Dandy Gilver and the Unpleasantness in the Ballroom

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘And now that you are “out of it”,’ said Alec, ‘do you think you can say a little more about what it is?’

  She dashed the water down the sink and set the teapot on the board to the side. Then she came and sat down in the armchair. Alec and I had taken the wooden chairs at the table and were higher than she was, looking down. She seemed smaller than ever and childlike too.

  ‘I will,’ she said. ‘I think I must.’ The teapot was forgotten and the scones lay abandoned under their cloth as Miss Thwaite began to speak.

  ‘It started the same way with Foxy,’ she said.

  ‘What did?’ I prompted her.

  ‘A note and a little book and then the fox itself.’

  ‘A dead fox?’ said Alec.

  ‘A fur,’ said Miss Thwaite. ‘But made to look like it. Nasty, you know? Like the bird with the spangles. Nastier than you can explain unless you’ve seen it.’

  ‘Which we have,’ I said, ‘and we agree with you – it was horrid.’

  ‘And then he fell down the stairs,’ said Miss Thwaite. We nodded. ‘But that’s not all. He was unwell beforehand.’ We nodded again. Foxy Trotter had told us this much. He had left the dance floor feeling ill. ‘And he fell down the stairs,’ Miss Thwaite repeated. Her brow was drawn up in worry and she chewed at her lip. She was so very close to saying what was troubling her but something was getting in the way.

  ‘Do you mean that he was so anxious about the threats to Foxy that it made him ill?’ I tried.

  She shook her head.

  ‘Combined with nerves?’ added Alec. ‘I should imagine every dancer would be light-headed on the day itself.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘He really was ill. But he was made ill. He was made too ill to dance. And that’s what led to him dying.’

  ‘That’s it!’ I said. ‘That’s what was bothering me when Mrs Munn was speaking about it, Alec. She let the doctor believe that he simply tripped and fell. But, for one thing, there’s nothing to trip on at the top of the Locarno stairs. The carpet is close-fitting and there’s no rug. And what those two girls on the street said is true: sure-footedness was his stock-in-trade.’

  Miss Thwaite was nodding. ‘He fell,’ she said, ‘but he didn’t trip. He fell because he was faint and he was faint because—’

  ‘Someone slipped him a powder?’ said Alec.

  Miss Thwaite gave Alec a look of gratitude that lit up her wrinkled little face and showed us a flash of the girl she was once. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘At least in a manner of speaking.’

  ‘Who?’ I could not help asking.

  But Miss Thwaite shook her head. ‘I can’t say any more than that,’ she said. ‘But someone needs to warn Tweetie and Roly. I don’t want one of them to go the same way but I don’t want to get mixed up in it. I wouldn’t have got myself mixed up in it last time except I wasn’t thinking straight that night and I’ve ended up in possession of something I shouldn’t have and I don’t want and I don’t know what to do about it.’

  Alec and I were now as still as cats stalking a bird on the lawn. Neither of us wanted to be the one who spoke and sent Miss Thwaite fluttering off into the trees out of our reach. Alec, in the end, gave in first. And thank goodness he did because I had assumed that what she had come into possession of was unwelcome knowledge and what she might do with it was tell us.

  ‘Give it to us to take care of, Miss Thwaite,’ Alec said. ‘And we need never tell a soul who we got it from.’

  Even then I thought perhaps he might be speaking figuratively, as of a mental burden she could pass to us to carry.

  ‘Someone might guess,’ she whispered. ‘Or there might be fingerprints.’

  I tried hard not to let my astonishment show upon my face. I did not understand exactly but I knew enough to be sure that we were just about to come in for a bona fide clue.

  ‘I’m not going to give it to you,’ Miss Thwaite went on. ‘But I shall show it to you. To convince you how real my fears are.’

  She got to her feet and went over to the sideboard, then knelt in front of it and, opening one of the doors, reached far back into its innards. I could see stacked sets of china and some of the flat cardboard boxes which contain tea napkins and cake slices. Miss Thwaite reached past them and pulled out a small toffee tin. She picked at the lid with her fingernails and pulled it off, then showed us the contents.

