Dandy Gilver and the Unpleasantness in the Ballroom

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘The sledgehammer of murder to crack the walnut of a change in dancing partner,’ Alec said. ‘Why couldn’t Bert and Tweetie just tell Beryl and Roly that they were moving on to pastures new and wish them good luck?’

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘You saw Simon Bonnar this morning. Would you fancy upsetting his daughter and him asking her why she was weeping?’

  ‘I’d fancy it a lot more than killing her and seeing what he made of that.’

  ‘But he must have hoped – and has succeeded so far – in making sure that no one blamed him for the murder. If he had sacked Beryl there’d have been no denying it.’

  ‘But even so,’ Alec insisted, ‘by all accounts, Beryl was scrupulous in keeping her father’s way of doing things quite separate from her triumphs and disasters in the ballroom.’

  ‘As long as it was honest effort in open competition,’ I said.

  ‘It might have been a different story if Bert gave her the push?’ said Alec.

  ‘I think so. Humiliation and rejection at the hands of someone she’d had to fight so hard to get her father to accept.’

  ‘He was pretty well deranged on that topic, wasn’t he?’

  ‘From where you’re looking,’ I agreed. ‘But to listen to Hugh it was nothing out of the ordinary. Glasgow’s sectarianism is only just behind Belfast’s in his view. So it’s a case of local custom rather than derangement, really.’

  Alec nodded, chewing thoughtfully on his sandwich, which if it were anything like mine, took quite a bit of chewing.

  ‘I daresay it’s the same for the dancing couples,’ he put in at last. ‘We can’t see the trouble but there must be some because no one in his right mind would murder over it otherwise.’ He took a great draught of water and then pushed the remains of his sandwich away from him, since it was mostly crusts. I had cut mine off but still it was heavy going. ‘And I know who to ask too,’ he said, wiggling his eyebrows at me. ‘Jamesie and Alicia. They’re innocents in all this. They couldn’t get away fast enough when it looked as though trouble was in store. I reckon they’ll tell us, without stirring up another hornet’s nest.’

  We could not have been more wrong, although we were only wrong because we were so very right. It was just that we got to them second. Once before, as we were about to discover, Jamesie and Alicia had been chosen for their innocence and their disinterest and that would give us the last break in this toughest of cases, like a woodcutter’s wedge hammered in hard which will at last break apart even the knottiest knuckle of oak and allow it to be stacked in the basket like all the others.

  The tricky bit was finding them. We were both agreed that we wanted to stay away from the Locarno, but we had no addresses for them. All we had to go on was that Jamesie Hodge was a baker, but a quick perusal of the Post Office Directory in the residents’ lounge showed almost a page of bakers and not one of them with a telephone.

  ‘We could ring up Balmoral and ask for Tweetie,’ Alec said, ‘then if she’s safely at home we could go and beard Lorrison.’

  ‘We could try again with the police,’ I said doubtfully.

  ‘And tell them that we’re sticking to the notion of a poisoned hat – and I have to say it does sound silly when you say it like that – but that we’ve got two victims rather than just the one.’

  ‘What’s this?’ said a voice behind us, making us both jump. It was Grant, still in her outdoor things, with Barrow at her side.

  ‘Where have you been?’ I demanded, the fright making me short with her.

  ‘We went for a walk along the river,’ she said. ‘Very pleasant although you meet some funny sorts under the bridges. And it’s been quite useful because it’s given us a perspective on things, hasn’t it, Mr Barrow? And we’ve come to the conclusion that Beryl Bonnar is innocent.’

  ‘Oh really?’

  ‘And very likely dead too,’ Grant went on.

  ‘And what led you to this conclusion?’ I said. ‘I agree, I should say. But Mr Osborne and I arrived at the conclusion because of observations in the Locarno this morning. How about you?’

  ‘The pink frill,’ said Grant. ‘We didn’t get a chance to examine the back alley on Friday, seeing as how we were lolling around like Chinese opium smokers with our eyeballs on backwards.’

  I am used to Grant and so is Alec but it was causing Barrow considerable distress to be included in the ‘we’ she spoke of so unguardedly.

