He blinked and then, when he realised what I was hinting, he laughed and took an exuberant drag on his cigarette, making the gesture very cocky somehow.
‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘She’s broke my heart latching on to a good match and leaving me to pine. Aye, you’ve cracked it. I’m sending her wee birds to pay her out for it.’
His amusement was obviously genuine and was easy to understand. His relief – for relief there was – was much harder to account for.
‘So you’re not punishing her for betraying you,’ said Alec. ‘And you’re not punishing her for leaving you with the task of finding a new partner. And since her place in this competition is your place too you’re not trying to nobble her. Unless – you’re not trying to get rid of Miss Stott before the Champs because there’s someone better, are you?’
‘Less than a week out?’ said Roland. ‘Talk sense. It takes time to get used to a new partner. If I had wanted a new lass I’d have had to start a fair sight before now.’
I wondered if I believed him. The couples in the Locarno looked just as much like twined ribbons of silk fluttering and billowing over the floor when they swapped partners as when they danced with their own ones. But I supposed there were arcane details which made all the difference to the trained eye, although invisible to mine. I remembered Foxy Trotter disparaging her ‘mushy top line’ whatever that might be and concluded that he was telling me the truth.
‘Very well, Mr Wentworth,’ said Alec, clearly of the same mind. ‘You are officially in the clear.’
Roland saluted him with his smoking hand, another cocky gesture.
‘And therefore,’ Alec went on, ‘you have nothing to fear from answering all our questions.’
It was neatly done. Roland’s smile dimmed a little and he put the cigarette in the corner of his mouth and crossed his arms.
‘Who do you think is behind it?’ Alec said.
Wentworth shook his head very slowly and deliberately, while keeping eye contact. It was the most definite refusal to comply that one could imagine.
‘I’m saying nothing,’ he said.
‘Very well,’ said Alec. ‘I shan’t press you. But who do you think is behind it? Just think about it for yourself – you don’t need to say anything. What do you think?’
He was unused to much thinking, I was sure. He was young and handsome, what my grandmother – in a fashion which always disgusted us as girls – used to call a fine physical specimen: broad of shoulder, narrow of waist and long of leg. He wore his clothes well and had arranged his hair carefully. He was the sort who would get through life on looks and charm and never need to think very hard about anything. Charged with the task, he grew very still and solemn. After a moment, he frowned and looked up at us.
‘It doesn’t make any sense,’ he said. ‘I thought I knew who it was, but how could she do it without being seen? The door and the cloakroom and …’
‘She couldn’t?’ said Alec.
Roland shook his head. ‘No way,’ he said. Then he leapt to his feet and held out a trembling hand, pointing to us, accusing. ‘I never said anything. Youse told me I could just think it out and never say a peep. So I never. Don’t youse go tricking me.’
‘Our lips are sealed,’ I said. ‘We shan’t allude to it again.’ Inwardly I was cheering. ‘Whether it’s Miss Thwaite or Miss Bonnar, we won’t breathe a w—’
‘You dirty cheats,’ he said. He was backing away from us now towards the door and he got as far as to fumble with the handle before Alec loped over and held it firm against him.
‘Don’t be hasty,’ he said. ‘Remember if Mr Armour sees you, you lose your job and you’re out of the competition too.’
‘How?’ said Roland, that curt, belligerent bark of sound. There was umbrage and injury in it, a peevish demand to be answered. It came to be a sound I dreaded in the course of the Locarno case; it came to seem like an emblem of dull thinking and the hard scrabble of desperate individuals clawing their way to what they wanted, no matter whether they had earned it or what it would cost others to give it to them.
‘Because,’ said Alec, ‘Miss Stott is only being permitted to carry on with it since her parents so keenly want to see her settled with Mr Armour. If the wedding were to be called off, she would have no bargaining chips left and the “Champs” would be a fond memory.’
But this was far too intricate for Mr Ronald Watt and he threw it off with a toss of his head.
