Dandy Gilver and the Unpleasantness in the Ballroom Read online

  ‘I take it that’s cochineal,’ I said, crouching down beside Alec and poking a finger at the stiffened spikes of fur, that had dried dark.

  ‘Something like that,’ said Alec. ‘Where was it exactly, Mrs— Foxy?’

  ‘In my dress bag,’ she said. ‘Ruined my dress I was going to wear for the quickstep.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us immediately?’ I asked her.

  There was an unmistakable flash in her eyes.

  ‘What are you frightened of?’

  ‘I’m frightened of Theresa being hurt,’ she said, deliberately misunderstanding. ‘I can tell you that for nothing. Why won’t she just give up?’

  ‘How do you know she hasn’t?’ I said. ‘I thought you had severed all connections with the dancing world.’

  ‘And why is it Theresa you fear for, rather than Roland?’ said Alec. ‘Since it was Mr Munn who met his end no matter that you were the target of the threats.’

  She swallowed hard and held her hand out for the card which I was still holding. ‘I shouldn’t have come,’ she said. ‘I had better go.’

  ‘Why didn’t you take Mr Munn to hospital?’ I asked. ‘And why didn’t you tell the doctor he felt ill?’

  ‘I just didn’t want any trouble,’ she said. ‘I still don’t. But I can’t stand by and watch Tweetie be hurt. Len was up to high doh with the threats. He was ill with the strain of it. Then he just … swooned at the top of the stairs. He just … fell into a faint.’

  ‘He didn’t trip,’ I said. ‘You’re admitting it to us now.’

  ‘Look, never mind all that,’ said Foxy. ‘Can you not try to get Theresa to see sense and pull out?’

  ‘We are doing everything we can,’ said Alec. ‘Mrs Gilver and I and her parents too. But if just one person would come completely clean about what happened last year perhaps it would be easier to prevail.’

  ‘Has Miss Thwaite not guessed?’ said Foxy. ‘Didn’t she put two and two together when she found my headdress?’

  For once in my life, I managed to bite my tongue before blurting. More than that I could not achieve, though, and so I left it to Alec to be clever.

  ‘Did it come off as you followed Mr Munn?’ he said.

  ‘I’d taken it off already,’ she said. ‘It was digging in and I snatched it off as we left the floor. I must have just chucked it down to try to grab Leo. And then in the confusion I forgot all about it.’

  ‘And you think Miss Thwaite might have guessed something significant using your headdress as a clue?’ I said.

  ‘If she did then whatever she’s guessed must seem like something to keep quiet about. Like I kept quiet about the earlier threats. Look, I’ve done what I can. I’m a woman of my word and I’ll not break promises I’ve made. I’ll leave this lot with you to show to Tweetie if you think it’ll help. Please, please take care of her, won’t you? I don’t have any children of my own and she’s the dearest thing to me. As close as a daughter even if I don’t see anything of her these days.’ Then she put a hand over her mouth, either to stop herself from talking or to hold in a sob.

  ‘You’ve been more helpful than you know, Foxy,’ Alec said.

  ‘Try to make her see sense and, if you can’t, at least try to keep her safe,’ Foxy said, then she gathered herself, picked up her empty carpet bag and left, passing a maid in the doorway.

  ‘Brandy?’ said Alec, taking the tray and closing the door behind him with his foot.

  ‘A cup of strong tea with sugar will do me.’

  ‘Could you make sense of the “headdress”?’

  I thought hard about it but could not.

  ‘I wonder if there were photographs,’ he went on. ‘If we were to see it, it might help.’

  ‘We could ask Miss Thwaite to describe it,’ I said. ‘If she made the costume presumably she’ll remember.’

  Alec nodded and swallowed his glass of brandy in one gulp.

  ‘And here’s an idea,’ he said. ‘Send her a telegram and make it official.’

  I began to drink my tea rapidly, but he gestured to me to slow down.

  ‘I need to stash these,’ he said, nudging the fox fur with his toe while he slipped the Christmas card back into its envelope. ‘I don’t want a chambermaid to come in and get the vapours.’

  And just like that, the fog cleared. Somehow, the combination of his using that word while he replaced one of the items where Foxy had kept it served to jolt the idea into my head. I felt the smile spreading over my face.

