Rattle His Bones Page 3

  “Is that why he limps?” Daisy asked, disillusioned.

  “He walked into a display case. He wouldn’t spare the time to go to the hospital, insisted on setting it himself.”

  “Good heavens!” Seeing the scowling ffinch-Brown open his mouth, Daisy went on hastily, “I don’t want to interrupt your discussion, Mr. Witt.”

  “We’re quite finished, ma’am, aren’t we, ffinch-Brown? I believe I understand perfectly what you wish me to undertake.”

  “You’re sure? Good, good.” The little man rubbed his hands together. “I’ll be popping in quite often to see how you are getting on.”

  A shadow of irritation crossed Witt’s face. “It may take some time to see results,” he said.

  “No reason why it should,” ffinch-Brown objected, hands beginning to wave again. “After all, the hunters must have worked quite quickly.”

  Daisy foresaw a long wait for Witt’s undivided attention, and besides, her curiosity was piqued. “Do tell me what experiments you are planning,” she said.

  “Allow me to introduce Mr. ffinch-Brown,” said Witt resignedly, “from the British Museum, of which we are, of course, a mere branch. Mr. ffinch-Brown is an anthropologist. He means to investigate the marks made by the weapons of primitive hunters on the bones of slaughtered mammoths, by comparing them with marks made now on butcher’s bones.”

  “Witt refuses to lend me any of his marked fossil bones.” Not attempting to hide his disgruntlement, ffinch-Brown glowered, his whiskers bristling.

  “My dear sir, as we have already agreed, fossils are a great deal rarer than flints, and fragile, to boot.” He smiled at Daisy. “However, Miss Dalrymple cannot wish to hear our debate on the subject rehashed. I have promised to take the greatest care of your spearheads and knives.”

  “We ought to have some of those fossils in our Prehistoric room,” the anthropologist said discontentedly, pushing his specs up again, “the ones marked by the tools of man. They are artifacts, not mere natural objects. As are the cut gems in the Mineral Gallery. It’s disgraceful that that blackguard Pettigrew refuses to hand them over.”

  “A matter for your Director to take up with ours,” Witt pointed out. “Now I hope you will excuse me, sir. I must not keep Miss Dalrymple waiting any longer. So you want to photograph the mammoths, ma’am?”

  “And the giant armadillo, perhaps.”

  “Ah, the glyptodon. Right-oh.”

  Witt summoned the commissionaire on duty in the Fossil Mammal Gallery. Sergeant Hamm’s bottle-green uniformed chest boasted not only well-polished brass buttons but an impressive array of military medals. Despite lacking an arm, he helped Witt move aside the rope barrier around the mammoth skeleton, while Daisy unfolded the tripod.

  She was trying to work out where best to set it up when Pettigrew reappeared.

  “Witt!” he hallooed. “Come along, I’ve something to show you.”

  “I’m afraid I’m busy just now.”

  “Come along, come along, man,” the Mineral Keeper repeated impatiently. “I found some flints in a cave in Cornwall, and I want your opinion on whether they have been worked or not. I know you’re hand in glove with that little pipsqueak, ffinch-Brown.”

  “Mr. ffinch-Brown is the man you should consult.”

  “Bosh! He’ll only try to take them away from me.” Pettigrew seized Witt’s arm and practically dragged him along.

  Witt glanced back, his smooth façade ruffled by a grimace which combined anger, embarrassment, and an apology to Daisy. “Help Miss Dalrymple, Hamm, there’s a good chap,” he called as he was borne away by the irresistible avalanche.

  “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap,” Sergeant Hamm muttered forebodingly.

  “Mr. Pettigrew doesn’t seem frightfully popular,” Daisy observed.

  “Huh!” snorted the commissionaire, waving away a couple of boys who were approaching the mammoth too closely. “The destruction that walketh at noonday, that’s ‘im. I could tell you some stories, miss, as ’d curl—Don’t touch, if you please, madam! Big but fragile, them bones … . As I was saying, miss, Ol’ Stony, he’s a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, like it says in the Scriptures. Made Sergeant Underwood cry, ’im as was third up the ridge at Vimy.”

  “Good heavens!” Daisy inserted a plate in Lucy’s camera, wondering whether she need mess about with a magnesium powder flash or if the grey light coming through the window was sufficient.

