Daisy was sure she would have seen anyone going through the main entrance to the dinosaurs, straight across from the hall where she was when she heard the crash. But halfway down the gallery, a door on the left led to the General Library, and an arch on the right to the fossil cephalopods (whatwerecephalopods? She still had not found out). If Wilfred Atkins had been with Bert in the invertebrates beyond, the murderer could have fled unseen throughthe mysterious cephalopods and crossed the dinosaurs to the library.
The children glanced at each other and shook their heads.
“No,” Arthur admitted, disappointed.
“But we might not’ve,” Jennifer insisted. “You were too looking at the Megalosaurus, like anything. He was, miss, honestly. And talking about its teeth. We might not’ve seen anyone, nor heard footsteps neither.”
“Here comes Gran.” The littlest child ran to meet Mrs. Ditchley. “Gran, I want to go home. I don’t like it here.”
“Well, no more do I, Katy. Such goings on, and in a museum, too. And all these bones, it’s not natural. I don’t hold with it. But the policeman says there’s nothing he can do till he gets reinforcements … .”
“I don’t like policemen.”
“They’re just doing their job, duckie, so we’ll have to make the best of it, won’t we? Let’s sing a nice, cheerful song.”
So Daisy found herself standing among the skeletons joining a rousing chorus of “I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside,” followed by “Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit-Bag.” They wereSmile, smile, smilingfor all they were worth when the door to the General Library opened and Mr. Mummery burst forth.
“What the deuce is this horrible racket?” he howled. His round face was red with fury, his wild hair and eyebrows bristling like an upset hedgehog. Marching up to the silenced singers, he gabbled, “Madam, it is after six o’clock. Peace and quiet should by now have descended upon this august institution. Kindly remove yourself and these bra—children immediately. If, as is no doubt the case, you find yourselves lockedin, the solution is not to caterwaul among the dinosaurs but to find one of our admirable police guards and request egress. Do I make myself clear?”
Katy buried her face in her grandmother’s skirt and burst into tears.
“Mr. Mummery, please!” said Daisy. “Let me explain—”
“Oh, it’s you, Miss Dalrymple. I had not observed you. Are these people in some way assisting you in your research? The effect of loud noises on a dinosaur’s otic ossicles, perhaps? I must say, I had thought better of you. I cannot—”
“Mr. Mummery,” Daisy interrupted, taking a firm hold of his sleeve and leading him, resisting, towards the gallery’s entrance arch, “you must listen to me. Mrs. Ditchley and the children can’t leave because the police won’t let them. There’s been a … an apparent murder. Dr. Pettigrew is dead.”
Mummery threw back his head and guffawed. “Pettigrew murdered? He had it coming! If anyone did, I mean,” he said sobering. “But you can’t be serious, my dear Miss Dalrymple. True, we deal daily in death, but it is ancient death.” His sweeping gesture embraced the dinosaurs and all the fossils beyond. He turned tetchily reproachful. “I cannot believe this jape is your notion. It must be Pettigrew’s, of course, simply to bedevil me. Why you should support—”
“Come and see, then.” She had intended to warn him of the destruction of his pet reptile, but she was now too annoyed with him. “Come along.”
Two more uniformed police officers had joined Sergeant Jameson, another sergeant and a constable. Mummery scarcely spared them a glance as, with a screech of rage, he strode past them.
“My Pareiasaurus! He did this on purpose!”
Jameson and the constable caught his arms.
“Keep back, sir, if you please.”
“My Pareiasaurus! It will take months of work to stick those bones back together, if indeed it can be done. I’ll kill him!”
“He’s already dead, sir,” Jameson said reprovingly, and with a touch of suspicion, “if it’s Ol’ … Dr. Pettigrew you’re referring to. I can’t let you touch the skellington, and I’ll have to ask you to remain on the premises until you have given a statement to a detective officer.”
Mummery visibly deflated. “A detective? Miss Dalrymple mentioned murder.”
“Looks that way, sir, but it’s not for me to say. We’ll have a detective here soon as can be.”
“In the meantime, I suppose I may go back to the library and continue my work?” he asked with querulous dignity. “Miss Dalrymple, be so kind as to find some quiet diversion for those horrible brats.” With a last, desolate stare at his ruined Pareiasaurus, he stalked back into the dinosaur gallery.
“He might as well be there as anywhere,” said Jameson. “Well, Miss Dalrymple, do you think the old lady’ll be willing to bring the kids through here? If so, you can all go up to the refreshment room and wait in comfort, now I’ve enough men to guard all the exits.”
“Thank you, Sergeant. I’ll see.”
Past the dead Keeper, Daisy led a string of children with their eyes shut, while Mrs. Ditchley marched Arthur with her hands over his eyes. The newly arrived Constable Neddle went with them.
At the arch from the fossil mammals to the Central Hall, they found another constable on guard duty. A young couple stood nearby, hand in hand, looking disconsolate. A scrawny, bewhiskered man in horn-rims, vaguely familiar to Daisy, was arguing excitably with the guard.
“My dear chap, whatever the trouble is, it’s nothing to do with me. I don’t work here.”