  ‘What?’ said Alec.

  ‘An envelope is the natural place to keep a card,’ I said. ‘But a toffee tin is a very odd place to keep a handkerchief, don’t you think?’

  ‘Now that you mention it.’

  ‘Think of what she said, Alec. She put her face in his handkerchief and wept. And then she knew he had been deliberately harmed.’

  ‘I cannot bear it when you do this, Dandy,’ Alec said. ‘Out with it, for God’s sake.’

  ‘Miss Thwaite picked up Leo’s hankie. It can’t have fallen out of his pocket for no reason. He must have had it in his hand.’

  ‘If he wasn’t feeling well, perhaps he was mopping his brow or perhaps he had it over his mouth.’

  ‘My money’s on that,’ I said. ‘He had it over his mouth. And then he fainted.’

  Realisation spread over Alec’s face and he gave a long low whistle.

  ‘Oh, my sainted aunt,’ he said. ‘She put it in a toffee tin because it was airtight. She hoped to preserve the evidence. What do you think it was?’

  ‘Chloroform,’ I said. ‘I’m certain of it.’

  ‘And Foxy knew,’ said Alec. ‘That’s why she was so careful to keep him away from doctors and hospitals until the effects had worn off. Even though it cost him his life.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s fair,’ I said. ‘She knew, but if he’d cracked his head and injured his brain a hundred doctors in a thousand hospitals couldn’t have made it better.’

  ‘But why did she not tell the police?’ Alec said. ‘Why was she not shouting from the rooftops that someone had murdered her husband?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ I said. ‘She’s terrified. They all are. As we said before.’

  ‘Except Beryl and Jeanne,’ said Alec. ‘Jeanne, if anything, is trying to help us think it all through and Beryl seems merely amused.’

  We sat for a moment staring at one another, sorting the facts, looking for answers.

  ‘I’m stumped by the headdress,’ said Alec. ‘She did say it was pinching. “Digging in” were the exact words. You don’t suppose …’

  ‘What?’ I asked, almost laughing. ‘Poisoned barbs? I hardly think so. Still, I’d like to find it and examine it. It must be somewhere.’

  Alec quickly re-wrapped the monstrous fox fur and locked it, along with the other items, in a drawer.

  ‘We need to tell the Stotts that Leo was killed,’ he said. ‘Tell Theresa and bring her to her senses. This damn thing is in two days.’

  I nodded, considering it.

  ‘But don’t you think they already know?’ I asked him. ‘Isn’t that why we were bundled out of there so unceremoniously when we mentioned Leo’s name?’

  ‘Well, then we need to tell this bally Scottish Imperial Battalion of Dancers we keep hearing about. Get the whole thing shut down. Go straight to Mr Silvester himself if we have to.’

  ‘What makes you think they don’t know?’ I said. ‘It got kept out of the papers, didn’t it? And I can’t see Foxy Trotter wielding that kind of influence with the press.’

  ‘But surely Roly doesn’t know the whole story,’ said Alec. ‘He’d be mad to carry on.’

  ‘But they are mad,’ I said. ‘Dance crazy. They’re worse than hunting fanatics and they’re bad enough.’

  ‘What the hell are we going to do if she won’t withdraw or if Victor Silvester and the might of the SC Whatsit won’t call a halt?’

  ‘Solve it before Friday,’ I said. ‘We’ve got two suspects, haven’t we? J
eanne and Beryl. We pick one and prove it.’

  ‘And if we can’t?’

  ‘We must,’ I told him. ‘There’s no other way.’

  15

  The first job on Thursday morning would be to revisit the Locarno and shake it hard to see what fell out. I had taken to the pepper pot detection method with the zeal of the neophyte. We were armed with Foxy’s revelations and were emboldened by the knowledge that Tweetie was safely at home and could come to no harm, no matter who we angered and how much by our meddling. All in all, there was plenty to think of as I lay drifting towards sleep.

  There was the ticklish question of how to ask about religion, of course. That prospect held no attractions. Grant had returned from communing with the housekeeper and delivered her news most succinctly.

  ‘Prods,’ she said.

  ‘Grant!’

  ‘Who prods?’ said Alec. ‘Prods what?’

