“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised, dear. You tell him from me, if he wants to talk to the kiddies, he’ll do well to bring you with him.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Ditchley. It doesn’t sound to me, though, as if they saw or heard anything really useful.”
“Thank heaven for small mercies,” said Mrs. Ditchley.
Daisy was less grateful to heaven. Whatever her rationale, Alec was not going to be pleased by her meddling, but if she had had something significant to report he might have forgiven her more easily.
Sighing, she hoped tonight’s dinner was not going to turn into an acrimonious argument.
Nonetheless, her heart sank when the telephone rang at half past five and Ernie Piper’s voice replied to her recital of her number. “D. C. Piper, miss.”
“Don’t tell me,” she groaned, “the Chief can’t make it.”
“He can, miss,” Ernie anxiously reassured her, “but he says d’you mind going early and somewhere nearby. He’ll pick you up at half six if that’s all right. He hasn’t got time to change. He’s still got to see the an … an-thro-pologist and your Grand Duke this evening.”
“MyGrand Duke?”
“That’s what Sarge calls him, miss.” Piper’s grin was audible. “I gotta run. What’ll I tell the Chief?”
“Tell him right-oh, six-thirty.”
Daisy was ready to go when Alec rang the doorbell at twenty-eight minutes past six.
He kissed her and said, “Thank heaven you’re not one of those women who makes a man wait.”
“If I were, I’d never see you. It’s difficult enough already. If you’re in a hurry, let’s walk round to the Good Intent, in King’s Road.”
“I wouldn’t mind stretching my legs, but isn’t that an artists’ haunt?” he asked with caution.
“Used to be. The Bohemians have abandoned it as old-fashioned, but it still serves good, cheap food, and quickly. A starving artist who’s scraped together the price of a meal can’t wait to be fed. How did it go at the museum?”
“I didn’t learn much of significance,” Alec said gloomily. “As Tom says, the place is a regular rabbit warren, connecting doors and back-stairs everywhere. Even with the plans, it took me an hour to sort it out. All the suspects could quite well have been where they claimed to be, but they also could have got to the reptile gallery and back without being seen.”
“Does that mean you think Pettigrew had an appointment to meet someone there?”
“It’s possible, but the murderer may have met him by chance.”
“I can’t see why Pettigrew should have been there by chance,” Daisy objected. “He despised fossils.”
“Witt suggested he might have been on his way to the General Library, perhaps to look up something about prehistoric flint implements. I gather he had recently developed an interest in the subject.”
“Yes, that was what he was on about when he dragged Mr. Witt bodily from my side.”
“Witt admitted to that incident. He claimed not to have taken offence. Pettigrew being such a mannerless boor, it would be a fruitless waste of energy.”
“Fruitless to protest, I dare say,” Daisy observed, “but he didn’t exactly look as if he took being manhandled at all kindly.”
Alec was equally sceptical. He neither trusted nor liked Calvin Witt, who appeared suspiciously eager to be of assistance. The Fossil Mammal Curator was too smooth, his manner suave, his hair sleekly pomaded. His face was too young for the years his curatorship suggested, especially as he was of an age to have fought in the War, which should have taken several years from his work experience. Or perhaps he had gained the position at an early age through family influence, which would not make Alec like him any the better.
It wasnotjealousy, Alec told himself. He must not succumb to the niggling worm which still now and then reminded him that he was ten years older than Daisy and not of her class. She had been joking when she described Witt as handsome and charming.
Alec looked down at her as they turned into King’s Road. As if she felt his gaze, she glanced up, smiling happily, and slipped her hand through his arm. They might have been discussing sitting-room wallpaper, not a brutal murder.
Heoughtto be discussing wallpaper with her, not murder—but it was damnably difficult to avoid a topic in which they had a mutual interest.
He was about to change the subject when she said, “I suppose Ol’ Stony could have been on his way to consult Witt about the flints. Or rather, to demand information. That was more his style.”
“Yes, Witt actually proposed that possibility, too, though he seemed to think Pettigrew would be more likely to send for him. The route is the same as to the library. There are private stairs next to Pettigrew’s office which go all the way down to the basement, but on the ground floor they debouche only into Smith Woodward’s office. So Pettigrew would go either down the main stairs and through the mammal gallery …”