  “Underwood was on duty in the Mineral Gallery, see, and ‘e didn’t ’op to it quick enough for Ol’ Stony’s liking. Well, stands to reason, ‘e’s a bit slow, only got one leg, though ’e does ‘is job right enough. Same as what I do and I’d like anyone to say the cont’ry,” said the sergeant belligerently.

  “I’m sure you do.”

  “But Ol’ Stony, out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, which is to say, ‘e told Underwood ’e was bloody useless—pardon the language, miss—and only ’ired for charity’s sake.”

  “How beastly,” Daisy sympathized, peering through the viewfinder. “I think that’s all right. What happened?”

  “Oh, Mr. Wright, as is Superintendent of House Staff, his anger was kindled, like it says in the Good Book. ‘E stationed Underwood in Fossil Plants, Corals, and Sponges, where it’s nice and quiet, and sent Pavett up instead.” Hamm grinned. “Young Pavett were a gunner. Deaf as a post, ’e is, or near as makes no odds. Been no trouble up there since.”

  Laughing, Daisy asked, “Hasn’t Dr. Pettigrew complained?”

  “’Asn’t ’e just! But ‘e might as well be a voice crying in the wilderness for all the good it does ’im. Sir Sidney ’Armer, that’s our Director, ’e says non scientific staff is Mr. Wright’s business and ‘e’s got better things to do with ’is time than sorting out Dr. Pettigrew’s petty problems.”

  The flow of gossip continued, interrupted by occasional admonitions to members of the public who tried to take advantage of the absence of the rope barrier. Going about her photography, moving on to a lifelike, life-size model of a shaggy mastodon, Daisy listened with half an ear. It sounded as if the Keeper of Minerals had managed to alienate half the museum staff, including his own assistants.

  Daisy had not realized the museum had so many scientific staff working behind the scenes. If she had, she would have supposed scientists were too engrossed in their work to squabble like ordinary mortals. On the contrary, it seemed they simply added personal spats to professional disagreements and jealousies. Even if she discounted half of what Sergeant Hamm relayed to her with such relish, scientists were human after all!

  The commissionaire accompanied her to the pavilion at the end of the gallery, where the Glyptodon awaited her. The twelve-foot, armoured creature with the medieval morningstar tip to its tail would make a spiffing illustration to her article. She was setting up the camera when Witt returned, looking harassed.

  “Look here,” he said, “I’m most frightfully sorry, Miss Dalrymple, but Pettigrew’s thrown me right out. There’s some work I simply must get done before lunchtime.”

  “That’s all right,” said Daisy. “Sergeant Hamm has taken very good care of me, and I’m nearly finished here. Just a couple of quick questions …”

  “Perhaps you’d allow me to take you to lunch, and we could talk at leisure?”

  “Thanks, but I’ve brought two children with me.” The way his face fell made her want to laugh. She asked her questions and thanked him, and he went off, promising to tell Mr. Steadman she would like to see him.

  As Daisy folded up the tripod after finishing the Glyptodon’s portrait, a plump man scurried up to her. He wore a long, dusty, white lab coat with frayed cuffs. His greying fair hair curled wildly above a round, pink face adorned with straggling eyebrows and an incongruous hooked nose.

  “Miss Dalrymple?” he asked, speaking very rapidly. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Mummery, Septimus Mummery, Curator of Fossil Reptiles. I want to make quite sure you understand that the
Archaeopteryx skeleton really belongs among the reptiles, with the pterodactyls. Witt is utterly unreasonable about it, simply refuses to give it up. I hope any reference to it in your article will point out the misplacement.”

  “I’ll remember,” Daisy promised cryptically, as she mentally deleted from her article a passing mention of the early bird. Wondering whether Archaeopteryx in its day had breakfasted on worms—she had rather ignored the fossil invertebrates—she went on, “I was just going to the reptile gallery. Will you tell me a bit about the pterodactyls and those sea monsters?”

  “Leviathan that crooked serpent, and the dragon that is in the sea,” muttered Sergeant Hamm.

  “Superstition!” Mummery’s wild eyebrows quivered in annoyance. “Ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs. Fascinating creatures. I shall be more than happy to assist you, Miss Dalrymple. Allow me,” he added, taking the tripod and camera from her.

