinking they could throw the Reds out of their country if they had the ruby to sell?”
“I don't know what it's worth, but it doesn't seem likely,” Alec agreed. “I'm not sure even the Crown Jewels would do it, but that doesn't make getting hold of the ruby less of a motive. I'm just not sure Rudolf Maximilian is naive enough to believe killing Pettigrew would help. I need to get hold of him without his watchdog—or his mother, who struck me as a formidable lady.”
“Did you see that picture of her with the Czar, Chief?” Tring asked.
“No, but it doesn't surprise me. Her name is Russian, and I did see Queen Victoria and the Kaiser.”
“They had King Edward and the Emperor Franz Josef up on the walls, too, and some others who looked sort of familiar.”
“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.

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