Dandy Gilver and the Unpleasantness in the Ballroom

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘What club?’ I asked. ‘Do you mean the dancing class?’

  ‘I mean … you know,’ said Miss Thwaite. ‘Surely you must know by now. Mr Bonnar thought maybe Beryl would have come to me. We’ve been close for years, ever since her mother died, and I suppose the idea was that, in a pinch, it might be me she turned to.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Alec. ‘The club. That’s one way of describing it, I suppose.’

  Miss Thwaite coloured and began fidgeting with the end of the long plait in her hair. ‘I’m not saying he’s an angel,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t convince you of that, when he got me sacked last week for talking out of turn. But that was only a slap on the wrist. I’d have been back as soon as Beryl got her feet clear of the Champs and had time to get to work on him.’

  ‘That’s extremely understanding of you, Miss Thwaite,’ I said.

  ‘He’s taken care of me,’ she said. ‘It’s not just because Beryl has a soft spot. He keeps things quiet.’

  ‘Miss Thwaite,’ Alec said gently, ‘we’re not here to debate any of that, although, if we were we would start by asking what things and by what means, but let’s not be sidetracked. I don’t suppose you’ve seen Beryl, have you?’

  Miss Thwaite shook her head, still worrying at the end of her plait with her busy fingers. ‘I have not,’ she said. ‘But I don’t need to have seen her to tell you that she didn’t poison anyone. She had no reason to want Roland dead and she certainly had no reason to wish harm to Len Munn.’

  ‘Let’s concentrate on how it was done,’ I said, hoping that her new mood of expansive communication would survive the change of topic. ‘Tweetie’s headdress. Now. What sort of state was it in when it left your hands?’ I took out my notebook and pencil and gave her a look of friendly enquiry. ‘If you can remember. Any little detail might help us.’

  ‘Her headdress?’ said Miss Thwaite and her face was blank and still. She had dropped the tassel of hair and let her hands fall into her lap.

  ‘I know it sounds outlandish,’ I said, ‘but you, of all people, know that you don’t have to drink poison for it to harm you.’

  ‘Leo’s hankie,’ said Miss Thwaite. ‘I didn’t think you believed me.’

  ‘We didn’t understand you,’ said Alec. ‘Not at first. But we understand and believe you now. What was it? Do you know?’

  ‘Chloroform,’ said Miss Thwaite. ‘It’s gone now but it was as clear as anything the night Leo died.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t chloroform this time,’ I said. ‘Tweetie’s headdress was soaked in cyanide and Roly inhaled more of it than he could withstand.’

  ‘But Tweetie’s all right?’ said Miss Thwaite.

  ‘Thankfully,’ I told her, shuddering to remember the way Tweetie had buried her face in Roly’s handkerchief, with no thought to her safety.

  ‘Cyanide,’ said Miss Thwaite. ‘Poor Roly.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘It’s terribly upsetting, but the point is that the construction of the thing was geared to just that purpose. And we wondered when it was done, you see. After it left your hands?’

  ‘It was never in my hands,’ said Miss Thwaite. ‘The sketch Tweetie sent had just a ribbon with a spangled plume. I thought it was a little bit old-fashioned, if I’m honest. But … that’s not the trouble.’

  Alec flicked a glance at me and I knew what he was thinking. Jeanne said Tweetie got Miss Thwaite to make it and now Miss Thwaite denied all knowledge of the thing.

  ‘I need to tell you something,’ she said in a tiny voice. ‘About last year. About Leo.’

  ‘My dear Miss Thwaite,’ I said, making a guess at what she was skirting. ‘That’s exactly why we came. We want to hear anything you can tell us about Foxy’s head ornament.’

  ‘What did it look like, Miss Thwaite?’ said Alec. ‘If you can remember.’

  She was silent for a moment, then she nodded and sniffed. ‘I can do better than describing it,’ she said. ‘I can show it to you.’ She leapt to her feet and bustled over to the alcove bed, then dropped to her knees and pulled out a deep drawer fitted under the bed itself. It scraped along the floorboards with a dreadful dry screech. Clearly it was not often opened.

