‘They’re off one of my dancing gowns,’ said Theresa.
Alec and I did not need even to look at one another to know that we were of the same mind. He nodded slightly to tell me to take first bash at the work of persuasion.
‘Lady Stott,’ I said. ‘I cannot impress upon you strongly enough how serious this is. I really do think you should consider contacting the authorities.’
She was shaking her head before the words were even out of my mouth, and so Alec took over.
‘This is a crime,’ he said. ‘It’s a clear threat to kill and it’s illegal.’
‘Hardly clear,’ said Theresa. ‘I mean, unmistakable. But hardly clear.’
‘The Act of 1847,’ Alec said, as he loved to do, ‘has been used time and again to cover threats much more oblique than this one.’
Sir Percy was nodding along and looked relieved to have things so baldly stated. Lady Stott on the other hand gave every indication of being about to fly into either a panic or a temper at Alec’s words and Theresa had turned even whiter than when she was unconscious, dark smudges under her eyes, her lips showing almost blue. She sat back carefully, gazing at us but saying nothing.
‘And where was Jeanne?’ said Lady Stott, almost loud enough to be classed as shouting. Temper it is then, I found myself thinking. ‘She’s supposed to be your companion and your protector. Where was she when some grubby little so-and-so was sneaking around, leaving filthy things in your bag?’
Theresa opened her eyes very wide and put her hands to her mouth in a gesture which, for the first time, showed her resemblance to her mother. She, however, did not shriek behind them. She giggled. Her eyes sparkled with merriment and she gave a definite little laugh. ‘Oh, yes. Drat the circus rat!’ she said. ‘I forgot her.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Sir Percy.
‘I saw the thing’ – she waved at the bird in Alec’s hand. He was busy trying to form the sheet of paper into a little box around it – ‘and just grabbed my coat and fled. I drove home as fast as my little bus would take me. I didn’t even think of traffic policemen, much less Jeanne.’
‘Your maid?’ I said, hazarding a guess.
‘My cousin,’ said Theresa.
‘My brother’s girl,’ said Lady Stott. ‘An orphan. Her father died in … well, it was a dreadful thing, and her mother died five years ago so we took her in. It was neat timing with Tweetie needing a companion.’
‘Mother!’ said Theresa. ‘Rather heartless. And I didn’t “need a companion”. You thought I needed a chaperone.’ Her mother began to reply but Theresa held up a finger, rather rudely, and cocked her head. ‘Hark,’ she said.
Right enough, when I listened closely, I could make out the sound of footsteps on the gravel outside, then the front door opening and someone crossing the hall.
‘That was quick,’ said Theresa, as a young woman entered the room.
She was dressed rather more conventionally than her cousin in a pearl-grey gabardine coat and matching felt hat with shoes chosen for comfort rather than style, but she had the same slim figure and the same lovely line of jaw and cheek.
‘What happened to you?’ she said, taking in the scene.
Her voice was something else again, hardly a trace of Glasgow, but none of Theresa’s flapperish affectations either.
‘Did you catch a cab?’ said Theresa.
‘All the way from Sauchiehall Street?’ said Lady Stott. ‘I’m not made of money.’
‘I took the tram,’ said Jeanne. ‘Are you ill?’
‘I’ve had another delivery,’ Theresa said, nodding to Alec.
Jeanne walked over to him and peered into the cup of paper he had fashioned around the bird. ‘Is that a wren?’ she said. ‘It’s not a sparrow anyway.’ She put her head on one side, looking rather bird-like herself. ‘It’s not often you get the chance to study one at leisure.’
Lady Stott was rendered speechless by this. She was still on her feet and she simply lifted her hands and let them fall to her sides with a soft clap. Alec, after a glance under the brim of Jeanne’s hat, studied the bird with more attention than he had shown before. I concentrated on not letting my thoughts show on my face. After another minute, Jeanne wrinkled her nose and turned away.
‘I’m going to change,’ she said. ‘The tram was terribly smoky.’
Then she turned on her heel and left us. We listened to her footsteps crossing the hall and beginning to mount the stairs.
‘Well!’ said Lady Stott.