‘Backtracking a little,’ I said. ‘If Miss Stott didn’t meet you at Armour Ely, how exactly did she come to be part of the dancing world?’
He spent another frantic moment deciding on an answer and finally blurted out: ‘Jeanne’s mammy taught her.’
We knew better than to pay attention. It did not seem at all likely that Jeanne’s sainted schoolmistress mother had led Tweetie down the primrose path. Had it been so, then Sir Percy, in one of his public jousting matches with his wife, would have raised it. Hugh still blames my sister Mavis for taking Donald to Brighton five years since and letting him watch dancing girls. Such nonsense, because Donald chased little girls at birthday parties as soon as he could toddle after them without falling over.
Still, it was probably worth another visit to Jeanne in her sewing room. The pepper pot method of interrogation suggested that if I reported Mr Watt’s assertion she might blurt out something useful to us in her outrage.
‘Might I leave you to look after Mr Wentworth, Alec?’ I said. ‘I shan’t leave the house, but I’d like to pay a visit.’
‘There’s one just over there on the right-hand side,’ said Roland.
‘One what?’ I asked before I realised what he meant and turned – I knew it from the flood of heat – deepest red from hat brim to collar button. I do not even think he meant to be coarse; he was merely helping.
‘By jings,’ he said. ‘You’d never do in a single-end with a stairheid cludgie.’
I had not the faintest idea what that meant and even less intention of finding out, so I left them.
I never arrived at Jeanne’s sewing room, though, for as I made my way back along the passage to the landing I was rewarded by the sound of fervent whispering coming from the hall below and I peeked over the banister to see Lady Stott, sitting at the small table set up for the telephone apparatus and speaking fiercely into it.
‘I’ve no need of reminders,’ she was saying. ‘For who would know that better than me?’ There was a silence. ‘Well, what am I supposed to do about it?’ Another silence. ‘You maybe think you’re being helpful, but all you’re doing is making more worry. Unless you can tell me who’s behind it, you’re not telling me anything I don’t know. I haven’t got time! I’ve got to get back to them. Now don’t go ringing up again unless you’ve something to tell me.’ She banged the earpiece back into the cradle and stared at the instrument, chewing her lip and ruminating furiously.
‘Lady Stott?’ I said, a clear measure of how far I have come from where my careful upbringing left me, where eavesdropping is beyond anything except perhaps cheating at cards and even accidental overhearings are so shameful that one automatically starts to sing, stamp and whistle whenever one is drawing near the spot where a telephone is known to be. And if one cannot avoid catching a snatch of another’s conversation one simply pretends not to have. How I have sunk, now that I can tiptoe up close enough to listen and then boldly ask questions about what I have heard.
‘Mrs Gilver, you’re supposed to be looking after—’ She shot an anguished look at the library door as I came tripping downstairs.
‘Mr Osborne is taking care of matters,’ I said. ‘Who was that?’
‘I beg your pardon!’ she said. ‘I can’t see that it’s any of your business whom I speak to in my own home.’
‘Only I wondered if you were discussing the topic in which we share a mutual interest.’
‘I was not,’ she said stoutly.
‘Unless you can tell me who is behind what?’ I said.
‘It’s nothing to do with’ – she shot another look and lowered her voice – ‘Theresa. That was a private family matter, quite separate.’
‘It sounded urgent,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘A family crisis, I suppose you could say. But no concern of yours. Now, I must go back to dear Julian. He’ll be wondering what’s happened to me.’
‘And I’ll go back to the task in hand,’ I said, but she was looking at me very speculatively.
‘You could come and meet him,’ she said, looking me up and down. ‘I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if you were introduced to him.’
My affront made me brusque. ‘On the contrary, he would find it startling. You don’t introduce women to men, Lady Stott. You present men to women.’
‘Is that right?’ she said. ‘Even a detective such as yourself and a lawyer like him?’
‘Even a duke and a shop girl,’ I said. ‘The only male person I have ever been presented to in my life was His Majesty the King.’
She had started across the floor towards the library but that stopped her in her tracks.
