Death of a Dancer

by Caro Peacock

  ‘I hated the woman you call Columbine more than anybody else in the world.’

  There was a kind of tawdry dignity about the way he said it, like a man making a confession of faith. My mind somersaulted.

  ‘Good heavens, you’re Major Charles Rainer,’ I said.

  But he was giving me the blank stare again.

  ‘Who? No. I am the Reverend Theophilus Maine.’

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Silence, then a low whistle from Kennedy.

  ‘Maine – that was the family name of the old lord who dived off London Bridge.’

  ‘I am his son,’ the man said. ‘The younger son.’

  He stared into my face, as if I should have guessed his whole story from that. My mind had plumped down from its somersault and was trying to recover. I was glad when Kennedy took over the questioning.

  ‘You hated Columbine for what she’d done to your father?’

  ‘Her name was Priddy,’ he said. ‘We’ll use that, if you please. No, it was my father’s own fault. He was an unjust and lustful man. Priddy ruined my life and I’d done nothing to hurt her. Nothing.’

  ‘What did she do?’ Kennedy asked.

  ‘That’s between me and my maker,’ said Reverend Maine.

  ‘Oh no, it isn’t,’ I said. ‘You tried to strangle a woman, just below where we’re sitting now. That’s between you and the magistrates.’

  ‘The woman had defrauded me.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘She’d taken my money under false pretences.’

  ‘What false pretences?’

  He hesitated.

  ‘Pauline had agreed to kill Columbine for you, hadn’t she?’ I said.

  ‘To kill the whore Priddy, yes.’

  ‘Tell us. Tell us everything,’ I said. ‘You’ve attempted murder twice over: Columbine first and then Pauline.’

  ‘They were whores, both of them.’

  ‘It’s still attempted murder. Do you want to walk out of here a free man, or shall we tell the boy downstairs to call a police officer?’

  He looked from me to Kennedy and then to Amos. Finding no comfort, he reached out a hand to Kennedy.

  ‘Another drink. For my stomach.’

  Kennedy gave him back his flask. He drank deeply and noisily, closed his eyes for a moment, then started his story.

  ‘I was home from my second year at Oxford. The girl Priddy was employed in the dairy. She was never satisfactory, cheeky and insubordinate. I was a young man, reading for holy orders. She made sure she caught my eye, led me on.’

  ‘How old was she?’ I said.

  ‘Fifteen, sixteen, perhaps. Who knows. Those kind of girls grow up early. There was no indiscretion, nothing that could properly be called indiscretion, on my part. I was innocent in the ways of the world. I believe now that she deliberately contrived to have us discovered.’

  ‘Discovered?’

  ‘By my father. He was a man of hasty temper. I suppose appearances were against me, but in truth I was as innocent as Adam before Eve tempted him. My father didn’t believe me. He reduced my allowance, threatened to take me away from Oxford and force me to earn my living as a tutor. The humiliation was not to be borne. I promised to see no more of the girl Priddy. She never appeared again in the dairy after that day. Naturally, I assumed that my father had dismissed her without a character.’

  ‘Instead of which, he carried her off to London and covered her in diamonds,’ I said.

  I could see from Kennedy’s expression that he thought I was being hard on the man, but the Adam and Eve story always seemed unjust to me. Maine winced.

  ‘My father was besotted with her. He behaved altogether like a man in his second childhood. The scandal of it even reached Oxford. Can you imagine what torture that was for a proud and sensitive young man – having to listen to the jokes and speculation. Then my father dived off London Bridge and ruined my prospects for ever.’

  ‘You were the younger son,’ said Kennedy, quite gently. ‘Did you have much in the way of prospects?’

  ‘Our family is not without influence. There was a good living arranged for me, a church in Chelsea. After the scandal of my father’s death, my patron withdrew the offer. He said people would be looking at me in the pulpit and thinking of my father and the milkmaid, not their own sins. Door after door closed to me. In the end, I had no choice. I signed on as a chaplain in His Majesty’s navy. The longer I stayed away, the smaller my expectations were of a good living in this country. I was condemned, through no fault of my own, to the dangers and deprivations of a life at sea. Last year I returned, broken in health, with a charity pension that gives me less to live on than my father spent on his hunting dogs.’