‘Poor Jeannie,’ said Sir Percy. ‘She cannot abide the smell of pipe smoke.’
‘Oho!’ said Lady Stott. ‘Twenty feather beds to cushion a pea!’
‘She’s a thoroughly sensible young woman,’ said Sir Percy. ‘She’s not swooning and fainting all over the place.’
‘She’s no call to,’ said Lady Stott. ‘She saw nothing.’
‘But last time,’ said her husband. ‘When she did.’
Lady Stott shook both her hands at him and shushed him very loudly, more like someone shooing chickens into a henhouse that someone trying, discreetly, to stop a conversation going in an undesired direction.
‘Your father’s right,’ she said to Theresa. ‘Jeanne’s a good girl.’
‘And you shouldn’t have left her stuck there in Sauchiehall Street without a word,’ Sir Percy said.
I would have expected Theresa to be stung by her father’s taking a cousin’s side against her own, but she merely looked amused. Her mother, in contrast, turned on a sixpence and drew herself up so sharply that her pearls rattled.
‘If she had been looking after Tweetie properly as she should have been, she couldn’t have been left behind,’ she said.
‘She can’t be in two places at once,’ said Sir Percy. ‘If she was sticking to Tweetie like flypaper she couldn’t have been in the cloakroom guarding her belongings, now could she?’
‘She could have been sitting at the side of the dance floor, holding her belongings,’ said his wife.
‘I wouldn’t want my coat crushed by Jeanne clutching it all day,’ said Theresa. ‘In fact now I think of it …’ In a fluid movement, she rose to her feet. It was a kind of unfolding, quite unlike the way most of us, even at twenty, clamber up from a couch. She glided over to the doorway where she had dropped her coat and executed a graceful sideways dip to snatch it up again. Then she twirled it like a matador’s cape and settled it around her shoulders. And tiresome as she was, even on our short acquaintance, as I watched her I found myself hoping that while we were in the Stotts’ employ we should get the chance to see Tweetie Bird dancing.
4
We finagled a minute alone, walking around in the gardens, by telling the Stotts that an immediate synthesis of the elements of the case was a crucial step if we were to start off on the right path.
‘I don’t know how you can say it with a straight face,’ I told Alec once we were out of earshot of the house. ‘Synthesis, indeed. What does it mean?’
‘No idea,’ Alec said. ‘Barrow’s reading is as broad as it is modern.’
Barrow was Alec’s valet-cum-butler, a very superior young man who offset the horror of suddenly being dragged to Perthshire by knocking the household into a particular and somewhat peculiar shape. Alec was wont to say Barrow was sublimating and repressing and that we should be glad of it, but I did not find the explanation helpful.
‘So,’ I began. ‘How are we going to find out what happened when they’re all so determined not to tell us?’
‘What, you mean “last time”?’ said Alec. ‘When the press came sniffing around and Jeanne was so splendid?’
‘It might not be connected, of course,’ I said. ‘So, leaving it for the moment, what do you think of the current troubles?’
Alec took his time answering and for a couple of minutes we simply strolled along. We were passing between two herbaceous borders of a length, depth and abundance that would have reduced Hugh to seething envy, not to mention my mother in her day. This
early in June, the rigging of nets and rings and stakes was still visible amongst the vegetation and its sturdiness was a testament to good planning and a steely nerve. I, had I ever had the kind of clout that could direct gardeners, should never have been tough enough to order what had been done here: to dig up, chop apart and prune to the ground the fledgling plants each spring and then to overlay them with a superstructure which put one in mind more of Mr Brunel spanning a gorge than of stopping a few hollyhocks from flopping over. I had a sudden vision of Lady Stott in her bedroom in the morning before her frock and jewels were added, cinched and buttressed and perhaps, if she were loyal, held together with Stott’s patent rubberised fastenings.
‘I don’t know why you’re smiling,’ said Alec, breaking into my thoughts. ‘There’s something pretty nasty going on here, if you ask me. One doesn’t want to display finer feelings than a young woman, not in front of witnesses anyway, but I couldn’t really share in Miss … We haven’t heard, have we? In Jeanne’s detached interest. That bird gave me the willies, if I’m honest.’
