Death of a Dancer

by Caro Peacock

  They ran off. We followed more slowly and they were out of sight by the time he opened the door next to the dancers’ dressing room. It was a small and crowded room with costumes, velvet doublets and cloaks hanging from pegs, and Richard Crookback’s canvas hump swung from a hook on the back of the door. A plaster bust of Shakespeare balanced precariously on the narrow window sill.

  ‘How can we help you, Miss …?’

  ‘Lane. Liberty Lane.’

  ‘My wife, Honoria.’

  She smiled at me. They were a pleasant-looking couple, he in his mid forties, upright and broad-shouldered, she around a decade younger, with fair hair almost as bright as her daughter’s and eyes that glowed even in the grey light of the dressing room. There was no affectation about them, as if acting were just like any other family business.

  ‘It was dreadful, wasn’t it?’ she said. ‘Poor Columbine.’

  ‘They’ve arrested Jenny Jarvis,’ I said. ‘I want to find out more about what happened, if I can.’

  Robert Surrey’s face went dark. Honoria Surrey moved an armful of cloaks and hoods off a chair and signed to me to sit down. The two of them settled side by side on an enormous wicker hamper, looking at me.

  ‘You were with her, weren’t you, before the doctor came?’ I said to Mr Surrey.

  ‘Yes. I heard a commotion, Marie screaming and Blake telling somebody to run for a doctor, so I went out to see what was happening. Nobody seemed to have any notion what to do, so I had to manage the best I could. Not that it was any use. She was in a delirium by then.’

  ‘You weren’t called at the inquest?’

  ‘No. There was nothing I could tell them that the doctor couldn’t tell better.’

  A sound came from the direction of the stage, like a distant door slamming. He frowned. ‘I hope the Tower of London hasn’t fallen over again. That set’s been doing the rounds of all the theatres since before Garrick.’

  ‘Pauline said Columbine was talking about bleeding and people not seeing.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true. She was rambling about blood, but I don’t know why. She wasn’t bleeding or spitting blood.’

  ‘That girl Pauline has eyes everywhere,’ Mrs Surrey said.

  ‘She says you told her to get strong coffee,’ I said to Mr Surrey.

  ‘Yes, it was the only thing I could think of, to try to keep Columbine awake.’

  ‘You see, he’d had all this before, poor man.’ Mrs Surrey looked up at her husband’s face and put her hand over his. ‘Some time ago, when we were running a touring company, a poor girl poisoned herself with belladonna, so he recognised the symptoms.’

  He nodded.

  ‘She was a good actress, playing Ophelia. I’m afraid she played it all too realistically, fell in love with her Hamlet, and he wanted nothing to do with her.’

  ‘There’s quite often belladonna in dressing rooms,’ Mrs Surrey said. ‘You know some girls take it to make their eyes look bigger?’

  ‘So you thought from the start that Columbine was poisoned with belladonna?’ I said.

  ‘Yes. Either that or something very like it. After the Ophelia case, a medical student told me that she might have lived if we’d managed to keep her awake, poured strong coffee into her, made her walk and walk. I had something like that in mind this time, only it was too late.’

  ‘Can you think of any reason why somebody might have wanted to poison her?’

  They looked at each other.

  ‘Apart from Jenny?’ Mrs Surrey said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Robert and I have talked and talked about it, and we can’t. It’s true that she was a very irritating woman, but that’s no reason to murder somebody.’

  I asked if they had any idea what the quarrel between Jenny and Columbine had been about. They shook their heads.

  ‘We do try not to listen to chorus gossip,’ Mrs Surrey said. ‘I’m afraid dancers are mostly rather silly girls. I’ve had to stop Susanna from going into their dressing room. She’s at the curious stage and wants to know everything.’

  ‘Five years from now, that girl will be the Viola of her generation,’ Surrey said. ‘We’re not having her spoiled by the likes of Pauline.’

  ‘Or Jenny?’ I said experimentally.

  They looked at each other again.

  ‘We thought Jenny was different,’ Mrs Surrey said. ‘She seemed a shy, nicely mannered girl. She was so helpful when Robert had his sore throat.’

