Tring shook his head. “Afraid not, not a chance, when you were first on the scene. And with you in the thick of it, there’s no way the Super’ll give the case to anyone but the Chief!”
6
“Miss Dalrymple, Crane? The Honourable Daisy Dalrymple?”
Sitting in Superintendent Crane’s office, Alec heard the anguished yelp over the internal telephone, as clear as if the Assistant Commissioner (C.I.D.) were in the same room.
“First on the scene, sir,” confirmed the Super gloomily. “Do you want to speak to Fletcher? I have him here.”
Alec held his breath.
“No,” said the A.C., after a pause which suggested he had counted to ten. “I suppose she doesn’t do it on purpose. Does she?”
“Hardly, sir.”
“No, and he couldn’t stop her if she did. Yet. On second thoughts, give him to me.”
Crane handed over the telephone.
“Fletcher here, sir.”
“Fletcher, for God’s sake and the sake of my sanity, marry the woman soon!”
“Yes, sir,” said Alec, surprised but nothing loath.
“Then at least you’ll have the right, if not the ability, to keep her out of trouble. You’ll have to take this museum case.
I can’t ask anyone else to attempt to control her. I’m counting on you to keep her from getting any more deeply embroiled.”
“I’ll do my best, sir,” Alec promised, sincerely though unhopefully.
His pessimism must have travelled along the wire, for the A.C. said something which sounded very like “Pshaw!” and hung up the ’phone.
The Super pushed a slim file across his desk. “All yours,” he said. “Good luck, Chief Inspector.”
“Tell me about it, Tom,” Alec invited, dropping the file on his desk and himself in his chair.
Detective Sergeant Tring had on his most stolid expression, but Alec knew him too well to be deceived. Behind the moustache and the straight face, Tom was quivering with merriment. He had a soft spot for Daisy, if not the unquestioning adulation manifested by Detective Constable Piper.
“She wasn’t just there, Chief,” he said. He coughed a couple of times, though otherwise his cold seemed vanquished. Leaning back in his chair, at the desk at right angles to Alec’s, he went on, “She knows all the suspects.”
Alec clutched his head. “Great Scott! I might have guessed. She has been doing research at the museum for weeks, talking to the staff.”
“But it’s not only the staff. Miss Dalrymple knows the Grand Duke, too.”
“Grand Duke?” Alec queried hollowly.
Tom Tring permitted his moustache to twitch in a grin. “Grand Duke Rudolf Maximilian of Transcarpathia. Miss Dalrymple put me on to him. I thought he was just a visitor.”
“I’m going to have to talk to her about them, aren’t I?”
“Oh yes, Chief. All I got last night was statements aboutpeople’s movements, all there in that file. I didn’t ask Miss Dalrymple about anything but what she actually witnessed, and not all of that. She was a bit shook up.”
“I’llshake her,” said Alec grimly, then discovered what he really wanted to do was take her in his arms and comfort her. “No, forget I said that, Tom. Was it very messy?”
“Not like you’d expect of a stabbing. Looked like he was stabbed several yards from where he fell. He left a trail of drops of blood staggering along, but the floor’s made up of what they call mo-sake, little tiny bits in a pattern of white and black and red, so I don’t expect Miss Dalrymple noticed the spots. She couldn’t’ve missed the stain on his shirt and weskit, but there wasn’t floods of blood, because the weapon was left in the wound.”
“What was it? A dinosaur bone?”
