He told her about the strass glass maker and his grandson, and she reciprocated with Grand Duke Rudolf Maximilian’s near attack on the cave bear. As she finished, they reached Langham Place. Though they had to leave the car some distance from Queen’s Hall, they were not quite the last stragglers to arrive.
“Sorry I’m not in evening togs,” Alec said as they hurried up the stairs to take their seats.
“Darling, it’s such a wonder to have you to myself for half an evening, you could wear bathers and I wouldn’t care.”
Between holding his hand and the waves of music surging into Fingal’s Cave, Daisy had no thoughts to spare for crime for a while. The unknown Prokofiev piano concerto, his third, proved so spectacularly brilliant as to be all-absorbing. Yet somewhere in the back of her mind she must have been mulling over the new information, for when the interval came, the questions on the tip of her tongue were all about theft and murder.
Alec got in first, as they went to stretch their legs in the lobby. “How is your article coming along?”
“Very well. I went to the Entomology department this morning. I’ve typed up those notes, and read through the whole lot, and actually started really planning the article. It’s more complicated than anything I’ve done before.”
“But you’re finished at the museum? Good.”
“Pretty much. There are bound to be a few odds and ends to clear up once I start writing. Do you think the jewels are still there, hidden somewhere frightfully clever?”
“It’s possible. Not inside a cave bear, perhaps. Your objections to that seem valid. But finding something so small in a place so large is as good as impossible.”
“And you can’t search everyone every day, of course. So what can you do?”
“It’s a waiting game. We’ve bolted and barred all but one staff exit and we have men watching that and the main entrance. All the chief suspects are discreetly followed from the moment they leave the museum until they return. If any of them goes near a jeweller, we’ve got him.”
“What a pity your fake-making jeweller is blind as a bat! Still, ffinch-Brown—even if he was idiotic enough to give half his real name—is small, and Ruddlestone is surely large enough to qualify as more than merely big.”
Alec laughed. “Yes, that’s a point. The dates may help,too, though it’s rather a long time ago for people to remember whether they noticed anything odd.”
“I guessed the jewels must have been stolen while Pettigrew was on holiday,” Daisy said smugly. “Oh, darling, that reminds me! I suppose you know that one of the constables who was on night duty then has retired since?”
“What!” He stared at her, shaking his head. “Great Scott, Daisy, how the deuce did you … ? No, never mind, in this case ignorance is bliss. Do you happen to know and recall his name?”
“Southey? North? Eastman? Westcott, that’s it.”
“And his address?”
“Darling, I haven’t the foggiest. The Chelsea police will know, won’t they?” Daisy grabbed Alec’s arm. “You arenotgoing now. By the time you found out and got there, the poor old chap would be in bed and fast asleep. There’s the bell, let’s go back.”
At the end of the concert, Daisy and Alec, along with the greater part of the audience, hummed bits of the symphony as they emerged into the rain-gleaming night. Daisy’s head was too full of music to think of anything else. Alec had to open the windscreen and concentrate on peering into the darkness between lamp-posts all the way to Chelsea.
Sheltering under his umbrella, they stopped on the front step for a good-night kiss, then Daisy felt in her handbag for her key.
“That reminds me,” she said.
“Not again!”
“Oh well, I expect you already know,” Daisy said airily, sticking the key in the lock.
“I didn’t know about Westcott. Tell me.”
“Right-oh, darling. The museum locks match—not all ofthem, but, for instance, Dr. Smith Woodward’s key opens Dr. Pettigrew’s office.”
“Yes, typical of government institutions. What’s more, apart from the museum police, Pettigrew had the only key to the iron gate, which he may well have left in his office while he was away.”
“And Dr. Smith Woodward is constantly losing his keys.”
“He is? Now that I didn’t know,” Alec said thoughtfully. “So much the more likely that it’s a museum staff member who burgled the mineral gallery, and of course a constable who recognized him wouldn’t report it.”
“Not when no hue and cry was raised until after he left,” Daisy agreed. “Still, there’s not much chance Westcott did see him.”
“Not much chance, but some. I’ll run Westcott to earth first thing in the morning. Thank you, love. You have saved me from sitting around waiting for a purchasing jeweller to turn up, or for the thief to go looking for one.”
