Detective Markham Mysteries Box Set

by Catherine Moloney

He glanced down at one press cutting he had pulled out from among the rest. Baranov had apparently been working on a new ballet dominated by a figure in black representing Death. Had the choreographer experienced a presentiment – some foreknowledge that he was doomed? Had he decided to trust himself to God?

  For all the choreographer’s carnal drives, there was clearly a marked religious strain in his makeup, the press cuttings abounding in amusing anecdotes about his habit of offering prayers to various composers when he ran into difficulties. ‘Let us pray to Tchaikovsky,’ he said, convinced that the maestro would hear his prayers and help him over the creative hump in suitable style.

  On the other hand, when asked how he felt about his mortality, Baranov’s irrepressible impishness won out. ‘Death is a beautiful girl, who is going to come and take me in her arms. I look forward to the experience.’

  Markham stood up impatiently and walked over to the glass window of his corner office, staring intently at the evidence board.

  When Death came for George Baranov, was it in the form of a woman? A woman who wanted revenge?

  Time to go and meet Marguerite Aroldingen. Perhaps the ballet mistress held the key to the mystery.

  The DI strode into the office.

  ‘Get your face out of that Advent Calendar, Noakes,’ he said drily, observing the DS’s portly form hunched at his workstation, stealth written all over him. ‘I won’t cover if Jean comes after you.’

  The DS whirled round. ‘I was jus’ looking,’ he protested. ‘No harm in that.’

  ‘Not the least,’ the DI agreed amicably. ‘But if I were you, I’d get rid of the chocolate round your mouth before we head out. You know what nasty suspicious minds people have.’

  *

  Once admitted by the gnarled old doorman, they found the theatre cold and comfortless. On stage a technician was rolling something that looked like a metal detector back and forth.

  ‘What the heck’s that?’ Noakes wondered.

  ‘It’s a magnet, mate.’ One of the overalled props staff had come up behind them, smiling broadly. ‘He’s checking for any nails or tacks – anything that could hurt one of the dancers.’

  At that moment, there was an ear-splitting whistle from high above them. ‘Oi, Charlie, I need you to clear any dead stuff so we can work on the flats. I’m gonna kill the lights now an’ we c’n test them later.’

  The friendly worker smiled at their confusion. ‘You’re the fuzz, ain’tcha?’ he said, quite at his ease. ‘Don’t mind all that stuff ’bout killing things an’ dead things. It’s just stagehand talk.’ His voice suddenly more serious, he added, ‘But it can be quite dangerous round here, so you need to look lively.’

  ‘I suppose there’s lots of machinery for a ballet like The Nutcracker,’ Markham said. ‘Special effects and so forth.’

  ‘Oh yeah.’ The man’s voice was proud. ‘We’ve got it all – explosions, magic tricks, levitating kids, even a Christmas tree that grows on stage.’ He grinned. ‘Not to mention the snow machine an’ all the rest of it.’ Suddenly, his face fell. ‘That Mr Baranov was always proper chilled out ’bout everything. Never got wound up when things went wrong.’ He gazed reminiscently up at the rigging above them. ‘I remember one time, there was some big pipes or summat crashed from up there onto the stage. Nearly killed one of the stage crew. It was absolute bleeding chaos, one of the pipes split open and begin to stink the place out. No-one knew if we’d be ready in time. But Mr B just stood there cool as you like, with all this blinking hysteria going on round him sorting out one of the dancer’s tiaras. He didn’t let nothing faze him.’

  ‘You liked him.’

  ‘Yeah, we all did.’ The man’s expression was fond. ‘He was down to earth, no nonsense.’ He looked balefully over his shoulder as though nervous of being overheard. ‘Not like that high an’ mighty Romanian poof who looks down his nose at us like we’re dirt and won’t even give us the time of day.’ He scowled. ‘I remember when one of my mates saw him practising and called out for a joke, “Fuck me, Ivan. Can’t you get your leg higher than that?” Next thing we knew, he’d been reported to Ted Murphy and given his P45.’ An emphatic shake of the head. ‘Nah, there was nothing like that about Mr B. We knew he was famous like, but he didn’t put on no airs ’n’ graces.’ With a wheezy chuckle he concluded, ‘I remember when some of the orchestra were striking, one of them asked Mr B, “Why should a garbage collector get more than a musician?” Mr B looked at him like he were mad. “Because garbage stinks,” he said.’