  ‘It’s a handkerchief,’ she said. ‘Leonard’s handkerchief. He dropped it on the landing just before he fell and I picked it up. I thought he had tripped on it and I didn’t want anyone else to, so I picked it up and tucked it into my pocket. I thought no more of it but when I heard that he died, I admit I wept. I took out the handkerchief, put my face in it and wept. And I knew someone had deliberately killed him.’

  ‘How?’ I breathed.

  Miss Thwaite lifted the handkerchief and buried her face in it briefly, then looked up at us again.

  ‘I can’t prove it,’ she said. ‘And without proof I’m not brave enough to tell you.’

  ‘My dear Miss Thwaite, if you knew the things people had told us over the years,’ Alec said. ‘We are quite used to keeping secrets. There’s no need for bravery.’

  But she shook her head and folded her arms and there was no shifting her.

  ‘Well, how tantalising and yet how ultimately pointless,’ I said as we clattered back down the stairs to the street moments later. ‘I really thought we were going to learn something, not …’

  ‘… be shown a piece of the true cross,’ Alec said. ‘I know.’ Then, after another moment’s musing, he went on: ‘Do you think she’s protecting someone? Or just frightened?’

  ‘Everyone’s frightened in this case,’ I said. We were back on the street and I stared up at the tenement front wondering which window was Miss Thwaite’s. ‘Theresa, for obvious reasons, the Stotts likewise, Lorrison, poor Roly – at least, he’s frightened when he’s at the Locarno. Julian Armour is petrified. Foxy Trotter too.’

  ‘Everyone except Jeanne and Beryl,’ said Alec, climbing into the motorcar. ‘We should go back to Foxy now that Miss Thwaite has revealed all about the threats and ask her whom she suspects.’

  ‘After we’ve taken another close look at the card, the wren and especially the book,’ I said. ‘I didn’t care for Jeanne having more to say than us on the subject, did you?’

  ‘To the Grand,’ Alec agreed. ‘Supper on a tray and an early night? Try Foxy in the morning?’

  I turned the motorcar in the direction of Union Street, little knowing that we were far from done for the day.

  14

  When we opened the door to Alec’s room, it was to find a remarkable sight, which put the prayer card’s origins quite out of our heads. Barrow in his shirtsleeves was standing in the middle of the carpet – and there was a good deal of carpet to stand in the middle of, for the furniture had been pushed back to the walls – and was holding the limp body of Grant at an acute angle, just her feet on the floor, her arms trailing down and her head flung backwards, like a lily wilting on its stem.

  ‘Grant!’ I squeaked.

  ‘Barrow?’ said Alec, sounding flabbergasted.

  Grant turned her face towards us and spoke quite normally, utterly as though she were standing upright as expected and not at all as though she were being held off the ground by Barrow’s strong arms in their rolled-up sleeves.

  ‘We’re practising in case we need to help out,’ she said. ‘Madam. You’ve just missed our tango.’ She put her arms around Barrow’s neck and he lifted her back on to her feet and stepped away.

  ‘How unfortunate for us,’ I said. ‘What are you wearing?’

  ‘It’s what they’re all wearing now,’ she said. ‘These are called floats.’ She flapped her arms up and down like a swan trying to take off from a lake and the wisps of gauze attached around her arms on bracelets fluttered up and down.

  ‘And the rest?’ I said, for the arm wisps were not the half of it. Grant was in nothing but wisps from neck to kn
ee, except that because the wisps grew wispier at the edges, her neck and her knees were not so much clothed as decorated. I was surprised that Barrow could look at her without blushing.

  ‘Quite a standard sort of frock for the Latin dances,’ she said.

  I opened my mouth once or twice but inspiration did not strike and so nothing came out of it. Grant did, it is true, aid us in a recent case by carrying out the sort of impersonation known as ‘going undercover’ and gave, it is also true, an outstanding performance which helped us no end. But I saw no necessity for the rigmarole going on in Alec’s bedroom now.

  ‘Put the furniture back, Barrow,’ said Alec, apparently agreeing with me, ‘and we’ll say no more about it.’ Barrow had already unrolled his sleeves, buttoned his cuffs and slipped back into his coat. He swept his hair back with the palm of one hand and nodded curtly.

  Alec went over to his dressing table and opened the top drawer to take out the pieces of evidence. The wren was now inside a tea caddy in case it made its presence felt although, in my experience, creatures as small as wrens and even shrews and field mice never become noisome.