  Tears were running down his cheeks, into the channels between nostrils and mouth, dripping from his chin. I was beginning to pity him. I hardened my heart, thinking of Daniel.

  ‘So when did you decide to have Columbine killed?’ I said.

  ‘When I knew she was in London and flaunting herself on stage. My life’s almost over, in any case. The latest quack gives me six months at most. I made up my mind that, like Samson in the temple of the Philistines, I would perform one act of justice and cleansing before my death.’

  ‘How did you meet Pauline?’ I said.

  His eyes dropped.

  ‘Not so much the temple of the Philistines as the Palace of the Egyptians,’ I suggested.

  His sallow face turned red. Kennedy looked puzzled, but I think Amos Legge understood. Maine might have been telling the truth when he said he had less than the dogs to live on, but he’d somehow managed to pay Pauline’s price. Perhaps, to impress a gentleman client, she’d boasted to him about being a dancer at the Augustus. To Maine’s strange mind, the chance might have seemed heaven-sent.

  ‘How much did you pay her to kill Columbine?’ I said.

  ‘Twenty pounds. Ten before and ten when it was done.’

  ‘Where did you meet her to pay the first ten?’

  ‘St Paul’s, Covent Garden.’

  ‘Did you suggest poisoning?’

  ‘No. It was her idea to use arsenic’

  ‘She said arsenic?’

  ‘Yes. When I met her afterwards, she said she’d put arsenic in Priddy’s bowl of syllabub.’

  I remembered the greed for knowledge in Pauline’s face on the night of the murder, her question, ‘Was it arsenic?’ She’d needed to know in order to collect her money. If she’d been able to read the report in the paper, she could have changed her story to fit the facts.

  ‘Then you discovered from the newspaper that she’d lied, and you paid a visit to the theatre,’ I said.

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Never mind. You did, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes. The newspaper said it was some different poison, then the police arrested the other dancer. The whore Pauline said she wanted to meet me again. I think she wanted more money. I showed her the newspaper report and taxed her with lying to me.’

  ‘A waste of time. She couldn’t read.’

  ‘She laughed in my face and admitted the deception. “Did you think I was going to risk having my neck stretched for twenty pounds when I can make that much by opening my legs a few times?” That was what she said to me.’

  ‘Was that when you tried to strangle her?’

  ‘I never intended to kill her. I was angry.’

  ‘But you did intend her to kill Columbine?’

  ‘To kill Priddy, yes. But the Lord provided another avenger and left me clean.’

  ‘Do you know who did kill Columbine?’

  ‘The other dancer, I suppose.’

  A man’s voice shouted from below, ‘Closing time in five minutes, ladies and gentlemen.’

  It sounded like the angry man I’d met last time.

  ‘Will you let me go?’

  Maine spoke quite humbly. He sounded exhausted. I looked at Kennedy.

  ‘He is speaking the truth, I think,’ he said.

  ‘Abo
ut what matters, yes, I think he is.’

  I had no faith at all in the man’s honour, but his story touched the facts as I knew them in three places: the meeting with Pauline in St Paul’s, her inquiry about arsenic, his visit backstage at the Augustus. Also, it matched exactly what I knew about Pauline’s character.

  ‘You can go, as far as we’re concerned,’ I said.

  He stood up, took a last swallow from his flask and put it away in his pocket. The three of us followed as he walked unsteadily down the stairs. This time the angry man didn’t give me a second glance.

  Outside it was dark, the air harsh and damp. We watched as Reverend Theophilus Maine walked across the square.

  ‘Poor devil,’ Kennedy said.

  I was too disappointed to pity him. I’d hoped so much that he’d point the way to our murderer, but all I’d done was waste precious time.

  ‘He might have been telling the truth about the murder,’ said Amos, ‘but I’ll give you any odds he was letting himself off lightly about the milkmaid.’

  ‘How’s that?’ said Kennedy.

  ‘Reckoning the poor girl took advantage of him, and him the squire’s son and five years or so older. We’ve heard that story before and most girls it happened to weren’t as lucky as that one turned out to be.’