  ‘Hey you, what do you think you’re doing annoying these officers! Get on with your work!’

  Ted Murphy bustled up self-importantly, his great fat double chins wobbling with the unwonted exertion. With a look more eloquent than words, the stagehand sidled away.

  Markham contemplated the new arrival with thinly veiled antipathy.

  ‘I believe we have an appointment with Marguerite Aroldingen.’

  The stage manager frowningly consulted a clipboard.

  ‘She didn’t say anything to me about that.’

  ‘Nevertheless…’ It was the deep freeze.

  Bad-temperedly, with much tutting and sighing, they were ushered along the covered passageway next to the side door and down a corridor to a door marked ‘Principals’. Murphy’s hand was raised to knock when the door was flung open.

  A striking, raven-haired woman stood in the doorway, her dramatic Slavic features emphasized by heavy make-up, hooded eyes scrutinizing the visitors with some amusement. Somewhat bizarrely attired in what looked like a brightly-coloured chiffon dress, she nevertheless held herself as if she was dripping in diamonds, her elegant updo and crimson lipsticked mouth conveying an impression of cast-iron glamour. This was a woman who would never lose poise or pose.

  ‘Come in, gentlemen,’ she said in a husky ginny voice which hinted at Eastern European origins, regally dismissing Ted Murphy with a wave of the hand. Observing the elephantine stage manager’s face darken, Markham observed that he did not care for this at all.

  With the door firmly shut, she motioned them to two canvas chairs before sitting, bolt upright, in her own. No lolling was probably her motto, Markham reflected with wry amusement as he and the DS vainly tried not to slouch. Catching Noakes admiring her lovely legs, she winked, causing him to colour to the roots of his hair.

  ‘What can I do for you, officers?’ the ballet mistress purred, making it sound like an indecent proposal.

  Seeing that Noakes was still covered in confusion, Markham made the introductions and politely enquired where the ballet mistress had been on Saturday night.

  ‘My flat in Carnaby Terrace,’ she answered readily enough. One of the smarter districts just outside the town centre. ‘On my own,’ she added unapologetically.

  No alibi.

  ‘Look,’ she said, with an audible catch in her throat. ‘You want to know about me and George Baranov.’ She sighed expressively. ‘He was very nice, I was very nice, it was very nice.’

  Noakes was staring at her as though hypnotized by a snake, but somehow forced the words out. ‘But you weren’t … exclusive, like … I mean to say, he had other, er, girlfriends as well…’

  ‘Oh, George was like a puppy dog sniffing round lots of trees,’ she said with magnificent disdain. ‘But we were friends for all that.’ An impatient gesture of the beautiful beringed hands. ‘The sexual side was pretty much over between us… George had moved on to young athletic types. Less dying swan, more drum majorettes.’

  ‘How did you feel about that?’

  ‘Relieved more than anything else, I suppose.’ Aroldingen met the DI’s eyes frankly. ‘Look, Inspector, we came together in our devotion to the ballet. As far as I was concerned, that’s what counted.’

  From the bemused expression on Noakes’s face, she might as well have been speaking Esperanto.

  With an air of long-suffering patience, she endeavoured to explain. ‘Look, gentlemen, if you think about it, ballet is thoroughly un
natural and artificial.’ A vigorous nod of assent from the DS. ‘Quite sinister too, given the way a choreographer moulds human bodies like plasticine.’ She paused impressively. ‘But, when shaped by a genius, dance can become a technique for transcendence … something for lifting clay into the clouds.’

  Bugger me, thought Noakes, I wish the silly bint’d come down from them clouds for a moment. She must be on summat, banging on like that.

  ‘And Baranov was a genius?’ Markham knew the answer but wanted to draw her out.

  ‘Unquestionably.’ Aroldingen’s eyes were suddenly bright with pain. ‘Watching him choreograph was like watching light pass through a prism. The music passed through him and he refracted the music into dance.’

  Eh? Yeah, deffo high on summat. Prob’ly had a stash squirrelled away somewhere. Ketamine, bennies or some such…

  Noakes noticed the intrigued expression on the guvnor’s face. Surely he couldn’t be buying this load of cobblers. But that was the problem with the guvnor, he was a sucker for anyone who started spouting poetry or quoting la-di-dah gibberish…

  ‘…I understand he favoured the ballerinas.’