  ‘Brewed cup after cup of herb tea for me,’ he said sadly. ‘Melissa and sage and so on.’

  ‘Do you think she poisoned Columbine?’ I said.

  ‘We don’t like to think so, but…’

  ‘… but what can we think?’ She completed his sentence.

  ‘I suppose Pauline and all the others have gone now that the Spanish dancers are here,’ I said.

  The seven people who might know why Columbine had hated Jenny would be scattered all over London by now, if they’d been lucky enough to find work in other theatres.

  ‘You shouldn’t believe everything you read on playbills,’ Mr Surrey said with a laugh. ‘The Spanish dancers will be mostly the same girls with mantillas and castanets. The two soloists come from as far south as Clapham.’

  That was good news as far as it went. I stood up and thanked the Surreys. He opened the door to let me out, setting Richard’s hump swinging again. He gave it a rueful look.

  ‘I feel as if I’ve been kicked by a carthorse, being bent double for an hour. Still, it’s not as bad as having to black up every night. I hope you and the other man find what you were looking for.’

  I turned in the doorway.

  ‘Other man?’

  ‘Billy says there was a man around earlier this morning asking questions about Columbine. That was before we arrived. I thought he might have something to do with you.’

  ‘No. What did he look like?’

  ‘Tall, quite gentlemanly type, with a brown face, as if he’d been in foreign parts, Billy says. Middle-aged. That’s observant, by Billy’s standards.’

  ‘Could he have been one of Rodney Hardcastle’s circle?’

  He made a face to show what he thought of Hardcastle.

  ‘Doesn’t sound like any of them I’ve ever seen.’

  Nobody was about when I stepped out into the corridor. I made my way to the door that had been Columbine’s, paused and knocked softly. As I’d expected, there was no answer. I opened the door, walked in as if I had a right to be there, and closed it quietly behind me. If there was a reason beyond the impulse of the moment, it was the wish to find out more about Columbine. At first I thought the room was in the process of being cleared, because a couch was turned over and a big screen was lying flat on the floor as if ready for the removal men. It was a substantial folding screen with three panels, padded and covered in painted leather, large enough for a person to change behind. At second glance, the screen wasn’t quite flat. One end of it was raised from the floor by something underneath and a tangle of green satin and golden gauze spilled over the bare board floor. Columbine’s Titania costume from the first ballet. Why hadn’t somebody tidied it away before the furniture was moved? I walked over, intending to pick it up, then jumped back. There was a hand tangled in the gold gauze; a small pink hand, motionless and palm upwards.

  I shouted something and pulled the screen up. It was heavy and hard to move and all I could do was stand there holding it, looking down at Susanna Surrey. The child’s fair hair spread out over the floor. She was still wearing her outdoor clothes and scarf. Her eyes were closed. I shouted for help again. Running steps came along the corridor and the door slammed open.

  ‘God, what’s happened to her?’

  Robert Surrey was beside me, taking the weight of the screen, his wife a step behind him at first, then on her knees beside the girl.

  ‘Susanna!’

  Two blue eyes opened for a moment, screwed up against the light and closed again. The outstretched hand twitched and moved towa
rds her mother’s.

  ‘… pushed it over on me.’

  Her voice was a whisper.

  ‘What’s happening this time?’

  Barnaby Blake was at the door, sounding scared and angry. When he realised what we were looking at he came in and helped Robert Surrey and me move the screen right away. By then Susanna was sitting up, curled against her mother. A rectangular red mark on her forehead showed where the wooden frame of the screen had hit her.

  ‘I only came in for a look because David dared me. I saw her costume and went to touch it, then she pushed the screen over on me.’

  Her voice was stronger now. The child was an actress born and bred, and even though she was shocked and in pain she sensed that she’d never had a more attentive audience.

  ‘Who pushed the screen over on you, darling?’ Honoria said, stroking the child’s hair gently away from the injury.

  ‘She did. Her ghost did. She was angry with me for touching her costume.’

  ‘Whose ghost, darling?’