  Miss Thwaite began lifting out bundles wrapped in brown paper and tied with wool, speaking as she busied herself. ‘She’d ripped it off her head in all the to-do,’ she said and the echo of Grant’s words from earlier was eerie. ‘It was getting trampled. And for all it was a funny-looking thing, I didn’t want to see it ruined. So I put it with my bundles, meaning to give it to Foxy later. Then of course poor Leo died and after that I didn’t like to bring back memories, so I just left it packed away. I didn’t ever touch it the way I touched the hankie. So I can’t tell you if there was anything poured on it. Ah, here it is now! See what you make of that then.’

  She plucked a brown-paper parcel from deep inside the drawer and handed it to Alec. He slit the knots with his penknife in that way that men do, not having the patience to unpick them, then opened the crackling paper and gazed upon what it contained.

  ‘Bingo,’ he said quietly. ‘Bull’s eye. It’s another one.’

  It certainly seemed to be. It was not actually made of fox, for no one could have danced in that crowded ballroom with a fur hat on. It was made of rust-red velvet and the front part was fashioned in a point like a fox’s snout with two black beads glittering away for the eyes. The tail was made like a giant pipe-cleaner and stood up at the back at a jaunty angle, even more so when Miss Thwaite had fussed over it and pulled it back into shape after its long incarceration in the bundle at the bottom of the drawer. When she was finished, Alec applied the smallest and sharpest blade and as soon as he made a slit we could all see the same thick flannel lining as in Tweetie’s.

  I lifted it very carefully and gave it a sniff. Of course there was nothing to be smelled after all this time but the padding was lumpy and wadded up as though it had been wetted and then dried very badly.

  ‘It was certainly drenched in something,’ I said to Miss Thwaite.

  ‘Cyanide?’ said Alec, poking at the wadded lining.

  I thought it over, then shook my head. ‘Chloroform,’ I said. ‘Like the hanky. Leo was faint, by all accounts and Roly was anything but faint.’

  ‘Whoever it was has stepped it up then,’ Alec said. ‘Chloroform to cyanide strikes me as moving from mischief to murder.’

  ‘But who would do such a thing?’ said Miss Thwaite. Standing there agape in her nightgown and shawl she looked tinier than ever and so dreadfully old and tired too as the shock settled into her. Then her frown deepened. ‘Who would choose such a strange way to kill a man?’

  ‘We have no answer for either question yet,’ I said. ‘But perhaps you can help us. I suppose you had no hand in the fashioning of this?’

  It roused no indignation, which was a testament to her innocence as nothing else would be. She simply shook her head and, as she mumbled her reply, she sounded quite faint. ‘Foxy did it all,’ she said. ‘A beautiful seamstress. I never had a hand in her costumes.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ said Alec. ‘What about Beryl? Is she … what’s the phrase, Dan?’

  ‘Good with her needle,’ said Miss Thwaite and I in unison. Even this did not raise a smile.

  ‘She gets by,’ said Miss Thwaite. ‘Those blessed pinafore dresses she runs up for herself. Her sewing is sturdy and she can follow a pattern. She’d help her fellow dancers to get ready for the Champs for she’s kind that way.’

  ‘So it’s possible?’ Alec persisted.

  Miss Thwaite nodded. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Never forgetting that she’s skipped off,’ I said. ‘And since her father’s people are searching for her, it really does seem that it was her decision to go. It’s not as though she was bundled away by someone to get her out of trouble.’

  ‘But there’s no way Beryl would ever have done such a thing,’ said Miss Thwaite. She saw my look and bristled. ‘The sins of the father, eh?’ she said. ‘But she is not he
r father and for all the advantages she could have had if she used him she always preferred to make her own way under her own steam.’

  I could not let such an enormity pass unchallenged. I was almost spluttering as I spoke. ‘Her own steam?’ I said. ‘Her father has Lorrison in his pocket and Silvester too, not to mention the police who should have investigated Leo’s death and the same policemen or their compadres anyway who should be cracking right on with Roly’s and aren’t. And not to mention you, Miss Thwaite!’