‘It was Cock Robin that made me shudder,’ I said.
‘And three times,’ said Alec. ‘Surely a dancing school must have a fair amount of bustle. If Miss Stott broadcast her plight – and I can’t imagine her being stoical, can you? – then everyone there – the other dancers or students or what have you and the instructors – must have been on the lookout. Someone must have seen something.’
‘If there was anything to be seen,’ I said. Alec nodded. It is always gratifying the way he understands me.
‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘That occurred to me too. Perhaps the items were slipped into her bag before she left home. An inside job, as it were. With plenty of possible suspects.’
‘I can’t see Sir Percy sticking sequins to a wren,’ I said. ‘But Lady Stott? She passionately wants “Tweetie” to pack it in before Julian finds out and takes fright. She might well have decided to do it this subtly.’
‘And then there’s Jeanne,’ said Alec. ‘There’s no love lost there. Poor thing.’
I filed this remark away. It is always interesting to see a woman, apparently perfectly ordinary, who exerts an unaccountable influence over men, whether charming them, terrifying them or, as in this case, wringing sympathy out of them like sponges.
‘She didn’t strike me as the sort,’ I said. ‘She’s rather too forthright. And wouldn’t she have put on more of a show of concern?’
‘Besides,’ Alec said, ‘if we’re speculating about jealousy, we should really find out if “Tweetie Bird” is any good and who her rivals are, shouldn’t we?’
‘She mentioned winning prizes,’ I said. ‘But you mean envy, not jealousy,’ It was one of Hugh’s many little peculiarities to insist on the correct use of these two terms and, as was often the case, it had rubbed off on me. ‘Although there is jealousy too. We need to talk to the lovely and discreet Roland who is a clerk in Julian’s office. And we should probably try to talk to Julian. Perhaps he does know.’
‘If he doesn’t and we alert him, we’ll get sacked,’ Alec said. ‘Again.’
‘Then we must proceed with the utmost caution.’
‘But why would Roland jeopardise his own chances of winning the trophy?’ Alec said. ‘And why would Julian not just chuck her? You really are off on a flight of fancy this time, Dan. We’ve never even met these people.’
‘We can remedy that,’ I said. ‘Now, let’s go back and put the Stotts out of their misery, shall we?’
They were assembled en masse when we re-entered the morning room. Sir Percy had taken off his coat and was resplendent in waistcoat and watch chain, and Lady Stott I could just see, although she tucked her feet under her chair in an attempt to hide the fact, had eased out of her uncomfortable shoes. Tweetie was back on the sofa in a silk jersey so fine it looked oily and a pair of trousers with legs wide enough to make a skirt easily as bountiful as that of her mother. Jeanne was neat in tweed, with a jersey that looked to be hand-knitted and indeed she had a knitting bag at her side right now and was clicking away industriously without looking, pulling the wool out of the ball with a jerk of her elbow in a way that made me think unaccountably of a bird with a worm.
‘Thank you all for your patience,’ Alec said. ‘Now, we’d like to get started right away while memories of this latest incident are still fresh. Miss Stott, do you feel well enough to be interviewed?’
She did. She provided us with the dates of the two earlier incidents, ignoring her mother’s clucking and tutting, and was able to describe in painstaking detail who had been there each time, what dance they had all been practising, what every one of the young women had been wearing and what she thought of the young men’s ‘hold’, ‘frame’, ‘rise and fall’ and ‘sway’. Alec grew owlish with boredom and even I eventually gave up jotting down notes and simply nodded metronomically.
‘This morning,’ Theresa went on, ‘it was the usual crew. Big Beryl was there. In her pinafore, looking like a nursing sister. I tell you, she only needs a fob watch pinned to her breast. Well, I dare say if I had her figure I wouldn’t want to be in anything too clinging either, but why she wears rehearsal clothes that force her to keep going to wipe her neck with a flannel, you tell me!’
‘Now, now, don’t be coarse,’ said Lady Stott mildly.