  ‘She means that St Andrew’s is Church of Scotland, not Church of Rome,’ I supplied. ‘But really.’

  ‘That’s what Mrs Dolan said when I asked her,’ said Grant, wide-eyed but fooling no one.

  I ignored her.

  ‘We must find a subtle way to ask Miss Bonnar where she worships,’ I said to Alec, ‘and we can take it, I suppose, that Jeanne is not RC? I mean her father can’t have been or Lady Stott would be too and so would Theresa, but we’ll have to ask about the schoolmistress. Wasn’t there a Sunday school connection somewhere?’

  ‘We should ask everyone,’ Alec said.

  ‘Or no one,’ said Grant. ‘I don’t see why a Catholic couldn’t use a Protestant prayer card as a threat, sir. I don’t see that at all. It would add insult to injury. Or it might sit better to use a card the sender thought was already debased. Less blasphemous that way.’

  ‘Or even, as Miss McNab suggested, the card might have been chosen with no thought to such matters at all,’ Alec added, with no loyalty whatsoever.

  ‘I disagree,’ I said. ‘Cock Robin and the poor dead bird might have been sought by pretty much anyone. But one would have to search for the prayer card with an expectation of finding it. One would have to know of such things and Protestant Glasgow would know nothing. Do you see?’

  All in all we ended the evening rather deflated at the way our progress had melted away again.

  There is nothing like a new morning, however, to put the bounce back in one’s step, especially when the day is bright and breezy, with a blue sky and a promise of warmth in the afternoon if the clouds stay away.

  On Sauchiehall Street, we arrived at the Locarno just in time to see Bert Bunyan – very much Bert Bunyan rather than Beau Montaigne, with his cap on the back of his head and a cigarette in the corner of his mouth – striding along the pavement looking cheerful and carefree. He tipped his hat when he saw us and went inside, taking the stairs at a bound and flicking his cigarette away at the last minute before he entered.

  I was rather horrified to see one of our tame urchins, the little boy, pounce on the stub and put it to his lips.

  ‘Here!’ I said, climbing down. ‘Throw that down again before you burn your mouth. How old are you?’

  ‘Eight,’ said the boy stoutly and he went to take another puff. ‘There’s no need to worry yourself about me, missus. I know how to smoke.’

  ‘It’s nothing to be proud of,’ I said. ‘But have it your own way. You can choose between the fag and the sixpence for being our garage-man again.’

  Without a moment’s pause he positioned the stub between his fingers and sent it in a great wheeling arc into the middle of the street far beyond the tramlines. His sister, watching from the doorway, cheered him.

  As I was handing over the coins, however (I paid upfront since they had proved themselves already), I could not help but wonder that they were there again.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be at school?’ I said.

  ‘I’m too wee,’ said the girl.

  I gave a pointed look at her brother.

  ‘And I’ve been sent home for fighting,’ he said, without a trace of shame.

  ‘And do you live near here?’ I said, belatedly questioning why they were huddled outside the Locarno day after day without a policeman sending them packing. Both children hooted and chortled at the idea that they, barefoot and in their rags, might live amid the glitter of Sauchiehall Street.

  ‘Naw, the Gorbals,’ said the boy, naming one of Glasgow’s worst slums, rivalling anything that the East End of London could offer. ‘But the money’s better up the town.’ He bit on the sixpence and gave Alec and me a look so perfectly balanced between wisdom and innocence that it rather broke one’s heart.

  ‘Well make sure and be here tomorrow,’ said Alec. ‘This place will be packed out with people and lots of them might have motorcars.’

  ‘Oh aye, it’s always a good day when the Champs are on,’ said the little girl cheerfully. I was appalled at one so young – not even old enough for school! – being quite so mercenary until she went on: ‘I like seeing their frocks and the mennies in the penguin suits.’ And she clapped her grubby little hands with glee.