‘You never have!’ she said. ‘Really and truly? You’ve met the King?’
‘At court, when I came out,’ I said. ‘And once more at a ball, but there were so many people that evening, it was simply a sea of faces for the poor man.’
‘Well, I never,’ she said. ‘Come and let me present Julian then, even if he’s not what you’re used to.’ She set off again and made it another few feet before she stopped and wheeled around. ‘You’ve got your confidentiality clause stopping you saying anything you shouldn’t to him.’
‘How are you going to explain my presence?’ I asked.
‘Why would I need to?’ she demanded. ‘Why shouldn’t Sir Percy know Mrs Gilver? And anyway, dear Julian is far too courteous to ask questions. He was beautifully brought up.’
With me firmly put in my place as to both rank and manners, then, we entered the library. It was a monument to the newness of Sir Percy’s wealth. The yards of unread books in red binding not only matched all the other books but also the curtains, the background colour of the carpet and half the stripes on the wallpaper. The leather chairs were new enough still to have a scent about them and they squeaked like wet balloons when one sat down or shifted more than an inch. The desk across one corner was fitted up with exquisite pens in ivory stands and inkwells quite dry and unmarked by a single spot. Even the blotter was fat with unused sheets, as plump as a feather bed.
As to the paintings: they were far from the usual portraits covering hundreds of years of the family, prosperous generations corresponding with enormous full-length oils, horse and dogs thrown in for good measure, lean times during the stewardship of rakes and gamblers showing up in the form of watercolours, ink sketches and even paper silhouettes worked by the unmarried sisters of the house.
The Stotts had had their own portraits done first, one assumed. The two large pictures showing Sir Percy and his lady sitting solidly in chairs, staring outwards, were hung in pride of place above the chimneypiece. Then, it seemed, pleased with the results, they had gone to an auction house somewhere and bought enough of the same to fill the walls above the bookcases all around. There were two more couples – solid and staring – and three stout and bewhiskered men in chains of office, all painted within the last forty years and all looking rather startled to have found themselves in this library together. It looked like nothing so much as the senior common room of a rich Oxford college which can afford to have every chancellor commemorated and must inevitably then find wall space for them.
Lady Stott cleared her throat and I came back to attention.
‘Julian, dear,’ she said, ignoring what I had told her, ‘may I present our friend Mrs Gilver, who is visiting? Mrs Gilver, this is Mr Armour.’
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I was wool-gathering, admiring your pictures. How do you do, Mr Armour.’
He had leapt to his feet as we entered and remained standing while Sir Percy plumped back down into his squeaking armchair. As he came forward I thought I detected a smirk in response to my mention of the pictures, but he was perfectly composed as we shook hands.
‘How do you do,’ he said. Then there was an unmissable pause while he tried to fit me into the Stotts’ circle somewhere and failed.
‘Mrs Gilver is visiting from Perthshire,’ said Sir Percy.
Mr Armour nodded, but Perthshire was no sort of explanation at all and the quizzical look deepened. He was a handsome man, and I found myself thinking that his and Theresa’s children would be angels, if the sons caught their father’s height and chiselled bones and the girls their mother’s delicacy and soft sweetness. Of course, it can just as often go the other way and Theresa and Julian, if they were very unlucky, might end up with soft puddings of sons and great galumphing carthorses of daughters, and be lumbered for life with the lot of them, despite Sir Percy’s money.
‘Whereabouts in Perthshire are you?’ said Julian.
It was a perfectly acceptable opening gambit but I did not miss Theresa’s small sigh or the fact that she had a magazine open upon her lap and that she turned a page while he spoke. She was either very sure of herself or she was quite indifferent.
‘Oh, the middle of nowhere,’ I said, sitting. ‘Between Pitlochry and Dunkeld. The village is called Gilverton.’
The Stotts looked very impressed at that and it was lucky that Mr Armour did not notice because if I were really their friend they should have known it of old.