  ‘So we went back there on our way to the riverside,’ Grant went on. ‘And we think there’s a problem. Is it still locked in your dressing-table drawer, sir?’ she asked Alec. ‘Might we all repair up there? It’ll be easier to see what I mean if we’re looking at it.’

  Minutes later we were gathered in Alec’s room with the envelope opened out flat and the pink frill lying on it.

  ‘Now,’ Grant began, like a lecturer beginning a talk from a podium. ‘As you see, the frill is in perfect condition, except that for some reason it’s been wrenched off its backing cloth. It’s not torn in and of itself. Do you see what that means?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘I’m afraid not, Grant,’ said Alec, rather more diplomatically.

  ‘It wasn’t caught on anything. If it had been it would have been pulled out of shape, if not actually ripped. It’s cheap stuff and it would show the marks of a force strong enough to break the stitching.’

  ‘It might not have been caught on anything,’ I said, ‘but that’s not to say it wasn’t caught in something. In the door to be precise. That would cause only compression, and compression, once released, wouldn’t show.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Grant, ‘but if she had caught it in the door it would have been on the other side. Inside the building.’

  ‘I meant the van door,’ I said. ‘I’m not quibbling,’ I added as she shot me a rather poisonous look, ‘just trying to understand.’

  ‘If she’d caught it in the van door she’d have driven off with it sticking out of the van door,’ said Grant. ‘She’d hardly care about such a trivial matter if she was speeding away from the scene of a crime she had committed, would she?’

  ‘It’s very bright,’ I said. ‘Quite noticeable. Perhaps she wouldn’t want it waving from the door as she drove away.’

  ‘Well, then she’d have reopened the door and pulled it in,’ said Grant. ‘If she was worried about it being seen she wouldn’t have left it behind her.’

  ‘That’s an excellent point,’ said Alec which, to be fair, it was.

  ‘No, the only way for a frill to come unstitched like that – and remember I’ve seen the quality of Beryl Bonnar’s sewing at close quarters; she might have no flair but the sewing itself is very sturdy – the only way for a frill to come unstuck that way was if the wearer of the dress was pulling in one direction and some other person was pulling in the other. We couldn’t imagine, Mr Barrow and me, why the getaway driver and Miss Bonnar would be pulling in opposite directions. They’d both want to be going the same way.’

  ‘And from that’ – I pointed to the scrap of pink lace – ‘from that alone you surmise a complete new theory?’

  ‘Not complete,’ said Grant. ‘We still have no idea why they wanted her dead.’

  ‘They being?’

  ‘Tweetie Stott and Bert Bunyan,’ said Grant. ‘Stands to reason. Two partners have been got rid of. Who else would have done it but the pair who’re now free to team up. But we’ve no clue why they didn’t just switch. Why they had to go killing people.’

  ‘No more have we,’ said Alec. ‘In fact we’ve hit something of a brick wall. We’d like to speak to young Alicia and Jamesie to press them on it, if we can lay hands on them.’

  Grant was rewrapping the lace in the remains of the envelope but she looked up at that. ‘I don’t mind slipping along to Alicia’s work and asking her to drop in here at teatime,’ she said.

  ‘Would you?’ I said casually, but Alec ruined it.

  ‘You’re a marvel, Grant,’ he said. �
�How did you find out where she works?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean, sir,’ said Grant. ‘We were in that dressing room for nearly two hours getting ready. I know she works at the City Dairies in the packing room and lives in Dennistoun with her parents and two brothers. One of them is apprenticed to a riveter at Brown’s Works and the other—’

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘That’s plenty to be going on with. Yes, please, Grant, just you slip along to the City Dairies and ask young Alicia to come and see us at the end of the day.’

  She brought Jamesie with her in the end, which was even better. He had gone to meet her at the end of her shift and, whether from a protective instinct or sheer nosiness, he came to see what we wanted.

  It took a while to settle them when they got into my room, so diverted were they by its luxury.

  ‘Look at the bedspread, Jamesie!’ Alicia exclaimed, running a hand over its tasselled edge. ‘And curtains to match. Look at the curtains! There must be ten yards of velvet in them and all that braid. Have you got— Pardon me, Mrs Gilver, but does that door go to a bathroom?’

  ‘You’re showing me up, girl,’ Jamesie said.