  He walked as fast as he talked. Daisy trotted at his side through the passage to the fossil reptiles.

  Their gallery was half the width of the mammals’. On the left-hand wall hung slabs of stone, each with the skeleton of a prehistoric monster half-embedded. Poor, pathetic things! Mummery started to expound, in detail, upon the painstaking process of extracting a fragile fossil from the matrix where it was found. Daisy began by taking notes, but he went too fast and used too many technical words. Her attention wandered.

  The opposite wall was pierced at regular intervals by the rounded arches typical of the museum, narrow alternating with wide. The first was Special Palæontological Collections. Next came the wide entrance to Fossil Plants, Corals, and Sponges—that was where the one-legged Underwood had ended up, wasn’t it? Some of the plants were quite pretty, Daisy recalled, but not interesting enough for her article. The third arch had a closed door with a sign, GEOLOGICAL LIBRARY.

  Between the arches stood mounted skeletons, impressive in their way but less spectacular than dinosaurs. She hoped Mr. Mummery would not expect her to photograph them. Regretting having encouraged him, she drifted along after him from display to display.

  Another arch divided the long reptile gallery in half. Beyond it were the entrances to the invertebrates and to cephalopods—What were cephalopods?—and then the dinosaurs Daisy was aiming at. As if on guard outside the last, a squat, massive monster some ten feet long lurked on splayed legs. Though armoured with bony back-plates and armed with spikes on its blunt, heavy head, it made Daisy think of a giant bulldog.

  Mummery noticed the direction of her glance. “Ah, you are admiring the Pareiasaurus,” he exclaimed, moving toward it. “From South Africa, and one of the finest things in my collection.”

  “A fearsome beast,” said Daisy.

  “No, no, not at all, a peaceful herbivore.” He leaned across the rope barrier and fondly patted his pet’s hefty haunch, then gestured along its length. “All this is defensive, purely defensive. A splendid chap, isn’t he? A complete skeleton, too. Not a single one of those bones is plaster of Paris.”

  A tall, lanky man emerging from the Dinosaur Gallery gave Mummery a sour look, but turned to Daisy.

  “Miss Dalrymple? Witt tells me you want to take some photographs? I’m Steadman, the dinosaur curator.”

  “Oh yes, thank you. Dr. Smith Woodward said I may photograph the dinosaurs, and I have some questions for you.”

  “Dinosaurs are just another branch of Reptilia,” grumbled Mummery.

  “Just another branch,” Steadman protested. “You might as well agree with Pettigrew that fossils are ‘just another branch’ of Mineralogy.”

  “Not likely! Why, the rotter thinks they’re utterly worthless.”

  “Unless they have usefully metamorphosed into coal or petroleum,” said Steadman dryly. “This is your equipment, is it, Miss Dalrymple?”

  Mummery meekly handed over the tripod and camera, his claim to the dinosaurs dissipated in shared dislike of Pettigrew. He glanced wistfully from the camera to his pet Pareiasaurus. “If I can be of any further assistance, Miss Dalrymple,” he sighed, “you will find me in the work room behind the Geological Library. Or if I’m not there, one of my assistants will find me.”

  Daisy thanked him, somewhat absently. Libraries and work rooms—she pondered the possibility of expanding on the travel article to describe the scientific work of the museum for the interested layman. One of the weightier magazines might buy it.

  Avoiding over-technical information would be easy. All she had to do was leave out anything she didn’t understand. The girls’ boarding school she had attended had been absolutely free of any masculine taint of science. The school motto should have been Ignorance Is Bliss, but a minimal grounding in the basics might at least have let Daisy understand what Pettigrew, Mummery, and Steadman were arguing about.

  3

  Mr. Steadman ushered Daisy into the Dinosaur Gallery. Over half its length was taken up by the Diplodocus, eighty-five feet from nose to the whiplash tip of its tail, thirteen feet high, with its tiny head perched at the end of a long, slender neck.

  “I’d like to take the Diplodocus,” Daisy said, “but it’s so huge I don’t think I could do it justice. Besides, it’s American, isn’t it?”

  “The Iguanodon is home grown,” said Steadman with a smile, smoothing back his thinning hair. “Do you want to try that? It’s smaller, of course, but still quite dramatic.”