  Kennedy looked taken aback. He liked Amos but wasn’t used to such free speaking from him.

  ‘I agree,’ I said. ‘He’s a mean, hypocritical man who hates women, and I don’t feel in the least sorry for him.’

  (Though I did feel sorry, just a little.)

  ‘So Pauline’s not a murderer?’ Kennedy said.

  ‘No, the woman’s everything bad you care to name, but she’s not that. The one consolation is that we didn’t tell Daniel about this.’

  ‘At least we know now that it wasn’t Rainer at the Augustus,’ Kennedy said. ‘But then we never thought it was.’

  The three of us walked sadly towards Haymarket, where Kennedy had an engagement.

  ‘I’ll have the horses round about ten on Sunday morning, then,’ Amos said.

  I thanked him. Following Hardcastle’s trail seemed the only hope left now.

  Sunday was a bright, cold day with clouds driven across blue sky by a wind from the east. Amos arrived leading Rancie and riding a wall-eyed roan cob that he said could do with the exercise. We rode at a walk towards Marylebone then trotted around the north side of Regent’s Park. Strange bellowings and roarings came from the zoological gardens.

  ‘Some of the lads from the stables have been in there,’ said Amos wistfully. ‘They saw a hippopotamus.’

  We paused on Primrose Hill to rest the horses and look back over London, all the way across the river to hills far to the south. From there, we joined the main road northwards and uphill towards Hampstead. It was early afternoon when we came to the village and drew rein at the foot of the steepest part of the hill.

  ‘I reckon this is where Mr Hardcastle told the phaeton to wait,’ Amos said.

  ‘Yes, and the church is over there.’

  We rode towards it. The morning service was long over and evensong still some hours away, so the only people to be seen were a woman standing by a grave and a man sweeping the porch. Amos dismounted to help me down and offered to hold the horses while I went inside.

  Now the time had come I felt nervous, more than half-convinced I was wasting our time. I took two shillings from my pocket and slid them inside my glove then walked towards the porch, stiff from the long ride. As I’d hoped, the man sweeping the porch was the churchwarden. On the ride, I’d thought of various ways of working up to what I wanted, but in the end it was better to come straight out with it.

  ‘May I please see your register of marriages?’

  He gave me a stare. I think my nervousness showed. It occurred to me that he might have taken me for a wronged fiancée, abandoned by a lover who’d found somebody else.

  ‘Recent marriage, was it?’

  ‘Oh yes, very recent. About a month ago.’

  He put down his broom, turned and opened the door. I followed him into the church and down a side aisle. At the end of it he took a bunch of keys from his pocket and unlocked the door to a small room. Inside were a plain table, a few upright chairs, a cupboard. The place smelled of ink and old dust. Slowly, he sorted out another key from his ring and unlocked the cupboard, revealing a stack of leather-bound books. He took the top one, opened it and put it on the table.

  ‘These are this year’s.’

  I thanked him and gave him the two shillings for his trouble. He stood very close to me while I looked at the book, as if scared I might rip a page out. There were about a dozen entries for the year, but one leapt out at me. The Rt. Hon. Rodney Hardcastle. Beside it, a sprawling signature and a second clearer signature in neat, rounded handwriting, Margaret Priddy. Below it, the signatures of two witnesses. One meant nothing to me. The other, in tiny handwriting, was Marie Duval. The date was early February, two weeks before Columbine was murdered.

  The whole thing came as such a shock that my face probably confirmed what the churchwarden suspected about a faithless lover. It was almost the reverse. Hardcastle hadn’t been as faithless as we all thought. Instead of abandoning Columbine for a rich bride, he’d married her.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  ‘I’m sorry, but I fail to see how the deceased’s alleged marriage to Mr Hardcastle makes any difference to the case.’

  Monday morning, the day of Jenny’s trial. Toby Kennedy and I had arrived at the doors of the Old Bailey before eight o’clock to catch our barrister on his way in. Somebody else was there before us: Daniel, in dark coat and hat, his pale face newly shaven by some unskilful barber, with cuts on the lip and cheek.

  ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ Kennedy had said to him.

  ‘Do you think I’d be anywhere else?’

