When she awoke, Daisy was sure she had not been dead to the world for more than a few minutes. She was still slouched in a leather armchair with a coat draped over her. No headache, thank heaven, but she felt decidedly lethargic.
It was not only lassitude that kept her immobile, her eyes closed. If Detective Sergeant Tring knew she was awake, he might think he ought to send her from the room. With Tom Tring in charge of the case, she abandoned her attempt to curb her curiosity.
Mummery’s strident outcry had roused her. (Had she dreamt it, or had she really referred to him as Flummery? Too shaming! She only hoped she could rely on Tring not to tell Alec she had been tiddly, and to silence Ross.) After that brief explosion, Mummery was now explaining, using a great many lengthy scientific terms, what he had been doing in the General Library after working hours. Come to think of it, Flummery suited him rather well. He sounded as if he was taking malicious delight in befuddling the poor uneducated coppers. Daisy wondered how the note-taking Ross was coping.
Tom Tring was unruffled. After listening in massive silence until Mummery ran down like an underwound gramophone, the sergeant said politely, “Thank you, sir. It’s kind of you to take so much trouble to give me all the details when my Chief Inspector will likely be asking you to repeat it tomorrow. Very particular he is. Now, what time did you go to the library?”
Mummery claimed to have been there from shortly before five until he burst forth to rebuke Daisy and Mrs.
Ditchley for the singing. Several others were there when he arrived—he named a couple—but he thought all had left at half past five, at the end of the working day.
“I cannot be certain,” he said condescendingly. “No doubt you are unaware, Sergeant, that academic libraries contain a great many tall bookshelves, which tend to conceal the occupants from one another.”
“Is that so?” Tring spoke with such ponderous gravity that Daisy was sure he was amused. “Well, well, that’s a great pity, sir. Thank you, sir, that’s all then … for the moment.”
“For the moment?” squawked Mummery.
“Tonight, I’m just trying to get everyone’s movements clear, sir. You are at liberty to go home. Tomorrow, the Chief Inspector will no doubt have a number of questions to put to you, ’specially as Sergeant Jameson reports you threatened the victim.”
“But he was already dead!”
“Ah,” said Tring inscrutably. “Good night, sir.”
There was a blank silence, then a mutter from Mummery, the sound of a chair pushed back, and a door opening and closing.
“One up to you, Sarge,” Ross exclaimed. “But I didn’t get much of it down, the scientific stuff.”
“That’s all right, laddie. It was mostly obfuscation”—Mr. Tring was by no means the ignoramus some took him for—“and I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of asking him to spell out the long words for you. The Chief'll sort him in the morning.”
“You think the Super’ll give the case to Mr. Fletcher?”
“Bound to, when he knows who’s got herself mixed up in it. Right, let’s have Mr. Witt in next.”
Blushing, a tendency she deplored as positively Victorian but was unable to overcome, Daisy heard the door open andclose again. To distract herself from Superintendent Crane’s probable reaction, not to mention Alec’s and, eventually and inevitably, the A. C.’s, she pondered Witt’s appearance on the list of suspects.
“You can open your eyes now,” said Tom Tring.
“Oh!” Daisy did. He had turned Sir Sidney’s swivel chair and was regarding her quizzically, in the shadowy corner where he had put her. “I didn’t want to interrupt your interview,” she excused herself.
“Much obliged, I’m sure. Feeling better now?”
“Yes, much, thanks.”
“Ah.” He ruminated. “Still, I wouldn’t want to send you home alone, not after …”
“Mr. Tring, youwon’ttell the Chief?”
Tring chuckled. “What, that his young lady was under the affluence of incohol, as they say oop north? When it was me poured the stuff into you? You don’t tell, I don’t tell. And I’ll keep young Ross mum, never fear. But what am I going to do with you now? I can’t spare a man to escort you.”
“You could just leave me here,” said Daisy innocently. “I expect I’ll fall asleep again.”
“Ho, pull the other one! All right, you know the place and you know at least some of the people. You can stay, if you swear not to tell the Chief I let you, and to keep your eyes and your mouth shut.”
“Cross my heart and hope to be fossilized,” Daisy said, and closed her eyes just in time as the Director’s door opened.
“Mr. Witt, Sergeant.”
“Good evening, Sergeant.” Witt’s voice, smooth and well-bred, reminded Daisy of how helpful he had started out to be, and how he had had to pass her on to the equally helpful one-armed commissionaire assigned to his gallery.
