Free Rattle His Bones by Carola Dunn

refreshment room upstairs and wait there. You two, too,” he added to the young couple.
    With an air of utter bewilderment, they meekly followed Mrs. Ditchley and the children out into the Central Hall. Shepherded by Neddle, ffinch-Brown followed not at all meekly, with Daisy.
    â€œThe refreshment room!” he exploded. He really was remarkably like Mummery in temperament. His voice did not get quite as loud, perhaps because he worked off surplus energy by waving his arms. “Wait in the refreshment room? For what, may I ask, for what?”

    Daisy glanced back at Constable Neddle, who rolled his eyes. Taking this as permission, she outlined the situation.
    â€œNo great loss,” said ffinch-Brown contemptuously. “Any fool can polish up rocks, but Ralph Pettigrew had the unmitigated gall to think he could make flint tools that I— I! —would be unable to distinguish from the genuinely primitive article.”
    â€œThe ones he claimed he found in a cave in Cornwall?” Daisy asked as they started up the main staircase towards the statue of Sir Richard Owen.
    â€œNo, no, those don’t remotely resemble worked implements.” He rubbed his hands in remembered glee. “You should have seen his face when I confirmed Witt’s verdict. That was when he swore he could deceive me with flints he had chipped and flaked himself. Ha!”
    â€œImpossible?”
    â€œImpossible,” affirmed ffinch-Brown, but with a trace of uneasiness. Then, cheering up, he said brightly, “Well, now we shall never know, shall we?”
    Suppose Pettigrew succeeded in deceiving him, Daisy thought. The mineralogist would never have kept quiet about it. In that case, to what extent would the anthropologist’s reputation suffer? And what had he been doing since he finished his business with Witt? Quarrelling with Pettigrew?
    Ascending the second flight, Daisy glanced up at the bronze bust of Captain Fred Selous, big-game hunter, bronze elephant-gun in hand. It was hard to believe primitive man had hunted big game with nothing but flint weapons.
    â€œHow is Mr. Witt’s experiment going?” she asked. “Has he duplicated the marks on the mammoth bones?”
    â€œNot just mammoths, my dear young lady. I was contemplating certain grooves on the giant sloth’s tibia when—”
    â€œFräulein? It is Miss Dalrymple?”

    Daisy swung round. The Grand Duke of Transcarpathia was coming up the stairs behind them.
    â€œHello, where have you sprung from?” she asked with a smile.
    â€œI have not gesprungen! I walk.”
    â€œIt’s just an English expression. Where have you been?”
    â€œI vas de Irish elk regarding. Irish, pah!” he said angrily, “In mine contry also vas once dis magnificent beast, but de English dey must all take to self, de elks, de jewels, everysing!”
    â€œSo you were in the fossil mammal gallery? I didn’t see you there.”
    The Grand Duke turned sullen. “Dis de police also say. Lurking dey say, vhy you vas lurking behind de elk? Vhat is lurking, bitte? ”
    â€œEr, sort of hiding,” Daisy explained.
    â€œHiding? I not hide, but if I am not seen vhen de police come, I not at once rush out. To myself I remind, here in England I am not Grand Duke, only a damn foreigner!”
    Rudolf Maximilian had a grudge against the world, Daisy thought as they entered the cafeteria, but also good reason to loathe Pettigrew. Having bumped him off, he could easily have nipped along the reptile gallery, through the hall at the far end, and into the mammal gallery.
    Mr. ffinch-Brown, who had gone ahead into the refreshment room and was glowering disgruntledly at the CLOSED sign on the counter, claimed to have been in the end pavilion looking at the sloth. He would not have seen the Grand Duke. What about the young couple, who had also apparently been among the mammals when Pettigrew was killed? They were now ensconced