‘Are you related to Hugh Gilver?’ said Julian. Usually when one goes a-hunting acquaintanceship upon meeting a stranger, one is pleased or even relieved to find some. In this case, Julian began to look troubled. His dark brows lowered and he turned his head as though he could see me more clearly if he did not look straight on.
‘I’m his wife,’ I said, and the frown deepened.
‘I’m sure we’ve never met,’ said Julian, ‘and yet I seem to have an idea …’
One could have bottled the electricity in the room and taken it camping to boil a kettle. Theresa was turned to stone, more still than she had been when she lay in a faint. Sir Percy and Lady Stott suddenly looked as blank as their portraits on the walls behind them, only the shiver of her jet beads and the wink-wink of his watch chain showing that both were breathing fast and shallow. I tried hard to return Julian’s gaze with an open smile as though I could not imagine what he was thinking of.
‘Are you a rose grower?’ I asked, supposing I had probably sat through enough of Hugh’s enthusiasm to put on a creditable show of being another. He shook his head. ‘And you’re the wrong age to have been up at school with my sons,’ I went on.
He nodded and was almost ready to let the troubling memory go when Lady Stott stepped in and ruined everything.
‘Well, that’s a mystery,’ she said and Julian’s eyebrows shot up into his hair.
‘Mystery!’ he said. ‘You’re the lady detective, aren’t you?’
Sir Percy put his head in his hands and groaned. Tweetie fired a look fit to drop a stag her mother’s way.
‘What’s this?’ said Lady Stott with considerably more presence of mind than her husband.
‘Oh, dear,’ I said, simpering at Julian. There was really no other word for it. ‘I’m afraid I hadn’t yet admitted my recent exploits to my old friends. Yes, I confess it’s true. I’ve been making a bit of pin money by running a sort of enquiry agency. Are you terribly shocked?’
Sir Percy had recovered. ‘Ocht, there’s all sorts doing all sorts these days,’ he said. ‘Everything’s changed since the war.’
His wife nodded but Theresa spoiled it by giving her father a murderous look, understandable since it must have been sickening to hear him so philosophical about my doings when he would like to keep his daughter in a tower.
Besides, Julian would not have been mollified if Theresa had pulled off an act worthy of the West End stage. He was beyond noticing anything that was passing in the rest of the r
oom. He was horrified. His cheeks drained of colour, leaving his complexion yellow and revolting. It was not helped by the sudden sheen of sweat which appeared as a film on his lip and as beads – actual droplets of moisture – on his forehead.
‘Heavens, Mr Armour,’ I said, ‘I didn’t expect the news to cause such consternation.’
The Stotts were carrying on a whispered disagreement of their own.
‘Consternation?’ said Julian in a voice of great wretchedness, quaking with fear. ‘Not at all. I’m simply … Not at all.’
‘One almost wonders what you’ve been up to,’ I said. I do not often look forward to advancing age, but I do relish the prospect of the day when I can be grand, plain and simple, and do not have to worry that in trying to appear playful I end up sounding like some superannuated coquette.
Julian did not answer. Slowly but surely all three Stotts had noticed his distress and there was a long empty moment of sheer wriggling misery for everyone, which no one could bring to an end: not the poor Stotts, certainly; not Julian who was so pale and waxy that I started to look around for a receptacle should his stomach give way completely; not Theresa for all her careful education; and heaven knows not me.
I could not say how they managed it. I never found out. I bolted.
13
‘Well, I think I shall just slip upstairs and see dear Jeannie,’ I said, standing. I sauntered out of the library, then picked up speed and flew upstairs, grateful for the thick carpet which deadened the sound of my flight.
‘Alec!’ I said, bursting back into the ballroom, where he and Mr Wentworth were whiling away the time, sensibly enough I suppose, on dancing practice, Alec leading and Mr Wentworth dancing the lady’s steps. ‘Go downstairs and see what you make of Julian Armour. I think it’s him. I’m sure it’s him. He found out I was a detective and he almost passed out.’
‘What?’ said Roland. ‘How?’
Dandy Gilver and the Unpleasantness in the Ballroom Page 11