  We might as well have argued with a statue. When Charles Phillips arrived some time later, with a train of clients and solicitors in tow, Daniel had tagged along with the rest. Now we were standing on the first-floor landing between the two courtrooms, all still in our outdoor clothes and collecting some curious looks from court officials and other barristers going up and down stairs. In less than half an hour, the judges would be taking their seats on the bench.

  Mr Phillips was a courteous man and doing his best to listen patiently, but it was clear he was less than pleased to see us.

  ‘It’s not just an alleged marriage,’ I said. ‘I’ve seen the entry in the register. If necessary, we can produce the coachman who drove Mr Hardcastle to Hampstead.’

  ‘Very well, grant that the marriage took place …’

  ‘Just two weeks before her death,’ Kennedy put in.

  ‘… that still does not imply any connection. You seem to be claiming that her murder was in some way a consequence of her marriage.’

  ‘Surely it casts some doubt?’ Daniel said.

  Phillips gave him a black look. He’d been doing his best to pretend that Daniel wasn’t there. I dare say barristers are skilled at being selectively blind, but Daniel wasn’t making it easy.

  ‘Only if it gives another person a clear motive for murder,’ Phillips said. ‘Who gains by her death? Certainly not Mr Hardcastle, if that’s what you’re implying.’

  ‘He’d have her money,’ Kennedy said.

  ‘Was she a wealthy woman? Not that it’s relevant to her murder – the money would be his whether she lived or died,’ Phillips said.

  ‘As a wife, she’d have been an embarrassment to Hardcastle,’ Kennedy persisted, taking the line he and I had discussed on the way there. ‘His family would have disapproved strongly.’

  ‘So within two weeks of marrying her, he poisons her? You are intelligent people, surely you can see that to stand up in court and imply that the son of a noble and distinguished father is a murderer on no evidence but a string of perhapses is not the way to help Miss Jarvis?’

  ‘Then what is?’ Daniel burst out. ‘He mustn’
t be mentioned because his family’s rich and titled and she can hang because hers isn’t?’

  Phillips shook his head.

  ‘That’s hardly fair. I promise you, if I knew another person to be guilty, I’d stand up and proclaim it in court were he the son of the highest in the land. As it is, we must follow the course that we’ve set from the start. The chain of evidence against Miss Jarvis isn’t complete. Our strongest point is that no evidence has so far been produced that she was present in the theatre on the night of the murder. On the other hand, our weak point is that she can be proved to be in possession of a quantity of the poison that was used.’

  ‘Not at the time that mattered,’ I said. ‘It was actually in my possession.’

  Kennedy had already told him that. He looked hard at me.

  ‘Miss … Miss Lane, is it? I will tell you, I had thought of putting you in the witness box on that very point.’

  ‘Do it. I’ll tell the court gladly.’

  It was in my mind all the time that, in taking the basket to Daniel’s house, I’d put one of the most damaging pieces of evidence against Jenny into the hands of the police. I’d have given almost anything for a chance to put that right, but Mr Phillips shook his head.

  ‘If you did go in the witness box, counsel for the prosecution would have a right to cross-examine you on your evidence.’

  ‘That doesn’t worry me. It’s the truth.’

  ‘But is it the whole truth? Suppose I’m counsel for the other side and I ask: Miss Lane, were you aware of the contents of the basket? You see? You have to hesitate. Did you open the packet of thornapple seeds? When you first saw it, was the packet sealed and complete? I can see from your face that it wasn’t, and the jury would see it too. Then I’d close in with the most damning question of all…’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘What did you do with the basket, Miss Lane? Did you do your duty as a citizen and hand it in to the police? You didn’t, did you? You took it to the house of a certain gentleman who happened to be harbouring Miss Jarvis and might even now have to face a charge on that account.’

  ‘Do you think I care about that?’ Daniel said.

  ‘It’s not a question of whether you care about it or not. It’s a question of whether all this would be any use in the defence of Miss Jarvis, and I assure you it would be quite otherwise. We must do the best we can with what we have and what we can do to gain the sympathy of the jury. Yes, Mr Lewis, I’ll be with your client directly.’