  She was shaking her head. ‘That’s all just fripperies,’ she said. ‘I’m not talking about Silvester refusing to shut down the Champs nor even of those policemen – they know what side their bread’s buttered and no mistake – I’m talking about the scores. The judges. Beryl was always absolutely adamant that Mr Silvester and Miss Astoria and the other two judges subject her routines to Association Rules same as everyone else. She wants to win fair and square or not at all.’

  ‘But she didn’t win fair and square last year!’ Alec cried out. ‘She won because Leo and Foxy were out of the running. Tell the truth and shame the devil, Miss Thwaite, who would have won if Leo hadn’t fainted?’

  Miss Thwaite bit her lip and bowed her head which said more than any words might have. ‘You didn’t hear it from me,’ was all she said.

  ‘Agreed,’ said Alec. ‘And we’ll take this out of your hands, if you don’t mind.’ Carefully he rewrapped the fox bandeau in the paper although, having snipped the string into bits, he could not secure it again.

  ‘Where do you suppose she is?’ I asked him as we clattered back down the tenement stairs.

  ‘Spirited away by her father or his henchmen, of course,’ said Alec, ‘as soon as they realised that she’d gone too far this year.’

  ‘And then he went around his circle asking after her as a double bluff?’

  ‘Which doesn’t augur well for us, does it?’ said Alec. ‘If an organised ring of gangsters have her hidden and even the police are too scared to challenge them, what chance have we?’

  ‘Of finding her, none,’ I said. ‘Of proving that it was her and shaming the police into agreeing, I feel quite hopeful actually. There are plenty little loose ends. I just need to sit down and have a jolly good think about them. Review my notes, you know. No matter how much you laugh at me.’

  ‘Not this time, Dan,’ said Alec, as he climbed back into the Cowley and sat staring out through the windscreen as though at a distant view. ‘If you and your little notebook can shine a light on all this you shall have nothing but my praise. Straight back home to crack on with it, shall we?’

  I started the engine and pulled on my driving gloves.

  ‘Not a bit of it,’ I said. ‘One of the strangest things of all is the fact that Julian Armour was at the Locarno and took off when the trouble started. Let’s go and see what he has to say.’

  Unfortunately for us, after such a long and exhausting day, Julian Armour lived even further than the Stotts from smoke and smells, out on the moors to the south of the city, and it took us half an hour and two stops for directions to get there from Springburn. At least when we did arrive, though, at a pleasant villa set back from a broad road through the village, the light had failed and we could be sure he was at home, for there were lamps lit in the windows and too many for servants alone.

  Our knock was answered by a harried-looking housekeeper in her middle years. She gave us a peremptory look up and down and then folded her arms firmly over her considerable bosom.

  ‘Mr Armour is discommoded,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell him you called.’

  ‘We know he is,’ I said boldly. ‘That’s what we want to talk to him about.’

  ‘We are old friends,’ said Alec.

  She gave us a sharp look, me especially. ‘London friends, are you?’ she said. ‘For I’m sure I’ve never clapped eyes on either of you.’ She unfolded her arms. ‘And I must say you don’t look much like London friends to me but if you can do anything to help him I suppose I’m not the one to stop you.’

  On that intriguing note she turned and made her way, ponderous even when hurrying, to a door on the far side of the hall.

  ‘Friends to see you, sir,’ she said and then left us to make our entrance.

  ‘Mr Armour,’ I said, sweeping in. I stopped so suddenly that Alec walked up my heels, taking a long scrape off the calfskin of my left boot which was sure to enrage Grant when she saw it.

  Julian Armour was sitting in an armchair drawn close to the fire with a drink on a small table at his side, just like Sir Percy had been. Unlike Sir Percy, however, he was calamitously drunk. He was still dressed in the lounge suit he had been wearing when we saw him slipping out of the Locarno, but his tie was gone and his collar unbuttoned. His shoes were kicked off too and his hair was sticking up in spouts around his head as though he had been tearing at it. I glanced at the whisky bottle standing behind the empty tumbler and hoped that he had not opened it today for more than half of it was gone. And apparently he had not eaten enough to stop it hitting him like a hammer because, on the tray at his feet, half shoved under the armchair, there was only a single bite out of a sandwich and not so much as a dent in a dish of mousse beside it.