  ‘Need I open this?’ said Alec.

  I shook my head but was distracted by an idea I could not quite bring into being.

  ‘You’ve got that look again, Dandy,’ Alec said. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Will you never learn!’ I burst out. ‘I’ve told you over and over again that that look means I’m trying to grab hold of an elusive thought and asking me what it is chases it off completely. I keep telling you.’

  ‘You sound like Lady Stott,’ said Alec. He was studying the prayer card and I joined him, squinting to make out the name embossed on the back of it.

  ‘St Andrew’s East,’ he said. ‘Catholic? Since it’s a saint.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so,’ I said. ‘Patron saint of Scotland after all. Grant?’ They were almost finished with the furniture now, Barrow wiping away handprints from the edge of the writing table and Grant straightening the fringes of the rug which had been rolled up while they were dancing. ‘Have you made any friends among the hotel staff yet?’

  ‘Oh yes, madam,’ she said. ‘The day-shift housekeeper is a bit of a card. The stories she can tell.’

  ‘Excellent. Is she Glaswegian?’

  ‘I think the whole populace could go on the halls with a comedy turn,’ said Grant.

  ‘Could you ask her about this church for us – discreetly? We’d like to know whether St Andrew’s in Alexandra Parade is Catholic or Protestant. It won’t be Anglican with that name.’

  ‘Certainly, madam,’ Grant said and, sensing the chance of a cosy chat over the amusing housekeeper’s tea table, sanctioned by her mistress and counting as work no less, she took off.

  ‘I’ll go and see how they’re getting on with your travelling clothes, sir,’ said Barrow. ‘I left strict instructions with the boot boy downstairs but he didn’t seem to be listening.’ As he left he gave a sort of bow with an accompanying heel click that owed more to Gilbert and Sullivan than to a valet.

  ‘He’s getting more and more eccentric,’ I said. ‘And he’s hardly thirty. One never thinks of eccentric youngsters somehow.’ I took the prayer card out of Alec’s hands and turned it over and over in mine trying to decide if there was any more it could tell us.

  Alec was doing the same with Cock Robin and it was his study which bore fruit.

  ‘How interesting,’ he said. ‘Look at this, Dandy.’

  I peered at where he was pointing. On the inside cover of the little booklet was a very smudged purple oval stamp of the kind used by subscription libraries to prevent theft. It had not been successful in this case, evidently.

  ‘What does it say?’ I said. ‘It’s terribly unclear.’

  ‘It starts with a G,’ said Alec, ‘and the second word starts with a B.’

  ‘Great Britain?’

  ‘There’s a third word. C …?’

  ‘Great British?’

  ‘Too long. It might be “Girls”. “Girls and Boys”?’

  ‘That makes sense anyway,’ I said. ‘Since it’s a children’s book. Do you think if we decipher it it might lead us straight to the culprit? Someone who attended St Andrew’s Church and frequented a Girls’ and Boys’ library there, perhaps?’

  ‘It seems a bit of a stretch,’ said Alec. ‘The card and book might both have been bought at a jumble sale for all we know.’

  There was a knock at the door then and assuming that it would be Grant returning with news from the comical housekeeper I distractedly called for her to enter without looking. It was Alec who turned first and saw Mrs Leonard Munn, Foxy Trotter herself, standing there.

  ‘Forgive me,’ she said.

  ‘How did you know where we were staying?’ I asked her. Then I shook the distraction out of my head and drew her in by her free arm. She was carrying a large carpet bag in the other hand and whether from the weight of it or from some other distress she was grey-faced and swaying.

  ‘I’ll ring for some tea and perhaps some brandy too?’ said Alec as I ushered Mrs Munn into a chair and took the carpet bag from her.

  ‘This has gone on long enough,’ she said. ‘If I can help put a stop to it I must do so.’

  ‘I’m so very glad you’ve come to us voluntarily, Mrs Munn,’ I said. ‘Because we’ve heard from other quarters about the threats you received last year.’

  ‘Other quarters?’ she said. ‘I thought everyone at that Locarno was too scared to say peep.’

  ‘Miss Thwaite is made of stern stuff,’ I said. Mrs Munn’s eyes widened. ‘And she has something from that dreadful night. A keepsake, I suppose you’d say. She saved it. Almost by accident, but it seems to have made her feel personally connected to the tragic events.’