  ‘Columbine’s ghost, of course.’

  The adults exchanged glances over her head. Robert Surrey sighed.

  ‘The first thing to do is get you back to our room, young lady.’

  ‘Does she need the doctor?’ Blake said.

  ‘We’ll see. Arnica and a good rest may do the trick.’ Surrey bent down and scooped Susanna skilfully up into his arms, like King Lear carrying Cordelia. ‘And where’s young David? I’ll have some words to say to him.’

  It turned out that David was waiting anxiously outside the door with a paper cone of roasted chestnuts, now gone cold. His father told him in passing that it was all his fault, and the four of them disappeared into their own room, leaving Blake and me alone. He looked shaken, and I dare say I did too.

  ‘Her ghost – that’s the last straw.’

  ‘You don’t believe her?’ I said.

  ‘Of course not. The child crept in here for a look round and managed to pull the screen over on herself. Imagination did the rest.’

  ‘Yes, you can hardly expect a child to be smothered in the Tower every night and not be affected by it.’

  ‘Still, it’s a good thing you happened to be here,’ he said. ‘You heard the screen fall, I suppose?’

  I didn’t correct him as it gave me a good excuse for being in the room. Now that my heart was slowing to its normal beat, I took the opportunity to look round. A pair of point shoes lay on the floor, behind where the screen had been. Jars of make-up were scattered on a table in front of a mirror and Columbine’s ordinary clothes were hanging from pegs on the opposite wall, if anything so fine could have been called ordinary: a dress of dark red velvet, a black cloak with a red lining and hood trimmed with black fur.

  ‘I’ve sent a note to Marie asking her to come and clear up,’ Blake said. ‘We need this room.’

  A black fur muff that matched the cloak trimming had fallen on the floor. I bent to pick it up and almost dropped it again as it fell apart in my hands. It had been cut through several times over, the cuts going cleanly through the fur and the silk lining. I held it out to show Blake, my heart hammering at the savagery of the thing. He took it from me.

  ‘Good heavens, did the girl do that?’

  ‘Of course not. You’d need a sharp knife and quite a lot of strength. Besides, why should she?’

  He put the muff on the table beside the make-up pots and moved over to the upended couch.

  ‘And I don’t suppose she did this either.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It wasn’t like this yesterday. Somebody’s turned it over.’

  I went to look at it and recognised the couch Columbine had been lying on when I had my glimpse of her through the half-open doorway. The couch she’d died on. It was something else that made me shiver, though. The tough upholstery canvas at the base of the couch was scored through with five or six long cuts, clean as those in the fur muff.

  ‘What in the world has been going on?’ Blake said.

  ‘Could the police have done that?’

  ‘Of course not. Why should they?’

  ‘Somebody’s been looking for something,’ I said. ‘I wonder if it’s anything to do with the brown-faced gentleman.’

  ‘Brown-faced? Oh, I suppose Billy told you about him.’

  I didn’t correct him, in case he was annoyed with Robert Surrey for gossiping.

  ‘Did you see him? What sort of things was he asking?’

  ‘Yes. He wanted to know about how she died and so on. I thought he might be trying to get up something for the newspapers, so I didn’t waste much time on him.’

  ‘Did he introduce himself?’

  ‘I didn’t invite him to. He claimed to be a friend of hers, but half the world says that with people who are well known, particularly when they’re dead and can’t deny it. I wish I’d taken more interest now.’

  We walked round the room together but found no other signs of damage.

  ‘Whoever pushed the screen over might still be here in the theatre,’ I said.

  ‘Anywhere from the flies to the cellars, I suppose. We can’t search the whole place, but we can look in the dressing rooms at least.’

  We went along the corridor, starting at Blake’s office. The sparsely furnished dressing rooms would have provided few hiding places and there was no trace of a brown-faced man or anybody else.

  ‘Probably ran for it,’ Blake said. ‘We’d better see how the girl is.’

  He knocked at the Surreys’ dressing room and the door opened on a family tableau. Susanna was leaning back in a chair with a bandage round her head, her father kneeling beside her holding her hand, her mother putting the cork back in a bottle of arnica solution, young David sitting on the costume basket looking hangdog.

