After the Armistice Ball Read online

  CATRIONA McPHERSON was born near Edinburgh in 1965 and educated at Edinburgh University. Formerly a linguistics lecturer, now a full-time writer, she is married to a scientist and lives on a farm in a beautiful valley in Galloway. Find out more about Catriona and the series on dandygilver.co.uk.

  Praise for Catriona McPherson and After the Armistice Ball

  ‘In this first novel from McPherson the period setting is spot on . . . [and] in Gilver we have a winning character who will hopefully find many more crimes to solve.’

  Good Book Guide

  ‘After the Armistice Ball superbly evokes the feel of the 1920s . . . I look forward to [the] next adventure.’

  Euro Crime

  ‘Catriona McPherson . . . has given us a novel that even Dorothy L. Sayers would have been pleased with . . . This looks set to be a series that will really take off’

  Crime Squad.com

  Also by Catriona McPherson

  The Burry Man’s Day

  AFTER THE ARMISTICE BALL

  Catriona McPherson

  ROBINSON

  London

  Constable & Robinson Ltd

  3 The Lanchesters

  162 Fulham Palace Road

  London W6 9ER

  www.constablerobinson.com

  First published in the UK by Constable,

  an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd 2005

  This paperback edition published by Robinson,

  an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd 2006

  Copyright © Catriona McPherson 2005, 2006

  The right of Catriona McPherson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in

  Publication Data is available from the British Library

  ISBN 13: 978-1-84529-341-3 (pbk)

  ISBN 10: 1-84529-341-X

  ISBN 13: 978-1-84529-130-3 (hbk)

  ISBN 10: 1-84529-130-1

  eISBN: 978-1-78033-407-3

  Printed and bound in the EU

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  For my parents, Jim and Jean McPherson,

  with all my love and thanks

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Prologue

  Lustre. That was what had been missing and was suddenly back. The Esslemonts’ Armistice Ball was lustrous in a way feared to have disappeared for ever; and for once, as Daisy Esslemont observed, the emphasis was not on lust. Husbands were recently demobbed and there was none of the usual marital ennui, so in spite of the glitter a strange wholesomeness prevailed.

  The ladies dazzled. Young and old, their hair shone with setting lotion or twinkled with ornaments; lips glowed red if maquillage had been ventured upon, cheeks glowed pink if not; frocks sparkled or gleamed with the bristle of sequins or the stately drape of satin. The ladies, though, were not uncontested. Men, usually no more than a backdrop to their wives, were resplendent that night since no man without a dress uniform in which to strut around would have dared show his face. The epaulettes and medals from the Boer campaign and the one or two surviving costumes from the Crimea lent a faint air of light opera along with their whiff of camphor and outdid, somewhat impertinently the young men felt, the lesser peacockery of more recent heroes.

  So everyone glistened. And they laughed and the music was sprightly and even the smell was different. In the heat of the ballroom, the ladies’ sweat and sweet talcum mixed with the spice of cigar-breath and drove away sourness, the reek of worry, which was all there had been for five chill years.

  Then there were the jewels. Out from the safes, home from the banks, tipped from their velvet bags, came the jewels. Tiaras, brooches, bracelets and bangles, clusters, half-hoops and solitaires. The rubies, the emeralds, the sapphires, the diamonds, the diamonds, the diamonds.

  The Duffy diamonds, almost forgotten, newly mesmerizing, raised a round of applause as Lena Duffy shed her wrap; people jostled to the banisters to look down at them and cheer, enchanted. Then Lena’s simpering and swishing about made the onlookers turn away, murmuring that she might, she really might, have let one or other of her daughters have a look in instead of hoarding it all to herself still. Silly to have two pretty girls in pearls and their ageing mama stooping under the weight of the family jewels.

  Later, when a footman came round at supper to make the collection for widows and orphans, she took off her bracelets and dangled them over the hat, laughing, before snatching them away again in whitened fists and fastening them back around her arms. Silas Esslemont frowned until the younger Duffy girl, twinkling at him, brought a smile back to his face. After all, if one were honest, what was being celebrated here was things going back to how they were before when one owed no sombre piety to life and cruel little jokes gave it savour. It was half the joy of this evening, if one were honest, that only those whose loved ones had returned were here; that the others, of whom there were so many, could be forgotten and that just for tonight glee could bubble up and over unchecked.

  Chapter One

  I am not – and I say this with neither pride nor shame – a sensitive soul. Not one of those women whose recreation lies amongst ‘things she cannot explain’, sudden powerful convictions of who knows what exactly. I should not go so far as to say I have no finer feelings, but whenever I compare mine with those of my acquaintance they do seem somewhat coarser in the main. I have never smiled that curling smile and nodded when told of some engagement, some divorce. Rather, any news of that kind tends to take me by surprise and leave me, let us face it, coolish.