  Mrs Munn nodded. ‘I wondered about that,’ she said. ‘I never knew where it had got to. I hate to think of poor wee Miss Thwaite worrying and fretting. And too scared to speak.’

  ‘As we said, Mrs Munn,’ said Alec. ‘It’s speaks well of you that you came.’

  ‘Oh, call me Foxy,’ she said. ‘Everyone always has from when I was a wee bit thing and I don’t want to be the Widow Munn who’ll never dance the foxtrot again.’

  ‘Childhood?’ said Alec.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Foxy. ‘There were three of us. I was Foxy for my red hair, my big sister was Puddy because she was such a wee round dumpling and my brother was Goldilocks because of his flaxen curls. It started as a joke but he got Goldie until the day he died. Puddy stamped hers out once she was grown.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ I said.

  ‘Not that her christened name is much better,’ said Foxy. Then she came back from her childhood reverie and, blinking only a little, she lifted her chin and prepared to face us.

  ‘As you’ve heard, I was threatened,’ she said. ‘First there was a card.’ She dived into the carpet bag at her feet and drew out a small envelope, the kind ladies use for day-to-day correspondence.

  I took it and removed its contents. It was a Christmas card of old-fashioned design, a gold lozenge containing a coloured picture of a wintry hunting scene, pink coats and horses flying over hedges, while in the foreground a bushy red tail disappeared into a thicket. I turned it over and read what was written on the reverse in thick black ink: ‘Look out, little fox!’ I showed it to Alec.

  ‘How unsettling that must have been,’ he said. ‘Rather nasty, that exclamation mark, isn’t it. As though it were a friendly greeting. Might I see the envelope?’

  ‘Oh, it didn’t come in the envelope,’ said Foxy. ‘I just put it in there to keep it.’

  I nodded and once again I could feel an idea shifting inside me, lumbering forward in my brain, but still too far back to be hooked by me.

  ‘Go on,’ I said. ‘What happened next?’

  ‘Next the book,’ she said and dipped into the carpet bag again. ‘The Tale of Mr Tod. About a fox, you see.’ It was the familiar little white book, without its dust jacket as al
l nursery books tend to be, and bearing that beloved picture of the gentleman himself climbing the stile.

  ‘This isn’t quite as …’ I tried hard to think of a different word but failed ‘… nasty as Cock Robin, though,’ I said. I was very well familiar with it for my sons preferred the manly exploits of Mr Tod and Jeremy Fisher to the domestic travails of the bad mice or Miss Moppet and I had read it and then listened to each of them read it many times. I was sure that the final score of the wrestling match between fox and badger was left to the reader’s imagination.

  ‘Look at the last page,’ said Foxy, handing it to me.

  I turned to the end of the story where the Bouncer family are safely in their burrow having dinner. On the facing page was more of the thick black ink but this time it had been used to draw the crude outline of a gravestone. Written upon it were only five letters: ‘F.T. RIP’.

  ‘Did you not think of making a report?’ said Alec.

  Foxy Trotter shook her head. ‘There was only a week to go to the Champs,’ she said. ‘I didn’t have time to think about anything except practice and my costumes and trying to find out if it was true that Mr Silvester himself was going to be there from London. That’s what everyone was saying and the excitement was nearly too much! But then just two days before, I found the last thing,’ she said. She kicked the carpet bag with her toe. ‘It’s in there.’

  Alec obligingly got down on to his knees and peered inside the bag. Then he lifted out a paper parcel. I remembered, with a flash, Jeanne tying knots in the string around another.

  ‘I wrapped it myself,’ said Foxy, dispelling that idea. ‘I didn’t want any mess to get on my bag lining.’

  Alec had spread the paper flat on the floor and in silence all three of us looked at what it contained. It was one of those fox furs with its head still attached, which is fastened by means of a clever little clasp hidden in the fox’s mouth, allowing it to snap on to its own tail around one’s neck. My aunt had one which Edward and I thought was a marvel (while Mavis predictably found it frightening; she is such a ninny). They had never struck me as macabre before but somehow, looking at this one gave me the shudders. It was probably at least in part because this snapping jaw had drawn blood.