  ‘It does,’ I said. ‘Would you like to use it?’

  Grant squeaked and Alicia squeaked a little too as she answered.

  ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘But I’d love to have a wee keek at it, just to say I had. When am I going to be back in a hotel bedroom with its very own private bathroom right next door? Can you imagine, Jamesie?’

  When she got back her eyes were shining. ‘Beautiful,’ she said. ‘Just like something off the pictures.’

  I could not quite see what aspect of the chilly, white-tiled and green-linoleumed bathroom might have struck her that way but I did not argue.

  ‘If we’re all settled then,’ said Grant stiffly.

  ‘Thank you, Grant,’ I said. ‘I’ll take it from here.’

  Grant subsided, but she was quite unbowed. She derives almost as much pleasure from watching me make a mess of things as she does from getting to do them herself. If the one can be followed by the other she is usually deeply thrilled.

  ‘I’m hoping, my dears,’ I began, trying hard for a grandeur which comes easier every year, ‘that we can speak to you in complete confidence. It’s us or the police and we thought you’d prefer us.’

  This wiped away the last of the sparkle from Alicia’s face; the delights of the bedroom curtains and bathroom tiles were nothing to her now. Jamesie folded his arms firmly across his chest and narrowed his eyes. Grant smirked faintly.

  ‘The thing is,’ said Alec, taking over, ‘we don’t believe Beryl killed Roly.’ Now Alicia folded her arms too. ‘And we think Beryl has been killed too.’

  Because of the folded arms, it was very easy to see that their chests had begun moving rapidly, their breath to quicken.

  ‘We can’t have any part of this,’ said Jamesie. ‘And you wouldn’t either if youse had any idea what youse were getting into.’

  ‘We have met Mr Bonnar and come to an understanding with him,’ Alec said. ‘You are in no danger.’

  ‘Aye well, if you’ve got an “understanding” with Simon Bonnar maybe we should watch ourselves with you too,’ said Jamesie.

  Alicia looked rather shocked at his impertinence, but she could not stop herself from nodding. I sighed and looked over at Alec to see if he had a way through this impasse. How to explain to two such youngsters the pangs of Bonnar’s fatherly grief and to make them understand that all he cared about were his own worries and that all other considerations had faded for him. Then I thought of something.

  ‘And we know who did it,’ I said. ‘It was Tweetie and Bert. If you help us bring them to justice then not only will you be a professional couple at the Locarno but you’ll be the senior couple.’

  ‘Without Tweetie flexing her new muscles,’ said Alec, catching on quickly.

  ‘Tweetie and Bert?’ said Alicia, her voice as filled with wonder as a child on Christmas morning. ‘Killed Beryl and Roly? Killed them both?’

  ‘But the one thing we can’t work out and where we need your help,’ said Alec, ‘is why. Clearly they wanted a change of partner. But why, we’ve been asking ourselves, did they not just change partners?’

  Alicia and Jamesie continued to look back at us wide-eyed and open-mouthed, but a transformation had come over them. There was a fixity now about Jamesie’s gaze and after a minute Alicia glanced at him and raised her eyebrows, asking a silent question.

  ‘Ah,’ said Alec, sitting forward until he was perched right on the edge of his seat. ‘You know something, don’t you?’

  Both shook their heads and Alicia moved further back in her chair to put a safer distance between her and this advancing threat.

  ‘You can tell us,’ I added, ‘and we shan’t ever breathe a word.’

  ‘He’ll know,’ said Alicia.

  ‘Simon?’ said Alec.

  ‘He’ll tell Simon,’ said Jamesie. ‘Then we’ll be for it.’

  ‘I promise we’ll think of a way to keep you out of it,’ I said. ‘I promise you.’ Of course this was beyond rash as I was just about to discover. ‘We shall say we found out whatever it is some other way.’

  ‘You couldn’t have,’ said Jamesie. ‘There’s only Bert, Beryl, Alicia and me knows in the whole of Glasgow.’

  ‘And it gives a motive for the murders?’ said Alec. ‘Well, as Mrs Gilver said before, it’s either us or the police.’

  ‘Aye, but then she said she’d keep our names out of it,’ said Jamesie, pointing at me. ‘That’s not fair, going back on the deal.’