  ‘Well, George needed men, if only as partners.’ She was coolly offhand. ‘But there was always an area of competition. Obedient sons were okay, rivals weren’t, either professional or sexual.’

  What if a member of Baranov’s troupe had declined his assigned role of obedient servitor? What if docility had curdled to deadly hate?

  ‘Did Mr Baranov ever dance himself?’ Noakes asked curiously.

  ‘He had an operation after an injury to his knee, and mostly limited himself to character roles after that.’

  ‘What’s one of them, then?’

  ‘A part that doesn’t require full-put dancing … you know, like a wicked magician or a nobleman or party guest…’

  ‘Kinda like panto.’

  ‘I don’t think George would have put it quite like that, Mr Noakes,’ the ballet mistress said after a pause. ‘But you’re right, it’s more about dramatic roles with less actual dancing.’

  Visibly pluming himself on his acquisition of a classical dance vocabulary, Noakes sat back in his chair. Over to you, Guv.

  ‘I imagine in some ways a ballet company must resemble a family, Ms Aroldingen.’ The DI’s eyes were keen. ‘A dysfunctional family perhaps?’

  ‘Look, choreographers and directors are human like anyone else. And yes, fairness sometimes goes by the board.’ She looked as though she was willing them to understand. ‘You might have the talent, work ethic or whatever and be a sure bet for a role, but if you don’t play the game of the week – whatever that happens to be – you can get passed over or replaced.’ She snapped her fingers. ‘Out, just like that!’

  ‘Survival of the fittest.’

  ‘Something like that, Inspector… No explanations are offered when the bad news arrives. Just a rehearsal sheet on a bulletin board. You either jump for joy or run away to drown your troubles with too much red wine.’ She gave a brittle laugh. ‘Hell, George even taught us what and how to drink!’

  ‘What about Alexandra Fairlie?’

  ‘What about her?’ From a capacious pocket, Aroldingen produced a lacquered cigarette holder and proceeded to light up. The DI noticed her hands were shaking.

  ‘Er … I’m not sure as you c’n do that in here, luv,’ Noakes ventured. ‘There’s health an’ safety, you know. An’ happen your stage manager’ll have summat to say.’

  ‘Ted Murphy can go screw himself.’

  As there seemed to be no answer to that, Markham ignored the interruption.

  ‘How did you feel when Mr Baranov succumbed to an infatuation for Ms Fairlie?’

  The ballet mistress had herself well under control now. ‘Naturally it hurt at first.’ An elegant shrug of the shoulders. ‘But Alex is a wonderful dancer – she has coolness which burns, George used to say – and he had what he wanted most. A muse who would always dance.’ Another shrug. ‘Of course, she played him brilliantly.’

  ‘Played him?’

  ‘She had marvellous instincts for that. You see, George liked elusiveness in a woman. He used to say, “I don’t need a housewife. I need a nymph who fills the bedroom and floats out”. He always wanted romantic elusiveness. In his ballets, the man always seeks and the woman flees. He wanted women who were cool – guarded, emotionally unavailable.’

  A porcelain princess.

  ‘But then she walked out on him,’ Markham prompted.

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

  ‘And he turned to you again.’

  The expressive eyes were shadowed. ‘He turned to all of us again, Inspector.’

  ‘It must have been unsettling for everyone when she came back.’

  ‘Oh, it caused tremors for sure.’ She took a long drag of her cigarette. ‘But Alex and George were a force of nature.’ She smiled sadly. ‘George had to be in love to do his best work. There was nothing to be done but to accept the inevitable.’

  She made it sound so neat, so logical. But Baranov’s surrender to Fairlie’s powers could have been the tinder which kindled a murderous blaze, Markham reflected.

  The ballet mistress sensed his scepticism.

  ‘Offstage, dancers can be confused, sometimes stupid emotional human beings. But on stage we’re bigger and better than ourselves. That’s the miracle of dance.’

  The DI decided to leave discussion of the ballet totem pole.

  Glancing at his watch, he said courteously, ‘I believe you have a rehearsal now, Ms Aroldingen?’

  Clearly grateful for the reprieve, she glided to her feet, extinguishing her cigarette. ‘Why not come and watch? Then you can tell me who you need to see and they can go off one at a time.’