  About to agree, Daisy heard the gallery’s commissionaire say sharply, “No running, if you please!” She looked round to see Derek and Belinda approaching at a sort of compromise between a run and a walk.

  Derek skidded to a halt, eyes only for the Diplodocus. “Crikey!” he said, scanning it from end to end. “Crikey! Is it real?”

  “Course it is, isn’t it, Aunt Daisy?” Belinda said scornfully. “Everything here is real.”

  “You’d better ask Mr. Steadman here,” Daisy advised. “He’s the museum’s dinosaur man. My nephew, Derek, Mr. Steadman, and …” She could hardly introduce Bel to the curator as her future stepdaughter, particularly as he was now looking rather disgruntled. She shouldn’t have troubled him with the children. “And Belinda,” she finished.

  “Please, sir, is it real?”

  “In a sense, it’s real, Master Derek. Miss Belinda is correct in that we don’t have imaginary animals in the museum. Creatures like this did exist millions of years ago. But I’m afraid this particular skeleton is a model made from casts of the real bones.”

  “Oh,” said Derek, disappointed. Steadman grimaced. Daisy gathered his disgruntlement was with the plaster model, not the children. “Oh well,” said Derek, “it’s still spiffing, isn’t it, Bel? You can see what it was like, even if it’s not quite real.”

  “You mustn’t mind,” Bel said kindly to Steadman. “Did you lose the bones?”

  “No, no! The Diplodocus was found in America, and the Americans sent casts to various museums all over the world. Shall I tell you a secret?”

  “Yes,” breathed Derek. “Please!”

  “Promise not to tell?” They both nodded, wide-eyed. Stooping to their height, Steadman whispered, “They used the wrong feet by mistake. The front feet of this model are really the back feet of a Camarasaurus!”

  “Really and truly?”

  “Really and truly.”

  Derek dragged Belinda off to study the erroneous feet. Daisy and Steadman went over to the Iguanodon, a heavily built beast about twenty-five feet long. It stood more upright than the Diplodocus, perhaps twelve or fourteen feet tall, its forelimbs more like arms than legs, with huge claws on the thumbs. It would be a bit easier to fit into the viewfinder, Daisy agreed.

  While she prepared to take the photograph, she asked several questions about the creature, and then said, “Wasn’t the Iguanodon the one Dr. Smith Woodward said was discovered by a woman?”

  “That’s right. At least, Mrs. Mantell found the teeth.”

  “And there was someone else—Ann something?”

  “Mary Anning, a highly talented fo
ssil hunter of the last century. I believe she unearthed the first complete ichthyosaur and plesiosaur both. Mummery could tell you more about that.”

  Bother, thought Daisy. The female aspect sounded like a good idea to widen the appeal of her article, but it would mean applying to Mummery, whom she didn’t much care for.

  “Are many dinosaurs found in England?”

  “A few. The best hunting-grounds are elsewhere, however, chiefly Africa and the American West.” He glanced discontentedly around his collection. “The American museums and universities bag all the best.”

  “Even the African ones?”

  “They have the money to send out their own expeditions, as well as to buy the best from independent finders. Our trustees have been debating setting up an expedition since 1918. Smith Woodward is pushing for it, but five years and still no decision! The poor old fellow will die of old age before it happens. But I don’t want to bore you. Is there anything else I can tell you?”

  “What else would you suggest I photograph?”

  “Megalosaurus,” he said promptly. “It’s English, and actually the first dinosaur genus ever named or described in detail, just a century ago. We haven’t a complete skeleton, but a photograph of its head showing the dentition would be worthwhile, I believe.”

  Dentition—dentist—teeth, Daisy worked out. Latin was another subject the girls at her school had not been subjected to, but French dent, a tooth, helped.

  Derek had already found the Megalosaurus skull and was gazing with bloodthirsty awe at its vicious, carnivorous grin. Steadman explained to him the functions of the various types of teeth in far more gruesome detail than Daisy considered necessary. Belinda had already gone off in disgust to look at some innocuous fossil fish on the other side of the gallery.

  Apparently the description of a dinosaur meal, even as it destroyed Daisy’s usually hearty appetite, had aroused Derek’s. Having politely thanked Mr. Steadman, he reminded her that they were to have lunch in the refreshment room.