  ‘Will she be fit to go on tonight?’ Blake asked Surrey.

  Susanna gave him a maiden-martyr look.

  ‘We are always fit to go on.’

  Since she was obviously recovering, I risked a question.

  ‘Did you see anybody behind the screen?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or hear anything?’

  ‘I think I might have heard somebody move, but I don’t remember.’

  ‘Ghosts don’t make a noise,’ said David sulkily.

  ‘How do you know? You’ve never had one trying to kill you.’

  Brother and sister glared at each other. Blake and I wished her a quick recovery and let ourselves out.

  ‘I must get on,’ he said. ‘Ten thousand chores to do before tonight. The last thing we want is a story about a vengeful ghost going round. Heaven knows, she could be difficult enough when she was alive.’

  *

  I walked slowly back to the side door, hoping I might meet Billy and prise more from him about the mysterious man. No sign of him, but as I stood by his cubbyhole a woman came through the door from the street like somebody in a hurry. Today her cloak was red corduroy, with a matching feathered hat pinned to her daffodil hair. For a dancer on four shillings a performance, Pauline dressed remarkably fancy.

  ‘Oh, you,’ she said. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘You’re early, aren’t you?’ I said.

  A pair of hard brown eyes stared into mine, hostile as a cat guarding a fish bone.

  ‘I’ve got a right to be here. You haven’t. Your man’s been thrown out.’

  ‘If you mean Mr Suter, he’s not my man.’

  She tried to push past me. I stayed where I was. No point in being polite with her.

  ‘Why did Columbine attack Jenny?’ I said.

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Of course you know.’

  She shrugged.

  ‘No odds, anyway. One of them’s dead and the other soon will be.’

  ‘You knew Jenny had been arrested, then?’

  News travels fast in London, but it was surprising she’d heard so quickly. I wondered if she’d just come from Bow Street. She pushed her body against me and brought her face so close to m
ine that I caught the briny whiff of whelks or winkles on her breath.

  ‘It’s not good for the health, being a nosey parker like you are,’ she said. ‘I’ve got friends, good friends, don’t think I haven’t.’

  She pushed past me, went into the dancers’ dressing room and slammed the door loudly. She moved quickly. Quickly enough to have pushed the screen over on Susanna, left by the front entrance and come back in again? It was just possible, I thought. If so, had she been the person in Columbine’s dressing room with the sharp knife? I’d have liked to follow her and ask more questions, but there was no hope of getting answers to them.

  Still, my visit to the Augustus had answered one question at least. The next thing was to find Toby Kennedy and give him his reply.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘I don’t believe Jenny killed her,’ I said.

  I’d found Toby Kennedy and Daniel together in the studio at Bloomsbury Square. Daniel was sitting on the piano stool from force of habit, staring down at his hands, motionless on the keys.

  ‘Of course she didn’t.’

  His voice was impatient. Kennedy glanced at me over his head.

  ‘Two hours ago you only hoped she hadn’t,’ he said. ‘What’s changed?’

  I told them all that had happened at the Augustus.

  ‘Whoever was looking for something in that dressing room, it wasn’t Jenny,’ I said. ‘Pauline knows a lot about what’s happening. She as good as threatened me.’

  Daniel straightened his back and looked at me.

  ‘That man who was asking about Columbine – tell me again how Billy described him to Surrey.’

  I repeated the words as accurately as I could: ‘Middle-aged, tall, gentlemanly type, with a brown face as if he’d been in foreign parts.’

  Daniel’s hands came to life and swept up and down the keys in arpeggios. He looked from Kennedy’s face to mine and back again.

  ‘Don’t you see? Don’t either of you see?’

  Kennedy and I looked at each other.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Kennedy, it was you who told me about him in the first place,’ Daniel said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  From Kennedy’s face, he was concerned that his friend was going mad.

  ‘The cavalry man,’ Daniel said. ‘The one who cursed her from the dock at the Old Bailey. Rainer or whatever his name was.’