  ‘My dear fellow,’ Alec said. ‘You refused the deal.’

  ‘Aye but,’ Jamesie said. He ran a hand through his hair, ruffling it up out of its neat waves. ‘What will we do?’ he said, twisting in his seat and searching Alicia’s face.

  ‘Tell them,’ said Alicia. ‘I’m not lying to the police. My mammy would kill me just for being in the station. Just tell them, Jamesie, eh?’

  It took him a couple of good gulps to pluck up his nerve but when he spoke at last it was a succinct and orderly report, which covered all the necessary points.

  ‘We were the witnesses at their wedding, Alicia and me.’

  And just like that, the whole case fell together with a click.

  ‘Oh my good lord,’ I said. ‘They’re not just dancing partners. They’re man and wife.’

  ‘I couldn’t for the life of me see why any man would risk the wrath of Simon Bonnar by murdering his daughter,’ Alec said. ‘But once he had married her, his life was over already, wasn’t it? Bonnar would have killed him anyway.’

  ‘Beryl said she’d work on him,’ said Alicia. ‘Bring him round. But it’s been a year and nothing’s changed.’

  ‘I still don’t understand why Roly had to die,’ I said.

  ‘I do,’ said Alec.

  ‘So do I,’ said Grant. ‘And it’s wickedness beyond reckoning.’

  I waited and for once she did not make a dramatic performance out of delivering the news. Perhaps in her disgust she was beyond it.

  ‘If Beryl disappeared the whole of the city police would be falling over themselves. But if there was a murder and Beryl disappeared the police wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole. They think she did it and they’re letting her get away with it. They must believe her father’s grief is an act.’

  ‘Are you really saying what I think you’re saying?’ I said. ‘That Roly was just a means to an end?’

  ‘He was part of the method of killing Beryl,’ Alec said. ‘Nothing more.’

  We shared a moment’s quiet reflection then, each of us trying in our own ways to come to terms with the sheer arrogant waste of his poor young life. Of course, it was dreadful to think of Beryl done away with to set her husband free, but somehow the killing of poor Roly was the true horror for me. I could not forget the sound of the ragged sobs being torn from Julian Armour’s throat and I hoped that somehow he could be spared knowing
why Roly had died.

  ‘Very well then,’ I said, after a while. ‘You two can go on your way with our grateful thanks. In fact, when is your wedding?’

  ‘September,’ said Alicia. ‘We’re saving up for it.’

  ‘And how would you like to spend your wedding night here?’ I said. ‘As a present from Mr Osborne and me, to say thank you.’

  ‘Oh! That would be lovely,’ said Alicia, clapping her hands and bouncing out of her seat with the joy of it.

  ‘And when Mrs Gilver says “here”,’ said Alec, ‘she means the honeymoon suite, of course. If they have one.’

  ‘Will they let us?’ said Jamesie. ‘They’ll not come over all snooty when we get off the bus and haven’t a set of suitcases and hatboxes and all that?’

  He had a very exalted idea of the Grand Central’s clientele and I could not help but smile.

  ‘We shall make sure you are welcomed as their treasured guests,’ I said.

  I was salving my conscience because, when the news of Bert and Beryl’s marriage came out, someone – police, lawyer, or Bonnar himself – would want to see the certificate and there their witnessing signatures would be. If Bonnar then wanted to wreak his revenge for their part in it, nothing we could do would stop him.

  30

  ‘And finally to the police,’ Alec said, once the youngsters were gone. ‘To lay the entire thing down in front of them. Culprits, victims, means, opportunity and, most important of all, motive.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’d go quite that far,’ I said. ‘We have no idea who drove the van and we can’t account for how Tweetie or Bert got hold of cyanide. I don’t suppose he’s a chemist’s assistant or anything quite so handy.’

  ‘He’s not,’ said Grant. ‘He’s something far worse. If I were Miss Bonnar’s dad it wouldn’t have been the religion I baulked at. I mean, who’d want their only daughter married to an undertaker? Think of him coming home and chucking her under the chin with those hands.’

  ‘An undertaker,’ said Alec, squeezing my arm really quite hard. ‘I don’t suppose you know the name of the firm, do you?’