‘And she and Beau were dancing a waltz, of course. Of course they were, when everyone else had asked for a foxtrot and it was a foxtrot being played. “I don’t mind,” she says. “Don’t mind me.” It’s all for show – all to let us know that she can dance a three-four with a four-four playing. As though that proves anything except that she doesn’t have an ounce of musical feeling in her. And anyway, it’s poor Beau who has to keep time. It’s poor Beau who has to shut his ears and recite cricket scores to himself to stop his feet following the music. Or it would be if Big Beryl wasn’t the worst lady leader in the whole of the league. She drags him around like Christopher Robin with Pooh.’
‘Don’t be catty now, Theresa,’ said her mother.
‘Anyway, they were all there. I put my things in the cloakroom when I arrived and the first time I went back – to fetch a peppermint, actually – there it was. There it jolly well was. I can’t really tell you any more than that. Not today, anyway. You must forgive me.’ She touched her brow with the back of her hand in a delicate show of weariness and then rested her head against the cushions and smiled bravely across at Alec and me.
‘You should rest, Miss Stott,’ Alec said.
‘Perhaps you’d even take a day or two off to recover from your ordeal?’ I said. ‘Might we ask that you take them? If you were to stay away until Wednesday that would give us ample time to settle ourselves in Glasgow and be available to accompany you.’
‘I can’t take days off now,’ said Theresa. ‘The Championship is on Friday. Roly and I must practise every hour we can.’
‘Oh, Tweetie!’ said her mother.
‘Of course, we really are just practising now,’ Theresa went on, looking rather sly. ‘We’re not receiving instruction. All we need is a floor.’
‘Oh, Bounce!’ said his wife. ‘We were unlucky that last time. Couldn’t you—’
‘No,’ said Sir Percy.
Theresa was giggling and even Jeanne wore a small smile as she glanced down at her knitting.
‘Roly and I were practising in the ballroom here, before the Easter friendly,’ Theresa said, ‘and Julian turned up uninvited. Poor Roly had to be spirited away!’
‘Unexpected, Tweetie,’ said Lady Stott. ‘Your fiancé doesn’t need an invitation to your home. But he’s very busy at work just now, Bounce. I’m sure it would be fine.’
‘I will not have that creature in my house behind Julian’s back,’ said Sir Percy.
‘As you wish, Father,’ said Theresa. She blinked innocently. ‘In that case, I shall be returning to the ballroom tomorrow, Mrs Gilver. With Jeanne. If you want the job you’ll have to take up your task by then.’
‘Theresa,’ said her father, ‘you are over-tired or you would hardly be so rude to our guests.’
‘Guests?’ Theresa retorted. ‘Employees, surely?’
But even her mother took exception to this. As for me, my hand twitched to smack her legs as it had not twitched to smack anyone’s legs since my elder son, Donald, had taken his feather eiderdown out into the garden and left it there in a thunderstorm.
‘We certainly don’t want to tire you further,’ Alec said. ‘We can ask Miss …?’
‘McNab,’ said Jeanne, without looking up from her pattern.
Alec inclined his head in thanks which went unnoticed. ‘We can ask Miss McNab for as many of the more mundane details as we can, now that you’ve provided the most crucial information.’
‘What?’ said Theresa, sitting up again. ‘Jeanne doesn’t know a thing about it. How do you imagine she can help you?’
‘Oh, merely by giving us names and addresses,’ said Alec airily. ‘To save you. You’ve had a shock after all.’
Apparently, he had just delivered another one. Her eyes once again grew round and she shook her head slightly as she spoke.
‘What names?’ she said. ‘What do you mean?’
Her mother was paddling the ground like a restless horse in a loosebox. The click of Jeanne’s knitting needles made much too sprightly a sound to accompany such expressions as all three Stotts now wore.
‘Only the dance-hall,’ I said. ‘The owners and employees. The names of the others who were there.’
‘It’s not a dance-hall,’ said Lady Stott.
‘See the impression you’re giv—’ said Sir Percy to Theresa.
‘The Locarno, one of the grandest ballrooms in all of Glas—’
Dandy Gilver and the Unpleasantness in the Ballroom Page 3