Mrs. Fletcher sighed. “We’ll see what your father says when he comes home.”
Belinda, knowing perfectly well what her father would say, correctly interpreted this as grudging surrender and beamed. “Thank you, Gran, most frightfully,” she said, and went to give her grandmother’s cheek a decorous kiss. Then she ran to Daisy and hugged her, whispering, “Thank you most even more frightfully, Aunt Daisy, for coming to the rescue.”
At that moment, the Fletchers’ cook-maid came in and announced supper.
Daisy knew that when Alec was not expected, his motherand daughter ate together early. “I must be on my way,” she said, gathering up her handbag.
“If you have no other plans, do join us,” said Mrs. Fletcher, if not exactly gracious then at least not altogether hostile.
Daisy had, after all, given her a way out of an untenable position. She probably had not realized how fearfully upset her granddaughter would be. She did, one presumed, love Belinda in her way.
“Yes, do stay, Aunt Daisy!” cried Belinda with enthusiasm.
“Thank you, I’d like to.”
“Belinda, go and wash your hands and face while Dobson sets another place at table. And the dog is to stay outside until after we have eaten,” commanded Mrs. Fletcher.
Whatever her usual expectations of a child’s table manners in the presence of her elders, over the Brown Windsor soup Mrs. Fletcher encouraged Belinda to talk, perhaps as a buffer. Bel chattered about Derek and Tinker Bell, then moved on to Derek’s inexplicable keenness on dinosaurs.
“He liked the one with the big teeth best,” she said.
“The Megalosaurus,” said Daisy.
“That’s right. Can you imagine what it’d be like to have a baby Megalosaurus instead of a puppy?” Belinda giggled, then glanced at her grandmother and stifled the giggle. “I thought its teeth were horrid. I’m glad the other dinosaurs were so tall you couldn’t see their teeth properly, aren’t you, Aunt Daisy? They’re gigantic, Gran, bigger than a house, some of them.”
“And who dusts them, I’d like to know?” said Mrs. Fletcher. “A gigantic waste of time and money, if you ask me.” Thus having put herself firmly on the late Dr. Pettigrew’s side, she changed the subject back to Daisy’s nephew.
“I must say Derek is a polite child, if rather rumbustious. But then, boys will be boys,” she added tolerantly.
And girls must be young ladies,Daisy completed the hated maxim, one of her mother’s favourites. Really, if Mrs. Fletcher and the Dowager Viscountess ever got to know each other well, they would get on like a house on fire.
While Daisy meddled in his home as a change from meddling in his work, Alec was supervising a search of all the museum staff as they departed for the day.
Fortunately, almost all were men, who could be checked, even asked to remove their jackets, by uniformed constables under the watchful eyes of Tring or D.C.s Piper or Ross. But there were the ladies’ room attendant and the switchboard girl, as well as two saleswomen (what they sold he did not enquire) and four artists under contract to draw or paint botany and entomology specimens.
Alec did not see these as serious suspects in the burglary, but the thief might have inveigled one into carrying his spoils out of the museum. To search them, Alec requested one of the new woman constables. He was sent a police matron.
These matrons were more like prison wardresses than police officers. They took charge of arrested females, often drunk and disorderly, and rarely had anything to do with the innocent public. As a result, they tended to be hefty viragos, and to take a jaundiced view of all women they dealt with in their work, automatically regarding them—and inclined to treat them—as criminals. Tom Tring, who was not afraid of anything in trousers, claimed to be terrified of police matrons.
Mrs. Morble, sent round by Chelsea Division, was noexception. Tall and robust, with a red face and very pale eyes, she had a harsh voice and a bovine expression.
Bulls, as Alec reminded himself, are stubborn and belligerent as well as not exceptionally bright. What he needed was a women who was an ordinary officer, accustomed to frequent contact with law-abiding people, but the search could not wait.
He explained to Mrs. Morble what he wanted her to do. “I consider it highly unlikely that any of these women are involved,” he stressed.
“There’s a bad apple in every barrel,” said Mrs. Morble.
“Somewhere in the museum, yes. But I doubt it’s any of the women.”
“The female of the species is more deadlier than the male,” said Mrs. Morble.
“Er, possibly, though it’s quite impossible that any of them murdered Pettigrew. It’s the jewel theft we are concerned with here.”
“Set a thief to catch a thief,” said Mrs. Morble obscurely.
“It’s more a matter of catching the thief and hoping he’ll turn out to be, or at least lead us to, the murderer.”
“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink,” said Mrs. Morble. She elaborated. “If you was to ask me, there’s a lot to be said for what the Yankees call the Third Degree.”