  Her excitement was shared, perhaps outdone, by that inside the ballroom. The Locarno was, quite simply, thrumming with nervous hilarity. Alicia and Jamesie were there, looking from their damp hair and limp clothes as though they had run a marathon, Bert had joined Beryl and was leading her through a set of steps so fast and sharp their feet almost blurred as one watched them, while Beryl, red-faced and panting, struggled to keep up with him. The biggest surprise was the jazz song being pounded out upon Miss Thwaite’s piano by an enormously fat man in a striped collarless shirt and thick braces, who twitched his elbows and stamped his feet as though he were a one-man band but had forgotten to attach his cymbals. Mr Lorrison stood in the doorway to the office corridor and watched with his usual reptilian stillness, a stillness which deserted him instantly as he caught sight of Alec and me.

  ‘Oh no,’ he said, marching over to us. ‘No, no, no. She’s not here so you’ve no business here either.’

  ‘Mr Lorrison,’ said Alec, ‘we’ve been learning a great deal since we last saw you and we have some questions.’

  I was aware that the piano, although the music went on, was much quieter. Both couples continued to move around the floor but all eyes were upon us and all ears were straining too I am sure.

  ‘How did you keep it out of the papers?’ I asked under my breath and was rewarded by seeing Lorrison’s eyes flash in anger and fear.

  ‘Get away through,’ he said. ‘Youse can have five minutes.’

  ‘I do not understand your demeanour,’ I said once we were sitting on either side of his cluttered desk in that grimy little office. ‘We’re trying to help.’

  Lorrison made an ugly sound to show his scorn.

  ‘To prevent a reoccurrence of the same trouble,’ Alec added. ‘You can’t really imagine that if there’s another death at this year’s competition you’ll be so lucky as to sweep it under the carpet again?’

  ‘Another death?’ said Lorrison, looking sickly. ‘Why would—’

  ‘Foxy Trotter was sent a note and then a card and then that ghastly fur,’ I said. ‘Presumably you saw them?’

  He nodded, paler if anything, and swallowing hard.

  ‘And then on the day of the competition, Leonard Mayne was killed.’

  ‘He tripped and fell down the stairs!’ said Lorrison.

  ‘He certainly fell downstairs,’ said Alec. ‘But he didn’t trip.’ Lorrison started to interrupt but Alec only spoke louder. ‘He fainted because someone had doused his handkerchief with chloroform.’

  Lorrison’s clamouring was cut off as though someone had flicked an electric switch and taken the power of speech from him. He simply stared. Then he swallowed hard again and when he spoke it was without any of his bluster.

  ‘Where did you hear that?’ he breathed. ‘Chloroform?’

  ‘The handkerchief has been saved and stored in a good tight tin,’ I said. ‘The sme
ll is gone but I’m sure that a chemist would be able to detect traces of it still. So you can understand our concern. For Tweetie, and frankly even more so for Roly.’

  ‘This is not good,’ said Lorrison, with what I thought to be considerable understatement. ‘This is going too far.’

  ‘Do you know who’s behind it, Mr Lorrison?’ I asked.

  He gave me a hunted look and shook his head.

  ‘Is there any way you can stop it?’ said Alec innocently. ‘Even though you don’t know who’s responsible? Or should we go to the police?’

  Lorrison shot an arm out and grabbed Alec by the wrist. The movement was as quick as a lizard’s tongue catching a fly and Alec had no chance to flinch away from it. I half stood, ready then and there to go outside and call for a bobby, but at a second glance there was no threat about the way Lorrison was hanging on; just desperation, matching the pleading look in his eyes.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ he said. ‘For my sake as well as your own. Please don’t kick up any trouble. There’s still time for the federation to pull the Champs away and have them somewhere else and then I’ll lose my job and my house and be ruined.’

  ‘That would indeed be a misfortune, Mr Lorrison,’ I said. ‘But Leonard Mayne lost his life. If taking the competition to a different dance-hall would get rid of the threat of another death then it’s well worth it.’

  ‘Aye, but would it?’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t the killer just kill at the Palais or the Roxy?’

  ‘You know exactly who it is, don’t you?’ I said. ‘Why are you protecting her?’

  Lorrison, shocked by the pronoun I think, dropped Alec’s wrist and only seemed to realise that he had grabbed it at all when he saw the way Alec rubbed it, unfastening his cufflink to get at the sore spot.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t thinking.’

  Alec shrugged and gave him a friendly smile. ‘Don’t give it a thought, old man,’ he said. ‘Save your worries for where they belong. Can you really contemplate being responsible for another dancer losing his life at the Locarno?’