  How am I to explain then the conviction I held from the earliest stage of the Esslemont affair that somewhere here was such hatred, malign and unstoppable, that it must lead, as flood-water up and melt-water down, to violent death? On the surface (my usual habitat) it was a matter merely of commerce. At stake was a good business name – a livelihood at the very most – and while the theft of property might be distressing it does not usually, need not, stir the dust of life to much extent. I am at a loss, therefore, to account for my instant certainty last spring that somewhere near at hand and sometime rather soon blood would spurt and be staunched in murder’s furtive scuffle.

  Who can say how far back it had its beginning, at what moment the first turning was taken away from light and cheerful ordinariness towards the festering dark where thoughts of killing can gather? As far as I was concerned it all began on a squally spring morning in my sitting room, the little room of mine overlooking the flower garden which my mama-in-law insists on calling my boudoir, conjuring up images of Turkey rugs thrown over low settees, air thick with burning pastilles and me with satin sleeves dragging on the floor as I pace. This is a picture gapingly at odds with reality since I do not recall that I ever have paced in the whole cours
e of my life, in my sitting room or anywhere else.

  Anyway, there I sat sans satin, sans incense, dressed in wool and tweed, in a room smelling frankly of coal and nothing much draped over anything beyond a dog blanket on my pale chair since it had been wet on our walk. I was bored, and the pleasure of boredom was beginning to run out just then, in the spring of 1922. For a few years after the Armistice it had been delicious to be without occupation. The war had ended at last, and Hugh had come home as I had always known he would, since he had been tucked away miles and miles from the front, behind even the hospitals, so that my worrying had been no more than a wifely duty and a politeness, saving me from the crime of too much visible tranquillity in front of other women whose worries were real. Now none of us was worried nor were we busy and I daresay I was not the only woman in the land for whom, her husband home, her children at school, her uniform growing musty in an attic, boredom was getting to be a burden again.

  Understandable then that to help a couple of hours shuffle past we clung to the routine of doing our correspondence and managed still to make a morning’s work of it, but the silliness of it all made me cross; not the best mood for considering a sheaf of invitations and had I not forced myself to accept in spite of it Hugh and I might have ended as hermits.

  Daisy’s letter made me even crosser than usual. Before, an invitation from Daisy and Silas would always have been accepted and if Hugh grumbled (which he did) about the company, I could retort (which I did) that if he cared to take over the organization of our social life I should be happy to go where he chose.

  The problem with Esslemont, as far as Hugh was concerned, was Esslemont Life. Esslemont Life, begun by Silas’s grandfather in the 1860s, was exactly what it sounded as if it was. Where Grandfather had got the notion no one knew, since for generations before him Esslemonts had been content to kill their stags and collect their rents like everyone else. When the old man died – I was too young to remember this but it was still murmured about – people waited for Silas’s father to sell the shameful thing and retire to his grouse moor with a sheepish shrug But far from it. Esslemont Life became by degrees Esslemont Life, Fire, Theft, Flood, Retirement Pensions and heaven only knew what next. Eventually, the Esslemonts having an insurance company with offices in George Street and advertisements in the worst sort of morning paper came to be seen as a mere quirk, something to smile and wrinkle one’s nose about, something which gave one the chance to feel broadminded as one forbore to mention it.

  Still, when Silas took over, upon his father’s death in 1910, we all once again expected he would sell. Indeed, Hugh pronounced more than once that he should have to sell, to raise the estate duty. Or rather that he should have to sell something, for everyone did, and that surely he would sell a grubby old office and a lot of dusty papers before he would touch an acre of land.

  Nothing was ever said, but Silas dealt with the estate duties, running just then at forty per cent, without selling off a single sprig of heather and from then on our friends began to shut up rather about Esslemont Life. After the war, of course, it became nothing short of pitiful to compare the Esslemonts and ourselves. And now this: Silas was about to float. I was not entirely sure what that meant, only that somehow it was the sale we had been expecting for three generations, and yet also the most blatant swank Silas could have dreamed up to rub our noses in it.

  Indeed, rubbing our noses in it, or rather inviting us to rub them in it ourselves, was a yearly fixture for Silas. At the first Armistice Ball, on Armistice Day itself, the hats had brimmed and spilled with banknotes. Partly champagne bravado, but partly too our belief, soon to be shown up for the foolishness it was, that very soon and for evermore we should be as before. I wonder how many of us, sober in dreary meetings with our agents, thought back to that night and wished that some of what we had stuffed into the out-held hats was safely under our mattresses still. When the invitations came for the ball in 1919, I for one never dreamed that the hats would come round again. The embarrassment, the crawling mortification and shame as we scraped together what we could, for none of us had come prepared and clearly none of us walked around with cushions of banknotes about our persons any more. 1920 was better, since at least we knew it was coming, and Hugh made sure he was well buffered by Silas’s brandy before the moment came to toss in the five twenty-pound notes he had drawn from his bank for the purpose. In 1921, I thought of declining, but Hugh would not hear of it and we were not the only ones there looking hurt, proud and grimly determined all at once, watching Daisy and Silas through narrowed eyes as they floated around amongst their stricken guests without a care.