  Noakes flourished a smudged crumpled list and cleared his throat. ‘P’raps you c’n use this, luv.’

  ‘Excellent, Mr Noakes. Nothing like teamwork, I always say.’

  Markham was amused to note that the DS seemed somewhat alarmed at the prospect.

  ‘Right,’ she said briskly, ‘let’s go round to the auditorium. I’m starting with Isobel Kent and some of the corps. I can let you have them once we’ve practised the opening of act two.’

  From seats in the stalls, Markham and Noakes watched proceedings onstage with interest.

  Isobel Kent appeared to be warming up, though still clad in coat, leggings and leg warmers.

  ‘Looks more like Scott of the Antarctic than the Sugar Plum Fairy,’ Noakes observed jovially. Then he spied another dancer. ‘Hey up, what’s that lass over there doing with a cheese grater?’

  ‘It’s to level off the tip and bottom of her pointe shoes,’ came a quiet voice from behind them. ‘Gives the shoes extra grip so they won’t slip.’

  Brian Shaw, the Royal’s ballet master, smiled at Noakes’s wide-eyed wonderment.

  ‘Oh yeah, like the powder in that box.’ The DS was keen to show he was a quick learner.

  ‘That’s right,’ Shaw confirmed approvingly. ‘She’ll cover the soles and heels of her feet with it.’

  ‘An’ what’s the other one doing with all the sticking plaster?’

  ‘That soloist? Oh, she’s creating insteps – to make her feet look more highly arched.’ The ballet master chuckled at the expression on his interlocutor’s face. ‘I’m destroying all your illusions, aren’t I? You see, it’s all done with smoke and mirrors, gents.’

  With his customary suavity, Markham identified himself and Noakes.

  ‘You’re very welcome, officers.’ There was something very winning about Brian Shaw’s gentle self-effacing manner, the DI concluded. He wondered how the ballet master had coped with that ‘force of nature’ George Baranov.

  At that moment, a piercing scream thrilled through the cavernous space.

  It felt to Markham as though the temperature had suddenly dropped by several degrees.

  He jumped to his feet, every nerve end tingling, and looked at the stage.

  At first he saw not
hing, but then, following the white-faced look of terror on the little soloist’s face, he saw it.

  A puppet or marionette was slowly zigzagging its way along a wire which extended diagonally from high in the wings to the left of the stage and down to the other side.

  There was no sound save the eerie squeaking of the wire with its crumpled cargo.

  The dancer screamed again. And again. Scream upon scream as though she would never stop.

  Moving up the aisle towards the stage, Markham realized his mistake.

  This was no puppet.

  Sheila Bloom’s body spun gently in its cruel harness, a livid weal across the neck.

  5. Gathering Storm

  AFTERWARDS, THINKING BACK TO the ghastly apparition that he had witnessed, Markham recalled a long-forgotten event from childhood. He had gone on a school trip to see the ballet Petrushka, a winter fairy tale about the loves and jealousies of three clown puppets who mysteriously came to life. His classmates hadn’t thought much of it. ‘Punch and Judy on tiptoes.’ But Markham had been haunted by the climax where the leering ghost of the brutalized Petrushka, murdered by one of the other marionettes, suddenly appeared above the roof of the little puppet theatre. For an appalling moment, contemplating the ballet mistress’s corpse dangling from its hook like a sawdust-filled doll, it had seemed to him that Sheila Bloom’s face floated there in the air above her broken body, mouthing imprecations against her killer…

  Moving swiftly, Marguerite Aroldingen put her arm around the hysterical soloist and escorted her offstage. Other dancers, who had rushed to the auditorium from all corners of the theatre at the sound of their colleague’s piercing screams, stood gazing at the wardrobe mistress’s body with horror-stricken faces, shocked past speech, huddling together as though they felt there might be safety in numbers.

  Quietly and competently, Brian Shaw helped the DI and Noakes to evacuate the stage which, in what seemed like no time at all, was swarming with SOCOs.

  ‘Bromgrove Dance Academy’s just round the back of the theatre, Inspector, in Renton Street,’ the ballet master told them as the dancers clustered around him and Marguerite Aroldingen in a frightened huddle. ‘We do quite a lot of work with their kids, so they’ll let us use the studios over there. They’ve broken up for Christmas, so there aren’t any youngsters around.’