“Unlike Superintendent Crane, I’m not convinced. If not, it would be quite a coincidence admittedly, but coincidences do happen. The flint Pettigrew was killed with has been identified by an independent expert as a modern copy. He laughed like a hyena, by the way, over its having been glued to a shaft. Primitive man used to bind them together, apparently.”
“Mr. Ruddlestone would doubtless call that an educated deduction not much advanced from guesswork. I’m sure there is an expert somewhere prepared to swear they were always stuck together with sap, or pitch, or something. Still, whatever Pettigrew did with it, he made it, so he was probably taking it to show to Witt.”
“Probably. I haven’t had a chance to consider the implications thoroughly.” He rubbed his eyes. “Only in the disjointed way one does during a wakeful night. And now there’s this blasted jewel theft to be dealt with, too. Though I appreciate your discretion about that, incidentally, it’ll be in the later editions of the evening papers. You might as well tell Lucy.”
“What are you doing about it?” Daisy asked.
“Setting up the usual routine. That is, we get a descriptive inventory of what’s missing, notify jewellers, pawnshops, and customs, and put pressure on known fences; we interview all the security staff to find out whether they’ve noticed anything out of the ordinary; and we investigate whether any of the suspects have a particular need for money, or have suddenly improved their standard of living.”
“Gosh, all that must take an army!”
“Crane’s given me every man he can spare, in and out of uniform, because of the probable connection with the murder. It takes a lot of organizing. And of course, I have to interview the suspects. I must get moving, Daisy.” He drained his cup. “Tell me what happened this morning before I reached the scene.”
“You’re not cross because I was there when the theft was discovered?”
With a rueful grin, Alec reached for her hand. “I’ve decided it’s Fate, with a big F. You can’t help being on the spot. I can’t stop you. And Tom—blast his cheek!—reminded me that I’d never have met you if it wasn’t for your propensity for falling over bodies.”
“Bless him!” said Daisy, but added indignantly, “When we met, that was the first crime I’d ever been even remotely mixed up in. The ‘propensity’ developed afterwards. Darling, I wrote down what happened this morning while I remembered the exact words. Shall I get my notes?”
“Yes, do.”
The two sheets she was looking for were buried under a subsequent blizzard of paper. It took a couple of minutes to dig them out. When Daisy returned to the sitting room, Alec was fast asleep.
10
Should she wake him? Alec had lots to do, but he would be much more efficient after a nap.
Daisy sat down opposite, her feet on a petit-point footstool embroidered by her great-grandmother. Things would be just the same when they were married, she knew. She’d never be sure when he was coming home, and often he’d arrive too tired to be sociable. Sometimes he would share his cases with her, and sometimes shut her out. If she was ever involved in a crime again, a highly unlikely circumstance whatever he and Tom said about propensities, he’d be angry, Fate or no Fate.
Belinda and Mrs. Fletcher would go on sharing his time and attention. Daisy would not have it any other way—at least as far as Bel was concerned, she admitted to herself. Not that she had any intention of displacing Mrs. Fletcher. Alec’s mother might disapprove of her working, as well as of her noble birth, but her mother-in-law’s presence would allow her to go on writing.
Alec had no intention of trying to stop her. That was one of the reasons she loved him. Few men recognized a woman’s right to a career.
She contemplated the sleeping man, recalling their first meeting. From the first, even while she was still surprised to find a policeman so gentlemanly, he had impressed her as forceful and determined. From the first she had been attracted by the way his dark hair sprang crisply from his temples, and by the way his smile warmed his grey eyes. The dark, heavy eyebrows between, skeptically raised or wrathfully lowered, had not intimidated her. Not for more than a moment, anyway.
Knowing him had healed the raw wound of Michael’s death in the War, blown up by a landmine with his Friends’ Ambulance Unit. Daisy would always have a place in her heart for the memory of her first love, but she wanted to marry Alec. She wanted to marry him soon.
Ay, there’s the rub, she thought. How were they to escape the combined toils of her mother and Scotland Yard?
Alec yawned, settled more comfortably, then stiffened and opened his eyes. “Great Scott, have I been asleep?”
“Only for a few minutes. I hoped a nap would do you good, but it’s barely been a catnap.”
“I think it’s helped, all the same.” He sat up straight. “Your notes?”
She handed them over. “The first bit’s what you asked for. The rest is just trying to sort out my thoughts.”
To her gratification, he read the whole thing before, returning to the beginning, he said, “So the Grand Duke did draw Grange’s attention to the ruby. I agree it’s unlikely he’d have done so if he was responsible for the substitution.”
“I can’t believe he’d have gone on visiting the museum, let alone fussing over that blasted jewel. I don’t think he’d have pinched the rest, either, whatever Sergeant Jameson says about ruses and wily foreigners. What about Grange? He need not have taken any notice of Rudolf Maximilian’sconcern, let alone have insisted on examining the rest of the collection.”
“They’re both low on my list at present, though Grange was in a good position to manage the theft, as was Randell. The Grand Duke is still near the top of the murder list.”
“If murder and theft are unconnected. Alec,” Daisy cried, as inspiration struck, “has it dawned on you that the person who could most easily have stolen the gems was Pettigrew himself?”
“It had crossed my mind,” Alec said, with a grimace. “That would be the very dickens of a complication, which I haven’t time to think through just now. I must be on my way, love.” He heaved himself to his feet, waving the papers. “May I take these?”
“Yes, I have a fairly readable carbon copy.”