  All in all, as we shut our London houses and decided against restocking our salmon rivers, we felt that Silas was letting the cruel, cold light of a most unwelcome dawn shine into the burrow where the rest of us were still huddled, and knowing that we should all soon have to waken to this dawn made neither it, nor Silas its harbinger, any less blinding.

  So we had to go once a year, pride saw to that, but must we be always dashing off there in between times? Might I refuse? It was terrifically short notice, and to decline it would excite no surprise. ‘Darling Daisy,’ I wrote, ‘how sweet of you to think of us.’ I imagined her rucking open the envelope with her thumb, scanning the prose for a pip of sense and then ripping the sheet across and dropping it into the basket, as I had done an hour before and should do again tomorrow and the day after that. I dipped my pen and had just set it against the paper once more when the telephone at my elbow shrieked.

  This telephone in my room was a new departure and was thought by Hugh and by Pallister our butler to be taking modern manners to the furthest point of decency. I should never admit to either of them how it made me jump each time it erupted beside me, like a sleeping baby whose nappy pin had given way and pierced it, just as inconsolable, just as demanding of being picked up and made a fuss of with one’s whole attention for some length of time not of one’s own choosing. I composed myself and lifted the earpiece.

  ‘Dan? Dan, is that you?’ Daisy’s voice was as brisk as ever, talking over the girl at the exchange. ‘Listen, I’m ringing to make certain you’re going to come, darling. I should have sent you a proper letter to explain things but I did so want to speak face to face. And then I was suddenly convinced this morning that you wouldn’t come and if you don’t I have simply no idea what I shall do, so you must. And don’t call me a goose for caring, because I did think it was all a joke at first, as one would, but it’s Silas, you see. Silas has gone very peculiar and is talking about capitulation. So whatever Hugh says, you quite simply must come.’

  Even from Daisy, renowned as she was for enormous plumes of enthusiasm, this feverishness needed an explanation.

  ‘Darling, is everything all right?’ I began, then I listened as a kind of chalky gulping came over the line, a sound which might have been the very end of a long bout of sobs but which, since Daisy had just spoken, must in fact be laughter.

  ‘Oh Dandy,’ she said at last. ‘Haven’t you heard? You’re impossible! Nothing is all right or ever will be again. Dandy, the Duffys have long been booked this Friday to Monday because poor darling Silas has a contingent of bankers and other unspeakables to be sucked up to. Yes, even as far as actuaries, darling – don’t ask – whom I couldn’t have borne to inflict on anyone else. So I asked the Duffys. And a few satellites. They’re dreariness made flesh but so respectable I thought they would be perfect. And then Cara is such a dear and always cheers up Silas no end, although Clemence has undoubtedly washed ashore on a tide from the Arctic. Naturally, I assumed that they would cancel after last week – Do you really not know?’

  ‘I really think I mustn’t,’ I said, since nothing had made a whisker of sense so far.

  ‘Hence the late summons to you and Hugh. But they’re still coming, if you can believe it. And in her letter confirming it she said she wanted to speak to me most particularly and she imagined I would know what about. As of course I do. And she further
imagined that I would agree it could all be dealt with quite amicably. Which I most certainly do not. Anyway, all four of them will be here on Friday. Dandy, you’ve got to come.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, ‘but –’

  ‘You were so splendid that time on Cuthbert’s yacht, darling, and I just know that you will be able to get to the bottom of it and do it again.’

  ‘The bottom of –?’

  ‘All of it,’ Daisy yelped, and I jerked the earpiece away from my head. She continued on a rising note. ‘Find out what Mrs is doing, where on earth she got the idea. Or find out what really happened, speak to the servants if you must. Always assuming we have any left. McSween is threatening notice. McSween! Because he was on duty with the luggage that day. The under-gardener is beside himself. As are we all. It’s unspeakable, it must be stopped, and you are the only one who can stop it. You’re the only one whom no one will suspect of anything.’ She was beginning to speak more slowly now. ‘I shall never forget it; you sitting there on deck under that ludicrous hat piping away like a choirboy and everyone else simply squirming with shame, wondering how you dared. I was the only one who knew, I think, that the innocence wasn’t an act. You’ll be perfect.’

  I flushed. The memory of it was still painful. She asked how I had dared? I hadn’t dared, of course. I was just chatting, no earthly clue what I was saying, but Cuthbert Dougall’s yacht had sailed out from Anstruther harbour the very next day and never been seen again (and it was a testament to the vileness of Cuthbert that neither his mother nor his sister, our dear friend, felt anything but gratitude towards me).

  ‘I see,’ I said. ‘I’ll be splendid. In the way a new novel is splendid if it happens to be just the right thickness to wedge under a wobbly table. I’m very flattered, I assure you.’