  He looked up at us out of a face bleary not only from whisky but also from tears and, as he tried to focus on us, another rolled down from each eye and dripped off his chin.

  ‘You,’ he said. ‘Do your worst. I don’t care any more.’ Then he bowed his head and went back to staring at something he held in his lap.

  ‘Mr Armour?’ said Alec gently. ‘We are here to help you.’

  I raised an eyebrow, helpless not to, for that was news to me.

  ‘There’s no help for me now,’ he said and then he started to sob in earnest, bowing his head until it touched his hands.

  I squinted to see what he was holding and felt a flare of fear to see that it was a card, another little round-cornered card with a printer’s name stamped on the back. What monstrous thing could someone have sent to Julian Armour to have brought him to this wretched state? I eased it out of his hand and, although a moment later we were to learn that it was bad enough in its way, at that moment I was relieved to see that it was not a third round of threats.

  In fact, it was a small copy of the photograph in the Locarno’s plate-glass window: Tweetie and Roly holding one another at that frozen, eternal moment in the midst of their tango. I showed it to Alec and he only just managed not to look pleased, for it was also, of course, an excellent opening.

  ‘We had been rather under the impression that you didn’t know about Miss Stott’s dancing,’ Alec said.

  ‘She didn’t know I knew,’ said Armour. He reached out and took the photograph back, nursing it against his breast. ‘She knows now and she’s sacked me.’

  ‘She’s broken off the engagement?’ I said. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘She telephoned an hour ago,’ said Mr Armour. He hiccupped painfully, making me cast a fearful eye towards the whisky bottle. If he had drunk all that in an hour he needed at least a cup of broth if not a plate of stovies before it felled him like a dart gun.

  ‘Wait until tomorrow,’ I said, going to the side of the chimneypiece and pulling on the bell rope to summon the housekeeper. ‘Miss Stott is terribly upset by what happened today. And it must have flustered her somewhat, finding out her secret was no such thing.’

  Mr Armour was shaking his head, and rather too violently than was wise in his condition. ‘It’s over,’ he said. ‘She said she always meant to tell me tonight that the wedding was off, only it was supposed to happen after she and Ronnie won the tr-tr-troph …’ Unable, between sobs and renewed hiccups, to finish the word, he buried his face in the photograph again and gave way to every ounce of his emotion.

  ‘I don’t think I understand,’ I said softly to Alec, under the wails and snorts of Julian Armour’s distress. ‘I don’t understand what either of them is playing at; why Tweetie would keep him stringing along, and why on earth he went
to the Locarno.’

  Before Alec could answer, the housekeeper arrived and I saw that she had been thinking along the same lines as had I, for she brought with her a fair-sized tureen of some hearty soup and quite half a loaf of bread, thickly sliced and slathered in butter.

  She swiped the whisky bottle while putting the tray down in an admirable display of dexterity and, as she left the room again, I heard the cork being jammed back into the top of it most decidedly. She got away with it too because Mr Armour had cried himself out and now appeared to be beyond the need for whisky, although also beyond the reach of soup. He had fallen asleep or perhaps lapsed in unconsciousness. Either way, it was clear that there was no more to be got from him tonight and we took our leave.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Alec when we were once more under way, creeping along the dark road back to the city, ‘Tweetie knew that if she broke off her illustrious engagement before the Champs her parents would be angry enough to stop all the dancing immediately. So she strung them and Julian along.’

  ‘But that doesn’t explain why she was going to break it off at all,’ I said. At last, I could see streetlamps ahead and the lights of another motorcar.

  ‘Well, perhaps she thought if she won the competition her parents would change their minds and countenance her dancing on,’ said Alec. ‘If so, she was whistling in the wind, wouldn’t you say?’

  I did not answer, for the headlights of the approaching motorist were dazzling me and it was a narrow road with rough verges to either side. I slowed down and pulled as far as I could to the left, while it slowed down and pulled as far as it could to the right. Then, just before we were going to pass one another, suddenly the other driver appeared to decide there was plenty of room after all for he shot forward and, almost skimming the side of the Cowley, roared past me.

  Once I was sure we were not going to collide, I looked back over my shoulder at the other vehicle disappearing into the distance as if all the hounds of hell were on its tail.